“Right,” Where I Am

Strange; this life can feel so strange. We are born into an environment that seems to compel us to reach and continue to reach. As children, we learn the rules early: kindergarten is meant to lead to Grade 1, Grade 2, and so on. We are explicitly and implicitly taught that we should strive, become more, and make something of ourselves; and to that end, we often unwittingly sacrifice a greater gift to the false gods of materialism, success, and money. The price of our ignorance can be very steep.

Several years ago, the title of this article would have seemed nonsensical to me–I wouldn’t have understood. The idea of being “right,” where I am would have been paramount to capitulation. Without a figurative mountain to climb or a vision to achieve, I would have felt lost. Without purpose, what would be the sense of living? At that time, the notion of being was such a nebulous concept; for the nectar of life seemed to be in the dreaming, doing, and achieving. My misguided approach toward life seemed to offer only two paths labelled Success and Failure; and who of us desires to tread the latter? I spent a lifetime trying to succeed, and in the process discovered that I had not lived.

Now (when we become still and awaken), we may discover that everything is, was, and always will be, just fine. Beyond the machinations of the mind, we may realize that now we don’t need to go anywhere, or attempt to be other than that which we are in reality. Here and now, a greater realization may also dawn: that we are not alone. The One is with us, and has been with us, always. One: pervading everything, everywhere. One: beyond time, eternal. One: within our family, friends, and so-called foes. One: in every rock, tree, and butterfly. One: the All in All, including us.

What does “right,” where I Am mean? It means fine with, and fine without. It means to be accepting of that which is, and that which is not. It means to be at peace, and living in such a way that we’re not always striving to be somewhere else. It means creating joyously, but from the detached perspective of wisdom. It means to be grateful; dwelling with the Creator of our breath. Lastly, it means that we may rest; for we know that “right,” where I am; so, too, is God.

Dare to Dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2023 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. My YouTube videos may be found through this link. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. 🙏🧡

Thank You” & “Note to Publishers

Seeing Clearly

This article is my prayer for you. It’s a prayer that you will be spared the unwanted effects that occurred due to my own innocent ignorance. Its message is heartfelt. Of the nature of my mistakes, no incarceration was involved–the errors were not of that nature; but there was definitely time spent suffering, which can be avoided through clear insight. The intention within all of my articles is to offer insights related to a deeper dimension of being, so that you may also experience it directly and, thus, be spared the inevitable suffering that arises when we believe ourselves to be a separate egoic “self.”

My biggest error is that I believed that I lived for the false me. Such is the case for the majority of beings who still believe their identity is of name and form only; for without the hint of the deeper dimension of being, what else could we expect? When I state that I lived for me, I am not suggesting that all of my actions were selfish or always geared towards getting; but there’s no denying that an element of that existed. Most persons believe they have to get, to achieve, to succeed. If we contemplate this deeply, even when we’re performing an action for apparent others, there often still remains the subtle desire to get–perhaps if only to experience the accompanying “good feeling” related to giving. Some egos pin those moments (complete with day, date, and year) to their lapel like badges of honor. At least I didn’t do that.

If left to its own resources, our ego will spare nothing in its attempts to fulfill its needs. The alarm clock sounds in the morning, and our ego is (so to speak) off to the races. What follows is often a racing internal narrative being “thought-spoken” by the jockey known as “me.” Without any sense of separation from that jockey who’s riding us for dear life, we have little choice but to endure the weight of its saddle and go along for the ride–be it galloping uphill, or tripping face first downhill. The solution for this type of existence is related to the prayer at the heart of this article.

If you will commit but five minutes every day to meditation, you may avoid a great deal of needless suffering. When you “Be Still“–as stated in the Bible–“and know that I Am God” you may find yourself asking who (What) is it that notices thoughts about your job, images of your child’s messy room, or the sensation of a slight ache in your left hip. What is it that notices the intruding thoughts about upcoming repairs to your car? For the first time, you may be able to become knowingly aware and see clearly that you’re not who you think yourself to be.

With practice, a shift in perspective naturallyoccurs–from that of the person to Presence. In other words, we identify as the Source of all noticing and knowing during our periods of meditation.

This “knowing” gradually imbues our days with peace and joy

–because ITs very nature “IS” peace and joy.

