The Bottom Line

Have you ever discovered a core truth  that had  profound meaning to you, and yet, you were unable to fully integrate this truth?  It remained an intellectual knowing, not a fully integrated experience, the kind that opens a vast deep new reality, one that has the ability to take you home.   And then one day... It all comes together and lands in you complete, and what you are is forever altered.  That happened two days ago—in the shower (where I do my very best thinking).

I haven’t always related well to Christ; the idea of God worked a little better for me, but not much.  My parents came from an extreme fundamentalist Christian environment, the kind where original sin was alive and well.  By the time I was 20, four cousins had committed suicide; potential failure with God dogged them and trying to prove their worth to God simply became too difficult.  My parents decided to escape this background by immigrating to the U.S. when I was four years old.  They drove west from Ontario, Canada only stopping when they hit the Pacific Ocean in California.  

It took years for them to come to terms with what they were rejecting and to find a more balanced approach to their spiritual life.  As I was growing up they changed religions like they were buying a new car, take it for a spin around the block and reject it or keep it awhile.  They began with the Nazarene religion and moved left from there.  By the time I left home we were Unitarian.  I’d been exposed to so many variations of what Christ and God were that I just chucked the whole thing as a muddle of nonsense.   Somehow the Holy Spirit didn’t figure into the conversation.

Over the past 40 years, I have learned what some of the world’s great teachers have had to say and I have immense respect and admiration for them.  Interestingly, without any noticeable particular intention on my part, in the past two years God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, have moved to the forefront of what I relate to spiritually.   

So three nights ago, I asked to be shown what I next need to know.  I have asked this before with no discernible outcome, however, in the morning while I was in the shower I experienced the reason for our existence.  Not just as an intellectual thought, it landed in me completely.  It wasn’t a new thought, I even wrote about it in my last post (the part about entering greater reality), yet this experience was riveting and profoundly real.  It is astoundingly simple, and people have been saying it for centuries, but until one experiences it there is a separation and it cannot land.

We are to be God in form, as God, merged completely with God. We as God.  I Am That I Am.  I Am This I AM.  There is nothing we have to pay attention to that is more important.  There is nothing else as important.   This is all there is.   Anything else is a distraction and illusion that we have created.  All the buts, what ifs, etc., are all ego.  There is nothing else required of us except to be this.  This is the whole point of our existence, to be God in form.  Our awareness merged with greater reality giving it everything we are.

It is all so simple.  All it takes is letting go of everything that is not this merging.  Nothing else is necessary.  All that is asked is, all of you given to this, a simple shift of internal loyalty from you living life for your benefit to living life for what is profoundly real, God.  All you have to do is walk into this, leaving nothing of you behind you. Everything of you goes.  Without even once considering any alternative simply step into profound greater reality, God.  Whatever you have been in life, it all goes. 

It is all there quietly waiting for us.  We can see it when we can match what we are being to what it is. Being what it is will bring us to our knees in love, awe and gratitude. This is what we are and are meant, designed, to be.

Everything is so profoundly okay. Regardless of what occurs, there has never been anything to worry about and there never will be. We will lose nothing and we will gain everything we have ever wanted. We may or may not have gold, but we will be gold. None of this is for us to have and use for a nice better life. It is for us to be God in form, greater reality in form. It is us being God in form for God’s sake not for our sake. None of this is for us to have and hold. It cannot be for the ego. The ego withers in the face of this. This is home.

How to match what this is in you is the subject of the next few posts.

"What you are looking for is what is looking." -St. Francis of Assisi

"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love."  -Meister Eckhart

Love and peace…

Entering Greater Reality

“Without your entrance to greater reality in this life, greater reality has no entrance to this life. The meaning of all of this life of yours isn’t as it appears. The meaning of this life is for greater reality to manifest through all the forms of this life.”     -John De Ruiter

I have pondered this quote at least 30 times. The most important point is if we do not allow this to occur within us then we will have missed why we are on this planet, what our existence is for. We will die with a sense of having lived an unfulfilled life, of having missed our own potential and realizing there is no one else who is responsible for us not having allowed greater reality to manifest through us. Personally, I cannot imagine a more desperate realization.

