© 2010 Seventh Direction Publishing All rights reserved. Original title prior to rework: The Seventh Diection. The first twenty pages of this document may be copied and distributed in any manner as long as all 15 pages (including this one) are included in what is shared. Brief excerpts of up to 400 words may be quoted in any media (with attribution) without permission. This excerpt is from the hard copy. An eBook version is also available.

Truce Time?

This is a book about unfolding your truest, deepest, loving Self. To realize this means surrendering the egoic self to the will of the Higher Self: the heart, the soul. The most momentous of wars fought in this world are the ones we fight within ourselves. Are you ready for a truce? Then this book is dedicated to you, too. The world thirsts for your aware presence.

The Power of Truth

As this book is being written, we are in the midst of a consciousness revolution. Your role in this revolution begins in earnest when you declare a truce in any war you may be fighting with yourself. Then, your mind can become a more fertile ground in which to plant the seeds of loving truth, contentment, love and trust.

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
---George Orwell

Your Inner Guru

A great step along the spiritual path is taken when one chooses to cease reliance on “outside” saviors, when one recognizes clearly the unlimited nature of Love’s capacity to heal and fulfill. The core message of the truest of gurus is that within each of us we have built in the most powerful of guidance systems, the Divine Love of the will of the heart.

What is Power?

This book asks you to look at the word “power” in a way that may, at
first, feel strange to you. Many have been led to believe that power means the capacity and willingness to manipulate others. Power has
also been considered as something that is reflected in the size of one’s bank account, the amount of land one owns, the apparent possession of physical attributes or strength, or the flashiness of one’s car. In the so-called “real world,” the concepts of love and power, as Dr. Martin Luther King observed, are often seen as polar opposites.

An underlying premise of this book is that all true power is based in love. My intent with this book is to provide you with a powerful tool to help you learn how to trust and integrate this power.

This book asks you to often pause as a way of letting your heart be your guide as you discern your own truth.

Please pause now and, with your attention on your heart, contemplate how you define power before moving into your exploration of this book.

Time for a New Vision?

The revolution we find ourselves immersed in is one of consciousness. To fully open our collective consciousness is a process we are all in together. We are creating the solutions as we are discovering the loving result. It is best to see this process as one of utmost importance. We are becoming an enlightened, harmonious world. What could possibly be as important as uncovering all that can lead us to deeply realize our loving, harmonious nature?

A world in harmony: It is quite likely that you have been conditioned to believe that the creation of such a vision is impossible: frivolous, unrealistic, to “New Agey.” Various forms of propaganda---from the innocent to the purposeful---has led us to believe that we cannot create a world in harmony. One cannot get out of prison until one realizes that prison is where they already live. Likewise, we will not create a world in harmony until we can collectively envision this harmony.

Ego says that a fulfilled life and the attainment of enlightenment must be tantamount to a person with no legs wanting to climb the highest of the world’s peaks. As usual, the ego betrays its idiocy.

The process of Realization of Love appears difficult simply because we have made it so with our minds. When we choose the fully loving life collectively, the apparent forces of darkness will evaporate. The corporate, governmental, religious entities and mass media that we have allowed to bleed us will go away of their own volition. Because their volition will have met with a cleansing. Their hearts will have awakened their minds.

In the recognition of our communal loving nature, we will be in harmony with each other. Those who see this possibility are challenged to prioritize its manifestation. We will create it together. When enough of us have made the shift into higher consciousness, we will all be living in that sweeter-tasting ride together. We can choose to envision and create that sweetness now.

We can collectively drop our learned sense of futility, hopelessness, impotence and fear. Our deep sense of immense power can be unleashed, a loving gift to ourselves and our world.

As we choose the loving response to life more and more consistently, we will see that there is no need for bloody revolution, no “suffering treadmill gauntlet” to run. We are at the dawn of human evolution realizing its natural sense of fruition: Harmony. It is coming closer as we see it in our minds, as we practice it in our lives, as we realize that we are more and more creating loving harmony in the world by living it, by being it, by sharing it.

This is a book designed to show you how you can discover your own deep reality of this connected Love. The time to discover this essential Love is now, for the sooner we truly recognize our deep bond, the less suffering the world and its people will endure in our process of rebirth. Sure, this is different. How has thinking just with your head been working for you?

Many of the ideas as presented in this book may feel a little confusing at first reading. I am offering this to you in the way it came to me. Please do not cave in to the egoic self that may express frustration, anger, overwhelm or the inability to understand the words written here. An ego-bound person may respond with indignation at the fact that key ideas are repeated in this book, something that is done by design. At first, it may appear quite raw. The further you get into the book, the more you will understand its design.

