Prologue

A Note About the Difference Between Ascension and Enlightenment

Some spiritual masters have shared their knowing of the difference between ascension and enlightenment.  I resonate with their assertion that ascension is chosen and not necessarily permanent; you can slide back.  Enlightenment, on the other hand, is bestowed and eternal.  Once you are enlightened, that’s it.  You do not slide back.

Strict Bible constructionists will tell you that Ascension is something that just happened to Jesus when He died.  They might see as heresy the contention that one could ascend before death.

Ascension might be seen as simply the full embrace of, the constant reflection of and identification with our connected, Loving nature.  Ascension is the “rising above” the old and tired ways of living in which power was seen as the ability to manipulate, barely cope, live fearfully, choosing to distrust your experience and to place so much of attention on either remorse about the past or fear of what was coming.  The outmoded way of thinking has seen power as something to be built by falsely making yourself feel better or more powerful through cheating, abusing, dominating or shaming others.

You can be alive when you ascend.  And you can choose to trust this as knowing. There is nothing more important than fully revealing and practicing your deep, loving nature.

Are you willing now to dedicate yourself to this quest to the extent that you make it your highest priority?  If you are, this book can be a valuable tool for you in realizing your great loving power, in creating your own ascension and our collective unfolding.

No Table of Contents?

Right, you won’t find one here.  I ask you to move through the book as presented.  When you complete each of the sections having to do with the Shifting Process Exercise, there will be instructions on how to most easily navigate to the next section.  Notice how easy it is to let go of the imaginary ego and its request that you skip ahead, dabble or ignore.  I have endeavored to make every word of this book have high value.  I simply ask you to use it in the way that I was guided to share it with you.  “I wonder how easy this can be.”

That being said, I urge you to allow your heart to guide you throughout your use of this book.

The Gift of Repetition

Some ideas in this book are repeated, expressed in different ways.  The way that you have learned to live your life as you have lived it is that you heard and saw many things your world expressed to you over and over, and many of these were lies.  A way to move beyond this false conditioning is to experience multiple expressions of important, loving truths.

Introduction

Before we dive into this, let me make something completely clear: I present this book and and all my written works to you humbly.  I do not see myself as any better or worse, any more or less worthy than you.  I have been given this information to share with you, not to preach but to inspire you to find within yourself the capacities for calm, wisdom, happiness and the recognition of your divine nature.

I never really felt like I came from this Earth.  I did not at all seem to fit in.  For vast chunks of my life, it seemed always way too crazy for me.  I early on got hooked into the conflict that my parents had with each other, and immersed in the contradictions between the religion that was forced on me and my own sense of what was spiritually important.  My life became a very conflicted one, chaotic, manic, depressed and unproductive.

For fourteen years, I have been inspired to various degrees of enthusiasm for simplifying the understanding of---and ultimate success of---our self-realization.  I saw a world that tends to make everything complicated, so much of which could be simplified, organized into lots less words.

Guys like George Gurdjieff were wise, but there was his perverted Achilles’ Heel: Gurdjieff posited that if he made the spiritual journey sound or feel complicated, then the reader would somehow choose to read through a boat-load of true crap to get to the good stuff.  He figured that if you made enlightenment sound too simple, folks just wouldn’t pay attention.  In his classic work, Beelzubub’s Tales to His Grandson, the first 20-odd---and I DO mean odd---pages were consumed totally in expressing  his insecurities about whether he was a good enough author to be writing that same book.

And doing that just feels to me like the guy missed a big piece of the puzzle.  It’s the mind that wants things complicated.  We have no need whatsoever for the mind that is judging, condemning, self-pitying, conflicted, angry mind.  None.

So my aim is to keep it very simple, to put as many powerful ideas into the smallest number of words, so that the words are easy to keep with you.  We’ll talk, in this book, about keeping a simple set of ideas with you all the time, stored in that place in your brain where you house the information that is always there when ready, where the wiser self can more and more consistently choose to access them when love calls for them.

Throughout this book, when you see the    icon, it’s my way of asking you to pause and contemplate ….or go into the silence with the just-completed thought.  Pause for as long as it feels right to your heart.

For you to make productive use of this book, it is important that the following be true for you:

1) That you at least be quite willing to consider the possibility that the real you is way beyond your body and mind.

2) That you are willing to let go of any divisive, fear mongering, guilt-inducing religion you might have been supporting that insults you with its dogma.

