- ✅ #01 (Mon Oct 27 2025): 📖 Read Foreword & Introduction → “You are not your mind.”
- (xiii) That was the time when I would personally deliver a few copies every week to some small bookstores in Vancouver.
- (pg. 4) Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.” “Maybe,” I thought, “only one of them is real.”
- (pg. 5) I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind.
- (pg. 5) I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy.
- (pg. 7) On another level, I speak of a profound transformation of human consciousness — not as a distant future possibility, but available now — no matter who or where you are.
- (pg. 8) The pause symbol after certain passages is a suggestion that you may want to stop reading for a moment, become still, and feel and experience the truth of what has just been said.
- (pg. 9) When I occasionally quote the words of Jesus or the Buddha, from A Course in Miracles or from other teachings, I do so not in order to compare, but to draw your attention to the fact that in essence there is and always has been only one spiritual teaching, although it comes in many forms.
- (pg. 9) I speak from inner experience, and if at times I speak forcefully, it is to cut through heavy layers of mental resistance and to reach that place within you where you already know, just as I know, and where the truth is recognized when it is heard.
- ✅ #02 (Tue Oct 28 2025): 📖 Ch. 1 §1–2 “You Are Not Your Mind” → Notice one thought without judging it. :
- (pg. 11) Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth.
- (pg. 12) Enlightenment is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being.
- (pg. 12) I love the Buddha’s simple definition of enlightenment as “the end of suffering”.
- (pg. 14) Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal.
- (pg. 14) Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is!
- (pg. 15) Thinking has become a disease.
- (pg. 15) This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind.
- (pg. 16) The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity – the thinker.
- (pg. 16) You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.
- (pg. 16) The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues.
- (pg. 17) It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy.
- (pg. 17) The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation.
- (pg. 18) When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge.
- (pg. 18) The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides.
- (pg. 18) This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.
- (pg. 19) You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.
- (pg. 20) Instead of “watching the thinker”, you can also create a gap in the mind stream by directing the focus of your intention into the Now.
- (pg. 20) This is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within.
- (pg. 20) So, the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.
- ✅ #03 (Wed Oct 29 2025): 📖 Ch. 1 §3–4 → Sense where old pain lives in the body. :
- (pg. 21) As it is, I would say about 80-90% of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful.
- (pg. 22) The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind.
- (pg. 22) To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important.
- (pg. 23) In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.
- (pg. 23) No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power.
- (pg. 23) All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.
- (pg. 24) There is clearly an intelligence at work that is far greater than the mind.
- (pg. 24) Mind, in the way in which I use the word, is not just thought. It includes emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns.
- (pg. 26) You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware.
- ✅ #04 (Thu Oct 30 2025): 📖 Ch. 1 §5–6 → Catch one reaction before it begins. :
- (pg. 27) Make it a habit to ask yourself: What’s going on inside me at this moment? That question will point you in the right direction. But don’t analyze, just watch.
- (pg. 27) An emotion usually represents an amplified and energized thought pattern.
- (pg. 27) By dwelling mentally on the situation, event, or person that is the perceived cause of the emotion, the thought feeds energy to the emotion, which in turn energizes the thought pattern, and so on.
- (pg. 28) One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove that emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily.
- (pg. 28) You will not be free of that pain until you cease to derive your sense of self from identification with the mind, which is to say from ego. The mind is then toppled from its place of power and Being reveals itself as your true nature.
- (pg. 29) Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.
- (pg. 29) Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being, or rather three aspects of the state of inner connectedness with Being.
- (pg. 29) Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.
- (pg. 31) Don’t seek to become free of desire or “achieve” enlightenment. Become present. Be the “awakened one”, which is what the word buddha means.
- (pg. 31) Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind.
- (pg. 32) There are two levels of pain: the pain that you create now, and the pain that still lives on in your mind and body.
- ✅ #05 (Fri Oct 31 2025): 📖 Ch. 2 §1–2 “Consciousness: The Way Out of Pain” → When did I feel truly present today? :
- (pg. 33) The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life. The pain that you create now is ALWAYS some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.
- (pg. 33) The more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering – and free of the egoic mind.
- (pg. 34) The mind, to ensure that it remains in control, seeks continuously to cover up the present moment with past and future.
- (pg. 34) Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.
- (pg. 34) Say “yes” to life – and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
- (pg. 35) Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.
- (pg. 36) The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it.
- (pg. 37) Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy.
- (pg. 37) Once the pain-body has taken over you, you want more pain. You become a victim or a perpetrator. You want to inflict pain, or you want to suffer pain, or both.
- (pg. 37) The pain-body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness. It is afraid of being found out. Its survival depends on your unconscious identification with it, as well as on your unconscious fear of facing pain that lives in you.
