Equanimous 1st Chapter

Equanimous From the Big Bang to Peace and Quiet in Every Community - A Channeled Dialog of Why You are Here and What You can Do About it Right Now!

Equanimous From the Big Bang to Peace and Quiet in Every Community - A Channeled Dialog of Why You are Here and What You can Do About it Right Now!

Written By Michael Stephens Channeled by Orranut Stephens

First published by Michael Paul Stephens, June 2011 as a free E-book on www.michaelpaulstephens.com And www.provolutioncenter.com If you would like to contact us with regard to this book please email Info@michaelpaulstephens.com

Text copyright: Michael Stephens 2010

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the author.

The rights of Michael Paul Stephens as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover Design: Michael Paul Stephens

A GENTLE REQUEST FOR SUPPORT This book is offered absolutely free. It is a creation of time, devotion and love for the benefit of all people. If it has helped you to expand your awareness in any way, we invite you to make a financial contribution to the continued marketing and promotion of Equanimous and Share Circles around the world. To support us, please click this link: SUPPORT US Or visit us at www.michaelpaulstephens.com

Contents Chapter

Page

Preface

1

Prologue

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Part 1 : The History of Humanity Chapter 1: The Universe

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Chapter 2: Energy-beings

35

Chapter 3: Earth Birth

62

Chapter 4: Evolution of the First Civilization

88

Chapter 5: The Roots of the Modern Age

135

Chapter 6: The Ascension of Buddha

175

Chapter 7: The Life of Jesus

185

Chapter 8: The Energy Reset

213

Part 2 : The Way of the Equanimous Introduction – The Four Lessons of History

238

Chapter 9: Share Circles

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Chapter 10: Organizing Share Circles

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Epilogue

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Dedication For Anongluk and Chaleo Porkathong and Deana and David Stephens Without you, we would not be.

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Preface I need to thank Master Jacob for his patience as a teacher and a guide. He waited a long time through many of my lives for me to wake up a little. I hope this book is a worthy return on his faith in me.

Orranut, thank you for being a part of this book. Without you it would not have been possible. Thank you for being a part of my life. Thank you for our two wonderful children. You are beautiful inside and out. This book is most certainly yours.

Roger Moore, thank you too for your input and inspiration into this work. You are a guide on Earth and I love you as a brother.

Appreciation, kudos and love for a job well done to my two wonderful editors, Mark Stephens and Kirstie Flood. You are my sounding boards, as well as my filters for grammar and syntax aberrations!

Lastly, I want to thank all of my great friends who have been a part of this book, and those wonderful people who have been a part of our journey of discovery as clients and workshop participants.

You have supported Orranut and myself with your well wishes and faith in our abilities.

This is for you. It is for all of us.

Use it. Pass it on.

Love, MS April 2011 support@provolutioncenter.com

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Prologue Ever since humanity was conscious of being conscious we have asked where we have come from, where we are going and what the point of life really is. And there have been a multitude of different answers.

Some say we are a creation of God. Others say we started with a ‘Bang’ and will end with a huge ‘Crunch’. A few believe we live in an illusion and all that we see is just a dream. And then there are those who think the Earth was seeded by space travelers who were seeking the universal secret of fantastic soap, they spilt a drop into the ocean and voila…evolution.

OK, so I made that last one up but, as you will learn, from the perspective of this work, it is no less credible than the first three options.

You see, the answer the life’s purpose defines our humanity. It defines our reason to get out of bed in the morning. It defines whether we build our societies on the foundation of trust and respect or just continue to beat the living daylights out of one another.

Over the course of several months in late 2009 and early 2010 my wife, Orranut, and I decided to ask someone a little bit special these very same questions. We received some very different answers.

You see, Orranut is a channel. In fact, a very attuned and accurate channel. She is able to connect with spirit guides and receive advice about life, health, relationships, in fact just about anything that can help people to live their lives with a little more direction and clarity. If you’ve never really believed in psychic ability or simply cannot get that ingrained image out of your head of Gypsy Nora’s crystal ball from the traveling circus, we understand. It’s a lot to take in, and skepticism and doubt are nothing new to Orranut.

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As a child growing up in a conservative Thai household in the 1970’s, hearing voices in your head wasn’t exactly embraced as the etiquette of polite society. Not that most Western people embrace it with much more gusto. Whether you are accused of being possessed by demons or simply called ‘mad’, it makes little difference. The inclination of a young psychic subjected to criticism, ridicule and marginalization doesn’t exactly encourage exploration of rare abilities. Even today, 30 years later, the ability of people to channel information from invisible sources is still the stuff of movies, psychiatric hospitals and the weird and wonderful section of newspapers, as far as most popular pundits are concerned.

Despite the social stigma, Orranut has slowly embraced her incredible abilities over the course of her life. She has had to.

Denying the talents she has is like denying a limb, such are the essential qualities of her character that these abilities augment and reflect. She has come an extraordinary distance since those days when other people’s criticism led to self-doubt and the denial of her great gifts. She too has become a believer, when years ago all she felt was denial and shame. As a child, all she wanted was to be perceived as being ‘normal.’ It took her 40 years to realize that she was the most normal of them all. In a very real sense, today she comes out of the psychic closet.

Equanimous is a product of Orranut’s abilities, channeling my questions to my spirit guide1, Master Jacob and then channeling his answers back to me. Much of what we discussed, she does not even recall, such is the nature of channeling at times. Some of it covers subjects that she has both zero interest in and has little or no knowledge about. While some may claim that she is just making this up, there is no way she could have made up some of the conversations we had. If this comes from the mouth of Orranut, which it does, it is the real deal.

1

A spirit guide is what many would call a guardian angel; an energetic being who guides a person through life so that they may achieve their purpose on earth.

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The conversations that are written in this manuscript were not taped and therefore are written from my memory. Much was written immediately either directly after the conversations took place and sometimes even during the conversations, and while no information is included that has not been checked and doublechecked with Master Jacob, the reader may forgive this author for taking a little literary license for the way in which the conversations are structured, some being pieced together from several conversations in the initial three month period and some from both the initial conversations and conversations that have taken place since that time and during the editing of this manuscript.

