Create Your Story

I talk to everyone. All the time. The question is not to whom I talk, but who listens.

(God in Neale Walsch's Conversations with God)

Many spiritual travelers look for enlightenment. Well, there is good news, at least going by Neale Walsch's book Conversations with God. No point waiting for Godot and start listening to HER in the here and now. Maybe you find parts of HER MESSAGE in this note. Maybe you can find GOD in nature, in your surroundings or the people you talk to today.

Truth of the matter is that this world is entire self-created. Life as we perceive it is a simple reflection of who we think we are. Yet GOD, though operating outside of life as we know it, permeates everything. With every step we take both the self as well as our GOD connection are shining through.

Some people take this to mean that we should negate the self in order to be exposed to the SELF. While this approach may work in mathematics, that is, the negative of a negative is indeed positive, this concept falls short in spirituality. The institution that negates the self is still the self. Or put differently, putting two negatives in front of zero still doesn't give you a positive number.

Buddha had this observation shortly before reaching enlightenment. He realized that he was trying too hard. The part of him that wanted to get to enlightenment was still part of the same institution he wanted to overcome. So he tried the Way of the Middle instead, and "enlightenment" descended on him shortly thereafter.

A spiritual traveler has an amazing opportunity to meet GOD in the here and now. Everything we have ever done before, and everything that we ever experienced up to this point prepares us perfectly for following the WAY in the here and now. Zoom into your spiritual mission; mix purpose and passion and then simply have fun along the WAY. You know that you are on your spiritual path when self, soul and SPIRIT all rejoice. 

Create your story and enjoy every step of the WAY. With GOD as a CO-CREATOR, chances are your story will turn out to be a good one!

The Way of the Symbol

If I had to describe my spiritual path in one pithy expression, it would be, "The Way of the Symbol". I have discovered little nudges along the WAY over the years, pointing me in a direction of my choosing. When I see these signs, I just know that it is meaningful for my spiritual journey. So in a way, I would say that I have my daily conversations with GOD, yet, I would never be so arrogant to claim that what is meaningful to me has to be true for others as well. 

When we live our life, reacting to external signs and voices and giving them spiritual meanings, we of course have to ask ourselves, what is truly of GOD and what is our own make-belief.  I actually think that I have become pretty good in these situation-specific "yes", "no", "no", "yes" choices for the very reason that I have worked the best TEACHER there is for a while now, the WAY. 

Today, I stumbled on a note that I wrote many years ago when I wanted to understand better how exactly one knows when something is "right" or "wrong". And while I still don't have a clear-cut answers that I can pass along, I have mellowed a bit on that subject; I will argue later that this distinction matters much less than you think. Please read the problem statement I faced a while back first, and then allow me to provide some updated thoughts afterwards.

True Self or Super Ego, June 7, 2009

We always talk about the True Self, the higher institution inside us which is permanently connected to the universe. How can we separate this voice from the super ego, i.e. Freud's concept of the deep-seated biases that we receive from our our parents, society and culture?

Let me give you an example: I had some receding hair line, so I got a hair transplant done a while back. It is a minor operation and actually worked out quite well. In any case, one day before the operation, I banged my foot into a door such that I could hardly walk for almost one week. But since I am very well-coordinated, these things just don't happen to me. On top of that, the injury miraculously vanished exactly at the same time when my scalp had healed. I conjectured that my True Self wanted to give me the lesson that "you are not your body" and promptly cancelled my follow-up operation.

Perhaps it was a message from a higher institution, perhaps not. The alternative is that I was just ashamed as our culture still sometimes frowns on plastic surgery. My super ego was quite well articulated by my mother. When she heard about the upcoming operation she said, "My son, these are your genes, you should accept who you are!" You see the alternative view point, I may have run into the door because my subconscience wanted to tell me that I should not go against our cultural norms. How do we know? Any ideas how we can separate the alleged True Self from our subconscious desires and fears?

This was my problem statement from 2009, and as I mentioned, I canceled the follow-up operation and even stopped taking the medicine to prevent further hair loss, not because I believe that God frowns on those things, but simply because of a feeling I had during the operation. In order to transplant hair from one part to the other, the doctor has to penetrate your skin with a scalpel, and I simply disliked the feeling. "No one has the right to cut holes into me", I heard a voice say, and that was the end of this discussion. Super-ego or True Self, I didn't know who talked then, and I also didn't particularly care, all that mattered was the feeling to stop this madness and I never looked back. Frankly, when I look into the mirror these days, I kind of like what I see.

