Articles - U R Light

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Enjoy this sampling of Articles from Ariole’s ‘archives’ . . .

For more, enjoy the expanded collection available in her 2009 Blog . . .

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“H.O.P.E. = Healing Ourselves and Planet Earth”

– A Blueprint for Personal and Collective Change

There’s a kingpin in every machine, a tiny place no bigger than the size of your hand – even in a machine the size of a warehouse. In this tiny place, if you insert anything foreign to the process of this machine – something even as small as a toothpick – you will stop this mammoth mechanism in its tracks.

What is the kingpin for humanity? What is the missing clue that will stop suffering – and our perpetuation and encouragement of it – in its tracks?

Are you overwhelmed by the global – or even the local – news? Does the crime, ‘natural’ disasters, and even the reporting of the weather get you down? Does the state of the world plummet you into a quicksand pit of despair? Do you sometimes wonder if humanity will ever stop fighting? If we will ever enlist our will to the true cessation of famine, poverty, homelessness, and suicide? What about the growing epidemic of depression, anticipated to become even more prevalent than heart attacks and strokes in cutting short human lives? Does this get you down?

And in the privacy of your own personal life … Do you ever feel like your past has you by the throat, choking the NOW life out of you? Do you get caught in downward spirals – seemingly relentless personal tornadoes – of fear, anxiety, confusion, self-criticism, and hopelessness? How often is the sun obliterated by clouds in your experience of life?

As a species, we are becoming rapidly more and more de-sensitized – more and more like a great machine. The images on the ‘news’ of suffering and disasters around the world – ‘reporting’ which became increasingly fear based in the late 1980’s – has so overwhelmed us that we take suffering for granted. Images and characterizations of violence and violent people as ‘heroes’ in movies, video games and television programs has made us ‘tough’ outside … so tough that we are becoming increasingly desensitized.

When we ‘step back’ and observe this trend from an observer’s vantage, what do we see? What are the effects of the trends that we are allowing to sweep our species, unchecked?

With a trillion dollars exchanging hands around this planet each and every day, how is it that we tolerate poverty and living on the razor’s edge of survival – for us and / or for the billions of people around the world who daily eke out a meager living? How is it that we complacently tolerate this? What’s gone wrong?

With thousands of people in villages and communities around the world living well into their hundreds, hundred and twenties, and even hundred and forties, why is it that we increasingly assume, sheepishly, that disease is a natural cause of death? What ever happened to dying from ‘old age’, robust and content with our life’s journey – at peace?

With six and a half billion people on this planet – and growing – how is it that any of us are lonely? How is it that we can experience such incredible isolation, as if we haven’t any kin?

With millions of people experiencing true satisfaction and inspiration in their lives, eager to get up each morning to live a new day of fulfillment, service, creativity and discovery, how is it that any of us are bored? How is it that we settle for dead-end jobs, under-challenging and even denegrading work environments? And how is it that we tolerate knowing that many of the products we buy are created on the backs of sweat shop workers, farmers unprotected from lethal pesticides, and other atrocities of modern ‘technology’?

How can this be?

It can be because we have become so desensitized. We are like the frog in the glass beaker that sits trustingly as the water boils – until it explodes. We adapt. We normalize unspeakable conditions, our ego mind convincing us that they’re alright.

What is the cost of this? What if we were to pull out a calculator, and with the most brilliant mathematical minds in the world leading this project, we were to take an inventory of all the areas of human life that are affected by our adapting to appalling circumstances, protocols and behaviors? What ‘price’ would we tally?

Take a breath – a deep breath.

All of this can stop, now. We know where to put the toothpick in the machine. We know how to stop this insanity in its tracks.

It’s about stillness. And being present.

It’s about re-sensitizing ourselves to the world around us and within us.

It’s about standing up in our internal power and discovering that we each are far more capable than we’ve been raised to believe we are.

There is no problem or challenge in our midst that is devoid of a matching solution. To see this – to know this – we must become sensitive to what is. And we must stand in our true power.

Think of Atlas, the Greek God who carries the planet on his back. He is doing this not out of suffering, or out of martyrdom. He is doing this out of pure strength. When we are strong work is not an effort. Challenges are not obstacles. The toothpick stops the machine with utmost ease.