From November 2009 until February 2011 Orranut, Master Jacob and I have spent many hours discussing the structures of the universe, the creation of Earth, the evolution of humanity, the development of modern civilization and many other powerful epochs dotted across humanity's collective past. The purpose of these discussions was never to rewrite history, nor to incite flames of controversy, but to inspire people to leave behind the lie that we live in a meaningless universe on a lonely blue planet and to realize the incredible purpose and potential laying dormant within each and every human being.

Over the centuries, human society has slowly devolved into a rat race of economics, politics, technology and social competition.

Such is the worsening ecological condition on Earth, contributed to by the economic paradigm that we insist upon pursuing with such fanatical zeal, transformation in our consciousness and on a greater scale than previously seen in the history of humanity is becoming absolutely imperative. I cannot overstate the importance of the message that change in governments or in laws is not the answer to our current problem. Only by first raising human consciousness can lasting change occur that will mean anything worthy of our true potential. The will to create that change happens when we answer the simplest of questions: “Birth, suffering, death‌is that all there is to life?â€?

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Science cannot answer this essential question. There is no empirical measurement to it. It is just a question that arises from the inevitable dissatisfaction human beings feel from seeking genuine happiness through transient events and objects. Having spent the last year and a half uncovering the origins of our universe, the causes of creation on Earth and the purpose of all civilization over the past 150,000 years, I now feel qualified to answer the above question with an emphatic: No, birth, suffering and death is not all there is to life.

We are missing the point and Equanimous is all about you waking up and understanding your purpose.

There is a greater meaning to life than owning a big car, having a gorgeous partner and holidaying in the tropics twice a year, although it cannot be denied these things are nice. But life is not about just feeling ‘nice’. It is sad that ‘nice’ is so often a smidgen better than the contentment Joe Average expects in this everthreatening world. It is time that we awakened from our collective reverie and each of us started putting in the hard yards to adapt the mindset that tells us that ‘nice’ is the best we can hope for. There is more. There is better. And anyone can live it if we just started believing it is possible.

It is no longer good enough to await God to heal this Earth, for prophets to cure our ills or teachers to tell us, once again, how we should live better lives. In this book you will learn that you are enough to do all that needs to be done and times are such that you cannot delay your personal responsibility to evolve for even a moment longer. Our species has come from sticks and stones to hadron colliders and stem cells in a blur; a tiny fraction of the 4.1 billion years that we are told Earth has been in existence. And yet, here we are, civilization marching on into a bright, interconnected web-based, blog and Twitter-dependent future and we haven’t even learned to share anything more valuable between cultures than our email addresses. If life has a point, and it does indeed, we need to

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get it here, from the message of Master Jacob, and we need to do something about it now.

Yes, we may have the existentialists banging on about giving your own life meaning and the metaphysicists telling us what exists and what it feels like but none of them can tell you “Why?” or “What is the point of it all?” Are you a bag of bones thrown together by biology, roasted in the oceans and spat out onto the shore? Or are you a product of God, knocked out in a single day and cast into an Eden that you share with a mysterious woman who is also looking for her belly button? Science has theories about how all this came together but it is no more fact than fossils and theory will allow it to be. There is not a scientist in existence who can claim with 100% certainty where this planet came from. There is not one man, woman or child who can prove to you that it was not mixed up from a bag of instant planet formula, microwaved and placed in the void by a giant baker’s mitten.

That’s not what happened, by the way. Let’s just cross off that scenario from the get-go.

Orranut and I believe the answers we have learned from Master Jacob offer everyone a clear and concise insight into who you are, why you are here, what your purpose is in life and how you can go about it successfully, in peace and in joy. If you don’t believe in spirit guides like Master Jacob, don’t let that be a barrier to your understanding of the bigger picture. Just substitute spirit guide for teacher. If you’re Christian, substitute it with ‘God’. If you’re agnostic, substitute it with ‘energy’. If you’re a Muppet fan, substitute it with ‘Kermit’. It really doesn’t matter. The point is that, whatever you call the source of the information, the reason we have written this book is to ask you to question the perception you have of who you are and why you are here because I guarantee that by the end of this work you will have been challenged. Expect it and don’t take it personally.

I consider myself a spiritual person in that I take a great interest in seeking the truth about myself but I can state wholeheartedly

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that I had no idea what I would uncover in the process of these conversations. I have absolutely evolved into a new being during the course of writing this book, whether I liked it or not. It truly is a remarkable insight into life, the universe and, well, just about everything, that even the late, great Douglas Adams couldn’t have imagined! My hope is that Equanimous can do the same for you as it has done for me.

It is no coincidence that this book comes at a time when humanity faces unprecedented ecological trauma, rising political conflict and eroding social trust and respect. The interconnected and interdependent nature of the universe will always give us exactly what we need whether we are looking for it or not! We have reached the end of the road for the old ideas that created the modern crisis in human identity and those of us who are asking the question of whether this is all there is to life must now be prepared to look inward and answer our own question by making something better than what we have with what we think, say and do. There are no other tools, dear friends, just these. There are no short cuts either, just the opportunity for people to wake up as individuals, accept their part in the process of creation and make a better world.

Equanimous isn’t just a new description of reality. It offers you real reasons to change your life and the mechanisms by which to go about it. In Part One you will learn the shape and structures that exist in our universe, the true nature of humanity and the truth of why our collective search for equanimity; true spiritual harmony and balance in our lives, is so vital to our future. In Part Two you will learn about Share Circles and the way in which every reader can build person to person, family to family and community to community, spiritual groups that will help us all to share the load of change and work together towards a more equanimous future.

