Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.

Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away thy books; no longer distract thyself: it is not allowed; but as if thou wast now dying, despise the flesh; it is blood and bones and a network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries. See the breath also, what kind of a thing it is, air, and not always the same, but every moment sent out and again sucked in. The third then is the ruling part: consider thus: Thou art an old man; no longer let this be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial movements, no longer either be dissatisfied with thy present lot, or shrink from the future.

All that is from the gods is full of Providence. That which is from fortune is not separated from nature or without an interweaving and involution with the things which are ordered by Providence. From thence all things flow; and there is besides necessity, and that which is for the advantage of the whole universe, of which thou art a part. But that is good for every part of nature which the nature of the whole brings, and what serves to maintain this nature. Now the universe is preserved, as by the changes of the elements so by the changes of things compounded of the elements. Let these principles be enough for thee, let them always be fixed opinions. But cast away the thirst after books, that thou mayest not die murmuring, but cheerfully, truly, and from thy heart thankful to the gods.

Remember how long thou hast been putting off these things, and how often thou hast received an opportunity from the gods, and yet dost not use it. Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art a part, and of what administrator of the universe thy existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou wilt go, and it will never return.

Every moment think steadily as a Roman and a man to do what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and feeling of affection, and freedom, and justice; and to give thyself relief from all other thoughts. And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee. Thou seest how few the things are, the which if a man lays hold of, he is able to live a life which flows in quiet, and is like the existence of the gods; for the gods on their part will require nothing more from him who observes these things.

Theophrastus, in his comparison of bad acts- such a comparison as one would make in accordance with the common notions of mankind- says, like a true philosopher, that the offences which are committed through desire are more blameable than those which are committed through anger. For he who is excited by anger seems to turn away from reason with a certain pain and unconscious contraction; but he who offends through desire, being overpowered by pleasure, seems to be in a manner more intemperate and more womanish in his offences. Rightly then, and in a way worthy of philosophy, he said that the offence which is committed with pleasure is more blameable than that which is committed with pain; and on the whole the one is more like a person who has been first wronged and through pain is compelled to be angry; but the other is moved by his own impulse to do wrong, being carried towards doing something by desire.

Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly. But to go away from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not involve thee in evil; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe devoid of gods or devoid of Providence? But in truth they do exist, and they do care for human things, and they have put all the means in man's power to enable him not to fall into real evils. And as to the rest, if there was anything evil, they would have provided for this also, that it should be altogether in a man's power not to fall into it. Now that which does not make a man worse, how can it make a man's life worse? But neither through ignorance, nor having the knowledge, but not the power to guard against or correct these things, is it possible that the nature of the universe has overlooked them; nor is it possible that it has made so great a mistake, either through want of power or want of skill, that good and evil should happen indiscriminately to the good and the bad. But death certainly, and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them; what is the nature of all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with the bait of pleasure or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by vapoury fame; how worthless, and contemptible, and sordid, and perishable, and dead they are- all this it is the part of the intellectual faculty to observe. To observe too who these are whose opinions and voices give reputation; what death is, and the fact that, if a man looks at it in itself, and by the abstractive power of reflection resolves into their parts all the things which present themselves to the imagination in it, he will then consider it to be nothing else than an operation of nature; and if any one is afraid of an operation of nature, he is a child. This, however, is not only an operation of nature, but it is also a thing which conduces to the purposes of nature. To observe too how man comes near to the deity, and by what part of him, and when this part of man is so disposed.

Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbours, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the daemon within him, and to reverence it sincerely. And reverence of the daemon consists in keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction with what comes from gods and men. For the things from the gods merit veneration for their excellence; and the things from men should be dear to us by reason of kinship; and sometimes even, in a manner, they move our pity by reason of men's ignorance of good and bad; this defect being not less than that which deprives us of the power of distinguishing things that are white and black.

Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment. For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can any one take this from him? These two things then thou must bear in mind; the one, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same things during a hundred years or two hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that the longest liver and he who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not.

The soul of man does violence to itself, first of all, when it becomes an abscess and, as it were, a tumour on the universe, so far as it can. For to be vexed at anything which happens is a separation of ourselves from nature, in some part of which the natures of all other things are contained. In the next place, the soul does violence to itself when it turns away from any man, or even moves towards him with the intention of injuring, such as are the souls of those who are angry. In the third place, the soul does violence to itself when it is overpowered by pleasure or by pain. Fourthly, when it plays a part, and does or says anything insincerely and untruly. Fifthly, when it allows any act of its own and any movement to be without an aim, and does anything thoughtlessly and without considering what it is, it being right that even the smallest things be done with reference to an end; and the end of rational animals is to follow the reason and the law of the most ancient city and polity.

Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgement. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion. What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, philosophy. But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements? For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature.

We all possess a “human radio” as part of the marvelous organic equipment with which we have been endowed by the Creator; we possess it whether we know it or not, and whether we believe it or not. All of us use it in some degree, knowingly or unknowingly. It is a tragedy that men who could most benefit the world by its use, throw a monkey-wrench into their own machinery and have throughout history made it as difficult as possible for the most highly developed human radios to function without being stoned to death or thrown into a madhouse.

Ordinary radios have their own territory of reception, and amplify, at the will of their owners, any program being broadcasted at the time within those limits. To know what’s “on the air,” one need but to consult the various radio reviews, or the radio section of the daily paper. These assist one in tuning in to programs which otherwise he would never know were on the air unless he spent his entire time at the radio manipulating it from one end of the dial to the other, hearing only fragments of each program. But inasmuch as these programs have been designed and are being executed knowingly by men, their intentions can be scheduled and announced.

With the human radio, however, man can only listen in to what he is able to catch. All of Nature broadcasts continuously and permanently, retaining all history in her memory, and man, though its crowning blossom on earth, and the hands by means of which she may serve herself, is after all but a part of the Whole. He is the divine child that sprang from the union of the Creative Spirit that we call God with the body of material things that we call Nature. In this cocoon of mortal flesh a human soul is born, and man, seeing only the flesh, thinks that the birth of the soul is the end of all when it casts off its chrysalis, the human body, whose only purpose is as the shroud of incubation that insulates and preserves the individualized spec of Life until its transformation from a worm to a butterfly is complete.

