This is not suggesting that you deny your feelings or try to change or control your thinking. It is not about changing attitudes or beliefs nor is it about altering behaviour - although that may be a side effect; it is simply watching these manifestations and recognising and becoming aware that the vast majority of your thoughts are negative, unhelpful and untrue and that you are the ground of being beneath them. 

Acceptance when it is practiced as a means to an end is not acceptance.

When you want to accept the thing that’s causing you to suffer in order for that thing to disappear and relieve your suffering, you are not accepting the thing. In other words, acceptance is accepting the suffering

Once you have taken a step back from your thoughts by not attaching to them, they become like clouds passing across a clear sky. You will notice the interesting patterns and shapes they form as they float by – coming from nothing and returning to nothing, but they cannot touch the background perfection of the azure blue stillness - the Absolute that holds all.

How can the unknowable be approached, how can it be written or talked about? How can the infinite be expressed by the finite, how can the eternal and the formless be comprehended in a world of impermanence and forms? This unknowable stillness at the core of your being can only be pointed to indirectly and therefore should be approached delicately and from various angles

By trying to shape life and control your destiny, you are mistakenly attempting to take ownership of life, which is analogous to the waterwheel trying to change the essence of the river. Attempting to harness life’s force to your own advantage is as futile as the wheel attempting to alter the river’s flow. 

Just as each wave has a unique form as it swells and breaks, so too our environment uniquely shapes us as we grow. And just as the wave is created and sustained through constant movement, so our life is created and sustained through continual change. 

We were led to believe that truth and freedom from suffering was a reward after a lifetime of one hundred thousand steps, when in actual fact they were available in each step we took – available to us from the very beginning by simply letting go.

Turning the bright spotlight of enquiry to face you is initially painful – the natural reaction is to avert the eyes, however, illuminating our thoughts and the story they maintain can reveal the illusion of the Self, allowing a new clarity to emerge from a deeper level of being. 

This is not self-help with positive affirmations designed to rescue you from mental anguish because there is no long-term benefit in adding to or building upon a Self that is illusionary - any positive gains would be short lived and you would soon return to suffering, searching and seeking. 

In your life, you will have been encouraged to embrace the Self through sayings such as believe in yourself and anything’s possible, which is usually offered as a panacea to self-doubt and lack of confidence. However, such seemingly encouraging statements are part of the reason you find yourself on life’s treadmill, desiring all manner of things and finding fulfilment in none. 

Away from the popular illusion of Enlightenment, and the complex self-delusional games played by those attempting to achieve it, are rare individuals for whom the process of becoming ‘unenlightened’ as they grew never quite worked, in other words by a bizarre quirk of fate, their conditioning failed to create a believable Self. For them, the veil of illusion is threadbare, and glimpses of the Absolute regularly confirm their true nature – though not in ways their intellect can capture or express. 

The goal in spiritual circles is often to drop the ego, thereby attaining the so-called egoless state. However, the ego is not simply one aspect of the Self that gives rise to negative  emotions when we are feeling threatened or demeaned, it resides just as much in the happy and exciting moments as it does in assertive or defensive ones.

The consciousness arising in you, in me and in all apparent individuals is the same underlying source. Describing this is like trying to describe the colour blue to someone who is blind. To know blue, it has to be seen – naming, description and knowing come after. 

The happiness, peace and contentment we experience when our thoughts are stress free is fleeting and is not freedom from suffering. It is a superficial and temporary relief from our deeper worries and concerns, in the same way that those who turn to alcohol and other drugs find only temporary respite – when the effects wear off they are faced with the same problems. 

The truth of this message does not require validation from a higher authority; do not look outside – validation lies within you. The stillness in which both clarity and confusion arise remains in a state of perfection ‒ untouched by your desire to know it, however, at a deeper level the illusionary Self may sense its own emptiness and be open to this message.