Death Is Obsolete

 

"Death, as a concept, is preposterous in the face of the infinite effulgence of being." -- Unknown

From a quantum perspective, death is actually a re-arrangement, a re-assignment, of particles and waves. But death in the way it is used in casual social parlance, means the "end" of a living organism's lifespan. I had a wonderfully bizarre conversation with a channelled being calling itself "Anttarr" one afternoon back in 1991.

I had asked if my lifespan was predictable--you know, that question that most psychics get: When am I going to die? Anttarr replied, "Dying is a hallowed tradition amongst you humans. It is a way to escape commitments, prove a point, give up, and stop playing the game."

I countered, "So we humans don't have to die? If we wanted to, we could live as long as we wanted?"

And before I had completed that sentence, Anttarr barged in, "Of course, of course. But there is much to unravel here. There are hundreds of generations of DNA programming to prove to you that death is as inevitable as taxes," it chuckled. "But no, you don't have to leave your body, nor do you have to age. That, too, is a social meme, a more, an accepted value; a way of constructing a character around an ego. A way of using time to validate self."

I didn't really have anywhere else to go with the conversation, so I changed the subject. But Anttarr's words stuck in my craw, and every time I start mulling over my mortality, Anttarr is standing there waving his "finger".

This week, Deepak Chopra published an article in SF Gate Magazine, called "Practical Immortality". In it, he stresses the point that consciousness cannot be non-existent. It always has been and always will be conscious. It is the basic, fundamental property of experience, the physical universe, and all dimensions beyond this one.

Within this context, the concept of death is exposed as an extreme example of duality. As Alan Watts said, "Death implies Life", since death would be meaningless without life. In the social human world, we have languaged and defined life as "not death", focussing cultural attention on the end of life being the reason for living. On the face of it, it makes a kind of slavish sense, but universally and from a non-dualistic view, it is absurd.

If we can turn this around so that death exists alongside life, it makes much more sense, and becomes something we can work with. Life no longer is defined by death--no longer defined by "lifespan". Instead, death becomes a useful agent for change--a way to transform self, and transcend the death-obsessed ego.

In most cultures is the idea, or tradition, of the "mid-life crisis", seemingly brought on by "becoming aware of one's mortality." This is how we program our minds, our DNA, and those around us, into carrying on this fine tradition of mortal fear, body death, emotional loss and suffering. We live our lives under the auspices of "being a contribution to society" while we're still alive to create a "legacy", and generally use death to motivate and worship our ego.

In the face of the "effulgence of infinite being", these concepts, traditions and cultural habits become obsolete. And by contextualizing living as an everlasting sequence of experiences and expressions of form, we arrive much closer to the Cosmic Truth about existence--a truth that is informed by infinite possibilities, choices, freedom and joy. We choose to live in this form. We choose to live as boundless expressions of creation, untethered by such mundane and slavish concepts of "lifespan" or "mortality".

By living a life without end, we send a message to our DNA to continually repair and regenerate, and we embrace the nourishing impossibility of non-existence. We have always been here, and will always be here. It's the inescapable essence of life.

The Transcendental Object at the Center of Creation

Looking back on 60-odd years, I notice I've made it my business to follow some of the latest discoveries and trends in consciousness. It's more of a spiritual practice, actually, and allows a "quantum of solace" outside the normal noisy racket of my life. And every once in a while, I get a flash of insight about what this universe actually is, my place in it, and what life really means. Not to say I personally had any original thoughts in this field--just that every once in a while, I'm able to poke my head behind the curtain and see what's going on--or at least take a stab at describing what's going on.

My first real glimpse into cosmic discovery came about in a cliché way back in 1971 during a psychedelic experience. The gateway was "Orange Sunshine", and the experience was: "I saw what god was". I couldn't talk about the experience for years, but I've thought about it for over 40 years, and boiled it down to levels of consciousness, and among those, God Consciousness. This is something we all have access to (without taking psychedelics), it's just that our mundane aculturation, social training and--dare I say--American-style dismay with spiritual pursuits, puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to experiencing altered states of consciousness.

The thing about this first touch of god was, it terrified me. I mean it really scared the bejesus (pardon the pun) out of me. To the point where I was sort of stunned spiritually, where I couldn't even read a spiritual book or talk metaphysics for a few years after that.

