LIGHT or Darkness

     How do you feel directing your own & your loved ones' lives, in what many perceive to be a challenging, at times hostile, and seemingly deteriorating world? Many today feel anxious, nervous, afraid, worried for themselves, their children & grandchildren. 

    What if HOW we usually perceive & think is ALMOST ENTIRELY focused on DARKNESS: trying to grab, accumulate & survive at any cost AS IF we were alone, struggling in a hostile, meaningless, mechanical universe? WELL, THIS IS our culture's, and thus our own personal default way of understanding, thinking & behaving, called "left-hemisphere dominant" by noted scholar / researcher / author / psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist MD (http://www.johnlovas.com/2025/10/hope-courage-patience-perseverance.html). This mindset is certain that we are alone in a meaningless, mechanical universe, struggling against all odds to survive. Being trapped in this narrow, robotic mindset IS the nightmare!
    Sadly, those of us who have experienced major trauma, especially in early childhood, have tremendous difficulty trusting anyone, anything, including life itself. As a result, trauma survivors tend to rely exclusively on their intellect ie left hemisphere! This leaves their hearts armored, somewhat protected against re-injury, but effectively blocked from feeling, receiving & giving love. 

    Balanced, well-adjusted, thriving societies & individuals are "right-hemisphere dominant" by default. This right-hemisphere perspective is RADICALLY DIFFERENT because it IS aware of & IS in harmony with ALL of life's INFINITELY WIDER contexts, like Beauty, Love, Meaning, Values, Relationships, the Arts, Spirituality, etc.

    Mystics past and present, are exemplars of right-hemisphere dominance, experiencing life radically differently than left-hemisphere dominant people. Mystics feel peacefully held in love; "at one" - Unitive Mystical Experience - with everyone, everything & the Divine; no separation from others & life; feel no hostility; no desperation to control anyone or anything; no fear of anyone, any "vengeful God" nor death; no neurotic compulsion to do anything, be anyone, go anywhere. They feel liberated, free to be appropriate toward everyone & everything in the present moment ie to embody Divine nurturing unconditional love. ALL of us can gradually open our minds & hearts to our own Divine nature. Watch:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmOpCCJkuY

    Instead of a steady diet of psychopathic politicians, billionaires, "influencers", and other nightmare visions, for the sake of sanity - how about reading about and listening to wise elders? My blogs are all about inspiring, mature, healthy, wise role models, like: 

    Jonathan Ashford: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Jonathan+Ashford

    Sydney Banks: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Sydney+Banks

    James Finley: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=James+Finley .

    Helen Hamilton: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Helen+Hamilton .  

    Amoda Maa: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Amoda+Maa

    Rainer Maria Rilke: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Rilke . 

    Robert A. Johnson: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Robert+A.+Johnson

    Rami Shapiro: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Rami+Shapiro . 

    Richard Rohr: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Richard+Rohr .  

    Henry Shukman: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Henry+Shukman .  

    John Welwood: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=John+Welwood .

    Toni Packer: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Toni+Packer . 

    Ram Dass: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Ram+Dass .

    James Hollis: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=James+Hollis . 

    Roger Walsh: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Roger+Walsh .

    David Whyte: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=David+Whyte .

    Norman Fischer: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Norman+Fischer .

    David Steindl-Rast: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=David+Steindl-Rast . 

and MANY MORE wise elders to learn from & be inspired by. 

    It's OUR CHOICE - our free will - whether we immerse ourselves in wisdom - OR - darkness (https://www.jonathanashford.com/post/the-darkness). Are we "too busy", yet doomscrolling for hours each day?; Is this wisdom stuff "too deep" or "too confusing", and again, are we "just too busy" to get into it and learn? We can procrastinate and aim at best for feeling superficially OK, "ordinary unhappiness" - OR - discover what life is really about.