Humanity labors under the false belief that we will just keep going on and on. Progress is a natural state, we have concluded; we came from caves, we rose to skyscrapers and we will eventually conquer the stars. But life isn’t like that. Nature isn’t like that, at

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least, not here on Earth. The current version of ‘civilization’, the western model let us call it, is not the first to have existed. We have all been around on this journey time and time again and we keep failing to learn from the mistakes of ages past. Unless we wake up and smell the coffee in this generation, the stupor of ignorance that condemns us all to pursue pointless goals in life and to do so without any awareness or effort to learn from them will continue to plague our every thought, word and action and the resulting ego that has thrived so successfully on our planet will have to face the consequences of its own falling shadow one last time.

Orranut and I are not prophets. We are not soothsayers. We are not totally mental (you’ll have to take our word for it!) What is contained in this book is a call for everyone who reads it to open their mind to the prospect that beyond their superficial self, their authentic self is awaiting inclusion and involvement in the creation of an authentic reality that initiates humanity’s evolution from the trance of self-absorption to the heights of self-realization. You innately know the paths that will help you become equanimous because you have already agreed, before you were even born into this life, to find a way to become more authentic and, in doing so, thrust this entire planet in the same direction: authenticity. We have written this book to help you do that. It is time to act.

Equanimous is more than channeled information. It is more than a plea for greater community and more sharing. It is a book of hope in a time of great change. It is a book of love in a time of great fear.

It is a book of unity and togetherness in a time that has the potential for such division, for both Orranut and I know what it is like to be rudderless, lost and alone. By speaking out on these pages we do not claim the only truth, nor do we claim that any other truth is wrong but that, whichever truth you are buying into, unless it creates more peace on this Earth and less conflict in our individual lives, it is not doing what it says on the tin. There are no pause buttons on values. There are no sabbaticals on the learning of life.

We cannot await perfect conditions to be kind, loving and gentle.

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The next war is always the last, so we tell ourselves. So, let the demons within be the final battle on this Earth. No one need die except ego.

Our planet has reached a juncture in its evolution that is not about the politics of left and right or the definition of right vs. wrong. It is about the nature of our souls. If we are to survive together and work towards a greater purpose than a job, buying stuff, learning how to rumba and just generally trying not to die too quickly, we need a higher purpose than self-destruction. We can live together or we can die alone but the choice of which we become experts at is best made from a plateau of awareness that truly comprehends that your life has purpose and that it is a purpose that connects all of us together and all things as one.

Equanimous may answer questions about the universe. It may answer questions about God and the Prophets. It may even give you teasing insights into how to make a creamy cup of Joe. But it is does not answer the question of whether you will stand up once you have finished reading it, put on your best walking shoes and stride through your personal purpose like a knife through hot butter. You are the missing ingredient in your own perfection and all you need do is start cooking.

In a very real sense, Orranut and I have not written Equanimous at all. It is your book. It was always here, waiting to come alive in the lives of those who are prepared to wake up. That time is now and that life is yours. Equanimous belongs to us all. It is a part of everything. Take what is yours and live it as if you mean it.

No more fear.

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Part 1 : The History of Humanity “The entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, the moon, and the stars live together as a cooperative. The same is true for humans and animals, trees and soil. Our bodily parts function as a cooperative. When we realize that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise, that human beings are all mutual friends in the process of birth, old age, suffering and death, then we can build a noble, even heavenly environment. If our lives are not based in this truth, then we shall all perish.”

Extract from “The quest for a just society: the legacy and challenge of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu”, ed. by Sulak Sivaraksa Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, (Thai: พุทธทาสภิกข) Thai Buddhist Monkุ, May 27, 1906 - May 25, 1993

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Chapter 1 The Universe For nearly two and a half millennia, the Chinese have celebrated the power of Feng Shui: the art of designing the exterior and interior of buildings to sit harmoniously among the native energies of the Earth. Feng Shui practitioners believe that this world is not merely a floating ball of rock and soil but a living energetic entity and the design of every structure, the curves and edges of its external features and the placement of fixtures and furniture within it, all affect the energetic flow of a living space.

To practice Feng Shui is to practice shaping an environment to the energy of the Earth. Should you inadvertently disturb the energy of the Earth, you also disturb any human activity that would occur there.

Thinkers hailing from the European tradition have utilized the last two thousand five hundred years a tad differently. We have spent them conjuring up technical epithets for practitioners of Feng Shui. So far, ‘cuckoo’ is the connoisseur’s choice, closely followed by ‘brainsick’. ‘A few bricks short of a hod-carrier’s load’ runs a close third.

Flippancy aside, it would be injudicious to glibly dismiss the possibility that the natural environment interacts with buildings or objects in subtle as well as more evident ways. Throughout the ages human culture has often doffed its proverbial hat in the direction of this belief through such customs as respecting the spirits of the land or through Gods that represent natural energies such as the sun or the wind. Likewise, artists, mathematicians and spiritualists, to name but a few, have utilized the power of shapes, icons and images that are said to draw upon the natural energies of the planet. Many of these beliefs still endure today, so we should not be so hasty as to snub them as primitive simply because they are ancient.

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Some may call the use of this energy ‘magic’, others ‘supernatural’, still others ‘shamanism’ but what if the respect of these energetic forces was simply a necessary and natural obligation of all people seeking harmony in their life, from whatever historical period we hail? What if the very shape of our lives acts as a lightning rod for an energetic interaction with the planet which, in turn, defines the potential for harmony or conflict we can create? And, if this is so, what could we achieve with our lives if we opened our minds, understood a little more about the energies at our disposal and began using them to create a more harmonious and balanced planet?

The premise of Feng Shui, that a shape or form placed on the land can cause an energetic response from the Earth, is very similar to the idea that a shape or form could spontaneously invoke an energetic response from a human being, isn’t it? After all, we are natural products too? When we experience something in life, when we feel something, look at it, taste, smell, hear or intuit it, a response naturally arises within us without any conscious choice. It is spontaneous. We are naturally eased into a state of peace and tranquility or anger and frustration, depending upon our relationship to the experience. It is as though the energetic shape of our lives interacts with the energetic shape of the event to create an effect.

Upon closer inspection of European history we discover that Feng Shui is not such an alien concept to Western culture after all.