3) That until such time comes that you Ascend, a time when it all will come naturally without effort, you are willing to place the highest of priorities on your quest to respond to all life with Love, and that you increasingly often let your heart catch yourself when you fall down.

4) That you more and more see that all your experience is part of a divine plan to help you become more loving.

I set the pace of this book very fast.  It’s for people who are ready to make The Shift, people who are ready to make their life a reflection of their love.  What’s offered here is a set if simple word tools that you can use to summon the courage and loving power to realize who you are and to prioritize that realization in every response you make to your experience, all the time.

At some point that might be thought of as Ascension, the realization occurs that discipline and dedication are no on your list of virtues for yourself.  Realizing the full extent of your love means that productive living no longer requires such resolve.  You have become, in word, deed and thought what you never realized you were before, and that reflects in everything you say and do without pushing yourself, without judging anything, without suffering.  The inner battle is over.

We realize that it is easy and natural to respond to all experience with loving acceptance.  We can, in a continual way, find ease, comfort and happiness in situations that the egoic mind had before found cause for upset, depression, arrogance, rebellion, unworthiness….

It takes most of us a whole bus full of lifetimes to figure out why we are here and what would serve us to be.  There’s this stubborn “thing” we call the ego that just has seemed to be always getting in our way.  This totally imaginary being that we may think is us, tells us that acting and thinking in completely unproductive ways is really a way of coping or thriving.

This imaginary ego is cunning, never present, willing to offend and be offended, judging, vengeful, stupid.

Ego thinks that power has a lot to do with how much money we have, or how we look, or how we can seem to make ourselves feel more powerful by dominating or stealing from some apparent other.

Sooner or later, we wake up and see that how we have defined power is simply stupid.  We see that the only power is that which is based in Love.

Still, so many still battle or sleep their way through life identifying with ego as Self.  Now, individually and collectively, we seem to be getting hit from all sides, sometimes harshly, with so much that challenges us.  We’re getting wake up calls left and right, and they seem for many to be getting more frequent and profound.  Money troubles, the abuser at work, the angry spouse, the difficult son or daughter, the aging, angry, alone parent….

If you are on the cusp of taking the big spiritual leap, something’s probably been hammering you, taking shots at waking you up. What’s it been for you?

No matter the circumstance, these are all requests from the Universe, and the plea is this: “Respond to this with Love.”

As we move along the path, we come to a point, maybe around where you are right now, when we can clearly realize that there is nothing more important to realize than our deep, loving nature.

There will come a time for you when you fully realize and know at the deepest of levels that you are Divine, that you are an integral part of Everything That Is, intimately connected to all creation.  All the big religions, and most of the smaller ones, tell us the lie that we are somehow separate. “God’s in everything, except you, of course.”  Guilt-spitting and fear provoking religion has been responsible for the mongering of more discord, unworthiness, fear and guilt than any other factor in our history.  The vast majority of all religion is spiritually counterproductive, heart-suffocating and ego-feeding.  Subscription to it is stupid.  If you have not yet realized this, then you are not ready for this book.

The vast majority of all religion has provoked more suffering and hatred than anything else ever on our planet.  Subscription to it blocks one from unfolding their full loving power.  If Satan existed, we might say that religion was, ironically, Satan’s Net.   So if you are still committed to any of the divisive religions, your feet are still stuck in the mud, and this book is not something for you at this time.

The most basic thing we can do to open the doorways to our enlightenment is to let go of any silly notion that there is some schizophrenic god “up there somewhere” who is both all loving and willing to roast you eternally in his barbeque pit if you mess up.  Way back in time, a bunch of greedy guys all over the world discovered that they could manipulate people and get lots of money from them if they spoke convincingly enough of their ability to help people find escape from the fires of eternal hell.  And then societies came to learn as truth the lie that not only are we somehow separate from God, but that we should look down upon, even kill, others who chose to believe in a different God.

The lesson that all of the big churches hoped you would never get: That you are divine, and that so is everyone, every animal, every creation.  We are all one big singularity.

If this is indeed so, then the need for any religion whatsoever is negated.  If there is no big deity in the sky who might damn me to forever torture, if I recognize that I am infinite loving Spirit which lives beyond the death of my body, and if I really trust my path and give my gifts with calm courage and compassion, then why would I want to consider relying on anything outside of my own heart to guide me in choosing how to live my life, what to make important?