Does this inspire you? Does it frighten you? Does it evoke your curiosity? Do you feel hot inside, as if your body is preparing to rise to an exciting challenge?

If you feel your senses whetted by what you are reading here – this is a sign that you’re ready to rise into clarity, empowerment, and freedom from misery – yours and humanity’s.

All of the great teachers throughout the ages have shared a common vision with their earthly students: That suffering is not a necessity.

There is a path out of suffering.

A path, by its very nature, is a guided route. It is a route that has already been traveled – at least by the person leading it. Jesus taught as he walked this path. He ‘shone the light of his consciousness’ upon it and led the way for those who believed it could be true. Buddha taught as he walked this path. Mohammed taught as he walked this path. Lao Tzu taught as he walked this path. Gandhi taught as he walked this path. Martin Luther King Jr. taught as he walked this path. The list goes on …

This path is not a religious path. Religions have evolved out of the teachings of great masters. The masters did not proclaim a religion. Religion ‘followed’ them.

You can be a simple mortal and walk this path.

And you can do this NOW.

Take stock of your suffering. In what areas of your life do you suffer? How? Do you suffer just in your own personal life? Do you witness suffering around you? In your immediate community? In the world at large?

How much would it be worth to you to reduce this suffering?

What if there was a clear and simple ‘Map’.

Breathe again. Take a deep, long, slow breath.

It is here, now.

The ‘Map’.

Ariole K. Alei is the author of H.O.P.E. = Healing Ourselves and Planet Earth – A Blueprint for Personal and Collective Change, a book which has been likened to Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. She teaches international Courses and Workshops based on the teachings – the ‘Map’ – within this book.

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“Love is an Energy Field”

“Love is not a feeling. Love is spiritual energy. Love is pure creative energy at its highest level. Love expressed in human form actualizes your divine self.”

– Barbara King

Love is not a feeling. Love is a spiritual energy field.

So often in our culture we assume that love is a feeling. That we either feel it or we don’t. That it either exists – it is present – or it isn’t. Barbara King’s words direct our awareness to the recognition that love is an energy field – and as such, it can be cultivated.

Love is an energy field in which we exist. It is a state of being in which we exist. When we step into it, it surrounds us, it envelops us, it shapes us, it fills us. It nurtures us.

When we assume that love is a feeling, we diminish it. Feelings come and go.

States of being – energy fields – ebb and waft like clouds. And yet their substance is always present. It is energy available for creation.

When we assume that love is a feeling, we relegate it to the realm of all feelings – shame, guilt, apathy, despair, longing, excitement, contentment, fear, sorrow, sadness, anger, happiness, desire.

Love is more than this.

When we imagine that feelings rise and fall – within us – and that energy states arise and evolve around us – we begin to recognize that love is something distinctl unique from feelings. When we learn to contribute to the well-being of the state of love, we are sustained by it. We are fed by it. We are cared for by it. We are loved by it.

What we teach and emulate in HeartSong are the Principles and Practices of love – how to step into it, how to stay in it, how to flow with it.

When we misidentify love as a feeling, we have no responsibility to it. There is no commitment required to maintain it. It – like most of the human created world we live in – can easily be mistreated by us. We can take it for granted, become angry when it ‘leaves’ us, and vow to never succumb to it again.

This attitude shifts entirely when we realize what love is. It is a state of being, a vibration that we must learn to attune ourselves to.

This requires recognition – of what love actually is – and discipline – to attune ourselves to it.

When we are not attuned to love, we fall out of love.

When we are attuned to love, it never leaves us. Because we never leave it

What are some of the Principles which support us to step into love – and stay in it? Here are a few … Truthfulness. Honesty – with oneself first. Honesty ripples from this place outward. Gentleness. Respect. Willingness. Trust. Trustworthiness. Sensitivity. Maturity. Grace. Inner power. Porous boundaries. Being present. Honor – the ability to honor that which is divine. Rapture – the ability to open oneself to that which is truly beautiful. Awareness, and awakeness – being conscious of what is, in this present moment, now. The willingness, and the inner power, to take appropriate action, thus not being fossilized in – or attached to – the past. Surrender. The willingness to be love – to actually become it. This is a process. A process which requires, at some turning point, a decision, a commitment. A decision to align oneself with love. This is what we teach. How to spiral oneself upward – consistently, into love – rather than downward, out of one’s inner power, into the depression and apathy of the lower levels of consciousness – the lower realms of emotion.