Until then its wings cannot be used, but they are developing though unseen. And what would be the result if the butterfly refused to develop its wings because it could find no use for them in its cocoon? And it is thus with unseen, neglected faculties of the human mind, without which we would be as helpless after death as a butterfly without wings—faculties which have puzzled science because of the little practical use for them in this life as we know it. There is little real use, it seems, in the toys of children, but it is the children who play as if the world depended upon it with toys, who later wield tools and weapons as masters of men.

So if one cannot put it to definite, practical use at once, still it would behoove him to “play” with the human radio, developing his Intuition, Imagination and Memory into the powerful wings of freedom for the human soul which they are destined to be. But instead of “playing” with it, the “Game of Life,” man suffers with it, accepting conditions and “programs” without any effort to change them or get something better.

There is something lacking in the newspapers of today, something which in small measure I have been quietly trying to supply: a “Human Radio Review,” as it were, broadcasting a few fragments of what I have found, and continue to find “in the air,” a willing entertainer, comforter, helper or tantalizer of man, according to the adjustment of this own mechanism. He can become a wise man or a fool, a madman or a genius; the intricacies of all knowledge are at his disposal, or the simplicity of Wisdom, just as he desires or thinks.

To help others develop, perfect, adjust and atune their human radios is one of the main objects of my life. And in this connection, as time passes, I shall develop a “service” which might fittingly be called “The Human Radio(P)review”—calling attention to what’s “in the air” for the human radio that cares to listen, and making suggestions to help the readers tune out of uncomfortable programs into more beneficial ones aligned with human progress.

You may rest assured that the air is not completely filled with “sermons.” There is plenty of humor and entertainment, plenty of music to lift the soul above material clouds, or plunge it into the primitive earth. There is the breathtaking panorama of History, not as it is written, but as it was, and still is, in Nature’s all-seeing Memory. And there are the whispers and shadows of a limitless future offering us our choice of what it and we shall be.

Starting as a child you seek guidance outside yourself because you know no better and you don't have the brain to even imagine being a source of your own guidance. Everyone wants to belong, and when you are a child you want to belong to all of the idiots who don't think, which is the whole crux of the problem. Ultimately your own system is the guidance you're seeking and is perfectly attuned to your circumstance.

In the short of it, without knowing it, a child thinks that its parents are god. Only later does the brain develop to the point where the child can have a concept of god, beyond the concept of parents. You must constantly keep this in mind when dealing with young children, because if you are harsh or strong with them, they think "god" is attacking them. They think god is all knowing, they think god' s knowledge is absolute and infallible. So if god is attacking them, they must be evil. The reason you have to be careful with them is because they can fall into thinking they are evil and never know what happened.

This carries into adulthood and when people throw god out the window. It is because they cannot stand the pressure of feeling worthless, useless, evil, and they have to throw away the thing that is making them feel that way. When one has the concept of an all-powerful god, and one sees people who are casting you upon yourself, and making you feel inferior, guilty, worthless, useless, evil, you have to throw away the concept as worthless. You are going to try and maintain your own sense of worth. You get to the point of not being able to tolerate the thought of not seeing an end to it all. The "devil" exists because of frustration. The real black forces of this earth are the pent-up forces of frustration. The desire to be positive forced to be negative. It's a half-truth based on ignorance, and a half-truth can be more dangerous than ignorance.

We are born with fantasies. The child believes his parents are god, and they are exactly equal to the job. The first time he suffers any discomfort, he can't make any sense of it. It is in complete violation to the way his mind works. The reason they give you the idea of "god on high" is because when you were a child you lived in a land of giants. One of the most important things you can do with your children is to get down on the floor and play with them. When you are a child, you have to get someone to do everything for you because you aren't big enough. The child is constantly pursued by the questions: Am I doing all right?; Am I holding my end up? When you hold your end up as an adult, you don't question it, you know it. There's something radically wrong there. I can remember these things very clearly. The mind of a young child is a gold mine. If you want to see where the main event is, just look.

The newborn infant only has wriggling and crying to signal that it wants something. The infant's mind frame is one in which it knows of nothing but itself. Everything is itself - the room, the world, the people, and it is the source of its own fulfillment. In the best situation, the mother figure, whoever is taking care of the child, has to be someone who doesn't have an inner revulsion to expressions of individuality. Most do and cannot tolerate individuality, because it reminds them of the fact that they were not allowed individuality.

If the mother figure has a positive attitude toward the child and with experience is sensitive to the child's needs and wants and provides them, then the child starts off life with acquiring the attitude of achieving success in what it wants. This attitude forms the basis for the rest of life. It can form an attitude of being the one in control, of getting what it wants. That is the whole issue and it starts at the very beginning.

This is not spoiling the child. You cannot spoil a child. What people call spoiling a child, is the parent forcing the child into the desires of the parent and which are the ones he's allowed to have. It is forcing the child to put all his desires into a particular pattern the parent decides upon. That's why the "spoiled child" always has fits and tantrums. It is because he is forced into a false self and is not allowed to be his real self. You cannot fulfill a false self. The spoiled child occurs from coddling and creating desires that are not real in the child. They are fantasies and are only real in the parent's own mind. The child is only allowed to want what they want it to want. That's the whole problem in a nutshell. The kid never gets what he wants, but only what he was allowed to want. After awhile he no longer knows what he wants, and only frustration remains.

Parents beat their children because it is very well learned. They've spent their entire life beating themselves. You can't really separate between yourself and the child. There's no real guilt or pain involved in it, because in your inner mind you are chastising yourself - for things, I might add, the child may not have even done. You project some failure of your own into the pattern, you never see it objectively.

You have a child, and the child is sick and you do not recognize the sickness, as was the case with me. The child from that person cannot experience release from the sickness. The child hungers for the release from its sickness without knowing that it is the need for the other person's mind in its life, to do what it can't do yet. The child without exception is being denied the presence of another person in them and they in the other. Honorably to do so is the right thing for the child. Honorably is the big word.

The child by design sees itself as others see it. If the child is seen as good and well, the child sees itself as good and well. Most of us darn near had none of being seen as good and well. The result is that most of us carry an unnamed burden throughout our lives. It generates the sense that there is something wrong here. The question of there being something wrong here is what ends up being answered to.

