12 Week Spiritual Intensive
Week 2 Message
"The Silence That Evidences Harmony"
During these 12 weeks - and hopefully forevermore - we are devoting ourselves to a minimum of 4 hours silence each day, perhaps more than most of us ever have until now.
Already, after only one week of this greater silent BEingness, I am receiving reports of MANY tangible benefits being evident - mind and body 'healings' (including one 'impossible' healing to materia medica and human sense), family harmony, miracles of awareness opening up, the truth and reality of Oneness being known as never before, abundance becoming evident from completely unexpected, unknown sources.
Of course! True Silence, and harmonious experience, are ONE AND THE SAME ‘EVENT’. God, Spirit, IS. Harmony, Wholeness, Joy is the ONLY Form, ONLY Presence, ONLY Activity RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, AS YOU. Nothing but the activity of the ‘human’ mind (the material sense) obscures this perfection of All. Nothing but the human mind! Therefore it is simple to see that the moment the human mind is stilled, there is harmony.
“Where the presence of the Lord is, there is liberty.” This does not mean that there are some places the Presence is, and some others It is not, or some circumstances or conditions in which It is, and others in which It is not.
The presence of Spirit IS. There is nothing or nowhere but the Presence BEING that something and someplace. “Where the presence of the Lord is…” means WHERE THE PRESENCE IS BEING YOUR CONSCIOUS AWARENESS rather than where ‘human’ sense is being your conscious awareness. Where THE PRESENCE is BEING the consciousness of you or me, there we witness the Harmony that has always been present yet obscured by human mind activity - foggy human sense, concepts and belief.
But… we need clarity on how to have our consciousness BE the consciousness of Spirit, the Presence… the consciousness that witnesses the Harmonies that Are.
First, let’s be clear what ‘silence’ means. Let’s imagine a deep and beautiful lake and say that normal human mind activity is equivalent to the lake waters being turbulent. All we can see is the turbulence itself. The lake’s real treasure - the clarity and depth of its waters, its beauty, bounty, color and variety of fish, rocks, plants and flowers - is hidden from us.
The activity and turbulence of the human mind IS what we call this ‘material, physical, corporeal’ world. It is the collective consciousness in its dark, foggy state of awareness unwittingly perpetuating itself by believing and therefore continuing to operate at ITS LEVEL of awareness, ITS LEVEL of belief of What Is.
But remember: Only God Is, only Spirit Is. Right where you are this minute is Utter Perfection of this very place, this very minute. Stop reading this for a moment and realize:
“My body, this very moment I am sensing it as physical, is the one spiritual Body. It is divine. It is perfect Life Itself being the Whole of Life expressing here in awareness. It does not have a heart, a liver, a stomach, lungs, a skeleton, a head and a brain; It is Spirit in sublime Life-Expression, Life-Freedom and Life-Eternity BEING Me!
“Only the foggy human SENSE makes it APPEAR TO BE physical, APPEAR TO HAVE organs and functions. But every tiny element of the ‘physical’ body is nothing more than a foggy, or dim, AWARENESS of the True Body that IS.
“In the same way, this very moment my job or business, my home, my ability to freely express myself seems to be limited by the amount of money and opportunity I have or do not have, there is unlimited abundance of ALL, including money, opportunity and utterly joyous and fulfilling work activity HERE AT MY FEET, ALL AROUND ME.
“I am in utter fulfillment of expression NOW; I have boundless heavenly riches NOW; I enjoy boundless freedom of self and activity NOW; I love and am loved by the entire Universe - every being, every animal and insect, every tree and plant, every ocean, lake and river, every place and ‘condition’ - and at such divine depths that no ‘human’ love ever experienced even touches what THIS Love Is. It is indescribable Universal Love not hindered by physical bodies or a material universe, not limited by pathetic ‘personal’ love. My Love is the Infinitude of I BEING Love AS Me and to Me - every breath of I in utter Love expression with every other breath, the Whole Being Love As the Whole, the Whole being in Love with the Whole.”
This is the truth of you this minute - the REAL, TANGIBLE, NOW-PRESENT TRUTH, not some far-off mystical ideal you’ll reach in one million or 10 million years if you become sufficiently saintly.
Yet it takes just 10 seconds of opening your eyes again to the material SENSE of you and your world to fall back into the trap of believing its reality and thinking and acting within that parenthesis of belief.
