Love Without Conditions

Paul Ferrini
 Copyright 1994
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part or in any form.

ISBN # 1-879159-15-5

For My Children:
Amy, Misha and Shanti

Heartways Press
9 Phillips Street Greenfield, MA 01301
413-774-9474

[email protected]
www.paulferrini.com
 Table of Contents

Preface
1 Mastery of Your Thoughts
2 Learning to Listen
3 Transparency
4 Freedom from Attachment
5 The Tyranny of Agreement
6 Relinquishing Judgment
 Introduction
to the Christ Mind
Series of Books
The words in this book and the following three books in the Christ Mind
series (Silence of the Heart, Miracle of Love and Return to the Garden) were
written down during a five year period from 1993 – 1998. These messages are the fruit
of my personal relationship with Jesus which developed in the 1980s and intensified
thereafter. Opening my heart and mind to my teacher and writing down his words was
an experience of profound communion. It was essentially ecstatic in nature.
During the last 15 years, these messages have been shared with men and women
around the world. They have been translated into numerous languages and have been
published in many countries. Readers have told me how touched they have been
reading these words. They have told me that they feel that Jesus is speaking directly
into their hearts. Through their experience of communion with him, their faith has
grown and their willingness to trust has deepened. This is perhaps the greatest blessing
this work brings to its readers.
This work also brings clarification and correction to the body of teachings that have
been attributed to Jesus. That body of teaching includes not only what we read in the
Gospels, but the concepts and positions adopted by the church hierarchy at the Council
of Nicaea – when Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire -
- and thereafter. Many of these later add-ons are challenged by Jesus in the messages
you will read in this book.
Those of you who are interested in the differences between the teachings that appear
in this book and those of traditional Christianity are referred to my book Love is My
Gospel: The Radical Teachings of Jesus (2006), which further elucidates these
differences.
If you are encountering these teachings for the first time, please take your time.
There is a lot here to understand and integrate. As you read these words, take them into
the silence of your heart and let them abide there. Cultivate your own personal
connection with Jesus and allow him to guide you into a deeper relationship with
yourself, with Him, and with God.
For me, truth is revealed when it resonates in my heart and mind and, sometimes
indeed, in every cell of my body. I invite you to put these teachings to the same test.
While there is a universal Truth that threads its way though all scripture and sacred
writings, each of us must decide what speaks to us and what we will use as a compass
to guide our journey through life. It is therefore with trust and humility that I share
these messages with you.
Some time ago, my teacher told me, “You are responsible for any teaching you
accept as truth. No one else has that responsibility.” In the end, experience is the best
teacher. Experience shows us what works and what does not, what helps and what
hurts.
Words can inform and uplift us. At times they even reverberate in the silence of our
hearts. But in the end we have to join the dance of life to understand its mysteries.
May the seeds of this teaching be planted in your heart and blossom in your life.
May you drink deeply from the well and quench your thirst for love and truth. May you
heal, forgive and come into the fullness of your power and purpose.

Namaste,
Paul Ferrini,
December, 2009
 Welcome
Mine is a teaching of love,
not of fear. Jesus

The great majority of my teachings have come down to you intact. However, there are
some errors and distortions that need to be corrected. Mine is a teaching of love, not of
fear. The language of fear cannot be used in any testament that comes from me.
Do not be surprised that some – even those as wise as my apostles – would have you
believe in a vindictive God who punishes you for your sins. I assure you that they are
mistaken. Our God is not an angry God, but a compassionate One who helps you to
find forgiveness for your errors and those of others. By learning compassion and
practicing forgiveness, you move through your fear, correct your errors and relinquish
your judgments. Gradually, your shame is washed away in a baptism of acceptance and
love.
Please just do your part. Ask forgiveness from all whom you have harmed in
thought, word or deed, extend forgiveness to others who ask it from you, and be willing
also to forgive yourself. God will do the rest.
There is nothing that you have done or that has been done to you that I have not
done or suffered to be done to me. Moreover, I tell you that I am not only the one
impaled on the cross of the world. You too are crucified for your mistakes. And you
are also the one who wields the executioner’s hammer.
All of you have come here to learn to love without conditions. When you can love
yourself unconditionally, it is not difficult to love others. When you can accept others
with all of their faults, it is not difficult to accept your own.
Those who misunderstand and misinterpret my words would have you place me
above you. Please do not do this. Whoever places me on a pedestal also places me on
the cross, for you cannot have one without the other. Therefore, do not address me or
anyone else as less than or greater than you, for to do so is to create the one and only
sin against the son of Man.
I teach and have always taught the Spiritual Law of Equality. Adhere to this
teaching and all that separates you from one another will fall away and you will rest in
the Heart of God where all beings are equally loved and blessed.
I do not teach one thing to one person and something else to another. My teaching
is the same for all of you. Think well, therefore when anyone asks you to judge, blame,
libel, cheat, harm, or reject any of your brothers and sisters in my name. I tell you this
is a blasphemy and an inversion of truth. It can lead only to suffering.
 I have told you once and I will tell you again, all are welcome in my house: rich and
poor, black and white, straight and gay, women and men, children and old people, tall
and short, skinny and fat, healthy and sick, the able-bodied and the handicapped.
I do not have one church for those who live in their minds and another for those
who live in their hearts. I have one church for all and the door to that church is always
open to anyone who wants to enter. Whoever closes the door or blocks the way to any
brother or sister takes my name in vain and distorts my teaching.
Do not heed the words of such a person but observe his actions to see if they are
consistent with what he says. As I have told you before, you would be wise to examine
the tree before you eat the fruit dangling from its branches.
The door to my church and the door to my heart is always open to you, dear brother
and sister. Indeed, I welcome you even as I hear your footsteps approaching. If I so
honor and care for you, how could our God, who is far greater than I, do otherwise. No,
my friends, God’s love for you is more profound than any love you will ever know.
Even my love for you pales by comparison.
We are both children of a loving God. Of that you may be certain. All that God has
given to me will be given to you when you are ready to receive it. By then it will not
matter from whose hands you receive the Gift, for all who serve Him share His love for
you and extend His blessing to you now and for all time.
Do not despair, dear ones. Open your hearts and feel my Love for you. Take my
hand whenever you need it. Although at times it seems that you walk this path alone,
know that I am at your side whenever you call to me.
Godspeed on your journey. Soon you will be home. Until then, know I am holding
this place for you.
 Original Preface
The light of Christ is within us all.
To think of Jesus as being outside of and independent of your mind is to miss the
point. For it is in your mind that Jesus addresses you. He is your most intimate friend
speaking to you, sometimes in words, often beyond words. Your communication and
communion with him is essential to your practice of his teaching.
Each of us has a tiny spark of light that illuminates the darkness of our unconscious.
This is the divine spark of awareness which keeps our connection with God alive. This
spark also connects us to the divine teacher in our tradition and to the divinity within
our brothers and sisters.
As Jesus points out in this book, were we to see only that spark of light within each
one of us, all darkness in our perception and experience would dissolve, and the world
as we know it would disappear. This is how love is established in our own heart and in
the hearts of our brothers and sisters.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that any reflection of the Christ Mind seeks
anything other than the establishment of the kingdom of love in our minds and hearts.
That is its single goal. St. Francis works for this. The Baal Shem Tov works for this.
Rumi works for this.
Divisions into religions are relics of this world. Such boundaries do not exist in the
Christ Mind, where all beings join in a single goal. It is hard for us to imagine this, but it
is so.
There is no one brought up in the Judeo-Christian tradition who does not have to
come to terms with the life and teachings of Jesus. This is true for Christians and Jews
alike. It is also true for atheists or agnostics.
All who have rejected Jesus or placed him on a pedestal have misunderstood his
teaching. That is why correction must take place for all of us. To each one of us, Jesus
has a specific message that will help us dissolve our guilt and walk through our fear.
A follower of Jesus does not advocate any kind of separation. He practices love and
forgiveness for all beings, including himself. He embraces the Jew, the Muslim and the
Hindu as his brother. He does not seek to convert others, but rests secure in his own
faith. Nor does he believe that those who choose a different path will be denied
salvation. A true follower of Jesus knows that God has many ways of bringing us home
and never doubts the outcome.
Each of us has available to us a personal relationship with Jesus. That relationship
comes into being simply as we begin to want it and trust it. There is no technology, no
invocation, no esoteric spiritual practice involved in it. The simple but authentic need
for his friendship and his guidance is all that is required.
Let’s be clear that Jesus does not wish to become an authority figure for us. Indeed, he
stands against all authority save God’s. He asks merely that we take his hand as an
equal, and that we reach out to each one of our neighbors with the same mutual respect
and intention of equality. His teaching may be simple, but it requires all of our
attention, all of our energy, all of our commitment to put it into practice.
Ultimately, the end of human suffering comes when we decide together that we have
suffered enough. Each of us, in our own way, is beginning to ask for a better way. Do
you think that Jesus will abandon us now? Do you think the little spark in your heart
and mind will shrink and grow dim, a casualty of our fear, our guilt, and our pain? It
cannot be so.
Because the light is within us, it cannot refuse to shine when we call upon it. The light
of Christ is within us all. Let us invoke it together, in the name of love.

Paul Ferrini
Santa Fe, New Mexico
December, 1993
 Chapter One
Mastery of your Thoughts
A single true thought
restores the kingdom.
My teaching has been and will continue to be distorted because it threatens every
thought which is false. And so threatened, false thoughts take hold of the teaching and
seek to mold it to fit their ends. It does not take long before the words attributed to me
are the opposite of the ones that I have said.
This is why I ask you to be vigilant. Do not resist this distortion, attack it or seek to
discredit it, for that will just make it stronger. But be clear in your own mind and reject
the false for the sake of truth.
A single false idea can bring the mind that thinks it to despair. But a single true
thought restores the kingdom. Therefore, choose your thoughts wisely. And if you are
uncertain what to think, bring your dilemma to me.
Mastery of your thoughts is essential for your enlightenment. For it is in your
thoughts that you choose to walk with me or to walk away from me.
If you would be like me you must learn to think like me. And if you would learn to
think like me you must place every thought you think in my hands. I will tell you if it is
helpful or not. Unhelpful thoughts must be eliminated. That is the essence of mind
training. Only thoughts that bless and recall us to truth shall be retained.

The Core Issue

You are using everyone as a mirror

to show you what you
believe about yourself.
Like all your brothers and sisters, you suffer from a basic sense of inadequacy and
unworthiness. You feel that you have made terrible mistakes which will sooner or later
catch up with you. You expect to be punished for your sins and are waiting for the
shoe to drop.
These unresolved issues of self-worth are the conditions of your embodiment. In
other words, you are here to work them out. You selected your parents to exacerbate
your shame so that you could become conscious of it. Thus, blaming them for your
problems will not help you remove the conditions you have placed on love.
Seeking someone special to provide the love your parents weren’t able to provide will
not help either. It just raises the temperature in the pressure cooker. Don’t be surprised
if the mate you choose is the perfect embodiment of the parent with whom you most
need to heal. Your life is set-up so that you will come face to face with your wounds.
Parents, spouses and children are here to help you see your need for healing, and you
are performing the same function in their lives.
Looking for unconditional love in a world of conditions must inevitably fail. Since all
your brothers and sisters are acting out of shame-based patterns, they cannot offer you
the love you know that you deserve, nor can you offer it to them. The best that you can
do is raise each other’s awareness of the love that is necessary and begin taking
responsibility for giving it to yourself.
If you do not take responsibility for bringing love to your own wounds, you will not
move out of the vicious cycle of blame and shame. Your feelings of rage, hurt and
betrayal, all of which seem justified, just fuel the fire of interpersonal conflict and
continue to reinforce your unconscious belief that you are unlovable.
You must learn to see the extent of your own self-hatred. Until you look in the mirror
and see your own beliefs reflected there, you will be using every brother or sister in
your experience as a mirror to show you what you believe about yourself. While this
practice may eventually produce awareness of the pattern, it is not the shortest or the
easiest way home, since there is always the tendency to think that what you see is
somebody else’s lesson.
If you want to step outside the vicious psychology of the world, you must stop the
game of projection. It is ironic, indeed, but at the very instant at which you are
proclaiming your innocence at your brother’s expense, you are also reinforcing your
unconscious shame and inferiority.
There is no way out of the circle of blame but to stop blaming. Yet, be prepared. If
you would step off the wheel of suffering, you may find that you aren’t very popular.
Those who don’t join in the world’s game of projection are the very first to be attacked.
If you learned anything from my life, you must have learned this!

The Futility of Punishment

You cannot love in an unloving way.

You can’t be right
and attack what’s wrong.
In human society there is a right and a wrong. Those who do right are rewarded and
those who do wrong are punished. This is how it has always been.
My teaching threatens this basic assumption. At the most superficial level it
challenges the idea that wrongs should be punished. In the face of the call for
retribution, I have stood and will continue to stand for forgiveness.
At a deeper level my teaching challenges the very idea that someone should be
condemned by his behavior. If someone acts wrongly, it is because he thinks thoughts
that are false. If he can realize the untruth of his thinking, he can change his behavior.
And it is in the interest of society to help him do this. But if punishment is brought, his
false ideas will be reinforced, and guilt will be added to them.
You have heard the expression “two wrongs do not make a right.” That is the essence
of my teaching. All wrongs must be corrected in the right manner. Otherwise correction
is attack.
To seek to overpower or to argue with a false idea is to strengthen it. That is the way
of violence. My way, on the other hand, is nonviolent. It demonstrates the answer in its
approach to the problem. It brings love, not attack, to the ones in pain. Its means are
consistent with its ends.
To make wrong is to teach guilt, and perpetuate the belief that pain and suffering are
necessary. To make right is to teach love and demonstrate its power to overcome all
suffering. To put it simply, you are never right to make wrong, or wrong to make right.
To be right, make right.
You cannot love in an unloving way. You can’t be right and attack what’s wrong.
Error must be undone. And since the root of all error is fear, only the undoing of fear
will bring correction.
Love is the only response that undoes fear. If you don’t believe this, try it. Love any
person or situation that evokes fear in you and the fear will disappear. This is true, not
so much because love is an antidote to fear, but because fear is “the absence of love.” It
therefore cannot exist whenever love is present.