- ✅ #06 (Sat Nov 1 2025): 📖 Ch. 2 §3–5 → Whisper, “This moment is enough.” :
- (pg. 38) So the pain-body doesn’t want you to observe it directly and see it for what it is. The moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention into it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in. I call it presence.
- (pg. 38) Watching it is enough. Watching it implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment.
- (pg. 39) When you start to disidentify and become the watcher, the pain-body will continue to operate for a while and will try to trick you into identifying with it again.
- (pg. 39) For example, if anger is the predominant energy vibration of the pain-body and you think angry thoughts, dwelling on what someone did to you or what you are going to do to him or her, then you have become unconscious, and the pain-body has become “you”.
- (pg. 40) Sustained conscious attention severs the link between the pain-body and your thought processed and brings about the process of transmutation.
- (pg. 40) Let me summarize the process. Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don’t think about it – don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze. Don’t make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of “the one who observes”, the silent watcher. This is the power of Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.
- (pg. 41) Once you have understood the basic principle of being present as the watcher of what happens inside you – and you “understand” it by experiencing it – you have at your disposal the most potent transformational tool.
- (pg. 43) Psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.
- (pg. 43) You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection – you cannot cope with the future.
- (pg. 43) Moreover, as long as you are identified with your mind, the ego runs your life, as I pointed out earlier.
- (pg. 43) Ultimately all fear is the ego’s fear of death, of annihilation.
- (pg. 44) Once you have disidentified from your mind, whether you are right or wrong makes no difference to your sense of self at all.
- (pg. 44) So anyone who is identified with their mind and, therefore, disconnected from their true power, their deeper self rooted in Being, will have fear as their constant companion.
- (pg. 45) Another aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a deep-seated sense of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole.
- (pg. 45) As long as the egoic mind is running your life, you cannot truly be at ease, you cannot be at peace or fulfilled except for brief intervals when you obtained what you wanted, when a craving has just been fulfilled.
- (pg. 46) The secret to life is to “die before you die” – and find that there is no death.
- ✅ #07 (Sun Nov 2 2025): 📖 Review → Highlight one sentence that still echoes. :
- (pg. 28) You will not be free of that pain until you cease to derive your sense of self from identification with the mind, which is to say from ego. The mind is then toppled from its place of power and Being reveals itself as your true nature.
- ✅ #08 (Mon Nov 3 2025): 📖 Ch. 3 §1–2 “Moving Deeply Into the Now” → Feel inner aliveness. :
- (pg. 47) I feel that there is still a great deal I need to learn about the workings of my mind before I can get anywhere near full consciousness or spiritual enlightenment. No, you don’t. The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind. Once you have understood the basic dysfunction, there isn’t really much else that you need to learn or understand.
- (pg. 47) The ego’s needs are endless. It feels vulnerable and threatened and so lives in a state of fear and want.
- (pg. 48) So once you recognize the root of unconsciousness as identification with the mind, which of course includes the emotions, you step out of it. You become present. When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled with it.
- (pg. 48) It seems almost impossible to disidentify from the mind. We are all immersed in it. How do you teach a fish to fly? Here is the key: End the delusion of time. Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from the mind and it stops – unless you choose to use it.
- (pg. 49) The more you are focused on time – past and future – the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.
- (pg. 50) Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace – and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now.
- (pg. 50) The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now.
- (pg. 51) “Take no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself” or “Nobody who puts his hands to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God”.
- (pg. 51) The whole essence of Zen consists in walking along the razor’s edge of Now. In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dissolve.
- (pg. 54) There is a place for mind and mind knowledge. It is in the practical realm of day-to-day living. However, when it takes over all aspects of your life, including your relationships with other human beings and with nature, it becomes a monstrous parasite that, unchecked, may well end up killing all life on the planet and finally itself by killing its host.
- (pg. 54) Make it your practice to withdraw attention from past and future whenever they are not needed. Step out of the time dimension as much as possible in everyday life.
- (pg. 55) Identification with the mind gives it more energy; observation of the mind withdraws energy from it. The energy that is withdrawn from the mind turns into presence.
- (pg. 55) Learn to use time in the practical aspects of your life – we may call this “clock time” – but immediately return to present-moment awareness when those practical matters have been dealt with.
- (pg. 56) Any lesson from the past becomes relevant and is applied now. Any planning as well as working toward achieving a particular goal is done now.
- (pg. 56) The enlightened person’s main focus of attention is always the Now, but they are still peripherally aware of time. In other words they continue to use clock time but are free of psychological time.
- (pg. 57) Clock time then turns into psychological time. Your life’s journey is no longer and adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it”. You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the Now.