Through the recognition of true Self, our apparent life will naturally shine as a beacon to our spiritual brothers and sisters. We’ll have been unsaddled from the egoic jockey that’s been riding the joy out of our life. When realization dawns within us, we’ll clearly know that to exist for the illusory separate “i” is the cause of all suffering; and that all of our so-called problems belong to the phantom jockey. True Self–Awareness–is forever removed from the polar swings related to the human story. Please trust me, this is a prayer worth making; and realization is its fulfillment.

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2023 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. My YouTube videos may be found through this link. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. 🙏🏻🧡

Thank You” & “Note to Publishers

8 Billion Prodigal Sons

Let me confess that this article contains an exaggeration: There are not (if I’m being truly honest) 8 billion prodigal sons. There’s actually two beings who are not (named Clive and Vaishnani), who live, respectively, in Seaside, Oregon, and Mumbai, India. Confession number two: Okay, perhaps I have understated the situation. However, we can definitely state that on a ratio basis, the vast majority of beings are definitely prodigal sons and daughters without being aware of it. Before we go any further, let’s share what the term prodigal son actually means:

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, prodigal is defined as follows: “characterized by profuse or wasteful expenditure; recklessly spendthrift.” The Parable of the Lost Son is related in Luke 15: 11 – 32. It relates the account of a father and his two sons. The younger son asks to receive his inheritance from the father, who willingly grants it. He travels to a distant country and lives an extravagant and wasteful life; while the older son stays at home. In time, the son who went away becomes destitute and is forced to take employment as a swineherd; work that would have been considered repugnant. When the circumstances of his life finally become unbearable, the prodigal son finally realizes that he must rise and return to his Father; who welcomes him with open arms.

The parable is actually a metaphor for what happens to on us during our human journey. I’ll go out on a limb and offer my understanding: When we stray from the Father (Awareness), such means that we have got caught up in the world of illusion (Maya) and forgotten our essential nature, which is Spirit. Due to our conditioning, we assume ourselves to be a separate self of name and form. That’s what it means to turn away from the Father, aka Consciousness. Due to this confusion, we waste our life on self-centered goals related to a fictional self. Please remember that all things–including our body-minds–are actually rendered by the mind. The parable mentions repentance, but this needn’t be interpreted so heavily. To repent merely means to acknowledge our error (sin: to miss the mark) and recognize true Self. By turning to the Father, the son “awakens” and realizes that his true nature is Spirit.

For several hundred years, the materialist paradigm of reality has convinced the vast majority of beings that their apparent body-mind and the world are made of independently existing stuff called matter. This continues to occur despite science informing us (for more than one hundred years) that atoms, which were once considered the foundational stuff of matter, are 99.999% empty space. The truth is that our apparent body-minds and the world appear in Consciousness. Both are rendered by mind. It’s why Jesus said that “I and my Father are one.” He was referring to Consciousness.

How do we turn to the Father? By investigating the nature of our being through self-inquiry. We can “Know Thyself” by withdrawing our attention from our senses and becoming still. When we meditate, we can see–directly–that we are the witness of our sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts. Our true nature is That which knows. It is Awareness, Itself, the very Substance of All That Is. It’s not dependent on the body or the mind. In fact, the truth is the other way around–the body and mind are dependent on Consciousness. They appear in the Waking State and are erroneously assumed to be the sum total of our being. Every time that we rest in the stillness of our essential nature, we return to the Father and, thus, know peace and joy. We only suffer, or become destitute (as in the case of the prodigal son), when we fall back into Maya and the perspective of personhood.

The ratio referred to in the first paragraph will begin to tip in favour of the Father when more beings investigate their essential nature. All that’s required is to ask the question “Who Am I?” with earnest curiosity. We are not our name; nor the body-mind. Instead of trying to appease the false “i” through objects or activities, we are wise to turn within and discover the true Source of happiness. Human incarnation provides a unique opportunity to recognize our essential nature. It would seem a shame to waste it.

