trust in liberation free parts

7/30/2019 Trust in Liberation Free Parts

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Trust in Liberat ion A M a n u a l o f S e l f

T r a n s f o r m a t i o n

E r i c G r o s s


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Foreword 3Taking a Walk Together 3Introduction 81Exile 102ThePrecipice 123LifeinBalance 144TheRuleofTwo 15 5WhoAmIReally? 186WhatDoIDoNext? 217WhatisLiberation? 248AmIMyBody? 27 9AmIThisLife? 3210Questions 34


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ForewordTaking a WalkTogether

Are you tired of the search?

Are you exhausted seeking to find and "get" what can neither be found or obtained?

Are you just worn out by the constant drive to be "more" or "better"?

Or have you collapsed into a place of darkness that haunts daily living?

Does this world of want and war provoke distress and sadness in you?

Do you sometimes sense the same conflict you see in the world within your own self?

If so, we have a lot in common.

We have attended countless workshops, watched too many videos and, God knows, poured overhundreds of books.

We begin to realize that it is the search itself that has become its own problem.

It is the wall that separates us from the clarity of effortless being, a being-ness - that is always present;the very quality of being we dream-of for ourselves.

Could we be trying too hard?

Have you ever looked for something in your fridge and couldn't find it, only to discover that it wasright in front of you?

Truth has only one place - right here, right in front of you and right within you.

If it's not here, where else could it be?


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Isn't the idea that the truth hides from us just another belief?

Could all of this be so much simpler than what we ever imagined?

Thought and habit says a resounding "No!".

The truth is very difficult to obtain - it's reserved only for the very few, only the greatest of the sages.

Can you open yourself to the possibility that the search itself is that which obscures the real?

Could it be that we are projecting some ideal state which is just resistance to what is in this moment?

You are that is-ness, free to be any way it needs to be.

But the mind is a cruel overlord.

Its dominance compels us to rejoin the search with always more intensity and seriousness.

Our problem, says the mind, is that we have not worked hard enough.

So we work harder at the one task the mind is unsuited to do in the first place.

We use the mind because that is the tool we know best.

We want to be secure, in control, content, knowing, loving, gracious, and we give all of those tasksto the mind.

We demand that our minds produce all of these "goodies" for us.

But if you're seeking one more formula to make life all neat and clear, you won't find it here.


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Formulas and rules are just more thought, just bait to lure the desperate seeking a better andimproved thought-based me.

Life does not consist of formulas.

Life is anything and everything.

It loves violence, conflict, wars, pestilence, earthquakes, crime, and revolution.

It also loves balance, peace, harmony, and ... love.

It is whatever it is and you are that!

That is the one thing you can absolutely depend on.

You might prefer to leave the fray, but the fray will find you.

You might say this hopelessly challenging life is too much for you, but it isn't and, down deep, youknow that.

Life will demand that you show up for it and one way or another you will.

If there is a formula in this book, that is it.

Show up and assume your role - play it with strength, confidence, and passion.

Life will create the role(s) and you'll play the part(s).

But what makes these pages different is their call to you ... a call that illuminates your light and notthe writer of these words.

For all that matters is you, the reader ... dearest you.


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Freedom is the realization that the enormous burden you have carried in the thought-cluster labeled"me" is the anchor that holds us fixed in habitual and monotonous patterns of pain and pleasure,where the focus is always on "me".

Everything changes when we see the false "me" as false and enter that real Me anchored in theblazing reality of just this one moment; now!

We are awakened from the dull thrall of thought and come to see our actual life as it is.

Through trust, we come to realize that this life, this experience, this now is it.

Presence shows us that everything happens like a theatrical production with a cast of just one; you.

So let the show go on as it does and sit back and relax, for you're are both the play as well as itsaudience.

No show is complete without an audience, especially an admiring one.

Have we forgotten the admiring audience?

So feel the pull of the show and be grateful to it ...

For it's a once in a lifetime performance, a one-time event.

Let the show be as grand and detailed as it needs to be.

Play all your roles with heart and brilliance.