But, as life paths go, I was returned to consciousness research from none other than my paternal granddad, a Baptist Minister by training, and a proud Irishman by birth. He gave me Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man, a pretty heavy read for a 20-year old--for anyone, any age, actually--and it pulled me out of my terror of my god encounter into an intellectual pursuit of proofs of god. This is a revered practice among Christian mystics, and I realized that under my granddad's jolly jokester Irishman act lay a true philosopher of magnitude. At any rate, I plowed through this dense tome a couple of times, and came away with a more rational view of what had happened to me that fateful night at the hippy dance.

De Chardin puts forth a series of thought experiments that bring you to unavoidable conclusions about the existence of god. He summarized that we are all "gods" in our own right (near blasphemy for his day), and that by merging into this universal consciousness, we all can have this divine experience.

Fast forward a few decades, and I was at a local ski resort on a two-night weekend gig with a band, and Sunday afternoon I was minding my own business eating a sandwich at the club where we were performing, and suddenly found myself looking at something in my mind that took me aback. It was a single sphere sitting there in my mind, much like the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey". I was like the apes jumping around trying to figure out why it was even there. And then came a thought: The entire universe emanates from this particle. Hummmm... OK. It just seemed to make sense, without any explanation--a self-evident display.

Fast forward another few years to Terence McKenna's "Time Wave Zero" theory, and we hear that there's a sort of transcendental object at the end of time, and that everything happening back from this "object" is a reflection and expression of that object. Time flows into this Transcendence like a vortex of water flowing down a drain, and it is entirely made of thought. This theory was enhanced by Kurzweil's Singularity--where all consciousness is moving toward a single point of universal thought.

THEN, a couple of scientists recently took the leap and mathematically proved that there is, indeed, one object from which the entire hologram of the universe emanates, and that it is a double tetrahedron (such as representations of the Star of David and the Sri Yantra). This accounts for all geometries, from spiraling galaxies to the double helix of DNA.

THEN, last night... I was watching the final episode of "Grimm", where our hero, Nick Burhardt, battles the ultimate evil only to watch in horror as all of those he loved are murdered by it. And just when poor Nick is about to give up and hand over the key to universal destruction to the evil guy, he is visited by his deceased mother and aunt--both powerful Grimm shamans--and together they defeat the evil, sending our hero back in time to when everyone he loves is back together again. His mother said, "The power of blood--the blood of you and all your ancestors--are more powerful than any evil."

The take away for me was that we all have within our own Being access to all the power, knowledge and love in the Universe, and it is ONLY a matter of Being Who We Truly Are. We are all not only Children of God, but also the Father of those children, having our Being in cosmic love and trust that everything there is, is who we are: The Transcendental Object at the center of Creation.

From Grumble to Humble

It was "one of those mornings" when I swung my feet from under the blankets onto the cold floor. I found myself grumbling about just about everything--it was cold, my arms hurt, I worried about money, I despised the errands I had to run, and damn it, I'm GRUMPY!

I made a point of going extra slow, in some sort of protest to myself and the Universe about irritating minutia, that, later, wouldn't amount to a hill of beans. And the fact I was grumpy about THAT, made me grumpier. I just was having a hard time snapping out of the polarized mind-warp I found myself in.

Coffee. That'll do it. I made a pot, and sat down at the computer with the steaming cup o'cheer, still irritable, but far off in the distance I could see a glimmer of better moods ahead.

I skeptically decided to listen to a meditation I received in my email inbox from Emmanuel Dagher, entitled, "Activating Your Money Magnet"--I could feel weird resentments and more grumpiness rising up, but I went ahead and listened to the 20-minute meditation.

It was actually not bad. Mainly, and thankfully so, Mr. Dagher focussed on the essentials: self-love, honor, and respect. I sat, sipping my coffee and listening, and there was, finally, a shift, and I snapped into non-duality, leaving the grouchy-grumpies behind.

Mr. Dagher pointed out that "everything that happens to us is for the good". As Pollyanna as that sounds on the surface (especially when you're pointing a grumpy finger at the Universe), from a cosmic perspective it is truth. It is too easy to pick up the thread of habituated monkey mind thinkity-think and the "fake facts" of discomforts, pain, and worries on top of completely baseless fears, that we lose track of this basic truth.