The reaction of a human being to a shape is exactly the kind of instinctive response that occurs when people view one such ‘magic’ shape known as the ‘Golden Ratio’. Indeed, the Golden Ratio turns out to be, not just an interesting anomaly, but a powerful symbol that affects all people, arousing a deep-seated state that lies dormant until stirred by a powerful key.

“Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages, from Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, through the medieval Italian

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mathematician Leonardo of Pisa and the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, to present-day scientific figures such as Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, have spent endless hours over this simple ratio and its properties. But the fascination with the Golden Ratio is not confined just to mathematicians. Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the Golden Ratio has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics.”

Mario Livio, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number (Broadway; 1st edition October 29, 2002)

The Golden Ratio, often represented by the Greek letter ‘Phi’, is best explained as the ratio of length to width in rectangles that is most pleasing to the eye. It was defined by mathematicians as the number 1.61803 39887 49894 84820. However, as long as I stare at that number, it neither sends a shiver down my spine nor moves me in any other way than to wonder what possessed someone to work it out to so many decimal points. Must have been a very, very wet Sunday. The only way to really feel the Golden Ratio at work is to view its application in art or architecture where it seems to imbue a creation with an unusually moving sense of harmony and balance. Such great structures as the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt and the Acropolis in Athens or art such as Phidias’ statue of Zeus in Olympiad or Da Vinci’s painting of the ‘Last Supper’ are notable examples of artistic and architectural applications of this phenomenon that move the observer emotionally, in ways that absurdly long numbers rarely can. Unless it’s your tax bill.

For an extended period of ancient history in cultures all across the Earth from China to Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia to India and Peru our ancestors invested a lot of effort in reproducing the Golden Ratio in buildings, statues and art across a wide range of cultures over a broad period of time. You don’t accidentally do this.

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Neither do you do this just because it is very, very wet. It is deliberate. It has meaning. Thousands of years before the Greeks even knew what the Golden Ratio was, ancient cultures, seemingly disparate and unconnected, were consciously using this formula for very specific reasons. Why? In the twelfth century an Italian mathematician called Leonardo Pisano, better known as Fibonacci, expanded on a sequence of numbers first described by the Indian philosopher Pingala in the second century before the current era. If you have read ‘The Da Vinci Code’ or seen the movie, you will have come across the Fibonacci numbers, which Pisano calculated in order to answer how many rabbits would be created in one year assuming that each pair bred once each month beginning in the second month after their birth. I am not making that up, by the way. Go on. Read it again and weep. Leaving aside the burning need to ask why anyone with all their marbles would want to know the answer to that question, this author is most grateful that Fibonacci did. The result is a sequence of numbers that is equal to the sum of the preceding two numbers (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 ... etc.). While this may sound exceedingly dull, even to someone who thinks knitting is an extreme sport, Fibonacci had rediscovered Pingala’s subtle message from over a millennium before: there is a pattern to how everything in the universe relates to everything else.

This is how the Fibonacci pattern looks when line-drawn:

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What does this silly picture mean? It is the pictorial representation of this rather more gorgeous natural application:

Photo by L. Shyamal Helianthus flower, Bannerghatta Bangalore, 2006 Wikipedia CC License: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.5)

This picture of a Helianthus is a Fibonacci spiral in a three dimensional natural formation. Flowers, ferns, trees, shells, snails, even the relationship between a person and their belly-button and the shape of entire galaxies organize themselves and relate to one another in this pattern. And you have to admit, it is both incredibly beautiful and familiar all at the same time. But why, when such ancient forms as the Golden Ratio, Feng Shui or Fibonacci spirals are applied to spaces and forms, do they spontaneously induce such a natural feeling of aesthetic beauty, calm or peace when viewed by a person?

The answer is because all shapes and forms in our world are reflections of their energetic vibration and those shapes and 15

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patterns most entrained with nature vibrate at a wavelength that connects with another of nature’s great marvels: human beings.

This vibration is not a local phenomenon. Nor is the shape of the Fibonacci Spiral, the Golden Ratio or the basic principles of Feng Shui coincidental. They each reflect the shape and vibration of the universe itself, repeated again and again and again in everyone and everything. So, as our human senses digest this sacred geometry, the feeling that results is like a chord strummed across the very fiber of our souls.

This, I believe, is what some of our ancient ancestors knew very well. They were fully aware that humanity is not a species separate or divided from our environment and they left teachings to guide those who suspect that there is more to life than just coincidences, luck, bricks and right vs. wrong. Our environment moves us, we interact with it, our lives are molded by it because we are intricately connected with its shapes and forms that affect us in quiet but meaningful ways. We are being guided by the entire universe to begin living our lives in ways that reflect the shapes of the universe and everything and everyone is screaming at every human being, albeit under their breath, the same soft message: “Wake up!” Unless we listen to the message of nature and learn how to make sense of these shapes and patterns in our lives, we will forever conclude that events are random, life is just stone and pizza and we are all victims of circumstances in a big accidental universe that doesn’t care about anyone or anything.

That is about as far from a useful truth as any truth can be.

The life of the average westernized person is not entrained with these natural principles in any shape or form. When I say that our lives don’t reflect a Fibonacci spiral at all, this does not mean that we should all become snails or that our purposes should meander a circuitous route but that we must expand our minds beyond the conventional interpretations of size, shape, weight and other measurements that our scientific minds might use to define what is practical in life and begin to create lives that feel like the Fibonacci

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spiral when you see it represented in art and architecture. The Fibonacci spiral embodies the infinite balance, harmony and flow of natural energies. When these properties are reflected in the patterns of our lives we feel at peace, we feel comfortable, we feel in harmony with life. In contrast, western thinking has for millennia sought to find stark comfort in the straight edges and sharp corners of beginnings and endings that separate the sky from the ground, the tree from the fish, the rock from the air, the bird from the clouds and the atom from the molecule until nothing appears to flow into one another and all things are individual, separate and alone. When we apply ideas to our life that do not create natural synergism (increased overall power) or natural symbiosis (a win/win situation) we effectively conflict with the movement and shape of our environment. From this conflict suffering, quite naturally, arises.

