Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.

Rabindranath Tagore

Part 11- Pain

It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Hope springs from an eternal source deep within our innermost selves. The future is moving ahead regardless of our wishes and desires. I am trying to think but sometimes there is no way to out think reality. Maybe in the end the thoughts just arent all powerful enough? The basis of what is considered real owes much to the interpretation. External events at any point are a given. Letting go is a breakthrough. Things may make no sense or very little at least for a long period of time. All we can do is breathe. Sometimes the pain is so intense and life can move so slow that it barely moves at all and one day can take an eon to complete. Sometimes we can tell ourselves that were ok when were really not. People ask us how were doing and we say things like, ya, great, awesome, never better. Maybe we do need someone to talk to but we at the same time dont want to talk to anyone. If you say, hey hows it going to one hundred people how many people will say something like, crappy? Not many. Maybe one person or half a person? The truth is that most of us probably have something we can complain about. The truth is that as bad as our lives may seem to be

there are probably many people even in our own communities who have it much worse. The bigger picture is that the pain will eventually start to fade away and then someday hopefully disappear. Life can be difficult. Sometimes when your life has been going good for a prolonged period of time its easy to lose sight of what people around us may be going through. We can look at people going through emotional stress and think something like, yikes, pull it together. Come on, lifes not that bad. Pain in a certain light can be a growing experience. Pain also has the potential to destroy us. In any situation it would be of some benefit to be able to peer into the future even if just for a moment to catch a glimpse of any other possible alternatives that may present themselves. We probably all the know some of the spiritual catch phrases that are supposed to lift us up out of the doldrums. You know things about living in the present moment and the importance of finding forgiveness. Ultimately if something happens to us where we start to question the intentions of those that we have placed our trust in say then embracing these concepts is a process and entails a lot more than simply learning or repeating the words. When we have put all of our energy into an external event, either a person or a situation, or a combination of events occurring and then absolutely everything falls apart around us leaving us without any answers, well, life can be challenging. The spiritual metaphor that springs to mind is the phoenix that rises out of the ashes. Sometimes we may need to take our emotions and not try desperately in vain to negate them but instead maybe we need to simply redirect them and let them be the rocket fuel that propels us to leave the wreckage of a bad or hopeless, ruined situation and fly off into the horizon somewhere where we can plant ourselves a new beginning. Perhaps we need to embrace our emotions fully and let ourselves dive straight into the pain letting it fully consume us and do its damage instead of trying to skirt around the edges of it all, letting it remain in the background and never quite confronting it.

Part 10 Love is Infinite

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge. Thomas Carlyle There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there. Albert Einstein

Love is infinite. The power of love created all life in this universe. Science will never fathom the extent of lifes true complexity. Because life yes is infinitely complex. What things will prove to be most successful along this path? The ultimate goal is love. If we can let love burn brightly in our hearts, even in the hardest and most difficult situations that life will throw at us, then we can start to think of ourselves as being somewhat evolved. Not fully evolved. Youre not going to find the end of the universe just like youre not going to reach the end of what it means to be personally evolved. As difficult as it is for the human mind to ponder something so large as forever. The spiritual path will forever unfold into something more all encompassing. With the ending of each paragraph there is something called a pause. For reflection. Everything is being reshaped and reformed in every moment. What we are, who we are, is all simply just a continuation of the past. In this way, being awake, being present, having presence, of course, gives us a great amount of power. In this light, we are all really just products of our own imaginations. In the end, negative and positive things that we think and believe about ourselves have to give way to a higher reality. Reality exists completely independent of what we would call our imagination, or even of our minds and the shape that they have formed to operate in the material world devoid of spirit. The false shape of who we are, devoid of spiritual intelligence, which we call the ego. The problems that we face are multi faceted. As far as finding ourselves goes. The spiritual life for starters is not a concrete thing that we can put on display for the world to consider. People love to point out the need for some sort of scientific evidence concerning this train of thought. We can ask for science to explain a number of things concerning the known universe. However consider this. Something like ninety five percent of the matter and energy in the universe is even by the most brilliant physicists completely unaccounted for.