Self-Forgiveness

Without self-forgiveness,
there is no release from guilt.
Your feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness create your fear of retribution. If you
believe that there is something wrong with you or that you have done something
wrong, you will be afraid of being punished. And if you are afraid of being punished,
you will defend yourself against all imagined attack. Whenever you feel that someone
is questioning your self worth, you will be ready to pull the trigger.
This whole drama of guilt and retribution is happening only in your mind. If you
project it, you will bring others into it and you will need to work it out together. This
just ups the ante. Working something out with another when you are not aware of your
own complicity in the event is unlikely.
Better to begin by bringing awareness to your own thoughts. For not only will you
find that guilt is the root of all suffering, you will also find that self-forgiveness is
necessary. Without self-forgiveness, there is no release from guilt.
 The drama of redemption is also happening in your mind. Judge and jury live within
your own thoughts. You established your guilt and now you must dissolve it. Until you
undo your guilt, you cannot find your innocence. That is what the forgiveness process
is all about. It has nothing to do with forgiving others. It has everything to do with
forgiving yourself for establishing your guilt.

Your Brother

Those who withhold forgiveness

from others withhold it
from themselves.
Forgiving your brother for his trespass on you only helps him if it enables him to
forgive himself. Likewise, receiving your brother’s forgiveness for your trespass on
him only helps you if it enables you to forgive yourself.
The forgiveness of others is necessary only if you believe that it is. If you do, as most
people do, making amends is important. Asking others for forgiveness demonstrates
that you are ready to change your own mind about what happened
However, do not make the mistake of giving your brother the “power” to forgive you.
This places power outside of yourself, where it can never be. Ask for his forgiveness
but, if he withholds it, do not assume that forgiveness will never be yours. Indeed, it is
always yours. Those who withhold forgiveness only withhold it from themselves.
You have a simple choice: to find your brother innocent or to find him guilty. This
choice occurs over and over again, every day, every hour, every moment. Thought by
thought, you imprison your brother or release him. And as you choose to treat him, so
do you deliver the same judgment upon yourself.
You cannot get to heaven by holding your brother down, nor will you get there if you
try to carry him. Each of you has been given the means to discover your own innocence.
Simply acknowledge your brother and bless him upon his journey. If he asks for your
help, give it gladly. But do not try to do for your brother what he must do for himself.
Proper boundaries are necessary if you are to move beyond them. Don’t make your
peace and happiness your brother’s responsibility, or make his peace and happiness
yours. He is not here to save you, nor you to save him.
On the other hand, release your brother from every grievance you have of him. Do not
withhold love from him in any way. For to try to hold him back from his happiness is
but to attack him and imprison yourself in the grip of fear and guilt.
Do not avoid your brother’s call for help. Let him work by your side as long as he
will. And when he is ready to leave, wish him well. Give him food and water for the
journey. Don’t make him beholden to you or force him to stay against his will.
Your brother’s freedom is but a symbol for your own. Therefore, let him come and go
gracefully. Welcome him when he comes and bid him farewell when he goes. More
than that you cannot do. Yet this much is enough. Care for each stranger in this way,
and I will show you a world where trust has returned and charity rules.
Love your neighbor as you would love yourself. Make him equally important. Do not
sacrifice for him or ask him to sacrifice for you, but help him when you can and receive
his help gratefully when you need it. This simple dignified exchange is a gesture of
love and acceptance. It demonstrates mutual confidence and mutual regard.
More than this is too much. Less than this is too little.

Interpretation

Just because you have inverted truth

does not mean the truth
ceases to be true.
You interpret what happens in your life according to your core beliefs and the
emotional states that arise from them.
When your expectations are not met, you are merely receiving a correction. You are
being told that you do not see the whole truth of a situation. You are being asked to
expand your perceptions. Correction is not attack. It is not punishment.
The perception that you are being attacked or punished when things do not go your
way is entirely guilt-driven. Without that guilt, the correction would be received with
gratitude, and perception would be expanded to include the new information.
All experience happens for one purpose only: to expand your awareness. Any other
meaning you see in your life experience is a meaning that you made up. You may not
decide at a conscious level what will happen to you, but you most definitely interpret
what happens according to your beliefs.
Your primary freedom lies in learning from the experiences that come your way. Of
course, you can refuse to learn from your experiences. But this choice leads to suffering.
If you don’t know this yet, it won’t be long before you do.
On the other hand, you can end suffering by accepting your experience and learning
from it. When you embrace your life as it is, correction is received and your thoughts
are brought into alignment with the Divine Mind.
Life is either resistance or surrender. These are the only choices. Resistance leads to
suffering. Surrender leads to bliss. Resistance is the decision to act alone. Surrender is
the decision to act with God.
You cannot experience joy in life by opposing the ideas or actions of other people.
You can experience joy only by remaining faithful to the truth within your own heart.
And this truth never rejects others, but invites them in.
Truth is a door that remains open. You cannot close this door. You can choose not to
enter. You can walk in the opposite direction. But you can never say: “I tried to enter,
but the door was closed.” The door is never closed to you or anyone else.
 If you feel that the door has been shut in your face, you have interpreted your
experience in a fearful way. And your belief may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You are all masters at taking truth and inverting it. You have the creative ability to
make anything mean what you want it to mean. You can take yes and make it no,
wrong and make it right. That is how strong your beliefs are.
But just because you have inverted truth does not mean the truth ceases to be true. It
means only that you have succeeded in hiding the truth from yourself.
So how you interpret your experience is rather important. When your expectations are
frustrated, will you accept the correction or will you insist that you are being unfairly
treated? Are you the victim of what happens or the one who learns from it? Do you
experience what happens as a blessing or as a punishment? These are the questions you
must ask.
Every experience is an opportunity to embrace truth and reject illusion. One
experience is not better or worse than another in this respect. All experiences are
equally potent. They exist only as a birthing ground for your divinity.

The Need for Miracles

Every miracle demonstrates

that love is stronger than fear.

Miracles are demonstrations of the Divine Mind in action within your mind and
experience. To experience a miracle, you must know that you need it, ask for it
sincerely and be willing to receive it. Then it is possible for it to manifest in your
consciousness and your experience.
Unfortunately, even if the miracle has manifested in your life, you may not know it
because you have a preconception of what it is supposed to look like. So even though it
is sitting right next to you, you may not recognize it.
What good is a miracle if you can’t find it? To bring God’s solution into your heart
and mind, let go of your pictures and expectations. Be open to change and allow it to
reveal itself to you.
Some of you may ask: “Why doesn’t God give me the miracle I ask for?” That is
because the miracle you ask for may not free you from your fear. Therefore, it is not
miraculous, and your fear will just recreate the conditions you were hoping to change.
Without a shift within consciousness, there cannot be a shift in your outer
circumstances. So be humble and receptive. Do not try to tell God how to meet your
needs. Let go of your solution and open to His.

Form and Content

 Each moment is new
and each situation
asks something different from you.

If you are trying to find the perfect form—the perfect job, the perfect relationship—
you will be continually frustrated. The world does not offer perfection in this respect. It
simply offers you an opportunity to grow and to change, which is not hard if you are
not attached to the form of your expression.
If you are not attached to form, your focus remains in the present, where each
moment is new and each situation asks something different from you. Your attention
stays with what is happening. You are able to accept and respond to what is.
If you are looking for perfection or predictability you must realize that the world
cannot offer you this. Everything in the world is in the process of change. Nothing is
steady or predictable. Nothing can give you anything other than temporary security.
Thoughts come and go. Relationships begin and end. Bodies are born and pass away.
This is all the world can offer you: impermanence, growth, change. Permanence cannot
be found at the level of form.

Love is Without Conditions

When you establish

conditions on love,
you experience the conditions,
not the love.

What is all inclusive, all accepting, all loving cannot be limited to form. Love does not
choose its beloved or the moment of its expression. Love extends to all at all times.
Love is without conditions; that it to say it is “without form.”
Does this mean that you cannot experience love in the world? Of course not!
However, your experience of love will be diminished in direct proportion to your need
to interpret or control it. Interpretation places conditions upon that which must be
without conditions. When you establish conditions on love, you experience the
conditions, not the love. You encounter the form, not the content.
To understand anything in the world, you must learn to look beyond the form to the
creative intention behind it. When the intentions change, the form that carries those
intentions changes too.
Every situation in your life provides you with an opportunity to experience greater
intimacy and freedom. As you love more people more deeply, you become less
attached to them individually. You begin to align with the energy of Divine Love which
is beyond the body, indeed beyond form of any kind.
In each moment you are challenged to use the form that is available to you. To do
so, you need to be flexible and receptive, yet in alignment with your intention. Move
into intimacy without trying to define it or control it, and you will not be limited by
form or obsessed by it. You will be free to create spontaneously.

Opening to the Divine

There is no human being

who does not deserve
your forgiveness and your love.
In a world where there are only “good” thoughts, comparison is impossible. Without
comparison there is no interpretation, so there can be no failure, punishment, sacrifice or
suffering. Can you imagine such a shining, guiltless world? It may seem strange to you
that such a world can exist, yet it is no harder to create than the world you inhabit!
You can begin to create this new world by understanding that there is no bad, but only
good in you and in your brother. Not one of God’s children can be bad. At worst he is
hurt. At worst he attacks others and blames them for his pain, but he is not bad.
Yes, your compassion must go this deep. There is no human being who does not
deserve your forgiveness. There is no human being who does not deserve your love.
Only one who is in fear judges another. Are you beyond the grip of fear? If not, then
recognize your fear. If you recognize your fear, you will not judge others, for you will
come to see that fear always distorts your perception.
Recognize your fear and be truthful with yourself and with others. Confess: “I am in
fear now, so I cannot see rightly.”
Give up the judgments you would make, for they are but a meaningless attack against
one whose goodness you cannot see. Surrender those judgments to me. Tell the truth:
“Jesus, I cannot see this brother rightly, for I judge him. Help me to drop my judgments
and understand what fears his behavior brings up for me.”
Every judgment you make on your brother states very specifically what you hate or
cannot accept about yourself. You never hate another unless he reminds you of
yourself.
That is why every attempt to justify anger, fear and judgment fails miserably. It is
merely an attempt to indict another for your own mistake. It lacks honesty. It lacks
responsibility.
You have the means to end fear and judgment totally, yet you would still justify them.
Why? Because you cannot admit your mistake.
 You would prefer to suffer rather than to admit that you had made a mistake. You
would rather pretend to be perfect than recognize that you are a learner here. What
incomprehensible pride! How can I take the hand of one who, in spite of his pain,
insists that he is perfect? I cannot help you if you do not let me.
To be mistaken is not so terrible a thing. It will not deprive you of love and
acceptance. You think that it will, but that is a fiction. What deprives you of love is
your insistence on being right when you are not. That prevents correction from being
made.
Please try to understand this. Being wrong does not mean being “bad” and being right
does not mean being “good.” Every one of you will be both right and wrong hundreds
of times in a single day. I tell you that you cannot count the number of times you are
right or wrong in the course of your journey here.
This world is a school and you have come here to learn. Learning means making
mistakes and correcting them. Learning does not mean being right all the time. If you
were right all the time, why would you need to come to school?
Be humble, my friend. You are here as a learner and must accept that this is so if you
are to master your lessons. Lest you recognize that you have made a mistake, I cannot
help you correct it.
But admit your mistake and correction will be there, along with forgiveness. That is
the path I have set out for you.
Do not try to be perfect, my friend. That is an inappropriate goal. Only those who
choose to suffer long and hard desire to be perfect. Desire instead to recognize every
mistake you make that you might learn from it.
Perfection comes spontaneously and without effort only when you tell the truth, when
you let go of your desire to impress others, when you surrender your false pride.
Those who ask for correction will receive it. This is not because they are better than
others, but merely because they ask.
Do not judge those who are not ready to admit their mistakes. Simply admit your own
and give the rest to God.
Share what your experience has been, but do not seek to thrust it upon others. For you
do not know what others need and it is not up to you to know.
Remember the good in your brother. Remember the good in yourself. Let all fears and
judgments dissolve where they arise. Admit your mistakes and be tolerant of the
mistakes others make. That is what I ask of you.

