Since I’ve started meditating more, my house is less clean and I have missed working out in my gym. I’d love to workout and spend more time cleaning my house, but only if life rearranges itself so I can do those things without giving up time meditating.

Why has meditation become so important? When I meditate, it seems that nothing much is happening. Attention habitually goes into thought, and I gently pull it back to focus on awareness again. After a certain amount of time, attention rests more easily with awareness, but there is still some going out and pulling back that occurs. That’s it, nothing else for up to two hours. But there’s this intuitive feeling that I have. It’s a feeling that something much more powerful is occurring. Something that is subtle to the ego, which looks for progress and tries to measure it, but something very steady and very precise.

To put it in the language of today’s workbook lesson, truth is correcting all errors in my mind as I willingly pull attention out of thought and rest with awareness to the best of my ability. I feel my small, poorly skilled effort is allowing something remarkable to take place.

And that is what today’s lesson tells us.

“It is impossible that anyone could seek it truly, and would not succeed. … Give truth its due, and it will give you yours.”

True spirituality isn’t about belief. It is about your own direct experience.

Our “faith” isn’t based on belief. Our “faith” is based on trust. We trust the teachings enough to try it for ourself. Instead of believing the teachings, we practice them, and through practice we experience truth directly.

Keep this in mind as you go forward with spirituality. There will be a lot of opportunities to believe something. Believing isn’t the point. Practice is the point.

What you give, you receive.

Jesus put it this way in the New Testament:

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” ~ Luke 6:38

Divine law does not discern for you. It does not look at what you are giving and decide that you would rather receive something else. It returns to you exactly what you give.

Today’s workbook lesson is pointing out that because of divine law, you cannot withhold happiness from others and know happiness.

In actuality, you cannot withhold happiness from others. They will receive what they give. However, as an example, if spitefulness is in your mind, you will feel wounded or attacked by what others say or do.

Remember: What I think, I see. What I see, I experience. What I experience, I think.

Today’s workbook lesson asks you to think of “those brothers who have been denied by you the peace and joy that are their right under the equal laws of God” and tell each one “My brother, peace and joy I offer you.”

This is a good opportunity to also practice the Loving All Method. What is your grievance? Can you look at it in your mind now and love it? Accept it? Emotionally allow it? It would be good practice to do so, and then say, “My brother, peace and joy I offer you.”

Another suggestion: If you contemplate today’s lesson alongside the Loving All Method, you may see the great benefit in making the Loving All Method a way of life

“Sin” is that which should not be. It is impossible to be happy with something if we judge that it should not be. This judgment, which is the fundamental judgment and the root of all judgments, is what we need to learn to let go of. There isn’t one circumstance that we can withhold from our love, our happiness, our forgiveness, because if there is any circumstance that we withhold from love, we have deemed that to be separate from love. Metaphysically, we withhold healing from anything that we withhold love from. We also withhold healing from ourselves in the same instant.

The decision not to love something, not to be happy with something, not to forgive something, is the cause of all suffering everywhere in the world.

This week as you read the Loving All Method, contemplate it deeply. Look at those situations that you want to withhold from love, realize those are situations that you’d like to see healed, and then remember that love is the only healing power. We cannot guarantee that a specific situation will be healed by your love, because many others may still hold judgments against it, but we can guarantee that your love will heal something. Not least of all, your love will heal you. We can also guarantee that your love will never add to a problem anywhere. When you love, you subtract from problems; you do not add to them.

The Loving All Method is generous. It gives you options. If you find you cannot love something, you can at least accept it. If you find you cannot even accept it, you can at least emotionally allow it. “Emotionally allow” is the same as Rest, Accept and Trust with the feelings you have about it.

Read today’s lesson again, and notice how clearly it points to the Loving All Method as an important practice in accepting truth. If love is all there is, if God is all there is, then happiness is all we experience. If we do not experience happiness, we have defined something as sin. Pause, look at it. Notice you have decided that should not be, and then practice the Loving All Method with it. Love it if you can. Accept it if that is the best you can do. Emotionally allow it if love or acceptance is too much of a stretch for you now.

Gotta go. Dad is calling me to breakfast. Gotta love it

Some of you may have thought, “Well, yea!” when you read that. There might even be a fear that if you aren’t unhappy, the change you want will never happen.

This belief that unhappiness will get us what we want is a deeply held belief, and it is completely screwed up. The only thing this belief does is keep us from being happy when we could be happy. Metaphysically, that’s more sinister than it may sound since our energy goes out and paints the world we see.

