From Fear To Love : Living In Alignment With Spirit
Break Through The Veil of Collective Illusion and Live Your Soul's Purpose
by David Stanley Bell

Part 1: What is Real and What Is Illusion?

For me, especially in 1999, the struggle to reconcile truth and reality in a world of illusion brought intense turmoil to my mind, heart and soul. I knew all too well the sensation of the 'splinter in your mind' as suggested by the movie The Matrix.

In moments of silence, intimacy and joy, I could simply "BE" in what the timelessness of my soul already understood. But when the analytical thoughts turned on again, so did the restlessness. My mind wanted so much to understand. Yes, I knew that the noise of the intellect can be the greatest enemy of the soul, this noise the canon fire of the ego in the battle to control, but the intellect had to have its spiritual purpose also.

But the intellect seemed to be a child that ran back to the safety of the rational while maintaining the outer appearance of being calm and collected. The intellect tended to take reality, reduce it to classes of generalization, and then replace reality with acceptable generalizations. Questions of “why?” seemed to aggravate the “splinter” and led to sensations of an isolated confusion, a feeling of madness.

The turmoil, it seemed, derived from refusing to let go of the teachings and beliefs of society and other respectible sources. The world has existed for so long with so many great and wise people... there MUST be some way to start with prevailing societal wisdom and take mental steps toward truth! And thus the turmoil.

The peace did come. The mind did move closer in unity to the soul - when I realized, when I surrendered to, when I released the angry sense of betrayal to understand it wasn’t I who was drifting into illusion, it was the world that lived in illusion. Ego, which is directly coupled to the intellect, was the tool to be manipulated in establishing control. Spirit, the true source of truth, was in direct opposition with ego and control.

The other major realization was that we were not humans that had occasional spiritual experiences, we were spiritual beings that are having human experiences.

Every issue was a spiritual one. Most people are just not aware. The modern myth of The Matrix is a splendid metaphor for the millions of people living what they think is real but is really an illusion.

The bible refers to the sins of the father being brought down on his children. I think this sin is the lack of awareness and the satisfaction for living in the world of ego and illusion. Thus it becomes difficult for the child to break through this illusion and find what is real. With the prevalent ambiquity of truth and illusion, how could I know which is which?  The answer was to first look away from the words of ego.

Part 2: Keep it Simple - Living In Your Truth

"Say what you mean and mean what you say," I remember hearing that growing up. It makes a lot of sense and is pretty simple. That’s what I heard people saying, but it is not what I saw people doing. Even Dr. Seuss was trying to make us aware of our behavior:

Through my 40+ years, I've watched people become more and more deceitful, more afraid to show who they really are. So obsessed with what other people think of them and so afraid to look "bad" in someone else’s eyes. Rationalizing material comforts and mediocre behavior as being as good as it gets, tucking away so many today’s for a mythical tomorrow, dismissing romance and dreams as folly of youth. Nodding 'yes' to someone's face as they talk to you, when you really mean 'no'. Say you will do something when you have no intention of doing it. The white lies, passive aggression, all rationalized as necessary. Building the infrastructure for neurological pathways that habitually avoid truth. Wired to see illusion even while looking into the face of truth. It hit me the hardest to discover all of this when I saw it in myself.

I see it so much in business, and I watch it spill into personal lives. Lots of energy expended to maintain a dichotomy, a split in behavior between working and personal lives - the illusion that we can behave differently if it's personal or business. So which one is us? Neither! Because if we live in dichotomy or schizophrenia, we are playing roles, while the 'real' self just sits back and watches, and will seek awareness through the unconscious, in accidents and disease.

There is no running away from ourselves, even though we try. But we are trained to lie to each other and lie to ourselves so much, that after awhile in can hurt one's head to try to make sense of it all. So after a while, we stop trying to make sense and just try to distract, entertain, or medicate ourselves, submerging into our favorite addiction. Some hide from the keys to their own souls and turn outside of themselves and become deeply involved in the trials and dramas of someone else’s life, which is why many people are addicted to the TV. Side note: If you look up "schizophrenia" in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it starts by saying "a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with the environment." I think the dictionary is using the definition of environment that means “the circumstances, objects, or conditions by which one is surrounded” but I think the other definition that refers to nature is more appropriate.