It is simple, is it not? It is so simple you will keep forgetting it. But do not be
discouraged. Once you have decided that this is what you want, you cannot fail to come
home.
 Chapter Two
Learning to Listen
There are times in your life
when you need to be quiet and listen.
You are wasting so much time looking for answers to your problems outside of
yourself. If you just took the time to be with yourself, the answers would arise
spontaneously.
Learn to be present with your experience. “Being with” is not an analytical activity.
Indeed, recognize that you cannot figure your experience out. You can either be with it,
or you can intellectualize it, which of course is an escape.
Every moment you are receiving helpful suggestions which can aid you in steering the
ship of your life back on course. But you cannot hear these suggestions if you don’t take
the time to listen. Ironically, it is precisely at those times when you are most frantic trying
to figure out and “fix” your problems that you most need to be quiet and listen. You may
not realize that at first. But you can’t help but notice that the more you try to figure things
out the more confused they get.
When you give up trying “to make your life work” the way you think it should, you
can be open to receive spiritual guidance from within. Usually, when you are on a
collision course, the answer that you receive is something like: “slow down, look
around.” That might not seem like such profound guidance, but it is the beginning of
correction.
As long as things are flowing smoothly in your life, you need not seek correction. But
when the waters get turbulent, you would do well to pause and consider your course.
Timely introspection can make a profound difference in your life. There are times
when external reality simply closes down around you and the only appropriate place to
go is within.
I am not asking you to meditate for two hours every day. Nor am I saying that regular
meditation isn’t helpful. I’m just saying that there are times in your life when you need
to be quiet and listen. If you learn to honor those times, you will save yourself a lot of
grief.
The more you learn to listen within, the more you will begin to “be with” your
experience as it happens. You will develop a partnership with your life, a willingness to
participate, to feel and experience what comes along.
The truth is that life is neither blessing you nor punishing you. It is working with you
to help you awaken to the truth. Life is your teacher. It is giving you constant feedback
and correction.
 Love Without Conditions

One who loves without conditions

places no limits on his freedom
or on anyone else’s.
You have learned conditional love from people whose love for you was compromised
by their own guilt and fear. These have been your role models. You need not be
ashamed of this. You need only be aware of it as a fact.
From the time you were an infant, you were conditioned to value yourself only when
people responded positively to you. You learned that your self-worth was established
externally. That fundamental error has perpetuated itself throughout your life.
Your parents’ experience was no different from yours. Your children’s experience
may be similar. All of you need to heal from the same wounds. All
trespasses/violations must be made conscious and the emotions attached to them must
be released. This is the way that all wounded beings move from the experience of
conditional love to the experience of love without conditions.
In the process of healing, you learn to give yourself the unconditional love you never
received from your biological parents. In this process you are re-parented, not by other
authority figures, but by the Source of Love inside yourself.
Learning to give love to the wounded person within begins to reverse your belief that
your self-worth must be based on how others respond to you. Slowly you retrain
yourself to value yourself as you are, here and now, without conditions. No one else
can do this for you. People can assist and encourage, but no one can teach you how to
love yourself. That is the work of each individual soul.
Each soul comes into physical experience intent to grapple with these issues of self-
worth. However, very early on in the soul’s sojourn here conditions are placed on its
natural ability to love and include others in its experience.
Reversing these conditions is essential. If the soul leaves the physical world believing
that it is the victim of its experience here, it will be drawn back again to unlearn that
belief. However, if the soul awakens to the truth that its worth is not dependent on
anything or anyone outside its mind or experience, it will establish itself in the Source
of Love and awaken from the dream of abuse.
Awakening from abuse means rejecting the illusion that you are not lovable as you are.
You demonstrate love by giving it to yourself unconditionally. As you do, you attract
others into your life who are able to love you without conditions.
Your attempt to find love outside yourself always fails, because you cannot receive
from another something you haven’t given to yourself. When you withhold love from
yourself, you attract others into your life who are doing the same thing.
 The experience of unconditional love begins in your heart, not in someone else’s.
Don’t make your ability to love yourself conditional on someone else’s ability to love
you. Don’t place your faith in the conditions that surround love or in the form in which
it presents itself. For these are impermanent and subject to the vicissitudes of everyday
life.
Real love does not change. It exists independently of the form through which it
expresses. The Source of this eternal, omnipresent, formless Love is within you. This is
where your faith must be placed, for this Love is as certain as anything you will ever
know. Once it is firmly established in your heart, you will never need to look for
happiness outside of yourself.
People will come and go in your life. Some people will treat you well. Others will treat
you unkindly. You will accept the love that its there and see lack of love for what it is, a
cry for help from one who is hurting. You will encourage others to find the Source of
love within as you did, knowing fully that you cannot fix their little problems. The
tragedy of their lives can be addressed only by their willingness to look within their
own hearts and minds.
One who loves without conditions places no limits on his freedom nor on anyone
else’s. He does not try to keep love, for to try to keep it is to lose it. Love is a gift that
must constantly be given as it is asked for in each situation. And the giver always knows
when and to whom the gift is to be given.
There is nothing complicated about the act of love. It becomes complicated only
when one starts to withhold love, and then it ceases to be love that one offers.
One who loves unconditionally does not love in degrees or with strings attached. He
does not search for someone special to love. He loves everyone who stands before him.
One person is no more worthy or unworthy of his love than another. This is the kind of
love that I offer you and that I ask you to extend to others.\
Love takes no hostages. It makes no bargains. It is not compromised by fear.
Indeed, where love is present, fear with all its myriad conditions cannot be.

Death and Rebirth

What dies is everything
that you thought you were.

The experience of Real Love ends your experience of the conditional world. When
you experience it, you no longer feel separate from others. You open to a larger reality
that includes the well being of others. Judgment falls away and acceptance rules.
When I told you “lest you die and be born again you shall not enter the kingdom of
heaven,” I wasn’t talking about reincarnation. I was talking about the death of the ego,
the dissolution of all beliefs that separate you from others.
 What dies is not you. What dies is every judgment you ever made about yourself or
anyone else. And what is born again is the Christ that has eternal life, in you and in me.
You are afraid of the death-rebirth process. Yet what dies on the cross is not you. You
are not the body. You are not your ego.
You cannot avoid the death of the body or the death of the ego. But these are not
necessarily the same. Do not make the mistake of believing that your ego dies when
your body does, or that your body dies when your ego does.
Your ego dies when you no longer have use for it. Until then, it will not be taken from
you. You can hold onto your ego almost forever, but you will not do this. For this is hell,
and you will not want to live in hell forever. There will come a time when the pain will
be overwhelming. There will come a time when you will call out to me “Please help me.
I am ready to let go.” That time comes for every being, I assure you.
Until then, all you can do is walk though your fears. Acknowledge every fear you have
and turn each one over to me. That will quicken your awakening. That will take you
directly to your core issues, to the fear beyond all your fears. Be assured, when you
come to that place, I will stand beside you.
Gentle brother and sister, I ask only for your trust. Give it to me and we shall walk
together out of this place of shadows. I cannot save you from your fear, but I can take
your hand as you learn to face your fear and move through it.
Rest easy. The outcome of your journey is guaranteed. Where I am now, you shall
also be. And then you will know with absolute certainty that Love is who you are. It is
inseparable from you. It is your only true Identity.

Opening the Door

I am the door to love

without conditions.
When you walk through,
you too will be the door
To bring attention to any person or situation, you cannot have an agenda of your own.
If you have expectations of yourself, of another, or of the situation in general, you
cannot be fully attentive in that moment.
Your ability to be attentive depends on having an open mind, a mind that is free of
judgment and free of expectation, and an open heart, a heart filled with compassion for
yourself and others. It means that you see and treat others as equals and understand that
your well being and theirs are one and the same.
Having an open mind and an open heart opens the door to love. But this is a door that
opens and closes. When it closes, one needs to be patient and forgiving, or the door will
not open again.
 One needs to feel not only the presence of love, but its absence as well. Feeling its
absence, one learns to listen, and to soften in the heart. Feeling separate from others,
one learns to look for the subtle judgments that are being made. The shift from
judgment to acceptance, from separation to empathy is the essence of healing.
Being a healer or miracle worker means accepting your inherent capacity to be free of
conflict, free of guilt, free of judgment or blame. If you accept this capacity in yourself,
you will demonstrate miracles in your life just as I did.
Healing is not only possible, it is necessary. Every one of you is a healer of your own
perceived injuries and injustices, and a witness to the power of the miracle. Healing is
your only purpose here. The sooner you realize it the better.
Please remember that all authentic spiritual practice begins with the cultivation of
love for and acceptance of yourself. Don’t try to love other people before you learn to
love yourself. You won’t be able to do it.
When someone comes into your life who pushes all your buttons, don’t try to love
that person. Just refuse to blame him or make him your enemy. Simply acknowledge
that he pushes your buttons and ask for time to be with your feelings.
When you are alone, remind yourself that what you are feeling belongs to you only.
The other person has nothing to do with what you are feeling. Disengage from all
thoughts that would make the other person responsible for what you are feeling.
Now be with your feeling and say to yourself: “what I am feeling shows me some
aspect of myself which I am judging. I want to learn to accept all aspects of myself. I
want to learn to bring love to all the wounded parts of me.”
Practice this again and again and be patient and compassionate with yourself. Take
small steps. Begin healing your own thoughts and feelings. Every time you heal a
judgmental thought or feeling of separation, it is felt by every mind and heart in the
universe. Your healing belongs not just to you, but to all beings.
When you come to peace, world peace becomes immanent. If you have a
responsibility to others it is only this one: that you come to peace in your own heart and
mind.
An open heart and an open mind are the door that opens to love’s presence. Even
when the door is closed, it bids you open it. Even when you are judging and feeling
separate from another, love calls to you from within.
I have told you that, no matter how many times you have refused to enter the
sanctuary, you have only to knock and the door will be opened to you. I have said to
you “ask, and it shall be given you,” but you refuse to believe me. You think that
someone is counting your sins, your moments of indecision or recalcitrance, but it is
not true. You are the only one counting.
I say to you, brother, “stop counting, stop making excuses, stop pretending that the
door is locked. I am here at the threshold. Reach out and take my hand and we will
open the door and walk through together.”
I am the door to love without conditions. When you walk through, you too will be the
door.
 Relinquishing Effort

Most of what you try to do

for yourself will not succeed
because you do not know
who you really are.
What happens in your life is neutral, neither positive or negative. You decide whether it
is positive or negative, spiritual or mundane.
Everything in your experience can be endowed with spiritual qualities by bringing
your love, acceptance or forgiveness to it. Even a terminal illness or a murder can be
transformed by the power of your love.
When you give the situation your own meaning, you will always view it as a
punishment of you or someone else. That is what your fear does to any event that
happens in your life. Don’t be surprised when this happens. Indeed, expect it.
Don’t try to live without fear. To try to live without fear is the most fearful
proposition you can imagine. Just acknowledge the fear and move through to the other
end of it.
There is nothing you can do that will procure your salvation. In fact, everything that
you do will simply keep you from finding what is already there. Salvation is already
there. You are already saved. You do not have to buy your salvation from me, from your
brother, or from some church or synagogue.
You practice forgiveness not to buy your salvation, but because the practice of
forgiveness allows you to experience salvation right here, right now. You learn to
accept what comes as a gift, not because it brings you brownie points with God, but
because acceptance reminds you that there is nothing wrong now, nor was there ever
anything wrong.
Your entire spirituality is lived in this moment only. It has nothing to do with anything
you have ever thought or felt in the past. It is happening right now, with the
circumstance that lies before you.
You experience darkness and scarcity only when you find fault with the situation you
are presented with in the moment. When you see the situation and feel gratitude for it,
you experience only bliss.
Do not try to move out of darkness. Do not try to move into bliss. The movement
takes place of itself. Just be willing to move and let that willingness move you.
Most of what you try to do for yourself will not succeed because you do not know
who you really are. Your self image is limited. You do not know or feel the extent of
God’s love for you. You think that somewhere along the line something in you got
broken, or perhaps you are just missing some parts. But that isn’t true. You have no
missing or broken parts. All of your wholeness is fully present right now.
 Many of you study prosperity consciousness, yet what you do does not seem to
prosper. Why is this? Because you do not know your true worth. If you knew your true
worth, you would not feel that something was missing from your life. You would feel
grateful for everything you have.
The truth is that every thought prospers. Each thought that you think adds its energy,
positive or negative, to the situation at hand. Because you have a mixture of positive and
negative thoughts, your external situation reflects both.
However, you won’t be able to make negative thoughts go away by focusing on
positive ones. In fact, the more you focus on positive thoughts, the more power you
give to your negative thoughts. You cannot escape this paradox.
That’s why saying affirmations doesn’t work. Stop trying to change your negative
thoughts and just be aware of them. Awareness is the only effective vehicle for
transformation.
How will you learn to be supported by Divine law if you are always interfering in its
workings? I tell you that you cannot fix yourself. Your attempt to fix yourself just
fractures your consciousness into smaller pieces.

Moving out of Conflict

Love accepts the validity of both sides.

When you watch your thoughts you become aware that part of you wants one result
and another part of you wants another. You feel that you have to choose between these
two parts and that brings pressure and conflict.
When your mind is in conflict, you do not move out of conflict by choosing between
two opposing positions. That just sets up a more intense conflict.
You move out of conflict by accepting both positions. This is a loving act. Love
always transcends any kind of dualism. Love never chooses sides. It always accepts the
validity of both sides.
You believe that you must choose between right and wrong. But are you or anyone
capable of determining what is right and what is wrong? As soon as you think you
know, you have lost the thread of truth. So don’t try to choose. Don’t embrace one side
and reject the other. Embrace both, or embrace neither. Be neutral and you will meet
life on its own terms.
Lest you find this place of neutrality, you will continue to impose your own meaning
on what happens in your life, and there will always be some aspect of scarcity or
punishment in it, because you do not know your own worth.
Even if there were something about you that needed fixing—and I am not suggesting
that this is the case—you would not know how to do the fixing. If you are broken, how
can you fix yourself? If you are divided or in conflict, how can you create wholeness?
Only that which is not broken can experience its wholeness.
 Understand that here, in this moment, there is nothing wrong with you or with your
life. Everything is as it should be. Right now, in this moment, you are completely
loved.
Are you in pain or conflict? Okay. But that does not mean that you are not completely
loved. The idea that being in pain cuts you off from love is an idea you have imposed
on the situation. In truth, nothing cuts you off from love, save your own beliefs.
You invert the truth of the situation. You make cause an effect and effect a cause.
Your fear inverts the truth and makes you a victim of the world. But you are not a
victim.
However, do not beat yourself because you do this. Simply see and accept what you do
and let it shift of itself. Simply bring your awareness to it. When you see the world in its
utter neutrality, you will understand that it exists only as a tool for your own learning.
Pray for those who trespass against you. Do not hold them to you with thoughts of
retribution, but gently release them in forgiveness. And know that as you release them,
you release yourself.
I can preach to you about the power of forgiveness, but you will never know how
great that power is until you experience it. The willingness to forgive yourself and
release others from your judgment is the greatest power you can know while you live in
this embodiment. The only power that is greater is the power of love itself. And
without the gesture of forgiveness, which removes the veil of fear, the power of love
remains unharnessed.
Yet take heart, my friend. Every time you forgive, you dissolve a condition you have
placed on your capacity to love. Every time you forgive, love is awakened in you more
deeply and your capacity to extend that love is increased. That is the nature of the
journey. Be at peace with it and it cannot fail to bring you home.
 Chapter Three
Transparency
You are one facet
in the many-faceted jewel
of God’s love and grace.

