Some think that Tiger Woods’ greatest gift to the American public has been in showing us his skill as a golfer.  While entertaining and, for a while, inspiring this aspect of his gift to us pales in comparison to a much greater gift.

He is a great mirror for many of us.  With mirrors, we get to see our self.  Some aspects of this mirror:

The Pre-Apology Mirror:

• The feeling of entitlement.  He thought he deserved to be treated differently, that given his fame he could play by a different set of rules than the rest of us.  This is a facet of arrogance.  In what ways might we be acting in arrogance?

• Pretending to be something he was not: a faithful husband.  Woods projected a squeaky clean image as a family man.  What masks do you wear to hide your inner world from the outer world?

• America is the most prominent example of a world of being a body of people with apparently limitless cravings.  We are gluttons for artificial, poor excuses for food and drink.  We crave drugs, affection, erection, release, fancier cars, TVs with bigger screens, and all kinds of escapes that give us a very temporary and artificial sense of power or happiness or calm.

• He has also reminded us of our capacity for blindness as a choice.  If we let the egoic mind run our lives, we can convince ourselves not to see what is right in front of us.  In taking on multiple sexual partners, given the nature of his popularity and the nature of the media’s and public’s interest in his personal life, he chose to be blind to the idea that his infidelity would be exposed.  He let the craving and the arrogance blind him to the consequences of both.

The Mirror in the Apology

• He sees himself as a victim of media invasiveness in his life.  How often do we see ourselves as victims of life, and what does that sense of victimhood really do for us?

• Concurrently, he asks the media and the rest of us for his privacy, and that of his wife and children.  Can we respect this, or do we feel entitled to learn what we want to learn of his private life.  Is it our business?  No.  Yet in this society of addicts that we are, we are also addicted to gossiping about and judging others as a way of feeling falsely superior to someone else.  It is not anyone’s place to judge Tiger Woods or anybody else.  You may not want your son to emulate this man’s off-course behavior, but damning Woods doesn’t do anything other than drain your own energy.

• He took responsibility for his actions.  This is the mirror of positive example.  How often do we do the opposite, blaming our children, parents, friends or co-workers for our challenges?

• He shared with us his perceived solution to his challenge with craving: the learning of restraint.  This is a teaching he had learned as a part of his Buddhist upbringing.  In this American age of excess self-indulgence, low self-esteem and marketers hawking of all kinds of unnecessary “stuff” as being important to buy and use, the realm of restraint is taboo.  We want more.  What we get is an artificial sense of power that does not last long before it needs to be propped up again.

It is curious, too, that many now seem to be wanting more from Woods.  We want to see him express remorse, which is defined as deep and painful regret.   To demand remorse from another is to demand that they have pain.  This requirement does not give one much of a boost in the positive karma department.  What good can come out of the intent for another to suffer?  Do you really want to emulate some wrathful god?  Does that make you feel better?

Many do not relate to Buddhism.  What we do not know, we often foolishly attempt to belittle.  Some news commentators have expressed disappointment and surprise that Woods did not invoke Christian values, rather than what he learned as a youth.

While much of the Eastern world may be governed in harsh and godless authoritarianism, the East has given the world so much of great value in many arenas from the spiritual to healthcare innovations and philosophical insight.

In contrast, the vast majority of the Christian world---along with the Jewish and Muslim religions---has devolved into the diametrical opposite of what any worthy religion would be.  Any religion with integrity is one which empowers and unites people.  Most religions today do exactly the opposite.  It takes very little study of the confirmed history of the Christian bible to understand how its most Christ-like content has been removed over the centuries.  There are so many contradictions and so much unloving content in both volumes, that believers in the Christian bible or the Muslim Qu'ran must fall into one of these categories:

1)  They have not read it.

2)  They believe in loads of blatant contradiction within these texts, which would characterize them as schizophrenic.

3)  They are OK with God, Allah or the authors of these scriptures being dangerously schizophrenic.

When one studies the history of religion, the inescapable conclusion is that religion has been developed as a primary tool of the wealthy to disempower the majority of the population of our planet.  If we are willing to wake up, there will be no apocalypse, just an awakening to the potential we have to be a planet in harmony.