- (pg. 58) You will not have any doubt that psychological time is a mental disease if you look at its collective manifestations. They occur, for example, in the form of ideologies such as communism, national socialism or any nationalism, or rigid religious belief systems, which operate under the implicit assumption that the highest good lies in the future and that therefore the end justifies the means.
- (pg. 58) How does this mind pattern operate in your life? Are you always trying to get somewhere other than where you are? Is most of your doing just a means to an end? Are you always focused on becoming? Are you waiting for a man or woman to give meaning to your life?
- (pg. 59) The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future – which, of course, can only be experienced as the Now.
- (pg. 60) If it is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that determines the future, then what is it that determines the quality of your consciousness? Your degree of presence. So the only place where true change can occur and where the past can be dissolved is the Now.
- ✅ #09 (Tue Nov 4 2025): 📖 Ch. 3 §3–4 → Let the mind serve presence. :
- (pg. 60) All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of unforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.
- (pg. 60) You may find it hard to recognize that time is the cause of your suffering or your problems.
- (pg. 61) Ultimately, there is only one problem: the time-bound mind itself.
- (pg. 62) Find the “narrow gate that leads to life”. It is called the Now. Narrow your life down to this moment.
- (pg. 63) Use your senses fully. Be where you are. Look around. Just look, don’t interpret.
- (pg. 64) Focus your attention on the Now and tell me what problem you have at this moment.
- (pg. 64) You become so overwhelmed by your life situation that you lose your sense of life, of Being.
- (pg. 65) All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: no matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself.
- (pg. 66) A great deal of what people say, think, or do is actually motivated by fear, which of course is always linked with having your focus on the future and being out of touch with the Now. As there are no problems in the Now, there is no fear either.
- (pg. 67) If there is no joy, ease, or lightness in what you are doing, it does not necessarily mean that you need to change what you are doing. It may be sufficient to change the how. “How” is always more important than “what”. See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.
- (pg. 68) So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action – just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord. This is a powerful spiritual practice.
- (pg. 68) When the compulsive striving away from the Now ceases, the joy of Being flows into everything you do. The moment your attention turns to the Now, you feel a presence, a stillness, a peace.
- (pg. 68) In the absence of psychological time, your sense of self is derived from Being, not from your personal past. Therefore, the psychological need to become anything other than who you are already is no longer there.
- (pg. 69) When your deeper sense of self is derived from Being, when you are free of “becoming” as a psychological need, neither your happiness nor your sense of self depends on the outcome, and so there is freedom from fear.
- ✅ #10 (Wed Nov 5 2025): 📖 Ch. 4 §1–2 “Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now” → Spot the problem-maker mind. :
- (pg. 71) When every cell of your body is so present that it feels vibrant with life, and when you can feel that life every moment as the joy of Being, then it can be said that you are free of time.
- (pg. 71) Tomorrow’s bills are not the problem. The dissolution of the physical body is not a problem. Loss of Now is the problem.
- (pg. 72) When you have had your first few glimpses of the timeless state of consciousness, you begin to move back and forth between the dimensions of time and presence.
- (pg. 72) So before you are firmly established in the state of presence, which is to say before you are fully conscious, you shift back and forth for a while between consciousness and unconsciousness, between the state of presence and the state of mind identification.
- (pg. 73) What I call ordinary unconsciousness means being identified with your thought processes and emotions, your reactions, desires, and aversions. It is most people’s normal state. In that state, you are run by the egoic mind, and you are unaware of Being.
- (pg. 73) The unease of ordinary unconsciousness turns into the pain of deep unconsciousness – a state of more acute and more obvious suffering or unhappiness – when things “go wrong”, when the ego is threatened or there is a major challenge, threat, or loss, real or imagined, in your life situation or conflict in a relationship.
- (pg. 73) The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life’s challenges when they come.
- (pg. 74) So it is essential to bring more consciousness into your life in ordinary situations when everything is going relatively smoothly. In this way, you grow in presence power.
- (pg. 75) Why are you always anxious? Jesus asked his disciples. “Can anxious thought add a single day to your life”? And the Buddha taught that the root of suffering is to be found in our constant wanting and craving.
- (pg. 76) Make it a habit to monitor your mental-emotional state through self-observation. With practice, your power of self-observation, of monitoring your inner state, will become sharpened.
- (pg. 77) Maybe you are being taken advantage of, maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious, maybe someone close to you is dishonest, irritating, or unconscious, but all this is irrelevant.
- (pg. 78) Negativity is never the optimum way of dealing with any situation. In fact, in most cases it keeps you stuck in it, blocking real change.
- (pg. 78) How can we drop negativity, as you suggest? By dropping it. By recognizing that you don’t want to suffer the pain or carry the burden anymore and then letting go of it.
- (pg. 80) Humans are a dangerously insane and very sick species.
- (pg. 81) To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim.
