Welcome to satsang.

Those of you listening to this topic today are very fortunate because you can apply what you are about to hear in every aspect of your life. The topic today is inner body awareness. This phrase was coined by Eckhart Tolle, who as you know, is the author of the bestseller “The Power of Now.” I would like to use that term because it is so complete.

In our journey throughout life, we strive to grow, to improve. In our youth, we strive for physical excellence, usually. As we grow a little older, we strive for mental excellence, maybe taking up psychology and philosophy. And as we mature even more and begin to question life, we go into spirituality. Initially in our spiritual journey, we become interested in many things. Angels, reincarnation, UFOs, parapsychology, psychic phenomena, the hereafter, etc. This is OK, this is fine, these are true; but they are not the Truth. What we do in satsang is take a short cut to the pinnacle, to the major truth, and there is only one Truth. We are all bound to arrive at that sooner or later, and when we do, we realize it’s the only way to peace, the only way to fulfillment. The question is, “Who am I?”

Who are you, really? You cannot really define who you are, but for the sake of the inner body experience today, we are going to call you the “here and now.” Now please listen to that. You are the here and now! How powerful that is! I am not saying that you are here and now. I am not saying that here and now is the truth. I am saying you are the here and now ITSELF.

Say a man visits you every fifteen years and says, “Who are you?” And pointing to your body, you say, “This is who I am.” Then he visits you after another fifteen years and he asks, “Who are you?” And you say, “This is me, this body.” And he visits you again, and you say the same thing. Well, after he has visited you five times, he says, “Which one are you, because each time I saw you, you were different! The body changes; everything changes.” So you say, “I guess I am the one who is observing all those changes. I am the here and now.”

Consciousness - you are consciousness; the truth is consciousness - is just like a circle. A circle has a circumference, and we live on that circumference. Now, when you visualize a circle, remember that there is no beginning and no end to it. Now picture that circle spinning. No matter how fast it spins, it is always here and now. It just goes round and round, no beginning and no end. If we watch our activities and look at what is happening, we find we are getting older, just like the tire of a wheel, wearing out through activity, but we are not going anyplace. We are just going round and round and round. It’s just like the earth rotating around the sun. When it faces the sun, we call it day; when it doesn’t face the sun, we call it night. But actually in truth, nothing is happening. It’s a movement. But within that movement, there is aging. There is deterioration because there is change, like all material things. But the one who is experiencing does not change. But we don’t know the experiencer until we move in a spiral from the circumference to the center. When we move to the center, what do we find? The hub of the wheel. But the hub of the wheel is a hole! It never moves, never changes, and through this hub the wheel is able to spin. When we find ourselves in the center, we say, “I’m home! I am in the center! I look at all this activity, all this change that is happening around me, but I am here, always here. I am here, always here.” It is the most frightening thing for the ego to experience.

One time Scott Morrison said something very beautiful. He said, “All my life I was trying to get from ‘here’ to ‘there.’ But I began to recognize that when I am ‘there’ it is always ‘here.’ Finally I realized that there’s only here and now and I became desperate because I was stuck with all my faults and misery. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to achieve, it was all hopeless.” So we keep escaping it by seeking, by trying to get someplace, by trying to attain, accomplish, or achieve a goal. And this seeking, this desiring, is our pain, our suffering, our desperation. When people say, “I’m not awakened spiritually,” it’s because they don’t want to be, because it’s very simple. It’s that you’re escaping the moment you are seeking. Seeking enlightenment is another escape! Seeking to wake up is another escape from now. NOW is all you’ve got! Now is all that there is.

We talk about forgiveness, acceptance, growth in consciousness. What are these? They are realizing that you are not learning anything. They are the here and now itself. Forgiveness means you are forgiving yourself every time you are in pain, every time you seek something, every time you try to be other than what you are, which is right now. To forgive yourself is to realize that there’s nothing to forgive. That’s forgiveness.

Acceptance is when you realize there’s nothing to accept. That’s total acceptance. And it’s the same with growth. Growth is when you realize you’re not going anyplace. It’s vertical; it’s not horizontal. There’s no past and future. It’s vertical; it’s a deepening of here and now.

So, the inner body that we are going to explore and go into today, is to bring you to the beauty of here and now. You see, when we talk about here and now, we say, “That’s it?” Because we bring the past with it. We bring our ideas, our conditioning with it. But the here and now in its totality is everything we have ever wanted. Everything! Love, peace, joy, happiness, fulfillment are the now itself. But why are we afraid of the now? Because we have concepts about it. So what is desperation? Desperation is the thought, “I have nowhere to go. It’s hopeless. There’s nothing to do. I’m stuck.” That’s desperation. What is the truth? There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing to accomplish. I am stuck. It’s hopeless. That is the truth. You see? But the ego gets frightened with that.