Anyone paying attention today who is willing to see religions’  history and what is going on right now in the world comes to the most obvious and truthful of conclusions: The most grave threat to the safety and peace of our world comes in the form of our generally insane religious convictions: that redemption can come from killing in the name of some god, that we might fry in some eternal dungeon, and that we are unworthy or deserving of shame.  Communally, how stupid can we be to buy this stuff?  What will it take to wake us up?

As we communally move closer to the age of true harmony in the world, more and more will see the destructiveness that defines most of today's popular religion.  Tiger Woods’ apology on the world stage may very well be a significant step in that direction.

His greatest gifts to the world have nothing to do with the quality of his golf swing.  They have to do with the ways he is showing us to ourselves.

We can spend the rest of our lives teed off and stuck in the bunkers of delusion and self-destruction or we can open up to a more loving way of being.  I think Tiger Woods is giving a new way of living his best shot.  And when it comes to that, it may be wise for us to be like Tiger.

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Next in Part Two:  Tiger Woods and the End of Golf

With all the apparent craziness going on in the world, we might often wonder:  “What is going on?!”

Here is  my answer to that question.  We are being pushed to the point that we will collectively choose to be aware of what is in front of us to see: that we are ruled by banks via a puppet government, that the religions so many of us subscribe to inhibit our deepest, loving expression, and that the popularity of these religions means we have put a large part of our faith in false gods while we have lost faith in our own selves, in our own power.  As a world civilization, apparently, we are not yet willing to see what is right in front of us.

How far are we going to collectively put our heads down the rabbit hole?  We are going to find out this year.

We are in the middle of a collective game in which each of us is a player.  This is the game: We, as the powerful beings that we are, get to decide whether we are, indeed, powerful beings or if we are the insecure, fearful ego that pretends to be us. 

And it is the answer to this question that will decide whether our transition to creating a more loving world will be a graceful one or a harrowing experience.

It appears, for the moment, that we have been defining ourselves as our fearful, avoiding, limited selves.  It appears that, despite the warnings we have been given, despite the numerous creative ways that the Universe (maybe God?!) has been attempting to wake us up, that we are for the moment, more comfortable
in a state of blindness.

We see all the signs of a collapsing economy, but rather than look at it with clarity, we are preoccupied with our soap operas, with which team will win the football game, with our beer and our artificial comfort foods, and with our own petty ways of finding apparent differences between each other,.

What we have shown more clearly recently is that we, as a society, are completely asleep.  The Universe---God, if you will--is giving us wake-up calls.  We are so busy bailing water out of our personal sinking ships that we are not
seeing that the larger ship we all sail upon is sinking.  And that the only reason it is sinking is that we refuse, collectively, to see that it IS sinking and that we, the People, have the power to make it much more buoyant, light, alive: a true expression of our Loving Power.

The Shift that we are in the middle of is a shift of loving power: no blood need be shed, no violence need be wrought.  All that we have to do is wake up to our power, a power much greater than those who sometimes seem
to be calling the "real world" shots right now.

While I have been surprised by the basic silence after the recent landmark decision by our so-called "Supreme Court" to allow corporations, both domestic and foreign, to basically buy our governments, I am very clear that if this wake-up call is not heeded, then the Universe will find other more creative, more painful ways of attempting to wake us up.  If the very real prospect of being governed by the will of the corporate money interests is not enough to wake us up, I wonder what the next raise will be in this poker game.

All the truly strange things we have been witnessing on the part of our government, our financial institutions and our geophysical environment are all wake-up calls.  Let's wake up!

We are being asked to see that our governments are largely false: they and the media are basically owned by the bankers.  If you do not see this, you are not paying attention.  We are being called to see that our organized religions are mostly false, that they, too, are run by people whose agenda is counter to the true loving nature of their sheep-like flock.  We are here to become united in love. 

Most religion---by design---divides us, yet almost no one will stand up and speak this truth.  Mohammad was a gangster.  Read the history.  The most beautiful and touching stories of Christ's life have been largely deleted from the bible to serve the interests of those concerned with money and power.  Wearing the mask of righteousness, most organized religions betray the faith of their blind flock.  Please open your eyes.  Use the Internet to do a little research.  Search terms like "Bible contradictions" and "Qu'ran contradictions".