The Activity Of Human Mind IS Materiality
The material sense - material thinking, belief and activity - is the turbulent waters of ‘this world reality’. The material sense IS this physical, material universe and everything in it and of it. It is astonishing to start looking out at this universe, its world and people, things and places, conditions and circumstances, and to start to realize that all of this magnificence, and all of this horror - all of this good and all of this bad - is the formation of the collective, dim ‘human’ SENSE of God’s perfect Universe.
The ‘material’ universe has no more reality than a shadow on the wall. It has no power, no substance, no reality. Yet because CONSCIOUSNESS IS EXPERIENCE, while we collectively and individually believe that it IS real, we experience it and everything in it and of it AS real.
The ingredients of consciousness always produce the sense of ‘reality’ of experience. To an individual who firmly believes ‘this material world’ is real, it IS in his experience. To an individual who knows his spiritual self and world is real, it is to HIS experience.
But the miracle is that EVERY level of consciousness is demonstrably harmonious WHEN even a grain of TRUE Spiritual awareness is brought to it. There never is a place in or of consciousness - a degree of consciousness - that is barren of rich harmony AT THAT LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
In other words, whatever your current experience, no matter how difficult, dissatisfying or even ‘hopeless’ your situation of health, wealth, relationship or peace is today, there ALWAYS is a solution, and a glorious and full solution, to the appearing problem. And that solution is available to you NOW because it already exists in all its fullness. The finished kingdom of utter harmony, completeness and happiness of ALL IN YOUR EXPERIENCE exists fully manifest, fully tangible and fully available NOW.
It is simply a matter of ‘seeing it’ rather than ‘manifesting’ or ‘demonstrating’ it. What ALREADY IS cannot be ‘manifested’ or ‘demonstrated’. IS cannot be made to ‘become’ IS! IS already IS! As consciousness REALIZES THIS PROFOUND TRUTH OF SPIRIT BEING ALL AND OMNIPRESENT… OF SELF BEING ALL AND OMNIPRESENT… consciousness is BEING an illumined state and suddenly “whereas I was blind, now I see”.
Think of our lake. The beauty and bounty of the depth of the lake EXISTS ALREADY yet the turbulent waters make it impossible to see, impossible to experience. We would never think the lake’s deep beauty has to be ‘manifested’ or ‘demonstrated’; we know ALL THAT HAS TO ‘HAPPEN’ is the STILLING of the waters. Suddenly, then, THERE IS the clarity that enables us to see and experience the lake’s depth and the peace and harmony and bounty that it is.
The Three Aspects Of Silence
The term ‘silence’ is confusing unless we are very clear about its spiritual meaning. Silence is not a ‘deadness’ or ‘dumbness’ of mind, it is the opposite - an aliveness, a vitality, a fertile receptivity. It neither is using the mind to read or listen to spiritual teaching, or to think spiritual thoughts.
There are three aspects to the TRUE SILENCE THAT WITNESSES OMNIPRESENT HARMONY:
1, Knowing The Truth:
Before we can silence the mind we have to know the truth that provides us with the REASON TO silence the mind.
To tell a ‘human’ to silence his mind is an insult. He has no reason to, in fact he has every reason to increase the activity of his mind in the belief that the intellect is all - the ‘smarter’ he is intellectually the more he’ll get on in this world; the ‘more skilled’ he is at staying healthy and fit the longer he’ll live; the more financially acute he is the more he can expect his job or business or investment to prosper; the more loving, giving and non-judgmental he is the more successful his relationships will be, and so on.
But when we discover the truth that God Is, and God is omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence, and that all this ‘God Is’ is infinite, invisible and indivisible therefore I Am That, not as I appear to be, but in ACTUALITY, in PURE TRUTH, in ABSOLUTE REALITY here and now, and that as I put away the SENSE of mind that has me and this world and everything in it APPEAR TO BE material, physical, and separate from each other I discover the miracle that TRUTH APPEARS AS HARMONIOUS ‘THIS WORLD’ FORM IN UNLIMITED AND IMMEDIATE FULFILLMENT… well NOW I have a reason to still the mind - and a good reason!
