Experiencing Awareness of Awareness

     A very short, powerful guidance to recognize & directly experience - fleetingly at first - who you truly are. You will experience a wonderful difference in your day-to-day life as you learn to stabilize in, see things from, & act from your authenticity, rather than your past conditioning.
    This is NOT a math problem to solve, so relax, feel into this with gentle curiosity as if you were approaching a 1-year old relative or a wild baby rabbit you wished to befriend.
    Read along if it helps and / or listen to Louise Kay's skillful guidance 3:20-7:25 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gSxygwMsHU

    “Right now, bring all your attention, fully present, into this moment, and just notice your body breathing, and notice the experience of the body of sensations. You’re already here – right? So, just recognize that you’re here, you’re aware, and let go – this is the paradox – let go of any idea that you need to awaken; that you need to open your third eye; that you need to experience Oneness. Those ideas come from a seeking, from the conceptual me – and they’re also authentic, it’s also incredibly beautiful – but this is the paradox. It’s when you surrender it, and recognize I’m already here, that which is here now is Pure Consciousness. You already are it.
    Now it’s not an experience, because any experience will come and it will be beautiful and amazing but then it will go. So what this is about is recognizing what’s here that’s deeper than any experience. And to recognize that, you simply witness the experiences that appear in the moment. So right now, you observe any thought that comes, so maybe that you’re just being here, present, and then the thought comes like ‘I want to experience full spiritual awakening.’ Okay, then that’s a thought, and then it goes. But you, the witness, were here before the thought appeared, during the thought when it was present you witnessed it, and after it was gone, you’re still here. Now you keep your attention like that, every single moment, of every single day.

    The more you can be with it, the faster the transformation will happen on the level of the human expression. So it’s really a paradox. It’s not about faster or getting somewhere, because it’s only here now, in this moment, and the now is the gateway by stopping and recognizing yourself as the aware witness, and when you live like that every moment, transformation does happen in time on the human level.
    So now you’re recognizing what that feels like, and you just bring your attention back there again, and again, and again, and again, until you don’t even have to remember it – it’s just your natural state. It will start to happen more and more and more when you make this prayer in your heart to life, to the Universe, to God, to the Divine, whatever you want to call it, ‘Yeah, I’m available for this. This is what I want. This is the most important thing in my life. I want to surrender everything to this.’
    Life will support you fully in this. And it already is.”
    Louise Kay “How Can I Speed up my Spiritual Awakening?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gSxygwMsHU (below 3:20-7:25)

Awakening and the Ego

    I value what serious spiritual practitioners have learned from many decades of continuous practice & teaching. Here is part of Roshi Gerry Shishin Wick's talk: “What I learned from almost 60 years of Zazen” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlsgX5oH_HQ

    “To paraphrase the Buddha, ‘In my many years of practice, I haven’t gained anything, but I’ve let go of a lot.’ The Buddha said that everyone, without exception, has the wisdom and virtue of the Buddha. We’re all intrinsically as complete and spacious and as virtuous as the Buddha. Yet we obscure that truth with all kinds of attachments and opinions, judgments, projections and deluded thoughts. If we can just let go of these obscurations, our intrinsic wisdom will shine through.
    So what is it that prevents us from being able to let go of all these attachments? This is what I learned. It always comes down to our image of who we think we are, and our persistent attempts to maintain & protect that image.
    One thing I learned is that there’s no fixed, abiding self. That fact is hard for most people to swallow. How can I function if there’s no self? Can you believe that the notion of a ‘fixed self’ is just that – a notion, a concept, an idea? And even the teaching of ‘no self’ is a concept.
    Concepts can be used to guide, but they’re not the experience itself. Some concepts can lead us astray because they’re like conspiracy theories. Other concepts can guide us to experiences that lead to the lessening of suffering. But remember, the concepts are like the fingers pointing to the Moon - they’re not the Moon, just like the map is not the territory, or the menu is not the meal. Our practice is beyond words and letters.
    What that means is that our concepts do not describe the experience of awakening, insight or enlightenment. The best we can say is that the Self cannot be grasped, it is unknowable.
    The more we are able to let go of our attachments, the clearer the Moon of wisdom will shine within us. So I did not gain anything, but I did let go of attachments that obscured my Original Self. But it’s an endless practice." Roshi Gerry Shishin Wick

