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.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

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.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

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.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

On Day 179, we learned:

A thinker is one who has an intention regarding thought, so when NTI says “you are the thinker” it means that you get to choose the intention in the mind. You can decide if attention will wander with any thought that arises, or if it has an intention to focus on truth and let other thoughts go.

Today’s reading says:

You are the Mind that Thinks…

And it encourages us to shift our attention—shift our vibration—so that we stay focused on truth.

I recommend contemplating today’s reading in this way:

1. Read NTI 1 Timothy 6 slowly and contemplatively.
2. Listen to this 30-minute audio, which is a review of NTI Philippians 4.
3. Review the tip from Day 179.
4. Read NTI 1 Timothy 6 again.

If you do not have time to complete all 4 steps in the morning, use the entire day to complete the steps. For example, complete step 1 this morning, complete step 2 around lunchtime, and then complete steps 3 and 4 this evening. Or, complete the steps in a way that fits with your schedule.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

When we believe manifestation is reality, we are in darkness as opposed to light. (Ref: Day 226.) That could also be called ignorance, as opposed to knowledge. However, that doesn’t mean that manifestation should be disdained. In fact, the opposite is true. The purpose of manifestation is love (joy).

Yesterday, we saw that love loves the whole, not just selected parts or circumstances. Today’s reading guides us to love all of humanity exactly as it is, without asking any part of humanity to be different. The reading is reminiscent of Jesus’ last instructions to his disciples:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
~ John 13: 34,35

Love loves. That is its nature. It does not select what it will and will not love. Selection and rejection are aspects of judgment, and judgment is the tool that was born out of a desire for something different from truth. (Ref: NTI Romans 2.)

To return to the realization of truth, be truth. Truth is love (joy).

Today’s reading offers a means by which you can genuinely love everyone just as they are. It asks you not to see people through the filter of personhood, which includes rules and expectations that define “good people” and “bad people,” “attractive people” and “unattractive people,” etcetera. Today’s reading recommends that you see all people as expressions of freedom. To see everything as an expression of freedom is to focus on a quality of consciousness. Therefore, to focus on everything as an expression of freedom is letting go of the filter of personhood. (Ref: Day 214.)

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

This is one of my favorite Bible scriptures:

This is the day that the Lord has made;
we will rejoice and be glad in it.
~ Psalm 118:24

When my grandma died, I was asked to plan the funeral service with the minister. He asked if there was a Bible scripture that I wanted read during the service. I requested Psalm 118:24. He couldn’t see how that scripture fit in with a funeral service, so I agreed to share it during my portion of the service.

I opened my eulogy with Psalm 118:24, and then went on to talk about what a joy it was to have this woman as my grandma. I talked about my experience with grandma in full. I remembered her homemade cinnamon rolls, butter and cheese, which everyone loved, and I remembered that she trusted no one and said some pretty outrageous untrue things about other people, which wasn’t what everyone loved about her. I openly loved it all. I loved every aspect of the personality-body-mind that was my grandma. I said:

This is the Grandma that the Lord has made for me;
I rejoice, and I am glad she was my grandma.

Today’s reading says:

To love they Self is to love all things and all circumstances …

If life is the source and essence of all things, we can only love life as it is by loving all things as they are. If we reject any part of life, we aren’t loving it as it is, because life is not a part; it is whole.

This is why the Loving All Method is such an important practice. If we don’t love all, we separate and divide life through judgment. Separation is illusion. Life is one.

What if you cannot love everything as it is?

Today’s reading says:

To train yourself in godliness [loving all], be willing to rest the mind frequently. Be willing to step back and observe while remembering all that I have taught you. Remember that all circumstances come to you for your awakening, because you are the creative process that is God and awakening is the purpose you have chosen.

Here is a link to a 1-hour audio that is related to NTI 1 Timothy’s teaching about the personhood and about loving every aspect of the personhood as it is:

The Flow

Note: You can find The Flow as a written message in two parts at this link.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

As I write this, it is the day after euthanizing my dog, Jamie. Yesterday, after she was gone, I decided to go for a walk, which is what I would have done had she been alive and healthy. I went to one of her favorite places along the Arkansas River.

As I walked, I noticed lizards, grasshoppers, ants, birds, trees, the water, and the wind. I felt awed by the intensity of life. It was so full of itself—vibrantly present and immediate. I could not find death in life. I knew the dog, Jamie, had ended, but yet there was no loss or lack in life. There wasn’t a hole in life where Jamie had been. Life was perfectly intact.

As NTI John taught, life and light are one. NTI John 1 said:

The Light is in all men and with all men. The Light does not fade or wither, but the darkness that fills the sight of man does not see the Light or choose to know it. And so, the Light waits on welcome, that it may be known.

What is the “darkness that fills the sight of man”?

It is the belief that manifestation is reality. It is the belief that I am the person, that Jamie was the dog, that an ant is just an ant, etcetera.

On Day 212, we saw that it’s a mistake to see ourselves as merely manifestation. It is more correct to say we are the creative principle than it is to say we are the person. To say we are consciousness is closer to truth. To say we are life is truth. To say we are all of it (life, consciousness, creation and manifestation) is the essence of truth, since consciousness, creation and manifestation are made of life. Life is the source and essence of all things.

