Coming Soon : The Wake Up Book by Carlo Ami

After two and a half months of reorienting, I am back, and nearly ready to release the retitled and reworked book now called "The Wake Up Book" (formerly "The Wake Up Book."   The book asks the reader to do something many are unwilling to do: go within themselves for answers to the most important questions.  As we are being readied for a major shift in how the world functions, now is the time for us to further understand who we are and why we are here.  This book provides a framework for your own understanding of these questions, and for how to find your won answers to them.  This new book, introducing an entirely new genre of self-exploratory spiritual writing, is designed to enhance the spiritual empowerment of those who read and ponder it in small segments as provided.  Do you have the courage to go within yourself for the real answers to life's most important questions?

Here are the first pages from that book.

The Wake Up Book

Opening thought to ponder:

This book is for those of us who are ready to get our minds out of the gutter.  It is for people who are ready to at least start considering to point themselves consciously in the direction of living a fully heart-based life.

The gutter is anywhere that is not apparently loving.

The heart of the enlightened one sees the Love---and the opportunity to exercise it—in each experience.

To move intelligently in the Loving direction requires the reconditioning of the mind by the heart.  By surrendering to the will of the heart, we become fully loving and free.  Why would we want to do anything else?

To move beyond old, tired, destructive patterns, we are quested to use the same method by which we were falsely conditioned.

This book is about reconditioning your head by the will of your heart.

You can make the choice to do this.  Are you willing?  Are you ready to wake up?

Preface

Worldly and Heart Propaganda

Do the same kinds of challenging things keep happening to you over and over?

Do you keep on responding to these challenges in basically the same way?

If so, there is only one reason that your life is the way it is: Conditioning.  You are conditioned to look at the world in the ways you have been seeing it and you are conditioned to respond from the imaginary part of you that does not really exist, your ego.

If you are dedicated to empowering your own life, consider using this book as a heart propaganda tool.  So what does that mean?

Many people tend to associate the term “propaganda” with that which is negative and political. Propaganda goes far beyond the political arena and into advertising, religion, news buzzwords, the parent-child relationship (“don’t” , “stop”, “no”) and much more.

The mechanism by which propaganda conditions us is repetition.  If one sees or hears the same words spoken over and over, after a certain point those words tend to be accepted as truth whether they are true or not.

Propaganda is persuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them.                                                                                                                                                                            -- Harold Evans

Could it be that what makes heart propaganda different from the propaganda promoted by the apparently corrupt or ignorant is that heart propaganda speaks only the complete truth.  Please ponder this:

The wisdom and will of my heart is complete in its Love.

More and more, I trust the wisdom of my heart to guide me.

As I write this book in 2010, the world appears to be teetering on the brink of oblivion.  Our religions, our governments, corporate interests and our media all seem to be out of kilter, often appearing to do the opposite of fulfilling the roles we may have envisioned for them.

"When people decry civilian deaths caused by the U.S government, they're aiding propaganda efforts. In sharp contrast, when civilian deaths are caused by bombers who hate America, the perpetrators are evil and those deaths are tragedies. When they put bombs in cars and kill people, they're uncivilized killers. When we put bombs on missiles and kill people, we're upholding civilized values. When they kill, they're terrorists. When we kill, we're striking against terror.

--- Norman Solomon

We look at this and we see the mirror of our ego in the apparently bigger world.  What other response could possibly be as appropriate as kissing that imaginary part of ourselves goodbye?  It is the petulant, spoiled brat.  It exists only as we feed it.  Such stopping is a natural by-product of the choice to live life with the central recognition of Self and world and all inhabitants of this Earthly home as equals infused with Love, nothing but Love.

Yes, to you that may seem like a radical thought.  How well has your way of thinking so far in this lifetime served your sense of happiness, contentment, and trust?

Times of radical change require radical change in the way we have been living.

Before the European settlers arrived in what is now the United States, many Native Americans had a very wonderful set of beliefs about what religion and spirituality can be.  The settlers from Europe wiped them out, wouldn’t allow them to practice their religion, and imposed upon them a schizophrenic, dangerous God.  Our government, the one so many support without question, has found ways to break nearly every treaty it has made with America’s original inhabitants whose land and way of life was stolen from them.