Science knows its there, they can detect it. But science doesnt know what it is exactly. There are a lot more things in life that science cant explain versus what it can. The point is that people are procrastinators and if we need to wait the next ten thousand years to see if science may or may not be able to explain spirituality before we start to look into what we can otherwise just discover on our own by examining ourselves a little bit? Well that seems somewhat absurd. The power of love is a giant tractor beam of information and inspiration that has been solely responsible for all of the worlds greatest discoveries. We live in a shadow world of five senses. Thats where the missing energy is. It exists in the unseen realm that most people would tell us doesnt exist. When we open our inner minds eye to, when we begin to let the sixth sense stream into our life, then we start to let the almighty force of love and creation shape and guide us in its beauty.

Part 9 -The true path will overcome all obstacles.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. Oscar Wilde

The true path will overcome all obstacles. The music of life is a symphony. Balance and wisdom. Rhythm and the patterns that reveal to us that the mind that created all of this is beyond both order and chaos. Radiance. Sometimes we just need to say the words devoid of the usual supporting cast. What we call truth is somehow asking too many questions. We take it in little by little at our own time. Sometimes we ask for too much and it is then all so powerful that we wonder later how we somehow held it all in without losing it. The truth. The totality of it all would absolutely destroy us all at first contact. Im sure of that.

Theres always a bigger picture looming off on the horizon of our own limited ability to truly breathe it all in. There are always things we hadnt or wont ever consider. Little variables that although they may only be things of such minor importance that theyre only really decimal points in a world of numbers of mammoth proportion, they somehow impact the equation throwing the result hurtling off in an almost opposite direction. We cant avoid all the obstacles on this path. And even if we get sidelined for a while there is always the opportunity to pick ourselves back up out of the ditch, out of the rut, to stand up strong once more and announce ourselves to evolution as participants. In the end who is to say anyways. Because in the end somehow everything that happened probably happened for a reason. But then again if we cant find a reason for the reasoning itself and use it as a reason to grow then we probably arent. Growth is an option. Sometimes life is literally trying to force it upon us.

Part 8 A Mysterious, Mythical Beast

Change. We all go thru it. Good change? Bad change? Yes we all have regrets. There are things that we could have done better, things that we could have done differently, and then there are obviously things that we shouldnt have done at all. You know the routine. Im not going to go and get all philosophical right now and talk to you about the value of letting go, or the importance of finding forgiveness. Which are both important things. Depending on the definition and depending on the situation. Sometimes life just takes our hearts and emotions right out of any logical framework or frame of mind that would have normally let us somehow deal with the whole situation a little bit better. Sometimes as well we know what the right course of action should be but we are so emotionally involved that there is a part of us just watching from a ways away shaking its head in disbelief.

We can learn from life or we can conversely just keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Sometimes it can be hard to put our fingers exactly on what the lesson to be learned was from a certain situation. Other times of course, its easy. From anything that happens in life there must be something that we can learn from it all. We can choose to be evolving or we can reject the notion altogether. We probably all know people who seem destined to never really get it. Maybe all of us have our own little things that at times can frustrate others. Some people will just be eternally miserable or pessimistic for example. Change, real change, is not always the easiest option. Its always easy to judge people and the things they get themselves into forgetting our own messed up moments in life. Some people are just eternally right about everything. People can be entirely un evolved but somehow at the same time be running around criticizing everyone around them. Sometimes the most critical, all too often maybe, people, are the people who are the most in need of some real critical analysis. Maybe if you can keep your focus on other peoples flaws and, as well, at the same time over state and exaggerate them, it somehow hides your own and therefore you dont have to think about it all. The human ego. Sometimes the human ego is virtually dysfunctional but it can still just keep hanging around stinking up the palace because it doesnt shower and is just living in and wallowing around in its own filth. Almost like an insane old king sitting in his throne babbling away while his whole kingdom falls apart around him. Maybe a little bit harsh but the point is that some people are in need of some really serious spiritual help. We have people who can treat you for physical ailments and we have people who can listen to you and try to give you advice on psychological matters but generally people who claim to be spiritual healers are frowned upon by society. Spiritual healing for most is the crazy, superstitious, by product of a more primitive time. People called to this line of work are either simple minded people who have been brainwashed by their own intellectual shortcomings or else charismatic charlatans who may have as their only real talent the ability to fool and embed people with their own grandiose version of themselves.