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2023 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. My YouTube videos may be found through this link. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. 🙏🏻🧡

Thank You” & “Note to Publishers

Thumbs Up: Enlightenment 101

When Johnny Begood was eight years old, he experienced a horrendous event. If it had been an earthquake measured on the Richter Scale, the event would have registered as a ground-shaking, pavement-heaving 10.0. Now at forty-seven, he can still remember what happened as though it were yesterday. Please glaze your eyes slightly as we travel back in time: Johnny was helping his father build a plywood doghouse:

Gleefully, Johnny hammered the shiny nails, one after another: Thump, thump! Thump, thump! Whack, whack, whack! Over and over, he repeated the process, using his “real man” hammer that his parents had bought him for his birthday. Before his very eyes, each nail that had stood so tall was pounded down, until its head was flush with the surface of the plywood. HE WAS A CARPENTER! However, during the pounding of one particularly stubborn nail that was leaning off to the side, his left thumb somehow strayed into the territory that was the domain of the head of his hammer. As the taut forearm muscles of his right arm brought the hammer down forcefully, he remembers seeing (as though in slow motion) the head of the hammer a mere split second before it contacted the surface of his tender young thumb. A thumbnail that turned purple within hours was his reminder for the next few weeks. The lesson: Keep your free hand away from the strike zone of the hammer.

***

As life would have it, Johnny Begood learned something else from that incident. He learned that he liked to help other people by sharing what he had learned; to spare them some of the pain associated with his “lessons.” In addition to cautions about the proper use of a hammer, he was also inspired to advise his younger siblings and neighbourhood friends of the following: that fingers and spokes of a spinning bicycle wheel should never get too close; that raccoons in the wild don’t like it when you poke a stick near them; and that before sitting on the end of a tree branch, you should always ensure that the branch is still alive. Johnny’s love of sharing knowledge would continue for the rest of his life.

Later in life, Johnny’s most important lesson was related to his sudden recognition of his true Self when he was forty-two. The profound nature of the “experience” was beyond words. He realized, of course, that awakening from the dream of personhood had to be known directly; but he was still happy to offer pointers to seekers who approached him with their questions. Using the hammer incident as an analogy, he advised seekers to maintain a healthy distance from the strike zone related to the perspective of their person. In this way, events that happened to the body-mind were processed in a detached manner, which lessened any associated suffering. He also reminded them of their innate I Amness–Consciousness, in which, and through which, all apparent events took place. “Be That which is aware of the person,” he said, “not the person.” During some of his talks, he shared the following description of our essential nature from the Bhagavad Gita:

Weapons cannot cut it, nor can fire burn it; water cannot wet it, nor can wind dry it.”

In the years his recognition of true Self, Johnny has known of several seekers who have realized their essential nature. In other words, they transcended their conditioning–the uninvestigated belief that they were the person. You, too, dear readers may recognize That which you truly are. Do you dare? No hammers required–just an earnest eagerness to know Truth.

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2023 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. My YouTube videos may be found through this link. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. 🙏🧡

Thank You” & “Note to Publishers

Spiritual Remedial School

It was Edward Trappedbythought’s first day at the world renowned Spiritual Remedial School. The school was famous for providing intense one-on-one attention, with the hope that students would knowingly recognize That which they truly are. The head master, a tall stately man known as Hewithoutaname, was reading Ed’s lengthy record. “It’s recorded here,” said Hewithoutaname as he approached Ed, “that you’ve been taking this whole human story just a little bit too seriously. Is that so?”

“Guilty as charged,” replied Ed, as his hands wrestled each other.

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?”

“No, guess not,” said Ed.

“You guess,” said Hewithoutaname, raising an eyebrow, “or you know?”

“Pardon, Sir, of course; I know.” Although Ed was middle aged, he suddenly felt as though he was five years old.

“At SRS, we have a strict three-strike policy. Do you know what that means?”

“Kinda,” muttered Ed, his face flushing. “I think it means if I get three three incorrect answers that I’m immediately expelled.”

“Well, you’re off to a good start. It seems you’ve done your homework. So let’s get straight to it. You’ll be given ten seconds to respond yay, nay, or with a full length answer that’s clearly audible. Do you understand?

“Yes,” said Ed nervously. A sheen had appeared on Ed’s forehead, threatening to rain sweat off his eyebrows.

Holding a timer in his hand, Hewithoutaname momentarily said, “First exam beings NOW:”

***

Head Master: “I am my body.”

Ed (nervously shifting in his chair, glancing at cheat notes scribbled in his palm….10, 9, 8, 7,): “Yay?