Is this book for you?  It depends on how ready you are to make a great shift in how you live your life.  It’s not for you if you are tied to a religion that is divisive and preaches fear of eternal damnation.  It’s not for you if you are frequently abusive to your spouse or children.  It’s not for you if you’re still crazy enough to think that you can keep on doing the unproductive things in your life and have different results just by reading this book.

It is for you if you already have a sense of your spiritual nature and you have moved along the spiritual path with more and more awareness.  Maybe a lot of things are going better in your life, but you’re still addicted to doing something that doesn’t work for you.  You certainly don’t need to be an addict to make successful use of this book, yet it has been suggested by some, accurately, I think, that addicts tend to be people who are well along the spiritual path.  Underneath the surface, most addicts are kind, gentle, loving people who just got sucked into doing something stupid so that they could find quick gratification of some kind.

This book is for you if you have a sense that you are much more than your body or mind.

It is for you if you are at or near a point of being fed up with certain aspects of how your life is going.  One of the great precursors of living as an ascended master is often becoming completely fed up with the status quo.

It is a likely fit for you if you see yourself as worthy of success, happiness, abundance, and a life of general calm.

Order The Shifting Process eBook here.

Right, you won’t find one here.  I ask you to move through the first 30 days of your use of this book in the order in which it is presented.  Notice how easy it is to let go of the imaginary ego and its request that you skip ahead, dabble or ignore.  I have endeavored to make every word of this book have high value.  I simply ask you to use it in the way that I was guided to share it with you.  Run this thought through your heart now:

That being said, I urge you to allow your heart to guide you throughout your use of this book.  Be aware of any resistance or ego temptation to short-cut or skip.

Some ideas in this book are repeated, expressed in different ways.  The way that you have learned to live your life as you have lived it is that you heard and saw many things your world expressed to you over and over, and many of these were lies.  A way to move beyond this false conditioning is to experience multiple expressions of important, loving truths.

I never really felt like I came from this Earth.  I did not at all seem to fit in.  For vast chunks of my life, it seemed always way too crazy for me.  I early on got hooked into the conflict that my parents had with each other, and immersed in the contradictions between the religion that was forced on me and my own sense of what was spiritually important.

My life became a very conflicted one, chaotic, manic, depressed and unproductive.

For fourteen years, I have been inspired to various degrees of enthusiasm for simplifying the understanding of---and ultimate success of---our self-realization.  I saw a world that tends to make everything complicated, so much of which could be simplified, organized into lots less words.

Guys like George Gurdjieff were wise, but there was his perverted Achilles’ Heel: Gurdjieff posited that if he made the spiritual journey sound or feel complicated, then the reader would somehow choose to read through a boat-load of true crap to get to the good stuff.  He figured that if you made enlightenment sound too simple, folks just wouldn’t pay attention.  In his classic work, Beelzubub’s Tales to His Grandson, the first 20-odd---and I DO mean odd---pages were consumed totally in expressing  his insecurities about whether he was a good enough author to be writing that same book.

And doing that just feels to me like the guy missed a big piece of the puzzle.  It’s the egoic mind that wants things complicated.  We have no need whatsoever for the mind that is judging, condemning, self-pitying, conflicted, angry.  None.

So my aim here is to keep it very simple, to put as many powerful ideas into the smallest number of words, so that the words are easy to keep with you.  We’ll talk about keeping a simple set of ideas with you all the time, stored in that place in your brain where you house the information that is always there when ready, where the wiser Self can more and more consistently access these ideas when love calls for them.

Throughout this book, when you see the heart/pause button icon, it’s my way of asking you to pause and contemplate ….or go into the silence with the just-completed thought.  Pause for as long as it feels right to your heart.

For you to make productive use of this book, it is important that the following be true for you:

1) That you at least be quite willing to consider the possibility that the real you is way beyond your body and mind.

2) That you are willing to let go of any divisive, fear mongering, guilt-inducing religion you might have been supporting that insults you with its dogma.

3) That until such time comes that you Ascend, a time when it all will come naturally without effort, you are willing to place the highest of priorities on your quest to respond to all life with Love, and that you increasingly often let your heart catch yourself when you fall down.

4) That you more and more see that all your experience is part of a divine plan to help you become more loving.

I set the pace of this book very fast.  It’s for people who are ready to make The Shift, people who are ready to make their life a reflection of their Love.  What’s offered here is a set if simple word tools that you can use to summon the courage and loving power to realize who you are and to prioritize that realization in every response you make to your experience, all the time.

