Book One – Lesson One – A Beginning

How are we any different now than we were last week? Last Month? Last Year? Or ten years ago?

What answer would we give ourselves to this question?

Have we learned anything that we didn’t then know?

If we have learned something, then how has it changed our life, if it has? If what we’ve learned has had no effect on how we live our life, then what purpose does the knowing serve? Information? Opinion?

Could we live just as well without having learned whatever?

Everything we remember has power to affect our life, whether we’re aware of this power or not. Thoughts and emotions are types of energy – forms and forces of varying strengths, flexibility, and endurance. Some are more easily let go of. Some seem to hold on to us until we accept their potential power over us. …………

Book One – Lesson Two – A Common Root

What is the common root that holds us together?

What is the common root that holds, cookies, cakes, bread and muffins, not to mention pancakes and pasta? Flour. So much of our daily food would not exist without flour.

Fruits and vegetables also share a common root in that all plants grow out of the ground.

Like all other forms of life, we come from the ground of being. Some call it Nature. Some call it God.

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Book One – Lesson Three – A Dynamic relationship

“Individual and collective – everyone other than ourself expresses the collective.

If we can learn to accept, and then to adapt to anyone other than ourselves, we are learning to harmonize between the individual and the collective. We’re each playing two roles – one as an individual, and one as one of a collective. Everyone and everything else is experienced by us as one of the collective, and we are experienced by them in the same way.”

“Yes, but we might harmonize more with some than with some others.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Isn’t that just the way it is?”

“Yes.”

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Book One – Lesson Four – A Higher Infusion of Energy

“Transcendence is going beyond.”

“Beyond what?”

“All that we now think that we are.”

“Expansion of awareness?”

“Yes.”

“So, then what is reverse transcendence?”

“Reaching back into all times that we once were.”

“How? And why?”

“Facing one’s shadow to learn how it developed, and from where and what.”

“So, from where and what?”

“Nothingness.”

“And nothingness is potential?”

“Yes.”

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Book One – Lesson Five – Alone if Necessary

“We do what we seem to need to do.”

“Where does our sense of need to do something come from?”

“Potential, and an inner drive to fulfill it.”

“Do we each have a unique potential?”

“Yes, and no.”

“Please explain.”

“We are individuals with individual needs, capacities, and potentials, and yet we each and all are as a drop in an ocean of life.”

“And not all drops are exactly like any others?”

“Yes.”

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Book One – Lesson Six – A Map is a Guideline

“We were always beyond form.”

“What purpose does form serve?”

“Form is a map.”

“Our physical body is a form.”

“Yes.”

“How can it be as a map?”

“It is as an island.”

“Among many other islands?”

“Yes. We can move closer to or further from other people.”

“And yet, in some ways we will always be separate from everyone else?”

“Yes, and so it is with our minds and hearts.”

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Book One – Lesson Seven – A Materialized Adept

“A spirit in disguise as a human? Are we all playing that game?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s a learning experience.”

“What are we expected to learn?”

“What is the experience designed to teach us?”

“Yes.”

“As spirit we’re aware of what is happening, and yet we’re not participating in the process of human development.”

“When we become human?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a choice?”

“Yes, and no.”

“Or more or less?”

“Yes.”

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Book One – Lesson Eight – And Anyone Else

“When anyone or anything speaks to our inner knowing, we’re receiving a message, and we know it.”

“We instinctively or intuitively know and/or recognize it’s truth?”

“Yes.”

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Book One – Lesson Nine – An empty mind

“My thinking can adapt and change as I’m introduced to new ideas. That’s the beauty of it all. I don’t have to be anywhere.”

“An empty mind is not as an open mind. An open mind has ideas and yet is not rigid in its thinking, and is able to adapt to new thoughts if they seem to be of higher value than the ones now held. But if the mind is empty, then no ideas can … We need contrast. We need choice. An empty mind is a potentially dangerous mind. Any idea is more than no idea. Learning to think attracts ideas into our mind, and these ideas can be improved on by new (to us) ideas. We compare values. An empty mind is as a closed mind in that no new thoughts can enter. There’s nothing to attract new thoughts. A closed mind refuses to accept new thoughts, and an empty mind isn’t able to think.”

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Book One – Lesson Ten – And Still a Long Way to Go

“We each are what we each are, in a continuing process of developing a way of life that works to help us feel satisfied with how we live our life. A satisfied mind is an enlightened mind, and yet an enlightened mind is only more or less enlightened than it was, or yet may be, and only more or less enlightened than some other minds may be. And only more or less enlightened than some others until they become more enlightened than they are now.”

