I used to stress out over having dinner parties, birthday parties, gatherings in our home.

Now, I refuse to sponsor events in my home.

I protect our home as a sanctuary.

For years, the church told me that I must be ever ready for hospitality. I believed that – a little too much perhaps.

I wanted to be a good wife and mother. I thought that included planning and having parties.

I remember my mother having my birthday parties in our home. I’m an only child. My aunts and cousins and some school and neighborhood friends would come. My father was always on a business trip. My mom planned it every year while he was away.

I remember going to my aunt’s house for every holiday. It was festive and exciting. The decorations made it special – because my aunt went all out and it was just gorgeous. The foods and punch were only available those wonderful moments each year so I looked forward to them even more. My father stayed home alone every single year. My mom and his mother and I would go.

As a military family, we never got to experience holidays with family. We’ve always lived hours – or even oceans away.

When we planned our own little family holiday dinners, I was so stressed about making everything perfect that I would make myself physically ill. Every holiday, I would burst into tears because something wasn’t just right at dinner. The wine was spilled. The meat wasn’t cooked just right. I would forget something important, like cranberry sauce. But, I had no help. My kids were babies. My husband stayed out of the way while I worked myself into a frenzy. My mother had my two grandmothers for help and I just don’t think they really cared all that much about the details.

My kids are teens now and we cook together like a symphony.

I feel like a really horrible mom about not having birthday parties for my kids, but we bought all the themed decorations and I baked cupcakes and planned games…and no one showed up. Like, no one showed up for an entire year for my kids. No one RSVP’ed and no one came at all. We sat around as a family, staring at the cupcakes and snacks, until I went to the bathroom and cried because I realized what was happening. Then we turned on music and had our little family party.

I stopped planning my kids’ birthday parties about ten years ago.

After that year, we did everything almost the same for birthdays, but we invited no one. It’s not about getting lots of presents. It’s about celebrating my people.

My kids don’t get invited anywhere either because we homeschool and don’t go to church anymore and we just don’t have any one.

The people we thought were our friends promptly forgot about us the moment we moved away. We were even unfriended on social media. This was before I even knew what ghosting was. I’m still hurt by the lack of closure. Did I say or do something to offend? Did my kids hurt the other kids’ feelings? Did my husband upset someone? We will never know.

It was hard to socialize with my husband’s coworkers because we were often admonished for intermingling with different ranks. Even now that he’s retired and working at a local hospital, work events take place at work, so families aren’t involved.

The quarantine with COVID thankfully didn’t affect us all that much, but we’re even more isolated now. There is a gap in my son’s experiences since he has aged out of most the homeschool classes his siblings got to take. All the extracurricular activities were closed during COVID and now it’s too late for him at almost age thirteen.

My kids used to play in the neighborhood with a couple kids, but no one was ever allowed inside houses, and that’s so strange to me who grew up in the 1980’s and we were everywhere all at once. My kids lost the few acquaintances they had in the neighborhood the last year because they’re from ultra conservative families who were antivax and told us my trans kid is going to hell. My kids chose not to compromise.

I used to dream of being that house all the kids congregated at – with cookies and snacks and safety. No one over the age of ten is outside anymore. Kids are kept in classes, planned activities, rec sports, school-related extracurriculars. They have no time anymore. They have no freedom.

In Utah and Ohio, we invited people from church for celebrations and a few times it even turned out ok. I’ve been criticized by not having my kids more involved or cutting corners with store-bought cookie dough. But even when people brought a side dish, it was so very expensive hosting. I even learned how to make fun and delicious vegan dishes for the vegan pastor’s family.

It’s amazing how quickly turn against you when you begin questioning sexism and racism and capitalism in the church. We were only as valuable as we were available to work harder and spend our own money on entertaining the church. I was told to have a nice life as a dismissal. So, that chapter is closed in our book.

“Don’t leave the church because of the people who hurt you. Nobody is perfect, only God.” I’ll explain why this comment is not only not helpful at all, but also very harmful.