To suggest that the words in these books are the word of a Supreme Being is to suggest that the Supreme Being is  quintessentially and dangerously schizophrenic.  Really.  Search.  Investigate.  You will be amazed.  The so-called faithful can have no meaningful reply.  None.  They simply suggest that you ignore proven facts in favor of unconscious story.

This has been staring you in the face and you have not wanted to look. You have feared the judgment of your peers and the judgment of a false god who does not exist.  There is no All-Loving god who would condemn his people to
an eternity of torture.  To believe such a thing is the ultimate act of spiritual stupidity and fearfulness.  If we are, indeed, smarter than the apes, then we are too smart to believe such ignorant ideas.  But it seems that we communally sit here like stupid monkeys and accept that the highly-edited words of men who lived thousands of years ago are somehow the word of God.  How smart are we going to choose to be?

I do not call for your anger or violence in any way.  I do suggest that you call upon the innate courageous, loving being that you are at depth. Ask your heart about who you are and whether you are truly a deeply loving being.  Then simply be quiet and listen to your inner callings.  Do this as a gift to your Self and a gift to your world.

So what will you do and think now:  Deny?  Delude?   Distract?  Consider me a quack?  Ask your heart how you might best respond.

Time is short.  Please do not be wasting too much time thinking about it with your fearful head.  Please, rather, listen to your heart.  Let it guide, calm and empower you.  It IS a facet of who you really are.

And calmly let your elected representatives know what you are no longer willing to put up with.  Calm wins the day.

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Blog by Carlo Ami,  Review article by Chiwah

Published in The LIfe Connection Magazine, February, 2010 (formerly The Light Connection

Quick Inner Retreats to Calm CD

What is true empowerment, and how do we find it?  Who of us hasn't asked this question?  Man and woman have forever searched the stars, followed the paths of their ancestors and stepped onto new paths of their own intuiting, in search of answers.

Whatever your answer to this question, surely it involves going within, finding that calm space in which to listen inside.  Sometimes we find that this is not so easy, however: the mind insists on whirring, engaging us in thouights when we want to let go.  This CD and Carlo Ami’s website offer openings into the quiet within.

Carlo speaks, posing questions designed for entry into the moment—offering reflective statements that take us into feeling into our bodies, listening into the sounds of water and music to tune in to the still, silent voice that rests inside each of us.

This world is sorely lacking in calm.  The intent of this CD is to create openings into inner peace, and for that I bless Carlo.  You can sit and listen to the entire CD and take the time to “space in”  with each segment, or tune in when you have a minute or two.  Either way, you’ll be doing yourself good and creting one more spot of calm in this landscape of earthly chaos, and your soul will thank you.

As Carlo says on his website, “Going inside yourself takes guts, courage.  It’s certainly easier in the short term to distract yourself from what is truly important, to avoid yourself and keep on muddling through life, no matter how much you think that yourlife may suck.  I invite you to explore your deepest self, to uncover your deepest truths---in your own way.  It can be much easier than your mind thinks.  If you let your mind run your life, you will never be truly happy, never fully love or be loved.”

The rewards of going within are amazing.  I highly recommend this CD and the experiences offered on YourPauseButton.com.

Spiritual Empowerment IIa-- Shifting Away from the Need to Fight

As we see so many challenges in front of us---in America and around the world---we have also seen a variety of responses to them.  As the controlling monied forces, with the assistance of our paid-for governments and our so-called free media, have methodically taken away many of our freedoms, masses of people have generally  had one of four responses:

1.      Apathy: “There’s nothing I can do about it.  I do not have the power.”

2.      Denial: “It’s not really happening, and if it is, it’s no big deal.”

3.      Distraction: Unconsciously: “Ice cream, beer, drugs, TV, romance novels….

Which of these can I numb myself with today?”

4.      Confrontation or Fighting: “I gotta get angry.  I gotta show ‘em I am upset.  I am fighting mad.”

Let’s take these one at a time.  Apathy is “I don’t know and I don’t care.”  It’s provocation is the simple sense of powerlessness.  Deep down, there is a sense of caring, but if one doesn’t feel empowered to do anything about the problem then to avoid pain, the egoic mind pretends nothing challenging is happening.

This is no solution.  It is avoidance, a state of pretending not to care in order to avoid the potential pain of facing a reality.