The love of and in our life starts with the self. If we don't love ourselves, we literally cannot love our life, and thus the things, people, circumstances and events within it. To love self is to honor self, and this can be a hard one.

How often is it that you make what seems to be a "mistake", only to find out later it was actually not a mistake, or by the making of it, you discovered something valuable you didn't know before. There really are no mistakes. Sure, there are mis-calculations, errors of judgement and such, but these are only so because of our perspective.

From a cosmic view, everything that happens is exactly what is needed for a higher expression, or frequency of existence. We get glimpses of this "greater world", and yet have difficulty with the navigation to it, as though the vision of it requires physical movement or doing. This is not necessary. This greater world is the world where you love and honor yourself.

Go ahead. Imagine your life where you always love and honor yourself. You feel pain, you drop something, you injure yourself--all these are opportunities to honor the process of the experience. These things deepen the experience of self, and result in greater compassion for your life and the lives of others who may be having a much tougher time of it. By honoring life and our place in it, we can feel gratitude, and that gratitude faces us towards the cosmic gateway of a greater life, and a higher world for all.

I finished my coffee, and rose from my chair, only to knock the empty cup off the desk on to the floor, intact. I paused to honor the event, and smiled.

The Discomfort Zone

I was watching a dear friend and teacher recently speak on a Facebook Live broadcast about how change is not comfortable, and about how we are using that as an excuse not to change.

Well... my dear friend, I have to disagree on a couple of finer points:

1. The reason most people need and desire change is because their comfort zones are no longer comfortable.

2. When the change one is seeking begins to happen, we feel excitement--not discomfort.

She also spoke about how the process of changing steers one through all the barriers, reasons, sensations and blockages that are holding the particular condition or situation we wanted to change in place. It's true that all of this unraveling can temporarily feel like things are "falling apart", or "caving in", however, if the intention was to change, this unraveling is the evidence validating the intention to change, so why not celebrate it?

Yes, we can definitely lose track of all the changes we have desired, so that all this "falling apart" seems dangerous or distressing--and if we go into being the victim, we risk the nullification of our intention to change.

In fact, most desire to change revolves around finding a comfort zone, where life comes to us with ease and joy, and we are free to express ourselves creatively, experience the world as a loving place, and where future changes are joyful and generative.

I would hazard a guess that the meme, "Change is uncomfortable" is really just an arbitrary point of view that ignores the mechanics of how things work in this magical 3-D world we've constructed. The bottom line is that the higher more generative life we seek change for, is, in fact, the truer reflection of who we really are. And to make that change, we have simply to focus our intent on that version of ourselve already existing as a parallel reality.

I would also profer the view that what drives most change is discomfort or pain of some level, and that it is impossible to change from an alleged "comfort zone". If we are truly in this theoretical comfort zone, why would we want to change from that?

On the other hand, why experience discomfort at all in a "comfort zone"? How about just choosing something different--perhaps with more magic, excitement and incredibleness?

If instead, we are suffering or prolonging discomfort, how about changing the current situation or condition by tuning in to the higher version of yourself, and sending out the intention to become that? More joy, more ease, more fulfullment, more amazing-ness. Then, be willing to experience whatever the universe presents to us as experience in the unfoldment of that version of yourself wherever it may lead.

I would also venture to make the observation that behind all discomfort and pain is the desire for that higher version of your life, and that any pain or discomfort we are experiencing is us in the process of actualizing that higher life. It's the perception that life is victimizing us that prolongs the discomfort, pain and suffering, and potentially completely blocks any change.

So switch it up. Be the creator. Spot where the victim is, and simply say "bye bye". Then go to where the ease and joy is that will demonstrate to the Universe--your co-creative partner--that you are onboard with realizing the greatest life you can experience, and that you are willing to go beyond that. Continually broadcast that vibration of ease, love and joy, and tune in to that same broadcast emanating from the Ultimate You right next door. Enjoy the ride, and enjoy arriving at your new comfort zone!