The work of childhood is play. The minute the play doesn't have that genuine sparkle and vivacity, they are off the track. It has to be an on-going and constant thing because the child cannot stand the frustration. Children keep dealing with something until it is over. Many traumas that occur in childhood aren't retained as psychological difficulties, but resolved right as they happen. Most serious things are post-pubescent.

It doesn't take much positive reinforcement in the average child for them to reach the point of feeling good about themselves. But if one runs into a negative aura in the father or mother, if the parent is the type of person who is so upset that they can't want to give the attention that is needed, they can' t want to and there' s nothing they can do about it. The child will spend its life looking for an acceptance that even if it finds, won't fill them up. I call this negative impression on the child "imprinting." Imprinting is an over-riding subconscious determining factor.

The thing about people who are really divorced from themselves is that they possess an almost psychic ability, being careful by what I mean by psychic. They know how to hurt. They are able through the bond that exists between parents and children, for instance, to be sensitive to when an action on their part will hurt the most. They will pick the moment when you are ripe and hit you. It is uncanny.

When I see a woman who is headstrong, self-determined, independent, this is all hostility in my mind. The difference between arrogance and humility is hostility in anybody. In women it is hostility over the fact that they never felt wanted securely by their male imprinters. It could be a father, an older brother, an uncle. The odd thing about it is that this state can transpire in a woman for forty years, and then they find a man and it can completely turn around, which is the unusual thing about it. I've seen it happen several times. Unlike men, they can turn around. If men do not get a favorable imprint by the time they are two years old, there's nothing you can do about it. If a man doesn't get favorably imprinted as a child, he ends up constantly trying to control his environment. They are motivated by a desire to "engineer" in people. They want to be the pope.

If you haven't spent a minimum of fifty hours thinking about the mother-child relationship, you aren't going to have a nickel's worth of sense about what is really going on. You can't understand psychology until you understand the mother-child relationship. You see yourself as others see you, period. That is what the mother-child relationship is all about. If you don' t get treated right from the start, you never get started. It doesn't matter if you live to be a hundred, or what any therapist can do. If it isn't done right in the beginning, it's never done right. It starts with the first minute of birth and probably before.

Ideally when the infant demonstrates that it wants something to change in its environment, someone is there who understands what the child wants and sees that the child gets it. Mostly at the beginning, this is physical manipulation. Importantly the person responsible to the child should be someone who does not have a deep-seated objection to independence, their own or anybody else's. It's all there in the first six months for most people. If the string of ego reinforcement, ego encouragement, ego building and ego support is broken at anytime between then and thirty, you are still in trouble. That's how precarious it is. Nobody will make it through if it isn't - and people talk of a "beneficent god!"

There is a big difference between childish and child-like. The general state of consciousness of the child is a state that we would label euphoric. The child avoids any training that tries to burst his balloon. In our education system, all so-called learning is imposed upon the kids from without and they hate it. If the desire to learn something comes from within, the kid will devour whatever it is.

School was totally divorced from my questions. That's why I hated it. I had so many unanswered questions that I was hanging from the ceiling by my toenails. In my last year of high school, I didn't go to five classes. I'd come to school two classes late, and then hang out in the hall and smoke a pack of cigarettes. A Catholic Brother would then come out and tell me I had another million years of detention. I could pass the tests, but couldn't stand sitting in some class with some guy telling me how important an apostrophe was in a sentence, while meanwhile I'm feeling like my insides are falling out. I had no one to talk to, so I had to get my answers from the inside. I was an excellent student until I got into this, and then I didn't care if the place burned down. To me, I had to totally understand everything I studied. I didn't memorize. I had to follow my own master. There was absolutely nothing in this world I could permit to be more important.

I escaped into my mind from a world I couldn't stand. I forced myself to think. I started out with a blank page and everyone who comes up with something new does the same thing. I learned to notice when something important went by in my mind. I stopped everything, even if it took hours, to track it back down and follow it up. After a year or so of this, I never missed anything. I came to the conclusion that I had to find all my answers from within, that I wasn't going to get them from anyone else.

People were making me so miserable that I had to learn what made their heads tick. I had to do it with no fantasy involved and strictly and clearly see what made them operate. At the time I had never heard the word "psychology." I had never heard of Freud. When I fully understood people to my own satisfaction, and still it brought about no relief, it caused my inner death. I went to the other side.

Sometimes analysts claim that people or children imagine that they were abused and that this is the source of their problems. No one ever imagines they were abused. There could be a family of sixteen kids with only one that became a psychiatric patient. All the psychiatrist would say is that it was genetic. It wouldn't be genetic; he was the one that was used. He was the one that got all of the kicks. I can never be convinced that anyone can imagine that they were abused. If it is a hundred to one of people saying that he had a good home and the like, it's not possible that he wasn't abused.

First, lets break it down into observation, and self-observation. By observation we can take to mean the observing of the view before us, by the ego or individual body/mind. A created thing watching its own creations, then adding to the mess by creating more reactions to that which it just 'observed'. By self-observation we can mean the observing, or listening to, the entire above mentioned process, without identifying with the secondary reaction. We would then take in impressions through an observing 'I", a listening silence, which does not make judgements or assessments of that which it observes. It also has no ulterior motive, such as laziness or pride. I can't see much use in looking at the first form, observation, if we mean looking outward through the senses at our behavior in the world, and forming opinions about what a good job of observing we're doing, while the business of our life suffers for the effort. This may be good for those who have yet to venture outside their own imaginations, but for most it would be better to take a look within, at the strange and unfamilar workings of the inside of their own head.

A few points are in order here. One is that of honesty. We will not gain much if we twist or ignore certain observed facts to keep our beloved self-image intact. The ego is the enemy here, not our friend. Another is objectivity, and a little compassion. We do not wish to judge, condemn, praise or otherwise color the observations, but to see them and their patterns clearly. Finally, we will need courage and earnestness to take the task to its final conclusion: our own internal death and consequent freedom.

