Here is a review of the seven steps to awakening (as put forth in NTI):

• Step 1– An intense desire for awakening.
• Step 2– Seeing through the ‘mask’ of ferociousness (attack, grievance, harshness) to the false beliefs that support and sustain it.
• Step 3– Tiring of judgment.
• Step 4– Letting go of the belief that life is temporary, which is also letting go of the belief that the body-mind-personality is your reality.
• Step 5– Learning to trust all that is as it is.
• Step 6– Letting go of perception, which is letting go of thought as me.
• Step 7– Giving no meaning to anything the ego says or any experience you have as the ego dies its final death.

Each of the first six steps leads to the seventh step. Ego death is a step in itself, because that is the ego’s last chance to reclaim your attention, and it will likely use anything it can  to manipulate you into returning attention to it.

If you can withstand the ego’s final temptations, a change will occur. The habitual connection between attention and mental chatter will collapse, and you will be free to see without seeing through the filter of mental chatter.

The physical world doesn’t change when you are liberated from the mind. It’s your way of seeing that changes. Instead of seeing through judgment and interpretation, you see naturally, which means you see consciousness as consciousness. Without mental chatter directing your actions and reactions, you live through spontaneous inspiration.

Here’s how Jesus described awakened inspired living in the Bible:

“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” ~ John 3:8

Using the symbols from Revelation, today’s reading says:

The Sight of Spirit is a choice that you make.
It is the choice to marry the lamb.
For with this choice is innocence known,
and glory is seen through the land.

In this context, innocence isn’t the opposite of guilt. Innocence is the freedom of living through spontaneous inspiration. It is freedom from mental chatter.

Today’s reading recommends that we observe the thinking mind and see how it works. If we do not see our judgments and interpretation clearly, we remain enslaved to mental chatter. We let go of mental chatter when we see that it deceives us.

When we see that chatter deceives us, we can lose interest in it. As long as we believe it protects us, we give it our full attention.

Without the desire to be free of mental chatter, you cannot free yourself from mental chatter. The addiction to mental chatter is strongest of all human addictions. Therefore, the greatest of all desires is necessary to free yourself from mental chatter.

It is as Michael Langford describes in The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss:

• Eagerness for liberation must be equal to the eagerness someone who is being held underwater has for trying to rise to the surface. …
• Eagerness is another word for the desire for freedom.
• How great, how intense is the desire of someone being held underwater trying to rise to the surface. …
• Every second his desire to rise to the surface is becoming more and more intense.
• Michael Langford also writes:
• Another great key is self-honesty. …
• Self-honesty means to be 100% honest with your self, all of the time.
• Catch your ego using preservation strategies.
• Today’s reading makes the same recommendation.

Please read Revelation 19:6-9 in the Bible before reading today’s reading from NTI.

Thoughts of Awakening # 288

The world is a reflection of the mind. That statement is true in two ways:

1. The scenes of the world are created through the creative principle based on the believing-attention that consciousness gives to thought.
2. The scenes of the world are interpreted through the filter of the individual mind.

The world is seen and experienced with clarity when there isn’t mental chatter. Inspiration shines through the mind that is not blocked by mental chatter, and it looks out on a world of miraculous beauty. The things that were important to the mind blocked by chatter, aren’t important to the clear mind. Although the person may still work in the same way and face the same daily challenges, she is happy, because she lives and works amid the spontaneous magnificence of consciousness.

Here’s a story that illustrates this:

St. Francis traveled from Assisi to Rome to get the Pope’s approval, so that his order of friars would be legitimized in the eyes of the church. This could have been seen as an important journey, one that could end in success or failure. In fact, it could have gone very wrong. Francis could have been arrested as a heretic and thrown into the Vatican’s dungeon.

One who listened to mental chatter would have had quite a bit to worry about on this trip. And once the approval was given, one focused on mental chatter might have big plans to focus on and talk about with his fellow travelers. You may be able to imagine what this journey could have been like if mental chatter was active in Francis’ mind.

Here’s a poem by St. Francis, which illuminates his experience of that journey to and from Rome:

A bird took flight.
And a flower in a field whistled at me
as I passed.

I drank from a stream of clear water.
And at night, the sky untied her hair
and I fell asleep clutching a tress of God’s.

When I returned from Rome, all said,
“Tell us the great news,”
and with great excitement I did:

“A flower in a field whistled,
and at night the sky untied her hair and
I fell asleep clutching
a sacred tress …”

Francis lived in the moment—in the miracle.

The world is seen and experienced with clarity when there isn’t mental chatter. Inspiration shines through the mind that is not blocked by mental chatter, and it looks out on a world of magnificence and beauty.

Please read Revelation 18:1-3 in the Bible before reading today’s reading in NTI.