Be the Magician

One of the most basic skills in magic is to entrain the audience into suspending their disbelief of their own senses. If the audience no longer disbelieves what they are seeing, what you do as a magician seems like real magic. The trick is to convert the skepticism of disbelief into the wonder of true believing.

And this is how we actually create our lives. We become true believers of our own magic. We don't like a certain situation, or we want to change what we are experiencing in our lives, so we reach out with a new vision of how we want our lives to be, and refuse to disbelieve when things are slow to change or barriers and apparent obstacles block our choice to change.

Last week I had an experience with the crowdfunding app, GoFundMe. I had made a choice that I was going to raise the money for my cause, no matter how long it took, or what I had to do to make that choice come true. I thoroughly suspended my own skepticism about fundraising and "other people's intentions"--all the reasons that prevented me from using the service in the past. And with that mindset, lo and behold, it only took 48 hours to achieve my GoFundMe goal. In retrospect, it did seem like magic. In fact, many of the partcipants in the fundraiser were surprised how fast everyone chipped in.

My guru/coach said something that got me going on this: "The energy of wonder--the amazement of creation--is one of the most attractive qualities you can show the Universe. The intelligence of the particles and waves swirling around you, are just waiting for you to want something amazing they can be a part of."

Most of us have had the experience of deciding to accomplish a project or get something done, then sitting down with pen and paper to write down all the plans necessary to bring the project to fruition. We list out all the steps that we can see from the perspective of not having the project completed. We then proceed to trudge through the steps, one by one, and then realize a lot of the steps have to be revised, or new steps added, and after a while it seems overwhelming.

Of course, the problem started when we wrote down the steps we thought we needed to do. That's a problem because it was done from the viewpoint of not having what it is you're shooting for. In fact, a very wise person told me once, "It's not your job to figure out how to get something done. That's the Universe's job."

All we need to do is put the vision out there and suspend our own disbelief about it happening. The fact is, as creators, once the vision is released it IS existing within the quantum energetic structure of the subtle energy fields permeating us all. And, these subtle energies are independent of space and time and instantaneously connected to all particles and waves in the entire Universe. They are, literally, the MAGIC of life.

We can just as easily spontaneously STOP everything by disbelieving. If you don't believe in your own creation, then the intelligences of the particles and waves in the subtle energy field of your life, won't believe them either, and nothing changes.

So, as the magicians of our own life, we must entrain our monkey minds to be true believers in what we are creating. And in doing so, wha-la! Magic.

Building a Ladder to Infinite Possibilities

One of the more amazing aspects to Life that quantum physics teaches us is that all possibilities--infinite possibilities--exist within every moment. We also learn that the subatomic intelligences making up the perceivable universe(s) are clumped together in forms that the mind assigns use and meaning. These subatomic intelligences are listening to our thoughts and watching our actions at every moment.

In the science of epigenetics, we find that the decisions, opinions, fears and other emotional states not only create gene expression, which changes DNA, but that these changes are passed down for generations unless acted upon or changed.

The way we view life--our Point of View--sets up a matrix within which the subatomic intelligences build their forms and sequences. By changing your conclusions about Who You Are, it changes the matrix, and thus changes the forms surrounding you.

Most of what makes up our lives are the conclusions and points of view we established about what we perceived as events that happened around us. These conclusions and points of view direct the activities of subatomic particle-waves. Unfortunately, because we are habitually inclined to conclude and judge what we see and feel, we end up inadvertantly doubling down on our situations, creating unchanging conditions, stagnation and premature death.

The way out of the conundrum of reinforcing fixed or stubborn conditions is to stop judging, stop concluding, and stop habitually asserting a particular point of view. Instead, ask questions.

The question is the signal to the subatomic intelligences to change their positions in the matrix of Self. When you allow your perceptions, but then do not judge or draw conclusions about them, it opens up the energy and space for change to occur. By "staying in the question", you "loosen" tight, fixed forms and start to allow new energies and new forms to come into being.

How do you stay in the question? The key is mindfulness. We must be able to observe the moment we "double-down" with a conclusion or point of view. For example, your employer passes you up for a well-deserved promotion. The conclusion? "It's unfair!" or "I'll never get anywhere at this place", or "I guess I'm just not worthy". Instead, ask the question, What else is possible? What about this is getting me to my greatest and most glorious life?