A crude analogy of how we disrespect these patterns in our lives might be trying to get water to flow upstream or the wind to blow in another direction. Although you might, for a time, be able to create the impression of these things occurring by applying mechanisms and technologies that force it to do so, the result is artificial. The river is not really flowing the other way and the wind has not really changed direction. If you do this for long enough you will forget how the river flows and the wind blows and believe that the artificial air and water are great accomplishments because they are doing what you want them to do. These types of patterns occur so frequently in our lives; using violent means to create a world we think serves our purposes, but this ignores the fact that the wind and water flow in the direction they flow for the same reason that blood flows towards the human heart through veins and away from the heart in an artery. It wouldn't be effective any other way.

The patterns of nature may sometimes fill invisible channels and head towards intangible objectives but to place in their way human barriers that dismiss their purpose as inconsequential because we cannot comprehend how they connect with our own is to detach

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from the natural mechanisms that bring order to the universe and to descend into an artificial environment created from the illusions of humanity. It is madness to adjust nature to suit our purposes. It is wisdom to adjust our own to the purposes of nature. In that way we become natural once again and, in becoming natural, we will find peace.

The choice to accept a mind full of beginnings and endings has a simple logic behind it. Sadly, logic is not a Fibonacci spiral. It has sharp edges and straight lines and thus its unbridled application to the creation of our world tends towards filling our lives with artificial patterns that lead us further from connecting to our natural heritage, let alone our friends and family. If you organize your mind along the lines of beginnings and endings then it is a logical assumption to conclude that ‘you’ and ‘I’ are also separate from one another. After all, physically, you can see where ‘you’ begin and ‘I’ end. From this initial conclusion, a false conclusion I might add, everything begins to unravel from a tightly knit ball of unity into a disparate set of unconnected parts and pieces. With beginnings and endings ‘life’ and ‘death’ are distinctly different and unconnected, an event on one side of the planet is not connected to an event on the other side of the planet, the eternal process of causality, of all things affecting all other things, seem as if it can be controlled and stripped down to the manageable context of ‘my life’, ‘your life’, ‘their country’ and ‘our country’ and so on and so forth. Thus, in such a world, all responsibility for events, as well as possession of objects, can be divided and assigned so that we can each go about our independent days in the belief that we live once, we are here alone and that the ultimate philosophical purpose of life is to enjoy what we can own for as long as we can possibly own it… …and from this philosophy of separation and independence, so we extrapolate our society, economy, politics, education, medicine and science. We build legal systems out of guilt and innocence, education out of pass and fail, life out of success and failure,

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business out of winners and losers, structuring and shaping our personal conduct and our relationships with one another in ways that learn to distrust the moderation of balance that has relegated the search for harmony to an idealistic pipe-dream.

Over the millennia, as natural values have slowly given way to artificial divisions, our social, political, and economic structures have become equally exclusive and divisive. The civilization we have created is not a natural pattern. It is waging war against natural patterns and thus the lives of the individuals within it are battlefields and the battles that we win are quickly destroying the trophy: Earth. If the motivation of greed is the best shape we can come up with to create a better world, what shapes are the minds in which this idea appears so profound and compelling?

In this first section of Equanimous we will begin our talk with Master Jacob by looking at the shapes that structure the universe in which our earthly environment has developed. If we wish to create harmonious lives, we must begin by creating awareness of how harmony manifests in the universe and how we can apply these shapes to live together on the planet more effectively. To achieve this, we will need to first suspend our faith in our conventional notions of what the universe is and why it is here because these ideas support the patterns by which we have built our lives and they will not change by themselves. We must each consciously recognize the part we have played in contributing towards the habits and rituals that dictate what is normal in our personal world and accept that the only way to create something new is to break these ingrained habits and change the patterns that build the limits in our own lives.

Talking of beginnings and endings, let’s start our dialog with the mother of all beginnings: The Big Bang. It is one of the most glaring examples of the divisiveness that we project into our reality. Can there be a bigger example of a bigger beginning than this? Where did the idea of the Big Bang come from? My intention here is not to criticize Georges LemaÎtre, who in 1927 postulated the Big Bang

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theory, but to examine the paradigm in which he and millions of other people were constructing their view of the universe and wonder whether it is still helpful to us to continue believing that the universe ‘started’ and therefore will one day ‘end’ or whether a different shape would help us to build lives that are more conducive to a greater future than the inevitability of a dark, finite death. The idea of the Big Bang did not come from a mind contemplating the possibility of infinity, that’s for sure. It came from a consciousness whose limits precluded the idea. From within this paradigm, it is natural that our own life should conform to the same limits that reinforce our separation and independence from other people around us. Therefore, challenging ideas that support this paradigm is the first step to a new beginning for us all. If we can leave behind the very first division, the very first beginning and the very first notion that anything has begun or ended, we evolve away from the shapes that limit who we can be and into the interconnected patterns of nature’s infinity.

According to Wikipedia: “As used by cosmologists, the term Big Bang generally refers to the idea that the Universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past (currently estimated to have been approximately 13.7 billion years ago), and continues to expand to this day.”

Perhaps you personally don’t give two hoots whether the universe began with a bang, ends with a crunch, or continues with any other onomatopoeic noun but the laws that are in effect in the meantime are the same laws that make you and me walk, talk and watch reality TV for hours with only salty snacks and adult diapers for company. The inevitable conclusion in short: ignorance of the shape, values and processes of the universe around you is akin to ignorance of your own nature, which inevitably gives birth to

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producers who believe that reality TV adds to the quality of human endeavor.

Now, do you realize how urgently you need to pay attention?

I’m no physicist but I must say the notion of the Big Bang has always bothered me. I’m not saying I’d sit up late at night fretting, but it has certainly caused me slight indigestion on occasion. I’d wonder, for instance, if the ‘Big Bang’ started the universe, what came before the start? How did something (the entire universe) come from some stable or fixed state before which only that stable and fixed state was present? Why did it cease to be stable and become unstable? What caused it? And if something caused it, then it wasn't fixed or stable in the first place. So, not only can you tell from this how full of paradoxes the whole idea is, you can also see how anal I really am. But seriously, the current scientific view of the ‘Big Bang’ is like saying: “Before the baby was born from the sperm and the egg there was, well, nothing really. Nothing happened. It’s a miracle.