These are just some of the Principles which support us each, as individuals, and together, as a community – a culture – to experience – and to be – in love.

In our culture we often assume that one is either in love, or not in love. That we either feel love, or we don’t.

In Relationship Coaching, we redefine what being ‘in love’ means. Rather than simply feeling a feeling, love to us means living in an ongoing state of love. Yes, other emotions do arise from time to time. And yet, with Practice, these are allowed to wash through. They never linger. They never last. They are allowed – and encouraged and supported – to arise and to fall. We witness them, with our Observer Mind. And in so doing, we remain unattached. We Practice how to not feed them as a drama. And, as if miraculously, we discover that emotions – feelings – rise, fall, and disappear.

Love is not the same.

When we Practice the Principles which love invites us to rediscover, love remains. It is a constant in which these other emotions rise, fall, and pass away. Love becomes the container in which all of life exists.

This is what we teach – through individual Coaching and Healing sessions, Tele-Group Coaching Sessions, Workshops, and Webinars. Our work is created out of a consciousness that human communities, too, can be love. They can be containers of love in which other experiences – including interpersonal experiences – rise, fall, and pass away.

This concept could be a quantum shift for you in your life.

You can choose to – or default unconsciously to – living on the whims of love ‘the emotion’.

Or you can commit to learn how to step into love the energy field.

We are here to support ou on this journey.

We are here to teach you how.

Let us know if this interests you. We will then explore the most appropriate means for you to be supported into the energy field of love – be it through individual or couples Coaching, reading our Books, listening to our Audio Courses, participating in Group Coaching and/or Workshops, or any of our other opportunities for you to learn and discover love.

We are ‘midwives’ (and ‘midhusbands’!) – here to birth you into a new experience – a new context – of life.

Carpe diem. Seize the day. Seize this opportunity – to open and to awaken … to a new opportunity of how to live your life.

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Pro-Action – Getting What You Want

We can dream, and envision, and hope for, and want many things. To receive them, we must ask for them. We must open ourselves to them. We must grow to reach them. We must take action towards them. And we must be grateful for them.

Asking, openness, growing, action, receiving, gratitude.

Consider making this your mantra.

Where do you sometimes fall short? Is this a pattern? Do you forget to ask? Or assume you can receive without giving? Or gain all you want – that you don’t yet have – without stepping beyond your current comfort zone?

Take a bold step. Take a baby step. Stretch beyond what is familiar. And you will find your Garden of Eden, your Rainbow, your Oz.

We are here to support you. Ask us for help if you feel you need it, at any time.

We are here to encourage you. Growing requires courage, determination, and commitment.

We are here to commend you – for being pro-active.

We are here to celebrate you – for becoming who you truly are.

We are here … To grow with you.

This is a beautiful day. Seize every moment. Live every breath as if it is the most precious thing in the universe.

Because it is …

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Awakening Instinct

The True Feminine Principle

Introduction

There is a general malaise rampant in our culture, a malaise which threatens to destroy our very existence here in the ‘world’ of physical form. It is a malaise which arises within us – within our minds, the way we think and perceive of ourselves, the world, and what is beyond it.

This malaise can be seen as a loss. It can also be seen as a bloating.

Either way, the medicine for its healing – the elixir – is within us, within our capability. It is simple, yet not easy. To employ it is to call ourselves up from our depths. To employ it is to become the simple, unadorned, full potentiality of human.

The ‘bloating’ can be seen as this. We have, simply put, become grandiose in our thinking and have transferred numinosity from the divine to the mundane. In so doing we have cut ourselves off from instinct, the very signal that would redirect us to our sanity – and our survival / thrival.

Robert Moore writes clearly and powerfully about the grandiose epidemic in our world in Facing the Dragon. As an underdeveloped aspect of our psychology, our boy or girl ‘hero’ has become not a benevolent King or Queen, but rather a grandiose tyrant. The most dangerous elements of grandiosity are its limitlessness and its ruthlessness. When the psyche or mind is overcome or ruled by grandiosity, there is in a person a sense of no limits. No limits in the physical world. (There are no limits in the sacred. We have misplaced this awareness onto the mundane world.) With no limits, a grandiose person perceives that he or she can have anything, and as much of it as pleases him / her. This is the root of greed. And greed at anyone and anything’s expense.