- (pg. 82) Ordinary unconsciousness is always linked in some way with denial of the Now. The Now, of course, also implies the here. Are you resisting your here and now? Some people would always rather be somewhere else. Their “here” is never good enough. Through self-observation, find out if that is the case in your life.
- (pg. 82) Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time.
- (pg. 83) Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free.
- ✅ #11 (Thu Nov 6 2025): 📖 Ch. 4 §3–5 → Live one hour without your story. :
- (pg. 83) Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there”, or being in the present but wanting to be in the future.
- (pg. 84) Are your thought processes creating guilt, pride, resentment, anger, regret, or self-pity? Then you are not only reinforcing a false sense of self but also helping to accelerate your body’s aging process by creating an accumulation of past in your psyche.
- (pg. 84) Die to the past every moment. You don’t need it. Only refer to it when it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this moment and the fullness of Being. Feel your presence.
- (pg. 85) You can always cope with the Now, but you can never cope with the future – nor do you have to. The answer, the strength, the right action or the resource will be there when you need it, not before, not after.
- (pg. 86) Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don’t want what you’ve got, and you want what you haven’t got.
- (pg. 86) There is nothing wrong with setting goals and striving to achieve things. The mistake lies in using it as a substitute for the feeling of life, for Being.
- (pg. 87) If you are dissatisfied with what you have got, or even frustrated or angry about your present lack, that may motivate you to become rich, but even if you do make millions, you will continue to experience the inner condition of lack, and deep down you will continue to feel unfulfilled.
- (pg. 87) So next time someone says, “Sorry to have kept you waiting, ” you can reply, “That’s all right, I wasn’t waiting. I was just standing here enjoying myself – in joy in myself.
- (pg. 87) But beware: The false, unhappy self, based on mind identification, lives on time. It knows that the present moment is its own death and so feels very threatened by it. It will do all it can to take you out of it. It will try to keep you trapped in time.
- (pg. 87) Your life’s journey has an outer purpose and an inner purpose. The outer purpose belongs to the horizontal dimension of space and time; the inner purpose concerns a deepening of your Being in the vertical dimension of the timeless Now. Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now.
- (pg. 88) The sooner you realize that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment, the better.
- (pg. 90) Only the present can free you of the past. More time cannot free you of time. Access the power of Now. That is the key.
- (pg. 90) So what is the power of Now? None other than the power of your presence, your consciousness liberated from the thought forms.
- (pg. 90) If you can be present enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically but nonjudgmentally, then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of your presence.
- (pg. 90) What is essential is your conscious presence. That dissolves the past. The past cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence.
- ✅ #12 (Fri Nov 7 2025): 📖 Ch. 5 §1–2 “The State of Presence” → Where did I feel strong in stillness? :
- (pg. 93) You can’t think about presence, and the mind can’t understand it. Understanding presence is being present. As long as you are in a state of intense presence, you are free of thought.
- (pg. 94) The instant your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in. The mental noise returns; the stillness is lost. You are back in time.
- (pg. 94) What do you mean by “rooted within yourself”? It means to inhabit your body fully. To always have some of your attention in the inner energy field of your body.
- (pg. 95) This is the kind of waiting Jesus talks about. In that state, all your attention is in the Now.
- (pg. 95) Even the men who wrote the Gospels did not understand the meaning of these parables, so the first misinterpretations and distortions crept in as they were written down. With subsequent erroneous interpretations, the real meaning was completely lost.
- (pg. 96) Have you listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in the forest? Or to the song of a blackbird at dusk on a quiet summer evening? To become aware of such things, the mind needs to be still.
- (pg. 97) Mind can neither recognize nor create beauty. Only for a few seconds, while you were completely present, was that beauty or that sacredness there.
- (pg. 97) Many people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature does not really exist for them.
- (pg. 97) When Being becomes conscious of itself – that’s presence.
- (pg. 98) Everything is alive. The sun, the earth, plants, animals, humans – all are expressions of consciousness in varying degrees, consciousness manifesting as form.
- (pg. 99) Consciousness takes on the disguise of forms until they reach such complexity that it completely loses itself in them.
- (pg. 100) Whenever you watch the mind, you withdraw consciousness from mind forms, and it then becomes what we call the watcher or the witness.
- ✅ #13 (Sat Nov 8 2025): 📖 Ch. 5 §3–4 → Find joy in something ordinary. :
- (pg. 101) Most humans are still in the grip of the egoic mode of consciousness: identified with their mind and run by their mind. If they do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it.
- (pg. 101) Already for most humans, the only respite they find from their own minds is to occasionally revert to a level of consciousness below thought. Everyone does that ever night during sleep. But this also happens to some extent through sex, alcohol, and other drugs that suppress excessive mind activity.
- (pg. 102) But the very fact that I am speaking here and you are listening or reading this is a clear sign that the new consciousness is gaining a foothold on the planet.