So what is the difference between desperation and truth? Truth is paradise, the kingdom of God, Christ, the Almighty, the Infinite, Bhagavan. What is the difference between totality and desperation? The difference is this - desperation is trying to get away from here and now. Awaking spiritually is simply realizing that there is no escape. You are here, always here. And here you are always pure, always guiltless, always perfect. But you can’t bring the past into it. The Now is hopeless; that is it’s beauty. Because as long as there is hope, you’re thinking about tomorrow, and it keeps you from now. The now is complete. Listen to that word, “complete.”

So it is the escape from here and now that makes all the difference between hell and heaven, between fear and love. Are you beginning to understand that if we do not escape, control, try to achieve, or get away from here, that by staying here with what is, we find paradise? All suffering is an illusion, an escape from here and now. But how can you escape from here and now? It’s crazy! And that is the insanity of the ego.

We make everything into a method. I remember 20 years ago when meditation became very popular. A lot of books were written about meditation, and it seemed that everybody was reading about meditation. People would say, “Oh, I meditate every day.” And we made it into a method. We forgot that meditation is not a method. Meditation is a means to experience going into the here and now. So we can say that inner body experience is the real meditation. But we make it into a system, a method.

We make inner body experience the same thing. The moment you make it into a method or you think it is a method, you’ve lost it. Because you have to first take it from the heart and then bring it to the mind. The heart is the center, the hub of the wheel. Remember, like we said, picture the wheel of a car that can go 200 miles an hour. It goes so fast! So many things are happening! But it’s always here and now. Wherever it goes, there it is. The tires wear out, everything wears out, but the center is always perfect.

Today we are using the term “inner body awareness.” I would like to quote here from Eckhart Tolle. He said, “The art of inner body awareness will develop into a completely new way of living, a state of permanent connectness with Being, and will add a depth to your life that you have never known before.” Because we are going to be looking at things that we never looked at! Did you know that if you had a feeling of desperation, and you were to stay with that feeling and locate it in your body and move right into it, you’ll find a joy you never thought you had? Yes - but that takes courage. And there are many things in the way. We are going to discuss what keeps you from inner body awareness.

One of the beautiful things about inner body awareness is that you awaken the inner guide. I call it the “Bhagavan” that talks to me. These scripts that you hear every week - I say Bhagavan gives them to me through inner body awareness. When you listen to the body and to inner knowing, and you are going to find out today how to do that, it’s just like a guide talking to you. You’ll be guided because you have your inner teacher which is, of course, yourself.

The Course in Miracles calls the inner body the Atonement, but the Atonement has been misunderstood for a long time. I have clients who say that they have been studying the Course for ten, fifteen years and they’re still not clear about what the Atonement means. So today that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about.

Inner body awareness is forgiveness. It is full acceptance. It is true healing. It is pure unconditional love. It is incredible honesty. It is supersentience. It is full awareness. It is clarity. It is beingness. It is freedom. It is the secret of allowing. It is surrender in spirit. It is inner guidance. It is the real meditation. It is listening to the inner voice of the holy spirit. Inner body awareness is all these things wrapped up into one.

When Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi introduced us to inquiry, he said that the fastest way to the realization of who you are is to ask, “Who am I?” Many people had difficulty with that. As a matter of fact, they made it into a method. [laughs] Sometimes Ramana Maharshi would hear his students repeating, “Who am I, who am I...” They made it into a mantra! [laughs again] We turn everything into a method.

“Who am I” is not a method. “Who am I” is inner body awareness. “Who am I?” Find out where the “I” is. Where does the “I” arise from? Who is “Jan,” who is “Burt,” who is “Larry?” Ask that of yourself, and you’ll find that you’re nowhere to be found. You’re just awareness - but that awareness is not you! You see? That body is covering it up, making it seem like you. It is infinite, that state of totality. But when we begin to listen, we begin to get in touch with that “I.” And that “I” will teach us everything. Everything that we’ve ever wanted for centuries will come to us because we have hit upon it.

So very few people were capable of inquiry such as what Ramana Maharshi advocated. Over the years I have realized how difficult it is for most people. When the Course in Miracles was introduced, it said that the Atonement is the one need in this world that is universal. Thousands of people started practicing the lessons, but very few grasped the real meaning of the Atonement. In fact, most people who grasped the basics of the Course still had difficulty with the Atonement principle.

The difficulty in comprehending something so simple is understandable because of the paradox of the human mind. The simpler something is, the more difficult for the mind to grasp. So, it needs step by step introduction.

About a week ago I started getting these questions from clients, letters and emails - people still not understanding what inquiry really is, what inner body awareness is, what the Atonement is. I went into a deep reflection and I’ve asked my inner guidance if there is a way to simplify it. These six steps came through, which we are going to discuss today; six steps to take you to this inner body awareness.

There is one problem with these six steps. We are going to want to turn them into a method, but they are not a method. They are ways to help you. Let me tell you what I mean by “helping you.” Suppose you are a person who has never seen the moon. So when we are outside (this is just hypothetical, OK?) I point to the moon. And I say, “There is the moon.” You look at my hand and say, “Where?” And I say, “Look at the end of my finger.” So you look at the end of my finger and say, “I still don’t see the moon,” because you are not looking at the moon, you are looking at my finger. You made the finger pointing at the moon into a thing, a method, instead of looking at the moon. So therefore I say to you, “OK, let’s make it simple, step by step. Move a little closer so you can see the finger better. Step two: move closer yet. And so on, until step six: be behind me and look straight at my arm, exactly where my finger is pointing.” And finally you see the moon. You had to do the six steps in order to see it. Once you have seen it, you don’t need the six steps any more. OK? They are not a method; they are ways to get you to listen to the body which is always talking to you.