This icon, in smaller form of course, is used throughout this book as a pausing point, a place in the reading where it is suggested that you close your eyes and pause to reflect upon the words you have just read. Get in touch with what your heart would have you know. The amount of time you take to pause on any of the suggested cues here is up to you: I suggest that you trust your heart to guide you in this, never rushing forward as the avoiding mind would have you do. There will be places in this book where you feel an inspiration to pause and reflect. Whether there is a pause icon at that spot or not, I urge you to follow your inspiration.

An important distinction:

If you choose to pause for contemplation of any idea---in this book or not---it is best if that idea is expressed to yourself in a positive way. Contemplating any belief idea that is negatively stated can provoke anxiety and confusion. So it is best to contemplate, “I am my infinite soul.” Rather than “I am not my mind.” This may seem like a minor point, but it is not!

Note: A starter supply of lined loose-leaf paper is to be found in the back pocket of this book. Please use it to insert edits, notes and ideas at appropriate spots in this book to make it truly yours.
When you see writing in italics, I am expressing a thought for you, the reader.
Non-italicized words like these are ones you might choose to contemplate or edit. Many of these are written in the first person.
You ask: “Is this book a fit for me to use now?”
In less than four pages, right here, you can have a clear answer.

This book presents a way of navigating the spiritual road more efficiently, joyfully, and smoothly. The road may be rocky, but it was never intended to be tortuous, except to the extent that we might set it up that way in order to wake up. For some, the attachment to a life of pain or difficult emptiness is so strong, that some submit themselves to torture for choosing to be so deliberately blind.

Many are so conflicted and in fear that they not only fight with themselves but chose to believe in a schizophrenic God who is both vengeful and all-loving.

This book is about using the same tool that got you where you are, conditioning, to propel you to a place of more calm, happiness, wisdom, trust and radiance in each present moment. That means that parts of this book get repeated. You get to choose whether to alter the pause session or other thoughts a little or a lot. Edit the thought fit who you are and what you intend. In that process, you discover who you are and what you really believe.

This book is for people who are ready to start dropping their masks, rather than slapping on more masks as a futile way of coping. Have you been hiding from your world? Have you been hiding from yourself?

Are you willing to get more fully in touch with your mission in this lifetime and prioritize it? Please choose to make your life about something important.

Maybe for you it’s about having a gift to inspire people. Maybe you are an artist who can help people remember calm. Maybe you have a talent for gardening or arranging cut flowers. Or you might be talented hairstylist or manicurist. The questions to ask are: “Given the talents I have and my choice to enjoy life, how can I deliver the greatest amount of Love to the world? How can I promote the happiness of others? How can I create or facilitate pleasure or contentment for others?

The idea is to amp up the joy we experience, and then share that joy with as many others as possible, intending that those inspired will inspire others. This is one way that Love is grown.

If you just read this book “from your head,” you won’t get very far into it before abandoning it. If you’ve been running your life from your head, you will find that much of the content of this book---particularly early on in your reading---will not make sense to you. This is because you have learned to think in a way that prioritizes completely false versions of the words “love” and “power”.

If you have been living your life from your head, this book offers you the opportunity to perceive and observe your life from a different perspective.

This book is intended to be read very slowly from the perspective of your heart. Most people don’t have much, if any, experience with the concept of absorbing words from the level of the heart. As a world culture, we have scant experience in dealing with our own inner workings. It is the central aim of this book to help you open to your own inner workings, to become receptive to the idea of allowing your life to be managed by the will of your heart.

What thoughts just emerged as you read the last paragraph? Was it “Huh?” “Whuh?” or “I don’t get it?”
You will substantially benefit from using this book only if you have come—or are quite willing to come--- to a place of clarity that the purpose of your life goes beyond simply either enjoying or tolerating it..

It is important to have clarity about the purpose of life. If you are tuned in to the heart or spiritual part of you, then you know that you are here for a purpose. That purpose, for you, is more evolved than “Life is a bitch and then you die.” It is more evolved than “How can my life be always about pleasure rather than pain?”

If you have arrived at a place along your path where you know you are here to integrate Love completely, then you know the heart of the big picture quest. You know what matters. You are developing more and more commitment to making the quest important in your thoughts, your words and your actions.
In the process of inner exploration, we discover amazing things about ourselves.

Please do this: Read the following sentence a few times.

I can be extremely powerful, happy, loving, calm and contented just as I am.

Now say it to yourself again as you close your eyes and get in touch with your heart. How does this feel? What do you notice about your body sensations, mood or energy?

Yes, it is possible to feel good much of the time. Again express the thought in bold above with emotion, and then pause here for a moment, and ponder.

Notice what emotions arise when you make such a statement. Puny ego responds with “Wait a minute. How could I be all that?”