I used to try to expand, grow, and learn about my spiritual nature, but if I started to get uncomfortable, bumping up against myself or things I did not understand then I ran away from it. Most of my avoiding being uncomfortable had to do with experiences that occurred in my early 20’s that I had little frame of reference for like poltergeists, dead family members appearing to me in the middle of the night, intensely evil energy directed at me. Hence, for 25 years I learned only those things that felt good and were fairly superficial. I actually integrated very little of value and what I learned was hardly even useable. It left me ill-equipped to deal with major life issues, and I had to learn them the hard way.

In 1985, I began a long-term live-in relationship with my boyfriend. He was in the process of completing the last of 63 permits required by the state of California in order to get the required contract authorizing us to build two co-generation power plants. Everything was complete; we were just about to pay for the contract, and only one more meeting remained for funding from a major bank.

We stood to personally make $22,000,000 by 1990. The reality of my fantasy home with a circular driveway with tennis court looked like it was just around the corner. Well, he started having silent heart attacks, meaning heart attacks with no pain. We didn’t know what was happening. We thought he had food poisoning, and he blamed one heart attack on my coleslaw. He got weaker and weaker and finally had a treadmill test. During the test the doctor stopped it and sent him straight to the hospital for an emergency by-pass the next day. He was 40 years old. While on life-support he sustained some brain damage, and no one knew it. He was released from the hospital a week later.


He had a final appointment with the bank for funding 10 days after surgery and he insisted on going. He didn’t want to give them any reason for not funding the deal and said it was critical that he be there. So we put him together and drove to San Francisco. He just couldn’t hold the meeting together physically or mentally, and the whole thing fell apart. He never regained his mental aptitude and two weeks after that $22,000,000 went down the tubes and we were $100,000 in debt.

This was one of my great spiritual teachings. I just walked away from all expectations, no regrets, no remorse. The most important thing was what I was being in the midst of whatever happened. I simply let go of everything and lived in the question, “What is most profoundly important to me in this life?” “What is my life for that isn’t based on just this life, something that I can be now and here?”

There is a lot more to this story, but I discovered in this inquiry that it is impossible to serve two masters. Each of us has to make this choice: God or ego. We cannot be loyal to both because it causes an internal split, an abyss that is too deep and wide. The abyss cannot be bridged, although the ego would have us think so, for its own survival. The ego cares nothing for our best and highest interest. It would rather have us die a miserable death than give us one moment of true unabashed joy. It must be in control at all cost.

Some people never resolve this for themselves and life is then a struggle, no matter how well it seems to go on the surface there is always a sense of not quite getting life right. Something is missing. Being greater reality, giving all of our internal loyalty to it and fully integrating it into all our forms within cannot be crammed in at the last minute of our life—whenever that may be. It doesn’t work that way. Of course, every bit of work you do helps no matter when that is, but to fully integrate greater reality really takes something of us.

We are here to give it all power in us, so it is us and we are it. It then becomes indistinguishable from what we are at the core of our being, and we are then returned to what we first are, what we came from.

Everything we are aware of is in our care. We cannot pretend otherwise.

Love and peace....

Don't Believe What I Say

You should never believe what I say, or what anyone else says unless you actually know it is true. Just because someone says they know something and happen to have credibility, or lots of agreement about their knowledge, or you respect them does not mean what they say is the truth. Never blindly believe, or you may find yourself on the yellow brick road of willful ignorance and having to backtrack at a later time picking up where you left off. Sometimes where you left off might be as young as three or four years old.

Especially discern what is true about what a spiritual teacher says. Question them, take nothing at face value. Only after discerning and seeing what is actually true within you is it appropriate to believe. If you really do know the truth of something then give your whole heart to it. Go deeply into what you are knowing and pay attention to where it takes you in all the levels you are. It is like a pond that ripples both outward and inward, each ripple taking you to a more subtle level. Keep looking and see what you are knowing and being of it. If you know what you are seeing is true, give all of you to it in your heart.

My teacher, John De Ruiter, gave me similar advice after I first met him. He said not to believe anything he said unless I knew it to be true.

If you do not see things the way others do, stay with what you know, there may be something you are onto. This does not mean hold on just because you believe something. Holding onto a belief and not being willing to examine it is akin to being right. That becomes a slippery slope because what was true has in some way become distorted by your holding. Become aware of, train yourself to see when you are holding onto a belief and are unwilling to consider other possibilities that would take your knowing to a new level. Be open to letting go if another deeper knowing would shift what you previously knew. What is there to hold onto at any level? Hanging on is from habit and fear; neither is worth anything.