Jo Leuhmann

I tried to be kind to my eldest child’s friends. I invited her people over for dinner a couple times, but it’s stressful on my younger kids to feel they have to perform.

Now it’s about keeping us safe from antivaxxers.

Yes, I realize I sound whiny. But to constantly beat my head against brick walls eventually gets tiresome. We’ve been hurt and ignored and abused for so many years that it’s really hard to keep trying. I refuse to stay where I am not appreciated or celebrated. I would rather be alone. I would rather save my energy.

We desperately tried to be hospitable over the years.

My home is safe and a sanctuary from the world. I want my kids to feel safe inside our home and not hypervigilant against someone who might pose a health danger.

My introverted self is safer and happier alone in my home with my cats and my kids.

We don’t need Bible verses spouted in hate admonishing us to try harder.

Books That Have Helped Me:

• Gabor Maté
• John Gottman
• Harriet Lerner
• Susan Cain
• Elaine N. Aron
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk 
• Jesus, the Gentle Parent by LR Knost
• Motherwhelmed by Beth Berry
• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson

You might also like:

• I Tried Therapy
• Grieving Family Who Are Still Alive
• Toxic Positivity
• Teaching Kids About Healthy Relationships
• Introvert Holiday Survival Guide
• What If I Don’t Have Friends?

Linking up: Pinch of Joy, Create with Joy, Suburbia, Random Musings, Homestead, Eclectic Red Barn, God’s Growing Garden, Jenerally Informed, InstaEncouragements, OMHG, Artful Mom, Life Beyond Kitchen, Slices of Life, Joanne Viola, Soaring with Him, Fluster Buster, Ridge Haven, Answer is Choco, Lisa Notes, Pieced Pastimes, Being a Wordsmith, LouLou Girls,

This concludes my book study of The Power of Now.

It’s been interesting these last few weeks.

My eldest child got COVID, but they harassed her to return to work too early and she is not healing. I am upset about a situation that I can’t help.

My middle daughter got her wisdom teeth out.

My third child got their cast off their leg and is starting physical therapy.

I have lots of responsibilities and my schedule is full.

I love how this chapter reflects on illness and injury and how being present, conscious, in The Now gives enlightenment to tragic circumstances in our lives. I have longed to express that inner knowledge that I knew in my soul for decades.

I have felt saddened by so many who wear an illness on their sleeves like a badge of honor. Many American Christians attest to suffering as following Jesus and I am always bothered by that sentiment.

Chapter Ten: The Power of Surrender

Favorite quotes:

To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action.

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.

Let me give you a visual analogy to illustrate the point I am making. You are walking along a path at night, surrounded by a thick fog. But you have a powerful flashlight that cuts through the fog and creates a narrow, clear space in front of you. The fog is your life situation, which includes past and future; the flashlight is your conscious presence; the clear space is the Now.

It is true that only an unconscious person will try to use or manipulate others, but it is equally true that only an unconscious person can be used and manipulated.

Then one day, in the middle of an argument, you will suddenly realize that you have a choice, and you may decide to drop your own reaction — .just to see what happens. You surrender.

Nonresistance doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing. All it means is that any “doing” becomes nonreactive.

Remember the deep wisdom underlying the practice of Eastern martial arts: Don’t resist the opponent’s force. Yield to overcome.

In Taoism, there is a term called wu wei, which is usually translated as “actionless activity” or “sitting quietly doing nothing.”

Until there is surrender, unconscious role-playing constitutes a large part of human interaction. In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks. You become very simple, very real.

What the ego doesn’t know, of course, is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming “vulnerable,” can you discover you discover your true and essential invulnerability.

Surrender does not transform what is, at least not directly. Surrender transforms you. When you are transformed, your whole world is transformed, because the world is only a reflection.

When you are ill or disabled, do not feel that you have failed in some way, do not feel guilty. Do not blame life for treating you unfairly, but do not blame yourself either. All that is resistance. If you have a major illness, use it for enlightenment. Anything “bad” that happens in your life – use it for enlightenment.

Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.