Today’s reading says:

Rest within the acceptance that the temporal being you seem to be is not the totality of your Beingness, and so it cannot be the truth of what you are.

The person that you appear to be is to be loved, just as Jamie was to be loved, but the person is a temporary expression occurring through the creative principle. You are much more than that.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

The purpose of NTI 2 Thessalonians was to help us let go of the ‘I am bad’ belief. The purpose of NTI 1 Timothy is to help us let go of the belief in ‘me’ as an individual, separate person. This is also letting go of the belief in separation.

Today’s reading says:

The personhood of man, which is based on the belief in the world, is meaningless. It is meaningless because the world itself is not real, so all that is based on the world is also not real.

This is a very deep thought that you do well to sit back and soak in fully, for within this thought is another symbol that is key to your own salvation.

What is the “symbol that is key to your own salvation?”

It is Self-inquiry.

Who/What am I?

I was not ready for Self-inquiry when it was introduced in NTI 2 Corinthians 12, so like a GPS, inner wisdom recalculated to help me see that I am the Third Principle of God, the creative process. I accepted that teaching more easily. Through that teaching, I could see that I am not what I think I am and that the world is not real; it is made through attention on thought, perception and emotion.

In NTI 1 Timothy, inner wisdom asked me to contemplate that more deeply. If I go deeply  into the realization that I am not what I think I am, that the world is made by attention on thought, emotion and perception, and that the body-personality is part of the world, I will eventually come to the question:

What am I?

And that question is key to salvation (awakening).

Some of you accept that you are not what you think you are. You accept that the world is not real; it is made by attention on thought, perception and emotion. Now, notice that the body and personality are part of the world. That means they are also made  in the same way all manifestation is made. They can’t be what you are, so what are you?

Don’t make the mistake I made in NTI 2 Corinthians 12, when I went to concepts for the answer. Instead of answering with what you’ve learned, look.

Experience you intimately.

If not the body, if not the thoughts, if not the emotional-makeup, and if not the personality, what’s left as you?

Subtract everything that you identify with that is a type of manifestation.

What’s left as you that is not  a manifestation?

Today’s reading points out that individual personhood—me, you, us, them—supports judgment.

Can that which is left when body-thought-emotion-personality is subtracted be judged like a body can be judged? Like thoughts can be judged? Like emotion or personality can be judged?

Anything that can be judged is part of manifestation. It is not real, and it supports the continued making of illusion.

That which cannot be judged is beyond all of it—beyond world, beyond body and beyond mind. And yet it is you.

What is that?

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

The guidance I shared in yesterday’s tip said:

Letting go of [guilt and unworthiness] comes from the mind, since the belief that holds to the perception is in the mind. This is why I have been teaching you that the cause of guilt and unworthiness is not in the world or in anything that you experience. The only cause is belief in the mind. It’s important to remember that belief in nothing is nothing but belief.

Today’s reading reemphasizes that point.

Today’s reading likens the ‘I am bad’ belief to the busy mind. If you watch the busy mind carefully, you will find it is constantly judging you as less than your reality. The idea that you are less than your reality is the root of the ‘I am bad’ belief. Therefore, your busy mind is the cause of your sense of guilt, unworthiness, inadequacy and the like.

Today’s reading teaches a discernment practice. It asks us to “manage your mind” by using the practice it teaches. We can start by using the practice during meditation, during rest-accept-trust or anytime we want to sit quietly. However, once we are skilled at the practice, we can use it while we are active as well.

NTI 2 Thessalonians is a short section in NTI. However, what it teaches is powerful and incredibly useful. I recommend referring to NTI 2 Thessalonians frequently until you are free of the ‘I am bad’ belief completely.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

Today, we are taught exactly how to heal the ‘I am bad’ belief.

1. Ask to see it.
2. Look at it while being aware that it is a belief (not a fact).
3. Rest (rest-accept-trust).

You can practice these steps repeatedly until every shred of the ‘I am bad’ belief has been healed.

To help support today’s reading, here is guidance I received about letting go of the ‘I am bad’ belief:

Question: In order to feel my feelings (e.g., guilt, unworthiness) instead of repressing them, I cannot fear them. The problem is that I fear them because I still think they define me. I think they are true about who I am. How can I let go of this perception?

Answer: Letting go of this perception comes from the mind, since the belief that holds to the perception is in the mind. This is why I have been teaching you that the cause of guilt and unworthiness is not in the world or in anything that you experience. The only cause is belief in the mind. It’s important to remember that belief in nothing is nothing but belief.

To change your perception, look at this belief and say, “This is only belief.”

Call it by its name:

Not true, only belief

Be consistent and repetitive in this. That which isn’t true is coming into your mind now to be seen. This is a good thing, a great thing.  Look right at it in full confidence of who you are—full trust and knowing. Don’t trust your eyes or your thinking mind. Trust only your Heart, which knows. With knowing, look at your beliefs and say, “Not true, only belief.”

It is important to practice the previous guidance with clarity and not with fear. Your underlying motive for the practice is essential  to its effect. Truth realization is a different motive than the desire to avoid or escape something unpleasant.

Note: I recommend printing this tip for future reference.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.