The question of change is a huge one. People do change. Although some people may never seem to. You cant change really until you want to. And you obviously cant help someone change unless they really want your help. Real lasting personal change cant really happen unless we have empathy for the harm that our poor decisions have brought about. We can be in the midst of pain and of course we might wish for it all to go away, telling ourselves things, reassuring ourselves, and blaming external circumstances for what we have done. However until we can truly accept our pain as being necessary for our own growth and until we can fully accept responsibility for own actions regardless of what situation we found ourselves in when we did or said something ill-advised then real personal change will remain a mysterious, mythical, beast. We need to be really honest with ourselves. Sometimes of course, the pain doesnt start to dissappear and dissipate until we are.

Part 7 The Interlude

Maybe we should start all over again. Back at the beginning. Because honestly where do we go from here? Hurtling back down into the ashes of our own broken selves? Asking for knowledge. Begging for it. Please. Screaming up at the sky when we need help, when we need it the most, hearing nothing but our own tears silently drop to the forest floor. Rising up again. Lifting up out of the doldrums. Finally the earth provides an updraft and we wave our broken wings a little. And we can fly. We had somehow forgotten. Because it has been awhile. It seems like forever because we cant remember. But somehow we know. Still we may return home. Its all really always here inside of us. It can seem like its lifetimes away but its not, you could really just snap your fingers and be there.

Part 6 - The Power of Love

A lot of us just really need some sort of a serious breakthrough. We need to be able to really conquer that which ails our spirits. We need to open ourselves up to a new beginning, to a new way of thinking and being. We may not believe that we have the capability to find the ability to force such a radical change into our lives. Or we may believe that yes the human being does have the seed of said transformation but we for whatever reason are unable to, or have in the past been unable to, uncover it all. What kind of environment lends itself best to uncovering and facilitating the emergence of the human spirit? Everyone yes is a human spirit. What we are proposing is that people because of growing up in a limited world adopt attitudes, deeply ingrained, that serve to cloud the human spirit hence limiting it, filtering it, and capping its natural magnificence with the 'ego'. We see some very successful, happy, confident, strong, peaceful, intelligent, people in life and many of those people have no clue as to what I am talking about. The ego is not always the messed up enemy as it is for many of us. For many people it works just fine. Why would you talk about dying? It sounds like pure insanity. People are called to lead this life. It either stirs something deep inside of your inner spirit or it doesn't. For some people the spiritual life is 'the great adventure' and more exciting than even traveling the stars would be. Some people live to love and when they start to uncover that endless source of love that streams freely out of the very most basic matrix of the living universe then there is no turning back. Life when you didn't know that love wasn't really life at all. It was like being stuck in a basement. It had its great moments but all in all it was a life that was of a distinctly different quality. In a certain light it's not the people that most of us look up to, you know famous and successful people, who have the most to be thankful for. It's the rest of us, it's the people who have real problems, real hardships, real worries, who have the most opportunity. Because true inner peace and joy eclipses anything that any sort of external stimuli can provide. Academy awards, being on a talk show, selling a million records. Forget it. The point is that people who are so involved in the world chasing external things like that can be further removed from truth then the rest of us are. On the other hand. People who have had a significant amount of success can sometimes come to realizations about life that somehow seem to elude the rest of us. Most people

being under the illusion that fame and fortune will make us happy. When you've had success but your life is still miserable, or if the success hasn't added to your happiness maybe it has even decreased it then you are ready maybe to ask some of the more serious philosophical questions about life. Many people hold this belief in some sort of an event horizon somewhere off in the distance and when this condition, or set of conditions, is met, then they will find finally a lasting sort of inner peace. Granted its good sometimes to have goals and aspirations. Sometimes though when our minds are focused on something outside of where we are now, in an illusionary sort of existence, then we have in essence lost most of our power. Our power to think, to act, to be happy, to grow and evolve, even diminishing our chances of meeting someone or coming up with that great idea that will benefit us and make our lives easier.

Part 1 The Introduction

I don't need to say the same things that have been said a million times before. Especially when it's all just imagined wisdom that either really makes no sense or has no application with respect to reality. Someone said it at some point and a bunch of people who didn't know what they were talking about passed it around thinking that it was all somehow really profound. What is reality really anyways? You're really just projecting your own version of it all out onto the universe. Unless you're one of the few people out of all us who is at least approaching a point of some sort of higher awareness and clarity. What is the price of your freedom? If you knew, well then, you would know. Is there really ever any point in stating the obvious? You can't buy freedom. Not the type of freedom I'm alluding to. Some people aren't ready to think about the bigger things. So they dismiss it all and section it off somewhere maybe even labeling people who do think about bigger things as being delusional. What bigger things? Well things that are bigger than the daily concerns