The main point to remember and strive for, is not to get caught in the trick of not observing the present-time observer. Who was looking? What was it that made the observation? We must make complete observations, not just of the action but of the reaction as well. The ego can split itself endlessly and we may get deluded by our growing catalog of observations into thinking we're making headway. Until we catch the devil in the act, we are only spinning about in the personality, endlessly creating more observers.

Let me see if I can illustrate how this trick works. Say you observe something about yourself, a faux pas in respected company, and realize you've been doing this for years, but were blissfully oblivious. You have observed the hereto unknown behavior, in real time, plus perhaps realized how it was a part of a long standing pattern. But did you observe your reaction, in real time, of the self you were observing with? In other words, say you were shocked at seeing this perhaps embarrassing thing about yourself. Did you include this in your observation?

Isolation is a period of time spent completely alone, cut-off from the world's distractions, for gaining self-knowledge. People have ventured into deserts, forests, and mountains for thousands of years to escape their fellow men, to find peace, and to find answers to their deepest questions. Such time alone may be an undistracted attempt to delve within in search of the truth of our being. Such time may also be an escape into daydream and fantasy. For me, a few days or weeks alone each year allowed a clearer perspective on the rest of my life and was a time to pursue meditation with full intensity. At the very least, it was an amazing adventure into a tradition few modern people dare to explore. What follows are some suggestions for the process.

First, you need a reason for a stint in isolation -- something you wish to think about or investigate. I remember the first time I chose to spend a day alone. I sat on a blanket by the edge of a field. Shortly, I realized I had nothing to focus on. I simply had heard that it was good to spend time alone. My mind wandered from one thought to the next for half a day. Finally, I packed up and went home. Of course, it wasn't a total waste. You learn something from any experience if you take time to ponder what happened and why. I am trying to save you a few steps, though.

Perhaps explaining more of the benefits will help clarify your reasons for undertaking an isolation. Many people like taking a few minutes at the end or beginning of the day to review and plan. Isolation is an opportunity to review and plan for months or years of your life. Sometimes in my isolations, I reviewed my journals from the past year. This was a priceless opportunity to see how I changed, how I spent or wasted my time, and what my actions said about my priorities. In short, to learn from my history. Next, I planned for the coming year, and developed a strategy for how I wanted to live my life.

You can use isolation for reviewing and planning, or for creating and discovering. Think about the scientist working late at night in his lab, the artist in their retreat, or the Native American on a vision quest. This is isolation as meditation. Eliminating distractions so we can look within and see what arises. For a moment, we put the demands of society on hold. No cell phones, no bills to pay, and no class or job to attend. Just you and the universe -- you and life at its simplest. In this case, your reasons may be harder to articulate -- taking the form of a feeling or intuition.

Life is a sticky business, so you'll need to reserve a block of time and prepare to cut the cords of responsibility. Get your life in order so you won't worry whether or not your dog is starving while you are supposed to be contemplating the meaning of life. The older you get the harder this becomes, as not only your dog, but your kids also might wind up starving. Few students realize the luxury of time the college age provides. One's twenties are a window of opportunity for the grand adventure of spiritual seeking.

Where to go is the next consideration. There are numerous spiritual retreats and even a book or two listing them (such as Sanctuaries: The Complete United States). Make sure you will be left alone. It is best to not even see another person for the duration. Having to dine with others, or listen to singing and chanting can be distracting. There are options besides official retreats. Maybe a friend or friend of a friend with land where you could pitch a tent. Parks and National Forests are possibilities. I know people who simply holed up in a cheap motel room for the weekend. What is wrong with using your own home? Many reminders of your life in the everyday world, easy to be disturbed by friends or family, and too many distracting temptations like the television.

Wherever you go, plan to keep your life simple while you are there. Food preparation can become a time-consuming chore or a major distraction. Some people simply choose not to eat. Fasting is worth a try. Over-eating will make you sleepy, as will lack of exercise. The more primitive your housing situation, the more planning it may take to keep things simple -- how will you cook, clean, use the toilet? Beware of too broad a focus for your isolation. Don't plan to read ten books in two days. Or plan to decide on a career, a mate, and to discover the source of thoughts. Plan a major thrust for your isolation time and let all other actions be in support of that goal.

So you found a reason, a place to go, and a plan to make your isolation happen. Now you are there, so what are the unexpected hurdles? Typically, people find reasons to leave. You decide isolation was a stupid idea, or you are not prepared, or now is not the best time, you feel weak or sick, you have too much nervous energy (can't focus), or there is some emergency at home. My advice is to not shorten you isolation. If you said you would stay a week, stay a week. However, use your best judgement. If you vomit blood once (I've seen it happen), don't panic and leave. If you vomit blood for two days, and are unable to identify and correct the cause, then you've got a problem.

Generally, decisions to leave can be negated by changing another aspect of the isolation. Once, I meditated so long that my knees hurt day and night, so I kept changing up my sitting style so I could continue. Another time, a book I thought would be inspiring was a dud, so I used another book. I could have said my knees hurt too much or that the book was uninspiring and I might as well go home. Adapt the details of your plan in mid-stream, if necessary to preserve the whole.

There is knowledge and change that will come from the isolation experience. The answer to your deepest question may not come during isolation and you shouldn't expect it to. On a long afternoon of the twentieth day of a thirty-day isolation, as you are wishing you could sleep away the rest of time, this will seem solely an exercise in determination. That may be one value, but other values are not realized until far in the future.

Isolation is an invaluable experience, but even it may outlive its usefulness. Eventually, I felt isolation was no longer useful for me. Perhaps the focus of my isolations had so permeated my everyday life that I was always alone; always looking for an answer even in the midst of an outwardly typical life. Along this line, I do not recommend a cloistered life. Escaping the world through permanent isolation will become another cage from which we must escape.

1. Fall and rise a thousand times if need be: I know some people who will set a goal to meditate every morning, do so for a week, then give up after they miss a morning. They despair over their temporary failure. The key is to keep at it, even if you miss every other day. Even if you never manage to meditate every single morning, to keep trying is what matters. If you approach the task in that manner, you will discover of what you are capable, and what you are -- likely different than your original conception.

3. Give up, then try again: You can't control this one, but it is useful to know that it will occur. There is some magic in the process of giving up, as it weakens our conception of what we are. Our conceptions of our self as a seeker are stripped away, leaving only Rose's "egoless vector" which searches simply because there is nothing else to do. This temporary giving up is also the rest period necessary for any exercise.