Now, by asking questions, the secondary habit is to suddenly receive an awareness or a perception or "answer", and then make that answer a conclusion about "how things are". This is where mindfulness comes in again. Instead of making these answers into conclusions, simply ask more questions. The goal is to remain in a state of "ask" at all times. By attempting this, you'll become acutely aware of the debilitating and limiting conclusions and judgments you're making about your life. And sometimes it ain't pretty.

Every time you replace a conclusion with a question, you've added a rung to the Ladder of Infinite Possibilities, allowing greater space, greater vision and higher awareness than you had before. Ultimately, you're climbing into your infinite life, packed full of potential and possibilities for realizing the life you truly desire to live.

Leading the Pack

I've always been a big Carlos Castaneda fan, and his semi-fictional books have always been an inspiration. Now and then I revisit some of that information, and one piece in particular kept leaping into my awareness this past couple of weeks.

I believe it was the character Don Genaro, who, after appearing to Castaneda face to face in front of the casita where they were staying, suddenly and without warning re-appeared on the casita roof.

Flabbergasted, Castaneda blurted out, "What does this mean, Don Genaro?"

Genaro paused and looked out to the horizon for a long time from his perch on the roof, then said, "It's about getting in front of your life. If life is coming at you, you're doing it wrong. Be in front--like a leader of the pack." Genaro then jumped down off the roof, but seemed to be floating. "See? Live your life as a director, not a follower."

So many things seem to "happen to us", when actually we created them, or contributed to them happening. And yet, we seem to insist on being at the effect, or victim, of our circumstances and life events. When we assume the position of victim, or being at the effect, we give up any input energy that we may be able to change things with. That stance also leads to more victim-ness, as life saunters on like a slow moving tsunami, taking out the carefully built foundations and structures we've used to keep being at the effect.

One handy mind hack is to be mindful of when you put yourself at the effect of circumstances. Then say, "Interesting thing I created there. What is my next best move?" This replaces the inner rhetoric that usually goes on: "Damn. This pattern again. Will I ever learn? I'm tired of everything working against me."... etc. etc.

What we can create--and create in an instant--is an awareness of one of my favorite concepts: "Pronoia": The feeling and observation that Life is working in your favor. If you can perceive circumstances as being to your advantage, no matter how extreme or disadvantageous, then you've begun to "lead the pack".

Leading the pack also means seeing things the way they are NOW--not compared to the way they were, or some other past perceived joyful nirvana. Chances are that joyful nirvana is a self-defeating construct intended to neutralize best intentions in the present. "Youth is wasted on the young", or "The good ol' days are gone", or "It'll never be as good as it once was." These are all victim declarations, because they instantly dis-empower any present or future action to create brand new ways of joy and ease.

So assume the stance of Life Leader. Get out in front of circumstances simply by assuming that point of view. Then, sally forth confident that life is always working in your favor...

Life Doesn't Care...

My dear friend and shaman, Janet Barrett (whom I highly recommend for energy work), turned me on to this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. Begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

I've too often found myself stewing in recriminations and regrets about what I have or haven't done in my life--and when you get to that "certain age" (64), the opportunities to do so are frequent and persistent..

In saner moments, it's easy to see that all regret and recrimination is a result of judgements and conclusions that form into an overall point of view: "My life is nothing like I expected it to be", or "You'd think by now I'd have some things figured out", or "All this time has gone by and I still don't know shit." And then you consider all the time you've spent mulling over these apparent malfeasences and it adds more gasoline to the fire of self-condemnation.

In his quote, Emerson makes it all about choice. CHOOSE to forget those "blunders and absurdities"; CHOOSE to begin anew; and CHOOSE to begin it "serenely and with too high spirit to be encumbered by your old nonsense".

As Janet pointed out to me the other day in one of our marathon sessions, "What are you getting out of these judgements you're making about yourself? What is the reward?" Ouch. Does it actually feel good to wallow in self-pity? Well, if I was going to be completely honest, yes, there is a certain resignation and soft numbing not unlike falling asleep--and that does feel good. It's a sort of endorphin release of the abdication of responsibility combined with the cuddly softness of not giving a damn. It's a sort of soft rebellion of choosing not to care, choosing not to take action. It can be addicting, and I suspect it is what can lead a person into clinical depression.