of said individual. Whether it is the huge philosophical questions that confront human existence or something else, say the role that corporate controlled mass media plays in influencing and shaping our attitudes. Ultimately the really big picture encompasses the totality of all truth. We are individuals raised in this world and in order to separate ourselves from fiction and really embrace higher purpose we must be able to identify everything that comprises our identities. And this includes a working knowledge of and a love for truth that infuses us with divine purpose. Because if you can love truth. If you can accept truth even when it flies in the face of what you think you want. If you dedicate your life to truth you will find it. The easiest course of action in this scenario is of course, and it is also the most common, is to have some else who has found truth tell you what the truth is. Someone who can tell you what you need to know, think, and assume in order to progress along this path. Do this, then do that, this way, no that way. Some sort of spiritual guide to provide assistance even just as a starting point. Sometimes our lives start to unravel. Things we believed in, patterns and thoughts that formed who we thought we were lose their validity and we feel lost. Maybe thru some sort of experience as well we glimpse a higher reality and start to question some of the most basic things about our lives. It could just be a strong conviction that you have that there is more to life and living for the human being, there are keys to higher states of consciousness and you're just ready to begin unlocking some of them. Whatever the reason. And there are many. You are ready to start to think about spirituality. It could even just be something that you and some people you know start to think about at the same time. You might have read a quote someone posted on Facebook and even though you had never thought much about spirituality before the words resonated in your heart and you knew them to be profoundly true. Whatever the reason. You may now be ready to enter a new chapter of your life. Spirituality may be something you flirt with, something you learn from, that inspires you to make your way more gracefully through life. Conversely for others spirituality becomes something that transforms the individual on every level. In essence walking the mythical path made most famous by the Gautama Buddha himself. A path not of comfort and

pleasure, although it does have those elements, but one highlighting pain and struggle much more boldly. We know why there's a huge market for comforting things in the world today. Generally spirituality caters to this market. People saying something different about it all don't really have much of a place in the marketplace. The human being in the midst of a deep spiritual crisis needs some real help and some real answers before they end up in the system, there only answer becoming medication to damper the human spirit and the questions it is demanding answers for. Answers that of course the world will tell you invariably don't exist and are by products of the superstitious thinking of a more primitive time. Love is the question and love is the answer. What kind of answer is it though in a world that doesn't understand it in themselves? If I said that love is a profound connection to a higher source of understanding that most people can't connect with on a holistic and integral level? Most people would think that love is an emotion. Well that is true. But once you can really start to cultivate love in your innermost being then you begin to realize that love is really much more than an emotion. Another one of the most popular ideas surrounding spirituality is the idea of forgiveness. Indeed how can we grow into the almighty force of true love if we our holding things in our hearts that take our minds and spirits away from it. Forgiveness is true power. Without it we let people hold power over us and allow them to cause us to be weakened. What people who have hurt you, who want to hurt you, can't really understand is forgiveness. Forgiveness will throw them off and make them question their own intentions. Anger is what they want to see so they can further criticize you and add injury. Maybe because it gives confirmation to their own pettiness.

Part 2

There seems to be a myriad of ways thru the wilderness. Ultimately people want a path bearing fruit. Some people think to act in haste. Rushing around trying to find yourself can lead to hardship. Sometimes you feel like you need to, find some real answers, quickly. Its so easy to criticize others. Not enough people have what it takes to criticize