4. Realize that you want to help others: The ego prevents us from reaching out to others. With persistent self-analysis, you will come to have true consideration for your fellow man -- you will see your flaws in others and others' flaws in you. There is the thought that we should help others because it will help us in the long run, but this is not the same as truly wanting to help another. It is a milestone when we want to help simply because it is the natural reaction.

7. Look for the source of thoughts: Or look for the source of feeling, or intuition. Whatever you believe yourself to be, look to find where it originates. This will lead you to the source of your self. This question is phrased in many ways and may change over time. I began wanting to know what my purpose was, and ended by wanting to know what (if anything) was unchanging within me. Richard Rose describes this as backing away from untruth, which is correct in that we should not postulate what we might find. However, there is an intuition of the eternal within us which is helpful to follow -- a garbled message from the Absolute.

9. Will to do one thing -- keep one iron in the fire: Focus is the solution to any problem. If you are trying to play the stock market, get a promotion, find a spouse, and get a college degree, you will obviously have trouble finding time to meditate, read, and seek out spiritual teachers. Time spent looking within is rewarded with proportional results -- up to a point. Like any exercise, rest is part of the equation.

11. Always desire more, never be content: There are side benefits to a spiritual search. One may make fascinating friends, have travel opportunities, may even be regarded as a teacher in their own right, all before finding an answer to their deepest question. There arises the temptation to settle for a lesser prize. This is a powerful temptation whose only cure is to project out your life strand and ask if you are heading where you want to be. When you are old, what will you want to say about your life? When it is just you facing the unknown, where will you find certainty?

12. Surround yourself with fellow seekers: There is tremendous benefit to associating with like-minded people. Better yet is sharing an apartment or house with a group of seekers. It is a resource of ideas and inspiration, as well as help with the everyday problems of life. You will learn from each other's successes and failures. When one member is in despair, his fellows can in a sense, carry him until he recovers. If the group is too small, less than four perhaps, then the odds are the number of depressed members will outweigh the number of inspired and drag down the whole lot.

13. Spend time alone: From a few minutes a day to weeks-long isolations. This is a time to evaluate what you have accomplished and where you want to go. It is a time of intense concentration, intense looking within. When alone, it is easier to realize that we are the sole judge of our life and what matters is that we find the thing which settles our soul. A person may camp out, get a cheap motel room, go to a retreat center, or even hide out in their own room.

14. Know that the Hound of Heaven is real: Refers to the poem by Francis Thompson. There is something calling you -- God, Rose's Invisible Current, or the Voice of the Silence. Become aware of your intuition (heart), your hunger and yearning for certainty. You hide with endless diversions from your hunger and yearning. You fill the emptiness in you with material goods, or even love. Yet, you are truly, always alone. There is simply you and a haunting question that sooner or later you must confront.

We were talking about free association other night and someone brought point up. This point has to be brought up. When I was doing this, I had no one to talk to. I had no one to turn to. I had no place to go to discuss things. So apparently, the forces that exist decided that they were going to give me the special gift of teaching me how to do my own learning, how to do my own teaching, how to do my own insighting. I learned how to free associate. I asked myself the questions that would take me out of the blind spots. Most people doing this get into a blind spot, get into a thought that becomes repetitive, and they're done. You don't know where to go with it.

People get into a blind spot and might stay there for the rest of their life. I didn't have that problem. I learned to ask myself the questions: What does it look like?; What does it feel like?; What does it seem like?; What does it act like? - endlessly asking myself questions. Until suddenly there was one thought that was blank and would go no further. The free association word wouldn't yield anything like the release necessary. I would change just one little inflection in the words as I repeated them in my mind, just one little inflection. I'd ask myself: What does this mean? What does it suggest? What does that make me think of? I never found one of them that I didn't find my way out of whatever trap I got into by doing that. I don't know anybody else that knows how to guide themselves out of that hole. I can guide someone else out of a hole, but I can't seem to teach them how to do it themselves.

Everything you've went through in you lifetime and haven't resolved is still sitting there waiting to be worked on. Either you get straight with some of this stuff, or you'll wish you had. It is a mountain of work. You don't deal with each individual circumstance but with the abstraction of the problem. You deal with the still existing patterns. You don't deal with the individual circumstances of things in your life. The singular psychological patterns that maintain presently held values and patterns of thinking are what you deal with. You don't deal with the individual circumstances that gradually imbued you with one particular aspect or complex. Even then it is a mountain of work.

The ability of getting a feeling to translate into words is a tricky business, but it is well worth the effort. When some insight comes up, you should stop everything you are doing, if at all possible, and pay attention to it. If a word associated with a current feeling comes up, it is often extremely important. Repeat the word until you get some sense of what it means. It is often a word at the crossroads of other concepts, and ties them together. Before you couldn't figure out how this tied into this or this tied into that. You begin to build a structure and develop comprehension.

If you hold center on a problem long enough, things will open up. It is difficult when you are first trying this. It takes awhile to develop the expertise. Sometimes the effort of trying to hold center and bring something up is so great that you simply can't do it. It takes practice. You are facing a void because you don't what you are looking for. If you keep mentally facing forward, it will eventually focus itself. You will focus what your inner nature is seeking. If there wasn't an unanswered and even misstated question you wouldn't be doing this. At this point the question isn't even formed. You just know that there has to be a better state than that which you are currently in. The unanswered is what you are seeking.

It is difficult to stay on the point when thinking about something. It may be something is so painful to you that the mind will keep drifting to almost anything to get off the painful thought. When facing the unknown, the key is overcoming the fear. You must have faith that it will work. Fear is absolutely the hallmark that you are getting near something important. When you get to this fear you know something you are looking for will be found. You know that you've found a hot spot.

You have to have consistency in doing this and facing it to produce results. You can't meditate this week, do it again next week, and then let it go. You'll wind up always going back to the beginning. On the other hand, don't expect too much of yourself. When it gets too hot, let it go for awhile. The next time around you'll be a little closer when you start and you'll go a little farther before uncomfortable again.