Head Master: “Buzzz–strike one! Pitty, had such high hopes for you.”

Ed: “So sorry.”

Head Master: “No talking.”

Ed: (nodds humbly).

Head Master: “I am my mind.”

Ed (eyebrows alternately raising, searching for answers on the ceiling…6, 5, 4,): Yay?

Head Master: “Strike two! Oh, dear my, this is worse than your record reflects.”

Ed: (close to fainting, with a pale give-me-a-chance expession on his face).

Head Master: “Okay, one last chance. Spell Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s birthname backwards, in his native language of Marathi.”

Ed (blank stare, drool coming from the corner of his mouth…4, 3, 2, 1, 0,): No answer.

Head Master: “And that’s strike three! Just kidding! Here at SRS, we’re famous for having a wicked sense of humor–guffaw, guffaw. But more importantly, we’re known for our unconditional LOVE. We’re going to give you a second chance! Tomorrow we’ll get started with a sixteen-hour meditation period, beginning at 4:00 A.M. Just so you know, no bathroom breaks permitted; so you might be advised to go easy on the fluids before bed. See you in the morning!

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2023 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. My YouTube videos may be found through this link. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. 🙏🧡

Thank You” & “Note to Publishers

Not By Accident

That you find yourself reading this article (perhaps with enough curiousity to read it twice), has not occurred by accident. In the right place, at the right time, conditions align. Such may be a sign that the real YOU is becoming weary of playing the persona you have erroneously assumed yourself to be. It may, indeed, be time to awaken to true Self and knowingly recognize that you are not the egoic self of name and form with whom you’re familiar. How can this possibly be?

From the human perspective, it’s often convenient to believe that we are responsible for the favourable circumstances of our lives. We naturally assume credit because it feels good to do so. However, when unpleasant circumstances arise, we may wonder what we did to deserve such horrible conditions, or blame ourselves for being fools. Upon the shifting sands of ever-changing circumstances, we attempt to forge rich and fulfilling lives. From the point of the Absolute, nothing occurs by accident. As challenging as this may be to contemplate (much less accept), the nature and quality of our predominant thoughts and beliefs have everything to do with the apparent events that arise in our lives.

To help deepen our understanding of our essential nature and of how events–both personal and collective–occur, I offer the following passages:

We do not wake up into a really waking state. In the waking state the world emerges due to ignorance and takes one into a waking-dream state. Both sleep and waking are misnomers. We are only dreaming. True waking and true sleeping only the gnani knows. We dream that we are awake, we dream that we are asleep. The three states are only varieties of the dream state. Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave. By imagining that you are born as so-and-so, you become a slave to the so-and-so.”

(I Am That,” by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

***

Is there any reason to doubt that our dreaming mind functions uninterruptedly throughout the twenty-four hours of our time, that is, from birth, or before it, to death?

(Why Lazarus Laughed, by Wei Wu Wei)

***

You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality. Is it your decision to do so? You recognize from your own experience that what you see in dreams you think is real while you are asleep. Yet the instant you awaken you realize that everything that seemed to happen did not happen at all. You do not think this strange, even though all the laws of what you awaken to were violated while you slept. Is it not possible that you merely shifted from one dream to another, without really waking?

(A Course in Miracles, by Helen Schucman)

***

No one doubts the reality of the world. They see trees and mountains, and they are certain that all of it exists. Only when this certainty is challenged is the dream doubted. Wake up, and find it was a dream.”

(Wake up and Roar, Satsang with Papaji, by Eli Jaxon-Bear)

***

Every appearance on the physical or astral plane is just a dream before the soul. It is ignorance when it takes this experience to be real.”

(The Heart of Sufism, by Hazrat Inayat Khan)

***

The fact of the matter is that our waking reality is as much a creation of our mind as our dreams.”

(The One in the Mirror, by Ramesh S. Balsekar)

***

Dear Readers: To identify with the perspective of the person is to invite suffering. Life may proceed smoothly for many years; but circumstances eventually change. When we recognize That which we truly are (Spirit, Awareness, Consciousness), we process the circumstances of life more easily. To help this occur for YOU is the reason that I share this information.

The One had no other way to apparently become a multiplicity and diversity of various forms except through the power of imagination. You are not who you think yourself to be. You are an Infinite Being, dreaming a human life. When our attention is turned inward, we can recognize a much deeper dimension of Self. The Bible states this in Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God.” Through Grace you may realize that NOW.

