My favourite quote from the Buddha.......

'Do not believe a thing simply because it has been said.
Do not put your faith in traditions only because they have been honoured by so many generations.
Do not believe a thing because the general opinion believes it to be true or because it has been said repeatedly.
Do not believe a thing because of the single witness of one of the sages of antiquity.
Do not believe a thing because the probabilities are in its favour
or because you are in the habit of believing it to be true.
Do not believe in that which comes to your imagination, thinking that it must be the revelation of a superior Being.
Believe nothing that binds you to the sole authority of your masters or priests.
That which you have tried yourself, which you have experienced, which you have recognised as true, and which will be beneficial to yourself and to others, believe that and shape your conduct to it.'

It is this philosophy of the Buddha which resulted in me studying and practicing Mahayana Budddhism for nine years. I loved the idea that I was free to decide what was true for me based on my own experiences and not on what I had been told. That first night I discovered Buddhism I felt like I had come home. There is a freedom and a trusting of responsibility given by Buddhism that I don't find matched in other faiths or philosophies. Buddhism encourages the finding of one's truth and path through one's own experiences and gives the route of the eightfold pathway to ensure that it is travelled upon safely. This quote is powerful and to take it to the absolute limit requires a huge amount of courage. It's not easy to let go of the pull of the authority of so called experts to find one's own truth but this is what is required if the shift of consciousness if going to be significant.

One comment a while ago suggested that this blog was being written in a spiritually ignorant world. I don't believe that the world is spiritually ignorant. There is an awareness of 'something' but not the tools for teasing it out. The quote from the Buddha if it is read often and pondered on will start to produce the necessary tools by which spiritual knowledge and experiences can grow. No two of us have the exact same spiritual path but the tools we use to move along this path are the same. Self-awareness and an aspiration for the spiritual are given when we trust the validity of our experiences over and above the words of others.

It is interesting how the Buddha also distrusts the products of the imagination. It is from the imagination that many of the claims of visions of deities have arisen and for this reason I am highly doubtful of such claims. I don't trust the products of the mind whether these are thoughts or images, all are of perception and perception is of the ego. Experiences are given by insights and and realizations. An insight is having an inside view on something. As an example the insight I had that the firework represents the story of the one exploding to form many - that is an insight. A realization is where something is seen which shifts the consciousness. An example of this is the realization of the unity behind the perceived separation. None of these involve a visual component......

What also struck me in the quote is not to believe the single account of a sage. This is amazing really for the Buddha to say this but it is true. The ancient wisdom is always and ever the same and the insights given are the same. They may be expressed differently given the constrains of language at the time of writing but the essence of the message is exactly the same. Therefore everyone who proclaims themselves to be a sage should be teaching the same message.

I'll finish with something topical. That is the discovery of the lethal strain of bird flu the H5N1 virus that was confirmed in turkeys in England today. It is so important to keep one's nerve in the midst of events like this. It is the ability to remain steady and calm in the midst of chaos that will make a difference. Coming up to 2012 there is likely to be more of these kinds of discoveries. With each one it is important to remain calm and to discipline and not indulge the ego....

The only religion that ought to be taught....is the religion of fearlessness..

The title of this post is a quote by Swami Vivekananda and is saying much the same thing as Gandhi said. Success on the path from human to spiritual depends on many things but the most important two are courage and faith. Courage to keep going when everything is very dark and faith that the holy grail of enlightenment is achievable with courage and persistence. Enlightenment is nothing more than seeing things how they really are. In that seeing is freedom. Courage is necessary because the route to obtaining that freedom is not easy. However once the commitment has been made the help comes, of that I have no doubt.

By being fearless and acting with courage we assert the fundamental truth of the universe. This is that fear does not exist, it is made up by our ego to defend its existence. It is part of the unreal structure we made when we dissociated ourselves from spirit. Acting fearlessly proves to the universe that we have not bought into the ego's concept of fear. But liberation from fear cannot come just by saying 'I understand that fear is unreal'. Liberation from fear comes from investigating its essential nature. At the route of all fear is anger and defensiveness. Unacknowledged fear results in anger as the fear takes on an emotional charge. This emotional charge makes it more real in our world. When we can see that the fear is just a clinging to a view or an opinion frightened that it will be taken then there is no charge built up. We can see fear for what it is i.e. False Evidence Appearing Real and see through it, to be free.

