Let’s review how the creative principle works. When we place believing attention (faith) on thought, emotion or perception, the energy of that thought, emotion or perception is reprocessed into a new experience with the same energy. We could say that we “pray” for a particular experience by putting faith (believing attention) in that energy. For most people, experience is a repeating loop, because each time a particular energy comes into experience, they believe it. This loop has been expressed this way:

What I think, I see.
What I see, I experience.
What I experience, I think.

You can free yourself from this loop. You can:

1. Use discernment to let go of untrue thought. (Ref: NTI Ephesians 4)
2. Remember that the current perception comes from past believing, and choose to experience it differently now. (Ref: NTI Ephesians 5)
3. Experience an emotion with pure awareness instead of believing a story about it.

Today’s reading teaches the third option in the previous list.

Today’s reading says:

Let’s remember that the world is only a prop made by the mind in order to generate the experience the mind has already decided to have.

When did the mind decide to have a particular experience?

It decided to have a particular experience when it gave believing attention to a previous experience with the same energy. As today’s reading says:

The world is a prop, but the mind (believing attention) wrote the play.

The prop is magnificent as a prop, because consciousness is brilliant and free to create any experience it desires. The world is extremely effective at bringing up emotional experiences for us to experience. However, if we want to be free of the loop of experience, the way to experience experience is to experience it fully with pure awareness instead of with believing attention.

Pure awareness is a prayer for pure awareness.

Believing attention is a prayer for experience that is different from truth.

This is true, because your way of being  is creative spirit.

Beware of the temptation to blame someone or something else for your way of being. Blame can only come from believing the story or perception, and believing attention keeps one in the loop of experience.

To “heal” is to become free of the artificial loop of experience. “Healing the mind” returns one’s attention to pure awareness instead of outward believing attention.

It’s also true that pure awareness has no fear in it, so whenever we are afraid of our thoughts or feelings, we are looking at those thoughts or feelings with believing attention. Whenever we notice that we are afraid of our own experience, it’s time to drop into the heart and shift into pure awareness.

How can you do that?

Remember your spiritual aspiration.

Your spiritual aspiration is like a compass that always points to the heart. By placing your mind with your spiritual aspiration, you move attention from belief in the world to the heart’s motive. By placing attention with the heart’s motive, you move into the heart. From the position of the heart, attention can be guided by the heart, which enables you to experience an experience with pure awareness instead of believing attention.

The feeling that humans fear the most is fear itself. The way that humans fear fear is strange, if you look at it objectively. They will do almost anything to avoid the feeling of fear, and in their desire to avoid fear, they listen to fear and obey fear as if fear is their god.

For example, if a romantic partner tells the other, “I’m not happy in this relationship anymore,” fear may arise in the one hearing the news. It could be fear of loneliness, fear of rejection, financial fear, or another type of fear. When fear arises, thoughts come into the mind with suggestions about how to escape fear or how to avoid the feared situation. The fearful one may begin to act differently as a result. A man accused of not showing affection may buy flowers in an effort to be perceived differently. A woman accused of wanting her way might give up something she felt called to do. These actions don’t come from love. They are an effort to escape fear or avoid a fearful situation. Fear said, “Jump!” The fearful partner asked, “How high?” and then proceeded to do so.

Fear controls and restricts us. We think those limits keep us safe, but they actually keep us enslaved to fear. The next time fear rises, we will listen to its counsel again.

We cannot be limited by fear and know our free, unlimited nature too.

Yesterday’s tip suggested that we experience experience intimately. Fear is an experience. If you put distressing stories aside, and simply look at the feeling  of fear, you will notice it is only energy in the body.

Sit and watch fear next time it arises. Don’t do anything to escape it. Be with it.

We think fear will destroy us, but it doesn’t have that power regardless of how strong it gets. We can be with fear and remain perfectly unharmed. When we do that, we learn through direct experience that we are genuinely unaffected. That is coming to know our Self.

If we “jump” every time fear says, “Jump,” we continue to believe we are vulnerable, and fear stays in the driver’s seat as our god and as our advisor.

Yesterday’s reading asked us to:

Focus on the frequency that is God.

That is perfect guidance. According to Ramana Maharshi’s disciple, Paul Brunton, focusing on the Self is the “short path” to Self-realization. However, the fearful mind can distort that guidance into a corrupted mental message that goes something like this:

If I feel anything but peace, joy and love, I am bad.

That’s an untrue statement.

NTI 2 Timothy teaches us how to be with any feeling that is different than truth. It asks us to explore the feeling, see that it is just a feeling—an experience—and nothing more than that. In order to do that, we need to look at our feelings with pure awareness.

Thoughts are not pure awareness. Thoughts are judgments. Thoughts tell us what our feelings are, what they mean about us, others and the world, and what caused the feelings. Pure awareness doesn’t have any of these stories in it.

As you know, my dog, Jamie, was recently euthanized. That experience came with feelings. There was acceptance, joy and a strong experience of life. There was also sadness and a feeling of missing Jamie. The latter feelings came in short waves, and then passed. Each time they came, I gave myself to the feelings.

In my case, there were no stories about how things should have been different, so I did not need to focus on letting go of untrue stories, but I did explore the feelings as 2 Timothy recommends. I noticed what “sadness” felt like, especially in the heart. I noticed it wasn’t unpleasant (which is what the mind would have said about it). The sensation in the heart, which some people might call “a broken heart,” wasn’t there before Jamie’s passing. It was certainly related to her passing, but it was just a feeling. As I looked at it, I realized I did not know what it was. The mind wanted to understand why the feeling was there, but awareness was able to simply be with the feeling in gratitude for a present experience.

The same thing was true of tears. Every now and then, tears came. A couple of times there were a few seconds of hard crying, but none of that felt “bad” when looked at with awareness. It was just part of the experience of loving a pet and then losing that pet. If I label the experience based on how it looked through the eyes of awareness, I would say it was an intimate human experience. I felt what it feels like to be human.

This is what today’s reading teaches. We have the experience of being human because we want experience. Beauty and healing come when we allow the pure, unadulterated experience of experience. Stories, however, pollute experience with a particular spin or interpretation. When we are engrossed in stories, we still have experience, but our attention is more in the head than in the experience. In that way, intimacy with the experience is lost.

Love and intimacy are one.

By allowing ourselves to be intimate with an experience without becoming lost in stories, we love the experience. We are open to it and empty for it. When we love an experience, it moves through us. When it leaves us, we feel free. In the beginning, that freedom may be experienced as healing. However, openness, emptiness and freedom are our true nature. We come to know our Self by loving experience as it is.

Let me say that again.

We come to know our Self by intimately experiencing experience, because we intimately experience experience by being open, empty and free.

We be our Self, and so we know our Self.