 

Neil Young sings - "Imagine" by John Lennon

Remembering, Forgetting and Remembering

    We've all noticed how some of us have certain hard boundaries we firmly believe that we cannot step beyond. Some of these seem reasonable, perhaps even life-saving eg a recovering alcoholic refusing to have any alcohol ever again. 
    However, most remarkably firm boundaries are just quirky oddities that needlessly slow or even prevent normal spiritual maturation. These are tied to our rock-solid "story of me" - "my identity" - "it's who I am!!" "I've always hated ... I've always loved ... I could never ... I was always good at ... I've always belonged to ..." We have the free will choice to resist any inner change.

    We also have the free will choice to evolve spiritually - we can choose to awaken! 
    The people I admire and try to emulate become progressively more unconditionally loving, non-judgmental, forgiving, flexible, open-hearted and open-minded. See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2011/12/successful-aging.html and http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=stages+of+faith 

    “Many people have intimations of their true nature in childhood – the sense of a benevolent presence guiding their life, a radiance that shines forth from all things, or a current of love that unites us all. …
    But we lose touch with this luminosity as we age … we forget who we really are and succumb to the way others see us...
    By adulthood we've more or less forgotten who we truly are, and have passively absorbed the current cultural fad of being frozen in the armor of materialism, meaninglessness & cynicism. Not surprisingly, something in all of us 'continues to weep over the barrenness of modern life.'"
    Stephan Bodian. “Wake Up Now. A Guide to the Journey of Spiritual Awakening.” 2008.

    “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin 

    In other words, our personal worldview & self-concept - be that more materialistic & cynical - OR - tending more towards kindness & unconditional love - is our "state" which determines our experience of life. 

        “There are only two ways to live your life.
         One is as though nothing is a miracle.
         The other is as though
         everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

     Jonathan Ashford - from my current perspective - clearly & concisely expresses the most useful spiritual teachings. Below, an excerpt from a recent interview: "A Near-Death Awakening: 'I Came Back Without a Self'" Jonathan Ashford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmOpCCJkuY

    “I could tell you what I was shown and what I understand. I guess you would say what I understand to be true, or truth as it was defined for me, is that we are an expression of unconditional love, here to remember that very thing. So you could say time, through the process of the spiritual awakening, simply exists for you to experience the memory, or the event, or the set of circumstances, that remind you that you are an expression of unconditional love.

            So it (“the Divine,” “Source,” “God,” etc) has a very interesting sense of humor. The sense of humor is you are unconditional love manifest into this form, and now you’re going to forget, and go through everything which is just trying to wake you up to that fact, but you’re going to see it with different eyes. So it’s kind of like the joke is: it’s always been right in front of you. It’s always been right in front of your face, but you’ve always been looking a hundred yards out. You’re always looking to tomorrow, or you’re thinking I need 12 years of schooling to get me there. I need something, when it’s actually been in the mirror the whole time.

            Every circumstance serves you in your awakening to that very fact. And we live several lifetimes, because we miss it. We might live a thousand lifetimes because we just keep missing it. It’s just floating right by us, instead of catching that glimpse in the mirror. Understanding that unconditional love is what we are, and the second we wake up to it, it’s like feeling for the first time every time.

            As it was shown to me, there is nothing to do here. There is nothing to ever change here. There is nothing to ever fix. There is only to live consciously in a way to understand, I am unconditional love being expressed in this moment.

How does that play out? If I remember it, my life plays out to reflect that. If I don’t remember it, then my life plays out to reflect that.

So really, it was the two paths, if you want to call them paths, playing out simultaneously, based on your state.

As it was shown to me, everyone’s like, ‘What’s my life path? What’s my purpose?’ I’m like, ‘Well, just think of it this way. You have choice A or B, all day, every day. And based on choice A or B, you will affect the state in which you affect your existence.

Beyond that, everything else was just shown to either point you to it – or – pull you away from it. So all spiritual belief systems, every book, every definition, every word that we use, every language, everything either points us to it – or – away from it.