Fearlessness is also connected with looking good. It is the one thing that I know stops me from being utterly fearless and out there completely liberated. I care too much about what people think. But the truth is that if I don't get over this obsession I have with looking good and do what I constantly write about which is forgetting about me I will have achieved nothing. The pull for looking good is one of the strongest traits in the design of human. It is fundamental to the structure. It takes something to be able to free oneself of this.

So today (because I am writing this in the early hours of Tuesday morning) do one act which you consider to be fearless. It might be overcoming something where you normally find yourself stopped by fear. Susan Jeffers has written a famous book called 'feel the fear and do it anyway'. This is my request to those who are reading this blog. Experience today the freedom that is on the other side of fear. Doing one thing to overcome it demonstrates more powerfully than anything the emptiness of fear. It is what we project that is causing us to be fearful. There is nothing in the inner life to be afraid of. The ego projects and separates and it is this that causes us to be fearful and distrustful...

Swami Vivekananda saw the quality of fearlessness to be so important that he suggested it as a religion. This is not a suggestion that has been made light heartedly. I know today as I walk through the park I am going to ponder on the question....what would being fearless make available to me today. What could I create if I was fearless. And then I am going to do two things that demonstrate fearlessness. This is the process that results in expansions of consciousness as the familiar the 'way it is' shifts to power......

To have.....give all to all

The above title comes from A Course in Miracles. They are the first words that came into my mind when I woke up this morning. So I am going to begin this week using these words. In the design of human giving is often associated with having less for oneself. And this can seem to be True. If I give something to somebody then I have less for myself. This is true of material possessions but not of ideas. And even for material possessions I believe that if they are given away that what is given back in return is far more.

I remember years ago giving a friend money to travel to India. He promised that he would return it to me. Time went on and he never returned it. One day I called him and said that I could do with the money and he was honest and said that he would never be able to give it up'. I accepted this and was OK with the fact that I would never see that money. What I have got back since then in terms of spiritual understandings, peace and harmony is worth more to me than money can buy. It was such a small price for the huge things I have gotten. The key to abundance is to give and to give unconditionally. To give and then forget - this is the giving that has power.

The Course in Miracles is clear about this. It makes the distinction between the ego mind and the spirit mind. I don't know when but at some point we made the decision to split from the source of our creation and create our own structure the ego. This is what happened at the Christian idea of the 'fall from Grace'. It's not so much a fall as a dissociation or a cutting off. All it will take to restore to unity that which appears to be separate is the recognition of this unity. With this recognition the split is healed and peace, harmony,love is the result.

Because I make pictures in my mind when I read I see the picture of what the Course in Miracles is trying to show so clearly. I think we formed the ego structure to enable us to experience life as a human. If we remained as spirit we wouldn't be able to experience conflict and separation. By devising a structure different to where we came from we could choose which of the opposites we could experience, i.e. up and down, fat and thing, near and far. None of these experiences is possible in the spirit world. Neale Donald Walsch in his famous Conversations with God books speaks about this. The fact that spirit cannot experience and so experiences through the ego structure that we as humans have designed for this purpose.

The guilt we feel is of knowing that we are responsible for the splitting off that happened and not taking on that responsibility. Not taking on responsibility often results in feelings of guilt. But guilt is a useless and pointless emotion. It solves nothing and there is nothing to be guilty for because the structure i.e. ego that resulted from the split is unreal. Why feel guilty over something that is unreal. All it takes for joy, bliss and happiness to be experienced is to recognise that the split has never happened. See the soul in everyone and not the personality. If it's not obvious pretend in everyone that you see the soul. In time this pretence will become reality. There will be nothing else but the Soul. You will know that you have achieved this level of understanding and awareness when talking freely to strangers will be welcomed and not feared. When others are seen for what they are brothers and sisters and not bodies that are there to harm us.

It is texts like a Course in Miracles and CWG books that speak most strongly to me. These are chanelled which means that their authors felt that they were taking an inner dictation. I don't feel my writing comes from an inner dictation but when I let myself go and not worry about going back to edit it I feel more information coming through. Not new information, it is the same information that was been written about down through the ages but the explanation appears clearer. Through writing I am coming to understand more and more...

One thing to be aware of though is that if the idea of giving unconditionally to recieve in abundance is something that any readers of this blog feel inspired to take on....a word of warning....life is likely to become turbulent for a while. This is only because the equality of having and being is not yet understood. At this stage, having can appear to be the opposite of giving. So CIM says 'this stage can seem like a contradiction because it is being learned by a conflicted mind. This means conflicting motivation and so the lesson cannot be learned consistently as yet'. Further the mind of the learner projects its own conflict, and thus does not perceive consistency in the minds of others, making him suspicious of their motivation'.