I saw a commercial a while ago that starts by talking about the worries, anxieties and stresses of life, losing sleep and the effects on our life, and then the announcer says, "but now there's 'whatever drug' to help". The problem this commercial speaks of is not a medical or psychological one. No, it's a spiritual problem. Our human bodies are amazing electro-chemical transducers. We have a cycle that flows within us that includes our physical aspects, our emotional aspects, our state of mind, and our electro-chemical processes that activate the cause and effect between the aspects. Society isn't teaching us meditation and the skills to turn off the noise in our heads, but rather to go to doctors to give us medications. The medication only treats the symptom, and actually makes it harder and harder to find the real cure, which is 'being still'. Because, when we are on medications or alcohol, all seems quiet, but the war rages inside, ready to push to the surface even more intensely another time. This is how we give birth to the demons that can haunt us. Learning to hear and follow our own voice is essential in spiritual growth, but WE need to turn off the noise before we can hear.

What is rational? Thought along the lines of logic? What is logical? Processing of basic function concepts along the lines of the tangible. What is tangible? That which can be manipulated and controlled by our five senses.

Logic and rational thinking, by design, eliminate what cannot be explained by its own ground rules. Logic is intellectual, but logic is not always smart. It is a methodology to manipulate that which is tangible. Thus, science only admits unto its disciples that which can be explained by its own language, and throws out as insignificant that which cannot. Thus science is set up to perceive only what it permits itself to perceive and therefore determines that outcome of the experiment before it is performed. Thank goodness we have been graced with the presence of scientists and mystics like Einstein. If only more men and women of science listened to his ideas on reality and existence. I do not think science really understood the significance of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle either. This principle concludes that there is no such thing as an “objective observer,” the act of observation itself alters the outcome of the experiment. This is a scientific principle that reinforces a metaphysical concept that we create our own reality.

A 'science' is a pursuit based on a scientific process. The process cannot guarantee that any output is truth. In this "process-rich" age, bosses are quick to dismiss gut feel and trust in a process, as if no wisdom can ever be greater than the established process. A precedent-based legal system is just as bad, with the assumption that justice was realized in all previous cases. I remember having an argument with my college Psych 101 professor about the behavioral model of man, because 'will' was not in the model. I even expounded on his linear model on the board with a loop/feed-back path (experience/learning) and a loop/feed-forward path (perception/belief) and he would not hear it. He would have you believe that we are nothing more than stimulus and response. The truth is that we function at this primitive level when we are not aware, it is like our programmed default condition. The path to realize all that we are, using all of our brain instead of the 10% that drives our primitive response and tries to emulate higher/creative processes with logical processes, we must be aware. Aware of ourselves first of all. Enlightenment is not to know all, it is to know ourselves.  When we know ourselves, we know all to which we are connected.

What does it mean to help another? What does it mean to hinder another? What does it mean to enable another's dysfunctional behavior? We cannot 'fix' anyone else, we can only fix ourselves; and this is our primary journey. I know people that spend lots of time helping other people, but they do this to distract themselves from doing the necessary work within. All we can do is share our experiences, triumphs and failures and let the other person decide what to accept or reject. We need to have the same approach with our children. We don't own our children; we must always respect them as individuals. If we can help our children to be just a little more enlightened than we are, then we have done the world a great service and lessened the burdens of the sins of the fathers.

Keep it simple, keep it basic. I agree with Jewel as she sings “what’s simple is true.” We need to live our truth, regardless of what someone else thinks. Pride/ego is the opposite of Spirit. It is interesting to ask people who they are. Many people associate with their appearance, their behavior, or their addictions. So who are we? We are spirits having a human experience. We are unique expressions of the divine that exists in all of us. We need to re-learn or re-member our true nature, and to close the gap between our intent and our behavior. No 'devil' can make us do anything - we are solely responsible for our words and actions, regardless of how far we have let the voice of our soul fade into the noise of our own beliefs and thoughts. As far as devils, they are the creation of the one who is afraid, and they exist only when we bring them to life where they are real for us.

We were all born with truth in our heart. Unfortunately we were guided to stop looking inward and look outside and we bought into our psyche the centuries rationalizations to keep us in the herd. Thomas Jefferson said, "We hold these truths to be self evident..." in one of the cornerstone documents of the United States. The good part of accepting full responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, and actions is that we have no-one else to blame, and we empower ourselves to find solutions to our own problems. I think the first step in becoming spiritual is to look for answers within ourselves and to not blame others or even our own blood chemistry or DNA. We are all born with different circumstance, where we go from there is our mission in this life. George Bernard Shaw said,

We are what we think. OUR perception is OUR reality. On the flipside, to the opposite of political correctness, we cannot be held responsible for the perceptions of others. That is their business and only their business.