Honest guvnor, I didn’t even touch her!” Perhaps the universe was carried into existence in the mouth of a stork? It sounds about as credible.

Maybe it is just my relentlessly enquiring mind but I have to ask what came before the explosion. If we are to assume that nothing comes from nothing and only something comes from something but that something cannot come from nothing and nothing cannot come from something, we must either reread that sentence to know what on Earth I’m talking about or look for a simpler explanation.

The simpler explanation is that the universe cannot just spring into existence without a cause. In other words, if the Big Bang came from ‘a primordial hot and dense initial condition’ what conditioned that condition?

We are all creatures of nature and thus, the universe should behave in natural ways but I have never experienced the ‘magic’ of something being created from nothing and neither have I ever experienced a beginning nor an end of anything. All I have seen is

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transformation, transition and transience and I am yet to find anything that does not hold to these laws.

All life’s problems occur because we are trying to create a life unsuited to the environment in which we exist. It is like trying to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ with the wrong map. Life becomes trial and error when we should know enough about the environment of life for it to guide us without too much disaster along the way. What seems to be right and what should work isn’t right and doesn’t work and yet we keep on trying because we are unwilling or unable to let go of the only methods of creation that we are familiar with. The rules of life become less confusing if you understand where they came from.

In this case, they surely didn’t come from nothing…

Michael Stephens: “Master Jacob, did the Big Bang really occur? Was there really a massive explosion that brought the entire universe into being?”

I asked these questions one day in November 2009, riding home from work with Orranut. Having decided to write this book, I was quite sure I wanted to start it off at the beginning of pretty much everything and I couldn’t think of a bigger beginning than this.

As we started to research this book, Orranut would often take a while to connect with Master Jacob but, as time went on, this changed. She would soon remark that he was frequently with her throughout the day, commenting, offering advice and generally acting as her fourth spirit guide. Yes, she has three others.

Some people have a lot of help.

Master Jacob: “The universe has always existed. Its nature has always been similar to what it is now.”

MS: “Well, that’s very revealing on its own, Master Jacob but I would like to explain to people why the shape and structure of the universe is significant. As I understand it, current science tells us that the universe is 22

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expanding out like a bubble 2. Could you tell me if this is the correct observation and if there was some kind of explosion involved to create this expansive movement?”

MJ: “An explosion implies violence, that there was something destroyed to create the universe in its current form, but this is not the case.”

One of the things I learned very quickly with Master Jacob was that I needed to ask very specific questions. Little information would be volunteered. I had to work it out myself and get him to confirm it. It is his way of helping me to remember what I already know.

MS: “OK, so let me put it like this, Master Jacob. I need to understand why science has observed the universe expanding outwards from a central point. Physicists believe that this was caused by an enormous event over 13 billion Earth years ago, called ‘The Big Bang’ and that, one day, the universe may run out of the energy that currently causes it to expand and, when it does, it will contract in a ‘Big Crunch’. What I would like to know is whether this observation is correct and could you also shed some light on the mechanism by which the universe expands and contracts like this?”

MJ: “The observation that the universe is expanding is correct.

However, you have almost answered the question yourself. You are as natural as the universe round you, right?”

MS: “Are you saying that a human being reflects the way the universe moves?”

2

In 1929 Edwin Hubble and Milton L. Humason formulated what has come to be known as ʻHubble's lawʼ. This defined how light changed, known as ʻredshiftʼ, when an object was moving away from the observer. Their discovery showed that other galaxies were moving away from the Milky Way. In simple terms, this was the first empirical support for the Big Bang theory, which had been proposed by Georges Lemaître in 1927.

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MJ: “Of course. You are part of the universe. In your body, what organ expands and contracts in the same way as you have described the universe?”

I thought for a moment before realizing.

MS: “Oh, the lungs?”

MJ: “Correct.”

MS: “My goodness. The universe is breathing.”

MJ: “Indeed.”

Wow, the universe is breathing? Why not? But what an insight!

While the human mind finds such comfort in breaking things down into mechanical processes, physics has never taken seriously the idea that the universe may in fact be a living, biological entity or, at the very least, behave as a living entity would. I have never seen a living entity spontaneously explode, have you? Well, there was that scene in the movie ‘Scanners’, but that is beside the point. The expansion/contraction shape is consistent with all things that exist in this world. Why should the universe as a whole be any different?

Get over it!

MS: “OK, if the universe is breathing and we are in the inhalation breath, that would explain the expansion, but why would it exhale and contract?

What causes the transition from expansion to contraction? Is this what science might call the Big Crunch? Will the universe collapse back to infinitesimal energy in an infinitesimally small space?”

MJ: “It did not come from infinitesimal energy in a n infinitesimally small space, as you put it, so the question of going back there should not arise, should it? Nothing is repeated and nothing goes backwards. Let me give an example of the mechanism. When the energy of the universe reaches critical mass, the energy of expansion is less than that of contraction. In a linear way, you can 24

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view it as a seesaw with a weight that moves along its length.

Eventually the see-saw tips over simply because there is a point where change is triggered by the energetic laws that naturally govern such things.”

MS: “Right, so if we compare the metaphor to breathing, would it be like the reflex action of the lungs? One of the triggers of breathing, as I understand it, is the build up of carbon dioxide in the body. We do not need to be aware of it. There is nobody pulling a lever or flipping a switch.”

MJ: “That’s right. The breathing process is not mechanical or preset. It just occurs when the right conditions are attained.”

MS: “Thank goodness for that. I was worried that the universe might forget to breath without an email reminding someone to pull the lever.”

Orranut tells me that there is silence from Master Jacob.

MS: “That was a joke.”

MJ: “Indeed.”