When you have nothing to hide, shame can dissolve. Lies no longer need to be upheld.
Simplicity and clarity rule in your life, for there is no deception or hidden agendas.
This clarity available to you right now if you have the courage to communicate
honestly. If you have a fear and share it, that fear and the guilt beneath it no longer
remain hidden. If you have a judgment, you can see it and examine it. You can hide
your attack thoughts or you can confess them.
The ritual of confession, like most rituals, has ceased to embody the purpose behind it.
It has nothing to do with receiving absolution from another. It has everything to do with
rejecting the density of deceit and bringing fear and guilt into conscious awareness. The
one who hears the confession is not a judge, but a witness. He or she does not have to
wear robes or be in a position of authority. Any witness will do, so long as the witness
understands that her role is not to judge or condemn, but merely to listen with
compassion.
There is no one who does not make mistakes. Trespass one against another, with or
without intention, is commonplace. Mistakes will be made and each error is a gift
because it brings you to correction. Celebrate the opportunity to bring all manipulation
and deceit to the surface. Be thankful for the invitation to reach into the dark places of
your mind and bring the contents to the light of conscious inspection.
When you justify your mistakes, you hang onto them, forcing yourself to defend them
over and over again. This takes a great deal of time and energy. Indeed, if you are not
careful, it can become the dominant theme of your life.
Why not confess your errors so that you don’t have to spend all your time defending
them. Own your deceit so that it doesn’t chain you to the limitations of the past. Let
each trespass be openly acknowledged. If you think poorly of your brother, tell him so
and ask him to forgive you. Do this not to raise him on a pedestal, but to keep yourself
from falling into the bottomless pit of self-hatred and despair.
The density of this world is a result of your lack of courage to admit your mistakes.
Do you really think it possible that you could be more moral or more correct than
anyone else? The best that you can do is to be more skillful at hiding your mistakes.
This is a sad and self-defeating game. I ask you to stop playing it.
Trust your brother and sister and know that they do not stand above you in judgment,
but side by side, as your equals. They cannot condemn you without condemning
themselves.
Confess to yourself. Confess to your mate, your boss, even to the stranger on the
street. Do not be concerned about what people think. This is a revolutionary teaching.
Your confession gives others permission to look at their own mistakes with compassion.
One who admits her mistakes is a beacon of light to others. She has shed her cloak of
darkness. Light shines through her, for her mind is transparent, a clear channel through
which truth flows without effort.
Others immediately know that she can be trusted and they reach out to take her hand.
Having forgiven her own sins, she can extend that forgiveness to others. Her authority
does not come from outside, but from within. She has been ordained by no authority of
the world. Yet each person who comes to her recognizes her, trusts her, and confides in
her.
This is the truth about confession. And any man or woman can be a minister or a
priest. Do not believe in the lies that are offered up to you in my name. Use your
common sense.
You are right to reject false teachings. I too would have turned away from a church
that offers nothing but deception, exclusivity, and guilt. But do not allow your anger at
the hypocrisy to take you away from your direct relationship with me. Forget
everything you have been taught by others and consider the truth now in your own
heart. That is where we must meet, not in some pretentious building that mocks my
teaching and my life.
Now consider the truth, my friend. You cannot have secrets from me or from your
brother and leave your suffering behind. To end suffering, you must end all forms of
deceit in your life. And that can only be done by telling the truth, to yourself, to me,
and to your brother and sister.
What do you have to lose, except the density and confusion of the world? Would you
keep your secrets and remain in the labyrinth or would you confess them and be free of
the dark, twisting streets? The choice is yours.
But do not fool yourself. There is no salvation in secrecy or darkness. Salvation is
offered openly to everyone in the light of truth. And in that light no shadows of shame
or sin can remain.
Have the courage to admit your mistakes so that you can learn from your errors and
release yourself from pain, struggle, and deceit. Do not deny the truth or pretend that
you have not heard it. For I have told it to you here in simple words that you can
understand.
The rest is up to you. For Truth is not embraced until it is put into practice in your
life.
Each of you is one facet in the many-faceted jewel of God’s love and grace. Each one
of you has in your own way a simple dignity of expression. The beauty of one facet
does not interfere with the splendor of another, but adds to it in both breadth and
intensity.
What makes one facet shine is available to all. The light that is in me is also in you. I
am no more beloved by God than you are. You must come to know this in your own
heart. No amount of teaching or preaching will cause you to believe it.
That is why I ask you to practice. Remove the impurities of judgment that block the
clarity of your perception. Remove the obstacles of competition, envy, and greed which
block the flow of love through your heart. Confess your fears, your feelings of
inadequacy, your trespasses and your grievances. Bring the darkness of your secret
thoughts and feelings into the light of conscious attention.
There is no mistake that cannot be corrected. There is no trespass that cannot be
forgiven. That is my teaching. It is not just through my words that you can understand
it. Everything I taught I also demonstrated in my life. How then can I ask less of you,
my friend?

The Awakening Heart

You are the dreamer of the darkness

and the one who brings the light.

Unconditional love comes naturally to you. It is your nature to feel compassion for
yourself and others. It is natural for you to want to reach out and comfort a friend. It is
natural for you to receive the love of those who care about you. None of this takes any
effort or learning.
Why then is your experience of unconditional love so rare? The answer may surprise
you.
In the beginning you were one with God and shared in the omnipotent power of His
love. Nothing was impossible for you. But then you began to wonder what would
happen if you created apart from God.
Since you had never done this before, you weren’t too sure of yourself. Doubt came
in and you wondered “What if something goes wrong?” This doubt was just separation
anxiety, but it gave rise to many other fearful thoughts. Among these thoughts was the
thought “If I make a mess of things, God might be mad at me and withdraw His love
from me.” And that thought was the clincher.
It didn’t take long to go from that thought to the experience of feeling guilty and cut
off from God’s loving presence. Now this separation was artificial and self-imposed,
but it felt real to you and you believed it.
And so all that you created after that was the result of the belief: “I am not worthy of
God’s love.” So in your own mind you “fell from grace.” You went from sharing in the
omnipotent power of God’s love to being afraid of that love. Another way of saying
that is that you became afraid of your own creative power. So you hid it away where
you couldn’t see it. You stopped being a creator and became a victim. You stopped
being a cause and became an effect. In other words, you turned reality inside out. You
made love fearful.
When you are feeling separate, it’s hard to remember what it was like before
separation occurred. Yet that seems to be your peculiar dilemma.
And to find your way back to God, you must re-trace your steps and realize that the
“separation” was your choice, not His. You asked “What if I abused this power?” Then
you proceeded to make a world in which your power was fearful. You did not stop and
wait for God’s answer to your doubt and fear. Had you listened to His answer, you
would have heard something like this: “You are loved without conditions. I will never
withdraw My love from you. Remembering that you are loved, you can only act in a
loving way.”
Had you listened to God’s answer, your dream of separation would have come to an
end. For God’s answer immediately challenges your assumption that you are not loved.
This assumption is the original neurotic idea. All victimhood begins with this idea. You
cannot think “bad” things or perform “bad” acts unless you believe that you are
“unworthy of love.” All attack proceeds from this one assumption.
Adam and Eve asked the same “What if?” question: “What if I ate of the apple and
became as powerful as God?” They too gave their own fearful answer, felt shame and
hid themselves from God. You are asking the same question right now. You are
chewing the same apple. You too are playing hide and seek with God.
Indeed, it is the continual asking and answering of this question which keeps your
experience of victimhood in place. In your self-created world, you are either a victim or
a victimizer. As you explore these roles, you see that there is little difference between
them. The victim needs the victimizer and vice versa.
The question of evil does not arise until one doubts one’s own worthiness to give and
receive love. That is your existential state. You doubt that you are lovable . . . you and
everyone else in your world.
Now comes the choice, the only choice that you need to make: are you going to
answer the question “am I lovable” or are you going to wait to hear God’s answer? Are
you going to let God correct your original faulty assumption, or are you going to accept
this assumption as truth and build your life on its foundation?
It’s never too late to stop chewing on the apple. It’s never too late to realize that your
answer to your own fearful inquiry is unsatisfactory. It’s never too late to turn to God
and say: “God, my answer has filled my mind with fear. My answer has brought only
pain and struggle into my life. It must be the wrong answer. Will you please help me
find another one?”
You see, your spiritual life on Earth does not begin until you ask that question. It does
not matter what religion you are. It does not matter what your social or economic
standing is. Each one of you will come to a point in your life when you are ready to
challenge your false beliefs and assumptions. And that is the beginning of your healing,
and the restoration of your power and purpose.
 The doubting of your own doubt, the negating of your own negativity is the turning
point, the end of the descent into matter and the beginning of the ascent into heaven. It is
the renewal of your partnership with God, the New Covenant.
You can’t be a partner with God so long as you see yourself or anyone else as a
hapless victim. The New Covenant asks you to recognize the Kingdom of God in your
own heart. That is another way of saying that you reject the idea that God is separate
from you. You reject the idea that you are unlovable or that your brother is unlovable.
You reject the idea of evil as an idea created in fear. You reject the idea that God’s
power can be abused.
The New Covenant is the acceptance of God’s answer to the question “What if?” It is
the beginning of your own personal salvation and the beginning of human reception of
the Kingdom of God on Earth.
Once upon a time, you rejected your creative partnership with God. Now you
are ready to reclaim it. Once upon a time you entertained the idea that you could be
unlovable in God’s eyes. Now you reclaim your eternal love communion with Him.
When you accept God back into your life, your whole experience of the world and all
the people in it changes. You are a father and a mother to every child who approaches
you, a son or daughter to every elderly person. You are a friend to friend and friendless
alike. You are a lover to the one who remembers he is loved and to the one who has
forgotten.
There is no place where your loving presence and testimony to God’s love is not
needed. All are crying out for your gentle words. All would drink from the cup that
quenched your thirst.
The dream of unhappiness comes to an end when it is questioned and rejected. If you
are questioning your unhappiness, you are awakening to the unconditional love that lies
in your heart. If you are not questioning your unhappiness, you are deepening your
experience of it so that you can hit bottom. For, until you hit bottom, you are content
with your own answers.
No one can force another to awaken. Each person experiences the futility of giving and
receiving conditional love when he or she is ready. Each person clings to separation and
control until the pain of it is unbearable. The pain threshold is different for each
individual, but everyone crosses it in the end.
That is why I ask you not to preach to others, but merely to extend love to them.
Those who are ready to receive it will ask your help. Those who are not ready will
continue on their journey without interfering with yours.
A minister of love extends love to those who ask for it, silently or in words. He does
not browbeat unbelievers with words or concepts promising some future salvation.
Salvation is available now for those who would be saved. Do not judge the others for
it is not for you to judge. Those who come later into the lap of God’s love are not less
worthy than those who come sooner.
In truth, it is not God who lifts you up. Nor is it me. You lift yourself up as you
remember how lovable you are and accept your role in God’s plan.
 Accepting your omnipotence is impossible without your reconciliation with God. For
all power comes from Him. You share in that as an equal partner, but you can never
exercise that power apart from Him. Even in the “What if” dream, you could never
separate yourself totally from His love. In that dream, you crossed the threshold of pain
and chose to return. So it is with everyone.
The power of God’s love cannot be abused. It can be rejected, denied, hidden. But all
rejection, denial, and secret guilt have limits. Truth can be distorted but it can never be
completely eradicated or denied. A tiny light always remains in the deepest darkness,
and that light will always be found when the desire to find it arises.
You, my friend, are the hero of your own dream. You are the dreamer of the darkness
and the one who brings the light. You are tempter and savior rolled in one. This you
will come to know if you do not know it already.
In this self-created drama, your only argument is with God. It seems to be with your
brother, but it is not. The tree of good and evil grows in your own mind, and it is in
your own mind that you explore the questions of inequality and abuse.
There will come a time when your answer and God’s answer will be one and the
same. And then the tree of good and evil will transform into the tree of life, indivisible
and whole. Love will no longer have an opposite, but will extend freely in all
directions.
When someone approaches you who would place a condition on your love or his, you
will say to him: “Brother, I have dreamed that dream and I know its outcome. It leads
only to suffering and death. It does not do justice to either of us. Let us question the
assumptions that give birth to it. I am confident that together we can find a better way.”
If you ever wonder what your purpose is here on Earth, please remember that your
purpose is merely to answer the call for love wherever you hear it. This is not difficult
to do if you are willing. It requires no special abilities or talents. The hows and whys of
love take care of themselves, as you walk through the door that opens before you.
I never said that you should walk through brick walls or even that you should walk on
water. I merely pointed to the open door and asked you if you were ready to enter. And
that is all that you need to ask your brother.
One who loves without conditions is never attached to the outcome. People come and
go and you will never know the whys and wherefores. Some you think will easily pass
through the gate, yet they will turn suddenly away. Others you are convinced will never
come within sight of the gate, yet they will cross the threshold with unexpected grace.
Do not be concerned. It is none of your business who comes and who goes. The
covenant is made in every heart and only God knows who is ready and who is not.
Leave the knowing to Him and merely place yourself in His service. Life goes more
smoothly when you do His will. And in your trust of Him your heart is filled to the
brim and overflows with love and acceptance.
Thus do you come to know that the supply of love is limitless. It has no beginning or
end. All the limits of Earth are absorbed in the boundless love of Heaven as the
Kingdom of God is established in your heart.
 Eliminating Scarcity Thinking