Just for this moment, imagine that without you this show would die.

So accept the invitation that Life respectfully sends you every second.

The ticket is now in your hand.


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Hold it with love and Life will return that love a thousand times over.

This book is written in a special form, which I call couplets. It has been written this way for a reason.The topics addressed in this book are difficult to express using conventional paragraphs. Language is

especially head-centric and tends to reify some of the obstacles to wisdom described in this book.

By using simple, straightforward couplets we overcome confusion through direct clarity. While thecouplets are mostly short and simple, they need to be read slowly. Really hear and feel the couplets.Let them resonate. Connect the couplets with your heart and try making this a felt experience, ratherthan one that is exclusively analytical and intellectual. Read meditatively and the vision described inthese pages will become a part of your daily, lived experience.

Sometimes, I deviate from the couplet form. Points that are especially important appear as a lonestatement. You might call it a "singlet". There are several other sections that follow the standardparagraph format. Such sections are either an intermezzo, a brief detour as it were, or they are a morethorough discussion of the material.

As you read, know that these words areyourwords, for they arise onlyin your experience. See it as aconversation between friends walking perhaps along a stream far away from the noise of the city.Walking shoulder to shoulder, together, connected, to the Earth and of the Earth.


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Introduction

There is only one law and that is the law of connection.

Everything in the universe is connected with everything else in the universe.

This truth operates in the dimensions of space and time.

The statement, it is all one, is not a splat of new-age nonsense.

To the contrary, it is the only absolute truth we can say about the universe.

This is why all thoughts that assert separation are false.

First among all such thoughts is the "me" thought.

This book is a thorough investigation of the "me" thought.By book's end, you, the reader, will see how nearly everything you believed about yourself as true anddependable was neither true or dependable.

Most other such books seek to give you an "improved" and more refined understanding of who weare.

They replace one thought with another.

In this way they are merely re-arranging the furniture of the psyche.

This book is different.

Our purpose is to do away with the furniture once and for all.

It is to find humor in all such anachronistic ideas of "me" and "you".


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The time of "we" and "us" is upon this world.

We either embrace the mystery and wonder of the life we are or we succumb to the lethalconceptions of world rent by ideas of separation and the endless war between the "haves" and the

"have-nots".

It can be no other way.

Please don't misinterpret these statements as a diatribe against conflict.

Conflict can be good, healing, essential, just as peace can be good, healing, and essential.

You are invited to put aside the false in favor of the true.

The true is the connection that cannot be denied.

This is the most revolutionary idea of our time.

All revolutions of the past have been fought between social classes and ethnicities.

This revolution is different.

It is the battle between lies and truth.

Enter this fray with a heart wide open and be prepared to see the false everywhere you once sawtruth!


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1Exile

Exile.

The journey to a world ruled by fear.

These eight words tell us what we need to know.

This is the dilemma that faces us all.

Ruled by fear we are frozen in its cold grip.

But, could it be that fear also holds the power to its own release?

When we assert only one side as exclusively real, then the other side's power will expand to the extentthat we are blind to it.

Thus, we condemn fear too strongly.

We fear fear (not a typo) too well.

We lose the opportunity that fear avails us.

The heart of this book is an emancipation from allbelief.

Free of all belief we can live fully in trust to what is.

Free from all belief, what is real and true arises effortlessly as it must.

This world of trust is always open to us, if we are open to it.


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We are the very trust we seek.

All of us can live our lives free of fear.

The model of a fearless, trusting life has already been conceived and lived by countless men andwomen.

Fear is the aberration, the exception in our human story.

It is an aberration from reality itself.

Once, many years ago, I stood on a wind-swept, black macadam parking lot in the dilapidated townof Gallup, New Mexico.

By my side was a Navajo healer.

He said, "Eric, if you don't know that right now you're standing in the middle of the Garden ofEden, then you have failed to trust."

It is that statement that inspired this book.

I invite you to meet me on that same dismal stretch of black pavement.

To realize, together, that we are in the center of that primordial Garden of Eden, breathing itsfragrant air, hand in hand, heads held high, yet bowed in gratitude.