So, to know the truth is essential, but it has to be VERY SPECIFIC TRUTH. All of us drawn to this group already know so much ‘truth’ we could write a thousand books on it. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if we all ‘know’ far too much, so much that it has become complicated, even a burden, rather than the pure and simple clarity It is in Actuality.
Let’s understand the SPECIFIC TRUTH WE NEED TO KNOW and never be confused about it again. There are actually only TWO fundamental truths we need, but we need these two so deeply rooted, so ingrained in the very essence of our consciousness, that we can never stop reminding ourselves of them, working with them, and practicing (Being) them thought by thought throughout each hour of our every day and night:
One, this is a SPIRITUAL universe, and because Spirit is infinite every being and every thing that populates it is spiritual also. Even clearer: Everything everywhere, infinitely, without exception, ever, is SPIRITUAL not material, not matter, not physical, not mental.
God Is, Spirit Is, therefore nothing ‘else’ is. Spirit is the ONLY Only. That means that this universe, this world, you and every being and every thing everywhere, infinitely and eternally, is in Perfect Order, Joy, Harmony, Peace, Happiness, Plenty, and Fulfillment of Self because God is Love, Life, Harmony. “God saw everything he had made and saw that it was very good.”
Do you know that you’ve never seen yourself, you’ve never seen your partner or lover, your family? You have never seen a tree or shrub or flower, an ocean, a valley, a mountain AS YOU, HE, SHE OR IT TRULY IS. You see and experience collective consciousness CONCEPTS of you and all in this world but never have you seen the TRUE YOU, or True any one or any thing else.
You are Spirit, Perfect, Sublime, Infinite and Eternal. That means RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. You are That, I Am That. So is every person, every thing, every place, every amount and every condition. God’s Universal Being is in perfect order. Everything everywhere, infinitely, is God’s perfect Finished Kingdom in utterly blissful fulfillment of expression, of Being.
Every point of awareness (every point in the infinitude) consists of the Whole of God BEING that individual point… the omnipresence that is God, Spirit, Being the Whole of Itself at every point, every place, every expression - “The place on which you stand is Holy (Whole) ground… Son, you are ever with me, and all that I have is yours… Fear not, it is I.”
To sum up: Perfect, Complete, Fulfillment of All is the ONLY existence, the ONLY condition, the ONLY circumstance, the ONLY awareness, the ONLY thing, the ONLY amount, the ONLY everything everywhere. This is the ONLY ACTUAL, TANGIBLE, TACTILE, PRACTICAL REALITY; there is none else - “I am God and beside Me there is none else.”
Two, the ‘human’ SENSE of God’s Perfect Universe is ‘foggy’, dim, dark, confused. It is a ‘hypnotized’ state of awareness, consciousness. It is as if we see, and experience, a mirage, a hypnotized SENSE of What Is.
What SEEMS TO BE isn’t at all. What SEEMS TO BE your mind and body and life condition ISN’T AT ALL THE YOU YOU TRULY ARE.
What SEEMS TO BE this universe of physical, material, objectified people, things, amounts, activities, places, conditions - consisting of both good and bad natures, forms and characteristics - ISN’T AT ALL THE TRUTH OF THE UNIVERSE AND ITS POPULATION.
We experience only a CONCEPT of What Is, not the Truth of What Is.
There is not a single illness or disease in infinity, yet we experience these negative or destructive powers. There is not a single grain of matter in infinity, yet we experience matter everywhere. There is not a single lack or hardship or separation in infinity, yet our world is full of lack, hardship and separation from good.
There is not a single human being in God’s universe, yet the 6.8 billion world population of today is a population of human beings. There is not a single cat, dog, tree, flower, herb, ocean, desert or mountain in God’s Universe, yet this world has plenty of them.
There is not a single dollar, pound, or euro in God’s infinity, yet this world relies on them, fights for them, cheats for them, steals them, and even kills and goes to war for them.
There is not even a single atom or subatomic particle if God’s Universe, yet science knows that everything, without exception, is made of them.
Everything that appears to human sense - EVERYTHING from the mightiest mountain to the tiniest grain of sand, the human being to the insect, the solid to the liquid, the animate and the inanimate - is a mesmeric, or hypnotic, of foggy, dim CONCEPT, or SENSE of What Truly Is.