It's not that there is anything wrong with this syndrome--it's just something to choose against, really. The soft heaviness and comfortable apathy is the vehicle carrying us toward death. It shows up in the body as a sapping of energy, a need to lie down, a compulsion to tune out everything that is not that--a path to oblivion.

Oddly, I've noticed I can jump out of this vehicle's gravitational pull by asking the simple question, "What would it take to finally have joy and ease in my life?" And after a time, the photons return to energize the DNA, and lo and behold there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The thing is, Life really doesn't care whether you personally live or die, since through living it expresses itself through you, and in death, simply uses the vacated quantum waves, molecules and cells to joyfully re-animate into new forms of life. So the choice to live or die is yours alone to make.

Vital and energetic joy and ease are what life uses to be more of itself. And when we are "full of life" there is automatically joy and ease in our lives.

Are You Living A Story You're Not Aware Of?

Lately I've been paying attention to what story I've been living. You'd think it would be obvious, just by looking around my life and noticing the patterns. But that doesn't account for habits of perception, and blind spots.

What I mean by "habits of perception" are packaged conclusions you've made that amount to preconceived ideas about the "way things are", or the "way things should be". These are judgments and points of view, that can be changed, provided enough mindfulness is employed.

These preconceived "lessons" we've "learned" from life can create blind spots of assumptions. For example, just today I spotted myself commenting, "Well, I better get busy, or I won't make any money this month." This gem is chock full of assumptions about how money comes to me, or "how the world works"--you gotta work hard to make money. We just sort of off-handedly live by these "rules", when they are based almost completely on incorrect conclusions made when we were much younger, and less wise. Yet, here we are, spouting these life rules without any critical thinking or regard to their veracity.

String enough of these rules together, and they form a narrative--a story of our life and how it unfolds for us. The thing is, it's based almost entirely on past conclusions, judgments and points of view. The fact that, in many cases, the story has been proven unworkable and sometimes miserable, doesn't seem to cause any introspection. Why? Because it's all tangled up in who and what we believe we are.

We've come to believe (because we've accepted certain things as "true"), for example, that "nothing comes easy for me." And, even when something DOES come easy, there is no alarm or red flag to tell us that our little story about how nothing comes easy has just been contradicted. Instead, we ignore that information. But when corroborating evidence that things don't come easy arrives, we are quick to jump on it as definitive evidence of the "truthiness" and consistency of our story.

This selective awareness or filtering of evidence we use to justify our precious stories, is also the way we can change a story we do not want to live in anymore. Just as we ignored exceptions to the "rule" (that nothing comes easy, for example), we can now notice the exceptions and make THAT the evidence that our story is changing. Once we make ONE exception the rule, it all starts to shift. The trick is being able to SEE evidence contradicting our stories.

One way to increase mindfulness is by using gratitude. We are grateful for what we have, and grateful when things "come together" with ease and joy. Without gratitude, we would tend to simply overlook these moments of ease and joy because they contradict our ongoing narrative (that life never comes easy).

Another technique is to "re-frame"--where we re-contextualize what we are experiencing into a positive narrative. For example, when I'm in a hurry to get somewhere--I may be under some sort of deadline--and traffic seems so slow, and that street is blocked off for a festival, or there's a tree down in the road--I would immediately jump to this being evidence of how HARD things are, and nothing comes easy. Instead, by re-framing I become grateful for these slow drivers who are timing my travels so I won't get into an accident in my haste.

In these ways, we can get out in front of our story, and make whatever changes we choose about how the story unfolds.

A long time ago, my guru told me, "Do you know how to train a cat? You wait until it does something you want it to do, and then reward it." Life is much like that--it's flowing according to the story you're creating, and will immediately change course if you do. Change course with gratitude and re-framing.

Live lightly, feel deeply...

My friend and remarkable artist and poet, Paul Bond, posted this on Facebook: "Aldous Huxley, the renowned 20th-century intellectual who wrote 'Brave New World', came to regret only one thing in life: how 'preposterously serious' he had been when he was younger.