You can, and the most crucial step to being that is to simply trust that you are that---or that with practice, patience and trust you can exemplify it.

You can do this for yourself effectively if you are willing to….

* Be open. The mind tends to reject ideas which seem foreign to it. Please choose to be open to new ways of approaching your management of this life you have been given.

* See yourself from the perspective of your heart. This is challenging for many, kind of like having someone suggest that you should hear with your nose. Please get past that. As you are open, this book will help you to move beyond old, destructive, programmed thinking.

* Create a regular spiritual practice. The mind can appear to be quite devious. Your “ego mind” seems to think that Love is akin to death. If the idea of a spiritual practice is foreign to you, begin with 10 minutes per day of meditation with a little yoga. You can even take weekends off, if you like. The key is to set up a practice and then keep your word about it. Doing more, building up more daily time is fine, but please start with something you know you can and will do. Regular use of this book is one form of spiritual practice.

* Create reminders for yourself about what is important for you in your thoughts and actions. In other words, choose aware consciousness. To expand this idea: Make note of the most important ideas in this book for you---especially the ones that brought up challenging emotion of any kind. These “hot button” ideas are ones that are worth repeating, worth reading frequently, worth hearing. Any belief ideas that you find important to edit for yourself are worth spending extra time with. It is important that you live your life in a way that is congruent with your beliefs. As you will find more clearly as you proceed with your exploration of this book, your willingness to prioritize the spiritual quest for Realization will enhance the joy you have on the journey.

It has been said that knowledge is power. That is way off-path if spoken as a generalization. Communally, the vast majority of what we think we know is either lies or gross inaccuracies. The drama we suffer in our personal lives, as Don Miguel Ruiz so succinctly states it, is the result of believing in lies, mainly about our own selves, about who we really are.

And what is power, really? As used in this book, the term “Power” is expanded to be defined as “Loving Power.” The only real power is that which is based in Love. Anything based in domination, manipulation of another or the eliciting of greed, shame or guilt has nothing to do with having true power at all. These are all facets of weakness and of choosing to know something as true that is actually false. So let’s consider a reworked version of the knowledge-power declaration:

True and loving knowledge is true and loving power.

To get the most out of this book, your challenge is simply to have the courage to face yourself, every part of you. In remembering to tap into your courage and your trust as you move through the challenges you will be facing, you will make discoveries about yourself that will excite and motivate you to become more and more of what you can bAre you willing to tap into that courage and trust? This is the essential question you can answer now to determine whether reading the book is a fit for you now.

Are you willing to invoke the trust and courage that you have within you now?

Am I willing to face my Self?

The word “Self” is capitalized to indicate the Higher or Loving Self, as opposed to the worldly self.

If you let go of the concept that you are the self—with a little “s” ----and continually keep in the whole of the mind that you are really the Self---with a big S, I believe you will unfold with more ease.

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

--Aldous Huxley (1936)

The most dangerous man, to any government himself…. Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is disohonest, insane, and intolerable. --H.L. Meneken

Opening thought to ponder:

(Pause as many times as feel right as you read this slowly)

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 pointing themselves consciously in the direction of living a fully heart-based life.

The gutter is any time or place where one is not either experiencing love directly or perceiving the opportunity to respond to life with love..

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.

Am I willing to be guided by my heart? Am I ready to wake up?

Preface

Worldly and Heart Propaganda

The mass of humanity has been taught that the world is a fearful place, that it confuses, overwhelms, drains and batters us.

We have been taught that we are powerless to change these things, that it is best to accept our powerlessness, our ineptitude and the fading away of all that we have wanted to hold dear.

We have incorrectly learned that life is overwhelmingly complicated, that it must be difficult.

Misguided, we have learned to live with fear as a way of life. It’s stupid of us. It seems like we should all be awake by now, but it also seems that the crazier the world has gotten, the more we have allowed our governmental, religious, corporate, mass media and educational institutions to abuse our trust, the more blind to their corruption we have become. We have not yet collectively taken heed of the unrelenting wake up calls.

Are you frustrated with your life, with our communal life on this Earth?

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 there appears to be a lot of suffering in your life, your suffering has but one purpose: to wake you up to a more loving way of living.

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 purpose of propaganda is to induce people to think and act in targeted ways consistent with conditioned beliefs and sets of truth or “truth.”

The mechanism by which propaganda conditions us is repetition. If one sees or hears the same words 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? The heart, when its wisdom is truly felt, does not provide misinformation. 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 a 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 thinking and 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.

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

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, torture their enemies and pander to the wealthy elite, we sit silently as they withdraw our liberties, deplete more of our income, 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. As used in the ideas expressed below, the term “corporotocracy” is defined as a system of government that is basically controlled by the interests of big business and large banks. If you are paying attention to what is going on in your world, this is the form of government we have in the United States today, at least on the Federal and State levels.