- (pg. 102) Silence is an even more potent carrier of presence, so when you read this or listen to me speak, be aware of the silence between and underneath the words. Be aware of the gaps. To listen to the silence, wherever you are, is an easy and direct way of becoming present.
- (pg. 103) The only difference between Christ and presence is that Christ refers to your indwelling divinity regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, whereas presence means your awakened divinity or God-essence.
- (pg. 104) Jesus attempted to convey directly, not through discursive thought, the meaning of presence, of self-realization. He had gone beyond the consciousness dimension governed by time, into the realm of the timeless.
- (pg. 104) God said “I am that I am”. No time here, just presence.
- (pg. 104) Never personalize Christ. Don’t make Christ into a form identity.
- (pg. 105) If you are drawn to an enlightened teacher, it is because there is already enough presence in you to recognize presence in another.
- (pg. 105) Group work can also be helpful for intensifying the light of your presence. A group of people coming together in a state of presence generates a collective energy field of great intensity.
- ✅ #14 (Sun Nov 9 2025): 📖 Review → Write one line: “Presence is _.” : (Presence, to me, is what’s left when I stop trying to make life behave. It’s the space under the thoughts, the breath between actions, the part of me that’s quietly watching instead of judging. When I’m in Presence, I don’t have to earn peace — I just notice it’s already here, hiding inside the ordinary. It’s the sound of a spice jar clicking into place, the hum of the fridge, the feeling of being alive even when something hurts. Presence doesn’t fix the pain; it holds it, until the pain forgets it needed fixing. In those moments, I remember that nothing’s missing — not love, not purpose, not even the next step. There’s just this breath, this stillness, this gentle awareness saying, you’re already home.)
- ✅ #15 (Mon Nov 10 2025): 📖 Ch. 6 §1–2 “The Inner Body” → Breathe through emotion. :
- (pg. 107) Please stop trying to understand Being. You have already had significant glimpses of Being, but the mind will always try to squeeze it into a little box and then put a label on it. It cannot be done.
- (pg. 108) The word honey isn’t honey. You can study and talk about honey for as long as you like, but you won’t really know it until you taste it. After you have tasted it, the word becomes less important to you.
- (pg. 109) So, if a word doesn’t work for you anymore, then drop it and replace it with one that does work. If you don’t like the word sin, then call it unconsciousness or insanity.
- (pg. 110) In your natural state of connectedness with Being, this deeper reality can be felt every moment as the invisible inner body, the animating presence within you.
- (pg. 111) Underneath your outer form, you are connected with something so vast, so immeasurable and sacred, that it cannot be conceived or spoken of.
- (pg. 111) The one thing that truly matters is then missing from your life: awareness of your deeper self – your invisible and indestructible reality. To become conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from your mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey.
- (pg. 112) Please try it now. Direct your attention into the body. Feel it from within. Is it alive? Keep focusing on the feeling of your inner body for a few moments. Do not start to think about it. Feel it. Pay more attention to the feeling than to any image that may arise.
- (pg. 112) The feeling of your inner body is formless, limitless, and unfathomable.
- (pg. 112) On the level of the body, humans are very close to animals.
- ✅ #16 (Tue Nov 11 2025): 📖 Ch. 6 §3–4 → Move from reaction to response. :
- (pg. 113) Countless people in the East and West throughout the ages have tried to find God, salvation, or enlightenment through denial of the body.
- (pg. 113) Even the Buddha is said to have practiced body denial through fasting and extreme forms of asceticism for six years, but he did not attain enlightenment until after he had given up this practice.
- (pg. 113) The fact is that no one has ever become enlightened through denying or fighting the body or through an out-of-body experience.
- (pg. 114) Transformation is through the body, not away from it.
- (pg. 115) What you perceive as a dense physical structure called the body, which is subject to disease, old age, and death, is not ultimately real – is not you.
- (pg. 115) Do not fight against the body, for in doing so you are fighting against your own reality. You are your body.
- (pg. 116) The key is to be in a state of permanent connectedness with your inner body – to feel it at all times.
- (pg. 116) If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be anchored in the Now. You won’t lose yourself in the external world, and you won’t lose yourself in your mind. Thoughts and emotions, fear and desires, may still be there to some extent, but they won’t take you over.
- (pg. 116) See if you can be in touch with your inner body at the same time. Keep some of your attention within. Don’t let it all flow out. Do not give all your attention away to the mind and the external world. Whenever you are waiting, wherever it may be, use that time to feel the inner body.
- (pg. 117) It is easy to stay present as the observer of your mind when you are deeply rooted within your body. No matter what happens on the outside, nothing can shake you anymore.
- (pg. 118) So when such challenges come, as they always do, make it a habit to go within at once and focus as much as you can on the inner energy field of your body.
