Before beginning today’s reading, it will be helpful to spend at least 5 minutes watching awareness. As you watch awareness, do you find any human concerns in awareness, or are the human concerns in mind? Do you find guilt, anger, worry, or any other human emotions agitating awareness? If you do, look again. Is the emotion agitating awareness or is awareness aware of the agitation?

If you look at a human emotion (or the memory of an emotion, if there isn’t one present now) and compare it to awareness, which one is more intimately you? Are you the emotion or are you awareness?

Once you feel clarity about the previous questions, you are ready to continue with today’s reading. If you read from the state of clarity, it will be easy to see what NTI means when it refers to guilt, fear and denial as foreign purposes. After all, guilt, fear and denial have nothing to do with awareness. Guilt, fear and denial are mental activities only.

In his book, The Transparency of Things, Rupert Spira wrote, “Ego is not an entity. It is an activity.” Another way to say this is that the false self is not an entity. It is an activity, a mental activity. This is why many masters call the false self, “mind”.

Most people believe they are the body-personality-mind they appear to be. When they feel guilty, they believe they are guilty; when worry thoughts mull around in the mind, they believe they are worried, etcetera. However, mental and emotional activity are not the beingness. They are activity within the beinginess. The human is the beingness itself.

Please read today’s reading in this way:

1 – Practice the brief awareness-watching-awareness exercise in this tip.

2 – Read Matthew 27:1-37 in the Bible.

3 – Read today’s reading from NTI.

Just as the scribe was coached directly in yesterday’s reading, the scribe is coached directly in today’s reading. When I was the scribe of NTI Matthew, I had Jesus on a pedestal. Because of that, it was hard for me to see him as imperfect (in my eyes). It was hard for me to read about people mistreating him. All of these ideas came from conditioned thinking—from the way I had been taught to think during my upbringing—so all of this thinking had to be let go.

As you read today’s reading, it is okay to keep in mind that I was being coached directly. Since your mind was conditioned differently, you may not need the exact same coaching that I needed as I read the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and as I read the story of his arrest and trial. Look to see what is helpful for you in today’s reading. For example:

• Do you dislike it when people point out your mistakes? Look at the story Peter’s denial.

 

• Do you think forgiveness should be easier than it is? Look at the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

 

• Do you get angry with people who act sweet when you perceive them as devilish underneath? Look at the story of Judas’ kiss.

 

• Do you have a habit of defending yourself? Look at the story of the disciple who grabbed a sword.

 

Ask inner wisdom to guide you through today’s reading so you can find conditioning that needs to be seen and undone in your mind. If the coaching in the reading is not perfect for your needs, journal with inner wisdom and receive your own coaching.

If you are not familiar with the stories from the night of Jesus’ arrest, please read those stories in the Bible.

Today’s reading opens with, “Now you must choose where you will decide to look. Your decision will show you what you will see.”

Judas is a symbol of one who believed his thoughts and then saw what his thoughts told him to see. According to NTI, Judas turned Jesus in for arrest simply because he did not have the wisdom to see his thoughts as meaningless.

How often do we act from belief in our thoughts? Are we ready to learn from our brother’s mistake? Are we willing to let Judas’ mistake be a precious gift that leads us to make a different choice?

When I was the scribe of NTI Matthew, I was not able to see Judas as giving us a gift by showing us what not to do. I saw Judas as the evil betrayer. I still believed in betrayal at that time, so my scribing of this section is not as pure as it could have been. You’ll notice that inner wisdom coaches the scribe directly by saying, “… it is attack and hatred you see and feel through this scripture. Remember what I have told you. Fear will keep you from Me. Trust that these feelings of anger are intended only to hide your fear of Me. …. Choose now to let your anger, attack and hatred go. They serve you not. Rest with Me in faith instead.”

After reading verse 25 in the Bible—which reads, “Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, ‘Surely you don’t mean me, Rabbi?’”—I got it. I saw that in that very moment, I believed my thoughts just as Judas had believed his. I hated Judas for the same reason that Judas distrusted Jesus; we believed our thoughts.

This was a ‘eureka’ moment for me, and I have been madly in love with Judas ever since. I now see his ‘betrayal’ of Jesus as a great gift to us. He demonstrated just how bad things can get when we believe our thoughts, and that provides us with the opportunity not to make the same mistake.