All of us are on a path that is meaningful to us; we need to find this path for ourselves and need to stick to it without losing much sleep over whether the super-ego or the True Self is talking. I am reminded of Siri's voice: we use her for digging up stuff; for finding restaurants in our neighborhood, or for reminding us of upcoming calendar events. So she is somehow there to help us. Similarly, we can use our super ego as a convenient tool to help us proceed along our spiritual path. But then, on those few occasions when the signs of the WAY and our super ego, or our id seem to clash, that is the time to dig our heels in and override what seemed obvious and natural all our life.

When Freud developed his insight of ego, super ego and the id, he perceived himself as part of an enlightenment process designed to help us discover our "healthy ego". C.G Jung felt a spiritual component was missing in Freud's theory, so he alerted us to the "Collective Unconscious" and spent his life trying to incorporate his spiritual insights into the rational thinking framework. But even he was only willing to go so far. It was him who stumbled on Synchronicity, a framework that I frequently use along my spiritual journey. But he stopped short of developing it. At one point in his career he admitted that once he stopped looking for Synchronicity, the signs of the WAY also stopped coming. Perhaps even more revealing, when someone later in his career offered to introduce him to one of the enlightened Hindu Mystics - I believe it was Sri Ramana Maharshi - he politely declined as he didn't want to go down that path. We all manufacture our story, our path, and all of us are only willing to lean so much out of the window. Life is an ongoing choice to define our "self", and there is no "right" or "wrong", there is only our way.

I look for signs of the WAY. I look for ONENESS. I look for spiritual insights and I look for love. The signs of the WAY surround me daily, and I consider it so much fun to unwrap the little blessings that GOD sends me. It is a feeling really, an insight that strikes. I may miss a few steps, but more often than not, I recognize the symbols of the WAY and react accordingly.  If I felt today for some reason that a hair transplant could help me remove an inner obstacle along the WAY, I would immediately sign up!

It is arrogant to believe that I have something more worthwhile to say than Freud or Dr. Jung. Yet, it may be able to offer better directions for the select few who want to travel "The Way of Symbols" together with me. We can always appeal for GUIDANCE to a FORCE beyond our horizon, and this FORCE will cleverly use the symbols that we embrace. Observing Synchronicity in action does not prove that GOD exists. All it shows it that we are that magnetic and powerful to attract the symbols that are meaningful to us. Neither of us has any right to lecture someone else on what is "right" and what is "wrong" by GOD. "The Symbols of the WAY" are an intensely personal conversation.

God, in Neale Walsch's "Conversations with God", repeated one insight over and over: lose less sleep over the question what is "right" or "wrong", and start asking whether something is useful or a hindrance towards where you personally want to go. That's it really; first you decide what your life story is all about, and then go after it with all you got. If the collective insights of our forefathers and mothers have installed certain normative shortcuts to help us get to our goal, the better. And if we painfully have to overwrite certain biological, psychological or normative programs to advance instead, then so be it. This is our story. Let's make it a good one.

The WAY is always here to help us advance once we ask request the journey HOME. We are not intellectually or spiritually superior to anyone else, but when we travel next to HER, we end up having a lot of fun! Join us along the "The Way of Symbols"!

The Journey Home

The highway won't hold you tonight.
The highway don't know you're alive.
The highway don't care if you're all alone,
but I do, I do.
The highway won't dry your tears.
The highway don't need you here.
The highway don't care if you're coming home,
but I do, I do.
(Highway Don't Care, Tim McGraw)

God in Neale Walsch's 'Conversations with God' often compared our spiritual journey with road trips. "If you want to go north", God says, "it is of little use to go south". I was reminded of this conversation when I heard Tim McGraw's 'Highway Don't Care' song. We think we are on a road to somewhere, a promotion, a new sexual experience, a new possession, or a new thrill experience and we forget that what we run after something that doesn't love us back. Often our journey to somewhere is a trip to nowhere - the highway don't care!

Yet, no matter what we end up doing, love is always right next to us. The quiet Voice inside cares a lot if we are coming Home or not, but too often the Voice gets drowned out by what we are craving for. Continue your self-defining journey but keep your ears and eyes wide open for any changes in directions. Cravings can be understood, they can be refined, they can be transcended and they can be stood up to. Perhaps even more important than that, love can be recognized. Learn how to hand over the steering wheel to the Way, your friends, your family, friendly strangers, and even people you thought were your enemies before. The highway don't care but the Tao looks out for you if you take Her cues. The highway don't care if you are coming Home, but we do!

Your Journey

God in Neale Walsch's 'Conversations with God' often responded when asked about "right" and "wrong" that the answer very much depends on where exactly you want to go. "If you want to go south", He said, "it makes little sense to drive north". Doesn't that sum up our spiritual journey perfectly?