Are you seriously ill and feeling angry now about what I have just said? Then that is a clear sign that the illness has become part of your sense of self and that you are now protecting your identity — as well as protecting the illness. The condition that is labeled “illness” has nothing to do with who you truly are.

As far as the still unconscious majority of the population is concerned, only a critical limit-situation has the potential to crack the hard shell of the ego and force them into surrender and so into the awakened state. A limit-situation arises when through some disaster, drastic upheaval, deep loss, or suffering your whole world is shattered and doesn’t make sense anymore. It is an encounter with death, be it physical or psychological. The egoic mind, the creator of this world, collapses. Out of the ashes of the old world, a new world can then come into being.

Full attention is full acceptance, is surrender. By giving full attention, you use the power of the Now, which is the power of your presence. No hidden pocket of resistance can survive in it. Presence removes time. Without time, no suffering, no negativity, can survive.

God is Being itself, not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and God. God-realization is the most natural thing there is. The amazing and incomprehensible fact is not that you can become conscious of God but that you are not conscious of God.

Choice implies consciousness — a high degree of consciousness.

Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life.

It always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion.

You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your sense of self from the past. Only through accessing the power of the Now, which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless, and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are. The whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary.

When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. The Now is the key.

You might also like:

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine

Whew, I feel like this chapter, it all started coming together.

I’ve felt an awakening coming the last ten years or so. I knew there was more to religion than how American Christians teach and live. I’ve gone through many cycles of despair and joy; it’s a constant spiral of learning.

I feel like I’ve come back around to the mystic spiritualism of my youth from evangelical Christianity and seeking Truth.

I’ve grown on a path to inner healing despite all the outside forces trying their darnedest to keep me stagnant, comfortable, status quo. I lost so many friends and even family members in my quest for Being.

Some days it’s hard. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it. I sometimes wish I could be ignorant, mainstream, basic: bliss. It’s often unpleasant seeing all the people around me living under capitalism, in their pain-body, striving to keep up appearances.

I know how far I’ve come from when my eldest was a teenager and would hurt me immensely with her words and behaviors. I would internalize it all and feel so bad, wondering what I did wrong, how could I make it better. Now that my third child is acting out in similar ways, I take it in stride, with so much more peace. I don’t take it personally. I know they are in pain and lashing out and I allow it and I wait for it to pass.

I like how Tolle differentiates between happiness and joy.

I mentioned last week I was also reading The Island by Aldous Huxley.

Lo, and behold, this allusion to the book is in this chapter of The Power of Now! It’s incredible to me that I just happened to decide to read these simultaneously. I often like to read a fiction and nonfiction book side by side. These two go well together.

There is a novel by Aldous Huxley called Island, written in his later years when he became very interested in spiritual teachings. It tells the story of a man shipwrecked on a remote island cut off from the rest of the world. This island contains a unique civilization. The unusual thing about it is that its inhabitants, unlike those of the rest of the world, are actually sane. The first thing that the man notices are the colorful parrots perched in the trees, and they seem to be constantly croaking the words “Attention. Here and Now. Attention. Here and Now.” We later learn that the islanders taught them these words in order to be reminded continuously to stay present.

Tolle alludes to The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism in various ways:

The First Noble Truth: There is suffering. Suffering should be understood. Suffering has been understood.

The Second Noble Truth: There is the origin of suffering, which is attachment to desire. Desire should be let go of. Desire has been let go of.

The Third Noble Truth: There is the cessation of suffering. The cessation of suffering should be realized. The cessation of suffering has been realized.

The Fourth Noble Truth: There is the Eightfold Path—the way out of suffering. This path should be developed. This path has been fully developed.

Chapter Nine: Beyond Happiness and Unhappiness There is Peace

Favorite quotes:

Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.

And when you live in complete acceptance of what is — which is the only sane way to live — there is no “good” or “bad” in your life anymore. There is only a higher good – which includes the “bad.”

Forgiveness of the present is even more important than forgiveness of the past. If you forgive every moment — allow it to be as it is — then there will be no accumulation of resentment that needs to be forgiven at some later time.