There are two things which will keep you from listening to the body. Two things, very very strong and powerful, and this is where most people fail to listen: first, as we discussed last week, the willingness to listen, and second and most important, the primordial guilt. You really think you cannot hear, or you want to make something out of it, figure it out, or make it tangible. Listening to what is happening inside you is a silence. For example, say today you got upset. Stop and listen to that upsetness in your body. There is a part of you that says, “I am wrong; I shouldn’t be feeling this way; what’s wrong with me; he shouldn’t have done that;” and all this is called “guilt.”

But move beyond guilt. Go into that area of the body. As it relaxes and you start listening to that area, it might say, “OK, today there was a lot of anger. What was that anger about?” Listen. [pause] You see? That’s how you begin to listen and it becomes automatic. “Oh, I got upset because I didn’t get my way. How does that feel?” And you listen to that, and it leads you to the next level. As you learn to listen to the body, you’ll be amazed at how the silence leads you to the very essence.

But what’s important is not getting an answer. The important thing is that healing is taking place. You are healing the cellular memory in your mind-body mechanism. And you are healing it permanently. It is leading you deeper and deeper, and eventually that’s what inner guidance is.

The Course says this: “As long as you believe that guilt is justified in any way, in anyone, whatever he may do, you will not look within, where you would always find Atonement.” So inner body awareness is looking clearly into what is truly happening. This is difficult for most people because of their guilt. The following six steps, which we will take slowly, will help us to go beyond this.

What is the guilt that prevents inner body awareness? It is the constantly nagging ego asking, “How do I know I am being sincere? How do I know I am willing? What if I am not doing it right? Maybe I am playing a game?” These are the self-doubts with which the ego will confront you to keep you on the circumference of the circle.

And then of course you are very active! You become very, very active because you don’t want to move to the center, because the center is what you have been trying to get away from with all your goals and plans and seeking, you see? It takes courage to move to the center. But we are accepting the fact that you are willing, and we are discussing guilt now. This is the guilt that the Course refers to. The word “guilt” simply refers to that inner feeling that says, “I am not good enough.”

How do you overcome such doubts? Don’t even try. Don’t try to overcome doubts. You just observe them as part of the ego’s guilt that keeps you trapped on the surface, on the circumference. So whenever the ego doubts, you simply ask yourself, “Who is doubting?” Go to the core feeling of it. This is inner body awareness.

If we are going to look further at guilt, I would like first to say what inner body awareness is not. This is very important. Do not confuse inner body awareness with dwelling on something. We are talking about feeling, OK? And not feeling something, either. You are listening to that silence. There is an intuition that comes when you are listening to that silence.

Did you ever ask yourself, “Why was I angry?” You listen to that feeling of anger inside you with willingness; you don’t blame anyone, not even yourself. As you begin to be quiet and listen, the answer will come intuitively from that silence. That is called listening, OK? But you can expedite it and make it faster through these steps.

So inner body awareness is not dwelling on something, not thinking or interpreting or analyzing. It is simply listening to a feeling in the body. Now, when we talk about feeling through the body, it makes the body seem very solid and real. Remember that what keeps the heart beating, the blood circulating, and food digesting is not the body. It is consciousness that is doing it. So when we are listening to the inner body, we are not actually listening to the organs of the body; we are listening to the feelings of the body, which is consciousness itself. That’s why we call it “inner body.”

How a person looks on the outside is what the inner body is like. So if the inner body is full of self-doubts, then you can see it in the walk, in the eyes, in the manner of the person, in the confidence or lack of it. As you gain greater knowledge from that inner knowing, that inner knowing will change the outside. It will give you confidence, love, peace, and even innocence. It will give you here-now-ness. It will give you clarity.

So the whole premise of inner body awareness is not to figure out what you are feeling, it is to get a response from the inner body through its silence. It is not a process of talking to yourself. It is not an analytical process, not a bodily sensation. To repeat, it is listening to what the inner body is saying without mental interference. It’s going to take practice.

Another thing that we have to get in touch with is that when we go deep into our body, we also begin to hit upon the pain body. Today I am going to call it the rejected part of you, because through denial, resistance, and control, you have betrayed your inner innocence, and instead built a defense. You have built a wall of emotional feeling and pain without pure feeling. Most of the time, that place inside you feels rejected, betrayed, abandoned. How many times has it felt lonely, tight, contracted? The inner body has felt these things, and instead of being kind to it, you said, “What is wrong with me? I should be ashamed of myself for doing this.” On top of that, you are blaming it, punishing it. That is the rejected part of you. That is called the pain body.