Denial is just another way of avoiding reality.  If one pretends something difficult is not happening, then for the moment, pain is avoided.  The tricky thing is that when challenges are ignored, the potential lessons keep on getting projected to us until we face them.

This brings us to the “solution” of distraction.  People want to numb the pain that comes with challenging realities.  As a result, record numbers of people in “developed” countries are obese or find themselves controlled by their perceived need to distract themselves with excess quantities of harmful foods, alcohol, drugs or destructive activities.  Some say these actions are a way of trying to self-medicate so that we can feel better.  There is some truth to this, but unfortunately the challenging situations do not just disappear.  They keep coming back, so many people just increase their dosage of silly foods, booze, drugs, the venting of rage on family members, or mindless entertainment in the name of very short-term relief from their pain.

Distraction is the ultimate tool of the ego-mind.   Temporary satisfaction comes with the pint of ice cream or six-pack of beer or the vicarious living that comes with reading romance novels.  The problem is that the satisfaction is quite temporary.  When the hang-over wears off, when the quart of ice cream is emptied, when last page of the silly novel is completed, the challenges are still there in front of us.

Sooner or later, in this lifetime or one to come, we face what is in front of us that is asking us to see it.  Some are now willing to see the realities of our world.  Often, it seems, their response is one of anger and confrontation.  This has not worked.  Angry confrontation is not a solution.  The emotion of anger says that what is happening right now is not OK, that one does not accept what is happening.

The hope in anger is that it will produce a solution to the perceived problem.  What it does is often exacerbate the problem, because without trust anger is no more a solution than apathy, denial or distraction.  Trust is a prerequisite to solution.  Rather than trust, some people cling to hope, something that implies that some external power will save us from ourselves.  Hope is the ultimate masturbation.

In America, our President recently spoke about how we must “fight” for what we know is right.  Whom shall to fight?  Part of what we are here on this Earth to do is to learn how to cooperate with each other, to let a more loving way of living be our way of life.

In the same speech, President Obama said this: “There are things that have to be done.  And that means marching forward, not standing still.”  Of course, when we see something that we intend to accomplish, perseverence is important.  Still, I see it as ironic that the true solutions to all of our apparent problems in this world will surface when we are willing to sit or stand still.  When more of us are willing to be in the silence, to quiet our silly, panicky minds, to accept each other and love each other, then the need to march or fight or harshly judge the worthiness of any other person will evaporate.

Next: Our Collectively Stupid Beliefs

Spiritual Empowerment I

It is a paradox.  The pointlessness of upset is that it serves no loving purpose to act or feel upset at circumstances or self.

For the “nitpickers” out there, I do not mean feeling the feeling of grief, for example, as a response to the death of a loved one.  I am not talking about experiences such as brief sadness felt when you read about people starving in the world.  It is when these experiences are felt deeply over time about the same experience that we sap our own energy.

I put the word nitpickers in quotations in the last paragraph because my sense of it is that as soon as I label someone as a nitpicker, then I have suggested that somehow I am better than that person. I do not make that suggestion.  We’ll talk more about the pointlessness of judgement in Spiritual Empowerment II.

To seethe in anger or to vent that anger at another being does not serve one.  It is a willful draining of one’s spiritual power by ignoring that loving, trusting power that exists within you.

What is more important to you: to win an argument via an angry or demeaning response…or to exercise an opportunity for compassion and acceptance?

To hold resentment of any kind for another does nothing but abuse the resenter.  To envy another is to block oneself from receiving whatever it is that the other person has that you resent them for.

There is another side of upset, its purpose.

The purpose of another’s upset directed at you is the manifestation of an opportunity for the you and any witnessers to respond with love.  This is the only purpose of upset.

Responding w anger or another strong negative emotion saps one.

When we respond with love, we grow and we simultaneously enhance the energy of others in the world.  As we do this more and more consistently, we will evolve more and more rapidly.  We will see with more and more clarity, the world we intend to create.

As we approach the first day of a new year, many of us think about making resolutions: to eat smarter, to exercise more or to break negative habits.    The ease with which we transition to more “high vibration” living has largely to do with our levels of self-trust and self-love.  Spiritual empowerment is enhanced by making and keeping our resolutions.