themselves. Can you really take an honest look at yourself? Would you really want to anyways? What would honestly happen to a lot of people if they were suddenly shown truth even for just a second? Truth. Big word. People are probably already tuning out as soon as the concept is introduced. Almost everyone is an expert on their own particular version of ignorance. For most people, the truth, is what they tell themselves it is. Maybe really it is for everyone. Most people dont really seem to care. Who they are as people, is so reliant on the different thoughts and opinions that they have formed. And when we talk about truth what we are talking about is uncovering the real you. Most people thrust into the physical plane having to learn to operate in the world and in their particular society, family, religious group, etc. adopt an operating system in order to well, operate. It may not be an operating system that works that well, it often isnt, but as children we are just reacting to the world around us and we start to form an opinion about who we are. Negative and positive, real and illusionary. So who is the real you? If you are familiar with spirituality then you probably know the answer to the question even if you have not successfully uncovered the real you yet. You, my friend, as most spirituality will tell you, are the spirit, the soul, the eternal, the infinite. Your true nature is that of divinity. But you cant truly see that. Even if you believe it. You have deeply ingrained beliefs about who you are, about the world, about everything. I cant directly show you the light because you have built a huge stone temple to cover it. Maybe we could work together and bring you closer to truth, taking down brick by bloody brick but, its going to take a long time. And thats ok, I dont mind. Conversely we could find enough dynamite and just blow your temple to smithereens. But thats dangerous. And at the end of it all would you be any closer to the light? You might, you might not. In referring to your temple we are talking about who you think you think you are. When we talk about the truth we are talking about who you really are. Modern spirituality seems to be primarily, to me, to be interested in decorating and adorning the human ego, what I called your temple, with a little more happiness and grace. If we call the ego your operating system then its like getting a microsoft guy in to get rid of some of the adware on your version of windows 7 or whatever. Im not going to criticize that approach at all. All Im going to point out is that there is another dimension to spirituality that many people are unaware of. Why should people be aware of it at all? It

doesnt, it wont, impact upon their lives in any sort of meaningful way. Thats ok. Some of us however have become addicted to learning the truth. So we need to know.

Part 3

At the end of our own short mortal, often miserable, lives who is really able to say anything at all about anything anyways? Were all just on this wild ride called life, or not wild, my life too often is, reacting to things as best as we can. Everyone who starts to ask some very serious questions about things eventually develops or adopts a philosophy that allows them to say, this is what I think about things. Or even better people just admit that they, dont know, which many people will agree is the deepest thing you can say. Because no one knows. Because you cant know. So saying you dont know shows how evolved you are realizing this. So that leads to people saying things like, those who know, dont know. I dont remember reading about Gautama Buddha telling people sagely, something like, All I know, Is that I dont know. Also many modern people have hit upon this idea that if you did really know, if you had awakened, if you were enlightened, you would never say you were. So people who say they are obviously arent. Obviously meaning, and Ive heard this a lot too, that you wouldnt necessarily know if you were enlightened if you were. Also, that the enlightened individual has become so non egotistic that that person is somehow virtually a non-entity and cant even really tell you anything beyond something incredibly deep, something like, I dont know. The enlightened individual has somehow meditated too much and gone insane or something. Like the person has had a lobotomy and now has no personality. How a bunch of people who arent enlightened can tell you what its like being enlightened, or what people who are enlightened do or say, is beyond me. We do know that most people need to have an opinion about everything including things that they know absolutely nothing about. Having opinions is something that people are taught to cherish growing up. As long as theyre not the wrong opinions. At a young age we are more inclined to copy and parrot the opinions of our parents. As we get older, other things enter into the equation. Our peer group, music we listen to, famous people we look up to. We start to become influenced by a wider variety of things and we may start to clash with our parents and community. Even rebels have opinions. Everyone does. I, for example, think

that killing animals is wrong. But unfortunately thats just my opinion. If there is really any doubt as to whether your opinion is right or wrong then its just better to not have an opinion. And thats where saying something like, I dont know, does sound terribly enlightened. If being awakened is just an opinion about yourself and the universe as most people would probably just agree that it could really be no other way. Hey its a complicated question. And how do we answer it? Obviously we dont. I cant transport your consciousness into an enlightened persons brain so you can form a real opinion about it all. There are people who arent enlightened and you could put someone into their brain and in comparison to your own messed up mind state you may think youre in an enlightened place but still youre not, from a Gautama Buddha perspective. So what is enlightenment? Thats a question you need to answer for yourself. How do we come to conclusions in life free from the common mistake that most people make, as I have been talking about in, forming concrete opinions on a subject without sufficient evidence. Having an opinion on enlightenment is the most glaring example of this very real human flaw that is indicative of the modern world more especially even maybe than what we might think about our primitive ancestors. Science on the other hand should have nothing to do with having an opinion. Trial and error, inner exploration, you must become a scientist of yourself, you must test and re test yourself, over and over again, until your hypotheses fits every possible situation that may confront it. Being enlightened, what I would call, having clarity, obviously entails doing a lot of soul searching. Everyone could use a little time for inner reflection in their lives. The person who dedicates their life to truth is taking it all to the next level. Whether or not you or I may think that I am enlightened for instance is irrelevant but I can still say that dedicating most of my life to meditation has been much more beneficial than doing anything else possibly could have been. When I talk about meditating I am talking about thinking about things. Im not talking about as most people would think meditation is, not thinking, or trying to not think about things. Which of course brings us to another common misconception.