I can vouch for the Truth of this conflict from my own experience. When I seriously committed to seeing the Soul in everyone my life just seemed suddenly to be rife with conflicts, misunderstandings in communication with myself and others, so turbulent. I was bewildered because I thought 'my intention is to be in unity with everyone and instead what seems to be happening is that I am more separate than ever'. But I persevered with faith in the promise of what was possible if I persevered. Reading CIM I understand that this conflict in the outside world was a product of the conflict in my mind. As you go on studying and learning more this conflict gradually lessens. That is why the first stage of the journey from human to spiritual can be so bewildering. I can remember feeling a real sense of injustice that here I was doing all this reading and studying and yet me and my life was chaotic.

The CIM whilst it is not an easy read is well worth pursuing. It makes a clear distinction between the ego structure and spirit. It demonstrates that having bliss and joy is simply a choice to have bliss and joy by recognising that the ego structure we created is not real. It is more of a Christian text because it identifies spirit as the bridge between the creator and its creations i.e. us. Choose spirit over ego and spirit carries you very close to the creator. The last step is for the Creator alone.......

A life about me......just doesn't work...

I went to my assisting agreement today kind of shaky. This week it has felt that the whole foundation of my being has been rocked. There is a possibility that I am not the person I thought I was. Everthing that I considered to be stable and enduring felt to be under attack and I felt quite bewildered. I woke up feeling uncertain and unsure of things that last week I felt certain and sure about. I was grateful to my Buddhist training and the concept of Anicca - or impermanence. It is one of the central concepts of Buddhism, this concept of impermanence. The others are the concept of universal suffering or Dukkha and then finally Anatta or no self. I was experiencing all 3 this morning. The foundations of the world of my identity i.e. who I was was being rocked so that I wouldn't cling to this notion that who I think I am is permanent and unchanging.

So kind of lost was I that I debated about ringing my manager for my agreement and explaining that I wasn't up to speaking with people about what they wanted to create in the world. But then I realised that what I could depend on in the midst of all this turmoil is my integrity. My thoughts and feelings might be all over the place but this has no effect on my word unless I let it. So it was that I found myself in plenty of time to do this agreement, my ego personality protesting violently that its efforts to convince me that I needed this time to vegetate and feel sorry for myself were not working.

To my immense relief I saw my manager sitting at his desk. This meant that I wouldn't have to talk to anyone else. He saw me and gave me a big smile. Before the beginning of every agreement volunteers have to say anything that might get in the way of them having a powerful phone conversation with someone. I told him all about the insight I had into how I found out that I kept making someone wrong while at the same time painting myself as the person who had done everything to heal the rift. I told him I felt sick when I saw what was really going on. But that I now was determined to take responsibility. I now realise that the reason why I haven't caused things to happen in the world is because I have refused to accept responsibility. If I won't accept responsibility for small things like pulling my weight, how on earth can I expect to be trusted with the responsibility to cause greater things. I can't. This is why up to now I have had major psychological miraculous shifts, but they haven't been reflected out there in the world. They haven't, because of my refusal to take responsibility.

I also spoke to my manager about the pros and cons of getting a diagnosis for Asperger's. I asked him if he had heard of it and he had vaguely. I explained that the suggestion had rocked my world even if I pretended that it hadn't. I told him how I am afraid that if a positive diagnosis comes back that I will use it as yet another reason not to take responsibility for my life or what I create in the world. He didn't agree with my last point. He said 'when you understand what' so and accept it, then you can be responsible knowing the strengths and limitations and be powerful within those'. He didn't flinch or alter how he was with me. This was also my fear that a diagnosis of being 'somewhere' on the autistic spectrum will change how people view me. Again, this blooming concern with looking good. There was something in what he said in 'understanding what's so' and being powerful and responsible within a context of acceptance of what's so that appealed. It didn't lessen the confusion and uncertainty but something shifted. I find it hard to explain just what that was.

I settled down to make my phone-calls. After a few minutes he came over quietly to where I was on the phone and left half a bar of chocolate (with rum!) in front of me. That small and totally unexpected gesture so moved me and I immediately felt my heart expand with life and gratitude for the message I got through my manager from the universe. I know that in the midst of all this turmoil that the one thing I can rely on is my integrity to do what I said I would do no matter what. If I can't there is nothing wrong if I then communicate to the person that I won't be able to keep my word.

