NTI Colossians combines the teaching of NTI Ephesians and NTI Philippians, while bringing more clarity to both. You will recognize teachings from both NTI Ephesians and NTI Philippians in today’s reading. This review is really important, because the mind attempts to distract you from the realization that your way of being is creative spirit. It attempts to pull attention back toward thought, emotion and world, so that thought, emotion and world continue to be enlivened through you.

The evolutionary motion within consciousness now is a motion toward truth realization. In NTI, this motion is described as the desire to:

Know thy Self

One who accepts this motive as his/her motive is consciously and actively shifting attention  so that it isn’t used to enliven illusion, but to recognize Life. Shifting attention in this way is called changing your mind. Today’s reading is full of guidance that helps us change our mind so that we support the motive of truth realization instead of mindlessly resisting it with old conditioning.

Today’s reading says:

Praise your mistakes, that they may be corrected. For it is only in praise and acceptance that truth may be known.

According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, to praise is to “express a favorable judgment of.”

Why are we asked to judge our mistakes favorably?

It’s our habit to judge our mistakes negatively. Sometimes, in order to change a habit, one needs to be extreme in the other direction. However, even more important than that:

A key awakening practice is the Loving All Method.

Aren’t mistakes a part of “all” in Loving All?

Therefore, aren’t they to be loved just like everything else?

You may wonder how you can praise a mistake, especially if it created a problem or hurt someone?

Here’s what works for me:

1. Shift from the head to the heart. Genuine praise comes from the heart, not from intellectual thinking or rationale, even if it’s spiritual thinking or rationale.

 

2. With the heart, remember that the entire creative process including every thought, emotion, perception and action comes from consciousness’ brilliant ability to want something different from truth and experience that, even though truth itself can never change. Feel gratitude for that brilliance and for the perfect freedom that allows it. (Don’t rush through this step.)

 

3. Realize that the mistake you made is part of that brilliance and freedom. This is the positive judgment. It is praise for consciousness as consciousness, since consciousness is  brilliance and freedom.

 

4. Remain with the feeling of gratitude for brilliance and freedom. Remember that you have accepted the purpose of awakening now. Choose to see your mistake clearly so that you can learn from it. Feel gratitude for this opportunity to learn a lesson that further supports awakening. Realize old habits are dying through clarity and your willingness to look at mistakes.

As we learned in NTI Galatians:

You will be tempted to think with the world. In times of unknowing, you will think and act with the world. But your willingness is in action, and so you will see what you have done. Each moment of noticing is an opportunity for immediate repentance. Repentance is nothing more than remembering what you truly want and returning joyfully to the focus of your willingness. This is the dance of love. And the dance of love is the spreading of Light within a welcome mind. …

Do not worry about your errors. They are nothing but opportunity for learning. Return to your willingness in joy. In your truth, you are Spirit.

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.

Please read and contemplate the following commentary in the same way that you read and contemplate the Thought of Awakening. The commentaries are designed to enrich your understanding of the Thoughts of Awakening.

~Commentary on Gratitude ~

 What you are is formless. When you look about yourself as you experience yourself now, you see form and you say. “That is not me.” When you look at yourself as you experience yourself now, you see form and you say, “That is me.” But in both cases, you are in error, because what you are is formless, so you cannot be identified by what you see in form.

Gratitude, like you, is formless. It cannot be touched, but it can extend. Gratitude takes that which already is and moves it into new existence and new means of expression and experience. In this way too, gratitude is like you.

To understand what you are, you must drop understanding. But to get a glimpse, look at gratitude. Gratitude is a formless force that is much like you, and gratitude works through love because gratitude works through you.

~From our Holy Spirit

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

NTI Colossians combines the teaching of NTI Ephesians and NTI Philippians, while bringing more clarity to both.

NTI Ephesians taught that you are the process of creation, and your way of being is creative spirit. Whatever you accept as true is given through spirit to all of consciousness and is experienced by consciousness in the Fourth Principle of God, the realm of manifestation.

NTI Philippians taught that your creative spirit isn’t the result of your purpose alone. Your purpose (motive) combined with believing attention (faith) creates the way of being that is creative spirit. NTI Philippians recommended you watch the body to see if the motive and faith it follows is the motive and faith that you want as your creative spirit. It also recommended that you stand firm with the purpose of the Heart.

NTI Colossians points to what we are beyond the creative principle, which is life-awareness. It reminds us that our truth is the truth of everything. It’s not just that I am life-awareness and an insect is life-awareness too. The insect and I are the same  life-awareness.

In other words, NTI Ephesians pointed to the Third Principle of God as what we are. NTI Colossians begins there, and then points directly at the First Principle of God as our actual reality.