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2The Precipice

The conflicts we experience in our lives mirror the conflicts we observe in the world around us.

What fuels the many wars in the world is the same energy that fuels our own inner struggles.

Lack is the driving force.

And there is nothing that lack loves more than scarcity.

And this is what is happening everywhere.

Not enough money, not enough oil, not enough time and yet so much stuff.

Fear and lack are the same energy.

And as lack's power has grown, so has fear.

Now we are pushed to the precipice.

Lack/Fear creates demand, demands we make on our world, our families, and ourselves.

Fear and demand, fear and lack, fear and violence, fear and confusion, fear and the obsession withtranscendence all possess the same essential quality.

We have grown so comfortable with our fears and have grown so accustomed with our identificationwith lack that even though our eyes are open, we no longer can see the power of these forces in ourlives.

Frozen in fear, we don't know where to place our next step.

We either learn the lessons of fear or we will fall victim to it.


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The realization of abiding trust is the end of a victim's life.


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3Life in Balance

Balance and harmony are everywhere ... everywhere except here.

But here is where the illusion happens.

The great barrier is always uninvestigated belief ... belief in that person who never has enough.

That is the person ruled by Lack.

It is that belief that will be fully investigated in this book.

That person is "me".

Lack is a disease that we caught as babies.

This book is the cure.

Andyouare the healer.

It is possible to live in humor, dignity, integrity, and compassion.

But when our lives are ruled by lack/fear, that is not possible.

Instead we will spend the whole of our lives chasing illusions.

Endless seeking is a disease of the body, a disease that can be healed.

It is really quite simple.

There is no magic in it.


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Fear thrives when the soul sleeps.

Coming awake signals the end of Fear's rule.

The healing is in the seeing and clear seeing is wakefulness.

4The Rule of Two

The universe has a profound number.

It is two.

Two is easy to remember.

Everything has two sides.

One is light and the other is shadow.

Light is not superior to shadow.

We cannot have light without shadow.

The two always comes together as one.

An object or state is either "on" or "off".

To be or not to be, that is the question.


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Every thought that we invest with "truth" contains its opposite.

And that too is also true.

The Rule of Two effects everything that is said in this book.

Everything asserted here generates its opposite.

This is the Union of Opposites.

Tall contains short, thick contains thin, just as wise ultimately contains ignorance.

Even "me" will posit "not me" and in that positing, there is a subtle (or not so subtle) opposition.

And never forget that this "me" is, to the mind, just a word and not a living, dynamic entity.

Words exist in their own, exclusive, domain.

They can refer only to other words.

Words can never be a truth that exceeds the domain of words.

Yet we sustain our belief in them to be the ultimate truth.

Words are a convenience.

Life is not made of words.

But the brain acts as if it is.

There is no "you" and "me" in actual experience.

There is only this.


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This cannot be contained by words.

Why do we invest words with validity?

Because a "me" does the investing and "me" is a word.

Words can only refer to other words.

Free of the dominance of words, Life is fluid and mysterious.

Its complexity mocks the simplicity of language.

What we are is not a word.

That's why the "me" never becomes enlightened.

It is the falling out of all belief that best describes awakening.

Free of any word, there is nothing but this ... this all the time.


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5Who Am I Really?

This moment presents us with a happening.

But in an eye blink the happening is evaluated.

This evaluation is the portal to "me"

We can believe the evaluation.

Or we can trust the happening and be open to whatever comes next.

We notice that there is the happening.

Then, there is the evaluation.

Happenings are happening all the time

But evaluations only occur on happenings that effect "me".

But something else is happening.

We believe that we are the creators of the evaluations.

But if we are very observant, we can also see that our evaluations are as automatic as everything elsethat happens in the world!

We are served a plate of spinach and some of us will evaluate that as unappealing, while others willsay "yum"!

We say, "This is me. This is 'my' response."


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But we can see that our personal response happens even before we can think about it.

We claim these automatic evaluations as "ours" and we design a life out of them, but they are nomore ours than that tree in the distance.

What we protect, what we defend, is this same "me" reflex that arises in response.