If you feel you have to express something, be on the move. That's your mission. Where to exactly, that is entirely of your own choosing. Listen carefully to the brothers and sisters you meet along the way for they often hold the key for the next door that is yours to open. Listen carefully to the voice you hear inside as well. Sometimes it holds wisdom that no one else has. Understand too that traveling south sometimes require you to go north to catch up with the most efficient connection,

Traveling towards something you have to because we all have a job to do. After you travel to your desired destination you will start the well-deserved journey Home. You will naturally know when your job here is done here. The journey Home has no particular destination and time requirements. You could be strolling along a park, looking at the beautiful flowers in front of you and realizing that you are already here, and as a matter of fact, always have been.

Dropping Toys by the Wayside

Our spiritual community promises you Heaven on earth once you are "there", but tells you little how exactly to get "there". Somehow you should mind your "ego". Well, the problem with that approach is that the ego is you, so how exactly should you mind yourself?

Well, don't worry about getting "there", a higher authority does this job for you. There is only one requirement, you have to want it and have to be willing to drop the stuff that is holding you back along the Way. God speaks often about this concept in Neale Walsch's "Conversations with God". You decide on whether you want to go north or south, but once you decide on a direction it is of little use to go into the opposite direction.

The spiritual community is right in telling you that there is little use in suffering along the Way. So whenever you drop something that is holding you back, know that you will do just fine without it. Still, you will have to accept the temporary sadness at the same time. We should never delude ourselves; we are as much human as the neighbor next door. The one advantage the spiritual traveler may have is the knowledge that whenever we put our best foot forward, we will always be taken care off. Well, truth of the matter is that the same applies to everyone, yet few dare to claim what is theirs.

Character and Believe Sets

Who you think and feel you are is very much a function of your belief set. You may grow up in a conservative household learning that the institution of marriage is sacred only to read that Yahwey told Neale Walsch in their "conversations" that He never said so; so now you are confused because these conversations seem divine to you as well. But then, at this stage in your life the discussion is just academic anyway. While you could imagine that you could break up with your wife over some supposedly insurmountable problems, now that you have two little ones to raise you swear to yourself that you will be there for them just as your patents were there for you. Who can say what us wrong or right, only you can say what is right for you; no one else can.

Everything is a belief set. When it comes to God and religion we all should be quite humble. Just because everyone believes in the same thing doesn't mean that it is true. How many people believed - and still believe -  in the holy institution of the Bible. Yet when you read it with an open mind you can see for yourself that our notion of Yahweh grew up over the millennia just as we did. Our notion of God are communal believe sets that are not written in stone.

 Day in, day out you have to decide who you are. Unless you make up your mind for yourself, you will always reveal who you think you are on subconscious level. So you might as well make your character a conscious choice.  We claim that you can accomplish what you want in your life, but you have to be willing to pay the price for it. Some prices are worth paying, some are not. At each stage you will always feel what is right to do, just listen to your intuition as well as your conscience. There is no right or wrong way, there is only your way.

We claim that if you follow the Tao you will live in the best of all worlds from the perspective of your owl development. She will work with your belief sets  and will take you on a ride that reveals to you who you truly are. Sure, some beliefs you will drop by the wayside as you outgrow them, while others you will only strengthen along the Way. The Tao will polish the gem in the rough called "you" and when She is done with you, you gonna sparkle like a diamond in the sun. Following the Tao is certainly a belief set as well . We claim it is an experiment woeth taking and following through all the Way.

Sex, Love and Power

When the power of love replaces the love of power, (wo)man will be God

Our spiritual community has wrapped a big super ego around sex and given that many of us have encountered a "dark side" in the bedroom, we are somehow afraid that our spiritual leaders are right in their claim that sex stands in the way of experiencing God. This is not so. In fact, we very much have God's approval when it comes to sex. God says in Neale Walsch's Conversations with God " I am in every bedroom." Sex is the ultimate physical expression of love, yet, every path traveler will have to explore and make peace with this energy differently and will probably have to face a demon in the bedroom as well.

A demon has always something to teach us. He helps us getting in touch with our animal instincts and will show us the image that we have of ourself and of others deep down inside. Whenever power symbols appeal to us in the bedroom, changes are that we haven't yet claimed our authentic power base in other areas of our lives. So the demon can in fact show us who we truly are and by claiming our authentic power base elsewhere, we are finally free to discover sex as physical expression of our love.