Grandiosity has no heart at its centre. It feels no remorse. It rapes and pillages, physically and metaphorically. It takes prisoners for its own perceived gain.

Marion Woodman eloquently describes the transference of numinosity from the sacred to the mundane in Addicted to Perfection. My own instinct raised an alarm of this trend to me a decade and some ago – when stores began to open late night, and soon thereafter on Sundays. I sensed the ‘beginning of the end’.

I remember, too, the first time I consciously realized that not all humans love nature. This was a bit of a shock to me. Not all humans feel awe and reverence in the presence of nature. For me, hiking or walking in the mountains and their forests, I have always been aware of a power much larger than myself – much larger than ‘humans’. This awareness always carries with it a great sense of relief. It was shocking to me to first realize that some people are frightened by the enormous power of nature. Some people are terrified at the thought of camping, sleeping in a tent, being out of sight of their car, or home – of ‘civilization’.

Science from Déscartes onward has taught us to believe in only what we can see, hear and touch with our physical senses. It has taught us to disbelieve – and ultimately fear – all else. It has taught us, thus, to disbelieve the sacred, the divine. For the sacred, the divine is not physical. It is essential. It exists in all things, and yet it is not the appearance of the things. The material cannot be mistaken for it.

This has been our perceptual mistake, a mistake with a domino effect long ago unleashed.

We have withdrawn our true awareness of the divine as being within our essence and all around us as ‘spirit’ – and we have placed all of this power on what we can see, hear and touch. The material world has become our altar. We have come to worship things physical. And what we worship – what we place our attention on – grows. The material world of our creations has become cancerous. As with cancerous growths, only divine intervention and/or radical action can stop its rampancy.

As Robert Moore so eloquently describes in King [Queen], Warrior, Magician, Lover, we need to learn again, as Carl Jung realized, to identify the primary archetypes or ‘gods’ which are hard wired into the stuff of our psyche. And we need to do this without perceiving ourselves as the archetypes. In other words, we need to relate to them without identifying ourselves with them.

This may sound like a tight rope course. It requires study, inner inquiry and learning – recognition or ‘consciousness’ and its application. As long as we take the numinosity which belongs to the ‘gods’ and place it in ourselves, we are lost. We have lost our way. We have no path. We are trapped in an inner spiral, without a map. We are drowning in the ultimate morais of what the Buddhists call the ‘Wheel of Time’

The benevolent gods have a purpose – to lead us out.

Within ourselves, intuition and instinct are the voices of the benevolent gods.

The Numbing of Instinct

To understand how we allowed and participated in the numbing of our natural, internal ‘signal’ mechanism of instinct, we need to look at several historical elements.

Firstly, the relationship and interplay between the masculine and the feminine.

We have entangled our perception of the male and female with the masculine and the feminine. The latter two are principles, not genders. Each man has within him both principles, as does each woman. As a species we have come to overvalue one and undervalue the other, to our peril.

Let’s look at what the masculine and the feminine are, in a practical sense.

The masculine is the yang, the sun power, the active element. It is the doing. It is the driver. It moves in a linear path, charting a logical course from a to b. It takes clear steps to reach its goal. It is the embodiment of achievement, the desire for more, new, better, bigger. It is the conqueror. It is the vessel of actualized ‘power’ and pride. In its most fully awakened, dynamic state, it is the benevolent leader.

The feminine is the yin, the moon power, she who reflects and distributes the light of the sun. It is the being. It is the receiver. It flows in a circular, sometimes omni-directional ‘journey’, reaching into, exploring, discovering – like water finding its way through land to become a river. It is a process, rather than clearly laid out steps. It is an unfolding. It is the embodiment of acceptance of what is – of loving the totality of what is. In its most fully awakened, dynamic state it is a receptacle, holding space for transformation.

We have become skewed, as a species, placing value more on the masculine than the feminine. And for centuries we have been acting out this skew, creating the man-made world of it.