        My current favorite serious spiritual practitioner & teacher, Amoda Maa, wrote this on the same topic: 

    “Another tenacious concept that perpetuates the myth of enlightenment and creates much confusion in the spiritual seeker is the belief that the ego dies, and with it all personal history is erased. In this myth, the ‘enlightened one’ supposedly has no sense of self and no story, and therefore he or she is expected to never talk about themselves, to never use the word ‘I’ or ‘me,’ and to never refer to ‘my life.’ The ‘enlightened one’ has supposedly seen that the body and the world are an illusion, and therefore is totally unconcerned with physical well-being or worldly affairs. This image of enlightenment is a fantasy upheld by millennia of religious dogma and patriarchal spiritual traditions. It also taps into our childlike need to enter the kingdom of heaven or nirvana, where bad things never happen, and we are rewarded with endless peace.
    The stark reality is that awakening is not a death of the ego. As long as you’re alive as form, the ego cannot die. Ego, as a primary sense of ‘I-ness,’ must exist, otherwise you’d be unable to discern inside from outside. It’s very likely that, without an ego, the voices in your head would be undifferentiated from my voice, from someone else’s voice, or from the voice of God, and you would be in a state of psychosis. You might even be a blubbery mess, unable to function in three-dimensional reality. If you’ve ever taken too many psychedelics, you’ll know how disorienting and even terrifying this can be!
    As long as we operate within relative reality, the relative function of the ego must continue to operate. A sense of self as a separate entity is absolutely necessary for both physical and psychological survival as form. Death of the ego only happens when form dies. Luckily, as long as there is a functioning neurophysiology, there is a sense of self. It is a sense of ‘I’ that increasingly develops as we emerge from the womb and gives us the capacity for self-reflection and self-awareness. It’s actually the seed of awakening, because without it we would not be able to become conscious of consciousness.
    Awakening is also not a transcendence of ego. Transcendence of ego certainly can happen in a variety of circumstances, such as when you experience a mystical state or a state of expanded consciousness such as in deep meditation (samadhi), long-distance running, or giving birth. It also happens if you have an out-of-body experience or near-death experience. The initial experience of awakening can also be an intensely transcendent experience. But if you continue to identify with this transcendent state, you are likely to develop a ‘spiritual ego.’ There is no transformation or evolution of consciousness in the identification with this state, because when the inevitable return of old egoic patterns and personality traits appear there is a tendency to deny that any of this belongs to you.
    In true awakening, there is neither a death nor a transcendence of ego. Instead, the location of self is released from its entanglement with the unconscious ego (in other words, the conglomeration of conditioned mental, emotional, and physical responses.) Liberated from the prison of egoic identification, the ‘I-ness’ becomes nonlocalized and unattached. Having recognized awakeness as the inherent nature of all that is (including the self), the self becomes an ‘awake I,’ undefined and unrestrained by relative reality.
    Another way of saying this is that the self experiences itself as inseparable from the totality of existence. While certain survival-based impulses continue (protecting the body from danger, the impulse to eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, or rest when tired, and so on), they now happen without interference. They simply happen as life’s natural and intelligent movement toward what needs attention while form is alive. The ‘awake I’ is therefore free to respond intelligently & creatively to the moment, and this gives you access to a power that is at one with life itself.
    So what happens to the ego in all this? From one perspective, nothing happens. From another perspective, everything changes. In the process of liberation, the once ('noisy') unconscious ego transmutes to an evolved ('quiet') or ‘aware ego’ and gives itself in service to the ‘awake I.’ In other words, the ego stops being the master and bows down to awakeness.
    ((From an Internal Family Systems [IFS] perspective, this represents unburdening of protective 'parts' [subpersonalities], resulting in becoming Self-led. IFS psychotherapy appears to be an exceptionally valuable link between traditional ego-strengthening psychotherapies and spiritual practices serving to evolve consciousness.))