Dare to Dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2023 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. My YouTube videos may be found through this link. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. 🙏🏿🧡

Thank You” & “Note to Publishers

Are We “There” Yet?

Most parents will be quite familiar with the question that serves as the title of this article. The question (or variations thereof: “Soon? Much farther?”) often arises from our children during long car trips. To the children, the destination just seems so dang far away. The same mindset often lurks within us during our journey-less journey toward knowing recognition of true Self. In The Perennial Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley, he expressed this very clearly:

This ‘experience,’ which is a state of emotional excitement–an excitement which may be mild and enduring or brief and epileptically violent, which is sometimes exultant in tone and sometimes despairing, which expresses itself here in song and dance, there in uncontrollable weeping. But emotional excitement, whatever its cause and whatever its nature, must be died to by anyone who aspires to live to divine Reality. ‘Excitement’ about God (the highest form of this kind of excitement) is incompatible with ‘experience’ as immediate awareness of God by a pure heart which has mortified even its most exalted emotions.”

The point that Aldous Huxley made so eloquently is about the experience of awakening to our essential nature and how that relates to the person. To fully awaken is to live from the perspective of true Self; as opposed to the perspective of the illusory conceptual self that we refer to by name and form. As with so many points related to spirituality, a paradox applies: If we (as a person) are incredibly jubilant about having experienced recognition “of” the pinnacle of our essential nature, we have still not arrived. We are yet not there (liberated) until we’re presently living “as” true Self, and fully aware of What–not who–we actually are. From that perspective, such just is what it is. The situation is also described through the following quote from St. John of the Cross:

"The fly that touches honey cannot use its wings; so the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins its freedom and hinders contemplation."

The toggle switch between awareness of That which we actually are and who we think we are is incredibly sensitive. When we are knowingly unaware, it can be triggered abruptly by habits that belong to the body-mind. We can be reminded of the difference by contemplating a few questions: “In awareness of the inherent fullness of our true nature, who is it that could possibly be feeling lonely?” “In this dream called life, who is it that could feel guilty of acts labeled bad or rejoice in those labeled good?” As we stabilize in recognition of our essential nature, we may be surprised to realize that–yet again–we have descended a rung or two on the ladder toward personhood. When such occurs, it’s often wise to become still, take a few slow breaths, and regain our center. In time, the egoic voice that’s habitually asking whether we have arrived yet will lose energy and fall silent. And that’s good news.

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2023 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. My YouTube videos may be found through this link. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. 🙏🏻🧡

Thank You” & “Note to Publishers

Break Out The Champagne!

What great news, dear friends–a toast is in order!. The grandest, most important merger has occurred! It is a merger of “knowing” that you and the Lord of your Being are One! To this grand recognition we will be lifting our glasses in celebration. It’s what Rumi, the great Persian poet and mystic, expressed through the following quote:

I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.”

Strictly speaking, of course, we cannot actually define this as a merger; for that would imply that we had actually experienced a separation. You see, we already are–and always were–One with God. It has only been illusion of Maya that made it appear otherwise. Through ignorance, we have been conditioned to believe that we are the body-mind of name and form. In John 10:30, this message is again related through the following verse:

I and my Father are one.”

The Truth, of course, is not that one highly notable figure named Jesus was the only son of God. He came to make our lives more abundant by sharing that such was the birthright of every man, woman, and child. How, logically, could the Creator “not” be in his fruit? Never in a million years would “parents” within this Divine Matrix believe that their genetic material had not been passed along to their offspring:

Our true heritage is Divine, because we are of–and from–One Divine Creator.

The eyes of understanding open wide when we realize that just as our nighttime dream experiences are created by Consciousness in the dream state; so, also, are all objects, events, and circumstances in the waking state, which the majority of persons erroneously believe to be foundational reality. That reality is actually occurring within a dream. The following passage from Hebrews 11:3 may help to make this stunning revelation more clear:

 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

For the sake of clarity, we must be very clear about our understanding of the material shared within this article. I am NOT stating that experiences are unreal; but that they are only relatively real within the contextual framework of a dream. Does this information not suddenly help us understand why placebos give rise to cures and alleviate many conditions? It is our belief “in them” that creates their effects. “The mind,” as Paramahansa Yogananda stated, “is the creator of everything. In other words, although the champagne referred to in the title is not absolutely real (in the way we would have previously assumed), it can still make our legs wobbly. Now, let’s pop the bubbly and pour!