Just like a teeter totter, the masculine and feminine principles – in the world and in us – need to be balanced. They need to be harmonized. Too much emphasis on the masculine drops one end of the teeter totter and shoots the other sky high. The result is a created world which becomes, more and more through time, polarized.

In Only Fear Dies Barry Long differentiates between the earth and the world. The earth is the underlying reality, that which is eternal, which never changes. (Though it continuously evolves.) The world is the human made creation.

We, particularly in the ‘western world’ and increasingly in the ‘east’, fixate our attention on the world, at the peril of our recognition of and connection with the earth.

We are born of the earth. Chemically, biologically, we are made of the same stuff. We are not plastic, fabricated steel, or toxic drug. We are earth. Carbon, oxygen, zinc, magnesium. We are the earth. When we fixate on the world, we expect ourselves to be eternal in the sense of being non biodegradable, like the stuff that we increasingly create. We are of the earth. No matter how ‘advanced’ we become in medical technologies, we – each one of us – will someday return our bodies to the earth. (And the more ‘man made stuff’ we have inserted into them, the more non biodegradable our bodies will become.

It is not surprising that the earth is often – in many cultures and mythologies – coupled in perception with the Mother. The earth is the life giver. Nature is the life giver. The masculine, just as in intercourse, must interplay and merge with the feminine to create life. Creation without the feminine is the creation of death.

Awakening to Denial

To understand the numbing of instinct, we must understand denial.

Denial is the choice to be unconscious.

Why would we choose to be unconscious? We choose, at some level of our ego, of our mind, to be unconscious when we fear that we are unable to face what is – to respond holistically to what is. Denial can only exist in the presence of self doubt. If we believed in ourselves and had access (through our instinct and intuition and our heeding it) to all of our wisdom and personal, innerpower, then we would have nothing to fear. Ever. We would be in an ‘enlightened state of consciousness’, something which I believe is attainable to each one of us, here and now.

Denial is sleep, waking sleep. Shakespeare shone a brilliant light on it in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Philosophers and poets throughout time have spoken of the ‘dream’, the waking sleep. The waking sleep is, to varying degrees yet alive in each one of us, denial.

To look at the root, the ‘beginning’, and the continuity of denial as a central hold in our mind, our human psychology, is to look at the ‘story’ of why we are here. How we came to ‘be’ here, incarnate on this ‘earth’. It is to ask the existential questions, the questions which have been asked and somewhat, marginally answered by all religions spanning all of time. Who? What? Where? Why?

The most vital question to us now, is When? When will we be courageous enough to believe in ourselves, our own inner capacities, our own links with the divine – to awaken from our drugged state of denial?

Awakening our instinct and our intuition are the simple pearls within our oyster shells. Instinct and intuition naturally lead us out of the spell, out of denial.

* This is an excerpt of a manuscript which was first published, in full, in Explore! for the Professional magazine, Volume 15 Number 5, October 2006. Awakening Instinct – the true feminine principle is part of the trilogy Awakening Instinct * Running the Gauntlet * Windows Through Time.

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Discovering the Secret Door To Heaven:

Why “The Da Vinci Code” Matters and What To Do About It

Sting’s words – “When you love somebody, Set them free” – could not be a more powerful and perfect message for all men and women who are struggling with love, sex, and relationship. Rather than enslaving our partner for our own selfish gain – as men and women have done for millennia – the time has come for us to transcend our lower mind and activate our higher mind. We do this through our conscious reverence for life – through our feeling, awareness, and expression of unconditional love and respect.

Sting provides the recipe: “Set them free”. Let your partner choose to love you.

The following is an exerpt from my new book entitled When A Man Really Loves A Woman. Engaging this excerpt in your own life will demonstrate to you that you are a loving and loveable being.

The Secret of a Blissful Life

The essence of Life on Earth is LOVE.

Love is why we are all here …

to learn how to give it, unconditionally,

and to learn how to receive it, gracefully.

Mastering the lesson of real love is a man’s greatest challenge.

This task appears in front of every man in the form of woman. To rise up to this challenge, it is vital to know that – while a man remains immature psychologically – he will fail again and again at truly loving a woman.

The immature man, who is nothing but a boy in an adult body, seeks what all boys want: excitement. This excitement after puberty is the sex that immature men crave so much. But sex is not what a woman wants.

