Chapter 11 begins with the 6th Remembrance:
“You and God are one. There is no separation between you.”

Most Religions and Spiritual Teachings agree that whatever it is that they think “God” is, it is the All Powerful, All Seeing, Creator of Everything. There is Nothing that is Not God. That God created “Man” in his own “image”.

If God created everything and is everything there can be no “other”, no “out-there”, no separation between one thing and the next. Things only “appear” to be separate from our own limited perspective.

“God creates all of life, and you create all of your life”.

Without God, we do not have the power to live. Without life, God’s power is not made manifest. God is manifested through life itself. This is his Joy and our Joy.

“The presence of the wave is evidence of the existence of the ocean. Your presence is evidence of the existence of God”.

In the relatively short period of time that “man” has been creating “things” with his limited perspective, how has that creative faculty developed? Are we getting “better”? Are the things we create starting to look more like life itself? Are “we” creating things in our image (may be even our view of God)?

If you and God are one, then you and I are one, and you and your enemy are one.

If you and God are one, then there is nothing that you need, nothing that you are missing, nothing that you have to do, no where that you have to go and no one you have to please, not even God.

We are said to have Free Will, but many people don’t experience that they do. They feel that their lives are being dictated by other people or that the day-to-day struggle is what creates their experience. You can sit in a room on your own, and with nothing more than your thoughts, you can create the feeling of happiness or sadness, despair or joy, inside you. When you realise that you have this power within and that you can change your feeling by simply changing your thoughts and your perception of those thoughts, you are ready to take control of your life. What you believe, is all important. What you believe about yourself, can set your free.

Three people can be watching the same event. One thinks that he sees a Spiritual Master performing a miracle cure. The second thinks he sees a Master Magician performing a skilful trick and the third person thinks he sees a con-man taking advantage of the crowd. The event was always the same event, but the beliefs and perspectives of the three viewers create completely different ideas and feelings within them. Which view was correct? This is the thing that people have difficulty with. Whose view of the world is correct? If you and I can have different understandings of the same event, how can we agree on what the truth is?

We could film the event and take the film to a “judge” and ask her to decide for us. Having looked at the evidence and listened to the various positions, she may determine that it was a magic show, but it was being done for the benefit of the “believers” and therefore it was not something to be “punished”. How would this “judgement” affect our first three observers. May be it would just upset all of them and now we simply have a fourth view of the same event. No truth was determined by this “judgement”, it was simply another perspective added to the list of possible explanations.

What I believe, is what I will see, even if I am as “open-minded” and “impartial” as a judge.

Therefore, there are two possible ways to view the world we live in and the way people interact with it. Either, everything is True or everything is un-True. “What’s that?”, I hear you say, “can’t everything just be mostly true, or true as far as we can understand, or true from the perspective of the person performing the act, or a mixture of true and un-true”?

If you believe in the true/un-true story, you will be continually looking out-there for the “Real Truth”. The version that isn’t tainted by the observer, and there isn’t such a thing. Everything is changed by the observer.

There is an “Ultimate Truth”, but it consists of the addition of everyone’s perception of every event. You can not even understand one other person’s perception of even one event, not even if you are identical twins, so trying to look at an idea or event, to determine the truth that everyone will understand and accept equally, is futile. This is why you should not judge another person or any situation that turns up in your experience. Judging is the attempt to impose your perception on to other people and this can not work (at least not for long). Everyone acts out their lives based on who they believe they are and for most people, this was “given” to them by their parents, their teachers and their culture.

Only when we “choose” to recognise that we are living unconsciously, living our lives automatically, based on our conditioning, can we begin to awaken. This is our choice.

Everyone is doing the best they can with what they were given. Anti-social and un-conscious behaviour requires our understanding and compassion, not our judgement.

To get back to the theme in the book. You and God are one. Decisions made by you are also decisions made by God, and vice-versa. At some level of your own being, you choose everything in your life, including your death (which is only a change in state, not an ending of life). This is The Absolute Truth, at least from my Perspective. It may not be from yours, and that’s OK. It doesn’t make either of us wrong and shouldn’t cause either of us any conflict. However, if you find that it does, you should look into who you are and ask why that feeling is arising in you – there will be a reason.

Be Happy, All Ways

John Eyre