We fear the loss of that.

We defend the evaluator.

These frequent responses and the psychological identifications that arise with them create a trancewith the self.

Everything - happening and response - is experience.

Experience is life and it all just happens.

It is the pursuit of experience, as if it were lacking, that is the obstacle to finding and experiencing whatis already here.

The memory of past "highs" makes possible the continuous opposition to the present in favor of amore exciting and better projected future.

Yet, that which is here, is the only absolutely, solidly stable presence that exists.

It is the only quality that can be trusted.

It is the only entity utterly free of fear, for it possesses nothing, yet holds everything.

It is not a thought and it can't be found because it's not a thing.


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6What Do I Do Next?

People always ask What do I do next?

Reflect on this very day.

Somehow everything gets done.

No one had to ask the question, "What do I do next?"

It all just happens!

We think that we need to figure things out or plan, but it all just happens.

Where is the effort - where is the work?

Work happens, but only if you think about it.

Learning also just happens.

But that takes so much effort, so much work - says the mind.

Is that true?

How do we learn?

How does THIS get done?

Let's explore how "we do" things.


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Is this little "I" doing all of this right now or is this little "I" pulling off this immensely complexinteraction with a zillion other separate "Is" who are, in themselves, also burdened with the samemaze of near infinite complexity, in their own lives?

Who or what is doing this?

How does it work so seamlessly?

It all happens. It all gets done.

And we're starting to see that I am not really doing any of it.

It all gets done and we don't know how or why.

As the late and great astronomer Carl Sagan was fond of saying: "To make an apple pie, first youhave to create the universe."

We think we're doing so-and-so, but that too is just a thought and we don't know how that happenseither.

So what do I do next?

Next, we note, never arrives for now is already happening!

What do I do next keeps us fixated on "me".

What do we do next is the question pointing to the fantasy of me.

Drop the fantasy and let the happening happen.

Return to the Tao.


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7What is Liberation?

Liberation is freedom.

Freedom from the trance induced by belief in the unreal.

This moment is complete as it is.

What could be added to it - howshouldit have been different from what it was?

Our world seems to be divided into two discrete parts.

First, there is the world, this place of sights, tastes, and sounds arrayed before us.

And then there is "me" - the solitary self.

A wall is asserted between "me" and the rest of the universe.

But this "me" must be an expression of this universe.

How could it be otherwise?

Things and thought arise together in this magical substance of experience.

What part rejects the blazing reality of this?

Is it when we feel the most stressed that we cannot find anything we can truly trust - especiallyourselves?

It feels like there is nothing we can find to hold onto.


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This thing we seek is always here.

It is obscured by only one energy.

It is the energy of a false "me", a thought-based construct, that obscures all that we would seek.

The whole universe of fear is built on this one belief.

This book is about trusting THIS, for THIS is who we are.

We are not the story, we would project.

Just as THIS is re-invented and re-formed in every passing moment, so we are re-invented andreformed in every passing moment.

This is flow - truth - harmony - and reality.

In truth, we cannot help but be THIS experience now.

The story of a separate and clearly distinct "me" falls apart with this realization.

The seeking story of "me" finds refuge only in lack.

Lack is always looking beyond this moment.

It desperately searches for the next thrill, the next problem to work on, the next accomplishment toachieve, the next thing we must avoid.

Identification with lackisseeking.

It can be no other way.


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There is no problem in anyof this, until one small decisive belief is added to the mix; the ingredientof identification.

We spend the whole of our lives searching for here.

Isn't that amazing?


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8Am I My Body?

Are we beginning to see that there is no burden whatsoever?

And, are we beginning to see that, just possibly, when we believethat there is a burden that that beliefis incredibly helpful because it's pointing to some, as yet, unseen belief?

The sensation of burden only arises when the identificationwith a personal being arises in thought.

We recall the weight of our lives, unpaid bills, calls we need to make, helping our children with their

homework, walking the dog, and getting to work.

The burden of "me" only arises when we think about it.

Doing is always free.

This burden, this thought arises now.