It took Master Jacob a while to get used to my humor. I hope the reader will afford me the same patience.

MS: “OK, moving on…so universal breathing is no different to, say, the changing seasons on Earth? When the energetic conditions are right, the temperature, the moisture, the wind, the air pressure etc. the process simply changes automatically?”

MJ: “This is correct.”

MS: “Contemporary scientific opinion says that the current universal exhalation breath, if I can call it that, has been on-going for around 13.7 billion years. Does that correspond with your historical record?”

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MJ: “Time is not something I wonder about.”

The reader will note as we progress through this work that Master Jacob is consistently uneasy about using time periods, not because he does not know dates but because he feels that time tends to reinforce the linear impression people have of their lives.

He has often tried to explain to me why the use of time paralyses the mind in a fictional reality but it is still hard for me to grasp how being five hundred years late for a dinner appointment would not be considered ill-mannered in any dimension. Regardless, Master Jacob has made it plain to us that the measurement of time is not an important focus, although he always tries his best to give details whenever he can.

MS: “I understand that time is not something you are comfortable with discussing but I think you are very familiar with the need of humans to place events on a timeline in order to comprehend them in sequence.”

MJ: “I am constantly fascinated by how unhelpful it is.”

MS: “Right, OK…but would you help me out by confirming whether the 13.7 billion year timeframe is reasonable?”

MJ: “I will not argue with it.”

MS: “Do universal contractions and expansions always have equal duration?”

MJ: “No. They are different. Again, it is like human breathing.

Sometimes deep, sometimes shallow. If you listened to your own breath you would realize that every breath is unique. If you listened to the universal breathing it would be as enlightening as listening to your own.”

MS: “What does the exhalation breath do? What is its purpose?”

MJ: “It is like cooking.”

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MS: “Do you mean it prepares conditions?”

MJ: “Something like that.”

MS: “And the inhalation breath is…what exactly?”

MJ: “Serving the dish.”

MS: “So the out-breath, as the universe shrinks, is the gestation phase and the in-breath is the creative phase, as it expands?”

MJ: “You could put it in those terms, yes.”

MS: “What created this process? Is this God?” MJ: “No one knows. What is known is that energy is continuously rippling out across the universe fueling the expansion. The energy is not finite.”

MS: “Oh, so the Big Bang theory basically postulates that there is a fixed sum of energy-being spread out thinner and thinner across space. What you’re saying is that there are interim ripples, like mini-bangs, between the expansions and contractions?”

MJ: “Correct, but without the ‘bang’ as you put it.”

MS: “I see. And what do these ripples do, exactly?”

MJ: “They add impetus to the movement. They are like the fuel to keep it going, if you will.

MS: “How long might one of these ripples last?”

MJ: “It varies but let’s say one human lifetime, for argument’s sake.”

MS: “And can we speculate that energy is somehow sucked back in during contraction, like ripples going the other way?”

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MJ: “You could speculate that.”

MS: “It sounds like the waves of the sea landing on the shore and then withdrawing back into the sea.”

MJ: “Another good analogy. There are many such analogies as this pattern is repeated throughout the natural universe.”

The breathing, the tides, the ripples, the expansion and contraction; the very motion of the universe is totally applicable to motion right here on Earth. You’d think in a universe of this size and age it would have thought of some different patterns by now, wouldn’t you? It’s just the bone idle laziness of the youth of today, I say.

MS: “Human science also speculates that there is a black hole at the center of the universe. Could you confirm this?”

MJ: “How can there be a center of something infinite?”

I kicked myself.

MS: “I mean, could you confirm that there is a massive black hole at the point where the expansion and contraction emanates from.”

MJ: “Yes. A black hole exists at that place.”

MS: “What is its purpose?”

MJ: “It is like the nostrils in the center of your face, breathing in matter and spewing energy back out. This energy is the stuff of creation.”

MS: “Is this energy what scientists call ‘dark energy’ or ‘dark matter’?* 3”

3

About dark matter and dark energy the NASA website says “…roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe.”

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MJ: “Indeed.”

MS: “This process sounds like a tree breathing in carbon dioxide, transforming it and breathing out oxygen.”

MJ: “Once again, a very good analogy.”

MS: “So they are not, as science speculates, so gravitationally powerful that nothing can escape them.”

MJ: “No they are catalytic entities spewing out creative energy to nurture the universal process. They are also like universal timekeepers constantly clicking.”

MS: “Ah, radioactivity, like a nuclear clock.”

MJ: “Yes. They are not as frightening as humans might believe they are. Even your sun has a black hole. Do you believe that?”

Master Jacob was describing to me the way the universe moves in a totally natural phenomenon: breathing. There is an in-breath and an out-breath, a expansion and a contraction. It is just yin and yang. No Bang needed. For years I had been telling my students a karmic lesson about the ‘Pebble in the Pond’, and how you cannot take back a choice once it has been thrown into the waters of time.

Ripples expand out across the lake from the point where the decision hit and rebound back to the source once the ripples have hit the bank. Now, speaking to an energetic being from another universe I was hearing the same story repeated back, and this time, it was a story related to the creation of nothing less than, well… everything.

Your life is an environment, it is an ambience, it is a recipe brought to realization through the taste buds of your experience and it exists in the same universe that Master Jacob describes as expanding and contracting in a continuous fluctuation of highs and lows, strength and weakness, creation and destruction. How you

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prepare yourself to suit that environment and the behaviors and habits with which you create your life within it defines the quality of your relationship with nature, and thus how authentic your life feels to you. The more authentic it becomes, the better you feel. This feeling is all that really matters. Like a badly fitting shirt, too tight and it feels constricting, too large and it drowns you. It doesn’t matter a jot whether the label says its your size. Its all about how it feels, right? Life is the same way. If life feels good, you must be doing something right.