“Enlightenment is a limitless potential?”

“Yes. Green is green, but not all green foliage looks the same. And so it is with enlightened people. We’re still different from anyone else.”

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Book One – Lesson Eleven – An Open Line to Higher Help

“When you, or anyone, sincerely meditates, then your sincerity attracts, as if it had put in a call to Higher help.”

“How can we recognize that Higher help?”

“Answers to the problems you were thinking about may seem to come into your mind.”

“What if they don’t?”

“Then keep meditating until they do.”

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Book One – Lesson Twelve – Another Hero Gone

“We each came for a purpose, and when we’ve completed our chosen role …. if we’ve developed the capacity to choose. We can choose to be as we are, or less, for whatever reason(s). We may all know some people who seem to swing between a higher and lower quality of being. Their higher quality is their inner self. Their outer personality has been pulled down, for whatever reason.”

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Book One – Lesson Thirteen – Another Way to See the Tree

“Law, as form, is both structure and a foundation. Essence has potential to expand, after the form is acknowledged.”

“Accepting that whatever law must have served a purpose at one time?”

“Yes. Earlier generations may have shared ideas that today’s people, or at least some of today’s people, are dissatisfied with enough to demand change.. Laws reflect the quality of the people who obey them. We are responsible for what laws we choose to obey..”

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Book One – Lesson Fourteen – Are Bad Guys Necessary

“It’s easier to think of conflicting sides as having different values.”

“Yes. “Which side are you on?” is often demanded of us, as if one side is right and good, while the other side must necessarily be wrong, or bad, or even evil. Each side may be right from one perspective smf wrong from another, and to varying, and perhaps shifting, variables of right and wrong.

What makes sense in one situation may not make sense in another. We turn on lights when it’s dark and not when it’s bright and sunny. We wrap up when the weather is cold, and we wear light clothes in Summer.

Good and bad are value judgements that we label people with, when it’s some of their actions that might be considered to be good or bad, wise or unwise.”

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Book One – Lesson Fifteen – A Restless Spirit

“Anything we might wish to possess can be categorized under one general heading – Peace of Mind.”

“What would it take to provide peace of mind?”

“Different things for different people – money, fame, love, success, self-love …”

“What price would we be willing to pay for peace of mind.”

“Some things are not for sale.”

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Book One – Lesson Sixteen – Are You My Shadow?

“The difference between a channel and a medium is one of function. A medium communicates between physical people and non-physical people. A channel serves a non-physical person or purpose.”

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Book One – Lesson Seventeen – As Above

“Everyone possesses the same emotional and intellectual attributes as anyone else, but to variable degrees.

Assimilation and illumination move together.

Cultural assimilation – but a price is paid. Something is gained but something is lost.

Yesterday isn’t tomorrow, but without yesterday there is no tomorrow.

We pay a price for change. Nothing is for nothing. Nothing ever was.”

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Book One – Lesson Eighteen – A Simple Seeker connects

“There is no unity in diversity.”

“Why do we need unity?”

“It’s the only reality,”

“What does that mean?”

“Either we’re all in this together or we’re not. And we are. Case closed.”

“If there can only be one way …”

“And there can only be one way.”

“Then whose way? or what way? from man? How to choose?”

“How do you choose your leaders?”

“We elect them. We vote.”

“Yes.”

“But what they say they’ll do is not always what they do, once we give them power.”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“You vote for people, not for programs.”

“How can we vote for programs?”

“In time you will.”

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Book One – Lesson Nineteen – A Simple Seeker Tries to Teach Spirit

“How can there be no physical reality? I see, touch, hear, taste, and smell.”

“What do you see, touch, hear, taste, and smell?”

“Life.”

“What does life look like?”

“People, places, Nature, animals, birds, rivers, lakes, skies. The list goes on.”

“Are you part of the picture?”

“Yes.”

“Then who is seeing this picture?”

“If we’re all in it?”

“Yes.”

“Are we outside?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“We’re each part of the picture.”

“There is no outside?”

“Yes. There is no outside.”

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Book One – Lesson Twenty – Awareness as an Option

“We each have a path prepared for us.”

“My life had to be the way it was?”

“And the way it now is.”

“What about the future?”

“What about it?”

“Has it already been created?”

“Yes, and no.”

“Please explain.”

“Your future will depend upon what you’ve learned from your past.”

“Have I learned anything?”

“Time will tell.”