At some point that might be thought of as Ascension, the realization occurs that discipline and dedication are no on your list of virtues for yourself.  Realizing the full extent of your love means that productive living no longer requires such resolve.  You have become, in word, deed and thought what you never fully realized you were before, and that reflects in everything you say and do without pushing yourself, without judging anything, without suffering.  The inner battle is over.

We can realize that it is easy and natural to respond to all experience with loving acceptance.  We can, in a continual way, find ease, comfort and happiness in situations that the egoic mind had before found cause for upset, depression, arrogance, rebellion, unworthiness….

It takes most of us a whole bus full of lifetimes to figure out why we are here and what would serve us to be. There’s this stubborn “thing” we call the ego that just has seemed to be frequently getting in our way.  This totally imaginary being that we may think is us, tells us that acting and thinking in completely unproductive ways is really a way of coping or thriving.

This imaginary ego is cunning, never present, willing to offend and be offended, judging, vengeful, stupid.

Ego thinks that power has a lot to do with how much money we have, or how we look, or how we can seem to make ourselves feel more powerful by dominating or stealing from some apparent other.

Still, so many still battle or sleep their way through life identifying with ego as Self.  Now, individually and collectively, we seem to be getting hit from all sides, sometimes harshly, with so much that challenges us. We’re getting wake up calls left and right, and they seem for many to be getting more frequent and profound. Money troubles, the abuser at work, the angry spouse, the difficult son or daughter, the aging, angry, alone parent….

As we move along the path, we come to a point, maybe around where you are right now, when we can clearly realize that there is nothing more important than to realize than our deep, loving nature.

There will come a time for you when you fully realize and know at the deepest of levels that you are Divine, that you are an integral part of Everything That Is, intimately connected to all creation.  All the big religions, and most of the smaller ones, tell us the lie that we are somehow separate, that “God’s in everything, except you, of course.”

Guilt-spitting and fear provoking religion has been responsible for the mongering of more discord, unworthiness, fear and guilt than any other factor in our history.  The vast majority of all religion is spiritually counterproductive, heart-suffocating and ego-feeding.  Subscription to it is stupid.  If you have not yet realized this, then you are not ready for this book.

If Satan existed, we might say that religion was, ironically, Satan’s Net.   So if you are still committed to any of the divisive religions, your feet are still stuck in the mud, and this book is not something for you at this time.

The most basic thing we can do to open the doorways to our enlightenment is to let go of any silly notion that there is some schizophrenic god “up there somewhere” who is both all loving and willing to roast you eternally in his barbeque pit if you mess up.

Way back in time, a bunch of greedy guys all over the world discovered that they could manipulate people and get lots of money from them if they spoke convincingly enough of their ability to help people find escape from the fires of eternal hell.  And then societies came to learn as truth the lie that not only are we somehow separate from God, but that we should look down upon, even kill, others who chose to believe in a different God.

If this is indeed so, then the need for any religion whatsoever is negated.  If there is no big deity in the sky who might damn me to forever torture, if I recognize that I am infinite loving Spirit which lives beyond the death of my body, and if I really trust my path and give my gifts with calm courage and compassion, then why would I want to consider relying on anything outside of my own heart to guide me in choosing how to live my life, what to make important?

Is this book for you?  It depends on how ready you are to make a great shift in how you live your life.  It’s not for you if you are tied to a religion that is divisive and preaches fear of eternal damnation.  It’s not for you if you are frequently abusive to your spouse or children.  It’s not for you if you’re still crazy enough to think that you can keep on doing the unproductive things in your life and have different results just by reading a book.

It is for you if you already have a sense of your spiritual nature and you have moved along the spiritual path with more and more awareness.  Maybe a lot of things are going better in your life, but you’re still addicted to doing something that doesn’t work for you.  You certainly don’t need to be an addict to make successful use of this book, yet it has been suggested by some, accurately, I think, that addicts tend to be people who are well along the spiritual path.  Underneath the surface, most addicts are kind, gentle, loving people who just got sucked into doing something stupid so that they could find quick gratification of some kind.

This book is for you if you have a sense that you are much more than your body or mind.

It is for you if you are at or near a point of being fed up with certain aspects of how your life is going.  Often, one of the great precursors of living as an ascended master is becoming completely fed up with the status quo.

It is a likely fit for you if you see yourself as worthy of success, happiness, abundance, and a life of general calm.

*****************************************************************************

To order The Shifting Process eBook and

What To Do When It Hits the Fan together in one file, click here.