So now when you try to listen, immediately you go into your story and you don’t even know it’s there. It almost triggers it immediately. So we have to discuss this in order to make you aware of any guilt that comes up. It comes up as resistance, as escape from the moment. “I can’t figure it out. I don’t understand.” You see? There is all this kefuffle around it, when it’s so simple. Just be silent. OK?

So what happens when you keep judging and resisting it? It is going to act up like a child. This inner body acts like a child. It is going to yell louder to get your attention, and create more and more noise until you listen. The noise comes in the form of ulcers, headaches, rage, violence, and all kinds of physiological and emotional symptoms. And when you finally take the time to listen and pay attention, these symptoms go away, along with the fears that go with them. Remember that every fear that goes away is replaced by a deeper love. You don’t develop love. Love is always there. But it’s been walled up by our need to run away, by our need to seek something outside. As long as you seek something other than here and now, you are building a wall against the very thing you want most.

This is the healing miracle that the Course refers to. What is necessary is to create a caring climate around your feelings. Some words came to me from Bhagavan and I’d like to share them with you, telling you how to care for your inner body when it is in pain. Say this to yourself: “I am not here to fix you. I am not here to make you invisible. I know that what I am feeling is nothing, but I don’t want to call you nothing now. I want to validate you until you show me that it’s not real. I am not here to fix you or make you invisible. I am here because I care enough about you to be with you for a time. If you want to tell me something, fine.” You are talking to your body, OK? [laughs] You can say, “If you don’t want to tell me something, that’s fine too. Either way I am here for you.” You are connecting with yourself! This is something that we never do. And this is why we suffer such pain. Because the part in us that is always here, we reject it, we run away from it. You see? And so we are separated! We betray ourselves. So we can call it the rejected part of you instead of the pain body.

You can ask the healing part in your body, right now, “How do you need me to be with you?” And then you listen. Believe me, you will get that intuition. It will come. That is a promise. The point is to create a kinship with the place inside yourself which you have alienated for so long. That is the key. Make friends with yourself. That is your deepest love - loving who you are. And that’s how you begin to move closer and closer to that center, to that self which you are, which we all are.

The one thing that is very hard to understand, because we are flesh and blood beings, is that we make the body so solid that it seems more real than our own spirit. Take the spirit, consciousness, away from the body and the body is nothing but dust. But we do not see the spirit, we do not see the consciousness when we look at a body. We see a solid form. We misjudge the whole thing and we become lost in our understanding.

The wonderful realization that awakens from inner body awareness is this, that the physical body is not as real as we thought. Yes it is real, it is tangible; you can touch and feel it, yes. But it is often sick, it ages, and it is going to die soon. You are not listening to the body; you are listening to the inner body, to that consciousness which sustains the body. Every emotion, every feeling, and all thinking is experienced in the inner body. Every perception you have is an inner body action. Every image you have of the world, of people, of circumstances, relates to the image you have of yourself. Everything that you feel in your inner body is only real to you, and it is your world. It has nothing to do with what is outside of you, except that you see it outside because the inner body reflects your world. You live in the world of your inner body.

This is all a function of the inner body. Once you get in touch with your inner body, you get in touch with reality. You begin to see in a new way. Remember, and this is important, that no matter how you act, no matter how you think, no matter what pain comes, do not try to fix it. There is nothing that is missing. Our whole social system is based on the concept that there is something wrong that we have to fix about ourselves and everybody else. Inner body awareness challenges this concept and brings out the beautiful spiritual essence that we are, automatically.

Let me give you an example, based on a true story. Mary, who was an overweight and lonely woman, looked disgustedly at herself in the mirror. Tears ran down her cheeks as she asked mournfully, “What am I to do?” She wanted to fix herself with more things to do. So she took up exercising, regulated her eating habits, and took some courses. This is normal and natural. But she also knew in her heart that she wasn’t really motivated to do those things and it would only be a short time before she was back to square one. Mary was desperate, like millions of other people. She didn’t realize it was how she felt about herself that needed to shift, not more things to do.

You are understanding this, right? It’s not the things you do, it’s how you feel about yourself that is important. Knowing that there is nothing to fix is threatening to the establishment. I have often heard statements from people who say, “What do you mean there’s nothing wrong with me, that it’s only fear!?” [laughs] “I want something to do!” OK?

And when people want something to do, of course, I give them something to do. But remember, when you get in touch with who you are, there’s nothing to do! The very clarity itself will bring healing and bring you back to who you are. Who you are is more wonderful than words can ever say. Whenever we are faced with a problem, financial difficulties, forced change of job or residence, loss of a friend, or a hundred other things, we get upset, frightened, and insecure. We go about desperately seeking answers by getting another job, apartment, or new relationship in a frenzy. Then when we finally find the answer we have been seeking, it is only a short time before the unresolved feelings create another situation or crisis. In our seeking, we never ask, “How am I feeling?” - only how to fix the situation at hand. The first thing you need to ask is, “How am I feeling?”