Resolutions are  basically agreements one makes with oneself, a resolving to do something differently so as to be more happy, prosperous, confident or giving.    For many, resolutions are set-ups: we set an ambitious resolution and then find that when we do not keep it, we feel even less confident and empowered than before.  When this happens, many tend to lose interest in even making more resolutions, rather than to recommit to something envisioned.

Individually and collectively, given what is happening right in front of us during this time in our history, we are challenged to see more clearly what is in front of us to do and and what we are challenged to be.  It is time to wake up and realize the value of keeping our word.  If keeping our word—either to our own self or to another---is not seen as important, then our word means nothing and we find that we are not trusted by our own selves or by others.

Many invest more energy in finding excuses for breaking their word than they expend in honoring their word.  There always seems to be a reason to either put off making the resolution or to break one that has already been made.

As New Years Resolution season approaches, you might consider the resolutions you might make, and then get clear with yourself as to just how important keeping that resolution is to you.  Making small, gradual changes over time---setting a gradual plan---for an eventual goal realization makes much more sense than going from couch potato to someone who is spending 5 days per week in at the health club.

“If you try to do too much”, warned the Russian mystic, Gurdjieff, “you will do nothing.”

One of the true foundations of spiritual empowerment is trust.  As we learn to trust our own selves, we find that we experience more interaction with trustworthy people in our lives.  The less we trust ourselves, the more we seem to draw to us untrustworthy people.

Let’s take a look at the concept of agreement and how we use it in our world.  The following is an excerpt from my new book, “The Seventh Direction”, a guide to inner exploration.  The last sentence of this excerpt is one I suggest that you contemplate, asking yourself if this is something that you can truly say is important to you.

Agreement

Agreement is the acknowledgment of a unity.  It means little if the parties to it do not feel compelled to honor it.  This applies to agreements that we make with ourselves also.  As this book is being completed, leaders of the larger of the so called “developed” nations of our world created an “agreement” designed to help curb global warming.  In the eyes of many, the time is late for such an agreement.  If we would prefer, for example, not to find the city of Miami to be an island sometime down the road, the time is truly at hand to create agreements among nations to do what is in our power to prevent such things.

Waiting as long as we have to truly attend to this challenge is much like it might have been if Noah had waited until 10 minutes before the flood to start building an ark.

The “agreement” to deal with global warming was called a “non-binding agreement”.  Such a term is oxymoronic.  This late in the game, it is maybe just moronic, ignorant.

Likewise, what positive outcome does one have when a promise is made to oneself when there is no commitment to honoring that promise?

As a culture, we are still getting lessons from the Universe that creating and honoring agreements with ourselves and each other is a key to our individual and collective expansion.  This is an integral part of the foundation upon which a more harmonious world will emerge.

We are in the middle of the 11^th hour, not just in terms of global warming, but in realizing what is in front of us with money, with laws, with our leadership and with the general well-being of our world.  We are all challenged to feel compelled by our heart to get more and more consistent with making and keeping wise agreements, with ourselves and others.

Can you say this with feeling and truly mean it?:

I look for opportunities to make and keep heart-centered agreements with myself and others.

Please pause here and contemplate the importance you now place on keeping your word.

CHALUPA: The Keys to the Kingdom

My thing as a writer is to synthesize spiritual wisdom into the simplest, most easy to understand form.  In this life where everything can seem to be so complicated, there are ways to see through it all to the simplicity.  Bear with me a moment on understanding the title above.

Individuallly and communally we all came here to do the same simple thing.  We came here to unfold the depth of our calm, humble, loving power always.  That’s it.  That’s all.

So how do we do that?  Here is my truth, not necessarily yours.  What follows is as brief and as simple as I can put it:

We "do" that by understanding, integrating and living what those five words mean.  Calm, Humble, Loving, Power, Always.  I use the word "chalupa" to help me remember it.   Throw in a couple of vowels, and you got a chalupa.  Us creative types sometimes don't have the most sterling memories.  Does it matter?

These are 5 Keys to the Attainment of Full Power.  If you choose to be aware of these and to prioritize their development in your life, then you will become what you came here to become.

The first is to learn to be Calm.  This implies presence and trust in each moment.  If we see everything and everyone in front of us teachers, then we are practicing the essence of calm.

The second is Humility.  True power is humble, knowing that each of us are equal...to each other, to the animals, to the rocks and sand.