For example, when a loved one has just died, or you feel your own death approaching, you cannot be happy. It is impossible. But you can be at peace. There may be sadness and tears, but provided that you have relinquished resistance, underneath the sadness you will feel a deep serenity, a stillness, a sacred presence. This is the emanation of Being, this is inner peace, the good that has no opposite.

“Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?” This was written two thousand years ago by Marcus Aurelius, one of those exceedingly rare humans who possessed worldly power as well as wisdom.

Whenever you are not honoring the present moment by allowing it to be, you are creating drama.

You cannot have an argument with a fully conscious person.

“No one who is at one with himself can even conceive of conflict,” states A Course in Miracles.

There are cycles of success, when things come to you and thrive, and cycles of failure, when they wither or disintegrate and you have to let them go in order to make room for new things to arise, or for transformation to happen. If you cling and resist at that point, it means you are refusing to go with the flow of life, and you will suffer.

Many illnesses are created through fighting against the cycles of low energy, which are vital for regeneration.

The cyclical nature of the universe is closely linked with the impermanence of all things and situations. The Buddha made this a central part of his teaching.

Whenever a major loss of one kind or another occurs, just become deeply unhappy or make themselves ill. They cannot distinguish between their life and their life situation.

Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as the joy of Being. It is an essential part of the inner state of peace, the state that has been called the peace of God. It is your natural state, not something that you need to work hard for or struggle to attain.

Many people never realize that there can be no “salvation” in anything they do, possess, or attain. Those who do realize it often become world-weary and depressed: If nothing can give you true fulfillment, what is there left to strive for, what is the point in anything?

A Course in Miracles rightly points out that, whenever you are unhappy, there is the unconscious belief that the unhappiness “buys” you what you want.

No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the Earth that sustains it.

I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats. Even ducks have taught me important spiritual lessons.

Recurring negative emotions do sometimes contain a message, as do illnesses.

Somebody says something to you that is rude or designed to hurt. Instead of going into unconscious reaction and negativity, such as attack, defense, or withdrawal, you let it pass right through you. Offer no resistance. It is as if there is nobody there to get hurt anymore. That is forgiveness. In this way, you become invulnerable. You can still tell that person that his or her behavior is unacceptable, if that is what you choose to do. But that person no longer has the power to control your inner state. You are then in your power – not in someone else’s, nor are you run by your mind.

Having gone beyond the mind-made opposites, you become like a deep lake. The outer situation of your life and whatever happens there is the surface of the lake. Sometimes calm, sometimes windy and rough, according to the cycles and seasons. Deep down, however, the lake is always undisturbed. You are the whole lake, not just the surface, and you are in touch with your own depth, which remains absolutely still.

True relationship becomes possible only when there is an awareness of Being.

Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures.

One of the most powerful spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on the mortality of physical forms, including your own. This is called: Die before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is no more. Then a moment comes when all mind-forms or thoughts also die. Yet you are still there — the divine presence that you are. Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

To have deep empathy for the suffering of another being certainly requires a high degree of consciousness but represents only one side of compassion. It is not complete. True compassion goes beyond empathy or sympathy.

Just as the images in a dream are symbols of inner states and feelings, so our collective reality is largely a symbolic expression of fear and of the heavy layers of negativity that have accumulated in the collective human psyche.

Your primary task is not to seek salvation through creating a better world, but to awaken out of identification with form.

Only those who have transcended the world can bring about a better world.

When you are fully present and people around you manifest unconscious behavior, you won’t feel the need to react to it, so you don’t give it any reality. Your peace is so vast and deep that anything that is not peace disappears into it as if it had never existed. This breaks the karmic cycle of action and reaction. Animals, trees, flowers will feel your peace and respond to it. You teach through being, through demonstrating the peace of God. You become the “light of the world,” an emanation of pure consciousness, and so you eliminate suffering on the level of cause. You eliminate unconsciousness from the world.