You know, if you want homework to do, from now on do this. Every hour ask, “How am I feeling now? Am I happy now?” If you say, “I don’t know,” then chances are you are happy. If you say, “I am not,” then you are not. What is important here to know is that if you are happy, chances are you don’t know you are. Because you are! But if you’re not happy, you know you are not, because unhappiness is something. Happiness is nothing. Peace is nothing. You see?

Right now you are listening. You are totally attentive. You are at peace right now, but you think it’s got to be something that you’re going to achieve! We lose it when we bring seeking into it. Right now you’re at peace! Right now you are relaxed, unless of course you happen to be thinking about something else. Right now you are complete. If you were to ask yourself, “Am I happy?” you might say, “I don’t know,” because you are. Because happiness is not something. It IS! This moment, itself. So remember, the unhappiness you are feeling over a setback is merely a trigger for your inner emptiness.

Two - The answer does not lie in achieving what you think you are missing. The answer lies is feeling good about yourself. That is the major force, to be in touch.

So these are the six steps of inner body awareness, a step by step guide. But please, do not make this into a method. This is only helpful as a guideline to help you go deeper. You use it only until you understand what inner body awareness is. The moment you have done it once or twice, you can discard it, because inner body awareness can be instant.

Let’s assume you have a problem. Let’s assume there are things happening inside you. The first step of body awareness is to ask, “What’s between me and feeling fine?” In other words, right now get in touch with all the things that are not making you feel fine. “I am not happy in my job.” “I am not making enough money.” “My children demand my time.” “My husband is not very understanding.” “I got into a fight with my neighbor.” And so on. Get in touch with all the things that impinge on your ability to be here now.

Two - Allow yourself to feel. Move into the worst problem that is bothering you. As you pick out a problem, stop for a moment and ask yourself, “What do I sense in my body when I recall this problem?”

Three - Begin to feel the quality of it. Now that you’ve gone into the body, ask yourself, “How would I phrase it to somebody else? How would I tell them how this feels?” Now you are not going to say, “I feel rejected,” as that is a story. OK? You’re not saying, “Well, I feel abandoned.” That’s a story. Just get in touch with that feeling - “It feels like a contraction,” or “It feels itchy,” or “It feels like a crawling thing,” or “It feels like I am small.” Get in touch with it and put a word to it.

Four - Clarify the feeling. Now take the word you used to describe how you felt. Put it with the feeling. Ask, “Did I use the right word? Does it go along with the feeling? Is it appropriate?” If it feels right, move to the next step.

Five - Ask, “What is it about this whole problem that makes me so angry? So frustrated? So violent? So - whatever?” Right? Whatever it is. Ask that question and listen to the body. Just listen. Listen to what comes up from that silence. Just keep listening. And then ask, “Well, what is so bad about it?” You see, the moment you say, “What is so bad about it?” the body memory will respond, “Because...” So get rid of the story and listen to the feeling. You’ll be amazed at how much you are starting to hear from that silence within you.

Finally, after you have done that, stop for a moment and relax completely. Say, “Thank you. Thank you for giving me the courage and the willingness to do this,” Then just go about your business. Aren’t these simple? Very simple. But the benefits that come from this!

Let me tell you a story I made up that illustrates how you would go about this. Peggy was a woman in her late twenties, married to her husband, John, who works in a bank. She worked in the junior high school as a part-time teacher. She was not doing what she really wanted to do, which is work full time in a more respectable position.

One evening, John came home in a jubilant mood, full of vim and vigor. He had gotten a promotion to an executive position at the bank. He was excited, and in his excitement, when he was telling Peggy his news, he knocked a dish off the kitchen table and broke it. It was a piece of her best china. Peggy flew into a sudden rage. She ran up the stairs in tears, slamming the door, refusing to cook dinner.

Now, provided that Peggy wants to go through the six steps, this is how she could get in touch with her violent reaction. Let’s assume that Peggy is here and we are guiding her.

1. Clear the space for inner listening. “Why don’t I feel terrific right now?” She recalls all her work that needs to be done; correcting homework sheets, cleaning the house, the broken dish, guilt over her reaction, cooking, shopping, preparing for friends who were to drop by that evening, and anger towards her husband.

2. Allowing herself to feel. Now she is relaxed enough to allow herself to feel. Next she is to choose one problem that merits the most attention. As soon as she listened, she knew the worst problem was her anger, her violence.

3. Feeling the quality of the problem. She is gently asked what the quality of the feeling is like. “I was so angry when he broke that dish.” And then she realized, “Anger over a broken dish? No - the dish had hardly anything to do with it. My anger was over his air of jubilation, the way he radiated confidence over his future.” Immediately she felt, “Aha!” happening inside her. She allowed herself to feel his jubilation and her inner reaction. She waited for a response from her inner body. She waited for a response silently and patiently. How long this takes will depend on how willing you are. “What does this feeling feel like?” And all of a sudden, it came to her, “I am being jealous!” So now there is a word, “Jealous.”

4. Clarifying the feeling. She took the word “jealous” and checked it against her body feeling. “Does this fit with how I felt when I broke into that anger, when my body reacted? Does it fit? Hmmm. Yes. It does, but all that anger, over something that minor?” She felt her response saying, “There is jealousy in there somewhere, but...” Then she moved into step five.