But you will only know that if you’re walking in a state of awareness, which is part of the spiritual awakening process. You grow your awareness. I’m now more aware than I was yesterday. And because of my awareness, I choose this particular state. And I might do it a couple of times today, and maybe a couple of more times tomorrow.

Or, I might slip out of it. I might forget it completely. And then those circumstances will reflect that, and try to point me back to remembering it again. So it’s really an exercise in awareness.

Unconditional love is, yes, we are unconditional love. We walk in it, we hold it, we forget it. But the exercise is the awareness, because without the awareness, you won’t remember that you are unconditional love.”

    Jonathan Ashford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmOpCCJkuY 

 

 

Pacing Ourselves

    “The Hindu definition of hell is 'more, faster'." Iain McGilchrist

 

    Our feeling of always being in a hurry to get somewhere, do something, "be someone," is based on an underlying common sense of emptiness, "not enough", "not good enough". Even the most accomplished among us tend to suffer from chronic low self-esteem. 

    Frantic striving would make some sense IF inflating our ego could solve this imaginary problem, BUT IT DOESN'T help at all. The more our ego gets puffed up, the crazier & more destructive our behavior - as we're all witnessing.

    The solution is NOT found in grasping for & accumulating more & more, faster & faster, BUT by growing up as authentic, spiritually mature human beings.

 

 

     “... the essential practices of patience and slowing down to the speed of the soul.”  

    Francis Weller “In the Absence of the Ordinary. Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty.” 2025. 

    Whenever we notice we're rushing, no matter how worthy or even noble our task, we're trampling on & damaging ourselves, others, animals & things in our haste! EVERYONE and EVERYTHING is Divine and is to be loved & nurtured, NOT trampled.

 
    "Spiritual growth is a fine-tuning of our ear to the needs of our heart. ... Once we abandon the belief that there is a more spiritually-useful moment than the one we are in, we have embraced our life and infused it with the energy for awakening." We CAN "recover the sacred in the most remote areas of life, in the midst of difficulty and dissatisfaction, loneliness & despair. The reality of problems is challenged and investigated, and life begins to thrive free of circumstances & conditions. The heart takes over and is resurrected from the conditioned habits of mind.” Rodney Smith 


    During his Near-Death Experience Johathan Ashford learned profound spiritual lessons. This one is particularly valuable:
    “I realized on the other side that none of my previous accomplishments mattered. It wasn’t worth a single grain of sand. None of it; not all the money, the jobs, the titles, the successes, the wins, nothing. It was worthless. Absolutely worthless. And it’s scary to see how much time and effort we put into those things because you could say it keeps us from recognizing what we are. We get distracted by what we think we want. 
    And coming out of that life review, I recognize that there really is only one thing that matters. It’s a singular free-will choice that everybody in existence has - that I choose to be loving in this moment. I’m not worried about tomorrow. I’m not worried about next week. 
    Just right now, in this moment, I choose to be loving, and I recognize that or I don’t – I forget. And the times I forget, I choose to love myself for forgetting. So in essence, I’m sitting in love which is the most valuable thing here. It’s literally your entire existence without you knowing. It’s literally your entire existence. 
    It’s kind of like the Divine sense of humour that it has. I will put you into an existence where you forget what it’s about and hope you remember. I’ll give you little clues and breadcrumbs along the way, but if you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss it.”  
    Jonathan Ashford Shares Wisdom from his Three-Hour Visit on the Other Side 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKivFH1-lys

    "Try to be mindful, & let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things. You will see many strange & wonderful things come & go, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha." Ajahn Chah

 