I don't know if it was the sudden sugar rush but the next phone call I made so was so different. I forgot about me and started to really be with this woman as I spoke to her about registering for another seminar that is starting in January. At one point in the conversation there was a shift on my part of it being just another person to speak to about this and perhaps they will register to me saying 'no I am going to be a stand that this person registers'. She told me about how upsetting she was finding the behaviour of her partner and wished to find a way to transform it. I know the power of the technology offered by this education and in those moments I took a stand for her and for her registering because of what I know she will achieve. Suddenly I was more direct, honest, totally there for her and what she could achieve and I totally forgot about me. My joy when I finally said 'are you going to register with me for this seminar to get what you see is possible for you from do it and she said just as directly 'yes'.

With this 'yes' didn't come great elation on my part. Just a quiet 'I took a stand for this woman and in taking that stand I also took responsibility for what I said to her' It was this combination of being responsible and taking a stand that resulted in me creating the possibility for her to transform her relationship by coming to the seminar. I see now what I can create when I take on being responsible. Up to now I have been a stand without the responsibility. This is why I have only been able to create small. Being a stand is just words, taking on responsibility and saying 'this shall be' - is where the power lies.

My manager was thrilled with the registration. But I know that this agreement is not about me phoning people to inspire them to register it is about me pushing myself beyond my boundaries to see what I can create. It is to show that the greatest happiness and joy comes when we forget about ourselves and go out to another. This is because at the most fundamental philosophical level there is no separation between me and another. What I do with sincerity and love for another I do for me. The difference when you do it solely for yourself is that it comes from the ego personality. This projects and increases the sense of separation whereas spirit extends and includes. So there will never be the same satisfaction if you help or show kindness to another if there is something in it for you. This will never have the same level of power. It can't because it is operating from a structure that is not real.

I finished my agreement tired but also very happy. One woman had given a commitment to transform an area of her life that wasn't working and I had caused that by being responsible and taking a stand. I want to say a bit more about being responsible because it can feel somewhat counter-intuitive. How can I take responsibility for the decisions someone else makes. The Truth is that it will always be the way that I am being when I am with someone that will determine whether or not they take up this journey of identifying the layers of 'human' and revealing the spiritual. It all hinges on who I am being.

I had a quiet night when I came home. Sat for a couple of hours in silence just being with the uncertainty that is still here. I called my brother because I wanted to share with him how I haven't been taking responsibility and how I will from now on but the phone rang and rang. I felt disappointment that I couldn't do this because it was something that I feel scared of doing even though it is totally the right thing to let him know that I have the impact of him having a sister who has taken no responsibility for anything over the years. What a burden that must have been on him. This is what I was so upset about on Thursday night.

I'm not sure how this blog is going to go during this next week. A level of certainty I had about myself and my life has gone and so there is a hesitancy about my views. This is likely to result in me being less forthright. For a couple of days I might just take a few sentences from a spiritual book and expand on those because it is parts 2 and 3 of the journey from human to spiritual i.e. know THE SELF, and know THE ONE that are more important than peeling off the layers of illusion and delusion what Buddhists call Maya that characterise the first stage - know THY SELF....

I can't help feeling that everything that has been revealed to me this week is the result of lighting a candle in a church asking that EVERYTHING that has been hidden from my view be revealed. I didn't realise it would be this relentless. It's the last time you'll find me in a church lighting a candle for such a wish......whatever was wrong with blissful ignorance! I write this somewhat flippantly but the feeling of being overwhelmed and wanting to take a step back is real. However one thing I know about this path is that there is no back. I look back down to the steps of the ladder by which I have climbed this far....they are gone.. This is why Gandhi said 'do not approach the spiritual path if you are afraid......

The peace that follows when resistance goes.....

After I finished writing the blog this morning I felt an immediate release of tension. I was free of something that had driven my behaviour since childhood. I walked again to work through the park and at one point the sun was shining through the brilliant yellow and brown leaves and the beauty of this sight completely took my breath away. I had one of those moments where my consciousness expanded and I couldn't tell where I stopped and that beauty began. The power and intensity of experiences like this is what makes them so special for me.

I arrived into work happy and met a couple of friends for Friday breakfast. There was a good atmosphere iin the office. I was also aware that all of the tiredness that I had written about a couple of days ago had totally vanished. I was bright eyed and totally awake and alert. What had changed? I didn't have any more sleep. What was different was that the resistance I had been fighting was gone. I was free and as a result no longer tired.