When we just repress our animalistic drive, we will never understand what sex truly is. George Gurdjieff was an influential spiritual teacher who tried helping people wake up from their hypnotic "sleep walking", as he called it. He would get his disciples completely drunk and would then encourage them to reveal their true colors. For example, he would suddenly shout "rooster" at someone and his drunken disciple would spontaneously let out a loud "Cook-a-Doodle-Doo" while everyone would collapse on the floor roaring with laughter. This is just one way of shadow work when you openly admit to yourself and everyone who you think you are deep inside of you. Perhaps sex can be thought of as a similar eye-opening experience. Your fantasies and your bedroom partners activate a side of you that you normally don't have access to.

Shadow work is hardly a "card blance" for doing everything you fancy doing. You can discover for yourself that if you always do what you want to do, you will face many situations when you cut yourself off the divine energy. Shadow work is pretty straight-forward: do whatever your heart desires and observe how you feel in the process and what kind of energies you carry around in the aftermath. When you fully experience something and afterwards understand what it stands for, you have brought a subconscious drive to the surface. You now know what will happen if you engage in these behaviors, physically and spiritually.Try to understand the meaning of everything you do. Every action, every graphic image that you perceive is a symbol. Try to understand what it really implies for you personally and make your choice.

Sex permeates everything we do and are about so we have to bring this drive to the surface. You can see it so clearly how many dimensions are intersecting in this single desire: our genes, our upbringing, our neurological wiring, our psychology and spiritual norms. Biologically, there is no denying that we are all driven by the "selfish gene" that wants to propagate itself as it has been doing successfully for millions of years. We may aspire to be a monk but our ancestors haven't been monks since otherwise we wouldn't have been around. We have to accept our drives and have a great chance exploring and realizing who we really are and understand other people as well. Let's be happy with the drive that we have in us and be proud of the distance that we already have traveled.

Sex is divine energy. When you fall in love with someone you have that natural desire to have sex. It is an expression of intimacy. The dance of yin and yang, male and female, push and pull, is divine. Symbolically, we celebrate the divinity of our partner physically. During sex we can experience a glimpse of Oneness. Yin and yang merge literally during the act of ejaculation. During the orgasm, for a brief moment, you experience Samadhi, the union with God. With this oneness, you both are able to create like God.

There is spiritual beauty in the physical act of two bodies joining, but we should not lose sight of the darker aspects of sex. In fact, the shadow comes out at night especially if we only look at our bedroom in rose. Sex can also be a pure expression of power. The evolutionary biologists are right. Our body combines million of years of gene competition. Psychologically, pretty much everything about us is power hunger even though we certainly don't like to put it that way to ourselves.

Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam in their fascinating book A Billion Wicket Thoughts, analyze 400 million internet searches between 2009 and 2010. Do you know what the second most popular heterosexual sex interest was? It was Cuckold porn, the fantasy of being dominated in the bedroom by an alpha male who has sex with your partner while you watch helplessly. Interesting, isn't it?And can you guess what - by far - the most popular sex search was? It was Lolita sex, the fantasy of sexually robbing the innocence of a young girl. Dominated by stronger bodies while dominating weaker bodies in return; you can see the capriciousness of your ego - the power hunger - right here. The ego whispers in your ear that you lack the power to fully satisfy your partner, but it shows you the appeal of dominating weaker bodies and spirits to compensate for it.

You can tell from these researches that men lust after power in the bedroom with the fear of impotence as its mirror image. How easy it is to impress a young woman who doesn’t have any sexual experience. They feel empowered when they are able to dominate and satisfy their partner in bed. However, sweeping an experienced woman off her feet instead requires authentic power. The fear of impotence always lingers, but few men are willing to face it. By repressing it they grow more distant from their bedroom partners and the sex life is getting more disappointing for both sides. So men express their sexual frustrations with porn instead and rarely realize how different mind sex is from actually having sex. Mind sex in all forms is about power while earth-chattering sex is a physical expression of love.

Do not immediately condemn power and aggression when you see it. The whole point of shadow work is that you reflect on what exactly the demon wants to communicate to you. Our spiritual community wants to embrace the power of love and looks down on the love of power. Yet, all the demon says is please look again. There is something that you currently disown about yourself. While dealing with dark forces is always very confusing and can be quite destructive for us spiritual travelers, try nevertheless to find out why these dark symbols appeal to you. First, understand what these symbols truly stand for, and second, find a creative way to make them your own in real life without undermining your spiritual journey in the process. No matter how scary your demon may look to you, there is always a creative way to express your natural power base without undermining your spiritual path.

All ego fantasies in the end boil down to the fact that you have not yet found your authentic spiritual power base and your demon brings this insight home in steamy images. Learn from your bedroom demon what kind of adjustments likely lie in store for you and work on expressing them. Perhaps you are simply too aggressive in your day to day dealings and your demon encourages you to get more in touch with your caring feminine self. Perhaps you are not assertive enough, so your demon wants you to stand up for yourself. Perhaps there is fear inside you that you are not able to satisfy your partner. Shadow work assumes that you will always find a creative outlet for your authentic needs and as you do, the demon will naturally fade into the background.