Here is one of my favorite songs. I have listened to it many, many times over the years. It reminds me not to believe my thinking. I listen to it with gratitude and with love for our brother, Judas. I think it’s funny that the song begins with Judas singing, “My mind is clearer now.” It shows that we can be deeply deceived by our own thinking.

If you are not familiar with the story of Judas’ betrayal, please read it in the Bible.

Today’s reading interprets three Bible stories. I recommend reading the stories in the Bible before reading the interpretation in NTI. Each story provides an opportunity for self-examination and self-honesty.

Jesus did not tell these stories so that we would chastise ourselves and decide that we are not good enough. There would be no forward movement if we understood the stories that way. The stories are provided so we can look, see where we are not in harmony with the calling of our heart, and then make adjustments. These stories are gifts to help us notice where we are still operating based on old conditioning, so we can retune ourselves.

With that said, a question you might ask yourself as you read The Parable of Ten Virgins and its interpretation is, “Where do I look for peace of mind? The marketplace, which is a symbol for the world, or within?”

A question you might ask yourself as you read The Parable of Bags of Gold and its interpretation is, “Do I trust the unknown or fear it?”

A question you might ask yourself as you read The Sheep and the Goats and its interpretation is, “Am I guiding myself towards unity consciousness or am I still interested in self-centeredness?”

It might be helpful to see yourself as a musical instrument. Are you playing the melody you want to play, or are some of your strings out of tune?

I found this comment online about tuning a harp:

There are people who will tell you that one key is “better” or “worse” than another. Like with many harp-related things, it is not so much a matter of right and wrong, but is rather very subjective and individual, and depends on a number of factors, including: what type of harp you have, how much musical experience you have, what style of music you want to play, and how much theory you know. It can even depend on things such as, how much improvising and/or transposing you want to do, and how much you rely on sheet music. So instead of trying to tell you the “right way” to tune a harp, I’ve presented some of the more common tunings, with explanations as to why some people choose them and others don’t.

I thought this comment was helpful, because we can get caught up in ideas of right and wrong whenever we engage in self-examination. It isn’t a matter of right and wrong or good and bad. It’s a matter of, “What do I want?” and “Is my way of being in support of that or hindering it?”

Here is a quote from Nisargadatta Maharaj that we can contemplate along with today’s reading:

You do and undo at every step. You want peace, love, happiness and work hard to create pain, hatred and war. You want longevity and overeat; you want friendship and exploit. See your net as made of such contradictions and remove them — your very seeing them will make them go.

Remember, we are in Messiah kindergarten. Remember, “Messiah” means, one in whom God’s plan for humankind is being brought to fruition. It is an evolution, of sorts, and in this evolution we are baby Messiahs. Since Messiah is a very important role, we need to give all of our attention—our whole heart, our whole soul and our whole mind—to the lessons we are learning now. (Ref: Mark 12:30)

Today’s lesson is a key lesson for Messiahs, although it is not the easiest of lessons to learn. In fact, it is a lesson that some students of non-duality deny entirely. They say this teaching isn’t what it appears to be; it means something other than what it says. However, the masters do not deny the teaching. Only some students—those who do not yet know—deny it.

The teaching  I speak of is that the world is not real. It is an illusion.

First, let’s look at the dictionary definition of “illusion”. An illusion is “a thing that is or is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses. It is a deceptive appearance or impression.”

One mistake that we make is not questioning our senses. We believe that if we see it, it is true. But is that entirely correct? We see the sun rise and the sun set everyday. The earth that we are on looks stationary, as we observe the sun moving across the sky. But is that true?

The earth that we walk on seems horizontal. Is that true?

Moonlight lights up the night sky. But is there such a thing as moonlight?

If our senses are not reliable some of the time, can we be sure that they are reliable the rest of the time? Is it possible that we see with our brain, a brain that has been conditioned to see in a self-centered way, a way of seeing that is entirely faulty?

Here are some quotes to consider before beginning today’s reading in NTI:

“Vision consists of your eyes detecting light and converting it to electro-chemical impulses in neurons which are then given meaning by your brain.   Hence, the real ‘seeing’ occurs in the brain with the interpretation of the impulses. ~ Debbie Hampton, author of Beat Depression and Anxiety by Changing your Brain

“… bear in mind that your own sense of vision is carried by nothing but millions of nerve signals that just happen to travel along different cables.  Your brain is encased in absolute blackness in the vault of your skull.  It doesn’t see anything.  All it knows are these little signals and nothing else.  And yet you perceive the world in shades of brightness and colors.  Your brain is in the dark but your mind constructs the light.” ~ David Eagleman, author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