If you do not understand

the meaning of the gift,
be still and wait.
God does not give questionable gifts.
Scarcity thinking results from your perception that you are not worthy of love. If you
do not feel worthy of love, you will project lack outside you. You will see the glass as
half empty, rather than half full.
If you see the glass as half empty, do not be surprised if before too long there is
nothing left in the glass. Lack is the result of negative perception. Of course, the same
principle works in reverse. See the glass as half full and it won’t be long before it is
filled to the brim.
When you know that you are worthy of love, you tend to interpret the words and
actions of others in a loving way. You do not easily take offense. If someone is rude to
you, you consider the possibility that he or she may be having a bad day. You don’t feel
victimized or abused.
How you view life depends on whether you feel lovable or unlovable, worthy or
unworthy. Either way, you will create an external situation which reinforces your opinion
of yourself.
All preoccupation with supply comes from living in the past. Lack is simply the
remembrance of old wounds. These are too easily projected into the future.
To end scarcity thinking you must forgive the past. Whatever it has been no longer
matters. It no longer has effect, because you have released it.
Do you feel unfairly treated? If so, you will project lack into your life. Only one who
feels unfairly treated will be unfairly treated.
To end scarcity thinking, start with the awareness that you feel unfairly treated.
Realize that this comes from your deep sense of unworthiness. Understand that you do
not feel lovable right now.
Don’t try to change your thought. Don’t repeat the affirmation “I am lovable right
now,” hoping that it will reverse your conditioning. Simply be aware “I’m not feeling
lovable right now. I feel unworthy. I feel mistreated. I feel scared that the bad things
that happened in the past are going to happen again.”
Just be aware of how your heart has tensed and tightened. Be aware how you have
emotionally shut down. Information came to you and you had a choice as to whether to
see it as negative or positive. You chose to see the glass as half empty. You chose to be
a victim.
That’s okay. Don’t be ashamed. There is no need to tense up any further. There is no
need to beat yourself up. Just be aware of what you chose to see and how it made you
feel. See that it made you unhappy and realize that you must make a different choice if
you want to be happy.
You have practiced hard being a victim and have learned that role well. Don’t think
invincibility comes without practice. Just see your choice to be a victim and be willing
to make a different choice. That will be enough.
Abundance thinking means you feel loved and worthy right now. Now you can say
that you feel this way, but if the phone rings and you find out that you just lost a lot of
money or that your partner is leaving you, how worthy do you feel? Is the glass half
empty or half full? Do you know that right now, in the moment that you heard this
apparently bad news, you are completely worthy and lovable?
If the answer is yes, then you have learned abundance thinking. If the answer is no,
then you are wrestling with scarcity thinking. Just acknowledging your own fear-based
thinking goes a long way toward transforming it.
That is why emotional honesty is important. You can’t force yourself to think
positively, but you can acknowledge your negativity. Acknowledging your negativity is
a loving act. It is a gesture of hope. It says: “I see what is happening and I know there
is a better way. I know that I can make another choice.”
Giving yourself another choice is the work of individual redemption. Forgiving the
past and letting it go sets the stage for choosing differently. No matter how many times
you have made the same mistake, you have a fresh opportunity to forgive yourself.
Without forgiveness, it is impossible to move out of scarcity thinking. And to forgive,
you must become aware of all the ways in which you are hurting. You must
acknowledge the wound. Then you can forgive it.
Hidden wounds have hidden agendas that hold us hostage to the past. Deep wounds
may require bandaging at first, but to complete the healing process they must be
exposed to air and sunlight. Conscious awareness must be brought to all unconscious
beliefs and assumptions.
Scarcity is an important teacher. Every perception of lack in your surroundings
mirrors an inner feeling of unworthiness that must be brought into conscious
awareness.
The experience of scarcity is not God punishing you. It is you showing yourself a
belief that needs to be corrected.
You have the capacity to love yourself. And that capacity must be awakened in you
for authentic spiritual growth to take place.
You learn to love yourself by seeing how you withhold love from yourself. And you
often see how you withhold love from yourself by seeing how you withhold it from
others.
Abundance comes into your life, not because you have learned to memorize some
mumbo jumbo incantation, but because you have learned to bring love to the wounded
aspects of your psyche. Love heals all perception of division and conflict and restores
the original perception of wholeness, free of sin or guilt.
When you have seen yourself as you really are, you know that love cannot be taken
away from you. Love belongs to you eternally, formless yet ever-present, unconditional
yet responding easily to the conditions at hand.
Whenever news comes that seems bad, consider this. Would God give you a
questionable gift? Do not be misled by the wrapping on the box, but open it with an
open heart. And if you still do not understand the meaning of the gift, be still and wait.
God does not give questionable gifts.
Often you will not know the meaning of the gift until the gift is put to work in your
life. That can be frustrating, but it is inevitable.
The gifts of God do not feed your ego expectations. Their value is of a higher order.
They help you open to your true nature and purpose here. Sometimes they seem to
close a door and you don’t understand why. Only when the right door opens do you
understand why the wrong door was closed.
Yours is a partnership with the Divine Mind. Please do not try to make abundance
your responsibility or God’s alone. If you are willing to love yourself, you will open
the channel through which God’s love can reach you.
Open the door to abundance within your own mind, and see the gifts of love reflected
all around you. And please, do not judge the value of these gifts or the form that they
take in your life. For the value is beyond question, and the form is too easily
misunderstood.

Gratitude

Gratitude is the choice

to see the love of God in all things.
You cannot mention abundance without also mentioning gratitude. Gratitude stems
from worthiness and supports the experience of abundance. On the other hand,
ungratefulness stems from unworthiness and reinforces the perception of scarcity. Each
is a closed circle.
To enter the circle of grace, you need to bring love to yourself or another. To enter the
circle of fear, you need to withhold love from yourself or another.
When you stand inside of one circle, the reality of the other circle comes into
question. This is why you often have the sense that there are two mutually exclusive
worlds in your experience.
The grateful cannot imagine being unjustly treated. The resentful cannot imagine
being loved by God. Which world would you inhabit? It is your choice.
In every moment you must decide to play the victim or remember that you cannot be
unfairly treated. In the former case, you will resent the gift and see it as a punishment;
in the latter, you will accept what comes your way knowing that it brings a blessing
you cannot yet see.
Gratitude is the choice to see the love of God in all things. No being can be miserable
who chooses thus. For the choice to appreciate leads to happiness as surely as the
choice to depreciate leads to unhappiness and despair.
 One gesture supports and uplifts. The other devalues and tears down. How you choose
to respond to life shapes your own continued perception. If you are living in despair, it is
because you are choosing to depreciate the gifts that have been given you.
Each person who walks the earth reaps the results of the thoughts he has sown. And if
he would change the nature of next year’s harvest, he must change the thoughts he is
thinking now.
Think a single grateful thought and you will see how true this simple statement is.
The next time you are about to depreciate a gift that is given you, pause a moment and
open your heart to receive that gift with gratitude. Then notice how your experience of
the gift and relationship with the giver is transformed.
The next time you are poised to judge or condemn another, pause a moment and let
that person into your heart. Bless where you would condemn. Judge not and be glad that
you have not judged. Feel the release that comes to you when you let another be free of
your narrow perceptions.
When I said to turn the other cheek, I instructed you to demonstrate to your brother that
he could not hurt you. If he cannot hurt you, he cannot be guilty for his attack on you.
And if he is not guilty, then he does not have to punish himself.
When you turn your cheek, you are not inviting your brother to hit you again. You are
reminding him that there is no injury. You are telling him that you know that you
cannot be unfairly treated. You are demonstrating to him your refusal to accept attack,
for you know you are worthy and lovable in that moment. And knowing your
worthiness, you cannot fail to see his.
The violations and trespasses of this world will end when you refuse to be a victim or
a victimizer. Then you will step out of the circle of fear and all that you do and say will
be filled with grace. This you will each experience.
Christ will be born in you as It was in me. But first you must set aside all
unworthiness, all scarcity thinking, all resentment, all need to attack or defend. First,
you must learn to turn the other cheek.
It seems that there are two worlds, but truly there is only one. Fear is but the lack of
love. Scarcity is but the lack of abundance. Resentment is but the lack of gratitude.
Something cannot be lacking unless it was first present in abundance. Without
presence, absence has no meaning.
This is like a game of hide and seek. Someone has to hide first. Who will it be? Will it
be you or me? Perhaps it will be the Creator Himself.
In truth, it matters not. When it is your turn, you will hide, and your brother will find
you, as I found him. Everyone gets a turn to hide and everyone eventually is found.
The world of duality emanates from wholeness and to wholeness returns. What is joined
separates and comes together again. This is a simple dance. It need not be fearful.
I invite you to enter the dance without taking yourself too seriously. None of you are
professional dancers. But every one of you is capable of learning the steps. When you
step on someone else’s toe, a simple “sorry” will do fine. You’re all learning at the
same time and mistakes are to be expected.
 Chapter Four
Freedom from Attachment
Where there is no resistance,
there is no unhappiness.

Supreme Reality cannot be apprehended from a dualistic frame of reference. It is the

creation of total acceptance, surrender, all-inclusive love. In contrast to the flow of
Supreme Reality, there is Resistance, which gives birth to various conditions.
Distinctions, comparisons and judgments arise and the natural flow is interrupted.
The nature of Supreme Reality is to say “Yes.” It has a natural exuberance and
enthusiasm. It is happiness personified, for it takes everyone and everything as itself.
Resistance, on the other hand, tends to say “No.” By nature it brings conflict and
struggle. It opposes life and so it is unhappiness personified.
Where there is no resistance, there is no unhappiness. Unhappiness always resists
some condition. It establishes itself in some interpretation for or against. The root of
unhappiness is attachment.
Now I am not asking you to give up all your attachments. That is not a realistic goal. I
simply ask you to become aware of your attachments, your perceptions, your
interpretations for or against.
If you want to understand the unconditional, look at the tree moving in the wind. That is
the best metaphor you will find. The tree has deep roots and wide branches. It is fixed
below, flexible above. It is a symbol of strength and surrender.
You can develop the same strength of character by moving flexibly with all the
situations in your life. Stand tall and be rooted in the moment. Know your needs, but
allow them to be met as life knows how. Do not insist that your needs be met in a
certain way. If you do, you will offer unnecessary resistance. The trunk of the tree
snaps when it tries to stand against the wind.
Move in the wind. Your life is a dance. It is neither good nor bad. It is a movement, a
continuum.
Your choice is a simple one. You can dance or not. Deciding not to dance will not
remove you from the dance floor. The dance will continue on around you.
There is a simple dignity in this. I encourage you to enjoy the simple grace of being
alive. If you are seeking a greater meaning in life, you will be disappointed. Beyond the
dance, there is no meaning.
All conditions open of themselves to the unconditional. Simply be open and present,
and you will fall into the arms of God. But resist even for a moment and you will get
caught in a needless tangle of your own making.
 Human beings cannot be free of conditional reality, because conditional reality is a
creation of human consciousness. Stop trying to escape your own creations. Simply
accept them, as the tree accepts the wind. Your dignity lies in becoming fully human,
fully receptive to your own needs and those of others. Compassion comes not by cutting
yourself off from the range of emotional experience, but by participating fully in it.
Some have said that this world is a painful place. That is not true. This world is
neither joyful nor painful, or you may say it is both at once. This world is a birthing
place for the emotional and mental body. Physical birth and death simply facilitate the
development of a thinking/feeling consciousness which is responsible for its own
creations.
It is absurd to deny the importance of this birthing work and it is equally absurd to
glorify it. There is no human being who participates in the journey of birth who does
not experience both joy and pain.
Are both necessary? Absolutely. Without pain, the mother would not expel the baby
from the birth canal. Without the joy of the newborn life, the pain would have no
meaning.
But do not say “this is a place of pain, or this is a place of joy.” Do not seek to make
of your experience what it is not. Stay away from interpretations which would have you
embrace only one end of the spectrum of life.
My experience here was no different than yours. I did not conquer pain. I surrendered
to it. I did not overcome death, I went willingly through it. I did not glorify the body,
nor did I condemn it. I did not call this world heaven or hell, but taught that both are of
your own making.
I entered the dance of life as you have entered it, to grow in understanding and
acceptance, to move from conditional love to the experience of love without
conditions. There is nothing that you have felt or experienced, dear brother and sister,
that I have not tasted. I know every desire and every fear, for I have lived through them
all. And my release from them came through no special dispensation.
You see, I am no better dancer than you are. I simply offered my willingness to
participate and to learn, and that is all that I ask of you. Be willing. Participate. Touch
and be touched. Feel everything. Open your arms to life and let your heart be touched.
That is why you are here.
When the heart opens, it is filled with love and its ability to give and receive is no
longer based on anything external. It gives without thought of return, because giving is
the greatest gift. And it receives, not for itself alone, but that others may experience the
gift too.
The laws of this world no longer limit the man or woman whose heart is open. And so
miracles happen, not through any special activity, but merely as an extension of love
itself.
Miracles do not come from linear, sequential thinking. They cannot be planned. One
cannot learn to perform them or to receive them. Miracles come spontaneously to the
heart that has opened and the mind that has surrendered its need to control or to know.
 For the Mind of God is innocent and all-giving. It cannot withhold its supply from
you, for you are part of it. “Reach out and receive these gifts,” it calls to you. But you
do not heed its call. In your frustration, you do not hear the Divine voice calling to you.
Yet, no matter how far you may feel from God, you are but one thought away. And
right now is the moment of your salvation.
Remember this, dear friend. Right now, in this moment, you are either listening to the
voice of God or you are needlessly enmeshed in your own psychodrama. You are either
happy or you are finding fault with the circumstances of your life.
As you learn to be open to the present moment, you will become increasingly
aware of the Divine Presence in your mind and experience. Your personal goals will
open up in this expanded consciousness, helping you to understand how you can best
be of service to yourself and others.
Circumstances will unfold before your eyes. The appearance will often seem
perplexing, but you will not judge. You will not find fault with yourself or with others.
You will learn to surrender to the situation at hand, doing the best that you can and
trusting the outcome to God. You will increasingly understand that your gift is
acceptable as it is. It is always enough.
Thus, the time of self-crucifixion will come to an end, and peace will return to your
mind. Then you will see me as I really am, for then you will have given birth to the
Christ within. I await that moment with great joy and certainty. For that is the moment
of truth. That is the end of separation. That is the end of suffering.