5. Inquiring into the body feeling. Now she asked her body, “What is this sort-of jealousy? What is the whole problem that makes me sort-of jealous?” She kept on listening, and the feeling came back, “This feels more like being left behind, abandoned. He’s been promoted, and I haven’t. He’s been better at his job than I.” Finally it dawned on her what was really happening. She moved to the sixth step.

6. Opening herself to receive. She said, “Thank you for clarifying this.” But what is so beautiful is that after she finished doing this, her anger and need for violence was gone. She forgave John because she forgave herself. The situation never repeated itself because she was able to move through it. So Peggy forgot about the dish, her anger was gone, her head was clear. She had moved one step closer to her core being.

Again, do not make these six steps into a method! They are merely helpful guides. You can jump around the steps as you want. This is just how they came to me. Please use them because they do work. If you can find a better way to use them, then do so. The point is, of course, to help you to get in touch with your inner core. Your inner essence has all the answers. Eventually it will happen just like that. [snaps fingers] You stop, get in touch with what is happening, and hear it. The answer is always there. The Course says that the Holy Spirit is the only answer. It is always silent, and it is that silence that holds all knowledge.

Are there any questions?

Q: You talked about the horizontal and vertical. The horizontal is the past and the future, right?

A: That’s right. It goes in a straight line.

Q: So basically, is that the line of compassion?

A: What we mean by horizontal is just a form to give you more understanding, a bigger picture. Say you were up where a bird flies, and you look down into the ocean and you see a ship moving from there to here. You see where it left behind and where it is going. It is a horizontal line. So we can say that this is the past, this is the present, and that is the future. That’s what we mean by horizontal line.

Now, the vertical line is the real line of compassion. The vertical line is the deepening of the here and now. As I begin to feel you as a part of me, I don’t even have to hug you or kiss you or anything; but the deepening of that understanding, that experience, becomes my love. So therefore, that deepening is not going to be tomorrow. It happens vertically, just like climbing a ladder. You start with the first step, and looking up you say, “Oh my goodness, I have a long way to go.” But the moment you are at the top, you’ll find that you never got anyplace; the ladder was always here and now, and you’ve achieved it. But of course, we never get to the top - it’s a constant deepening of awareness in the moment.

Q: With that consciousness, you can bring yourself to this moment, now. So by doing that, it can bring you to the feeling body quickly?

A: It happens very quickly when you’re totally willing, when you totally go beyond your guilt and your story. You feel the feeling as it is and there’s an immediate shift, because instead of fear now you are feeling love, and you feel that peace.

Q: Tell me more about the Atonement, please.

A: The Atonement is to be able to look at something so clearly that eventually you begin to see its nothingness, and then it shifts. If I am feeling fear at the moment, and what is fear - fear is a sense of loss, to lose something. You are attached to something, or you project a type of loss. Either you think you are not going to get something, or you are going to lose something. That’s what fear is. So when you begin to feel that sense of fear, and you get in touch with that fear, or in other words you feel that fear in your body and you quiet the body, you’ll find that fear was nothing more than a need for you to get away from this moment. All fear is an escape from here and now. Because I am projecting I am going to lose something, or I don’t have what I want. But in the now there is nothing that is missing. So when you stay with it, there comes a feeling that the fear itself was nothing more than a need for love. We can see it that way. As you allow that, it becomes love.

An example would be this: suppose you are feeling lonely, a perfect example. Most people feel lonely. Loneliness is a very common modern malady. What is loneliness? Loneliness is simply not loving yourself. In fact, when you are lonely, you begin to dream about someone loving you. You daydream, maybe about sex. You have all these images. But here is the snag - at that moment of loneliness, are you willing to love yourself? No. You want somebody to love you, but you are not willing to give that love to yourself. If you were willing to give that love to yourself, then where is the loneliness? But the reason you don’t want to give love to yourself is that by loving yourself the ego dies, and that’s frightening. So you want somebody to love you to replace the love for yourself. And that’s why we want somebody to love us, because by their loving us we can feel OK with ourselves without having to love who we are. Because loving yourself means going into the depth of your emptiness.

What is love? Love is not emotional, love is emptiness. Love is this moment. Love is nothingness. Love is spirit. Love IS. You are the same “I” that I am. And when I recognize that “I” is nothing more than infinite space, then I see you as myself. That is love. But that is not something, see? That IS. And the only way that I can experience that is by dealing with the fear, the fear of myself. And the fear will keep you trapped, keep you thinking you are going to lose something. And you become very attached to that something, and you try to hang on to that something. And then, of course, you are going to have a lot of pain in the future because every time you hang on to something or get attached to something, you are creating future pain. OK? Because the attachment is saying, “I need this to complete me.” You are betraying your very core, your very center, your very essence. You are complete here and now. It is the thought of losing something that is keeping you trapped.

Q: So would you say that the Atonement is self-forgiveness, self love?

A: Right!