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 thrive on the promotion of war
* 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 things 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 reflections 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.

Let’s look at the first item on the list above. And let’s assume, for the moment, that our various institutions---large religions, the banking/corporate corrupt, government and religion are all “in bed” with each other. Their interests appear to be served by the proliferation of war—in at least two ways. First, there are the wars we fight within ourselves. While our church may insist that the preservation of human life is a sacred duty in virtually all circumstances, our government and various corporate interests tell us that we must find ways to reduce our population, that the Earth cannot handle our growing population. This sets up a conflict. Whose wisdom do we follow?

You might note that in 2010, billionaire Bill Gates spoke of reducing the population by at least 10%. His suggestion that improving birth control education would help to that end sounds innocent enough. But then he says that viruses and the healthcare system can also assist in this population reduction. It does not take a rocket scientist mind to put two and two together: He’s talking about using viruses and our healthcare system to either kill people directly or shorten their lives. And all the while people are happily lining up for their anti-flu virus shots despite the warnings from very credible sources that may easily be found on the Internet.

My assertion here for your consideration is that our institutions that were supposedly set up to serve us are actually designed to abuse us. They are structured to foment discord, confusion and both internal and external war.

Our awareness of this fact is our first step to releasing ego in all its forms from our lives.

Of course, there are worthy institutions that intend to be of true service to humanity. And many of those who are corrupt truly think that they are right and that they are following their destiny. Let’s not condemn any of them. The call here is to pull our blinders off and see, to take the figurative plugs off our noses and smell the stink. You cannot clean up a stinky mess until you are willing to smell it. This is what is in front of us as a leap towards cleaning up the mess.

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 wake up to what is in front of me to see?
your_pause_button

How is our collective situation today similar to the one she found herself in back then?

What can I do about this collective situation?

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.
-- Noam Chomsky

If you have the courage to educate yourself about the realities of the world, get at least part of your news from a reliable source for truth. Get the real news that most of the mass media will not tell you. My top choice here is the internet “Information Clearinghouse”-- www.informationclearinghouse.info/

There are certain realizations or steps that open us up to new levels of lightness, new and higher vibratory frequencies along the progression to full realization. To signify the importance of these 9 Ideas, I call them Freedom Keys.

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

Sample Pause Sessions

Taking some time with these four Pause Sessions will help you to decide whether the printed version or the eBook is best for you.

When you see the heart icon, close your eyes and pause as you focus your attention on your heart.

Listen to your heart, letting yourself be guided by it. It may not speak to you in words, but it will speak to you in the language of feelings.

As you contemplate each idea, tune in to how the heart resonates with it. Does it feel right as it is or would it be more powerful for you if you edited it to fit who you are and to reflect more powerfully your aspiration?

Italicized words are me, the author, speaking to you.

Non-italicized words are ones suggested for your contemplation.

Without breezing quickly through these, take as long as you like with these, allowing your heart to guide you.

It might be helpful to use a sticky note on your screen to mark your place between the segments in a Pause Session.

Risk, The Paradox

Of course, it is wise to honor and protect our bodily vehicle. It is also worth remembering frequently that you are not that vehicle; you are spirit navigating the world in a body. The cocoon is abandoned when the time has come for transformation.

Life is an adventure. Adventure entails risk.

I release the need for security and I follow my adventuresome heart.

Virtually all risk is imaginary.

If, indeed, the body and mind are but temporary vehicles for who we really are, then risk of physical pain, bodily death, or inconvenience is of little consequence.

It is more spiritually productive to live happily in great risk than to be depressed in a cocoon of safety.

Service

The path of frustration and manifest hell is the path that focuses on service to self.

Each present moment asks something of me. Daily, I receive opportunities to be of service to others.

Whether it is an aging parent, a lost puppy, or a co-worker grieving, I pay attention to and act upon opportunities to be of service.

My focus in this life is to be aware of and to prioritize opportunities to be of service to other living creatures, including our planet.

Surrendering to My Power

Power that is rooted in manipulation, greed, and dishonesty is never truly power at all. True power respects all of creation.

I know that the only real power is that which is based in Love.

There is deep power in surrender.

Surrendering the ego is letting go of that which has sucked my power in the past.

One who surrenders something in order to attain anything of this world is not in deep surrender. Deep surrender is motivated by nothing but the intent to become a more loving being.

What have I held onto that it will serve me to surrender today?

Truth

Surrender to the truth and surrender to Love are the most powerful surrenders.

Feeling the joy in my heart, I surrender to loving truth now.

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