    So, yes, in awakening there is a death. There is a death of the self-identity that is wrapped around the ego. But there is also a birth of a whole, integrated human being that includes both the surface sense of self as a separate entity (the self that is born & then dies) and the deeper layer of undifferentiated beingness (the self that was never born & can never die).
    Awakeness embraces the paradox of self & no-self. There is no conflict in this apparent duality. While the mind finds this intolerable, the heart abides in unfathomable acceptance. When the silent mystery of spacious acceptance becomes overridingly preferable to the habitual struggle of making sense of it all, the search for a mythical state of enlightenment comes to an end. However, the ever-unfolding deepening into authentic awakening never stops.”
    Amoda Maa. “Embodied Enlightenment. Living Your Awakening in Every Moment.” Reveal Press, 2017. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BOOK

The Fall Season's Beauty

Gradual AND Sudden Awakening

    A few nights ago, shoulder pain woke me around midnight. I got up & meditated on the meaning of the chronic, day & night pain, versions of which has been tugging at me for attention for at least three years. Soon after sitting down to meditate, I became immersed in a very complex, beehive-like buzzing - a manifestation of energy. And the pain & suffering melted away. This insight was a wonderful reminder of how everything is complex, intelligent, loving energy, and that pain is only one, tiny, insignificant, transient manifestation of It. I found this quote the day before, with the same message:
    “The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege & often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.” G.K. Chesterton
    I understood his word 'dream' to mean Mystery - our actual identity, dreaming up what we assume to be reality when we forget that we are the Dreamer, not the dream.

    “Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.” Ram Dass 

    'Witness' is easier to understand for our personal mind than 'writer-producer' - the One dreaming all of this.

    “It is said that awakening is an accident, and when we keep practicing, we become more accident-prone.” Nikki Mirghafori

    “chance only favours the mind which is prepared…” Louis Pasteur

    Zen teacher Henry Shukman concisely describes how - IF we're INTERESTED - we do evolve / grow / mature:

    "Broadly speaking, there are two approaches in human spirituality: gradualist and 'subitist.'
    The gradualist approach says we need to painstakingly, gradually improve our states of mind & heart, and we need long term training to do this.
    ... you work systematically ... reducing negative mind states, then eliminating negative mind states so they don't arise again, and gradually reducing & eliminating the causes of negative mind states. ...
    The subitist approach ... means 'sudden.' The idea here is that we're already whole, perfect & pristine, but we don't realize it. We actually are, but don't see it.
    Therefore, the logic of the practice here is to realize it, and suddenly see that that is indeed the case. We are already whole and okay, as expressions of a blessed empty boundless unity that all things belong to. Some call this 'pure consciousness,' others 'buddha nature' or awakened nature.
    The reason this kind of practice is known as sudden is that it’s a matter of finding what is already the case. Nothing really changes, except that we have a revelatory moment when we realize that all has been well all along, so to speak.
    This might sound extremely counter-intuitive, when the world is manifestly on fire, with war, oppression, cruelty & suffering. But actually, the logic here is that the world is only this way because we haven't realized how okay things actually already truly are. If we only see that, then our behavior will no longer be guided by our illusory way of seeing things, based on a separate sense of self, but by the reality of a larger wellbeing previously unnoticed, but always right here, which all things share.
    So one question is: are these two views and approaches reconcilable? And is it possible they're both right? The answer is surely, yes. It could be that by temperament some people are more drawn to one or the other, and that we may change our orientation as we change through practice. And it could also be that one without the other is incomplete. ...
    Either way, we are slowly & incrementally becoming more aligned with the underlying order of things, the fundamental wellbeing that is unfolding as this world – and which, paradoxically, we have always been expressions of anyway. But what a world of difference it makes to realize it. Yet, at the same time, on another level, it makes no difference at all.
    So on we go, down the pathless path." Henry Shukman henryshukman.com

    "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff … and it's ALL Small Stuff!"