Are you willing to consider the notion that our government has broken---and continues to break---its basic agreements with us?

From your head, ask yourself if this is acceptable to you as a way of life.

Ask your heart to reveal to you the solution right now.  

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We have been witnessing our collective  decline for centuries. We watch anxiously as our religions preach to us in ways that divide, persecute, anger, belittle and disrespect us.  As our governments foment war and pander to the wealthy elite, we sit silently as they withdraw our liberties, deplete more of our income, torture their enemies, and withhold life-saving medical knowledge as a way of protecting the wealthy.  To serve the corporate interests, our government allows brain-toxic chemicals to be added to processed foods.  They allow livestock to be abused., While the government poisons our land, air and water, we collectively look the other way, as if to say that there is nothing we can do about it.

Still, if you care to do even a small amount of research, you will learn that all of the above allegations are true.  Most would rather not know this or even look to see if these assertions are valid, because to recognize them as true might bring the deeper pain of realizing that we are in a virtual prison created by our unwillingness to see what is in front of us.

We have allowed our religions and our governments to abuse us.  Let’s take a deeper look at how these institutions show us the ignorant destructiveness of the human ego on a macro level.

How Most Religions and Our Governments are Mirrored by the Human Ego

(I am observing the following about false religions that feature a harsh God, eternal damnation or dogma that suggests belief makes the believer better or more worthy than others.  Only some of the so-called “minor” religions may be seen as uniting and empowering, so the following would not be referring to them.)

• They give the illusion of freedom and choice while removing both
• They refuse to take responsibility for their actions, blaming something outside
• They take simple topics like Love and make them appear complicated.
• Their dogma and books (like governments’ laws) are purposefully self-contradictory and misleading
• They foster a brand of ignorance that they call the truth
• They  are willing to suppress obvious truth in order to maintain their version of power
• Their number one weapon is deceit.  They are imposters.
• They are centered in creating fear of condemning judgment by God or other “superior”, “more worthy” beings/authority figures
• All have stories that justify their existence.  Most of the stories, upon rational observation, are either simple fabrication or clever lies.
• So far in our history, their apparent motto has been “Order Though Chaos.”   Internal facets of each of these---government, religion, and ego---appear to fight with each other, fanning the flames of our inner battles as we engage in both inner and outer debate.  Much of the message contradicts itself, discouraging our reliance on reason and common sense as it encourages division and feelings of weakness or powerlessness.

With the passing of time, the lessons---the wake up calls concerning the state of our world---have increased in intensity and clarity.  Our religions and governments display what appears to be expanding willingness to betray us.  Yet, collectively we have remained largely asleep.  We see our religions and our governments as representing us---just as we have seen ego as who we are---when, in fact, they all do the exact opposite of representing us truly.

We have not wanted to see the truth because accepting the truth is perceived as being more painful than pretending stupidity.

Consider the words of a heroic African American who, in 1955 refused a bus drivers’ demand that she give up her bus seat to a white passenger.

“I did not want to be mistreated, I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for. It was just time... there was opportunity for me to take a stand to express the way I felt about being treated in that manner. I had not planned to get arrested. I had plenty to do without having to end up in jail. But when I had to face that decision, I didn't hesitate to do so because I felt that we had endured that too long. The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became.”

- Rosa Parks

Ponder, please:

What similarities does my own life situation today have to the position she found herself in?  Am I willing to to wake up to what is in front of me to see?

How is our collective situation today similar to the one she found herself in back then?    What can you do about this collective situation?

With all the apparent craziness going on the world, what can we do about it?   In our search for stress relief, many still choose the old, tired, unproductive ways of reacting to the world.  Maybe the easiest road, because we likely know it already, is to react with some combination of avoidance, powerlessness, isolation or fear.  There is a more productive way that can also be easy and results in a better you and a better world.

When we focus our attention and energy on what we want to “remove”, we create fear and anxiety in ourselves. Many have been conditioned to believe that we must fight violence with violence.  As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”  Collectively, we are still in the process of integrating this knowledge.