- (pg. 118) As long as you are in conscious contact with your inner body, you are like a tree that is deeply rooted in the earth, or a building with a deep and solid foundation.
- (pg. 119) When you are not in your body, however, an emotion can survive inside you for days or weeks, or join with other emotions of a similar frequency that have merged and become the pain-body, a parasite that can live inside you for years, feed on your energy, lead to physical illness, and make your life miserable.
- (pg. 120) Forgiveness is to offer no resistance to life – to allow life to live through you. The moment you truly forgive, you have reclaimed your power from the mind.
- (pg. 121) Presence is pure consciousness – consciousness that has been reclaimed from the mind, from the world of form.
- (pg. 122) Awareness of the inner body has other benefits in the physical realm. One of them is a significant slowing down of the aging of the physical body. Whereas the outer body normally appears to grow old and wither fairly quickly, the inner body does not change with time.
- (pg. 123) So if you inhabit the inner body, the outer body will grow old at a much slower rate, and even when it does, your timeless essence will shine through the outer form, and you will not give the appearance of an old person.
- (pg. 123) Another benefit of this practice in the physical realm is a great strengthening of the immune system, which occurs when you inhabit the body. The more consciousness you bring into the body, the stronger the immune system, becomes.
- (pg. 125) If at any time you are finding it hard to get in touch with the inner body, it is usually easier to focus on your breathing first.
- (pg. 126) Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. Become aware of the stillness. When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative. In any thought activity, make it a habit to go back and forth every few minutes or so between thinking and an inner kind of listening, an inner stillness. We could say: don’t just think with your head, think with your whole body.
- (pg. 127) When the mind is running your life, conflict, strife, and problems are inevitable. Being in touch with your inner body creates a clear space of no-mind within which the relationship can flower.
- ✅ #17 (Wed Nov 12 2025): 📖 Ch. 7 §1–2 “Portals Into the Unmanifested” → Let quiet renew you. :
- (pg. 129) When you can feel the inner body clearly as a single field of energy, let go, if possible, of any visual image and focus exclusively on the feeling. All that is left then is an all-encompassing sense of presence or “beingness,” and the inner body is felt to be without a boundary.
- (pg. 131) Chi is movement; the Unmanifested is stillness. When you reach a point of absolute stillness, which is nevertheless vibrant with life, you have gone beyond the inner body and beyond chi to the Source itself: the Unmanifested. Chi is the link between the Unmanifested and the physical universe.
- (pg. 131) Then, when you consciousness comes back to the manifested world, you reassume the form identity that you temporarily relinquished. You have a name, a past, a life situation, a future. But in one essential respect, you are not the same person you were before.
- (pg. 132) As you go about your life, don’t give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and to your mind. Keep some within.
- (pg. 132) It is quite possible to be conscious of the Unmanifested throughout your life. You feel it as a deep sense of peace somewhere in the background, a stillness that never leaves you, no matter what happens out here.
- (pg. 132) You take a journey into the Unmanifested every night when you enter the phase of deep dreamless sleep. You merge with the Source.
- (pg. 133) So use your body as a portal through which you enter the Unmanifested, and keep that portal open so that you stay connected with the Source at all times.
- (pg. 133) The Now can be seen as the main portal. It is an essential aspect of every other portal, including the inner body. You cannot be in your body without being intensely present in the Now.
- (pg. 134) Another portal into the Unmanifested is created through the cessation of thinking. This can start with a very simple thing, such as taking one conscious breath or looking, in a state of intense alertness, at a flower, so that there is no mental commentary running at the time.
- (pg. 134) Surrender – the letting go of mental-emotional resistance to what is – also becomes a portal into the Unmanifested. In the state of surrender, your form identity softens and becomes somewhat “transparent,” as it were, so the Unmanifested can shine through you.
- (pg. 134) Love isn’t a portal; it’s what comes through the portal into this world.
- (pg. 135) Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be.
- ✅ #18 (Thu Nov 13 2025): 📖 Ch. 7 §3–4 → Release control of one small thing. :
- (pg. 136) Even seemingly solid matter, including your physical body, is nearly 100 percent empty space – so vast are the distances between the atoms compared to their size.
- (pg. 136) The Unmanifested is not only present in this world as silence; it also pervades the entire physical universe as space – from within and without.
- (pg. 137) “Nothing” can only become a portal into the Unmanifested for you if you don’t try to grasp or understand it.
- (pg. 138) In other words: You cannot think and be aware of space – or of silence, for that matter. By becoming aware of the empty space around you, you simultaneously become aware of the space of no-mind, of pure consciousness: the Unmanifested.
- (pg. 138) Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing, the same no-thing.