Changing your perception of what a good life might be made from is a vital step in creating one. The right house, the right job, the right income, the right spouse, the right family, the right hair cut, the Playstation 15 and the Gibson Les Paul may have the right ring about it in a mind that meets all your spiritual needs through physical solutions but the end result is attachment to the physical world and the resulting suffering that goes with it. We reach out for physical solutions to life's ills because…well…what other options seem credible? Religion has let me down. Politics is corrupt. My marriage has failed. I hate my family. Even my dog has eaten my slippers. What else can dull the pain of life but a good dose of shiny stuff? Why is life so painful anyway? How on Earth did I even get this gig? What was God thinking when he made me?

No need to answer that.

The first issue each of us has to address is how to create a life that actually works in the environment in which we live. You may have gone out and got yourself a terrific Lamborghini because you imagine the universe to be a racing track, but if the universe is shaped more like a sky dive you’ve just invested your entire life’s earnings in a vehicle that is going to crash and burn however much fun it may seem on the way down. Piling on the juice just makes the inevitable quicker. Your life may just become the biggest bang going. Any ideas why you suffer yet?

Orranut and I spend much of our time healing and counseling and many of our client’s lives do indeed look frighteningly similar

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to a car wreck. People take a single problem and smash it into a million different parts and then sit paralyzed not knowing which part to work on first. But here’s the answer: understand where you are. Understand your environment. Understand what the universe really is. Understand what it will take to live in rhythm with it.

And, if it’s a sky dive, buy a parachute.

MS: “What is the shape of the universe?” I asked Master Jacob, some days later, once again driving back home from the south of Phuket after some healing sessions on the island.

I looked at Orranut sitting in the back seat of the car and she is smiling. She informs me my question has been met with laughter. It was good that Master Jacob was finding his sense of humor but it was somewhat unsettling to have an ancient energy-being giggling at you, whatever the cause.

MJ: “What is the shape of your mind?”

I think about it.

MS: “Are you saying the universe and mind have the same shape?”

I realized how dumb the question must sound even as it leaves my mouth. Silence from the back seat.

Orranut: “He’s laughing again.”

MS: “Fair enough.”

My mind, like everyone else’s, is stuck looking for reassuring shapes and patterns that conform to the preconceived notions of what is real and what is not. They are wholly illusory. If we assign our universe ‘a fixed shape’, if it is donut-shaped or orb-shaped or spiral-shaped or even shaped like a cute little teddy bear then, by virtue of this, we must conclude that it would also have dimension and with dimensions come walls, barriers, starts and ends etc. From 31

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this paradigm, the theory of the Big Bang becomes very plausible, and from within this mindset we extrapolate our linear tale of how the universe must have started, grown to a certain shape and size, created the Earth, built each of us separate and independent of one another and so on and so forth. It is the greatest linear illusion in existence. When we set up our mental environment to entertain such notions as a fixed shape and size, everything we think, say and do is extrapolated from it in order to support a consistent model.

Let’s put this as succinctly as possible: the Big Bang Theory is a fantasy based upon the initial assumption of a finite mind.

MS: “If I were to take a physical telescope that could see forever”, I asked, “would I ever see the end of the universe?”

I sat back in my chair, awaiting what I expected to be more inevitable laughter. I was quietly surprised.

MJ: “It has the physical properties of shape and mass but it is also infinite.”

MS: “Were I to take a telescope that could see forever, would physical planets exist at every point that I looked into the infinity?”

This was definitely a giggle-inducing type of question. Master Jacob can some times lose patience with questions that stretch the point of the point to the point of pointlessness. And I am an expert at just those types of questions…

MJ: “I have never been there. I do not know.”

A reply in true character. I left it at that.

Understanding the way in which the universe moves is of no use to us whatsoever unless we apply those shapes to our lives to make our reality more compatible with the natural order of things.

What we have learned is that nature creates, recreates and creates

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once again the same shapes throughout the entire universe to inspire our greater connection to the natural processes by which we must all live and through which we must all get along with one another. We may sometimes feel alone and vulnerable in this world but that is simply because we have not learned to connect to the multitude of natural signposts revealing our purpose and how we can get there in joy and contentment. Stacked into every gram of soil, every cubic inch of air and every milliliter of water on this Earth are the patterns and shapes that encourage human entrainment with nature, but the human mind has the unprecedented capacity to relegate nature from possessing profound meaning to meaning nothing more than commodities. We separate and detach from our natural connection to such an extent that we forlornly believe that human life can be acted out in a sterile artificial environment where the nature of nature is mute and irrelevant.

But nature has a deafening voice if we learn to turn up the volume through our personal sensitivity. It talks to us, interacts, communicates on so many subtle levels but we must learn to listen.

The way in which we organize our lives to entrain with natural patterns and shapes defines, to a very great extent, the shape of energetic feedback that can either nurture our spirit, our sense of connectivity and our feeling of interdependence, or whittle it away to nothing and leave us all feeling separate, alone and purposeless within a world closing in on us.

Neither of these choices happen without effort. It is not random or a case of bad luck if we feel disconnected from our natural world or if our life seems meaningless or empty. It is entirely up to you which effort you apply to your reality just as it is entirely up to you what you believe to be right and wrong in that reality. Bearing in mind that our wealth and status-driven economy has encouraged humanity to invest so much time and effort in the competitive processes of winners and losers, clearly you must make a different investment in your life if you are seeking inclusion and not

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exclusion, community and not self, respect and not prejudice. It is not a cakewalk, I admit, but I guarantee it will require no more effort than that you have so far invested to create the reality you already have.

Life is a spiral. It is breathing. It is ebbing and flowing just as surely as your world is changing, your lungs are inhaling and your heart is pumping blood around your body. Learning to build the bridges between you and your authentic self is just a single step in the direction of creating harmony and balance, for in attaching to the mental markers that have created the barriers of beginnings and endings in your life, you have forgotten that you are the greatest pattern of them all, floating without attachment to the natural patterns that created you. While the universe breathes in and out, so do you. As is outside, so exists inside. Listen. Feel. And if one day the talking stops, silence reigns within and life feels good all at the same time, you will know that the shape of your reality has aligned with the shape of the entire universe.

And both you and the entire universe will laugh as one.

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