“What we perceive as our physical material world, is really not physical or material at all, in fact, it is far from it. … Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating, each one radiating its own unique energy signature. Therefore, if we really want to observe ourselves and find out what we are, we are really beings of energy and vibration, radiating our own unique energy signature -this is fact and is what quantum physics has shown us time and time again. We are much more than what we perceive ourselves to be, and it’s time we begin to see ourselves in that light. If you observed the composition of an atom with a microscope you would see a small, invisible tornado-like vortex, with a number of infinitely small energy vortices called quarks and photons. These are what make up the structure of the atom. As you focused in closer and closer on the structure of the atom, you would see nothing, you would observe a physical void. The atom has no physical structure, we have no physical structure, physical things really don’t have any physical structure! Atoms are made out of invisible energy, not tangible matter.” ~ Arjun Walia, author of Nothing Is Solid & Everything Is Energy – Scientists Explain The World Of Quantum Physics, an article published in CE—Collective Evolution (an e-magazine)

“It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. You think you think them, and so you think you see them. This is how your ‘seeing’ was made. … It is not seeing. It is image making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions.” ~ A Course in Miracles Workbook for Students, Lesson 15

“There is no body, nor a world to contain it; there is only a mental condition, a dream like state, easy to dispel by questioning its reality.” ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj, Indian sage.

“If one is able to remove the ego-sense by means of one’s awakened intelligence, he cleanses from his consciousness the impurity known as world-appearance.” ~ The Yoga Vasistha, an ancient Hindu text.

“After Realization, the supposed seeing ends and what is known will be known and what was supposedly ‘seen’ will be ‘seen’ no more.” ~ Floyd Henderson, author of The Advanced Seekers’ Series

One of the Nisargadatta Maharaj quotes from yesterday was, “Just remember steadily what you want, and reject the incompatibles.”

Today’s reading is about rejecting the incompatibles.

My dictionary has three definitions for “reject”:

1. Dismiss as inadequate, inappropriate, or not to one’s taste
2. Refuse to agree to
3. Fail to show due affection or concern for

What are the incompatibles we are to reject?

1. The world as our purpose
2. Guilt as a motivating factor or call to action
3. Fear as a motivating factor or call to action

In a way, we aren’t to reject the world, guilt or fear, and in another way we are to reject them. First, I will write about how we are not to reject the world, guilt or fear, and then I will write about how we are to reject them.

The World

We are not to reject the world by avoiding the roles we are to play in the world. There are roles that come with each bodily existence. Our roles may include spouse, parent, child, worker, homeowner, pet owner and etcetera. Each role has ‘doing’ that is part of that role. Doing is natural, and doesn’t need to be avoided.

What is unnatural is attachment to doing. We are attached to doing when we associate our identity, self-image, safety, or happiness with doing. We are detached from doing when we see that doing has nothing to do with who we are, what we are, our sense of well being, or joy.

We are to reject attachment to roles in the world, while continuing to do the doing called for by those roles. See attachment as inadequate or not to your taste. Refuse to agree to it. Do not be concerned with thoughts that lead to attachment.

Guilt and Fear

We are not to reject guilt or fear by avoiding those feelings. Whenever those feelings arise, we are to pay attention to them. They signal false ideas that are to be seen and let go. In fact, when guilt or fear arise, it is best to give them our full attention by inquiring into them to see what we can learn, and then by practicing rest-accept-trust until they have passed.

We are to reject guilt and fear as motivators for action. In other words, we are to reject doing what guilt and fear urge us to do. They are not appropriate motivators, and so do not agree to them as motivators. Instead, stay with inquiry and rest-accept-trust, and do nothing else, until guilt and fear have dissipated and a sense of peace, acceptance or well-being returns.

The same is true for the many forms of guilt and fear, which include unworthiness, the sense of lack or the sense ‘I am lacking,’ anger, hatred, jealousy, and etcetera.

A Final Tip

I recommend printing this tip for future reference. Great confusion often comes with attachment to the world, with guilt and with fear. It may be difficult or impossible to remember this tip once confusion sets in. If you keep this tip in a handy place, you can reread it along with NTI Matthew 23 whenever it is needed.

(Note: This is the third tip that I have suggested you print. Consider keeping the printed tips in a notebook, so you know where they are and you can access them easily for review. The other tips I’ve recommended printing are Day 5 and Day 11.)