"There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling... Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply."

Yeah, leave it to Huxley to pretty consistently blow my mind. He pulls apart two normally connected states: feeling light = feeling happy or frivolous; feeling deeply = feeling heavy. In fact, we even have the hippy vernacular, "That's heavy, man" in reacting to a spiritually deep, existential concept. And we pull back so as not to be sucked into the quicksands of our own life's ultimate meaning.

Huxley is suggesting to instead feel deeply the existential truth in the experience of life, without any need to heap loads of significance on it, or make it more important than anything else in this world.

If you've done any "manifesting" study, you know that usually the lightest of requests submitted to the Universe creates the fastest results. The Universe's responses, our body's needs, the consciousness of non-corporeal beings, God, even the thoughts of others, come into our awareness as whispers. We get used to a certain amplitude of cacophony in our modern society that seems to "drown out" these whispers and makes life seem "heavy" and isolated. We feel we need to work hard, slave away, keep our noses to the grindstone and only accept those obviously physical things as valid to our perceptions. The rest of the whispers lose their relevance.

Remember the butterfly flapping its wings causing an earthquake on the other side of the world? It's the leveling of the playing field between extreme amplitude and zero state--all is the same meaning, all is simply an effect. Everything is important, and yet nothing is, because it is all one system--one infinite connection of everything.

Perhaps it's a habit to only pay attention to big, loud, explosive experiences that rattle our senses and create flight or flight responses, when these types of experiences are the exception, not the rule. By keeping our filters turned up to protect ourselves from the intermittent drama-trauma of life, why not re-tune?

Take down the filters. Allow it all, feel it all, but skip lightly around and through it without caring or needing to somehow "do" something about it. The "doing" is not what is important. What is important is who you are being, because the Universe is responding only to how you are being, one way or the other. Why not lighten your life by being light? Be engaged with the vast and mysterious depths of life and yet enjoy the "unbearable lightness of being"?

Being 50/50 with Life

I first heard this concept from Gary Douglas, founder of Access Consciousness, and it took me a long time to fully understand what being "50/50 with life" actually means.

The key is to embrace the assumption that we are all infinite beings and as such, are infinite creators. The 50/50 concept doesn't work unless this is understood. But, it's what got me into a conundrum, which is why I had such a hard time understanding this.

The conundrum is: If I am creating everything that's happening in my life, then where's the 50 percent come from? Isn't that 100 percent me? Actually, no.

We all came into this reality agreeing to quite a long list of rules and laws, and by doing so, it shifted our power and energies to "the other". It's important to get why this is important. "The other" is the Infinite--all the infinite possibilities from which all possibilities are born. It is, as I like to say, the soft underbelly of my own infiniteness. It's the part that we make "the other"--the part that is beyond what our limited minds can fathom.

So... it's imperative, when desiring something, wanting, or needing something, that we acknowledge "the other" as our actualizing partner, that without, life becomes difficult and suffering becomes the norm.

Ultimately, Life--our experience of everything we are--is a team effort: the team of You and Life. It is at the core of dualism--the engine of polarity that drives all motion in the Universe and beyond. By not acknowledging this Other Partner, we end up victimizing ourselves within the limited perceptual box that is the mind.

How do we access that other 50%? It's deceptively simple: ask questions. But more than that, it's BEING the question, where you're genuinely curious about what is you are asking about. "What would it take to find an epic, generative relationship?", for example. Hold that question, really be it, and soon, your partner, The Other, we begin delivering circumstances, opportunities and new awarenesses about actions you can take that fulfill that sincere question--a conversation, a Facebook post, a look, a new context--all flowing to you from the Infinite in response to your question.

Now, there is a nuance to this. If you're asking the question out of desperation, or other fears, the low frequency emotional content serves to block the broadcast of your question and the reception of all the possibilities. The question must flow from pure curiosity. "What else IS possible here?", "What DOES have to change here in order to resolve this issue?", or, "WHO do I need to be in order to receive more money?" The Universe instantly begins the process of delivering your possibilities. Then, as the possibilities come pouring in, it is then becomes a matter of choice. And a choice made creates new awarenesses and even more possibilities.

So, say hello to your 50/50 partner: Life!