The Glory of God

God is without form.

He abides in all things.
There is no place where
His presence cannot be found.

God is not some abstraction. God is a living presence, all-good, all- giving, happy,
whole, and without fear. Can you imagine such a Being?
Let go of the limits you place on what is possible. God is beyond these limits, for He
is without form. Being formless, He abides in all things. There is no place where His
presence cannot be found.
God is neither male nor female, for he has no body and therefore no gender. God is
often referred to as “he” because he is masculine in relationship to us. We are the womb
in which his Spirit is carried, nurtured and brought forth.
Although we stand in relation to him as the bride to the bridegroom, God does not
conform to some masculine image. He is neither warrior, nor shaman, nor savior. He is
not the wise man with white hair, nor is he the wise woman either. All such images are
anthropomorphic.
God is a loving presence that combines all of the positive masculine and feminine
qualities. He is nurturing and also protective, gentle and kind as well as strong and
assertive. He has the wisdom of the sage and the innocence of the child, the strength of
the warrior, as well as the sensitivity of the young mother.
God is all this and more. He is beyond definition. He cannot be limited to the
concepts we have about him.
As a non-limited presence, Spirit of God moves through our minds and our
experience. The Spirit is not born and does not die. It exists before physical birth and
after physical death. It is not subject to the highs and lows of mental-emotional
experience. It is a steady, loving presence, to which you return when you have stopped
crucifying yourself or attacking others.
The Spirit within you is not different from the Spirit within your brother or sister. It is
a single essence. Bodies seem to make you separate from each another, but Spirit unites
you. Minds may disagree, judge and attack each other, but Spirit holds all minds in
simple harmony.
When you identify with the body or with thoughts of separation, you forget your
essence. You think you are separate from your brother. You think you are separate from
God. You could not judge or attack each other otherwise.
When you remember your essence, you also remember your spiritual connection to all
Beings. Attack is impossible when you remember who you are.
When you are in touch with your essence, you know that you are acceptable exactly
as you are. You know that there is nothing about you or anyone else that needs to be
improved or fixed. To know your essence requires that you discard your self-judgments
and criticisms of your brother or sister.

Keeping the Sabbath

From that place of peace within,

you will arise and be a peacemaker
among women and men.

The more you learn to rest in this state, the easier your life will be. God-communion
is good for the nerves. It is essential for your overall well-being physically, emotionally
and mentally.
I do not ask you to meditate or pray for an hour a day. I simply ask you to remember
your essence for five minutes out of each hour, or for one thought out of every ten. Let
your remembrance of God be continual, so that you do not get absorbed in the drama of
your life. Nine thoughts may be about needing to fix yourself or someone else, but let
the tenth thought be about that which does not need fixing.
 This was the rhythm the Sabbath was to establish. For six days you could be
absorbed in the drama of work and struggle, but on the seventh day you were to
remember God. The seventh day was to be a day of rest, of turning inward.
Let the wisdom of the Sabbath be brought into your daily life. That way you will not
forget for very long who you are or who your brother is. Enter into the ritual of
remembering and your days and hours and minutes will be transformed.
When you eat, God will sit at your table. When you speak with your brother, God will
remind you to say something encouraging to him.
Be easy with the choice your brother makes, even if it differs substantially from your
own. Know that what helps him remember God cannot hurt you or hold you back. Put
aside any words or beliefs that separate you from others. Overlook the differences you
see, find what you can share with others and focus on that.
Truth comes in all shapes and sizes, but it remains one simple truth. You must learn to
see the truth in every form and in each situation. That is what a man or woman of peace
must do.
You are entering a time when the barriers of culture and religion will be transcended.
With tolerance for diversity will come the perception of universal values which can be
embraced by all. This is a time of great importance. Each one of you has a significant
role to play in the dismantling of the barriers to peace.
I encourage you to find the place within where you are whole and complete. From
that place, you will celebrate and accept all people who come into your life. From that
place of peace within, you will arise and be a peacemaker among women and men.
This is my teaching.

The Lessons of Earth

The seeds of transformation

have already been sowed.
Your job is to water and nurture them.
You are here to learn that all beings are equal regardless of their apparent
circumstances. Men and women, black and white, Hindu or Catholic are all equal in their
existential worth. All inequalities are of your own making and must be abolished.
Many of you have been working on this curriculum for some time. Some of you live in
poverty conditions, while others have riches. Some have too much food to eat, while
others go hungry. If you had you already mastered the curriculum here, these conditions
of inequality would not exist.
You are here to overcome your shame-based belief that you are superior or inferior to
any other human being. You are here to learn to meet your needs in a way that is not
unfair or hurtful to others. You are here to learn to make your own choices and to
respect the choices that other people make.
 The practice of equality is a profound one. It can transform your consciousness and your
world. Then, when you have mastered these lessons, you will be ready to move on to
greater challenges.
When you leave your body, you will move into a non-physical classroom, where
learning will be accelerated and you will experience a creative freedom unknown on
Earth, except perhaps in the dream state. In your dreams, you create your reality quite
recklessly. You kill and are killed, make love to all kinds of people, move through
incredible danger and have miraculous escapes. Few of you would ever attempt in your
waking state what you attempt in the dream state. Non-physical experience is even
more dramatic than the dream state. The creative possibilities are endless.
Earth school then becomes an environment for testing the skills you develop in the
non-physical classrooms attached to Earth. You can’t graduate from Earth school until
you have demonstrated your mastery of the curriculum. All beings know this, and so all
are anxious to incarnate in physical bodies to demonstrate the fact that they have
learned their lessons.
Why do they have so much trouble? The dense conditions of physical experience are
difficult to master. It takes time to develop physically. You start in your mother’s womb
totally dependent on her. When you are born, you are physically helpless. You have to
learn to feed yourself, to walk, talk, and manipulate your environment. For someone
who has recently experienced a non-physical environment where the effects of thought
are instantaneous, this is pure torture. In time, consciousness contracts, and moves to
more fully inhabit the physical body, thus shutting off awareness of other dimensions
with their creative possibilities.
Put simply, consciousness gets absorbed into the density of the physical environment.
There it feels trapped and victimized. It does not remember its less limited state. It does
not remember that it is not a body.
In a few rare cases, consciousness does not fully contract when it enters the physical
classroom. These people inhabit bodies, yet still retain the memory of the non-physical
dimension. They know that they are not limited to the body. They know that they are
not the victim of other people’s thoughts and actions. They know that they can create
reality through the power of their thought.
These people are master spiritual teachers. Without the presence of these teachers, the
density of the earth plane environment would overshadow the collective consciousness
and block out most of the connection to spiritual knowledge. There have been times in
human history when the Earth experience has been dark indeed.
The time that you now inhabit the physical classroom is a time of transition.
Technologically, you have the ability to destroy the physical environment many times
over. Yet there is more light available on the planet now than there has been in any
other time in history.
Your lessons on planet Earth now are clear. You are here to overcome your victim
consciousness and step into the fullness of your power and purpose. You are here to
create and to learn to be responsible for your creations. You are here to learn to treat
your neighbor as you want to be treated, to create equality and justice on the planet.
 As you learn to establish equality with your brothers and sisters, you will also
establish equality with me, for there is no brother or sister who is not dear to me. I see
into the soul of both the criminal and his victim and I will not withhold love from either
of them. Do not be shocked that I ask the same of you.
Be patient and steadfast, my friend. Our work will not be done until there are no
more victimizers or victims. Everyone is to be embraced, as she is, so that she may let
go of her fear and her need to retaliate against others. Everyone is to be loved without
conditions so that she may open her heart to love.
To walk with me is to serve all of your brothers and sisters.

When the lessons of equality are learned, Earth will give birth to a more glorious
curriculum. The seeds of this transformation have already been sowed. Your job is to
water and nurture them.
 Chapter Five
The Tyranny of Agreement

Your enemy is a mirror

into which you look
until the angry face that you see
smiles back at you.

The ego’s notion of love is based on agreement. It cannot conceive of love being
present when two people disagree.
Yet unless you are free to disagree with your brother in any given situation, you cannot
love him. If your brother insists to you that he is a victim of someone else’s actions, will
you agree with him? Of course, you won’t. You will say “Sorry, brother. I do not see it
that way.”
Many of you cannot imagine that saying “no” can be a loving act. Yet it is very easy to
say “no” in a loving way. If your child is putting his hand on a hot stove, you say “no”
quickly and firmly. You do not want him to hurt himself. And then you put your arm
around him and reassure him that you love him.
How many times does your brother come to you with his hand on the stove? You
cannot support behavior that you know will be hurtful to another person and you don’t
want your friends to support that kind of behavior in you.
A friend is one who is free to agree or disagree. A friend will speak to you truthfully.
She may or may not perceive the situation accurately, but she is not afraid to tell you
what she thinks. A friend tells the truth and then reminds you that you are free to make
your own choice.
This is love in action. A friend loves you equally when he is saying yes or no. He
does not withhold his advice, nor does he try to impose his opinion on you. A friend
wishes to be helpful. He treats you with respect and dignity, and he tells you the truth.
You can’t be a friend if you are not willing to be honest. But this doesn’t mean that
you are right.
Being right and being honest are not necessarily the same thing. When you are
honest, you are giving the best that you can give with the awareness that you have. But
honesty alone is not enough. Honesty and humility must go hand in hand. Your humility
says to your brother “this is the way that I see it. I may be right or I may be wrong. How do
you see it? After all, you are the one who must make the choice.”
 A humble person understands appropriate boundaries. He never seeks to usurp
another’s right and responsibility to make his own choices.
Because you constantly seek agreement, you rarely experience love without conditions.
Agreement is the ultimate condition and therefore the ultimate codependency or
collusion. It says “if your ego and my ego agree, I’ll support you.”
When two egos agree, you should be wary. That is because it is the nature of the ego
to separate, to divide, to conflict with other egos. So when two egos agree, you can be
sure that they are joining together to oppose another ego. This is not genuine
agreement, but a temporary alliance. As soon as the common enemy is conquered, the
alliance ceases to serve a purpose, and each ego returns to its own agenda.
Looking for love in agreement is not a very wise move. It is bound to bring you
disappointment. You would do much better to look for love through disagreement.
You will remember that I told you “love your enemy.” I did not say this to be perverse
or difficult. I said this for several important reasons. First, it is easy for you to love
your friend. Most of the time your friend agrees with you and supports you. So it is not
hard to love him.
But your enemy disagrees with you. He believes that you are wrong. He sees your
weaknesses and would do his best to exploit them. If you have a blind spot, you can be
sure he sees it. To put it simply, your enemy is not willing to give you the benefit of the
doubt. He is therefore your very best teacher.
Your enemy reflects back to you everything that you do not like about yourself. He
shows you exactly where your fears and insecurities lie. If you listen to what your
enemy is saying to you, you will know exactly where you must make corrections in
yourself. Only one who opposes you thus can be such an effective teacher.
Why do I say “love” your enemy? I say love your enemy because if you do not love
him you won’t value the gift he brings to you.
No one can go through life without both allies and opponents. A good ally is willing
to oppose you. And a good opponent is the best ally.
When you learn to love your enemy, you demonstrate your willingness to look at all
of the dark places within your mind. Your enemy is simply a mirror into which you
look until gradually the angry face that you see smiles back at you.
To make peace with your enemies, you must learn to see through their eyes, as well as
through your own. Then you will develop compassion and move beyond conflict.
Remember, you do not have to agree with your enemies to make peace with them. But
you must learn to love them.
Peace does not come through the agreement of egos, for it is impossible for egos to
agree. Peace comes when love and mutual respect are present. When love is present,
your enemy becomes like a friend who is not afraid to disagree with you. You do not
cast him out of your heart just because he sees things differently from you. You listen
carefully to what he has to say.
When you listen to your enemy the same way that you would listen to your friend, it is
not your ego doing the listening. The Spirit inside of you is listening to the Spirit inside
of him.
 The cause of all human conflict is a simple one: each side dehumanizes the other.
Each side sees the other as less worthy. As long as each side perceives the other this
way, even the simplest details cannot be negotiated. But let each side bring to the other
the attitude of respect and acceptance, and even difficult details will be resolved.
Miracles come from love. The solutions that come from loving minds are without
limit. The willingness to love—to regard each other as equals—is the essence behind
all miracle making.
Out of a diversity of perspectives comes the one perspective that honors everyone.
Yet this perspective will not be available until everyone has been heard. Your job, my
friends, is to give every person a fair hearing. This is the essence of democracy, which
is not only a spiritual ideal, but a living process. When the process breaks down, the
ideal is corrupted. But when the process remains strong—as awkward and ungainly as
it seems—the ideal cannot fail to manifest.
A society that tolerates differences of perspective is a society that is based on the
practical demonstration of love and equality. Those who seek agreement build
totalitarian systems where individual freedoms are sacrificed and the whole never
benefits from the wisdom of the parts. Such systems are doomed to failure.
It takes courage to disagree. It takes wisdom and foresight to maintain an environment
of equality in which all perspectives can be considered. The path to truth has never been
an easy one. It certainly has never been one based on expediency.
The expedient solution to conflict is to exterminate all those with whom you disagree.
The goal here is not to love, or even to understand, but to destroy your enemies. That
has been the prevailing value system on your planet throughout its history.
The democratic approach is a brave new experiment. It says, “let all voices be heard.”
It welcomes diversity and has faith in the essential worth of individual human beings. It
asks you to love, respect, and learn from your opponents. It assumes that the human
heart and mind is deep and wide enough to contain all these perspectives. It trusts in
your open-mindedness. Indeed, it entrusts its entire success on your ability to consider
different points of view and, when appropriate, change your mind.
Totalitarian and fundamentalist ideas play to your fears. They are always creating
enemies and seeking to overcome them. They believe that there is one side that is good
and another side that is evil. They are oversimplified and dualistic in their perceptions of
the world.
On the other hand, the path of compassion challenges you to love and accept all beings
as equals. It makes no exceptions, for it knows that to condemn one person is to
condemn all. It is not an easy path, for it recognizes that there will be continual
challenges to your commitment to equality. And each challenge must be met with the
full depth of your commitment if you are to demonstrate the truth.
Many people use my name in vain. They attribute abusive, judgmental ideas to me
and use them to justify all manner of vile acts. That is why I must tell you clearly: do
not use my name in vain. Do not use my name to judge any man or woman. I have
never taken one brother’s side against another’s. Nor would I ever ask that of you.
 I have asked you to come to peace within your own mind. And I have asked you to
come to peace with all of your brothers and sisters. How can anyone distort this simple
teaching?
If you have heard me in your heart, you know that you cannot use these ideas to
justify any judgment or attack on another human being. When you would judge
another, look within and ask “would I judge myself in this way?” For any judgment
against your sister is also a judgment against yourself and a judgment against me.
Understand, my friend, that you will not find love if you seek agreement. Love runs
deeper than that. As you learn to love the one who opposes you, you will find the
Source that goes beyond judgment or fear. In that Source we are all joined as equals,
free to think and act in accordance with our guidance.
I support you in your freedom to choose, even when you make a different choice than
I would make. For I trust you; I trust God’s plan for your awakening. And I know that
you can never make a mistake that will cut you off from God’s love or from mine.

