Travelling Lightly, All the Way Home...

A silent Mind sees the way Home, and silence comes from forgiveness; there is no other way. All the masters' instruction can be summed up in that one word: forgiveness. Of course they pointed to enlightenment with their beingness, but you cannot get to enlightenment as you are -- you must let go of everything before you can recognize enlightenment. So, to teach people how to achieve enlightenment is an impossibility and a lie -- enlightenment is not something to attain (you already are it), and it is not something that can be given or taught, for the same reason. Enlightenment is achieved when you let go of everything that is in it's way -- which is every thing, every idea, every concept, every judgement you have.

All that stands in your way, no matter how it appears, is based on one false premise under which you live and die: that you must judge anything and everything. You feel that you must judge everything as good or bad, right or wrong, in order to live your life successfully -- there seems to be no choice other than to judge, all the time. It is a false assumption.

Judgment is the linch-pin that holds all of your false ego structure together -- all your ideas, and concepts, and experiences, from which you base your judgements (and that's fairly inclusive of all you are as a body). Finally realize that you cannot accurately judge anything in truth, because you know nothing at all -- for absolute surety -- and, to beat that, there is no "you" (that you can find for sure) to do any judging anyway. Drop your judgement, and your ego will vanish. And, to the degree that you judge not, to that same degree is your ego diminished. No judgement, no ego. No ego, no noise in the mind. No noisy mind, peace at last. From peace, it is but one more step Home, the last step, the one you cannot make yourself -- for it is the leaving of the self behind, to become the Self you are, the Self we all share, the One.

As the ego dies, we experience the fear of anihilation, for we still believe we are our egos. Thus we must have faith in what our hearts tell us is true -- that we are eternal beings, non-physical, and forever free. If we are but egos, we must suffer and die. See the truth of it for yourself, decide for yourself if this is true or not. When you see it, don't deny it any longer -- through the fear of the death of your ego, lies the fearless Self that knows no death. Have faith, you will not survive the trip, and good riddance. And when your ego dies, you are reborn; better to do it now than later. Die consciously while you are still alive, to be reborn in this life, conscious.

Realizing that you cannot judge anything -- because you do not have all the information -- you forgive everything, accepting it as it is, having no concept about what it is or should be.

We can practice forgiveness, by simply seeing the truth that we cannot judge, and therfore all our opinions and judgements are empty and meaningless, and not worthy of all the energy we put into them to impose them on others. When you forgive, you drop your judgement, and then the constant chatter in your mind will, of its own, begin to be ever quieter because it loses purpose. When your mind is finally quiet, you will know who you are and you will know you are not your mind, and thus you are free. Freedom is freedom from the mind; freedom is a quiet mind, a mind that knows directly, without analysis, with clarity and purpose.

See the simple truth -- you cannot accurately judge anything.
This truth will lead you directly home.

How to see this simple truth? It just takes a little skill and a lot of ruthless honesty. The skill is simply in how to ask questions, real questions. The ruthles honesty is simply to keep asking real questions, as each layer of your ego is peeled back to reveal the emptiness behind it, until each layer of fear is understood to be a mistake, and you reach the point where no more questions are possible -- and there is Home.

How to ask real questions? It is perhaps best demonstrated by example:
Choose something you are most certain about, something in which you feel your judgement is justified, based on what you think you know.

Let's say you choose to assert that: "I exist"

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The One Step
The one step that will quiet your mind, is forgiveness. All the chatter in your mind is simply the result of incompleteness, things unresolved, hurts unhealed, fears not faced... And, how can anything be incomplete when you cease to judge... incomplete as compared to what? On what authority do you base any judgement that what is should not be, or that what is not, should be?

What is, is. What isn't, isn't. Your judgement cannot change isness, change reality. It can only create conflict between what is, and what you want. Forgiveness leads to acceptance; acceptance leads to peace; peace is a quiet mind. A quite Mind, is where you'll find Home and it will be right here where you stand now. For ultimately, if you keep asking real questions, you'll see that even time and space are but concepts, which are just another form of judgement. Therefore you understand that you do not even know what time and space are, for sure; that all you have is an opinion, and a working hypothesis perhaps, and that too is just a judgement. So, you begin to see, by asking deeper and deeper questions, that indeed you do not know anything for sure -- all your judgements begin to drop naturally then, because you can no longer fool yourself into believing that you can judge, due to a complete lack of knowledge. Being free of all knowledge is the key, the key you will find if you keep looking deeper and deeper into everything you now think you know -- realizing it's all a sham -- you cannot find any real knowledge in you. Be honest, be ruthless in your questions; go deeper and deeper as you find each question brings another question, because no matter how far you look, there is always another question lurking behind the one you just "answered" -- there is no seeming end to the questions, because there is never a final, undisputable, fact that is not in some way derived from merely an opinion. All your facts are found to be opinions, when you look deeply enough. Then, look past the opinions, and realize they are all you have, and yet you have continued to base your whole life on them. Opinions... mine are different from yours; who is right? Neither can be; all opinions are, by definition, based on incomplete facts.

Finding that you have nothing but opinions, no facts, you begin to accept that you cannot judge anything without error. Thus you begin to judge less and doubt your authority to judge. As you drop judgement, you naturally forgive yourself and others, because you see that their faults are only so in your opinionated imagination. As you forgive, your mind relaxes and becomes quieter and quieter. In the quiet gaps you begin to see a part of yourself that you had forgotton long ago as a child. You begin to see your own innocence, your own true desire to just love and be loved, that has motivated every action you have ever done. As this awareness of your absolute innocence begins to return, you drop your judgement of yourself and begin to relax and accept yourself in love. As you accept yourself, you easily accept others, and your forgiveness grows stronger and more universal. With more forgiveness, you become more relaxed and more quiet inside, and thus more healthy. Your energy begins to dance like a child playing without self awareness. This newfound energy is your true Self emerging from the fog of that ego self you built from scraps of opinions based on fear -- this energy is the light that will begin to illuminate more and more dark places in you -- places you have hidden from yourself in your judgement of yourself. As you see and realize that what you have hidden from the light is but a shadow, and not real at all, you begin to love yourself, forgive yourself, and accept yourself -- and others too.

The chaos in the world is the chaos of minds that judge themselves harshly. Teach them to find their innocence, that we may all get a good night's sleep.

Once the single step of forgiveness is taken, all others will follow surely and lead you directly Home.

Why persist in judging? What possible benefit do you imagine that judging things will get you? Do you see that any judgement seperates that which is whole? To judge something good means that something else must be bad, and thus you create disharmony. With every judgement comes conflict, for you are always judging one thing against another -- you set them to war with themselves, and you are caught in the middle of the conflict. Setp out of the conflict by simply not judging the right and wrong of any thing -- you cannot judge accurately anyway, as you will surely see if you look for yourself and be ruthlessly honest.

If you want to find your way Home, back to where you are pefectly whole, perfectly accepted, and perfectly loved... then take one small step in the direction of forgiveness. The first step is critical, but from there you will be pointing in the exact direction where Home is located -- just walk straight forward, never deviating from forgiveness, and you will arrive as quickly as you can leave the road behind you.

Isn't that what forgiveness is -- simply leaving the road behind you? Because if you insist on rolling up the road behind you, and bringing it with you, your journey will be slow and arduous indeed. Forgiveness means leaving the past behind, each moment, travelling light.