Part 4

Sometimes things come together quickly for us. Maybe even too quickly. At other times the universe is teaching us patience. Some of us are really passionate. We pretty much only exist to fall madly in love with someone else. Other people tend to think and act on a much more level headed plane. Everybody is different. Finding, uncovering, your true self doesn't change that. Yes the process of self-discovery will change you. Transformation will affect you on every level. After everything has been said and done however you are still an individual and you still have a personality. You are still you. Although it may be hard for you to think that what I am saying is true. Consider this; you were born with a personality. You weren't born as a blank slate. You were born with character. What we're talking about is more about bringing out your true character minus the deficiencies than somehow, again with what some would think, deleting your individuality. Viewing the enlightened individual somehow as a noncharacter who talks really slowly only saying really deep things. Are enlightened people passionate or are they on the other hand extremely level headed about things? You can't group enlightened people together and put labels on them. Snowflakes are all different and unique and so are people whether awakened of not. I am a unique aspect and representation of the almighty force of life. People think of enlightened people as being a little less human than other people are where the opposite is actually more true. Finding and uncovering your true self has more to do with becoming more human not less. It's all about developing empathy and feeling for others not about losing your connection to those things which tends to highlight the predicament of the modern individual. People who have awakened laugh and smile, they fall in love and have their hearts broken, they may have real problems, and they make mistakes like everyone else. Life is all about growth and life is all about learning and evolving as human beings. You don't awaken to your true nature and then all of a sudden expect the growing to end. Like you've reached some de facto end state of true perfection. In a lot of ways real growth doesn't begin until you have reached that enlightened state within. Unless you don't get that and buy into what the world would mostly tell you what reaching enlightenment means, which is finding perfection. Perfect people are not usually good people whether enlightened or not.

If you can grow, if you can really learn to grow as a human being then you can start to think about even bigger things. Being an enlightened person means you now have a lot of responsibility. Even if you're not talking about it all like I am, people will start to be drawn to your light and people will start to believe in you. An angel is going to hit the ground a lot harder than a human being will. You are also now a spokesperson for something much more important than your own selfish concerns and desires. You may be someone who thinks you can help and heal people and society. Many people won't believe in what you represent or in what you believe and like I said will try to knock you out of the sky. An angel must have respect. No one wants to think of themselves as an equal to god or the power of life itself even though we all in essence share in the same divine spirit. We must be humble. Part of the reason I'm alluding to angels is because you don't want to look like a fallen one. Like satan. Many people would argue that an angel should hide its wings. Maybe that's true. What truly scares people? Many things I guess but I think as others have said that people are truly afraid of their own true inner power and potential. People are scared of true transformation and the pain that that entails. People are scared of jumping out of the nest when we collectively don't believe that people can fly. People don't like people who keep saying, jump! Because they feel like people who are saying that are calling them weak and cowardly. People can be superstitious and people can be collectively afraid and you really don't want the pitchforks to come out. It's always easier to go back to sleep then wake up in this light. People can be judgmental and it's much easier for someone to invent a reason to dismiss you and what you are trying to say rather than listen and take it to heart. The truth hurts and you are being hurtful. The easiest course of action for someone having to deal with you is to be genuinely suspicious and unconvinced. To invent things about you that bring you back down to their level, a level where they don't have to question basic assumptions that they have about their lives, afraid of the very real struggle that will incur if they do realize that life is much more alive and spiritual than they thought it was. Egoism is a very real beast and its best to beware. A very real and common reaction to being transformed is to think that, wow, now I am going to save the world. Luckily it's not 1 A.D. in the Middle East or whatever and people will just think you're insane and probably not actually physically crucify you when you

make it your business to awaken the world. It is better when your inner transformation begins when you're older and wiser instead of if it does when you're a young and passionate hot head. And there are many levels to being enlightened as well. Like life itself there are an infinite amount, life is endlessly complex. I, if I have, have only scratched the surface. The best you can hope to be for other people is as a coach and as a guide providing advice and encouragement. People must find the answers within themselves ultimately. A big mistake people make is to become overly egotistic about it all. Just as easily as you can lose your ego, you can also go ahead and develop a new one. Some people who do know a lot about spirituality and may have truly gone thru the process of self-transformation become decadent. And this is because somewhere along the way they have forgotten the scientific method and embraced superstition.