Jesus said, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." Teddy Roosevelt said "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." Both of these point to balance. Living with an open heart, but able to defend our sacred space. Good, evil, God, devil... they are all are around us, and all can flow through us. But which of these are we? That all comes down to our choices. What we decide to think about, what we decide to act out, where we put our attention and our energy, we make it so. This lesson is told so well in a story of Native Wisdom that was sent to me:

Part 3: The Nature Of God, Karma and Forgiveness

The Native American Sioux believe in one Great Spirit and Creator whom they call Wakan Tanka which means Great Mystery. Just as there is no way to answer the question “how large is space,” the Sioux believe there was no way to exactly answer the question, “who is the Great Spirit." He/She is a Great Mystery which can be characterized in stories and myths but not exactly defined because no one can know for sure.

We all have heard “we will know him by the fruits he bears", and from the time I was a six year old, I knew this had to apply to God and not just men and women. Let us consider some thoughts on the portrayal of God for a moment...

More than 95% of people on this planet believe in the existence of a creator God of some sort. Most believe in an afterlife with good benefits for those that follow the rules of their God. In the past, these rules were handed down from the educated minority in power to the uneducated majority. If this minority in power wished to keep control of the majority, would it not be a strong emotional tool for this minority to manage perceptions of God to its own benefit?

As I grew older I was amazed at the bizarre portrayals of the nature of God. So God was wrathful and then decided not to be? Was God the gentle rain that nourished our crops and then became absent when the storm brought a tornado or became a hurricane? It seemed that there was a myth of the nature of God to support every agenda. I watched people come to church on Sundays, pledge their faith to God, and then tend to a week of Godlessness. I saw and learned of horrible deeds done in the name of God. This God, the father figure so far up in the sky somewhere looking down on us and so very angry and disappointed in us, the unworthy.

So how do we know the nature of God? By His/Her creations. People? There are some enlightened minds and souls but they seem to be a minority and most people learn it's too easy to betray their own nature and rationalize life, reality and God to match their own beliefs. Nature lives its true identity and integrity or else it dies. That would apply to people too, but there are too many groups of disconnected thinkers that will protect 'their own'.

People create infrastructures and technology to temporarily isolate themselves from the laws of nature. It allows the weak to appear strong, the ignorant to appear knowledgeable, and “agenda-followers” to be appointed or elected to positions of power. Nature never lies; nature is always in truth.

The sad story is that truth is always inside us, but we are taught at such a young age to question ourselves and believe outside experts. As long as you are looking outside, climb a mountain, raft a river, hike out into the desert, there you'll find a little something about the nature of God. God is the gentle snow, God is the avalanche, God is the warm light rain, God is the hurricane. There is no hint of forgiveness in nature. If you do not bring enough water into the desert, you will die. If you are not careful of predators in the wild, you will die. If you do not respect a mountain, it will kill you. But if you surrender and adapt to the wisdom of nature, you will survive and thrive in a oneness with all things.

God has infinite love, compassion and patience for us, which is why He/She can wait forever for us to stop denying ourselves. God's love does not enable our dysfunctional behaviors, so we are allowed to take our steps, experience, fall, even kill ourselves, and learn from our own pain and joy, for all we truly know is that which we experience. Life is meant to be experienced and enjoyed. If we did not release our hands from around our standing but wobbling toddler, he/she would have never learned to walk. When we are in personal crisis, it helps to zoom-out our perspective to the God's eyeview, because in God's perspective, over the span of lifetimes, everything will be OK, there WILL be a happy ending. Everything happens for a reason. And the reason is a spiritual one. God wants us to find our purpose and will guide us there if we will listen. When we do not listen in our consciousness, we will receive our messages in the unconscious through dreams and even illness.

Forgiveness from a higher source in the classical sense, to be released from the wrongness of our actions, has no basis in nature. There is no taking a statement or an action back, we must live with it. For if we only learn what which we experience, then we must experience the consequences of our actions in order to learn. This divine cause and effect holds us always responsible and accountable for our actions. To deprive someone of their consequences would be to do them a disservice, deny them their opportunities to learn.

Our state of awareness determines the time between 'going around' and 'coming around' and I have noticed the greater the spiritual awareness, the shorter the cycle time. The cycle is in effect and it is not our business to enforce it on other people or to withhold their cause and effect from them. This appears to our own karmic balance that we must accept. But I believe that Karma is the link between our awareness and our cause and effect, but there is no balance sheet which is kept because there is no judgment, we keep going live time to live time until we get our purpose. The Universe is without judgment. Some one can use spiritual principles and laws of attraction to do good or evil. It is our ultimate evolution to choose the higher path the one that expresses our true nature of spiritual beings having a human experience. This is what I think Jesus meant when he said “what you hold bound on Earth, I hold bound in heaven.” When we do not forgive, we choke off the flow of love and abundance from the Universe and it is up to us to release the limitation.When we forgive someone, we release anger, resentment or some other negative emotion. If we do not release this it becomes a disease in the body. Our freedom depends on our willingness to forgive not vice versa.