This world sense is not REAL. Therefore NOTHING NEED BE DONE to try to ‘heal’ it, harmonize it, fix it anymore than we would attempt to fix the mirage in the desert. The mirage IS NOT REAL therefore nothing need be done with it OTHER THAN realizing its non-reality and then getting on with our lives.
The moment we try to ‘do’ something to ‘heal’ it, fix it, prosper it, love it, harmonize it, bring peace to it, or avoid it, we are believing it to be real and now we’re stuck DEEPER in the dream. We have given IT power. The more we believe it by reacting to it, and trying to ‘heal’ it, the more power it has in our experience, ALL its power being nothing but the power WE give it by our belief that it is real.
THE ONLY THING WE EVER NEED DO WITH ANY AND EVERY APPEARANCE OF ‘THIS WORLD’ - GOOD OR BAD, CONSTRUCTIVE OR DESTRUCTIVE, SEDUCTIVE OR REPULSIVE - IS REALIZE IT’S MIRAGE NATURE, AND THEN DROP IT. Leave it alone!
Knowing these TWO fundamental truths - 1, the truth of God’s spiritual universe; 2, the hypnotic ‘human’ SENSE of God’s spiritual universe - is all the truth we need to know. BUT we MUST know it so deeply that is becomes the blood of our blood, the bone of our bone.
We can’t just know it intellectually; it must be the deep truth we TRULY KNOW, just as we know we have skin, blood and bones. We don’t have to think about these things, we don’t have to continually remind ourselves, and repeat statements of their truth all day and night. When these two main truths are that deeply ingrained in consciousness we find 70 or 80 percent of the world ‘healing’ in our presence without further ado.
“Know the truth and the truth will set you free.” This is the truth that sets you free. You will find that any ‘other’ or ‘lesser’ truth does not set you free, nor does it enable you to be the consciousness that sets your patients or clients free. ONLY THIS ABSOLUTE TURTH SETS YOU FREE. It is the great secret Buddha and also Jesus realized and is WHY they were able to be the miraculous healing lights they were. The same truth, known TRULY even by a grain, enables you and me and anyone to witness our consciousness being a wonderful ‘healing’ presence.
To sum up: There is only ONE discord, error, lack, limitation, disease and that is HYPNOTISM. That is ALL we are ever dealing with. Never are we dealing with the APPEARANCE of discord or disharmony, only ever with the ONE PROBLEM: HYPNOTISM; the SENSE of What Is rather than the form OF the sense, whether that form be a he, she or it, a condition or circumstance.
Then watch what happens to that hypnotic picture: the ‘error’ of it dissolves, harmonizes, becomes whole and full, ‘heals’.
2, Stilling The Mind
After knowing the two fundamental truths - and never being confused by the tens of thousands of statements of truth in the numerous spiritual literature of the world (always their PURE and DEEPEST meaning as THESE TWO FUNDAMENTALS - the rest is simple.
If the activity of the ‘human’ sense of mind IS THE MIRAGE, and yet right where the mirage seems to be, THERE IS THE TRUTH IN ALL ITS GLORY AND TANGIBILITY AND FORM, it makes sense that by STILLING, making SILENT, the mind, TRUTH IS REVEALED.
The mirage of error or chaos dissolves to reveal what Truly Is as when the turbulence of the water is calmed and stilled, there is the ‘truth’ of the lake. Nothing has been ‘done’ to the image of error, nothing has been ‘harmonized, healed, fixed or prospered’; only the error of MIRAGE, HYPNOTISM, has been stilled, made silent, thereby revealing the truthful presence, form, amount or activity.
The revealing of truth is ALL about the stilling, the silencing, of the mind sense that FORMS, that IS, the MIRAGE OF ERROR… never, EVER about healing the appearing ‘problem’. THERE IS NO PROBLEM, EVER! There is ONLY TRUTH, OMNIPRESENT.
But WHAT IS A TRULY SILENT MIND? Some of you have asked if reading the Miracle Self writings, or Joel’s writings, or listening to the MS or IW audios, is what I mean by silence. NO!!
Reading and listening plays its part in helping to make the mind calm and peaceful, READY FOR SILENCE. But neither is silence itself because there is still an ACTIVITY of mind. It is better than collective consciousness activity, certainly. But it is not true silence.