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Book One – Lesson Twenty-One – Awareness of Personal Power

“Intellectual development has physical results. Everything you do, say, or think is an expression of intellectual development.

Choose your teachers wisely. Choose your friends wisely. They have power, perhaps without even being aware of the power you give them, without perhaps even being aware of giving them power over everything you san or do. Power over, and power to influence.”

Book One – Lesson Twenty-Two – Beauty and Evil

“What is seen in the eyes of some as evil, may be considered by others to be a necessary or expedient means to an end that may or may not, in itself be considered to be evil.

We dig up the ground to plant a garden, even knowing, if we do, that the homes of possibly countless forms of life will be destroyed.

Mines destroy the ecological quality of many rivers and lakes.

We make a difference to the world by the way we live.”

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Book One – Lesson Twenty-Three – Choosing Doesn’t Create Value

“The choice has already been made in your mind, whether or not you dare to act on it.”

“Isn’t choice the same as intention?”

“No.”

“What’s the difference.”

“Choice is a value call.”

“And intention?”

“A decision to act on that value call, or not to.”

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Book One – Lesson Twenty-Four – Choosing Integrity

“True knowledge is awareness.

Awareness is knowing.

Integrity is daring to choose to follow wisdom, whatever the consequences might be. To do what we know we must do, because it’s the right thing, the appropriate thing to do.”

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Book One – Lesson Twenty-Five – Choosing to do Nothing

“Your tooth was not important.”

“It was, to me.”

“How important?”

“When I smile, my missing tooth may be remembered longer than my smile.”

“By whom?”

“For anyone I meet for the first time.”

“What about the second time?”

“They may be more used to its absence, then.”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“First impressions are just that.”

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Book Two – Lesson Twenty-Six – Compassion has a History

“How did her energy affect yours in such a way?”

“Perhaps we’re kindred spirits.”

“Yes. We each resonate at a frequency which magnetically attracts and resonates with others resonating with the same or similar vibration.

We can sometimes look and see our world too close-up to allow for expanded awareness.

Expanded awareness doesn’t necessarily change the way we feel, but it helps us to accept that we’re helpless, more or less, to change the whatever situation.”

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Book Two – Lesson Twenty-Seven – Deep Breathing

“There will always be stormy weather, somewhere.”

“Are there stormy states of consciousness?”

“Yes.”

“Yow to deal with stormy states of consciousness?”

“How do you deal, now?”

“Not very well.”

“Yes.”

“They block my energy. I close up.”

“Does it help anyone?”

“No.”

“So why?”

“It’s not a conscious choice.”

“An unconscious choice?”

“I guess. so.”

“Trust your unconscious choice.”

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Book One – Lesson Twenty-Eight – Differentiation vs separation

“We each an all share more similarities than differences. Differences don’t separate us unless we choose to let it happen, for whatever reason.”

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Book One – Lesson Twenty-Nine – Ego as Our Life Force

“Ego is the central mover and pusher of thoughts, emotions, and actions. We can’t do or even feel anything without our individual life force.”

“What has ego to do with personal responsibility?”

“Even in a crowd, we’re still alone. Nobody can live our life for us. Ego and Higher Self are connected to each other. Ego is where we are, now, and Higher Self is where we’re all going.”

Questions to ask yourself:

Am I a solitary seeker, or do I need a group, or a teacher, or one or more friends who share my ideas and questions?

Do I trust my ego to know what’s right for me, now?

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Book One – Lesson Thirty Emptiness is Never Empty

“Emptiness and nothingness are never empty nor nothing. They are potential, as is everyone and everything.”

“So, we don’t have potential but are potential?”

“Yes.”

“Money has exchange potential.”

“Money is exchange potential.”

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Book One – Lesson Thirty-One – Evolutionary Buddhism

“Holding onto the concept of endless change as leaning out from a high window at traffic below?”

“Whether looking down or back, distance is distance, and allows for a wider perspective. Everything is change and everything changes. Buddhism is not as it once was nor as it might yet be.. So it is with everything else.”

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Book One – Lesson Thirty-Two – Experience as a Teacher

“Envy can help us to recognize and aspire toward higher levels of personal skills.

Envy is seeing in others what we want for our self. It can be encojuraging.

Experience teaches us the difference between envy and resentment.”

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Book One – Lesson Thirty-Three – Feminism and Ancient Wisdom

“Ancient wisdom was written and taught away back then, by and for people who lived a much less complicated life than most of us live now.”

“How would that change wisdom?”

“Something to think about.”

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End of Book One