    It's remarkably effective to remember who we truly are whenever life feels stressful & heavy: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=self-inquiry

     LISTEN to Eckhart Tolle clearly & humorously summarize, in 14 minutes, the heart of what I've been trying to say in over a thousand blogs: "The Mind's Limitation in Understanding Awareness" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrjHWpBQcFw

Love and Live!

    “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities – brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” John W. Gardner  

    We are, as Bruce Cockburn sang, "lovers in a dangerous time." We anxiously twitch to echos of the worn out phrase, "It's Do or Die!" in far too many, far too popular blow-em-up action movies, in our own tortured imaginations, and even in the reality of war-torn lands.
    Most of us have almost forgotten our true nature, which is always gently whispering encouragement, "Love and Live!"

“And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts;
a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused,
whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky,
and in the mind of man; a motion and a spirit that impels
all thinking things, all objects of thought,
and rolls through all things.” William Wordsworth 

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.” William Wordsworth

    “How can an Ego that is lost & entangled … find its way out and recover the right relationship to the Self (Universal Consciousness, Ultimate Reality)? The answer is this: since the Ego has become lost through forgetfulness & fear, it can find its way home through the opposite of these two: mindfulness & trust. In its innermost heart, the Ego never fully forgets the Self – the puppeteer – but its memory is dulled, as in sleep. The Ego can be aroused from that sleep and return home to the Self – becoming ‘I myself’ again, like Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
    It is important to remember that the Ego is not a third entity in addition to the I and the Self. The Ego always remains the I, but it is an I all shriveled up, because it lacks the expansive awareness of the Self that unites it with every other I.”    David Steindl-Rast. “You Are Here. Keywords for Life Explorers.” Orbis, 2023. EXCELLENT, PROFOUND & PRACTICAL!

    Iain McGilchrist's 2021 two-volume book, "The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" covers in masterful detail, how we deal with reality in two very different, complementary ways: left-hemispheric dominance (essentially serving the "Ego") and right-hemispheric dominance, with an appropriately subordinate supportive role for the left hemisphere, (essentially serving the "Self").

    “I found out from robots the most crucial rule of all for living. Human minds are constantly being thrown off the track by complications. The picture is rarely clear. We are told everything has buddhanature (Divine Nature), and we try to act accordingly. But then we discover that someone we know has done something perfectly execrable (dreadful, appalling), and we begin to doubt. ‘How,’ we ask ourselves, ‘could anybody who would do an evil thing like that have the Buddha (Divine) inside him?’ We feel that our trust has been betrayed, and we resent the person even more.
    But robots are simpler than people. So are mountains and rivers and plants and animals and insects. Suppose these less complicated creatures begin to cause us difficulty. In that case, we have no trouble seeing that the fundamental cause is our failure to function in accordance with the principles of the universe. The machines, the mountains, the rivers, the plants, the animals, the insects all tell us that we, filled from head to toe with the buddhanature (Divine Nature), have nevertheless not succeeded in being what we ought to be.
    When we forget to respect the buddhanature in the wind and the water, typhoons and floods inform us of our lapse and show us in no uncertain terms how we have not lived up to the buddhanature within ourselves. When we forget the buddhanature in automobiles and other machines we have created, a warning comes to us in the form of accidents or pollution. Everything in the universe constantly tells us that the way to perfect our buddhanature is to respect the buddhanature in other things & people.”
    Masahiro Mori. “Does a Robot Have Buddhanature? A Leading Figure in the Field of Robotics Investigates.” Tricycle March 21, 2023.

    “All that we behold is full of blessings.” William Wordsworth

    When we sit and meditate, the Ego does its best to retain control by chattering on, the same circular "story of me" we endure day in and day out.
    Mercifully by relaxing, remaining still, and listening deeply to the silence, we periodically return home, disappearing in Mystery. Each time we return with a mind-heart a little bit more open & wiser.

"Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Donovan

 

A New Relationship

    “The loss of a relationship is not the same as the loss of a life. Suffering a sudden betrayal is not the same as dying from heart failure. Yet both can teach us how to cultivate a new relationship to surrender and acceptance.” Sunita Puri MD

    “Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? ' ” 

    Betrayal by the Divine, Nature, Source, God, the Force, Ultimate Reality; by a human being we love dearly; or even by a pet that 'suddenly turns on us,' is perhaps the ultimate shock to the system. Even the death of a loved one is a kind of betrayal. Even dropping & breaking something we've worked so hard to make for someone else is a kind of betrayal. We assume that if we're doing good, surely then the Force is with us. Nope, not necessarily.
    Nature is constantly reminding us who we already ARE - to BE who we are, have always been & will be, and not to be so busy trying to do more, trying to become someone else, to go somewhere else.
    We resist hard truths. To the extent we attempt to resist reality, we suffer needlessly. We demand not 'a spoonful of sugar' to make the medicine go down, but gallons of syrup. In the 1992 movie "A Few Good Men" Jack Nicholson's character famously yells, 'You can't handle the truth!'

    In the 2016 movie, "The Dreamseller" (Netflix) the main character, once a workaholic billionaire who prioritized his business over his wife & young daughter, sees his wife & daughter perish when his private jet explodes. At the same time, he loses his business empire when his best friend & colleague betrays him. These events completely transform him - which many see as 'madness.' He now understands that true success is attaining what money can't buy. 

      Spiritual maturation or evolution or 'pulling up our big boy pants' involves a new relationship with reality. Aging involves losing EVERYTHING we've worked so hard all our lives to learn, master, accumulate, depend upon etc.
    NOW we must learn to accept loss after loss, after loss, till we have no thing left to lose - the material evaporates - ONLY THEN the Mystery!

Leonard Cohen - Anthem

Finding True Self, Peace & Joy

    Advanced spiritual practitioners are well aware that we all have two, very different operating systems. The egoic separate self is one most of us habitually contract into under stress & tend to stabilize in, even without stress. The other is the open, spacious, peaceful, timeless, silent, unitive state of awareness or true self that is always there, but for most is usually hidden, veiled over by our egoic self's fearful striving to control our lives for survival & reproduction.
    "When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished." Mihály Csíkszentmihályi PhD

     Our small, egoic self (& it's constant, very loud spokesperson, "ordinary mind's self talk") can only see consensual dualistic relative reality - of adversarial relationships, competition to get to the top, which even includes war (rape, plunder & murder). Small self's / ordinary mind's natural byproduct is dualism & rigid materialism - where ego can, or soon will be able to control everything ("promissory materialism" - a joke for everyone, except materialists).
    Our true self, when we don't drown it out by setting off our alarms, experiences ultimate reality. We all experience this occasionally, at least fleetingly. We are most likely to experience our innate authenticity & ultimate reality when we feel relaxed, open to & engaged with the flow of life.

     Psychologist Csíkszentmihályi researched the "flow" state & summarized it as: "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, & thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost." Mihály Csíkszentmihályi PhD
    An important component of "flow" was autotelicity - performing acts because they are intrinsically rewarding, rather than to achieve external goals; learning to enjoy situations that most others mind find miserable; associated with curiosity, persistence, & humility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi 
    Despite the formality of scientific language, "flow" seems remarkably similar if not identical to a common experience shared by serious meditators, mystics, saints, extreme adventurers, surgeons, artists of every description, and all who intentionally spend time being intimately engaged with whatever the present moment holds for them. A very impressive real-life example of this is detailed in the book : Michael A. Singer “The Surrender Experiment. My Journey into Life’s Perfection,” Harmony, 2015.
    Intimacy is a direct, heart-to-heart expression of unconditional love (nothing to do with reward / personal gain ie not transactional.)

    The huge practical problem in our lives is that most of us live as if a fire alarm was constantly ringing, resulting in our small, separate mind running & ruining our lives, and completely obscuring our authentic, true self.