I was a little apprehensive at work today. I can't shake the feeling that there is something coming for me from work. I have no evidence for that it's only my feeling. I have a sense of waiting for something. I had a couple of stressful hours as I battled with putting a document together. Not for the first time I asked myself why does it take me so much longer than the others to do left brain tasks. This was putting a table with rows and columns into a document. It's not rocket science but nothing about it comes intuitively. I went down for lunch not feeling the happiest and decided to have a hot lunch so I queued up with the others. When I reached to the top of the queue the guy who was dishing out the food said 'let's look for a nice piece for you'. I was simply amazed and just looked at him. This was so unexpected and had never happened to me before. I take this as a message from the universe that even if there's all sorts going on in my head that out there in the world, I continue to be looked after.

It is magical how that little act of kindness that cost nothing shifted everything. This is the power of unconditional kindness It is powerful because it is pure. The pure in heart will always be powerful because purity has no trapped energy. Purity is free to create. I finished my lunch and returned upstairs to work. Maybe it was because it was Friday afternoon but I found it difficult to concentrate on anything. At 5pm I shut down my computer and came home.

It was such a beautiful evening walking home. I didn't have any thought in my mind except the connection with the sky and the trees. Once home I started my reading of the Course in Miracles. The first sentence that struck me said 'everyone teaches and teaches all the time. This is a responsibility you inevitably assume the moment you accept any premise at all, and no one can organise his life without any thought system'. Once you have developed a thought system of any kind, you live by it and teach it.

This says to me that as humans it is inevitable that we have a thought system. It is part of the structure we created when we split ourselves off from spirit. This thought system then becomes something that we defend ferociously. It is true because it was made by us and in that sense it is real. But in the overall scheme it is unreal that is why it has to be defended so fiercely. The way to be free from this is to recognise that yes, I have a thought structure and there is nothing wrong with it, but I also recognise that it only a thought structure that has as its products thoughts. My thought structure is not the Truth. It is not a true reflection of the world. It is only a reflection of the world as I think it is.

To shift thinking like this is to heal the separation that occurs between ego and spirit and to return what was split to wholeness. It is also to create a huge expansion of consciousness to enable awakening. No awakening is possible while there is a split in the mind. Awakening comes when the split is healed. All it takes to heal the split is the decision to recognise that thoughts are not reality. They are just what they are and that is simply thoughts. We have them, we are not them. The same goes for feelings. If I was my feeling I wouldn't be able to observe them. I often say I feel sad. If I was this feeling there would be no separation. The fact that I can see my sadness as separate means I cannot be my sadness. Given this why then should I let feelings rule my life. I can't control feelings and they are not who I am so why give them any power. Like thoughts they are there to support to give an illusion that there is something that is stable and enduring.

In a couple of weeks I am going to do a two day consciousness training course with a man called Manuel Schoch. I first met him when I worked as a volunteer for Alternatives many years ago. Alternatives is a popular mind, body spirit organisation in London. Manuel came to give a talk and it so inspired me that I have attended most of his talks when he comes to London from Switzerland where he is based. What I find to be trusted in him is that he is a neuroscientist, psychiatrist and mystic with over 30 years experience in these fields. He says nothing that he hasn't seen from his own observations. He also reads auras. I can't see auras but I believe them to be the invisible energy layer that is around each of us and it shows where a body and mind has experienced trauma.

I was inspired at one of his workshops I attended when this woman asked him to read her aura because she had ME (Myalgic Encephalopathy/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) for many years and wanted to know if it would ever go. He looked at her carefully and then said you have had this for 10 years. She said 'yes'. Then he said 'around that time you were travelling' and she said 'yes, I travelled to India'. He then said 'you got sick in India' and she said 'yes, I was very ill'. Then he said 'I see in your aura some of the virus that you got in India, I have a friend who deals with this, come and see me at the end and I will give you his details, tell him that Manuel sent you'. This woman was understandably over the moon and I had the greatest of respect for this little man who was stood at the front of the room. With all his knowledge and experience and mystical experiences he oozes shyness and humility and he inspires me.

As a volunteer for Alternatives I have had many opportunities to meet lots of spiritual teachers. While there are some genuine ones out there, there are also a lot of opportunists and clever marketing people. On this path it is so important to be able to discern someone authentic from someone who has seen a gap in the market and gone for it with some therapy or theory. In every talk Manuel has given at Alternatives, he has never accepted any payment. He came early to join us in the opening ceremony there was before the start of every talk. To me he is honest and authentic. With all his knowledge and experience he hasn't written loads of books. Here's a good website that gives a broad overview. It's well worth checking out.http://www.sentientpublications.com/authors/m_schoch.php I will ask Manuel directly at this training whether or not I have Asperger's and I will trust what he tells me.