Q: I went to a Catholic school years ago and they told me I had to atone for my sins. That’s a different atonement, isn’t it?

A: That’s the confusion that the word “atonement” brought about. See “Atonement” in the Course written this way: “At-one-ment,” or “Be-one-with.” I am very happy you got that.

Q: When you speak of the inner body, you speak of it as something which to me is the acting out of...

A: The inner body is a silence. It is really nothing. No. It is consciousness, pure consciousness that appears as something.

Q: It comes to that, does it, after you work through the energy that you need to learn from?

A: That’s right. So what you do, what the ego is doing all the time is making something out of nothing. “You hurt me.” So you make it into a mountain. You see? You are always making something out of nothing. Waking up spiritually is doing the reverse - making nothing out of something, bringing that something into its nothing state.

Q: Which would be the Atonement?

A: Which is the Atonement. And which is forgiveness. You cannot forgive as long as you think there is something to forgive. You’ve got to look at it as nothing to forgive. People do what they do because that’s what they do! That’s their consciousness. You see? And so everything is as it is. People do what they do because consciousness is doing it through them. OK?

Now, accepting that fully in the moment is forgiveness. So you don’t go through the process of saying, “I am going to forgive you.” That’s arrogant. Forgiveness is when you see there is nothing to forgive. There’s nothing to forgive. Forgiveness, love, peace, joy, God, Christ, they’re all silence! They are all the here and now.

Q: They are just words.

A: They are just words, just labels. They all mean, “You are not here now. You are THE here and now.” Please understand the difference. You are the here and now ITSELF. You are the very essence of nowness. You see? There is never a moment when we can say, “This,” and it’s not now. Just like Scott Morrison said, that all my life he wanted to go from here to there, until he began to recognize that there, when it arrived, was here, was now!

So therefore, eventually it came to him that there is nowhere to go but here. You are always here! And then the ego says, “Oh, I am stuck here,” and you become desperate. Now if you were to go into that desperation, which Scott did because he is an awakened soul, you would wake up spiritually. Desperation and truth are two sides of the same coin. Desperation is nothing more, the same qualities, as truth. The only difference is that you are trying to get away from the here and now with desperation. By staying in the here and now, because there is no escape, there is clarity.

Q: It’s so crazy. You can’t just be here, you want to be better.

A: That’s the insanity of the ego, and the only way to love yourself is simply to see that you’re always here and now. Nowhere to go, nothing to achieve, nothing to get, nothing to accomplish, nothing to forgive, nothing to accept; you are nothing! You are nothing! You know, the most beautiful thing you can experience is when you realize you don’t exist. Who is Burt? Burt is talking to you now but really - I’m very serious - I mean, you watch a body talking now, but really, who’s Burt? I have been given a name and a body, but really, who the hell is Burt? I don’t know! I really don’t know. And it’s wonderful because I am an experience, and whatever I experience, I experience. Whatever I go through , I go through.

Q: When I went to Ireland, and I was seeing a different culture completely than here, I was just looking through my eyes to see it, and observing this thing, this whole situation. It was like turning on a channel on TV, click. I knew where I was, but it was a different venue, that’s all it was. I was there, this thing was looking through my eyes, me.

A: So there was detached observation of what was going on.

Q: That’s exactly right.

A: That is the key. You stepped out of your ego. You know, for the ego to die is not a big thing. Incidentally, let me say that the ego being an illusion, it never dies anyway, as long as you have a body. We are not talking about Jnanis like Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi who had no ego; such a rare being. But as long as you have a body there is always the idea of who you think you are. There is always some ego there. So when we talk about killing the ego, it’s a very simple thing to do. Just be here. Accept everything as it is. That is constant forgiveness.

Q: I think a lot of it could be terminology, like I call it “the watcher,” and that works for me.

A: Then call it “the watcher.”

Q: I noticed that some call it the pain body, some addictions, and different words work for different people.

A: That’s right. Get to the core, the essence, of that word that combines all the others, because essentially they all mean the same thing.

Q: When we recognize that we’re caught and we’re not loving ourselves, we’re feeling guilt and we’re suffering, are we best served then by going through those six steps, and it should bring us back to a place of love, which is nothing?

A: Which is nothing, yes. And as you begin to do this process of asking these questions that are in the steps, what happens is that you are relaxing with yourself, you are loving yourself. Even going through the process means you are taking time to love you. You see what I mean? Loving you has nothing to do with the ego. Loving you is getting in touch with that Bhagavan inside you, with that essence that you are, with that being that you are. That’s what love is. There is no egoistic preoccupation here.

Q: Part of us does not want to know, does not want us to turn around and reflect...

A: It wants us to stay on the circumference of the circle. It wants to stay on the surface because the center is its own death. It’s just like when you look at the ocean. What is the first thing you see when you look at the ocean? The surface waves. But the surface waves are what we call the ego. And then we say, “Oh, that’s the ocean.” It’s not the ocean, it’s just the surface. And the waves are afraid of dying, because they find, “I’m just part of the ocean. I am not an individual wave.” But the truth is, you are the ocean. We are total, pure consciousness.