We have all been conditioned to live and think in the ways that we do.  Our financial/corporate institutions, governments, religions and mass media---along with family, friends and co-workers---have repeated certain behaviors with us over the years.  The quality of our lives depends largely on how we have responded to their propaganda.  So many have reacted with fear, anger, isolation, anxiety…

There are some who would suggest that it is time for us to rise up in collective anger and righteous indignation over the events of the Gulf of Mexico oil “spill” or the disclosures of the WikiLeaks documents. The media repeatedly has been telling us that there is “nothing new” in the WikiLeaks disclosures, that it is just “business as usual”.

Our mass media, largely controlled by our financial institutions/corporations-—-as is our government---is telling a lie here.  And in doing so with frequency and repetition is attempting to condition us with false propaganda.  Since when is it “nothing new” that a country we fund with billions of dollars is funding and supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan?  Since when is it no big deal that our armed forces kill hundreds of innocent civilians so frequently?  Are we so collectively dumbed down that these things should make no difference to us.

Yet if we respond with fear, anger, anxiety or denial, we sap our own strength.  What we are being called to do is respond with loving compassion to all that is occurring in our world.  This means also not focusing on what we want to get rid of, but what we intend to create.

Key to this is to trust ourselves enough to be willing to be honest about what is happening in our lives and to have the courage to respond with love.  Sending loving compassion to the oil leakers, to the Taliban, to the WikiLeakers, and to all people---especially those experiencing pain or suffering---is what I believe we are all being called to do.

The agenda of the corrupt forces of the world is to promulgate fear.  That is how they have stayed in control.  These forces are very content having you focus on what you do not want because they know you are weakened by such focus.

We have been conditioned in this life to think and act as we do.  What we are collectively challenged to do now is to realize that we have the power to condition ourselves.

A synthesis of what is above:

With trust and courage, let’s be real about what is in front of us.

Let’s focus on what we intend to create.

Let’s create a world of loving compassion.

Let’s make all this important.

This is the gift of allowing Heart Propaganda to speak its voice.  Consider clicking on your pause button now to contemplate this.  Listening to our own Heart Propaganda may  just be the most effective form of stress relief available to us.

Heart Propaganda-Debugging Your Operating System

by Carlo Ami

Like our computers, we all have an operating system.  Think of your body and brain as part of your hardware.  Think of the mind as housing your data files and memory.  You might also consider, for a moment, that harbored in your heart is a great anti-virus program, something that can clean up incorrect or polluted data.

All your life you have been inputting data into yourself: experiences, emotions, assessments, and the judgments of your own self and of others.  Much of the input has been false data that has polluted your hard-drive, that part of you that stores your beliefs, your understanding of what is true.  Whether innocently or purposefully, the institutions in which you have placed your faith have been feeding you data about yourself  and your world that is often false.   The truth about the most important facets of life---who you are, why you are here, and what comes next when this life is over---has been corrupted.

Most of our religions on this planet feature a wrathful, commanding and judging god who can be very unhappy if you break “His” rules or if you happen to have chosen the “wrong” religion.  Most religious propaganda is very unforgiving.  If you mess up, you could end up frying forever on the rotisserie of some god’s eternal barbeque pit.

While heart sense might tell you that the purpose of any worthy religion would be to unite and empower people, most religion does exactly the opposite of that.  So many hold onto religious scriptures as the word of some omnipotent god when the truth is that most religious scriptures as we see them today are the product of men with an agenda that is spiritually blood-sucking.  The only reason people hold onto believing in a wrathful god is fear of that same non-existent god.

Likewise, we would prefer to see our governments as institutions that protect, respect and serve us while the reality of it is that most of our governments act in direct opposition to their originally-stated intention.  In the United States, our consitition is in tatters.  It is government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.  We have allowed their propaganda to keep us collectively docile, sleepy, and powerless.

Our religions and our governments tend to be very much like the human ego: judging, condemning, confused and afraid of losing their sense of power.  The input of faulty data into our personal operating systems, repeated frequently over the course of our lives has resulted in the reality of our not thinking too highly of ourselves, and in our not having a lot of faith in a better future.  For many, life is something to get through, to tolerate, and is often seen as probably a punishment for not living consistently with some moral or religious doctrine.