We are not condoning sexual fetishes, but we also don't condemn them. Just observe what is going on in your bedroom and explore how you can manifest your authentic power base in real life. Sexual fetishes are certainly not helping your spiritual path but at least the problem statement is out in the open. Suppressing your darker desires in the name of spirituality may just mean that the rude wake-up call still lies ahead. Experiment with your partner and discover how with her help the love of power naturally evolves into the power of love. Love and power do not have to clash at all. Wherever love is you will command natural power. But you may have some work ahead to claim it for yourself.

This note is part of "A Demon in the Bedroom" series. Please also look for
"Sex and Spirituality: The Dance of Yin and Yang" and
" Don't Confuse Mind Sex with Mind - Blowing Sex"

By Christian and Su Zhen

When Wholeness Meets Holiness

Buddha once said, " The good stuff, do it, the bad stuff, let it be!" This is true but you have a long journey ahead before you realize what is "good" for your homecoming. The Tao will lead you Home but you will probably be encouraged to question your spiritual value system.You will find that over and over again the Tao encourages you to follow your desires. This is what you were born to do, discovering who you truly are by embracing who you think you are and by encountering life. We don’t get this realization by listening to anyone. Life teaches us day by day who we really are.

We have been taught what is "good" and what is "bad" since our childhood. These values have effectively become our super-ego and so we will experience extreme struggles if a voice inside us is telling us that we should deveate from these norms. Yet we feel intrigued by whatever is prohibited. Crossing that line at times feels right, and at times has a demonic attraction. As Tao travelers we can't tell you anything about your path. Get in touch with yourself and become your own guru. By exploring life and by not avoiding anything your heart desires you will certainly make mistakes; will experience pain, but at the same time you will experience the complete spectrum of life and and you will become whole in the process. You will have so much more compassion for the fellow next door that way and you cease being afraid. If you have met your shadow, if you face your pure ego-driven desires without repressing anything there is nothing you can be afraid of anymore. At this moment you internalize all spiritual rules and perhaps you can even teach society a thing or two. You will learn to let your heart talk no matter what.

Along the Tao you will differentiate between"useful" and "not useful" instead. God in Neale Walsch's Conversations with God talked often about this concept. When you want to drive north, it just doesn't make much sense to drive south instead, right? But how can you say that going north is "good", it is not for someone who is going south. In the same matter, let the egomaniac CEO do whatever he has to do and the Hollywood star go for her 7th plastic surgery. It doesn't make sense to put any value judgment on driving north, for your soul siblings who drive south are as special as you are.

You have to decide what homework you still have to do. As long as you think something is missing in your life, go after it. Woo that dream partner that you lust after, go after that promotion that you aspire, try to become the bestselling spiritual author that you always wanted to be and manifest that body of your dreams. You will have to wrangle with life a little to get what you want. The Tao will send you plenty of feed-back along the way. Let life - the Tao - show who you truly are and let your choices define you and make you whole.

Being a Tao traveler is not something you can just do as a hobby. When you are chosen you will no longer really have a choice as it is probably dawning on you already. Further and further will you walk up the staircase towards the light and every step in the opposite direction will literally hurt you - taking a few consecutive steps in the opposite direction will suck the life out of you, so upwards you have to go. The reason for that is energy. Along the Tao, higher and higher energy centers are opening up and they will transform you. Any exposure to old energy fields will literally hurt you.

As you mature spiritually and as some of your ego-driven desires drop off naturally along the Way, you will converge with the religious notions of "good" and " bad". The high energy centers all converge in the end and the Tao will lead you there. Eventually you will find divinity in your sexual partner, you will eat only purified food and you will put your life in the service of humanity. The way towards holiness is wholeness and wholeness is acquired by embracing life fully. After a decade or two of dealing with life as a Tao traveler you will probably echo Buddha's sentiment, "The good stuff do it, the bad stuff, let it be!" But you have to let every Tao traveler find this insight out for herself.

By Christian and Su Zhen

The Healing Path

God described a spiritual path as a highway in Neale Walsch's 'Conversations with God'. A normative statement such as 'You better drive up north to Chicago' doesn't make much sense in general, unless, of course, you like to go to Chicago. You never have the right to tell anyone in which direction they should be headed. Only they can tell what their mission statement is about. Some choose to go to Chicago, others are headed to LA.

