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by
Martha Beck
Read between
May 16 - June 11, 2022
They offer just enough feedback to help us find the wisdom at the core of...
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No one can give us pure integrity: knowing our truth is something we can and must learn to do on our own. The role of the soul guide is simply to put us in touch...
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when we’re still wandering around the dark wood of error, knowing we’re lost but clueless about how to find ourselves, a teacher is essential. So stay alert ...
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When we first encounter true soul teachers, they often appear anomalous, annoying, incomprehensible, or downright weird.
A real soul teacher will draw your attention in a way that makes you feel inwardly driven,
Genuine soul teachers may perplex or disturb us, but they tend to be fascinating, not repulsive or unbearable.
We make ourselves ready just by realizing we’re lost and committing to the way of integrity. A teacher will eventually show up, often in unexpected ways.
a real soul guide’s job is to wake us up when we’re somnambulating through the dark wood of error.
involve jangling us, shocking us, contradicting what we deeply believe.
It wants—always, always, always—to set us free.
That’s why our truest guides don’t help us get comfortable in our illusions. Instead they rattle our cages, make us uneasy, confiscate our sedatives.
attention. As long as it liberates you, what looks like harshness or even cruelty may in fact be the purest love you could possibly receive.
a common frustration for people who experience enlightenment: language cannot communicate it.
The sense of oneness and the dissolution into love show up consistently in people who have “awakened.”
A subjective experience of “inner light” A deepening of moral or spiritual values An increased sense of intellectual illumination A loss of the fear of death A loss of a sense of sin or guilt A lasting transformation of personality
The path toward Enlightenment is not only real, but we are biologically predisposed to seek it.” Brain scientists are hard at work figuring out how and why.
the sense of being a separate thing, distinct from the rest of reality, and the sense that we’re in control of ourselves and our situations.
Dropping into enlightenment Start by sitting with both hands outstretched, palms up. Get comfortable. By actually lifting your hands, you’re activating both hemispheres of your brain, so don’t skip this step or the exercise won’t work. Think of something you do regularly, even though you think you shouldn’t: obsessing about your ex, playing computer games at work, googling yourself. Call this the Forbidden Thing. Imagine that sitting in the palm of your left hand is a tiny version of a wild animal. This is the part of you that wants to do the Forbidden Thing. If you’re sleepy and irritable, it
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As you observe these two versions of yourself, consider this: Both of them are good. The Creature is trying to be free. The Controller is trying to be socially acceptable. Can you see how tired your Creature is of being yelled at by the Controller? Can you see that the Controller is just as exhausted? When you can see this, begin offering loving wishes to both the Creature and the Controller at the same time. Silently say—to both of them—“May you be well.” “May you be happy.” “May you feel free.” “May you feel safe.” “May all your longing be fulfilled.” Once you can genuinely feel compassion
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You’re not the Creature, nor the Controller. You’re watching both of them. Caring. Meaning them well. At this point, you have moved into the part of your brain that calms inner conflict and emanates peace. Call this the Compassionat...
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there’s a lot science hasn’t yet figured out.
the more I dissolve my internal suffering, the more these mysterious things happen.
Imagine spending your entire life trying to listen to a symphony through a broken radio, hearing traces of gorgeous music distorted by static so bad it sets your teeth on edge. Then imagine waking up in the middle of the orchestra. No static. No separation. Just beauty.
I’m not saying my actual father showed up in some metaphysical form to give me comfort and support . . . but I’m not saying he didn’t either. To come down dogmatically on either side would be to claim I’m sure of
something I don’t understand, and that’s not integrity. I just don’t know.
Knowing that you don’t know
it liberates your vastly intelligent true nature to see reality as it is, not as your culture taught you to see it.
Toni Morrison said, “The function of freedom is to free someone else.”
has.” Groups committed to truth and compassion become patches of translucency, even transparency. As this process continues, it’s conceivable that humanity as a whole might someday reach the tipping point of enlightenment.
Every individual who develops a clear mind becomes part of a fractal that brings us into alignment with one another and with nature itself. As that pattern spreads, humans may begin to live in a whole new way.
at the speed of light, time stops.
what we call “matter” may exist only as energy until we measure it.
everything in the universe is one single thing (energy field), and that we see it only as bits of matter because our way of perceiving (epistemology) can’t take in reality as it actually is (ontology).
your life may go beyond our culture’s definition of “normal”—not because you’re departing from reality, but because you’re connecting with it.
born. In reality, my body is not a solid thing, but a constantly shifting assortment of molecules swirling around a wisp of consciousness.
as if the entire universe is being projected onto an infinite screen called “now,” and that this “now” is in fact the only material thing that even appears to exist.
a perception of an interconnected, benevolent reality in which human consciousness and the other aspects of the universe are continuously interacting.
“safe, enticing, and alive.” The acronym for this is “sea.”
when we return to a state of peace, the things we’ve “ordered” can finally reach us.
stillness”
and down I’d go, like a pearl diver, to the same never-changing, always-renewing freshness.
Perhaps it’s in our imaginations that fractals of awakening first begin to spread, clearing one mind, then transferring light to another.
Imagining may be the key to finding paradise, in our individual lives and then in all life, all consciousness.
use our imaginations to picture beauty that “exc...
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If anything can save us at this point, it will be the kind of magic we work by clearing our minds so completely that we can see beyond anything our combined cultures have ever created, and then hold that image constant and still until the world turns around it.
He has moved into the eternal present. “Eternal” doesn’t mean something that lasts for a long time, but something outside of time.
at the speed of light, time no longer exists. A photon can be anywhere, everywhere, at every moment in history.
There is nothing left to do at this point but release one final error: the belief that there has ever been any distinction between the separate scraps of matter we imagine we are, and the all-inclusive truth that extends beyond anything we can conceive. When we fully dissolve the lie of being isolated within ourselves, we join Dante and everyone else, everything else.
remember ourselves as l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle, “the love that moves the sun and the other stars.”