To recognize the primacy of Being, and thus work on the level of cause, does not exclude the possibility that your compassion may simultaneously manifest on the level of doing and of effect by alleviating suffering whenever you come across it. When a hungry person asks you for bread and you have some, you will give it. But as you give the bread, even though your interaction may only be very brief, what really matters is this moment of shared Being, of which the bread is only a symbol. A deep healing takes place within it. In that moment, there is no giver, no receiver.

All evils are the effect of unconsciousness. You can alleviate the effects of unconsciousness, but you cannot eliminate them unless you eliminate their cause. True change happens within, not without.

Without a profound change in human consciousness, the world’s suffering is a bottomless pit. So don’t let your compassion become one-sided. Empathy with someone else’s pain or lack and a desire to help need to be balanced with a deeper realization of the eternal nature of all life and the ultimate illusion of all pain. Then let your peace flow into whatever you do and you will be working on the levels of effect and cause simultaneously.

Remember: Just as you cannot fight the darkness, so you cannot fight unconsciousness.

Raise awareness by disseminating information, or at the most, practice passive resistance. But make sure that you carry no resistance within, no hatred, no negativity.

“Love your enemies,” said Jesus, which, of course, means “have no enemies.”

You might also like:

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight

What is true salvation?

This chapter was a hard one for me.

I struggle with interpersonal relationships.

I have no friends.

My husband and I for sure have our ups and downs. It’s difficult to stay in The Now when we’re constantly hurting each other.

The concepts mentioned seem so simple, but they’re very complicated to implement, and have to be recalled again and again and again.

My parents just turned 80. I just turned 46. I know this chapter is more about partnerships and romantic relationships, but my estrangement from my parents affects every single aspect of my life. My memories swing in and whop me upside the head. I feel triggered by my husband and kids and I have to be still to gather myself so I don’t lash out. I don’t always succeed.

I am reminded of all the marriage counselors, both Christian and secular, who pointed their fingers at me, the wife, the woman. I never did enough, am not enough. I still see this online every day – on social media, from abused wives and girlfriends, from pastors, from Christian counselors – blaming women.

Tolle describes how women are more connected to emotions and the body, but he doesn’t blame women for having to carry an entire relationship between two adult people.

Tolle even discusses how women experience personal and collective pain from misogyny.

I am currently also reading Island by Aldous Huxley and this book espouses similar mystic or alternative ideas about society and relationships.

Chapter Eight: Enlightened Relationships

Favorite quotes:

You see time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle.

Unless and until you access the consciousness frequency of presence, all relationships, and particularly intimate relationships, are deeply flawed and ultimately dysfunctional.

They do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you.

For love to flourish, the light of your presence needs to be strong enough so that you no longer get taken over by the thinker or the pain-body and mistake them for who you are.

The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way.

What is God? The eternal One Life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of that One Life deep within yourself and within all creatures. To be it. Therefore, all love is the love of God.

True communication is communion — the realization of oneness, which is love.

But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world.

To relinquish judgment does not mean that you do not recognize dysfunction and unconsciousness when you see it. It means “being the knowing” rather than “being the reaction” and the judge.

If there isn’t an emanation of love and joy, complete presence and openness toward all beings, then it is not enlightenment.

Your main task as a woman now is to transmute the pain-body so that it no longer comes between you and your true self, the essence of who you are.

A victim identity is the belief that the past is more powerful than the present, which is the opposite of truth.

Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not “fit in” with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness almost by force.

If you cannot be at ease with yourself when you are alone, you will seek a relationship to cover up your unease.

I think The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is a good book to deal with pain-body concepts. We can heal ourselves and our relationships.

You might also like:

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven

I will be glad when I am through this season of busyness.

It’s too easy to feel empty when I am chauffeuring teens to appointments, social events, and sports practices. I love providing the service but get lost in the shuffle and my needs have never been met.

I have been rushing, stressed, tired – for decades now it seems. It’s been difficult to experience The Now and to rest or be still.