Crime and Punishment

Those who hurt others feel

that they have no choice.
Those who know they have a choice
do not hurt others.
Theseeds of all actions are to be found in your thoughts. What begins as thought
quickly becomes speech and w hat becomes speech eventually becomes action.
Society says, “Only the physical action is reprehensible. Verbal attacks are
unfortunate, but inevitable. No one would be foolish enough to try to hold another
accountable for his thoughts.”
You are outraged by the act of murder, but the thought of murder is acceptable. You
have all had it. You are outraged by the act of rape or sexual abuse, yet you are not
greatly disturbed by the thought of it.
Yet the difference between you and the one who rapes and murders is not as big as
you think. I do not say this to make you feel bad. I say this to help you wake up to your
responsibility to your brother.
If you can forgive yourself for having thoughts of revenge, why can’t you forgive the
man or woman who acts with vengeance? This person merely acts out what you have
thought about.
I am not justifying the act of vengeance. I cannot justify any attack, and I am not
suggesting that you do. I am simply asking you why do you cast this brother out of
your heart? He is perhaps even more desperate for love and forgiveness than you are.
Would you withhold it from him?
 Your brother has been wounded deeply. He has grown up without a father. He has
been addicted to drugs since he was nine years old. He has lived in a project where he
has never felt safe. Do you not feel some compassion for the wounded boy in the man
who commits the crime?
If you were to step into his shoes, would you do that much better? Be honest, my
friend, and in that honesty, you will find compassion, if not for the man, for the boy
who became the man.
I will tell you right now it is not the man who pulls the trigger, but the boy. It is the one
who is overwhelmed and sacred. It is the little one who does not feel loved and accepted.
It is the wounded boy who strikes out, not the man.
Do not let your sight be distorted by the angry, disdainful face of the man. Beneath that
hard exterior is overwhelming pain and self judgment. Beneath the mask of mismanaged
manhood and vicious anger is the boy who does not believe he is lovable.
If you cannot embrace the boy in him, how can you embrace the boy or the girl in
yourself? For his fear and yours are not so different.
Let us first take away your mask of moral superiority and then let the boy or girl in
you look out at the boy in him. That is where love and acceptance begin. That is where
forgiveness has its roots.
Criminals are just one group of untouchables in your society. You do not want to look
at their lives. You do not want to hear about their pain. You want to put them away
where you do not have to deal with them. You do the same with the elderly, the mentally
ill, the homeless, and so forth.
You see, my friend, you do not want the responsibility to love your brother. Yet
without loving him, you cannot learn to love and accept yourself. Your brother is the
key to your salvation. He always was and always will be.
Just as the individual denies and represses the negative tendencies he does not want to
accept in himself, society denies and institutionalizes the problems it does not want to
face. Individual and collective unconscious are filled with unspeakable wounds. The
behavior that results is driven by the unacknowledged pain, guilt and fear embedded in
these wounds.
Forgiveness brings a searchlight into these dark, secret places in self and society. It
says to your own guilt and fear, “Come out and be seen. I need to understand you.”
And it says to the criminal, “Come out, meet the victims of your crime, express your
regret, ask for forgiveness, make amends, begin the process of healing.”
Acknowledging the wound is always the first step in the healing process. If you are
not willing to face the fear behind the wound, individually and collectively, the healing
process cannot begin.
It is hard for you to look at your own repressed pain. It is hard for society to look at
the pain of its outcasts, but this must be done.
Everybody lives in a prison of reactivity until the wound is made conscious. It is not
just the criminal who is behind bars. The men and women who put him there live
behind different bars. If you don’t bring your unconscious material into conscious
awareness it will express on its own distorted terms. If you don’t work intentionally
with the criminal to help him come to love and accept himself, he will re-enter society
with the same anger and vindictiveness.
Building more prisons or putting more police on the streets will not make your
neighborhoods safer. These actions just exacerbate the situation by raising the level of
fear.
If you want to improve these situations, bring the work of forgiveness into the prisons
and the neighborhoods. Hire more teachers and counselors and social workers. Feed
people, challenge them emotionally and mentally. Offer them experiences of safe
emotional bonding. Provide them with opportunities for education and training. Give
them hope. Give them acceptance. Give them love.
This is the work of a peacemaker. This is service. This is embracing your brother as
yourself.
Please remember, in giving to others, you will be giving to yourself. Nobody gives
love without receiving it. Nobody gives a gift he does not simultaneously receive.
It is time that you stopped trying to punish the sinner in yourself and the criminal in
your society. Punishment simply reinforces rejection. That is the opposite of what is
needed. Feelings of rejection must be mitigated and alleviated. Judgment and attack
must be brought into the light of conscious awareness. Guilt and fear must be seen for
what they are.
The work of rehabilitation is a work of integration. The darkness must be brought to
light. All that is unacceptable must be made acceptable so that we can look at it without
fear. The seeds of action must be found in thought, and addressed there. You cannot
change actions without changing thoughts.
If you make certain thoughts taboo, you will be afraid to look at them. This is not
constructive. Be willing to look at the murderous thoughts in the psyche so that you
don’t have to bury them in the unconscious.
Help people take responsibility for the thoughts that they think and the effects of
those thoughts. Personal power and authentic self esteem begin with the realization that
you have a choice about what to think, what to say, and how to act.
Those who strike out at others feel that they have no choice. Those who know they
have a choice do not strike out at others.
This is the key. Show a man the choices he has and he will not commit a crime. Crime
is another form of self-punishment, unconsciously chosen to address unconscious guilt.
The criminal commits a crime because he is still trying to punish himself. Society
obliges him, by punishing him and reinforcing his guilt.
The only way out of this vicious cycle is for society to drop the agenda of ostracism
and punishment and commit to healing. Every person in pain must be offered a path out
of pain. Each must be helped to consciously identify his shame and unworthiness, as
well as the patterns of abuse and betrayal that run through his life.
The lepers of your society are no different than the lepers of my time. They bear
everyone’s wounds on their skin. They are bold witnesses to the pain we do not want to
deal with. Society should be grateful to them, for they are way-showers. They point to
the path of healing all human beings must take.
 The Search for Happiness
The world cannot make you happy.
The sooner you learn this,
the easier your struggle will be.
This is the world of “conditions.” It cannot give you what you want. It can only reflect
back to you what you don’t want.
The search for happiness in the world is a grim one. The world cannot make you
happy. The sooner you learn this, the easier your struggle will be.
Please spend some time looking at your goals. How many of these goals have to do
with accomplishing something in the world? You will see that many of them do. Don’t
be ashamed. Just realize that your attention is directed outward.
Once you accomplish one goal, you have to set another goal. You can’t be happy
with what you have done. You keep looking for happiness in the future.
Yet real happiness happens only in the present moment. If you are happy now, there is
nothing else to accomplish. Indeed, if you become concerned about whether you will
be happy tomorrow or even five minutes from now, you will forget to be happy now.
All your scheming and dreaming takes you away from your present happiness.
Many of you have very important jobs serving others. Yet you are not happy right
now in this moment. I must ask you: at what price would you serve others?
Do you really believe that you can bring happiness to another when you yourself are
worried and stressed? Surely, you know that this is not possible.
There is nothing glamorous about the process of awakening. People who awaken do
not become wealthy or famous. They do not sell salvation. They simply look into your
eyes and ask “Are you happy right now?” If you answer “yes,” then they smile back at
you, because they know you are already in heaven. If you answer “no,” then they
simply ask “why not?” Because they know that you have a choice to be happy right
now, and there is nothing except your own stubborn need to wallow in the past that
prevents you from making that choice.
All the master can do is ask “Why not?” He cannot tell you what to do or what not
to do, for the responsibility for both doing and undoing belongs to you.

Not Withholding Love

All anyone wants is to be loved
and accepted as s/he is.
 Your brother only wants your love, but he does not know how to ask for it. Indeed, he
is confused about what love is. So he asks for money, or sex, or something else. He
tries to manipulate you to get what he wants.
Of course, you don’t want to be manipulated. You don’t want to reinforce his
inappropriate behavior by giving into his demands. But you don’t want to reject him
either. So what do you do?
You give him the love that he really wants. You give to him what you can give freely
and you don’t worry that you aren’t meeting his demands.
You say “yes” to loving him and “no” to being manipulated. You say “no,” but you do
not cast him out of your heart. You do not judge him, or separate from him. You refuse
to be a victim or a victimizer.
You say: “No, friend, I cannot give you what you ask, but I will find a way to support
you that affirms both of us. I will not reject you. I will not pretend that you are less
worthy than me. Your need for love is as important as mine and I honor it.”
This is how the lover talks to the beloved. He does not say “I will do anything you
want.” He says “I will find a way to honor us both.” The lover is equal to the beloved.
They are the mutual expression of love.
It is important that you understand this. Many of you believe that if you do not say
“yes” to another’s demands you are not acting in a loving way. That is not true. Saying
say yes to another’s demands is not loving yourself. Do not place another’s needs
before your own. Love has nothing to do with sacrifice.
On the other hand, some of you believe that you must say “no” to everyone to protect
yourself from trespass and manipulation. That is the other extreme. If you have to say
“no” to everyone you just reinforce your fear of intimacy. You build a wall around your
heart to keep other people out.
It is important to see your pattern of codependence or isolation. Do you abandon
yourself to try to keep others? Or do you reject others to try to hold onto yourself?
Both gestures are a denial of authenticity and intimacy.
Only the authentic person—one who honors his own truth—is capable of intimacy
with another. Only the respectful person—one who honors the other person’s truth—is
capable of being himself fully.
Do not capitulate to each other’s demands or allow yourself to be manipulated. Set
healthy boundaries with others. On the other hand, don’t push people away when they
approach you with respect. Keep your heart open.
Let your “no” to manipulation become a “yes” to love and support. Let your “yes” to love
and support become a “no” to manipulation. Honor yourself and others equally.
Let love replace your grievances. If you feel attacked, say no to the attack, but do not
attack back. If you attack others, realize it and make amends. Correct the problem in
the moment.
The more you give love, the more love you will attract. That is because you stay in
the vibration of love by loving. As you learn to say yes to people’s need for love and
support, their behavior toward you will no longer be motivated by fear.
 Do not speak or act in a way that makes the fearful more afraid. Instead, speak and act
in a loving way, for love alone redeems. Fear and condemnation have no place in a
ministry of love.
All anyone wants is to be loved and accepted as she is. Give her that and she will not
be afraid. Give her that, and she will have no need to attack you.
 Chapter Six

Relinquishing Judgment
Be patientwith yourself
and the barriers to truth
will come down.

All “objective” reality is based on subjective agreement. Yet, explore this area of
agreement rigorously, you will see that it is paper thin, like a flimsy membrane draped
over the world that you perceive. Behind that membrane, nobody agrees on anything.
Events occur with a certain rhythm and grace. But then you step in and try to give
them meaning, and the rhythm and grace are lost. As soon as you think you know what
something means, you cease to be able to understand it.
If you would know “reality,” you must remove your judgments from it. This can and
must be done with every situation in your life.
Do not decide what something means. Just let it be and dwell with it, move with it,
breathe with it. In time, insight will come.
When people come to you saying “I have the answer,” send them politely away. Their
answer is just as toxic for you as your own judgment of the situation.
Let others know that there is nothing in you or in your life that needs to be fixed.
Remind yourself of this too. You don’t need to change what it is. You need to learn to
accept it and learn what it has to teach you.
The purpose of each situation will be revealed to you when you are ready to accept it.
Until then, be patient and gentle with yourself, and the barriers to truth will come
down.

Authentic Spirituality

Each path has its own

simple beauty and mystery.
 The nature of mind is unlimited. It does not conform to time or space. It goes beyond
all boundaries. Yet you experience only that portion of the mind that fits into your
experience. Other aspects of mind operate beyond your understanding or awareness.
Those who have come close to death know that there is a reality which is beyond the
limits of perception in this world. In that reality, communication is spontaneous and all-
inclusive.
The interesting thing is that right now, without struggle or effort, you are in
communion with unlimited being. Your body is bathed in light. Your heart is capable of
receiving unconditional love and your mind is capable of apprehending truth directly.
This is the ultimate destination in the journey of consciousness. All forms of spiritual
practice invite you to the experience of unconditional love and grace here and now.
When you throw out the dogma and ritual you come to the essential invitation to
connection and oneness. It is there in every tradition.
All beings are called to peace, joy, and happiness. To answer this call is to enter the
path. It does not matter what form it takes or how you express it. Each path has its own
simple beauty and mystery.
Authentic spirituality is not linear. It is not prescriptive. It cannot tell you “do this and
do that, and such and such will happen.” Whatever is done must come from deep
inside. It must be fresh, clear and centered in the heart. It must be done spontaneously.
The path home is never what you think it is. Yet it is never beyond your own ability to
intuit the next step.
Deeply imbedded in your psyche is the call to awaken. It does not sound like the call
that anyone else hears. If you are listening to others, you will not hear the call.
But once you hear it, you recognize that others hear it too, in their own way. Blessing
them, you bless yourself. Setting them free to travel their own path, you set yourself
free to travel yours.