He knows me because when I had the first experience of energy rising from my spine in an office setting on a Saturday morning, I spoke with him about it. I raised the possibility that it happened because of the overactivity of the right brain caused by uncorrected lazy right eye. He looked at me keenly and said 'what has happened to you has nothing to do with your eye'. I promptly dismissed this because it would have meant giving up my attachment to my theory. At tht time this was something I didn't want to do because if it wasn't this, then there REALLY IS SOMETHING!...woa scary big time.

So on November 21 and 22 I will ask Manuel about the possibility of Asperger's. Last night sitting quietly and thinking about this I realised that I want a yes, or no, so that then I can be responsible or not. If it's a no then I am responsible for my life and how it turns out. And if it's a yes, then I'm not responsible and nothing is my fault. It is the fault of the syndrome I didn't even know I had. Nothing could be normal for me because of the way I am.

But is this absolving myself of responsibility because I can now label myself a powerful way for me to be in life, absolutely not. But I've just realised that this is what has been going on. All my life I've been looking for ways to avoid taking responsibility. Asperger's is just the latest way! So now I have seen it I have a choice, I can keep on going the way I have or take responsibility for making things happen instead of looking for ways to have the responsibility taken away from me. I see it all so clearly now. Through writing this blog and letting everything come freely it is something else that was hidden from my view that is now revealed. It has come up for me to look at, get the impact on me and those around me from not taking responsibility, not to make myself wrong for it; it is just the way it was and now to create a new responsible way of being that will create real and lasting transformation in the world.

Today I have my assisting agreement and am far more understanding now of the training that is being given to me. Up to now I was resisting it because it was forcing me to be responsible and I don't do 'responsible'! I find all the layers of 'human' utterly fascinating. I know that there is a game being played out through me and I am all up for it. It is the continuous game of discovery and creation which moves the consciousness of humanity along. I will die but the game will continue.......

What was hidden from my view.....

Yesterday because I am writing this blog in the early hours of Friday morning was a much better day. I walked through the park to work and as always the deep peace and contentment that I always feel when I walk among nature lifted my spirits. I even smiled at a couple of people that were passing me as I walked. It is such a lovely feeling to make a connection like that no matter how brief and is a real reminder that beneath the separate human covering is a unified soul. I was upbeat for another reason and that was because I received a phone call from an old boyfriend. I knew this guy many years ago but because of how difficult I find it to form intimate relationships we broke up but he has always stayed in touch. He called me when he was getting married and when he had his first child. Then he had an affair that broke up his marriage and he came to stay with me to try to understand what had happened. He went back to his wife but has always stayed in touch. I always like to hear from him because he has an amazing mind and attitude to life that I find fascinating.

I arrived into work with the idea not to hide in my chair but to have fun with my work colleagues. Most of them were already in when I arrived so I announced myself with a cheery 'good morning'. I was met by a deafening silence. Normally I would have taken it personally but today that was just the way it was and there was nothing wrong. Looking at it like this I had power and was still able to do what I said I would do and that was to have fun. One of the guys said that he was going to go downstairs for a coffee and would anyone like anything brought up. I started to play saying yes, I want a tea, I want the tea bag left in for 2 minutes and then taken out. It was fun and changed the whole energy. I explained that this was me being unreasonable because I wanted to test how life opens up when I go out of my comfort zone of being reasonable and accommodating and be unreasonable. This interested the others and soon all of us were chatting about the power there is in being unreasonable and making unreasonable requests.

I settled down to finish my minutes from the meeting earlier in the week. I am so grateful for my ability to write. I write well which offsets my way of speaking and thinking in a simplistic manner. I had another reminder of this simplicity which could have been embarassing if I had let it be. I had a phone call where the person wanted my email address so that he could send me an email. I spelt out my name using very basic meanings like M - for mother. When the phone call was finished two of my colleagues said to me how that wasn't very professional. My first instinct was to argue but that would only have been me making them wrong and would have come from the ego personality. I am always and ever aware that I have a choice in situations where I become reactive and in that choice is power. I chose to accept what they said and I asked for the alpha, bravo, charlie, system from a colleague who had the entire thing on his computer. He printed it off and gave it to me. I spent 10 mins yesterday learning it and now I know if off by heart.