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2023 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. My YouTube videos may be found through this link. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. 🙏🧡

Thank You” & “Note to Publishers

Neighbour Blues & Good News

It was Gwen’s fourth night in her new apartment. At forty-six, she was starting over; her divorce papers had been signed only a month prior. The pace of unpacking had slowed; and now, with some favourite knick knacks in place, her living space was beginning to feel like home. A smile lit its way across her face as she surveyed her efforts. At quarter to midnight, she climbed into bed; eager for a good night’s sleep. She felt tired but content. All seemed right in her world until she heard of the strident voice of her neighbour Harriet (who she had met briefly the previous day) explode in an uncontrollable tirade. “Get the f#%k out!” Harriet screamed. “Get out, you f#u%ng loser–NOW!” She was a spigget of profanity turned on full force. A fearful thought spiked into Gwen’s mentality as she pulled the covers higher: “Oh, dear God, have I just traded one hell for another?”

For the next half hour, Gwen was tossed by fearful thoughts as Harriet subjected anyone within earshot to her continuing explosion of anger. Harriet was demanding that a woman who was visiting must leave; but the woman, who was also screaming profane replies, refused to leave. Admidst the turmoil, Gwen came very close to notifying the superintendent or the police. However, she finally found peace–even during the event–when the following thought entered her mind:

Persons who appear most unlovable actually need our love the most.”

With that anchor of understanding, Gwen gradually found her own fearful thoughts being crowded out by feelings of loving compassion. “No one in their right mind would deliberately choose to live this way?” she said to herself silently. “What inner fears are driving this release of pent up energy? What kind of hellish environment must Harriet have been raised in, or exposed to, to give rise to such behaviour?” As the noise from the apartment beneath her lessened in intensity and frequency, Gwen was finally able to fall asleep.

***

Dear Readers: Attempting to ensure that home “without” always remains peaceful is a losing battle; for our outer environment is subject to ever-shifting circumstances. It’s only when we recognize home “within,” (that placeless place beyond name and form) that we realize the peace that passeth all understanding.

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2023 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. My YouTube videos may be found through this link. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. 🙏🧡

Thank You” & “Note to Publishers

Eavesdropping on God

Not once upon a dead time in history, but continuously in the living here and now, I, God, create and recreate the apparent world and all objects, events, and persons contained therein. I Am the immanent and transcendent Mystery; the Creator of all that is, was, and ever will be. It is written in the Gospel of Thomas, “Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.” As I am omnipresent, nowhere am I not. I Am the alpha and the omega; for everything known begins with Me and ends in Me. It could be no other way; for I Am all that IS.

Due to confusion and innocent ignorance about your essential nature, humans continue to assume that they are the source of their own being. This mental story has spread like wildfire and burned its falsity into the human psyche. This erroneous perspective is based upon illusion and gives rise to suffering. Only through I do you live; for I Am Life, Itself. That humans live is the very proof that I Am. Jesus expressed this Truth when he stated that I Am the vine and that you are the branch. Unless you remain connected to Me, you cannot possibly bear fruit.

Distracted by the apparently outer world, the majority of humans spend their life struggling against challenges which, they, themselves are creating. Like spiders, they unwittingly spin thought-webs that promise happiness for a false self in a future that doesn’t exist. Feeling lost and alone, they are unaware of My divine inner Kingdom, which may be discovered by turning their attention within. There, I, the Light of their very Being, lie waiting to be recognized. We are One in quality and nature, varying only in degree. It’s true that I will never leave you; for I Am in you, and you are in Me.

Please hear this: Your soul reason for living is to come to recognize your true origin and, thus, experience life more abundantly. This cannot possibly occur until you realize That which you truly are. It’s time to cast aside your identification with the false self and recognize the eternal dimension of “I Am” within. The Truth will, indeed, set your free. To know this is to live in peace and harmony.

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2023 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones–released September 8, 2020), press here. My YouTube videos may be found through this link. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. 🙏🧡

Thank You” & “Note to Publishers