I’ve been suffering as a mother as I try to assist a child with depression and anxiety. It’s been a hard journey with medications, hospital visits, doctors, therapy. Some helps and some make it worse or no help at all. Some days, it’s hard to see a vision of a better future.

How am I to teach my children to experience connectedness when I myself struggle to observe it?

As a sensitive, empathic introvert, it’s often easy for me to be silent, to be still. Some might consider it daydreaming and there is a bit of that. I’ve always found it easy to be alone and to be quiet in a busy loud world.

Chapter Seven: Portals into the Unmanifested

Favorite quotes:

The Unmanifested is the source of chi. Chi is the inner energy field of your body. It is the bridge between the outer you and the Source. It lies halfway between the manifested, the world of form, and the Unmanifested. Chi can be likened to a river or an energy stream.

Chi is movement; the Unmanifested is stillness.

When your consciousness is directed outward, mind and world arise. When it is directed inward, it realizes its own Source and returns home into the Unmanifested.

As you go about your life, don’t give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and to your mind. Keep some within.

Feel the stillness deep inside it. Keep the portal open. It is quite possible to be conscious of the Unmanifested throughout your life. You feel it as a deep sense of peace somewhere in the background, a stillness that never leaves you, no matter what happens out here. You become a bridge between the Unmanifested and the manifested, between God and the world. This is the state of connectedness with the Source that we call enlightenment.

You take a journey into the Unmanifested every night when you enter the phase of deep dreamless sleep. You merge with the Source. You draw from it the vital energy that sustains you for a while when you return to the manifested, the world of separate forms. This energy is much more vital than food: “Man does not live by bread alone.” But in dreamless sleep, you don’t go into it consciously.

The Unmanifested does not liberate you until you enter it consciously. That’s why Jesus did not say: the truth will make you free, but rather: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” This is not a conceptual truth.

The Now can be seen as the main portal.

you feel the God-essence in every creature, every flower, every stone, and you realize: “All that is, is holy.” This is why Jesus, speaking entirely from his essence or Christ identity, says in the Gospel of Thomas: “Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there.”

Another portal into the Unmanifested is created through the cessation of thinking.

Surrender — the letting go of mental-emotional resistance to what is — also becomes a portal into the Unmanifested.

As soon as one of the portals is open, love is present in you as the “feeling-realization” of oneness. Love isn’t a portal; it’s what comes through the portal into this world. As long as you are completely trapped in your form identity, there can be no love. Your task is not to search for love but to find a portal through which love can enter.

The Unmanifested is not separate from the manifested. It pervades this world, but it is so well disguised that almost everybody misses it completely. If you know where to look, you’ll find it everywhere. A portal opens up every moment.

nothing in this world is so like God as silence.

“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” states the Heart Sutra.

Everybody pays attention to the things in space, but who pays attention to space itself?

Space has no “existence.” “To exist” literally means “to stand out.”

You cannot think and be aware of space — or of silence, for that matter.

Most humans are completely unconscious of this dimension. There is no inner space, no stillness. They are out of balance. In other words, they know the world, or think they do, but they don’t know God. They identify exclusively with their own physical and psychological form, unconscious of essence. And because every form is highly unstable, they live in fear. This fear causes a deep misperception of themselves and of other humans, a distortion in their vision of the world.

A Course in Miracles expresses this truth poignantly: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”

Space comes into being the moment the One becomes two, and as “two” become the “ten thousand things,” as Lao Tse calls the manifested world, space becomes more and more vast.

And the greatest miracle is this: That stillness and vastness that enables the universe to be is not just out there in space — it is also within you.

Even if you have missed all the other opportunities for spiritual realization during your lifetime, one last portal will open up for you immediately after the body has died.

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it is described as “the luminous splendor of the colorless light of Emptiness,” which it says is “your own true self.”

Every portal is a portal of death, the death of false self.

I love this idea of portals where we might stand on a threshold of the divine.

I often experienced the miracle of stillness and I long to return to it when the stresses of modern life drag me back to this reality. I keep glimpsing God and try to maintain a semblance of that peace in every moment.

You might also like:

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six