The mechanism of any propaganda is repetition.  Our religions, governments and media know this truth and how effective it can be.  It is now up to us to more and more consistently employ the secret weapon of Love: Heart Propaganda.  Being in touch frequently with what I call the Propaganda of the Heart is a fruitful path to a more enlightened you and a more enlightened world.

Disavowing the faulty input of religious, governmental or media propaganda does not work.  There is something strange but very true about the workings of the human mind: When it is fed data that has a negative word in it (“stop smoking”, “quit nagging”, “not do drugs”) the output of our inner computer is anxiety.  Affirming what we do not want can make us feel a little crazy.  When one thinks of something that one doesn’t want, one is still picturing what that thing or experience is.  This is a form of self-torture, a hallmark of futility and confusion. Please use your “pause button” and ponder what has been expressed here so far before continuing to read this article.

The human civilization sits largely asleep at a crucial crossroads in its history.  We have slugged along our collective path in a state of ignorance about what is important, about why we are here.

Most of us do not know what true power is.  We do not understand that we have defined it as something totally other than what it is.  Many see power as the ability to manipulate others, to dominate, to instill fear in others.  One cannot truly evolve until one sees that true power is based in love and respect for self and all other creatures.

Think about it: Who are you?  The heart will tell you that you cannot be your body.  The body is obviously quite temporary in nature and has all kinds of challenges, demands and breakdowns.   You cannot be your mind, either.  The mind has all kinds of obviously idiotic demands and constructs.

To put it simply: It helps to conceptualize who you are as some combination of heart and soul.  Operating with this as a belief can be very productive in all areas of your life.

I see my soul as infinite and fully connected to everything.  It lives forever.  There is no book that can convince me of this, no charismatic speaker who can instill this belief in me.  I just intuit it.  I trust my intuitive self.

If this is true, I have no reason to ever fear.  Of course, that has nothing to do with the motivation to be prudent.  It’s not that I fear running a red light; it’s that I am present and wise enough to intend to do things that preserve my life.  Please stop here for a moment, and ponder that idea.

So let’s get back to how to move beyond the bugs in your operating system.  Just as the propaganda—often “bugs”---of the world have corrupted the “hard drive” of your operating system, the propaganda of the heart is capable of debugging that system, cleaning it up.

These are the basic steps you can take to do that:

• Get clear on your beliefs and intentions concerning what is important to you.  Envision what you intend for your life to be.
• Create and practice ways of reminding yourself of the importance of these beliefs regularly and frequently.  Write down the most important aspects of your vision and read them daily when you get up and when you are ready for sleep.  Create a one-sentence power statement that you print and put in places where you will see it frequently.  My power statement: I am calm, humble, loving, trusting power now.
• Choose to be more and more aware of opportunities you get to practice these more loving beliefs.

Eventually, you will get to a point when you will have no more use for beliefs of any kind.  You will just be.

You are where you are now not because of the experiences you have had in life but because of how you have reacted to these experiences.  By utilizing heart propaganda, you can move beyond all the ways of reacting to life that have not worked for you.  I urge you to experiment with the ideas in this article as a way of being more kind to yourself, as a way of becoming the more loving being that you are at depth.

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For more ideas and tools on how to use heart propaganda in your life, see the homepage at YourPauseButton.com

Televised Poison: “America’s Got Talent”

Spiritually, much of American television is a cesspool that pollutes the mind and tends to muffle the voice of the heart.  A new low has been reached with the prime time series, “America’s Got Talent”.  The basic messages of the show are three: First, that we live in a cold, harsh judging world.   It sends a strong message that the judgment of others upon us is quite important.  The third basic theme is that each contestant is probably not good enough to go to Hollywood, especially if they make even the most minor misstep in an otherwise brilliant performance.

This show is gutless ego food.  It portrays the judges as gods and the contestants' performances as being crucially pivotal life events, leaving courtesy and compassion completely out of the picture.

Confusion and contradiction are the judges’ habits.  They often don’t know how to judge a performer whom they can be thrilled with one moment and dismissing the next.   The message underneath: "Even TV stars can be confused.  It's good to be confused.  I'm confused."

This is just a facet of the propaganda this series exemplifies.