If you're being bothered by something, I've found that if you let your body run the show, just laying horizontal, that all the things that wander around in your mind will drift off. You'll start getting a feeling that an important thought is coming. It's a physical feeling that a thought is coming up into your brain. As soon as this happens, you know you're on the road home. The pain diminishes and you start realizing what is disturbing you.

Learning this technique is like learning a new language. The first couple of times it is not going to be very effective. You just have to lay there and be quiet until the problem comes to the surface. You have to face forward into the void, as it were, a type of tunnel vision. Ideas will come to you and eventually one will come that really hits the gong about problems you are facing. Different ideas will come to fill that void. The thing that is hard about it, when you're first attempting it, is to realize that you're searching for something you presently have no answer to. It is hard to realize that you are putting effort into putting something where there is now nothing, as far as consciousness is concerned. I came upon this method instinctively. For the first year I wondered what the heck I was trying to do. Finally it started to work. This, meditation and dreams is where I've learned everything, I never learned anything from a book.

You may unconsciously be chastising that inner work is not a good of time and energy. You may be prejudiced against your own thinking to what someone else says or you read in a book. You have to think as much of your own thoughts as do of somebody else's. In any effort you start out from zero. You may feel foolish about the things you are thinking about but you have to start somewhere. You have to realize that you are trying to be a student of yourself and that it is a good effort.

I was stumbling around with meditation and I discovered that if something was bothering me and an answer to the problem occurred to me, then it stopped bothering me. So when something started bothering me I knew I was looking for a specific answer, which was the golden key to the thing. Little did I realize how much work it would be. At first you don't know what you are seeking. Once you make the discovery of this inner satisfaction, then you know what you are seeking for. You're blind to it for quite awhile. You just know things aren't what you'd like, but you aren't able to be specific about it. Our major appetite is the need to comprehend. Comprehension is a specific appetite and even needs to understand itself. You need to know what the mind is trying to get done so you can be more effective at it. Your internal system is entirely capable, given the opportunity, to teach you what it is trying to teach you. Your inner being knows. Your outer being is always unknowing.

Your system is constantly trying to get some inner job done. It is constantly trying to get you conscious of what is distressing you. Secondly, it is trying to get you to comprehend what natural laws and patterns that distress is involved with. To know where the mistake is so you can evade making the mistake and start going with the natural flow. This is all built in by design. Try to place the problem mentally in front of you and let every tension go out of your body. Let the thing just hang in front of you. Gradually a word will come to mind that will begin to explain and alleviate the circumstances. The words form so long as you hold that center. It is uncomfortable, miserable, and the only thing that is worse is what you're trying to escape. If it is something superficial, you can deal with it superficially. If it is a deeper problem, you have to pinpoint what is bothering you. To find out what it is you have to stay on center on the problem and not slip off the point. Sometimes a flash of insight might come which lasts but milliseconds. If you miss it, you can only get back to that insight by plodding and working step by step.

You can bring on insight experiences if you learn how. You have to let go of the trivia. But you have to learn what the trivia is in reference to what you are seeking. It may not be trivia in all situations. Some insight might come up when you're at a business meeting. Now to me, for the time being, the meeting would be trivia because it is mere readily accessible, and I'd have to get away. Maybe excuse myself to go to the bathroom, to get at the source of what's coming up. You may have to try to get a handle on it by repeating the word or concept over and over to yourself. When you get a handle on it, you can keep it to get back to later. If you let it go, it may not come again. It is a way of life. You don't want to give your job away, but you have to do what is ever possible.

When you run the gamut of concentrating on something, you may want to take a break or forget it for awhile. Just when you take your mind off it, is when answers to you other problems will often come into view. This is a good thing to know from the methodological standpoint. The reason for it is very simple. When you are keyed up and putting a lot of energy into a problem, the minute you let go of the problem, all the energy has to go somewhere, and it goes to whatever the next problem is on your agenda in priority basis, even if you don't know consciously what your next priorities problem may be. The second you break off concentration, a slight dizziness sets in because of the change in concentration levels. That is when the answers will come in. The more you do this switching back and forth of levels, the more effective this process and information is. As soon as you take this high energy level off the problem you are focusing on, it will escape to the next energy level, like a spark crossing the gap in a sparkplug. Until you are good at it, you won't notice it. It will just go flashing by.

There is a free association part of the mind that is like a citizen's band scanner, constantly going up and down the channels. Your inner mind is constantly trying to get your outer self aware of what's going on within yourself until you've answered to that need. It keeps throwing balls over the fence. As you drive down the road your mind will constantly pick out this fence or that tree, or this sign. You' re accustomed to it and assume that everyone else's mind does the same thing. If you analyzed why you pick this or that to see out of everything that is available, there is a definite reason and pattern to it. It follows very closely the things that come in ordinary dreaming (which is another method of throwing balls over the fence.) The dream-maker uses these things in waking life. They are attempts to guide you to what in you is unfulfilled.

When I was young I learned that dreams were the source of all necessary information. It's good to go to sleep slowly and to wake up slowly. If you have a nagging dream, just lie in bed and be quiet. Try and be conscious of no-thing, which is different than nothing. Just let it come to you. All the pictography of the dream is an attempt by the inner stage master to throw things over the fence to key you in to what is happening in your insides. Through dreams you can repair the bridge to the inner self and again become a whole person. Realizing something in a dream isn't enough; you have to become aware of it in the waking state.

When I was good at dreams, several times I was able to go deep inside myself and hear the dream and actually be able to see it, and get a person to repeat what they said time after time until I was able to re-experience the dream. In interpreting my dreams, what I would do when I woke up was to go all the way back to the crossover state. The feelings that the dreams elicit are the things that tell you what the dream means, so you have to be able to go right back into it. Whatever the same feelings are that would occur to you when you are awake, is what the dream is trying to get to. The real point in dreams is to get it to come back so clearly that you get all the feelings as they went by.

Your inner mind is using all opportunities at all times to get you to look at something about yourself. When I had my mind and could use it, every time I found somebody I didn't like, invariably I would discover that they had something that I didn't think I could ever have. But the process of going from the initial dislike to the discovery of the secret jealousy took me months every time to work my way through it. As I'd go through the process of discovering specifically what characteristics I was so jealous about, I'd find out that the person really didn't even possess the characteristics.