Yesterday, I told a story about a woman with five daughters. In that story, the daughters were asked to remove their Disney Princess costumes, “and become my daughters again.” Of course, each girl already was the woman’s daughter. No one really had to remove the costume to “become” the daughter.

The same is true with you. You do not need to remove your false beliefs and conditioning in order to become truth. You are truth now. And yet, you do need to let go of your false beliefs and conditioning, just as the girls did need to take of the costumes—if not for strawberry shortcake, then later, for some other reason, like to get ready for bed, to bathe, or to go to school the next day.

Why do costumes need to be removed? Because they aren’t truth. The costumes did not represent who the girls were. The costumes weren’t real. They were temporary. Beliefs and conditioning do not represent what you are. They aren’t reality. They are temporary. The spiritual journey is one of taking off the temporary—like one takes off a costume—and returning to the foundational reality.

How does one do that?

Nisargadatta Maharaj said, “All you need is to listen, remember, ponder. It is like taking food. All you can do is to bite off, chew and swallow. All else is unconscious and automatic. Listen, remember and understand — the mind is both the actor and the stage. All is of the mind and you are not the mind. The mind is born and reborn, not you.”

He also said, “Forget the known, but remember that you are the knower. Don’t be all the time immersed in your experiences. Remember that you are beyond the experience ever unborn and deathless. In remembering it, the quality of pure knowledge will emerge, the light of unconditional awareness.”

And, “The more earnest you are at remembering what needs to be remembered, the sooner will you be aware of yourself as you are, for memory will become experience. Earnestness reveals being. What is imagined and willed becomes actuality — here lies the danger as well as the way out.”

What is to be remembered? “The ‘I am’. Give your heart and mind to it, think of nothing else.”

And one final instruction from Nisargadatta Maharaj: “Just remember steadily what you want, and reject the incompatibles.”

These quotes are the heart of today’s reading. First, contemplate these quotes, and then read today’s reading from NTI. Put your heart into the contemplation and the reading, and you will experience great profit, which brings me to another Nisargadatta Maharaj quote:

Remember that you are.
This is your working capital.
Rotate it and there will be much profit.

A Parable of a Woman and Five Daughters

There was a woman who had five daughters. Each of her daughters loved Disney, so one day the woman surprised her daughters with a day of Disney fantasy. She let each of the girls dress like the Disney princess of her choice, and she took them to Disneyland. This was especially fun, because other people at Disneyland addressed the girls using the names of their characters. For example, “Do you want fries with that, Cinderella?” Also, “Please slide over, Princess Jasmine, to make room for another rider,” and etcetera.

When the woman and her daughters arrived home that evening, each girl ran off in a different direction, continuing to play the character she’d pretended to be all day. Since each of the girls had a smartphone, the mother sent a group text to her daughters, which read, “Please take off your costumes and become my daughters again. When you’ve returned to yourself, join me in the kitchen for strawberry shortcake and milk.”

The twins were the youngest daughters. They were six. They helped each other change out of their costumes quickly and easily. They arrived in the kitchen first, giggling and smiling, excited to eat strawberry shortcake.

The eldest daughter was thirteen. She was excited to get the text that promised strawberry shortcake, but then she became distracted by another group text with friends. It was half an hour before she finally took off her costume and joined her mother and sisters in the kitchen.

The next eldest daughter was eleven. She was dressed as Snow White. This daughter was particularly imaginative. She pretended that her mother, four sisters, the family dog and family cat were the seven dwarfs. She swirled down the hallway toward the kitchen in costume, hoping to have shortcake with the seven dwarfs. Her mother saw her in the hallway in costume and said, “When you are ready, come into the kitchen as my daughter, and you can have strawberry shortcake and milk.”

The next eldest daughter was eight. She was dressed as Sleeping Beauty. When she got home, she ran straight to her bedroom. She lay down on her bed and closed her eyes, pretending to be Sleeping Beauty, but she fell asleep and did not see her mother’s text. When she did not come into the kitchen, her mother sent the twins to look for her. The twins woke her up and relayed the message about strawberry shortcake in the kitchen. The little girl felt guilty for falling asleep and missing her mother’s text, but when she arrived in the kitchen her mother smiled and said, “It is as it is. Now let’s enjoy strawberry shortcake.”

With all of the daughters in the kitchen, the day of pretending was over. The woman thanked her daughters for changing out of their costumes, told her daughters how much she loved them, and they all enjoyed strawberry shortcake and milk together.

The End.