Next is Loving.  In truth, it encompasses all the others, and right in the middle, it is like our middle chakra, the center of who we are.  We are unlearning the notion that the center is our brain.  We are in the middle of integrating the knowledge that the will of the heart is infinitely more powerful than the will of the mind.   As we embrace this truth and trust it we allow our vibration to increase in frequency.  In embracing all of life, especially our own, we come to live a fully loving life.  There is nothing more important than this.  Geophysicists will tell you that the frequency of the earth is increasing.  Has been for several years.  This is helping us raise our vibration.  Likewise, our earth is receiving more and more light, more than ever before as it approaches the center of our galaxy, reaching a peak of light receiving towards the end of 2012. This, too, will assist us in transforming our world into a more loving place to be.

Then we come to the fourth key: Power, with the crucial ingredient just revealed, Love.  True power is based in nothing but Love.  Loving power has nothing to do with manipulation, force or one’s bank account balance.   You have the bank account balance, and the relationship quality, and the life you have because it is where you are supposed to be to learn what you are here to learn, to get to understand how to make more loving choices until there is never any real choice to be made: You Always opt for the most loving response to life.   It’s not a choice, it is a way of loving living.

And that is the “A”.  The final key is to choose all of these Always.  Always means in each moment, each ensuing now.   All the time.

And the paradoxical perversity of it is that we are not here to do anything at all.  As we choose to simply become who we are, all the time, then we have become what we came here to be.  Any doing comes out of what we recognize our selves to be.

To close, allow me to expand on that.  So just what DID we come here integrate so that we can enter the “kingdom”?   Oh, I’ll just blurt it, blaspheme:  We came here to recognize that we are Divine.  Each and every one of us.  Each animal and each mountain and each river.  We are all part of a larger whole.  We cannot explain it.  It is a mystery.  Just like men are mysteries to women and women are mysteries to men.  Like those mysteries, we are challenged not to explain or dissect life but to love it as it is.

That is the world’s biggest secret that “they” do not want you to know.

As we see before us the dawn of a new and more loving world, we will come to understand that there is not “them”.  It’s all us.

“Their” apparent power and influence will evaporate as we communally accept that we are All one, all part of a larger whole.   Weakness is a product of division.  We are learning how to be strong, how to accept true Power, Loving Power.

So no blood.  Now sweat. And only tears of joy.  That is the revolution that is lovingly staring us in the face.

So now you understand how I stretched out CHLPA into CHALUPA.  I find the definition of chalupa poetic on a number of levels:  (feminine noun, Spanish) 1. small boat  2. stuffed small tortilla.

Please re-read the parts of this article in blue above.  Then take a quiet minute or two and ask your heart if these words are true.  Your heart will tell you, not necessarily in words but in how you feel.  As we choose to hush up that itty bitty shitty committee in our heads, our hearts let us feel a loving sense of calm, humble, loving power when we are faced with truth.  Feel for yourself.   If you then feel that what you have read here is true, I ask you to share it with as many people as possible who you see as potentially receptive to it.  We are moving faster now along the path to a loving world.  Together, we can do it so much more gracefully

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Next on this blog, on December 11: Wearing your C.A.P. to be in CHALUPA. The final acronym, I promise.

http://www.yourpausebutton.com/spiritual/Inspirational-Articles-by-Carlo-Ami.html

Note: In my books and articles, I use this pause button icon to show a place where I suggest that you pause and consider or meditate on what has just been expressed.  If you breeze through this article without stopping, you will not get maximum benefit from it.   You might choose to pause for 10 seconds or for an hour, whatever feels right.

Need is a strange and largely useless word.  Yes, it is powerfully used when it is said that we need to feed more hungry people since over 30,000 people starve to death every day.  Even that usage of the word can be a pointless provocation of collective guilt rather than an impetus to dig into our pockets to help feed.

Unfortunately, the word “need” is used much more extensively, inaccurately and unproductively.  Such use sucks the energy from any intent of having higher levels of spiritual empowerment.

Our words and thoughts are powerful.  It is important that we respect this if we intend to spiritually and emotionally mature, to unfold.

Our use of the word “need” is so important, I believe, that I made it one of the four “Things that Matter” in my first book, All That Matters:

Ask for what you intend to have, but choose not to need anything.