We are all healed by life. The 'I' is digested by following your drives and when you get to where you wanted by overcoming a few obstacles along the way, you are ready to experience the 'I Am' state.There is no hierarchy at all - we are all the same. We are all special in traveling the path that aids our soul development. If it dawns on you that you are a spiritual traveler rest assured that you will get detailed directions along your journey. Once you connect to the Tao you will be encouraged to let go of the steering wheel, lean back and experience how a higher power does the steering. The feeling that is guaranteed to you is that no matter where you go, peace is yours. And if it is not, you have a hunch that some readjustment lies in store for you.

A spiritual path is something very concrete. Very much like a snake leaves her old skin behind, there is a day when you suddenly experience a shift in you and from that day on there is no turning back, the new has to be born and the old has to be dropped by the wayside. Your new skin is the 'I Am' voice that always slumbered deep down inside of you but that from day on starts communicating with you. It needs a little practice to get used to the different voices, but soon enough you will find the 'I' voice distracting. Sure, you are bound to make mistakes and at times will travel in the opposite direction of where you are really headed, but sooner rather than later you will get the hang of the process. You learn to distinguish the 'I' from the 'I Am' state. This self-discovery process can be annoying at times, very much like the snake still has to wiggle a little to let go of the old skin, but soon enough you will be free.

There are some who claim that the 'I', the ego, wants to drive into the opposite direction of the 'I Am' state. You actually have a way to find that out. If this is true, the 'I' will try hiding in something that is special to you. That in fact is the symbolic meaning of the last temptations that Buddha and Jesus experienced before they reached liberation. Well, you can very much experiment with that concept. In my experience there is no all or nothing moment; instead you always have a choice between peace and interference, between passion and serenity. In short, you have an ongoing choice between the 'I' and the 'I Am' state. The decision is a no-brainer really. Then at last you hear a rip when the old skin falls off by the wayside and from that day you are free to roam around the country with every destination being the right one.

On Peace

Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is.
A Course in Miracles

Why would anyone sign up to travel the Tao? You are going against everything you seemed to have learned and everything the fellow next door thinks is sane: being compassionate, while ignoring your own agenda. The first step is the hardest and that's why I advise you to start with little experiments. But eventually big ones will come your way and you will be scared that your environment will take advantage of you. Unfortunately, no one can help you with this problem. You see the abyss, you take a step and only then will you know whether the invisible bridge really opens up. Fact of the matter is that nothing really changes when you travel a spiritual path. The movie is still rolling, but what changes is your perception and interpretations of what these scenes  are for. Before, you externalized all tensions. It is the others who were responsible for the situation you are in, some were the heroes and friends while others were the jerks and the villains. In your new movie everything is about you and the fears that prevent you from becoming the one you aspire to be. But with the fears that you are facing there will also be  a magical world that opens up to you. And time is on your side since with every step you are taking along your path, peace will penetrate every fiber of your being. God says in Neale Walsch's 'Conversations with God' that it does get easier. I found this to be true, but I would be lying if I didn't tell you that there were a few scary steps along the way.

Eventually you will merge with the Tao and the peace will be complete. Everything that happens to you, good or bad, will have spiritual meaning to you and thus, in its own way, will be perfect. I came across a description of a spiritual path traveler in a collection William James put together in 'The Varieties of Spiritual Experiences' more than 100 years ago, and I immediately felt that he must have been a Tao traveler as well.

"The compensation for the loss of that sense of personal independence which man so unwillingly gives up, is the disappearance of all fear from one's life, the quite indescribable and inexplicable feeling of an inner security, which one can only experience, but which, once it has been experienced, one can never forget."

Yup, that's the peace of mind one experiences once you travel the Tao. I hope you will feel it too.

Sexual Abstinence

God in Neale Walsch's 'Conversations with God' says that He happens to be in every bedroom at night, so you can forget about the religious notion that sex is sinful. But God also says in the Conversations that by putting selective emphasis on the lower chakra, you may be depleting the higher energy centers. And while this action is not wrong per se, it might just not be useful if your journey is all about reaching your highest energy center.

My personal advice would be not to lose sleep over the sex issue. If your energy system opens up along your spiritual path, you will feel whether sex is a hindrance to your spiritual development or not. If there is one thing that is certain about the Tao, it is that the choices you are facing along the Way are always be made abundantly clear to the earnest truth seeker. In my experience - and that is obviously a male perspective - it is not sex per se that wastes spiritual energy within your body, it is the act of ejaculation. It turns out that you can have the one without the other. If you are interested in that topic you will find ample of reference material in the tantra sex literature.

The One I Truly Am

God in the Conversations with God often talks about the One Who You Truly Are. But He also reminds you that this definition has to come from you and no one else.