If you want the world to be a happier more secure place, offer it a happier more secure person. Give what you want to see by being what you want to see.

In Chapter 15 of “The Untethered Soul,” Michael Singer wrote:

“[Unconditional happiness] leads you to absolute transcendence because any part of your being that would add a condition to your commitment to happiness has to go. … You have to transcend the personal, and as you do, you will naturally awaken to the higher aspects of your being.”

Happiness is the way to contribute to a better world, and happiness is the path to enlightenment. If you are not choosing to be happy now, there must be something else that you think you want. What is it?

Don’t simply read this and say, “Uh-huh,” or click Like. Read this and look. Whenever you are not happy, you think you can get something from not being happy. What is it that you think unhappiness will get you?

Will people start acting the way you want them to act?
Will people give you attention that you want?
Will God grant your wishes like a genie?
Will your thoughts quit coming?
Will you quit making mistakes?
Will your health get better?
Will someone love you?

Just what do you think you have to gain by being unhappy? What is the hidden desire that unhappiness is chartered with resolving? AND can you see that it is not your true desire? Are you willing to let it go, and simply be happy ???

Be happy even if people act differently than you would have them act. Be happy even if you don’t get attention from others. Be happy even if your wishes are not granted. Be happy even if the same thoughts keep coming in your mind. Be happy even if you make mistakes. Be happy even if the body isn’t healthy. Be happy even if someone chooses not to love you.

Do you share God’s Will for your happiness? Are you ready?

I prefer to help you SEE something is true, rather than just deliver the information intellectually. If you can see that mind and awareness are separate, and what you are is awareness, you will have a realization that transcends the belief in sin, which goes far beyond an intellectual teaching.

Today’s workbook lesson says that “suffering is causeless. Joy is just, and pain is but the sign you have misunderstood yourself.” MISUNDERSTOOD YOURSELF.

This is why awareness-watching-awareness (AWA) is such an important part of our practice. Through AWA you consistently (albeit subtly) attain more and more realization that you are awareness, not thought. Be sure to practice AWA for 10-15 minutes each day. Also use the 5 minutes per hour to watch awareness. When you can’t give a full 5 minutes, at least spend 3-5 seconds noticing yourself as awareness. Through AWA your identification will shift from body-mind to awareness, and that shift changes everything, even if nothing else changes.

Another way to disengage from seeing yourself as body-mind is to “abide as your Self.” Ramana Maharshi gave this guidance frequently. But what does it mean?

It means abide as life-intelligence-awareness instead of as a body-mind.

How do you do that? You will learn to abide as your Self by practicing the Loving All Method, which is assigned as part of your homework this week. Please read that assignment carefully this week, preferably several times. Find what questions you have and bring them to our next meeting. We want to take the Loving All Method seriously so we can live from it.

Practicing the Loving All Method is the same practice as the vow of Happiness taught in Chapter 15 of “The Untethered Soul,” which Jacquelyn shared in class last night. Both are the same as forgiveness as it is taught in A Course in Miracles. So, let’s get a clear understanding of these three as one, and then go forward from this week clear on how to live from happiness/love/forgiveness

Along the way to Self-realization some people may have some tremendous experiences that seem to be proof of something divine, but to me the simplicity of genuine happiness is the greater boon. To be happy no matter what appears to occur or not occur is a sure sign of detachment from the world and detachment from thought. It is a sure sign of awakening to realization of one’s real nature.

Happiness, openness, and confidence are the true miracles of awakening. When one isn’t feeling happiness, openness and confidence, something has gone wrong. An untrue thought has gained attention.

Root cause inquiry begins at unhappiness. Whenever we are not perfectly happy, it’s a good idea to look to see what untrue idea is driving us.

Sometimes it is easy to see what you’ve believed that’s causing unhappiness, and it’s easy to let it go. However, especially in the beginning, it often takes effort to uncover the ideas that block our happiness and even more effort to let them go. That’s because we’ve taught ourselves to believe some really crazy stuff, and some of these ideas have been very heavily learned.

Today, regardless of what you experience, contemplate the fact that happiness is natural, and unhappiness is the sign that you are believing something that isn’t true. This is always the case. When we accept this as true, we begin to respond to unhappiness appropriately. The appropriate way to respond to unhappiness is to look, uncover and release an untrue idea.