Our minds are quite creative, but can be rather stupid.  At a deep level, the mind does not understand negative terms:  Mental stress is created when you say, “I need to find a loving relationship.”   The Universe responds: “OK, he is a person who has defined himself as needing a relationship.  That will be what he continues to be.”  

Similarly, you create anxiety for yourself if you say, “I want to stop smoking” rather than “I choose to be a free breather”.   So expressing or thinking that you do not want something tends to bring that thing to you.  So it’s quite counter-productive to say or think that you need more money, sex or love.  Doing that is a way of ignorantly defining yourself.  It exacerbates anxiety, stress, fatigue and muscle tension.

When you say, “I need” something, the Universe accepts that as a definition: You are a person who needs whatever it is.  This does not become a cue to the Universe to give that to you, but it is a clear signal to the Universe that since you have defined yourself that way, then needy is what you are and will remain until you change your mind

I have great respect for the modern day mystic Darryl Anka who receives channeled wisdom from a being in another dimension, Bashar.   Most of what I hear from him is just so darn wise, that in this rare case, I believe in this channeling.  In this time of mass freak out about money, Anka gets this from Bashar about abundance: He defines it as “the ability to do what you need to do when you need to do it.”

He’s on the right track with this new twist on abundance, yet that little four letter word gets used twice and that takes the guts out of it.  When one says or thinks that they need something and they do not immediately have it, then the mind tends to take that and twist it into something harsh, judgmental and quite crazy-making.

Here is how I would express the Bashar quotation:  Abundance is the ability to do what you are faced with doing when you are faced with it.

What we are faced with at all times is to respond to all of life in a loving way.

When you say that you need something that you do not possess, the mind tends to generate one or more of the following thoughts:

• I am not good enough since I don’t have it
• I am not smart enough
• I am bad
• I am a disappointment
• I am not OK as I am
• I am not worthy (the most ridiculous religious doctrine of all time)
• Since I haven’t had any in a long time, I probably never will

The fact is that in any given moment, you have zero needs that are not fulfilled.

That’s right, nada.  In any present moment, you do not need air.  In any present moment, you do not need food.  You do not need anything.  As you label something as an unfulfilled need, you denigrate yourself.   The Universe gives you an earth to be on and gravity to keep you from flying off into the clouds.  If you can be present, you realize that, right now, you have no needs whatsoever.

Right now, your mind may be objecting, finding apparent but baseless exceptions.  What does that do for you?

Letting go of the phrase, “I need” is a great step to a more loving way of living and becoming what we all came here to be.

Please consider taking a step in your own spiritual empowerment  by clicking on your internal pause button now, and feeling how it feels to be needless.

As we move through these times of change and challenge, there has been much discussion about how to best respond to these changes and how to most gracefully create more harmonious local and world societies.  In what way is it most spiritually profitable to direct our energies if we intend to reach higher levels of spiritual empowerment?

While much of the world seems to be reacting to the civil, geophysical, governmental and financial system problems with fear, doubt and anxiety, others of us have generally taken one of three roads. Let's look at them one at a time:

1. Resignation

Those taking this approach figure  that an apocalypse is coming fast and that there is nothing we can do about it. They are convinced, generally through truly silly religious indoctrination, that the world is going to hell in a hand basket and that they are powerless to do anything about it. For them, it's just a matter of waiting until we either all fry or when "non-believers" (choose your deity) will fry while the deity lifts all the good folks into heaven or another, kinder-gentler planet.   This is no more sane than figuring that killing innocents will be rewarded with the eternal favors of 72 virgins in the afterlife.

This is the approach of the truly deluded who feel powerless.  Over the centuries, this kind of thinking has been perpetuated by those who would strongly prefer that the masses stay weak and afraid.

2.  Denial

Many people, particularly in the so-called metaphysical community, would rather not hear about the challenging realities of what is going on in the world. Their excuse is that by recognizing what is going on in our governments,in our monetary systems and in geophysical disturbances just gives energy to the negative, expanding it. They do not want to hear about government corruption or the anticipated monetary collapses, claiming that we can change the apparent course of these by ignoring impending disasters and focusing on what we want instead.