I had my seminar session after work. This is the main reason for this blog entry this morning. It is the reason why I didn't want to get out of my bed. I didn't feel like it so therefore I didn't want to write it. So why am I here now then. I am writing it because I gave my word to write every day....for no other reason. I can't control how I feel so am I going to be at the mercy of how I feel. Is keeping my word going to depend on how I feel, NO. I can have integrity and do what I said I would do regardless of how I feel. Like thoughts, I have feelings but they are not who I am. Who I am is my Word, this is all I am.

Last night I had another insight and saw something major that has been hidden from my view. I have written about the rift with my brother and how I'm so sad it's happened. I painted myself as the sister who had done everything called up, said I was sorry, said I loved him, blah, blah and then I justified myself for being resigned and cynical that this is always the way it is going to be with him.

What dawned on me in one awful terrible and shaming moment is that I have spent years making my brother wrong. I've made him wrong for having a better relationship with my mum than me. I've made him wrong for having the affection of a little old lady who used to live next door and worshipped my brother. She used to bang on the kitchen window with her walking stick. This was a signal for my mother to go out and collect whatever goodie she had for my brother that was for him and not for me or my other brother. All of this washed over me last night and I felt quite sick. Sick for the hypocrisy I have brought to the whole situation. It is like putting icing on a mud pie - the icing was me congratulating myself for doing everything to heal the rift and justifying myself and making myself right. The mud is the jealousy and making him wrong which had been running in the background every time we spoke.

This is a tough thing for me to share in this blog. Especially because I have identified it and me as spiritual. I wax lyrical about not seeing the personality only the soul. But when it came to my brother I couldn't get past making him wrong. Last night I really saw the impact me being like this must have had on him. It must have been particularly tough on him when we were speaking and he could feel intuitively that while my words were kind that there was a making him wrong that was felt and not expressed. How confusing is that for anyone.

In all of this I am not making myself wrong. It is what was there but deeply hidden from my view. Now that I have seen it I am going to give up this making him wrong. The benefit to me of doing this is that I got to be right and him wrong. I am also giving this up. I am inventing a new way of being with my brother that the next time we meet that he will feel like a younger brother should feel with an older sister. That he has a sister he can count on. Up to now he has only had a sister who he feels he has to be on the defensive with. The shift in my perception that this insight has given to me is a concrete example of a miracle. I feel this shift in every cell of my body and it is a shift that is permanent.

This is the miracle of this work. It is not easy, it takes courage and persistence. I wrote a couple of days ago about being very tired. I knew that it was a tiredness that was of resistance. There was something I was refusing to see by resisting, this was causing me to be tired. This insight was making its way to my consciousness to be seen and resolved, not judged. That part of me that doesn't want to see it is in conflict with my bigger possibility. The result is tired.

All of this is happening because of energy I have freed up by shifting how I look at certain things. A couple of weeks ago I realised that I make things significant and so when they don't happen in the way I want them to I breakdown and get upset. Letting go of this freed energy then goes to bring about the next insight. This frees up even more trapped energy. It is only when all of the energy that is trapped in disempowering thoughts and habits has been freed that creation can begin.

I create on a small scale every time I see something, give it up and bring into being a different way, but to create on a large scale requires the availability of free energy. This is why I persist with this education, it is the best teacher in showing me how I have been put together as a human. It is a fascinating discovery as long as I don't use it as a weapon to beat myself up. There is nothing wrong in the decisions I made that have made me into who I am today, it is just the way it is. Now as each of those decisions come into my consciousness I can look at them and evaluate them in terms of do they still serve me given who and what I want to be. If they do I keep them, if don't I give them up, recognise how I've been stopped by them and bring something else into life.

As I release more and more energy it is likely that deeper and more profound insights will come into my consciousness from the deeply burried unconscious. Now what I have to do to make the transformation come alive is to share it with people, most of all my brother. It doesn't come alive until it is shared. It's major for me sharing this through this blog on the Internet.

As you can imagine I was in another world coming home on the tube last night. For that reason I was glad that I hadn't driven. Last night in bed my body started to shake again. It is a long time since this has happened. As always I stayed totally connected. I find it so difficult to explain exactly the nature of this experience. It is quite violent but afterwards I feel the most amazing peace and calm. It's like all of energy that is blocked is being shaken free, if that makes any sense. I have never read about this so I have no explanation as to why it happens or what its purpose is, I just totally accept it as part of my journey from human to spiritual.