Part 5

The dialogue must continue. The words swell up from the inner soul then pour out onto the paper. There's so much to say. Or there's nothing to say. And saying something was just a pleasant interlude. We want to help people but at the same time thru the process of thinking about these things and then writing them down we are writing something that is just as important if not more important for ourselves. For ourselves to grow. For reflection. If this is shared and other people find value in it then so be it. No one is asking you to read it and then judge the content. A book like this maybe won't lend itself well to a review. There have been a lot of times in my life that I could have used this book for help. Ultimately we may not truly understand the forces that have shaped one another. We may never need to. But still we are not alone. There can come a time in your life when everything becomes dark and hopeless. What some have of course called the dark night of the soul. When you leave your comfortable perch and descend out into the cold searching for the unknown.

For some of us our comfortable mental home that spiritual people like to call ego starts to disintegrate signalling yes like i alluded to above a journey into the unknown. The hitherto unexplored depths of the human psyche. Some of us have travelled into that realm and have somehow survived it all becoming because of the process much stronger and more alive than we ever were before. We are the victors and we love what others call madness seeing it instead as the glorious womb of our own creator. Like a caterpillars cocoon. Or a giant glorious fire that burns out our impurities as painful as it is. Somewhere we can return again if we need to. Normal everyday people are generally of course scared to death of venturing out into this land. Which is understandable. People will hold onto to their little life raft of who they think they are for dear life during the most horrendous storms that creation can muster refusing to let go and be swallowed by change. People will have almost zero ability to find peace and happiness but still will cling on to their identity with everything they can, because at least it's something. It's better than going crazy. Who's to say? Many other people are trapped out in the wasteland cold and alone and will probably never make it back. What chance do we have of being truly successful in this seemingly stressed out environment. If it is truth? People prefer a more comforting version of it all. For most there are more comfortable alternatives to watching almost helplessly as your ego starts to disintegrate. Like I said before there are different versions of it all. Different types of spirituality for different types of people looking for different things from it all. Some people search for truth without a guide thinking that they can just have a go at it on their own, figuring everything out haphazardly, successfully, like there's nothing they can't conquer. Some spiritual writing will even advise this course of action. Maybe in the end it is the quickest route to finding yourself. Just dive in and lose yourself in the process crossing your fingers almost hoping everything you think is not what the world would tell you, some sort an ancient myth passed down by people who apparently spoke with spirits on a daily basis. Sounds pretty crazy. But go for it. It's the approach I took honestly but I'm not necessarily advising it. If you have no dependents. If you have no other goals, plans, and aspirations besides for unlocking your inner self and learning the truth about it all? If you are born with an almost unreasonable amount of confidence that you can pretty much figure out anything

you put your mind to. And if maybe you dove in the ocean of consciousness but you did so from a sinking ship anyways so it wasn't really a choice you had in the end after all. And if you were lucky enough as well to find the right book at the right time or maybe you wouldn't have made it back? Not saying that this book that I'm writing will be the right book for anyone. But it is in the public domain and it saddens me knowing that people question my reasoning for writing it. Maybe because they think that they 'know me' and I must just be making all of this up. Because I'm saying that I'm trying to help people but really I'm just fooling them because none of what I'm talking about exists anyways. In that light, and who is to say really? We each have our own path thru life and mine won't be just like yours and vice versa. Whats real for me doesn't need to be real for you. You can maybe help someone if they do want your assistance. Otherwise pretty much forget about it. People are by and large stubborn creatures. Generally if someone is heading down a certain path you're going to find it nearly impossible to head them off into a whole new direction. The best we can usually do is just nudge them a little. Little by little. Maybe being some sort of a positive influence. Constantly we will come into conflict with those who don't believe. What choice do we honestly have? People who came before us spoke about these things. All in all are we not just another link in the great chain of this knowledge. Passing the torch down thru the ages hoping to shed a little light to help those who are lost, wandering off aimlessly in the dark tunnels of the human mind. As well as those people who have reached a point in their lives where they demand some real spiritual truth. Those who came before us risked everything to help keep this message alive. Criticism we may get from friends and family, from our community or the general public will just be have to be something that won't affect what we are. And what needs to be said.