- (pg. 139) If some cosmic convulsion brought about the end of our world, the Unmanifested would remain totally unaffected by this.
- (pg. 139) If you remain in conscious connection with the Unmanifested, you value, love, and deeply respect the manifested and every life form in it as an expression of the One Life beyond form.
- (pg. 140) Nothing could be without space, yet space is nothing.
- (pg. 140) Nothing could be more awe-inspiring and majestic than the inconceivable vastness and stillness of space, and yet what is it? Emptiness, vast emptiness.
- (pg. 140) That stillness and vastness that enables the universe to be is not just out there in space – it is also within you. When you are utterly and totally present, you encounter it as the still inner space of no-mind.
- (pg. 141) They are the two essential attributes of God, infinity and eternity, perceived as if they had an external existence outside you.
- (pg. 141) It is through the world and ultimately through you that the Unmanifested knows itself. You are here to enable the divine purpose of the Universe to unfold. That is how important you are!
- (pg. 142) Even if you have missed all the other opportunities for spiritual realization during your lifetime, one last portal will open up for you immediately after the body has died.
- (pg. 143) You then realize that death is an illusion, just as your identification with form was an illusion.
- ✅ #19 (Fri Nov 14 2025): 📖 Ch. 8 §1–2 “Enlightened Relationships” → Listen from presence. :
- (pg. 145) Salvation is not elsewhere in place or time. It is here and now.
- (pg. 146) True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness. It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has no opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself.
- (pg. 146) True salvation is to know yourself as an inseparable part of the timeless formless One Life from which all that exists derives its being.
- (pg. 146) True salvation is a state of freedom – from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging. It is freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need.
- (pg. 147) You “get” there by realizing that you are there already.
- (pg. 147) There is nothing you can ever do or attain that will get you closer to salvation than it is at this moment.
- (pg. 148) It seems that most “love relationships” become love/hate relationships before long.
- (pg. 148) The negative side of a relationship is, of course, more easily recognizable as dysfunctional than the positive one.
- (pg. 149) However, you may also have noticed that there is a neediness and a clinging quality to that intensity. You become addicted to the other person.
- ✅ #20 (Sat Nov 15 2025): 📖 Ch. 8 §3–5 → Love without need. :
- (pg. 150) The reason why the romantic love relationship is such an intense and universally sought-after experience is that it seems to offer liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened state.
- (pg. 150) You now have a single focal point that replaces them all, that gives meaning to your life, and through which you define your identity: the person you are “in love” with.
- (pg. 151) But there comes a point when your partner behaves in ways that fail to meet your needs, or rather those of your ego.
- (pg. 151) Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain.
- (pg. 152) Every addiction reaches a point where it does not work for you anymore, and then you feel the pain more intensely than ever. This is one reason why people are always trying to escape from the present moment and are seeking some kind of salvation in the future.
- (pg. 152) Avoidance of relationships in an attempt to avoid pain is not the answer either. The pain is there anyway.
- (pg. 153) For love to flourish, the light of your presence needs to be strong enough so that you no longer get taken over by the thinker or the pain-body and mistake them for who you are.
- (pg. 153) To disidentify from the pain-body is to bring presence into the pain and thus transmute it.
- (pg. 153) The moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.
- (pg. 154) You will then either separate – in love – or move ever more deeply into the Now together – into Being. Can it be that simple? Yes, it is that simple.
- (pg. 154) Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.
- (pg. 154) What is love? To feel the presence of that One Life deep within yourself and within all creatures.
- (pg. 155) When this happens, your Being, which is usually buried underneath the mind, becomes revealed, and it is this that makes true communication possible.
- (pg. 155) As soon as the mind and mind identification return, you are no longer yourself but a mental image of yourself, and you start playing games and roles again to get your ego needs met.
- (pg. 156) As humans have become increasingly identified with their mind, most relationships are not rooted in Being and so turn into a source of pain and become dominated by problems and conflict.
- (pg. 157) The opportunity that is concealed within every crisis does not manifest until all the facts of any given situation are acknowledged and fully accepted.
- (pg. 158) If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again.
- (pg. 159) Never mind if your partner will not cooperate. Sanity – consciousness – can only come into this world through you.
- (pg. 159) When your partner behaves unconsciously, relinquish all judgment.
- ✅ #21 (Sun Nov 16 2025): 📖 Review → Note one change in how memory feels. : (“Memory used to feel heavy and sticky, like it dragged pieces of me with it. Now it feels softer, more distant — like something happening in another room. I can remember without losing presence. It’s just a picture, not a place I live.”)
- ✅ #22 (Mon Nov 17 2025): 📖 Ch. 9 §1–2 “Beyond Happiness and Unhappiness” → Notice quiet okay-ness. :
- (pg. 159) To relinquish judgment does not mean that you do not recognize dysfunction and unconsciousness when you see it. It means “being the knowing” rather than “being the reaction” and the judge.