Q: So the wave breaking on the shore is just our body dying?

A: Yes, you can see it that way. The wave goes up, and the life span of the wave is a millisecond. It has a life span and dies. And our life span is maybe 80 years, but it’s a twinkling of an eye. It goes so fast! The consciousness is fast, just like a dream! Sometimes you might dream a whole lifetime in a dream, and it might last just five minutes. But while dreaming, it feels like it has been going on for a long time.

Q: So all ego is, is resistance?

A: All the ego is, is resistance. It is seeking, yes.

Q: I find the breath fascinating, because when you get in touch with the feeling body, and feel how your breath is contracted and that you are holding, you can just be aware of that.

A: The reason for the breathing is to relax you, to keep you here and now, because the breath is always here and now. But don’t get caught in your breathing, because then you lose... the breathing is so you don’t get caught in your story. That’s the point of breathing. The contraction, the fear, takes you back into guilt, into seeking a way out, a need to escape.

Q: So how might you treat control, that you know what the right outcome is?

A: Well, first of all, you can never know what the right outcome is. Only consciousness knows that. So we are not interested in what the outcome is going to be. When we live in the moment, we simply live in the moment. That means we trust whatever comes from that moment. So as you live each moment, then the next moment is the result of moment to moment living, and that becomes perfection itself. That brings the fulfillment.

Q: So is intuition a brief connection with consciousness?

A: That’s right. And that intuition keeps getting more and more refined. Intuition is really the surface of that inner body listening, inner body awareness. But it goes even beyond intuition. What is beyond intuition? I give it a word called “feeling-knowing.” Because you can think it is intuition but not be quite sure if it is or not. Feeling-knowing is a certainty. There is no doubt about it whatever. You just know. So we can say it’s a little deeper than intuition. It comes to a point when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt. There is no doubt whatsoever. You just know. And that knowing does not come in words. You cannot prove it. It’s a feeling.

Q: So how would you explain that from judgment?

A: Judgment is when you make somebody wrong.

Q: But could you not have an intuition that someone’s not right?

A: If you make somebody wrong, it’s a judgment, it’s not intuition. Intuition does not judge. Intuition sees clearly but it does not judge; for example, I see a person who is not very aware, and he’s doing acts that are not very aware. Now, that’s clarity. That’s seeing clearly. But you don’t hate them for it. You feel compassion for them. See, there’s a difference. But if you judge them as wrong and bad, it’s not intuition. That’s a judgment. The moment you make somebody wrong, you’ve immediately stepped out of line with yourself. You have betrayed yourself right at the moment, because that judgment is coming from you. And the moment you make somebody wrong, you are the one thinking in terms of “wrong.” That means you are in the consciousness of “wrong.” You are really judging yourself.

Q: But even just comparison is insanity.

A: Yes, even comparison. Yes. People do what they do because that’s where there consciousness is at. And what right have we got to change anything? See people as they are and accept them as they are. And when a person is willing, and they want guidance from you, beautiful! But when they don’t, let them be. We have all eternity! You see, people are going to make mistakes and you know they are going to get hurt. But you know also that they are not going to listen. Let them! They’ve got all eternity to learn what they need to learn.

Q: And they also need to get hurt to learn that lesson.

A: That’s right. Some people need to get hurt before they hear, before they listen.

Q: I was having a conversation with a friend about Timothy McVeigh, and we realized that he was choiceless. Given his background, his conditioning, and his thinking, he had to do what he did. So you can feel compassion rather than horror, even though the outcome was so devastating.

A: There is still a karmic predicament with his action. That’s all part of it. See, it’s true that consciousness does everything, but we do have a choice. One time somebody was asking about Al Capone, and they said that according to astrological readings, Al Capone was someone who was very good with a knife. He could have been a surgeon! You know what I mean? So what I am saying is a person can make a choice, whether to use the knife to kill people or heal people. So we have gifts; it is the choice that we make how to use them. We do have a choice. We have a certain destiny. The moment we are born, we have a destiny. The enneagram, the zodiac, the sex, introvert/extrovert, that’s all set the moment you are born. That’s your destiny. Certain things that you love to do, maybe music or art, that’s also part of your destiny, your expression. But what you do with how the energy moves is your choice. You make those choices.

Q: When you said that about choice, there was a friend of mine who was abused by his mother from the age of five to when he was a teen. I said, “How did you come out of it?” He said, “There comes a point when you have to cut the loop. Otherwise it goes from parent to child and child to parent, and it keeps on going. That’s when you have to choose, and you cut the loop and you say, ‘I choose not to do that anymore and you move on from there.’” It was like somebody switched a light on in my head. He said, “It doesn’t matter what you’ve been through. It’s what you choose to do from now on.”

A: That’s right. And when you learn from what is happening, then there is a choice. Our choice ultimately is between love and fear, all the time. Those are the only two emotions. All negativity is fear. All positivity is love.

Q: But being in personal contact with someone who has overcome their fear, who has faced it and seen it die, is an incredible force. It opens the door.

A: That’s right.