What (or who) gives it the weight it doesn't possess on its own?

Is it not our identification with just this one, single thought, this "me"?

The burden happens within experience when I turn myself into a thought.

What about that crappy job that forces me out of bed on dark, cold winter mornings?

The "I" and the job are both thoughts.

They are real, but only as thoughts.


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They are not our essential selves.

Their weight comes from only one place.

That place is that we take hold of them with the full force of our personal identification ... with theforceful thought; this crappy job (relationship, etc.) is "me".

Divested of belief, life is transformed.

They become just one more passing sensation.

As sensation, they still may possess great pain, but drained of personal identification, they are farmore manageable.

This is called living in truth.

Thoughts are their own domain belonging to no one.

Nothing in the universe is a thought, except for thought.

Everything that feels bad about "me" is a thought.

The mind is thought.

Go out of your mind!

Let's take a little journey in the world of real thought.

Pop!

The thought appears that I have to get up much earlier that I'd like to to get to my crappy job.


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Where did that thought come from?

We don't know - it just happens, it is part of experience.

Maybe the thought comes from memory ... from the last time I had to dragmy body out of bed to goto a job I didn't like.

The body wants to sleep, but it is forced out of bed.

This is an experience of the body.

It is the effect of memory on the body's identity.

It is the "I hate to be forced out of bed at 6:15 AM thought cluster rooted in memory.

Am I this body?

Or could the body, as it is currently experienced, be just a thought ... a sensation?

We recall that the physical body is all about genes, childhood, psychology, interactions with others,and all the rest.

Does the body contain all of those thoughts and feelings that are noticed?

We have seen that these are sensations.

Then there are thoughts about sensations.

And we have seen that thoughts are often more powerful than the sensations themselves.

Thoughts have a greater sense of "me" than my does body.

"I know" that "my" thoughts and feelings aren't physical.


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Where is the line drawn between the physical and the mental?

If I assert my identity purely with the physical then I am forced to exclude all the thoughts andfeelings that arise from and about the body.

I also need to negate the fantastically complicated interactions my body has with the world around it,including other people's pleasing and annoying thoughts and feelings.

I also must exclude that mass of unseen but powerful things that float in the air, like germs, bacteriaand other strange invisible chemicals that could actually kill my body.

At this point, I am not even sure what my body is or isn't.

I don't even know how my body got to be the way it is.

I am thoroughly confused by "my" body.

I don't know where it begins or where it ends.

I can't control my body, but my body seems to control "me".

On its own, it ages, gets sick, gets well, it fosters pains that come and go and it responds to people inways that I would prefer it not.

Then, one day, "my" body dies.

Who controls that time and place?

The body has a mind of its own.

Could this mean that I am not my body?

I see that this body is so much more than just a thought.


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It seems that I don't know anything.


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9Am I This Life?

If I am not my body and I cannot truly say that I do, then does it seem absolutely clear to me that I

am?

Yes!

Perhaps you believe that this sense of "I am" must reside in your thoughts and that if these thoughtsare truly you, then you can control them?

But were that true, then why would you ever have painful thoughts, why would you ever have theceaseless train of repeating thoughts that keep you up at night?

Perhaps you believe that this sense of "I am" must reside in your feelings and that if these feelings aretruly you, then you can control them?

Then would you not always have beautiful and wonderful feelings, no matter what is happening inyour life?

We discover that the body, doings, thoughts, feelings, and life situations all just happen.

We cannot find a "me" anywhere who can claim ownership of them.

But if we truly open our eyes and see, what we see is that everything, the body, thoughts, feelings,doings, situations, narratives, stories, all just happen.

Through it all, there is only "I am" - this weightless, but living presence.

We see that when we attach our identity to these thoughts, feelings and body that we move into therealm of fantasy.

It is nothing but belief.


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Everything just happens, as it does, as it must!

The dream of the "me" that could ever get anything out of life ends.

Life is not something which a "me" can obtain anything, yet thought is always and forever insistingthat you absolutely must strive for a better "thought me".

This cannot ever happen, because you were never a thought, you only thought you were a thought.