An adult male who is insufficiently integrated is too much boy and not enough man to really love a woman. Instead of giving love, he selfishly demands sex and attention. He uses all sorts of tricks to satisfy his wants, even to the point where he aggressively manipulates and violates people.

Man and woman are meant to be One.

We are sexual beings. Sexual energy is our life force. Being sexual is part of our divine nature. Yet most of us don’t recognize – or respect – it as this. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code offers an intriguing perspective on this subject.

It is only when our life force is trapped in the lower levels of our consciousness – where the human ego/mind is immature and not yet integrated – that sex becomes distorted. When we use our sexual life force energy selfishly, it becomes depleted pre-maturely and we die of dis-ease and old age before our time.

This is true for both men and women. The soul that yearns for love and union remains unfulfilled, and its sadness is felt as pain and suffering through our mind, body, emotions and spirit.

The union of man and woman through unconditional loving – both physical and non-physical – reconnects us with our essence and our source.

A male who fails to become a whole loving man keeps himself and his mate in a downward spiral of fear, separation, loneliness, dread, doom and gloom, worry, shame and guilt.

How did you feel when you first fell in love? Were you on top of the world?

In a perfect world, this love should have lasted. Reality is different. What can you do about it now?

It is simple: Forgive and forget, and acknowledge the love that flows through your life this very moment.

Instead of blaming your mother, your father, your lover, your priest, your teacher or your friends for what went wrong with your love life, just try this …

Commit to being even more loving from this moment onward. Soon you will enjoy blue skies again … your fortunes will improve and you will begin to spiral upward in your experience of love and life on Earth.

Any man can do this! Any woman can do this!

Noticing and cherishing the beauty in everything that you see, feel, hear, touch, smell and taste is the secret of a blissful life.

THE 4 ASCENTIALS

How to Rise to New Levels in Your Relationship

What would your life be like … if you had boundless energy and a sense of hope that your love relationship is going to be good, no matter what?

Would you like to be free … from shackles such as dread, fatigue, fear, anxiety, stress, guilt, cravings, and depression?

Of course you would! The real question is … where to begin?

What you are about to discover are four practical steps to Self-Transformation which have changed the lives of thousands of people whom I have coached over the last two decades. Through my own journey of attaining Self Knowledge, I have found out how to be free from the limitations of what I call the lower levels of consciousness – where our self-defeating feelings, thoughts, and emotions have their eternal home.

According to Barry Long, the late enlightened spiritual teacher from Australia, the only worthwhile thing that humans can contribute to the world is higher consciousness. Within the context of David Hawkins’ “Map of Consciousness” from his monumental book Power versus Force, this idea implies that when an individual transcends the force of his or her selfish, inflated ego personality, such a person then contributes his or her true potential – released through benevolent power – to the world. The world then becomes the place we all yearn for: the Garden of Eden.

How do we proceed practically, as the man or woman who is reading these words, to manifest this idea? How do we liberate ourselves from our own forcefulness? How do we become kind, generous, benevolent, happy and peaceful? How do we tap into our authentic power and contribute effectively towards humanity’s expressed desire and purpose of creating and living in a real and lasting paradise?

While there may be infinite paths leading to this destination, my answer is ‘through our individual commitments and efforts to raise our personal levels of consciousness’.

Toward this means I share with you now four simple steps that I call ‘THE FOUR ASCENTIALS’.

I call these ‘The Four Ascentials’ because they are the action steps that lead us to the summit of life. This is important to understand, because the moment we are born we essentially begin the process of ascending our respective mountain of life.

Climbing our respective mountain is the life challenge that each one of us is faced with, from the moment of our birth until we die. Hopefully, by that time, we have dissolved our fears and have developed the courage to let go of our shame, guilt, regrets, cravings, anger, and false pride. Because as and when we do, the spiral of life spins us upward towards willingness, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and understanding. Moving upward and closer to the summit, we transcend duality and begin to live the choiceless life of an ‘Awakened Soul in its Earthsuit’ – the one and only mortal body.