The Way of Forgiveness

There is only one person

to forgive and that is you.
I have chosen the way of forgiveness, because it alone undoes the lock of time upon the
wound. When there is no time, there is no wound. Let go of the past, and you will have
no grievances
Time makes the wound seem real. It makes death seem real. It makes all the changes
that happen in your life seem real. Yet none of these are real.
You are in heaven, but heaven is not acceptable to you. Heaven does not support your
ego, your schemes and your dreams. Heaven does not support your power struggles,
your lessons, or even your forgiveness process. There is no need for forgiveness in
heaven because no one in heaven is guilty!
 Heaven does not support your soap opera of crime and punishment. It does not
support your drama of sin and salvation. In heaven, there is nothing that needs to be
fixed.
You think you get to go to heaven by “being good.” Yet no two of you can agree on
what it means to be “good.” Is it any wonder that the road map to heaven is a rather
crooked affair?
Some of you believe that I hold the key to your salvation and that I am the one who
will remove your guilt. But that idea just makes you dependent on me and unlikely to
forgive yourself.
I’m afraid that none of this is helpful. Your guilt belongs to you and you are the only
one who can release yourself from it.
There is only one person you need to forgive on your journey and that is you. You are
the judge; you are the jury; and you are the prisoner. An unholy trinity, to be sure!
The more guilty you feel, the more you will beat yourself up. Projecting your guilt
onto someone else and beating him up only adds to the guilt that you carry. The only
way out of this labyrinth of fear is to practice forgiveness.
Look at every judgment you make with compassion for yourself and the person you
are judging. Do not justify your judgments and you will not make your illusions real.
You mistakenly believe that you can hurt others and that others can hurt you. These
beliefs run your world. Yet if a single one of you could be hurt, if your wholeness could
be compromised or damaged by suffering or death, then your world would be beyond
heaven’s reach, and all your murderous thoughts would run rampant throughout
eternity. Yours would be a dark and unredeemable world.
I know, at times, it seems as if this were true. But it is not true now, nor has it ever
been true, even in the darkest of times. Your world, your life, your thoughts, have never
been beyond the reach of heaven, for heaven is here, my brother, and heaven is now.
You see what you choose to see, because all perception is a choice. And when you
cease to impose your meanings on what you see, your spiritual eyes will open, and you
will see a world free of judgment and shining in its endless beauty.
The shackles of Earth will fall away, and you will be free to ascend to your place
amongst the brightest stars. There you will look down on Earth, as I do now, and you
will say with compassion: “There I walked too, when I was afraid, and learned to walk
through all my fears. It is a holy place, where every enemy became a friend, and every
friend a brother and a teacher. It is a HOLY LAND where the dream of death and
separation came to an end. I feel privileged to have taken the journey and happy to be
home at last.”
Then you will know that you did not have to take the journey to be saved. You could
have stayed home without any taint on your innocence. But had you not taken the
journey, you would not have come to know your innocence as you now know it.
An angel who has not fallen from grace can never be a co-creator with God, for she is
not capable of conscious creation. To create consciously you must understand your
creation. And to understand your creation, you must join with them and experience
their journey.
 This you have done, my friend. And so we welcome you back home. Your journey
through sin and death has left you surprisingly spotless and intact. Hallelujah!
Lucifer has been redeemed. The prodigal son has returned home. All the angels in
heaven are rejoicing. But those who have taken the journey themselves are also
shedding tears of joy.

The Death of the Ego

Either you will die,

or you will wake up,
which is a different kind of dying.
Dwelling in peace requires that you see what links you to others, not what separates
you from them. When you see what links you, you can learn to respect your
differences. Differences are healthy when they are respected. They don’t interfere with
the potential for intimacy.
However, trespass occurs when you try to change others to fit your image of how you
want them to be, or when they try to change you. This is the push/pull world of the ego.
The ego is always taking sides. It has no native confidence or generosity of spirit. Its
nature is to divide and conquer. Where it cannot divide, it cannot conquer.
The ego is the part of you that doesn’t know that you are loved. It can’t give love,
because it doesn’t know it has love to give. How do the unloved and unlovable find
love? That is the cry of every soul in exile in the world.
The ego must be taught that it has love. This is a threatening proposition, for as soon
as ego recognizes it has love, it ceases to be ego. The ego must die as ego to be reborn
as love.
Now you know why most of you resist enlightenment. The idea of waking up is scary
to anyone who is still asleep. You keep thinking “When I wake up, I may not be there!”
That is why your fear of death and your fear of waking up are the same fear. The
unlimited, universal Self is not born until the limited, temporal self dies.
So death will come, one way or the other. Either you will die, or you will wake up,
which is a different kind of dying.
Once you are awake, dying is no big deal. You have no more prized identity to lose.
Whether you stay in physical form or not isn’t important.
Dying is one of the best ways to learn to be present. If you want to wake up quickly,
try dying. When you are dying, you are aware of things in a way you never were
before. You notice every breath, every nuance, every flower, every word or gesture of
love.
Dying is like a crash course in waking up. Now that doesn’t mean that everyone who
dies wakes up. It just means they’ve taken the course. Those who graduate from the
course are content to be wherever they are sent. If that means somewhere in a body, so
be it. If that means assisting someone in a body, that’s fine too.
 It doesn’t really matter where you go because you have nothing to prove. You are
there simply to be helpful.
Disengaging from meaningless identity is an inevitable aspect of the path back home.
The less you have to protect, the more help you can be. And the more help you give,
the more blissful your experience becomes.
While I would not go so far as to say “dying is fun,” I would say that dying is “not
fun” only because you are still hanging onto some shred of self-definition.
Your whole experience on Earth is a process of learning to trust in yourself, in your
brother, and in God. In the final moment of awakening, when trust blossoms fully,
these three aspects of Self merge into one. That moment cannot be described in words,
but I assure you that you will experience it. And until you experience it, nothing will
ever make complete sense to you.

The Gift

This is not my gift,

but God’s gift to you.
Because I received the gift,
I can give it to you.
Forgiveness is a gift that was given to you for all time. It is not something that can be
taken away. It is there always, and it is the only gift you will ever need to move beyond
the experience of pain and suffering.
Forgiveness works in this world, but it is not of the world. It is of Spirit and cannot
forget its origin. No matter how many times the gift is received and given, it can never
be exhausted. For every sin or perception of sin, forgiveness waits with the answer.
You do not understand the immensity of the gift, because you have not accepted it into
all areas of your life. You have not accepted it in all situations. When you do, you will
know that there is nowhere it cannot go. There is no situation in which the gift cannot be
given and received.
Forgiveness is the only gift that asks nothing in return. And so it is the only gift that
can be given and received without guilt.
The all encompassing love that lies beyond the door that forgiveness opens is
incomprehensible to you now. Therefore, talking about it is not helpful.
Be then as you are. Stand before the door and knock. Be willing to look at every
painful and unhelpful thought and let it go. Know that every thought releases or
imprisons you and choose to be released.
When peace comes to your heart, the door will open. The veil will be lifted. Moses will
enter the Promised Land. Until then, dwell where you are, in the heart of your practice.
God gave you one gift for your journey and one gift alone. He said “My son,
remember, you can change your mind at any time.”
 He did not say “Do not leave, Son.” He did not say “Son, you will be miserable until
you return to Me.” He just said “Remember, you can change your mind at any time.”
You can change your mind about every painful and unforgiving thought that you
think. You can question each unhappy thought and think another thought that releases
you and brings joy into your heart.
God did not say “I will not let My Son make mistakes.” He said “I trust in your return
and I give you a gift to see you home.”
All your mistakes mean nothing to God. To him, you are but a child exploring your
world and learning, through trial and error, the rules that govern it.
God did not make those rules. You made them when you made this playground. You
forgot only one thing, and God gave that to you with his blessing. He said “No matter
where your journey takes you son, remember, you can change your mind at any time.”
With a single loving thought, He made temporal what you would make final. He
made unreal what you would make real.
You created the ashes of death. He created the wings of the phoenix. To every unhappy
thought you would think, God gave a single answer “Remember, son, you can change
your mind at any time.”
Like Prometheus, you tried to steal the fire of the gods. But He did not punish you for
this. He did not chain you to the rock where you would live throughout all eternity with
vultures as your only playmates. He said “Take the sacred fire, Son, but be careful, and
remember you can change your mind at any time.”
Like Adam and Eve, you stood in the garden and became curious about good and evil.
When he knew your desire for knowledge would not pass, he sent the sacred snake to
you with an apple and invited you to eat. Contrary to popular opinion, He did not trick
you into sin and then banish you from the garden. He just said “Be careful, my Son.
When you eat this fruit, your perception of the world will change. This garden may
suddenly seem a dry desert where nothing grows at all. Your body with all its innocent
grace and wholeness may seem to be separated into parts, some of which you accept
and some of which you feel ashamed. Your mind, which now shares my every thought,
may seem to think thoughts opposed to mine. Duality and feelings of separation may
seem to enter your consciousness and experience. All this and more may arise from this
tiny bite you would eat, but remember, Son, you can change your mind at any time.”
Not only does God not condemn you for your mistakes, he is not concerned about
them. He knows the child will burn itself with an open flame. He knows the apple will
give indigestion. But he also knows the child will learn to keep the flame carefully and
use it to warm himself and light his way. He knows the body will adjust to the acidic
taste and use the apple for nourishment.
He knows that your decision “to know” will bring you into dangerous situations,
situations when you think your happiness depends on the way another treats you,
situations in which you forget you are not a vulnerable organism in an arid and hostile
land.
He knows that you will forget your origin, and that there will be times in which the
Garden seems but a distant memory, whose very existence is questionable. He knows
that there will be times in which you blame Him for all of your troubles and forget that
you were the one who chose “to know.” But all this does not concern Him because,
before you left hell-bent into your journey of separation, He said “Just a minute, Son. It
may be a long time before we meet again. Won’t you please accept this simple gift
from me, and keep it wherever you go in remembrance of me?”
Most of you do not remember answering “Yes, Father.” But I assure you that you did.
And so the voice of God went with you as you went into exile and it is still with you
now.
So, when you feel forlorn and lost, when you forget that you chose this journey,
remember “you can change your mind at any time.” I am here to help you remember
that.
This is not my gift, but God’s gift to you. Because I received the gift from Him, I can
give it to you. And if you receive it of me, you can give it to your brother.
But I caution you, do not be concerned with the identity of the giver. I am not
important. I am not the gift, but the one who extends it, as indeed are you. Let us
remember the origin of the gift so that we can give it and receive it freely.
Christ is the giver and receiver of God’s gift. And Christ is born in you every time you
give or receive the gift. It does not matter who offers the gift of forgiveness to you. It
can be your child, your parent, your friend or your enemy. All that is important is that
you receive it of him. And as you receive it, you become the Christ and so does he.
All who give the gift are the midwives of Spirit. Each one of you is Joseph and Mary,
welcoming God’s child into the world. And each of you is also the child who receives
the gift of limitless love from mother and father.
God gave you the gift of forgiveness. This gift travels with you wherever you go.
When you do not trust it, he sends His Son to you to remind you of the gift. And His Son
tells you that you must give the gift if you would keep it.
Many beings of light have come as the Christ, bringing that simple reminder. All have
the same purpose, for Christ is not a person, but a keeper of the flame, a giver of the
gift, and a messenger of love. Light comes from him, because he has remembered light
in the darkness of the world. Love comes from him, because he has received the gift
and learned to give it unconditionally to all who would receive it.
What he has done, you too will do and more. For in your salvation is the salvation of
every Son of God. You who see the Christ in your brother will help them see It in you.
And so the light of truth will be lit in many hearts and the star will rise again in the sky
above the Promised Land.
Many magi—men and women of open heart and mind—will come together to witness
the birth of God’s Son on Earth. And many others will oppose them, not understanding
that He is them. All dreams of crucifixion, sacrifice, and loss will array themselves in
vain against the forces of love, and once again love will triumph over fear.
Christ will reach out and take the wounded child in his arms and comfort him. And
that child will arise in the light of his love and push the stone of death aside. Many men
and women will walk safely across the waters of their fears and open the door that lies
on the other side.
 The Son of God will awaken from his slumber and his body will disappear from its
tomb. All the exiles will return home to the heart of God, the Promised Land.
If you read this, know that this will happen to you. And take heart, for I am with you.
Together, let us give thanks to God for His gift of love and forgiveness, for His eternal
trust in us to find our way back home.
Father, we remember that You are with us in every circumstance and we rely on You
to guide our thoughts and our footsteps. You did not let us leave comfortless, but gave
us mighty companions to light our way.
In your name, we celebrate our journey here, and pray without ceasing for the end of
guilt, the single cause of suffering. And toward that end, we embrace the gift You gave
us, the only gift that we can give or receive without guilt. Thank you Father for the gift
of forgiveness. We will use it wisely. We will use it in every circumstance. With it, we
will bring light to all the dark places of our souls.

Namaste.
Paul Ferrini is the author of over 40 books on love, healing and forgiveness. His unique
blend of spirituality and psychology goes beyond self-help and recovery into the heart
of healing. His conferences, retreats, and Affinity Group Process have helped thousands
of people deepen their practice of forgiveness and open their hearts to the divine
presence in themselves and others.
For more information on Paul’s work, visit the website at www.paulferrini.com
or email: [email protected].