While this approach is certainly more productive than resignation to coming apocalypse, the other side of the coin is that from both an individual  and collective standpoint, it is impossible to escape from a prison until such time as you recognize that you are in one.  Acceptance of what is is much different than surrender to extended anguish.   This is the difference between the power of now and the futility of delusion.

Those who are in denial mode often go to great lengths to distract themselves from the truth.  Feeling depressed about relationships, money, war or the quality of our country’s leadership?  If so, it’s likely that you are addicted to something that helps you avoid looking at it: drugs, alcohol, television, romance novels, or yelling at your spouse or kids.  Where does that get you?  If you are on that kind of sinking cesspool, now is the time to hop out.

If you are in denial and want to bust out of it, watch this movie online for free.  If you are sorely pressed for time, start with the last segment and then decide whether you have the courage to watch the rest.  The movie is called Zeitgeist Addendum. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912#

3. Focusing on Group Consciousness:  Joining and Participating in Communal Meditations and Such

We have learned that there is some power in collecting our intents and focus on a peaceful goal.  The downside of this phenomenon is that so many of us have  conflicting visions of what true peace and satisfaction are.  For some, the "New Age of Love" or post 2012 world is one in which life will be free and easy, a hedonistic nirvana.  Others see it as one that will be much simpler, with less in the way of conveniences, more in the way of "chop wood/carry water".

Note: Because he says it so well, much of the rest of this article will consist of the words of author Keith David Henry as included in an email response to an article I shared with a mutual associate. For simplicity's sake, all the words below showing in bold italics are his.

Henry says, “The idea that there needs to be some conscious campaign toward the unity of us all, while conceptually sound, may tempt us to rely upon the group consciousness paradigm which is now passing away as a primary means of achieving this unity. This approach is misguided.

Attempting to recognize and embrace everyone and everything into our thinking as valid in a move to "create unity" will create chaos instead. The dark oligarchy is counting on this. The dark oligarchy, their plans and their aspirations will crumble along with the current world systems upon which they have relied for millennia. There is no need to defeat them, nor is there the need to attempt such a counterproductive initiative. Leave them alone. Their fate is sealed. Let us not become a part of their fate by giving them so much of our mental energy via fear, anger, worry, or anxiety.”

If either as individuals or collectively, we focus on the need to “defeat” someone or some entity, or if we focus on what we do not want we drain our energies and sustain that which is not wanted.  It’s like saying you do not want that pesky cat that has been hanging around your back door, but then choosing to put out a bowl of milk for it every morning.

4.  Recognition and Practice of Our Individual Power, Sovereignty  and Divinity

I see this as the true root of unfolding the depth of our collective power.

Again, from Keith David Henry:  “By reaching into our own individual internal connectedness with source - each of us on an individual and unique basis (following our own hearts in true acceptance of ourselves, our own individual sovereignty as agents of source, and similarly embracing that the same dynamic exists within each of us, i.e. embracing each person's path as valid and sovereign) - we automatically harness the unity that already exists.”

”Yes, this sounds counter-intuitive. Yes, this is a different message than the new world order, many religions, and even many new age disciplines have taught us.  But it is the only way.  Each of us is our own authority. Each of us is our own window of source. This is not a paradigm of separateness, but rather the quintessential expression of the infinite diversity of source.  It is by fully embracing this diversity that we connectwith the already existent unity of all things and all people.”

As a world culture, we have spent centuries looking outside of ourselves for happiness, calm, wisdom and power. And we are in the process of communally realizing the futility of making things outside of us the primary sources of what we think we need to be OK.

We are in the process of fully unlearning the notion that that which is external gives us validity, worthiness and strength. It is the growing embracing of the knowing that our nature is powerful, calm, happy and, yes, divine that will smooth our path into the coming era of harmony.

I am not suggesting that we abandon practices of community togetherness or group meditation/focus of intent.  What I am suggesting is that each of us contributes most effectively to the graceful, powerful unfolding of the collective when we recognize the vast and complete nature of the love that is within us.  From that recognition, and then from living it in powerful faith and humility, we literally change our world.

It is simpler than most people perceive it to be. Modern day shaman Carlos Barrios expresses it so well: "The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness.  It's not complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free.  It's encoded in your DNA.  All you need is within you. Great teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your heart, and you will find your way."

The well-spring feeding your spiritual empowerment comes from a place where so many do not look: Within.