The show’s three judges, who shall go nameless here, are obviously coached in the art of heartlessness.   Suffice it to say that one of the judges is a washed-up comedian who never really hit the big time until he became a game show host.  Another of the judges is married to a famously drug-addled rock musician.  A third judge who has a talent for subtle nastiness is somehow popular in Great Britain.  They are all like Simon Cowell on downers.

You might call some of the words above “judgment”.  They are simple observations.

Bringing on contestant performers who have never been on the big stage before, many of whom obviously have at least a bit of stage fright to begin with, is an opportunity for the judges to magnify many of the contestants’ fears.  Prior to their performances on the most recent show, some were reminded by the judges that they were about to make “the most important performance of their lives”.  How’s that for calming stage fright?

Miss a note or miss a step in an otherwise fine performance and the judges imply that you are probably not going to make the cut.  If you look a little “slow”, be prepared to have a judge imply that, regardless of your performance, you are probably too stupid to repeat it in Hollywood.

An extraordinary senior citizen who created something of a symphonic masterpiece whistling by blowing into her hands was panned by the cold judges.  A sweet guitarist’s vulnerable, open-hearted demeanor was characterized by one of the judges as meek and unprofessional.  A fire-thrower was warned he’d probably not make the grade because one of his fire machines failed to ignite, like that was enough to damn him.

The messages:

• “Fear the disapproval of others.  Their opinion of you is more important than your own.”

• “Do not mess up because you will be judged and the judgment will hurt.”

• Underneath that message: “Maybe it is wise to just not participate in life so that you do not risk embarrassment or disappointment. It is so much easier to judge others.”

Make no mistake about it: these judges are either witless allies for the dark side or are intentionally feeding a monster whose purpose is to spiritually and emotionally poison an audience that is already quite sick to begin with if they are even watching.

Who wants to model someone who can take delight in the mistakes of others?   Who wants to live their lives vicariously as “powerful judges” of performance art who have the influence to send an entertainer to either to the “glory” of Hollywood or hell of watching their “embarrassing”  performance on their own home television screen?  Can such delight have anything to do with truly feeling superior to another?

The ultimate message is one in which judgment is glorified as something that gives those who judge power.  But wait!   In the last episode of the season, the audience will get to judge.  The audience will have the power to damn or to elevate.  It will have been trained by the show’s judges to be cold, merciless and petty.

“America’s Got Talent” is brainwashing TV, and it is dangerous.

In this sick world in which we live, we have allowed our governments, most of our religions and our entertainment media do more than just judge us.  We have allowed them to bleed us of our self-respect, our dignity and our true power by making their ideas about what is important in life more important than our own beliefs.

What is true power?  Some would have you think that it has to do with making someone else look smaller so they, themselves, can look bigger.  Others may tell you that power has to do with manipulation, bank balances, the kind of car you drive or your ability and willingness to instill guilt or elicit fear.  Real power has nothing to do with any of that.  It is, at depth, only about loving response and being loving.

My challenge to you is to simply be aware of the kinds of activities and entertainments that pretend to entertain and empower but that really are sucking your energy, depleting your desire to exercise true and loving power.

I believe that we are all here in our lifetimes to realize our loving nature and our Oneness.  Watching heartless television programming sends us down a very unproductive path.  What path do you intend to be on?

Life is full of propaganda, from news media, from our governments, from our religions and from our entertainment sources.  The time has come to be aware of propaganda that is dangerous and destructive, and to identify with the heart and it's loving propaganda.  With consistent awareness, the practice of Heart Propaganda can set one free from the self-imposed prison of false, self-destructive belief.  What this entails is a clarity about what you truly believe along with the commitment to feed yourself these truths frequently and regularly.  This is what the various tools available on the Your Pause Button website is all about.

Feeding one’s brain with the kind of  toxic crap found on “America’s Got Talent” is simply a way of affirming that the needs of the ignorant brain are more important than the loving will of the heart.  If you are still a fan of that show, feel free to continue sleeping.

In choosing, rather, to live a more enlightened life and to help create a better, harmonious world, focus on what you intend to create.  It is destructive to focus on what you want to avoid.  Envisioning regularly and frequently a loving world is a powerful step in the creation of that world.  Let's create it together.