Life is only for one thing: life just as it's happening now.

We might still be inhabiting the position of external evaluator or judge, but we can also see thatnothing can be outside of THIS.

When we see that this evaluator is all part of the same THIS as everything else, then somethingchange in our immediate experience of this.

We join the dance and start feeling its rhythm as our rhythm.

Welcome to life.


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We all suffer exactly to the extent that we fail to recognize the gift of life and to express that gift inthis lifetime.

Were Rembrandt or Einstein to deny themselves, how much poorer would we all be?

Were you to deny your own self in this lifetime, how much poorer would you be?

It is our uniqueness that shows the extraordinary capacity of creation to invoke miracles.

Just as every snowflake is unique, each moment is equally unique.

This book is an invitation to discover our own uniqueness in the freshness of this ever-present now.

Creation loves nothing more than itself in an infinity of forms all connected by Source.

This multitude of stories are possessed by no one, but Source and Now, as we notice how beliefevokes "my" body, "my" doing, "my" thoughts and "my" feelings.

Because "me" is always seeking a safe harbor, a place that it can claim as its own, it asserts the "my"before each object it posits as real and owned by "it".

Fear and belief are truly one and the same.

Wake up from all belief and you are free of all unreasonable fear.

Ask yourself, right now, what part of me is free of any need to cling to some symbol of security?

Fear and belief are heavy burdens that serve only themselves.

In this way, they are self (literally) sustaining.


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Creation invites us to the place that delivers us from both our dreams and our nightmares.

Even now you are free of all this weight, but your beliefs keep the psychological anchors intact.

Our purpose here is to cut the chains that keep these anchors in place and to awaken us to themiracle of this form and this moment.

Are there more questions?

I feel lost. Without this sense of "me", without knowing this body as mine, and without a sense that Iam the doer of what I appear to be doing, I feel adrift and uncomfortable. I feel uprooted. I'm notsure if I like this talk, even if it is true. If am not the doer, then how are people to be heldaccountable for their actions. Are you saying that the rapist is not responsible for his crimes?

This is an understandable concern.

This sense of uprootedness is perfectly natural.

If you didn't have this sense, I might doubt your integrity.

We have grown very accustomed to our beliefs, especially our ideas about who we are.

These beliefs are so close to us, that we no longer experience them as beliefs.

All we seem to know is what our conditioned and habituated minds tell us.

These beliefs are the authoritiesof our being.

But this very mind, the entity that maintains the fictions that keep the dream of the "me" alive, areproducts of the same dream.


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There are places in this world where people have an easy smile and an effortless laugh, deep andresonate.

They are happy and content, relaxed in the midst of life, often a very materially poor life.

Our lives are such a contrast.

We who have much have rates of depression and anxiety disorder that are all but epidemic and theywho have little live with relative contentment.

These same people seem to have a depth, an easy laugh, and keen sense of irony that we seem to

lack.

Many researchers have lived closely with these people and report about their elevated intelligencewhen compared with people raised in our TV and consumption obsessed culture.

What is really going on?

Just as we might feel uprooted and confused, these people seem so powerfully rooted and clear.

As you delve deeper into this book, that same sense of rootedness, balance, and calm will becomealive in you, just as it is in them.

Regarding the rapist, as he is observed, the rapist is a happening.

Happenings obey rules, even unwritten rules.

Just as a strong wind and rustling branches are One, just as the pain of hunger arises when we missmeals, so it is with the rapist.

If he is caught, processes are invoked to punish this person - on the level of form.

Just as the rapist is not his body, his form (body) will be forced in a prison cell.


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He will live with the shame, deprivation, and pain that the world makes possible for him, nodifferently than those branches rustle in the wind.

It is cause and effect.

Even the rapist can find freedom in a place where every door is locked, just as you can.

We have passed through the first furnace of unlearning.

We are in the haze of uncertainty, of uprootedness.

This is how it is meant to be.

The "promised land" is already here as the haze and the uprootedness.

It is the only place we can be.

It is the only thing we can trust, for it is the truth and that is trust.


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