Self-forgiveness, however, is very real. Forgiveness of others is very real. Once we learn our lessons, we need to release and move on, and not hold on to any regret or guilt. These things do much damage and shackle our Spirit. To forgive is to forget. I have heard many football coaches say that the best cornerbacks are the ones with the shortest memory. Because for every wide receiver that catches a glorious touchdown pass, a cornerback feels he has failed. He needs to quickly learn, release, and get on with the next set of downs. If we have not forgotten, we have not forgiven. And we cannot hold anyone bound, we can only hold ourselves bound, and our own unwillingness to forgive becomes a dis-ease within our own bodies. I has no effect on the other person.

We are given the freedom of choice but with the accountability of our choices. What a wonderful thing. I do not believe life is a test; it is a journey of experience. For we must see darkness to understand light, we must feel cold to appreciate the warmth, we must sweat in the sun to feel the gentle breeze. This journey takes us to the balance of all opposites.

Why does God seem to be so tough? Because we cling so tightly to the things that keep God and us disconnected. Jesus said, "Whoever 'loves' his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." What we are living and call life, is not life, it is an illusion. When we give up the game, give up the illusion, we find our Divine Selves. We need to learn true cause & effect, choices & consequences, then can we see our own power to create. Then we find that even our mistakes were not really wrong, they were all a collection of moments and experiences that made us what we are today. There is no reason for regret or guilt because all that happened needed to happen for us to learn.

Life is a journey, and we are born to walk a spiritual path. We are not expected to be perfect. I don't think there is such a thing as perfect. It wouldn't bother me if God was not perfect. If we were perfect we would not learn. But I have meet many people who have a death-grip on the notion that they must be perfect, and they put incredible amounts of energy into concealing their imperfections, and they create their own hell.

One thing is for sure, God helps those that help themselves, those that make the decision to walk a path and demonstrate the courage to stay on the path. It's tough going against the tide of the mediocre majority, sometimes you even think you are going crazy ... but help always comes, divine compassion. When we follow a path to truth and make mistakes along the way, the grace of God becomes such a real experience. We seem to have teachers and helpers, “angels” if you will, that pop up out of no where to help us. W.H. Murray wrote:

We are perfect already in the sense that we have the truth of God in us already and always, and it is okay to make mistakes to find what is already within. The journey is an inner one because we create our reality, our misery or our joy. We can choose to stay in the illusion of being separate from God, or we can discover our true identity of a spiritual being having a human experience.

Part 4 : The Purpose Of Life - Why Are We Here:

For ages mankind as asked "why am I here?" "What is the purpose of life?" I myself have diligently pondered these questions many times. I have found the answer to be profoundly simple, to discover and to live our true nature, and to find the unique gifts that are ours and give and develop these gifts. But what is our true nature? What are our unique gifts?

Our true nature is that we are spiritual beings having human experiences, not the other way around. To every problem there is a spiritual solution. It is the spiritual laws that govern our lives. It is the ego which tries to emulate spiritual processes and manifestation with doctrines of control and trusting of only the five senses. In truth we share an intimate connection with The Divine and we are all co-creators of what is all around us. All our pains and disease come from an unwillingness to see our true nature or to honor the magnificence of our own selves. Louise Hay wrote an amazing book called "You can heal your life," and it contains many techniques for us to find and honor and love our true selves. She also has a chapter that contains many physical aliments, describes their spiritual origins, and describes where we need to put our awareness and forgiveness so we can release these aliments.

Deepak Chopra wrote a magnificent book called "The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success." In the seventh chapter he explains his Law of Dharma. Dharma is a Sanskrit word that means "purpose in life." This law says that we have manifested in our physical forms for a purpose. In this life we have manifested with unique skills and talents; something that we can do better than anyone else in all the world. Our key to spiritual and physical success, happiness and abundance is to discover these talents and express them for all to see. When we do this our work becomes play. In addition to expressing these talents, we need to discover our true selves, express all that we are, and to serve humanity. It is said that the "fear of failure" is not so much rooted in a fear of ridicule if we should fail, but it is more a fear of showing our full and brilliant magnificence. As it says in the Bible, we should not hide our light under a bushel, but instead let our light shine bright before all humanity and all the heavens. The key happiness, to find our purpose, live our purpose and serve humanity.

Copyright © David S. Bell 2005. All rights reserved