My mind was just using the characteristic to bait me, to bring into my awareness something about my own values. That there is something that I consider to be important inside that I'm not consciously aware of. Your mind only uses these circumstances to bring your attention to something. When the washout was over with, what I would find out about the situation was that there was something that I valued that I never realized that I valued. My mind was just using the opportunity to bring it into view. You can't know what your real attitudes are until you get good at inner work. It's the only way you can find out.

The classic idea about going to a psychiatrist is that they set you down and want to know about your past. I don't want to know anything about the past, but about what brought the person in today. It is like a person looking for their glasses, and where are they? - right on their head. If I had been an analyst, a lot of the type of material I'd have written is in D.W. Winnicott's book, The Maturational Process. You couldn't spend enough time on it.

You don't have to remember anything, traumas and the like. You are never dealing with anything except what is right here. How long it has been there is another aspect. The Freudian notion that you can go into your past and set yourself free is totally false. They only achieve remembering things. That has nothing to do with it. You have to deal with the weird things you are doing now, that you started doing back then. You don't have to remember anything.

When you find the deepest past as the real now... In other words, when you find that deep past, the real now will never be the same again. When you realize that something you started nearly from the moment you were born is something you are doing right now, it instantaneously changes and will never be the same again. You don't go back. You go along the surface until you find the past in it. You don't go anywhere. It's all right here. It never really went anyplace. It' s still here.

"The Truth will set you free." There are times you are set free and you don't even know what the truth was that did it. You have to search for the concept that expresses it. It is important to search for the concept. When you find the concept that sets you free from something, and you understand how it explains a natural process that was aborted and then brought back on track, you experience a shift of realities that will take you away from the mundane for all time, the first time it happens. It can happen in a repetitive stream for half a lifetime. You are never again caught in the surface of things. You can withdraw from the surface of things and see the overriding influence that causes situations. The first time you escape the surface of things, you are relieved of it and never caught or bound in it again.

Nobody knows this when they are studying themselves. They stumble along and fall into it and get set loose from the whole thing. Sometimes they think they've lost all their sense of reality, because reality is never perceived again as the same thing from that time on. Reality is a matter of concepts. Up until this point, the most real thing in life is a hammer. After you've crossed this invisible line, the concept of "hammer" is much more real that the hammer itself. Without the concept, you could not have the hammer, but up until this point you couldn't appreciate the importance of that thought.

The usual meaning of choice, the usual meaning of will, the usual meaning of self-determination are linguistic concepts that are darn near necessary. I accept the unfoldment of me before the only audience that matters, - me. I long ago came to the realization that it has been completely out of my hands from the beginning. I know I've had nothing to do with what I've gone through. I've been the little character that sits at the crossroads. Nothing more, nothing less.

I have not had the opportunity that most people have had of being in the ordinary sense self-determining. They determine what they want to do, go out and do it, and have a reasonable amount of success. They pay their own bills and are able to do what they call "stand on their own feet." They have the ego support involved in it and it becomes a large part of their view of themselves. You must remember that I have had none of this. The body is built to answer to the first necessity. Get the bills paid. Get the food on. Get the house in shape. My hunch is that the only reason I can still put up with life is because of the experiences I've had. For me to continue life makes no sense.

A friend was talking last night about the fact that he gets so despondent. He'll get a rush of insight about something, and it will trigger a flood of insights that will come. He'll be uplifted by the passing flood of insights, even about minute things but mostly the seeing into important things he's been blind to. Then he'll go to bed one night and wake up completely in a hole and not know how he got there. The insight is gone. He looses all the insights. He can't remember anything that he's gained. He feels completely dissipated and spent and doesn't know what hit him.

I really raised his eyebrows when I told him that the whole point of the conscious effort, the whole thing you want about insight, is the insight to insight. You want to be able to get to the point where you can see how to bring insight into the hole, to keep it from crushing all the progress. That's the only impediment to an endless, continual consciousness of insight, which is what I finally got to. The key was to seek and pray, literally pray, for the insight to see what causes the depressions, because the depressions are what destroy everything.

Every time you have a specific fall into a depression, some one, specific emotional experience is involved in it, and only one. There can be a string of depressions caused by different emotions. When you resolve and dispel one big depression through conscious effort and insight - if you ever accomplish this once, you've learned the root to dispelling all depression. Free association is the biggest key. Also, you conquer the hopelessness by facing it.

A funny thing about depression is that it takes just as much effort as it does to be positive, but you end up with totally different results. The activity itself is not so much the key as what it produces. Being positive about things is equally as real as being negative. You have the same input, different outlook and results. The only way you can determine better or not between them is by what they produce. Between them they both suffice.

Let us say you find a living spiritual teacher. Someone you feel is authentic. Now what do you do? Do you sit at their feet and try to absorb some etheric "presence" you hope is emanating from them? Do you ask every question that pops in your head? Do you wait for them to give you a blessing or hand you the sacred robe and bowl? Do you sit at their feet and take copious notes, listening attentively, hoping they will speak the secret formula to end all suffering? The best teachers will point you in a direction and show you how to walk. Your job is to listen and to learn by doing.

You can accumulate knowledge from a teacher. Not knowledge about your true being, but knowledge as to how to discover your true being. Those who believe they discovered knowledge about their being from the words of a teacher are merely memorizing information. You know nothing until you experience. Some teachers provide methods to help you find your own answers. This is knowledge given to you to use. Use it. Try it. Don't just theorize about it. Use their methods, but adapt them to your personality.

When the opportunity arises to ask questions, ask them. Don't be shy. Your shyness is fear. Be willing to ask what haunts you. Ask questions about your self and not the nature of the Absolute, God, and Heaven. The nature of such is best explained in silence. Ask about methods you have tried. Tell your successes and failures. Be willing to expose your ignorance. Secrets bind you to the mind. Open your mouth wide and let the teacher swallow your ignorance. From your ignorance will arise courage.