To say we are merely the Fourth Principle of God, manifestation, is a mistake. To say we are the Third Principle of God, the creative principle, is more correct. To say we are the Second Principle of God, consciousness, is closer to truth. To say we are the First Principle of God, life-awareness, is truth. To say we are all four principles simultaneously is the essence of truth, since all four principles are made up of the First Principle of God.

In NTI, the First Principle of God is called Life. The Second Principle of God is called spirit. The Third Principle of God is called creation. The Fourth Principle of God is called form. You are all of them, because you are Life, which is the source and the essence of them all.

Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

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

Please read and contemplate the following commentary in the same way that you read and contemplate the Thought of Awakening. The commentaries are designed to enrich your understanding of the Thoughts of Awakening.

~ Commentary on Desire ~

Listening is a habit that is cultivated through desire. By desiring to listen and follow, one begins to listen and follow. Through desiring to listen and follow more, one begins to increase the habit of listening and following.

Desire is worth cultivating. Spending time focusing on one’s desire to listen and follow is helpful to the practice and the habit, because all practice and all habit follows desire.

Remember your desire in the mind. Have gratitude for your desire in the heart. Trust your desire in the moment. All of this will cultivate the desire, and the desire shall blossom into a lovely new habit.

~From our Holy Spirit

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

Please read and contemplate the following commentary in the same way that you read and contemplate the Thought of Awakening. The commentaries are designed to enrich your understanding of the Thoughts of Awakening.

~Commentary on Listening ~

 In order to listen, you must choose not to want things your way…the independent way…which does not consider the way of the whole.

In order to listen, you must also realize that the perspective from which you see is limited, and therefore, the perspective from which you see cannot make a decision based on benefit to the whole.

When you want only that which benefits the whole as an entirety, and you realize that you cannot decide for the whole based on your limited perspective, you are then ready to listen, because you realize that listening is the only satisfactory answer for you.

~From our Holy Spirit

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

Please read and contemplate the following commentary in the same way that you read and contemplate the Thought of Awakening. The commentaries are designed to enrich your understanding of the Thoughts of Awakening.

~Commentary on Peace~

The world is a reflection of the mind, but I do not ask you to give thought to this. I ask you to give acceptance. For when you give thought to the simple ideas I teach, you also add confusion to what was not meant to be understood, but meant only to be.

The world is a reflection of the mind.

Now that you accept this fact, most likely without understanding, you can use this fact to see which voice you listen to in the mind.

Are you upset by what you see? If so, you are listening to the voice for independence, and you are wanting everything to be the way the voice for independence states it must be. This is not being. This is demanding and controlling, and in demanding and controlling there can never be peace.

If you are overjoyed by what you see…if you are grateful with no desire to interfere or change a thing…you are listening to the Voice of Peace, and so you are peace and peace is what you know. This is like music that has no sound, and yet the music never stops playing.

Be only honest with what you see. This is all that is asked as you look at a reflection. And then if it is not peace, turn immediately to Me. And if it is peace, enjoy the beauty of your song.

~From our Holy Spirit

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

Please read and contemplate the following commentary in the same way that you read and contemplate the Thought of Awakening. The commentaries are designed to enrich your understanding of the Thoughts of Awakening.

~Commentary on the Wish to be Independent~

 The wish to be independent is the wish for “me” who is separate from “you” and whose key interests may be different. We may at times find similarities among our varied interests, but this is rare and never long-lasting, for always “my” key interest is to look out for “me.”

And can there be any question that this thought must eventually lead to conflict and to pain?

Yet this is the thought you listen to, and the choice you make, whenever you choose to worship the wish to be independent.

~From our Holy Spirit

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

Please read and contemplate the following commentary in the same way that you read and contemplate the Thought of Awakening. The commentaries are designed to enrich your understanding of the Thoughts of Awakening.

~Commentary on the World~

 The world is filled with distraction. It is filled with things to do, issues to think about, and things to say. The world is filled with distraction, because it is programmed by the idea of independence. The idea fuels the world, and the world fuels the idea.

This, again, explains the reason for obedience. The world is caught in the loop for independence, which is also the loop of conflict, which is pain. When you react to the world with your thinking and your doing and your saying, you continue to feed this loop. Yet that is your habit today.

To break a habit takes obedience. And it is your Heart’s desire to break this habit. Breaking this habit is your contribution to peace.

To break the habit of independence, conflict and pain, one must learn not to listen to himself or his thinking, because it is a part of the world…a part of this loop.

One must instead choose to listen to a Voice that is not part of this world…not part of the loop…and take all direction from it.

The mind will resist the suggestion to take “all direction” from a Voice that is not of this world, but that resistance comes from the desire for independence, which is also the cause of conflict and pain.

~From our Holy Spirit

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