    “Once I stop shaping reality into a theatrical performance with myself at its center, mindfulness allows the world to surprise me. The universe becomes delightfully open-ended.” Belden C. Lane 

    "When the mind appears, reality disappears. When the mind disappears, reality appears.” Bodhidharma 

     So our small mind, by way of constant "self talk," is constantly telling us how uncomfortable we are, and reminding us of our preferences: all that we "must have", and all that we "must avoid", in order to survive & be happy. Fixating on these attachments keeps us constantly self-centered, stressed & striving to be somewhere else, do something else, become someone else RATHER THAN be intimately engaged with whatever the present moment presents us.
    “By giving up our attachments in life, we open ourselves up to more opportunities, more spontaneity, and more chances to cultivate deeper connections with others.” Lama Tsomo

    “The mind is a wonderful gift, but the voice inside our heads ("self-talk") can also be a never-ending source of suffering. That’s the last thing we need when we’ve already got so much of the outside world challenging us. We can spend our lives trying to change those external conditions to ‘be and feel OK’ — when the real problem is what’s going on inside.
    The solution? Surrender – the willingness to let go. To realize that ultimately, our thoughts, emotions, & even our body are not who we are. We are the indwelling consciousness witnessing it all.” Michael A. Singer

    Much of our repetitive thinking is about escaping discomfort by getting some things & avoiding others. Our life experience has surely taught us by now that no amount of getting & avoiding can lift us out of "ordinary unhappiness." Buddhism teaches that this obsessive self-centered actually causes unnecessary suffering. Surely we're ready to start inhabiting our far more evolved, true self - often just referred to as "Self."
    "The thoughts change
     but not you.
     Let go of the passing thoughts and
     hold on to the unchanging Self." Sri Ramana Maharshi

    So what am I learning, if ever so slowly? It's ridiculously easy & common to remain overwhelmed by our past traumas & resultant reactivities, which guarantees continuous unnecessary suffering. Though many assume that this is 'just the way life is,' and 'nothing can be done about it,' that's just a 'helplessness & hopelessness' slump we all need to get past, from time to time.
    Even in the absolutely most horrible cases of suffering, it's been shown that it's best to let go of our 'hurt child' identity, and instead direct our energies toward embodying our 'wise elder' identity (transpersonal Self or divine identity), and thereby nurture ourselves & others so we may all thrive ie be the best version of ourselves ie true self or Self.
    Being authentic is our only way to peace & joy, that is independent of life's constant ups & downs, aging, sickness & death.

Finding the True Essence of You (Self) - Eckhart Tolle Explains (20min)

 

Approaching the Mystery of Life

            “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
             Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” Simone Weil

    Can I allow myself to be deeply curious?
    Can I reserve time to sit down, be still, silent, and simply observe what spontaneously arises; only to observe - no judging, pushing away, hanging onto, or otherwise getting entangled with the words, images & sensations that arise?
    My interest is not in what arises - not the content, but the source of all this stuff. This is a radical shift from automatically identifying with the content of 'self talk.' 

    So I gently, patiently keep accepting that the focus of attention keeps getting drawn to content, and refocus by silently wondering who is hearing this? Who is seeing this? Who is feeling this? 

    This 'self-inquiry' process is how meditators have, for a very long time, become acquainted, and gradually intimate with authentic self. This is the basis for shifting from our common mistaken identity of a fearful powerless child, abandoned in a hostile meaningless universe, to authentic self: wise, still, silent, peaceful, joyous, kind, nurturing powerful elder. Ramana Maharshi. "How to Practice Self Inquiry." 2014.

    After a lifetime of studying & practicing Buddhism, Sandy Huntington wrote as he was dying of pancreatic cancer: “I am learning the hardest of lessons: to no longer want more than what I am given, and to allow what I have been given to guide me through the purifying flames of love and grief into the brilliant darkness of unknowing.” C.W. Huntington Jr. “What I Don’t Know About Death. Reflections on Buddhism and Mortality.” Wisdom Publications, 2021. Deep & Excellent

    Investigate how everything changes when you shift from fear to love, embodying your authentic self, intimately engaging with & nurturing all you deal with, in each present moment.

            “To not be stingy with my life, with myself,
             is to fully express myself at every moment —
             fully express everything that I am.” Nancy Mujo Baker  


            "There is but one cause of failure
             and that is man's lack of faith
             in his true Self." William James