- (pg. 160) Being the knowing creates a clear space of loving presence that allows all things and all people to be as they are.
- (pg. 160) Giving space to others – and to yourself – is vital. Love cannot flourish without it.
- (pg. 160) If your partner is still identified with the mind and the pain-body while you are already free, this will represent a major challenge – not to you but to your partner. It is not easy to live with an enlightened person, or rather it is so easy that the ego finds it extremely threatening.
- (pg. 162) If there isn’t an emanation of love and joy, complete presence and openness toward all beings, then it is not enlightenment.
- (pg. 163) Generally speaking, it is easier for a woman to feel and be in her body, so she is naturally closer to Being and potentially closer to enlightenment than a man.
- (pg. 164) When the mind took over and humans lost touch with the reality of their divine essence, they started to think of God as a male figure.
- (pg. 164) What does remain true, however, is that the energy frequency of the mind appears to be essentially male. The mind resists, fights for control, uses, manipulates, attacks, tries to grasp and possess, and so on.
- (pg. 164) Whereas mind-energy is hard and rigid, Being-energy is soft and yielding and yet infinitely more powerful than mind.
- (pg. 165) At this time, the vast majority of men as well as women are still in the grip of the mind: identified with the thinker and the pain-body. This, of course, is what prevents enlightenment and the flowering of love.
- (pg. 166) Apart from her personal pain-body, every woman has her share in what could be described as the collective female pain-body – unless she is fully conscious.
- (pg. 167) The number of women who are now approaching the fully conscious state already exceeds that of men and will be growing even faster in the years to come.
- (pg. 167) The first thing to remember is this: As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it.
- (pg. 168) To suddenly see that you are or have been attached to your pain can be quite a shocking realization. The moment you realize this, you have broken the attachment.
- (pg. 168) A victim identity is the belief that the past is more powerful than the present, which is the opposite of truth. It is the belief that other people and what they did to you are responsible for who you are now, for your emotional pain, or your inability to be your true self. The truth is that the only power there is is container within this moment: It is the power of your presence. Once you know that, you also realize that you are responsible for your inner space now – nobody else is – and that the past cannot prevail against the power of Now.
- (pg. 169) So do not use the pain-body to give you an identity. Use it for enlightenment instead. Transmute it into consciousness.
- ✅ #23 (Tue Nov 18 2025): 📖 Ch. 9 §3–4 → Practice surrender. :
- (pg. 170) Any emotion that you take your presence into will quickly subside and become transmuted.
- (pg. 170) Remember: Do not let the pain-body use your mind and take over your thinking.
- (pg. 170) Menstruation will then become not only a joyful and fulfilling expression of your womanhood but also a sacred time of transmutation, when you give birth to a new consciousness.
- (pg. 171) If your male partner is conscious enough, he can help you with the practice I have just described by holding the frequency of intense presence particularly at this time.
- (pg. 172) Enlightened or not, you are either a man or a woman, so on the level of your form identity you are not complete. You are one-half of the whole.
- (pg. 172) This does not mean that you don’t relate deeply to other people or to your partner. In fact, you can relate deeply only if you are conscious of Being.
- (pg. 172) Your form may continue to have certain needs, but Being has none. It is already complete and whole.
- (pg. 174) If you cannot be at ease with yourself when you are alone, you will seek a relationship to cover up your unease.
- (pg. 174) All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.
- ✅ #24 (Wed Nov 19 2025): 📖 Ch. 10 §1–2 “The Meaning of Surrender” → Let life move through you. :
- (pg. 177) Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.
- (pg. 177) Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time.
- (pg. 178) And when you live in complete acceptance of what is – which is the only sane way to live – there is no “good” or “bad” in your life anymore.
- (pg. 178) Forgiveness of the present is even more important than forgiveness of the past. If you forgive every moment – allow it to be as it is – then there will be no accumulation of resentment that needs to be forgiven at some later time.
- ☐✅ #25 (Thu Nov 20 2025): 📖 Ch. 10 §3–4 → Act once today from stillness. : <>
- ☐✅ #26 (Fri Nov 21 2025): 📖 Afterword → Feel the Now as home. : <>
- ☐✅ #27 (Sat Nov 22 2025): 📖 Re-read Highlights (Part 1) → Circle what feels alive. : <>
- ☐✅ #28 (Sun Nov 23 2025): 📖 Re-read Highlights (Part 2) → Add new notes. : <>
- ☐✅ #29 (Mon Nov 24 2025): 📖 Re-read Highlights (Part 3) → Let insight deepen. : <>
- ☐✅ #30 (Tue Nov 25 2025): 🪞 Closing Reflection → Write ½ page: “How the Now changed for me.” : <>