The bottom line is, no one has the definitive answers to anything. We are a work in progress; life is a work in progress; so there is always more we can know about what we are both in form and not-in-form. Stay open regardless of whether or not you are comfortable or uncomfortable. It is okay to let a question or an issue hang in the air until something further is known. This can sometimes take a long long time or maybe a few seconds. It doesn't matter. I have unresolved questions that have been hanging around for 30 years, and I may not get them answered, and that is perfectly fine.

As human beings we tend to rush to form. We try to give form to events, relationships before it is warranted. Have you ever tried to get a commitment from a lover before they were ready, or sell someone something before they were ready? We can almost always tell when we are rushing things, and out of willfulness or intention try to move something into form too soon . It is okay to wait. You cannot rush your spirit, your being, your knowing, your seeing. It will come when the foundation is solid, complete, and there is a place for it to land in you. This place that it lands, if you are ready, you will be able in your heart to match what it is and then what you see will be perfect and true.

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."    - Albert Einstein

Go there.

Peace and love...

Beginning in the Middle

Where to begin writing about spiritual awareness is like trying to figure out which noodle is the first noodle in a bowl of spaghetti, every noodle touches almost every other one, so I'll just start. It will probably seem like the middle, and it probably is. Life is like that though, we are always in the middle until we die and then we are in the middle of something else.

About this blog: I am not interested in surface topics. Although what I write may seem simple, I find that what is deeply true for us has its foundation in what is simple, not always easy, but simple. Many people lack the awareness of what it takes to go into and then stay in the deep, to stay in the profound within that they are, whether fully seen or not. Once there is the awareness of what it takes, then comes what may be uncomfortable and difficult, giving everything you are to what you know is true within, in your heart. This is a place that only the honest will go because it brings up everything within to be seen and be responsible for. A definition of responsible: Something that is in our care.

Personally, I'm not interested in being comfortable; it never got me what I spent most of my life looking for, in fact, it kept me away from what I most loved and knew was true within. What I am interested in is Truth and giving myself only to that and then being that with everything that I am.

Notes from John De Ruiter, my teacher and example, fill books and my personal conversations fill about 500 pages in file folders. No doubt I'll refer to these at times. I will probably also include favorite quotes from various saints, sages, knowers, and seers. Oh, and something I love to do, which is ask you questions to consider and we can then chat about them here.

Something that just popped into my mind is a line from a song by the Grateful Dead "What a long strange trip it's been." It seems like a pretty random thought, but isn't this true for all of us? When I look at my life so far, at the choices made, synchronicities experienced and just plain unusual occurrences that I can only call grace, or possibly destiny, life seems like a long strange trip hurtling toward what looks like the unknown. For me, I often find myself musing, "Where did that come from, and why now?"

One thing I do know for sure is that I don't have to go looking for what is next to take on, to master, to deal with. Life always brings us what we next need to know. For instance, if I feel the need for quiet, what I notice is how much it isn't quiet. I can then settle within, being more quiet inside regardless of what is happening around me.

Back to the Grateful Dead. I have gratefully died many many times and will continue to do so. All this really means to me is completely letting go of ways of being, internal patterns, that hinder my ability to fully know and see. Letting go to the extent that that area fades into the background and no longer has force in my life, such as impatience, self-importance, willfulness.

People say they don't know how to let go, but we do it every night when we go to sleep. Everyone can let go of no longer productive or unhealthy ways of relating or identifying. What we once did not relate to can be let go of. Like I said above, simple and maybe not so easy.

If there is some way of being you would like to let go of, love letting go of it, for example love letting go of being stingy, love letting go of being right, whatever is there for you that is in the way of you being just you. Saying I want to let go of something does not get it to move, nothing happens in that statement. However, if you love letting go of something there is a gentle, kind, soft movement, a flow. There is no force or willfulness in loving letting go. There is a sense of honoring what one is as a being.

There is a door to step through and what gets you to the entrance is softness, kindness, openness of heart. Pay close attention to being these qualities, without these firmly established within you, how can the heart take you to everything within? This is the place to begin. Let go of everything that would keep you from being open, kind, soft and honest within. Everyone can be this, everyone can do this.

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." Gospel of Thomas (quote attributed to Jesus)

I will be posting at least twice a week, and will try to answer questions and responses daily.

Peace and love...