The Validity of Love, by Shawn Nevins: I can not count the times I scoffed at such statements as, "the universe is Love," or that, "all there is, is Love." Yet, tonight, I find myself writing, "There is only Love." The difficulty lies in the word "love." It is as full of pre-conceptions as the word "God." However, some ears may respond to "love," but not to "allness," so it is helpful to explore further. Love is not something we do. To be kind, thoughtful, positive, happy, or caring has nothing to do with Love. It is a feeling which is with us always, but only surfaces when we crack a little at the seams -- meaning when we relax our continual guard against the perceived threats of the world. Sometimes it is another person who allows us to feel the love that is always within us. Are we loved by another person, or does that feeling originate within us, available to us at any time, if we let down our guard (ego)? Love is not between two people, because there are not really two people there. There is only Love -- an ever-present oneness that has nothing to do with bodies. Search for the essential feeling behind your experience of love -- beyond romantic tingles, beyond your concern for other human beings. What is love telling you of your importance and the importance of others? "That the other is more important than me," you say. Think though, if the other person experiences the same feeling of love as you, then love is saying no one is important. Yet the majority of lovers and poets of all mediums use love to exalt the human condition and glorify our misery. A misery caused by claiming for the transient body a feeling that is eternal and all pervading. "I am in love," means not that you possess a feeling. It means that you rest in a sea of Love and are like Ramana Maharshi's salt doll dissolving in the water. Love is the light shining through the spaces between your atoms. Love is the impersonal reality of your Self.

For almost 25 years I've been involved with the TAT Foundation. My first introduction to the Albigen System was when I was a graduate painting student in Providence, RI and was encouraged by a friend to attend a lecture on Zen by a fellow named Richard Rose, who ended up becoming my husband, as providence would have it. So my circumstances have provided me with some very personal insights into the workings of the system, and the one factor that became immediately obvious was that woman's path is different from the man's.

You may argue that men and women are created equal when it comes to spiritual work, but I don't wish to indulge in argument. I'm pointing to the process of arriving at Self-Realization and how each of us works within that. I lived in a houseful of women, some married, some single, for about 7 years and discovered that to apply the principles of the Albigen System, certain pre-requisites were in order, that didn't apply to the men. The first was to keep track of the monthly cycle. This may sound like nonsense to the average socio-politically correct person, but common sense will tell you that we are biological creatures as well as spiritual ones, and the two are inseparable as long as we're in this relative existence we call living. There's a book called Brain Sex that lays it out very clearly.

So, what does keeping track of the monthly cycle have to do with spiritual work? Just ask yourself if you're the same person (or if you think you're the same person) every day. We all go through moods, but when you start to pick out a pattern, you know there's something going on in a consistent manner that has nothing to do with how someone looked at you or what kind of day you had at work. If a woman has a fairly consistent (regular) cycle, the tracking is a piece of cake - well, seemingly. As I got into this practice of watching myself from day to day, I realized that some days were more conducive to meditation, where others made it nearly impossible to concentrate. Rather than beating myself up over the fact that I was having a bad meditation, I could chalk it up to the day of the month and accept the fact that this too would pass and maybe that day could be better used for something else, like housecleaning.

Once you get the pattern identified, it is important to look back from month to month to prepare for what is to come - and it is interesting how consistent it really is. Some days are very intuitive, some very philosophical, some very physical, some very psychic, others downright frustrating. But by being able to become an observer there is a lot less identification with the body rhythm and more harmony with it. Instead of PMS being the enemy, it can be used as a time for intense discernment. Instead of being "the curse," menstruation becomes a gift of intuitive/psychic insights. Women, in general, have the advantage of being more intuitive so that the head banging logical approach can be avoided altogether. Sorry, guys.

Take a moment to be aware of your current state. Now, imagine that yesterday you died. You are exactly where you are right now, only you are dead. Nothing has changed, except that you are dead. Everything that you do from here on out is the action of a dead person -- it means nothing. Try as you might, your actions have no effect. Your touch is that of a ghost, your mightiest efforts like a soft breeze.

I have often marvelled at my ability to repeat the same mistake, often repeating a pattern of mistakes steadily down through the years. This observation runs contrary to a feeling that I'm actually getting smarter, or better, as the years run by. One also hears this from ones' peers, that we used to be pretty stupid way back when, but now, thank God, we're better. As we look at the younger generation, we see them repeating the patterns of folly we suffered through, and realize we can do little to help them with our experience. A little self-observation, and honesty, will also show us that we ourselves are only getting better relative to our own mistakes. The man we were 5 years ago was not as smart as the man we were yesterday, but much better than the one of 10 years ago.

This apparent progression from the ignorance of our past to the sureness of our present state can be seen to be only a realtive shift. Though the mistakes I made in the past month may not be near to the seriouness or frequency of the time of my adolescence, I still made them. I will most assuredly make more in the future. If we look at this seeming progression from relative ignorance to relative wisdom, we see that it is still not a real change. We are still functioning with a limited finite mind, even though it is seems to be becoming more effecient. This seeming movement is merely a statistical one if we look at it a little closer.

No matter what numbers we give to the distance between the ball and the ground, if it only travels half of these numbers at a time, it will still not be in a different position relative to the ground. To finally make contact with the ground, a total change of being will have to occur. The ball and the ground will have to enter into a common relationship, or they will have to become one unit. Let us look at our three objects, the ball, ground and seeming distance between them, in another light.

If we take the ground to be another ball, but of infinite mass and circumference, from the perspective of the smaller one we would see a plane stretching in all directions, from horizon to horizon. The finite mind, or smaller ball,could not conceive of this in any real way, it would be unaware of the ground, or infinite mind, having nothing to gauge it against. It's only relation would be one of attraction, a gravitational pull leading from multiplicity and ignorance back to the state of contact and oneness.

If we equate the state of wellness with that of Enlightenment, and the state of sickness with that of ignorance, we can get a better look at the illusion of getting better. When we read of the experience of men who have made the change to the Absolute state as described in works such as Cosmic Consciousness, by Richard Bucke, we find they describe it as sudden. There is no "better" state, but a sudden, complete change. The ball hits the ground and is a separate thing no more.

If we view the ball as having freedom of choice between directions, either moving towards the ground or away into the void, we can see another fallacy. The ground, or infinite ball, would appear to the smaller sphere to be so uniform, motionless and never changing as to be practically invisible. A projectile cannot be fired at an invisible unknown object, it has to have a direction to its m