True silence is when we have finished reading, finished listening, finished talking, finished thinking, and are now RESTING AS A NOTHING… A NO-THINKING nothingness. We are like a rag doll, or a ventriloquist doll - literally a NOTHINGNESS of self. We are like the transparency of the window, still and peaceful and non-resistant, non-active (non-thinking), ‘through’ which the sun is able to freely shine… ‘through’ which, as which, Spirit, Truth, is freely revealed. Into the void, or vacuum, of the mind’s silence rushes Spirit, Clarity, Truth Itself. “God abhors a vacuum” (Spinoza). A vacuum does not exist in omnipresence, just Allness. So the minute the mind that IS THE FORM OF THE MIRAGE, the MIRAGE OF ERROR, is no longer operating, THERE IS TRUTH - “Where the presence of the Lord is, there is liberty” - liberty, freedom, harmony of Truth NOW TANGIBLY EVIDENT whereas before it was hidden - “Know what is in your sight (then be still and silent), and what is hidden from you will be revealed; there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed” (Jesus).
Can we truly silence the mind for more than a few seconds at a time, or perhaps a few minutes at a time when we’re practised? No, and it doesn’t matter. Here’s how I am silence:
If I need it (if a mirage is too strong and persuasive) I use the tool of mind (for that is all mind is, a tool to use) to ponder a beautiful truth, to remind myself of the two fundamental truths, and perhaps any aspect of them that comes to mind, or is pertinent to the particular mirage presenting itself. Sometimes I’ll do that, other times I can go straight to silence, or silence takes ‘me’ over, welling up within before “I” get there.
Then I ‘hover’ between utter silence and gentle pondering, or ‘reminding’ myself, of the truth. It’s like a hot air balloon hovering high in the sanctuary of the skies, every few minutes needing to light the flame to lift it back up to altitude, then gliding peacefully on the heat its been filled with.
I have found I can remain that way for up to hours - 8, 10, 12 hours at a time with just two or three quick breaks of a minute or two, or shorter periods of 30 minutes here, 60 minutes there, 90 minutes. No matter how ‘long’ it is beautiful, bliss!
Remember, even one second of TRUE SILENCE can reveal perfect health where there appeared the mirage of a deadly disease or a minor cold; it makes no difference to Truth because ALL mirage is nothingness.
One second of TRUE SILENCE can reveal abundance of wealth where there appeared the mirage of lack or poverty or barrenness of any nature. One second of TRUE SILENCE can reveal love where there was discord or hate in relationship, or discord in trade or government relations.
One second of TRUE SILENCE can stop a tidal wave or tsunami or earthquake or fire in its tracks. The power is just taken from it, stolen from it (the mirage), and you watch as it dies and dissolves into the nothingness of error it always was IN TRUTH.
‘You’ are doing nothing OTHER THAN recognizing the error for the mirage it is, then BEING THE SILENCE OF TRUTH REVEALING ITSELF, silencing the mind that was the FORM OF THE MIRAGE OF ERROR, so that now Truth can be revealed as that very he, she or it, the only Reality that ever was that he, she or it.
3, Receptivity / Fertility
There is one other aspect to the silence that evidences Truth, Harmony, Completeness: that is receptivity, attentiveness, fertility of awareness.
Silence is not a numbness of mind, a sleep or drowsy state, it is a fertile ground, an attentiveness, a receptivity, in which Truth dawns.
Imagine you are listening for a birdsong a mile away in the silence of your kingdom. You remain VERY still and silent, patiently attentive, listening. With enough patience you soon hear the song.
The ‘song of Spirit, Truth’ is singing AS You 24 hours a day. The whole universe of utter Beauty, Bounty, Joy, Completeness, Harmony, Peace and Satisfaction of Being is BEING YOU THIS MINUTE, ETERNALLY. But the busyness of the mind obscures the CONSCIOUS AWARENESS of It happening as You, as Me. So it is ‘us’ that needs to be patient so that we can gently get the mind still and silent enough to hear the song, to witness the Truth happening within - the witnessing being a FEELING of peace or a sense of release or warmth or light or just a great calm, a great stillness happening as us, or ‘within’ us.
There it is: know the two fundamental truths; don’t believe the mirage of error; know that ALL is God’s Perfect Universe in Perfect, sublime order. Then be the receptive, fertile SILENCE of mind that witnesses Truth where error seemed to be.
With so much Love and Gratitude for you, this whole group,
Paul