So I've kept my integrity. I've gone against an unrelenting inner voice that has been adamant that I don't write what I wrote this morning. Yet my possibility kept waking me up when I was snoozing quietly insisting 'write your blog'. I am not going to read back over it because there is a real possibility that I will delete everything because then I won't look bad to any readers. But concern with looking good means that I only play a small game. If anything I write about this journey and the way I show how determined the ego personality is not to allow access to the soul inspires anyone reading it to take this on for themselves, then it will be more than worth the discomfort and dilemma's I face each time I sit down to write it.

I'm so glad that it's the weekend. The literal way I interpret everything is now an open secret at work and there is a watching for how I respond to things. This has given me a level of wariness I have not had before. I think that it has also added to the tiredness......

Overwhelmingly tired.....

I could hardly keep my eyes open at work today. This is a worry because it signals to me that there is something deep going on internally. Tiredness is a form of resistance and sooner or later that resistance is going to end and I will come through whatever darkness this is. This tiredness indicates to me that there is something that is trying to come through to my consciousness to be healed that I am resisting. The last time I felt this kind of tiredness I had an amazing insight into how I was resisting power. All of us by virtue of how we are made are powerful. Nelson Mandela said at his inaugural speech for president in 1994 'it is our light, not our darkness that frightens us'. Deep down we all know how powerful we are and it is this knowing but not accepting that causes me to be tired. I assert that if resistance was not inherent in the human condition that there would be no such thing as tired. These days I am tired and so I am asking myself gently and patiently 'what are you resisting'. And now I wait.....

I decided not to get up early this morning in case the tiredness is really of a body being pushed too hard. That is why this blog will be shorter. I think it's worthwhile spending time on writing about the importance of being with tiredness. Not to immediately write it off as having 'overdone it'. There is a very important message in tiredness. In the past I used to be so tired in the evenings. I couldn't study or work past 6pm. When I started this education I am such a stand for I could barely keep my eyes open at the evening training sessions. But I pushed through the tiredness and the strong thoughts telling me not to go. I mentioned to someone how I was always so tired. She said to me 'why are you afraid of power'. This baffled me because I thought that I wasn't. Confusion is also another sign of resistance. Being confused prevents seeing things as they really are. Going home that night I thought about what she said. Two days later in the morning I had an insight and knew exactly what was going on.

I pretended I didn't want power when the truth was that I did and the pretence was pulling me apart and making me tired. I saw the root of this conflict and the decision I had made as a young child that 'power was bad' and I gave it up. Since then and up to now I have not had any tiredness no matter what time I go to bed. All of the trapped energy that was caught up maintaining that pretence has been freed to create something else. That is why I am going to be with this tiredness and not fight it because I know that there is something big on the other side of this resistance that is showing itself as 'tired'.

My Italian friend who looked after me when I had my operation on my foot came over to me. Her friend has written a children's book in Italian and she wanted to translate it into English. It was a lovely story about three friends, Monkey, Lion and Little Elephant who hate performing in a circus and their efforts to break free. Reading it I was reminded just how much the simple and uncomplicated appeals to me.

I have my seminar session this evening and I haven't been making unreasonable requests from people. Maybe this is at the route of my tiredness. The conflict that there is with me when I say I will do something and then I don't do it. But I suffer only because I make this significant. It's not a difficult assignment yet I am resisting it so much. I am resisting it because of how badly I take 'no'. I take it personally and the whole purpose of this exercise is to be OK with a 'no' to realise that both the request and whether it is accepted or not is empty and meaningless and just to play with making unreasonable requests. But these requests have to be reasonable in that they do not cause offence, and are do-able. They are aimed at taking me out of my comfort zone - a zone I am so reluctant to leave as seen by how excessively tired I am.

It is important to free up the trapped energy that is around being tired. Energy when it is trapped is not free to create. This is why so many lives appear to go around in circles. The same patterns are repeated. These could be work or relationship patterns. For a little while in a new job it can seem different and then one day there is the awful dawning 'this job/relationship is the same as the others'. Without realising the possibility of trapped energy resigned and cynical sets in which traps the energy still further. At least with resistance the energy is flowing, with resigned and cynical it is stagnant. Only free energy can create. For us as humans there is so much energy trapped in our thought patterns, the obsession with me and mine, and behavior habits that there isn't much free energy to create.

Today why not take an area which seems to be a bit stuck and look deeply at the thought patterns you have around why it is that way. See if you can shift your thinking and in that shift trapped energy will be freed. Then notice whether or not there is anything different about the day. This is just a small exercise but it is effective. A miracle is nothing but a shift of perception seeing the familiar in a new and powerful way....it's not about changing or making anything more better or different.....

Now I'm running late for work.......