Q6: How can I tell the difference between old ego habits of feeling and feelings which need to be felt to completion?

A: First, beloved friend, is there a difference? Your experience is always of and in the present. For what arises is not past, it is now. Is it an old ego pattern? Perhaps. If there is a sense of constriction, a sense of resistance, a sense of judgment of self or another, rest assured, that which has arisen to temporarily dominate your attention is an egoic pattern, since the ego is, by definition, the constriction away from Love. And therefore, the loss of peace is its result.

Look well, then, and simply recognize, What is arising in this moment? Am I willing to look upon it, to feel it, to embrace it? And as we would perceive and observe, you’re beginning to recognize, Am I willing, yet, to breathe? For to breathe is Life!

Feel, then, what you are truly feeling. Observe what is truly present within the mind. In this way, you take your hands and cup them around whatever that is. And you’ve done that, then recognize this great Truth: I can choose again. And I can choose peace instead of this.

Now the “this” is not so much the picture of what you might call a memory or a feeling or something that’s coming up. The “this” speaks to your judgment, your perception of what is arising. You can choose peace instead of the perception that steals your peace. And that is the place of infinite and perfect power to literally transform your life!

Beloved friend, the past does not exist at any moment. If the mind is causing, bringing forth, a picture or a thought that seems to be reminiscent of the past by your own decree, rest assured that it is arising in this present moment, which is the only place creation and experience occur. The past, then, can exist for you only if you re-create it now. This re-creation does not mean that an image or a picture can not arise in the mind, what you call memory, although, it is a very present experience. We are speaking here of the experience you created when that same picture appeared in your experience in a different time frame. Your experience is never caused by what arises in your field of awareness. Your experience – listen well – your experience is how you have chosen to react in the emotional and mental field, to a neutral event that has arisen. All events are neutral. The reaction to them is what generates experience.

When nails were driven through my hands, that was an entirely neutral event, although, by the way, many friends scurried about. It didn’t appear to be so neutral. But it was neutral for me. Therefore, understand beloved friend, that whatever events have ever unfolded in the realm of your experience, each and every one of them was perfectly neutral, until you responded with the reaction that you were choosing in order to create an experience in the emotional body, in order to create a learning experience about the potentials of your own consciousness.

Forgiveness, healing, peace, and awakening are equally potentials within your own mind. Equal to and, indeed, even greater than, anything that you have experienced heretofore.

Therefore, understand, beloved friend: Nothing has been caused by anything or anyone outside yourself. What arises is always present experience. Embrace it, look upon it, claim it, own it, feel it, breathe through it, and then recognize that you are free to choose again.

Herein lies the straight and narrow path that leads to Life! And you have a friend, currently without a body, who wants nothing more than to witness your true Living. And you have countless friends, with bodies, who share the same desire.

Be you, therefore, that which you are! And live from the power given unto you, from the freedom in which you abide always – as the Love that you are!