Today’s NTI reading is a gentle introduction to what can become a hard-hitting topic. I call it a “gentle introduction,” because anyone who is not ready to see what today’s reading points to can not see it in the reading. However, anyone who follows this path to its end will eventually come to the point of questioning every expectation and everything he has ever put faith in.

I am not going to rob you of the gentle introduction provided through today’s reading. One will arrive at “hard-hitting” when one is ready. All I want to do in this tip is highlight one paragraph:

Peace comes from laying down your expectations and your judgments and accepting truth as it is. There is no other way to accept the truth, for to accept it in any way other than as it is, is not to accept the truth. It is to accept delusion over truth, and in delusion, you are lost from truth.

There is a term that is used frequently these days. The term is “his truth” or “her truth,” as in, “She has to find her truth and live by it.”

The problem with that idea is this:

There is only one truth.
Anything other than truth is not truth.
It’s imagination.

Most people live by imagination. In fact, there is so much imagination in most people’s lives that I couldn’t begin to point it all out. Nor would I. Each one is allowed to live by his imagination. However, the problem comes when one person’s imagination conflicts with another person’s imagination, or when one group’s imagination conflicts with another group’s, or one nation’s with another nation’s imagination. The problem with imagination is that it isn’t consistent—it can be anything—and when it is heavily believed and invested in as if it is truth, it creates conflict.

Conflict comes from believing one’s imagination.
Peace comes from accepting truth as it is.

That’s why everyone who follows this path to its end eventually comes to the hard-hitting point of questioning everything she’s ever believed. You can begin that questioning whenever you are ready. Life will provide the starting point for you. Every time you are upset, you are provided with the opportunity to discover where you’ve mistaken imagination for truth.

Note: I recommend that you read Matthew 21 in the Bible before reading NTI today, since today’s reading refers directly to the stories in the Bible.

A Parable of a Woman and Five Sons

There was a woman who had five sons. All of her sons were comic book fans, so she took them to Comic-Con. Each boy dressed as his favorite comic book character and spent the entire day at Comic-Con pretending to be the character he dressed as.

When they arrived home that evening, each boy ran off in a different direction, continuing to play the character he’d played all day. As the woman walked through the house looking for her sons, she came across her youngest son first. She said, “Go into your bedroom and change out of your costume. When you are done, come into the kitchen for chocolate cake and milk.”

A few minutes later, the woman came across her eldest son. She said, “Go into your bedroom and change out of your costume. When you are done, come into the kitchen for chocolate cake and milk.”

The woman continued through the house in this way until she found each of her five sons, saying to each of them, “Go into your bedroom and change out of your costume. When you are done, come into the kitchen for chocolate cake and milk.”

The last son that the woman found loved cake the most, so he changed his clothes the fastest. He ran into the kitchen and saw a round chocolate cake cut into six slices. The boy said, “Mom, since I was the fastest can I have two pieces of cake?”

“No,” the woman said, and she gave her fast son one piece of cake and a glass of milk.

Next the eldest son came into the kitchen. He looked at the five remaining slices of cake and said, “Mom, since I am the oldest, can I have two pieces of cake?”

“No,” the woman answered, and she gave her eldest son one piece of cake and a glass of milk.

Two more boys came into the kitchen and the woman served cake and milk to each of them. Finally, the youngest boy came into the kitchen. He was only four years old, and so he had worked very hard to take his costume off all by himself. “Momma,” the youngest said, “Since I worked the hardest, may I have the extra piece of cake?”

“No,” the woman answered. “Each one of you took off your costume, so each one of you get the same amount of cake.”

Why didn’t the woman give the extra piece of cake to the fastest boy, the eldest boy or the boy who had worked the hardest? It is because each one was her son. The differences made no difference.

There are apparent differences among us. Some of us gain wisdom quickly. You could say we are fast, like the woman’s fastest son. Some of us have been on the spiritual path for many years. You could say we are the elders, like the woman’s eldest son. Some of us are very committed and work very hard at awakening. We are a lot like the woman’s youngest son. However, we are all already consciousness, so our apparent differences make no difference at all.

Today’s reading focuses on letting go of the differences we see in one another. That doesn’t mean that differences won’t appear. It means that differences are appearance only.

When we focus on differences, we focus on appearances as if they are reality. When we let our sight soften around differences, and we look for sameness—for the fact of each human, in which there is no difference at all—we open to reality.

(Before reading from NTI today, read Matthew 20:1-16 in the Bible.)