I once read the story of an opera singer who had a terrible case of a stage fright in front of a big show. While it looked as if he couldn't perform at all, he suddenly got up an screamed "I will not allow this fear get the upper hand of my true self!" and stormed onto the stage. Another brilliant application of Susan Jeffer's 'Feel the fear and do it anyway."

'Feel the desire and then do it or drop it' would be my advice. It is this decision that defines Who You Truly Are. Anticipating how you might decide if given a choice is also of little help. It is the feeling at this golden moment when you make this decision that matters and nothing else. The nice thing, you cannot really make a mistake in this soul-searching process. If you feel after your choice that you made a mistake, you can always reposition yourself and try again. The universe will always give you new chances to define yourself. 

Synchronicities versus Spiritual Intuition

The Tao exists, it can be observed moment by moment and I have often written about it in this forum. The question however remains, does it exist for everybody? Some spiritual path travelers describe real conversations with the True Self, a good example in this direction is Neale Walsch who manged to fill books with his Conversations with God. Perhaps the Tao is just an external conversation device for those who don't have the same trust to rely on their inner voices. Synchronicities are seemingly magic connnections that you have with other people and events. You cannot help but to accept their meanings as a gospel from the beyond. Who knows, perhaps they stop after you have finally embraced the inner voice and no longer need any external guidance. Either way, bring it on!

Why does Ego Death have to be so Theatrical?

God says in Neale Walsch's Conversations with God that our journey does get easier, and comparing my life with other historical figures that certainly feels right. Still, I have often wondered why so many spiritual path travelers, myself included, have reported the feeling of being on the edge and looking into the abyss feeling. I hate fear and I presume most others do too, so why to have it in the first place?

Joseph Cambell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces makes a good point. He says that by transcending into the metaphysical sphere you are dealing with forces that are simply overpowering. Unless you are part of a process that allows you to conquer them step by step, i.e. the slow ego death, they will consume you. He gives the example of Prometheus who was a champion of mankind known for his enormous intelligence. He pretty much dashed into heaven and stole the fire from Zeus. Well, Zeus tied him to a stone and had his liver eaten out by an eagle day by day while growing it back over night.

The moral of the story: next time you face ego death remember it could be a lot worse. Happy traveling!

Spiritual Progress and Erosion

The Course in Miracles states that we might be mislead in the evaluation of our accomplishments:
"Some of your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success".
My experience certainly echos this sentiment. While I never really know how exactly my day went from a spiritual perspective, all I do is to focus my attention on the next choice in front of me. "No matter how many bridges I may have burnt today, now is the moment when I am healing things" happens to be my motto. Still, there are a few feedback mechanisms along your spiritual path. If love is in the air, chances are you did something right. The same applies if everything is in a perfect flow. However, when you experience interferences along the way, you are never sure whether this is a reflection of the fact that you have chosen wrongly, or if you are working off issues from the past, and experiencing pain is actually a sign of healing.

Don't be afraid the take a few steps back on your path, as long as that happens unconsciously. The little signs along the way will remind you of your missteps. Making mistakes can be very therapeutic. They allow you to monitor how your environment is changing in response, and once you have realized that you made a mistake you are likely to go your spiritual way with twice the energy. It is the ongoing spiritual erosion that results in that sinking feeling on your subconscious level that you are on the road to hell. This is what generates the cancer inside yourself. But then again, once you realize it there is nothing to fear anymore. As God said in Neale Walsch's Conversations with God, once you understand that you are driving in the wrong direction all you have to do is to turn your car around.

Groovy

Sri Ramana Maharshi once remarked that you need to watch your "pernicious habits" because the mind is a little like a potent garden, it is open to everything, the seed of a beautiful flower can be grown, but so can weed. This remark was made many decades ago, but modern neurological research would verify this insight. Thoughts, actions and habits literally form grooves in your brain, the more power to give to it, the harder it will be to overwrite them at a later stage.

You don't really need any spiritual or cultural taboos to foster right-minded thinking and living. All you need is your common sense and the sensitivity to the reactions of your soul sisters and brothers. You will recognize when you are moving in the wrong direction yourself, like the gardener cannot help noticing when weeds grows. Your spiritual path is your destination and every u-turn on that road has to be corrected with yet another u-turn as God repeatedly reminds us in Neale Walsch's "Conversations with God". Or to go back to the garden analogy, once you had to rip out the weed yourself, you will put down twice as much mulch when the next planting season starts.

Spiritual and cultural taboos may be necessary to table certain dark tendencies for a while, but ultimately you will have to face them head-on, otherwise you would always fear that somebody opens Pandora's box.