The 4 Ascentials

‘The 4 Ascentials’ is a powerful set of four inner cultivation steps which will make your ascension to the top of your ‘mountain’ more effortless. Their application will stop you from being immaturely emotional and prevent the usual ups and downs of living. Together they are an effective ‘cure’ for conditions such as fatigue, stress, self-doubt, procrastination, indecision, and depression.

Imagine that you are climbing a real life mountain. What gets you successfully to the top are the same steps that get you to the highest peak of life:

Be silent. Don’t talk unless absolutely necessary. Save your breath (life). People waste enormous amounts of energy gossiping and trying to be right.

Tune out. Don’t haul a TV, newspapers and magazines with you because this baggage will slow you down, confuse your mind, and distract you from your real life path.

Tune in. Learn to silence your chatting mind. It will otherwise confuse you and leave you doubting yourself. Be still so that you can tap into the universal mind for guidance, truth and wisdom. Listen for and follow your intuition and you will stay on your path.

Be grateful – for nothing in particular. Life is good, and because life is in you, you are good. Unconditional gratitude opens your heart, stills your mind, and helps you to ‘see’ the bigger picture – the whole of the mountain and all of the space surrounding it. Unconditional gratitude, as expressed by a simple ‘Thank You’, leads to forgiveness, compassion, love, and inner peace. It is like sending a message saying ‘I’m coming home’.

How do you apply ‘The 4 Ascentials’ in your daily life?

Stop talking about yourself unless you really have to. In particular, stop talking about the past unless you have to communicate some facts. Once you stop talking about the past, you will also stop thinking about the past. Don’t complain or blame. If something is not right, do what you can to correct and improve it.

All of your emotions are in the past. All of your worries about the future arise from your living past. When climbing the mountain, do you keep looking down or are your eyes set on what’s ahead and in front of you?

Avoid watching too much TV, reading newspapers and magazines. You must resist the pull of the magician who is trying to steal your mind.

Abstain from studying pornography and stop masturbating. If you have a sexual urge and no lover to make love to, find a creative, productive outlet or channel for your sexual energy. Love only what is in front of you – that which is real – and then love it fully and completely with all of your heart.

Leave conversations that are meaningless. I.e. Don’t gossip or discuss things. If you were climbing a mountain, would you discuss nature? No, you can’t. Nature is what it is. You can only discuss what mankind is doing to nature. All that we can ever discuss are questionable acts – which don’t lead us to truth and honesty, or responsible behaviour. There is only one right thing to do, ever. This is how you get out of the misery called ‘duality’ which, in human emotionality, is translated into happiness/unhappiness or emotional ups and downs.

Concentrate on something positive. Stop being like a yoyo! Yoyos don’t climb mountains. They end up hanging head-down!

Learn how to meditate. Sit still, by yourself, a few minutes after waking and a few minutes before sleeping. Sit in an upright chair, feet on the ground, back firmly supported by your spine or by the back of the chair. Resting your hands on your legs, palms facing up, close your eyes and turn your attention to the center of your forehead. Stay here until you can feel a sensation. If a thought comes in, you have three choices: (1) ignore it and stay with your attention on your forehead, (2) gently push it aside and come back to your attention on your forehead, or (3) totally devote yourself to your distraction until it is taken care of – like writing an important note – and then come back to your attention on your forehead. From here, move your attention down into in the center of your palms, until you can feel some tingling energy there. Then, move your attention back to your forehead, then to your feet, then up your legs, to your lips, your nose, the top of your head – your crown chakra, and so on.

The purpose here is to heighten your sensory awareness so that you begin to feel more subtle energy moving through your body. This energy is your life force, and it feels blissful – simply delicious. You will begin to sense the love that is flowing through you naturally – every second of your life – and start tapping into your universal, infinite, eternal and immortal consciousness.

The practice of simply saying ‘thank you’ to the Universe comes naturally to you as you expand your consciousness. Similarly, you naturally expand your consciousness as you express a simple, plain, unconditional ‘thank you’ as often as you remember to do so.

Your daily fifth step is a self-coaching exercise. Start a special ‘Ascension Journal’ and ask yourself these questions:

What are three personality traits that are working well for me?

What are three personality traits that are not working well?

What can I do about it and what can I not?

Then take action on the part that you can change.

This is an excerpt from Colin’s book When A Man Really Loves A Woman.