Bodies

I was in a bar the other day watching the soccer tournament when I saw some advertisements on the screen next to it which appeared like some magic sex spell. It displayed young girls with lolita-like body postures. The slim teenager bodies had surprisingly big breasts and - me, being a man - I couldn't help being glued to the screen. Actually, the ad company was a little too effective in creating these images as for the life of it, I couldn't have told you what the ad was about.

I vaguely remember God saying in Neale Walsch's Conversations with God that you will always discover the soul of your sister or brother despite their bodies if you really look. I experience this most of the times. If you meet a breathtaking 'body' on the street and really bother to look at his or her face, something amazing happens - the gestalt changes into something else. Sadly, the sisters and brothers with the sexiest bodies often have plain faces. Exceptions to the rules exist of course, but then the gestalt changes into the most amazing art work.

So why was I so depressed the other day when the media got me? I couldn't get to the soul of the girls, my sex instincts prevailed. Well, it's a kind of a media sex spell. They define the environment you are in, and probably also used some digital magic to blow up specific bodyparts. Exactly the same applies if you go to a sexual websites or see pornographic movies. These scenes are designed to activate your sexual fantasies - and where your mind is, soul perception is hard to come by. It's like going to a magic show and being surprised that you cannot figure out the trick.

The Devil Inside

I sometimes wonder how people will feel reading my thoughts 5000 years from now. Will they laugh at my naivete or will they see nuggets of wisdom. The answer is probably both. When you read the story of Adam and Eve, the idea of seperation from an external God and devil strikes us odd today. Is there really a force out there that wants us to do evil things? Well, this concept somehow doesn't feel right. But then, we probably have all discovered in us the voice that wants us to go in the opposite direction that our spiritual path would lead us to. We now call this voice ego rather than the devil, because we now feel the struggle of seperation versus oneness right inside ourselves.

My Russian colleague told me that if you touch wood you also want to spit over your right shoulder, because that is where the devil sits. Actually, I wasn't surprised, the right stands for our so-called rationality, please do not spit to the left, because that's where your intuition is located.

The Course in Miracles emphasizes the duality in us for pretty much for all choices: ego or God, fear or love. I have observed this duality in me as well. I do not want to bore you with my idiosyncratic shadows, but I did observe in me one day that these shadows are exactly the mirror images of my spiritual path. When you look closely, you will see that following your dark desires you will always throw dirt on your stainless path. Or to use Neale Walsch's figure, you think you are headed to Boston, but you suddenly realize that you are going full-speed south! The good thing though, once you realize this game, the struggle is mostly over. After all, why would you deliberately go in the wrong direction?

Don't fear the force inside yourself. We called it devil when we were children and just to scared to look. It takes a bit to disentangle the desires inside yourself, but it can be done. I also believe that it gets easier once you have realized the wolf in sheep's clothes. Look our for symbols in your life and always get vigilant when something doesn't feel right while you are doing whatever you are doing - especially when this feeling only lasts a micro-second. You will see that this force always throws dirt on whatever is holy to you.

The Compression of Time

I have the feeling that time compresses as we wander along our spiritual path - cause and effect of everything you do becomes more and more apparent. If you make a mistake, you either immediately realize it, or, within a short period, the universe throws a ton of bricks at you. They are magic bricks, however, once you say "I am sorry, it won't happen again" and you mean it, the bricks turn out to be made out of foam and magically disappear the next day the sun comes out.

God said that you don't really have a choice in Neale Walsch's Conversation with God, sooner or later you will stumble along your chosen spiritual path. As you mature spiritually, time compresses and the cause and effect of everything you do will become clear at an increasing speed. Perhaps we can think of a vortex that sucks us in. Initially it takes a lifetime or two to figure something out, but, as the vortex sucks you in, insights hit you with an increasing speed.

Time is compressing spiritual co-travelers, you better fasten your seat-belt.

Useful versus Right

Believers have a great advantage over agnostics, they believe in metaphysics and as we all know, it is the belief that moves mountains. But agnostics have an advantage too, they are not biased by thousands of years of accumulated spiritual knowledge of what is supposedly right for you.

To use a Freudian expression, the believers have a spiritual super-ego burnt into their brains which is pretty hard to overcome if you ever have to. God, in Neale Walsch's Conversations with God, often used the expression useful rather than right. If you need to travel to a certain destination and you go in the opposite direction, He said, well, that's not useful.

Perhaps we can use the notion of running into a maize along our spiritual path. You know that the exit lies in the north, but you have to move south in order to get there. The point is that you have to become psychologically whole before you can become holy, and God and life only know what this entails for your personal journey.