Oneness and Othering

     The way we imagine ourselves, our self-concept, depends on what we're looking at and how engaged we feel. 
    If it's a beloved person, pet, activity or even object, we may well feel at-one-with them. Neither we nor our beloved seems to have boundaries. This has been called a Unitive experience or Oneness. It's primarily a felt experience - as one hugs or kisses a beloved, stares into a baby's or very young child's eyes, holds a puppy's head and stares into its eyes, there is simply unconditional love flowing unimpeded both ways. 
    However, the more different, cautious, afraid, angry or especially hostile we feel, the thicker & more impermeable the protective walls we erect. Often we feel superior in some way than the other. We are right, others are wrong. This "othering" is supercharged when there is a perceived or actual power imbalance - "might makes right." The swaggering bully, be it in the playground, school, workplace, bar or political arena, displays psychosocialspiritual immaturity. When such delusion of superiority is capped by "God is on OUR side" - religious exclusivism / narcissism - then ANY behaviour becomes not only justified but "sanctified!" When any leader consistently behaves destructively AND is allowed to get away with it, we're dealing with a dangerous cult. Sadly cult members often remain ardent followers to the bitter end. 

    "Tom was in his mid-thirties when a truck he was working under fell and crushed his chest. He had a very elaborate near-death experience (NDE). There were many parts of it, but one part was his life review. He went back over every event in his life in minute detail. He said, ‘I could count the number of mosquitoes that were buzzing around me at this time, which he couldn’t have done during the event, but in the NDE he did. And he said, ‘Not only that, but I experienced everything through my eyes and through the eyes of other people involved in the scene.’ He described one incident in particular, when he was a teenager, driving his truck down the street, when a drunk man wandered out in front of him. He jammed on the brakes, and was furious at the man for almost denting his truck. So he rolled down the window and started yelling at the man. And the man, being quite intoxicated, reached his hand in the window and slapped Tom across the face. You don’t do that to an angry teenager.
    So Tom got out of the truck, and started beating the man up. And he left him a bloody mess on the median strip. Now Tom tells me, when he relived this in his life review, he felt it through his own eyes – the adrenaline rush, the rage. And he also felt at the same time, through the eyes of the drunk man – the humiliation of being beaten up by this kid, the 32 blows of Tom’s fist in his face. Now Tom couldn’t have told you it was 32, but reliving it anew in an NDE, he felt 32 of them. He felt the man’s nose getting bloodied, he felt the man’s lower teeth going through his lower lip. And he came back realizing we’re all the same thing. There’s no difference between me & that man. It’s like if you’re looking at your fingers, they look like they’re separate things, but they’re really connected, and you can’t cut one off without hurting them all. So the Golden Rule for near-death experiencers is not a guideline, it’s the way things are.”
    Dr. Bruce Greyson - "After" 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViCWJWHR0a8

    Before his NDE, Jonathan Ashford had nothing to do with religion / spirituality. During his NDE, he like most ND experiencers, was welcomed with unconditional love. He now understands that the Divine has no interest whatsoever in which quirky little religion, if any, you belonged to. The Divine likely inspired Emo Philips' comedy sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNX_XiuA78

    “Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” Confucius 500 BCE

    Increasingly, people understand the Golden Rule from a non-dual perspective ie that my neighbour, myself & the Divine are one & the same - ONE entity manifesting as infinite variety of appearances, including everyone & everything: spiritually independents, scientific materialists, agnostics, atheists, theists, "president-for-life" dictators, drug dealers, petty crooks, mosquitoes, dogs, birds, fish, trees, rocks, mountains, oceans, earth, sun, moon, clouds, sky & cosmos. Divine non-dual infinite potential self-reflecting by manifesting as & exploring duality - the material world of opposites.

    “A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web ‘God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father,’ but it can be known only as love.” Joan Z. Borysenko PhD

     On manifesting as humans, we tend to forget our true nature, AND also forget most of our wisdom. Awakening is remembering who we truly are - and - how to live appropriately as 'dual citizens' of non-duality & duality.

    So, no matter who we think we are, let's be kind, humble & pull together like wise, nurturing grandparents.

 

Awakened Perspective

    “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” Jonathan Haidt & Dacher Keltner

    “The only service you can do for anyone (including yourself) is to remind them of their true nature.” Stephen Levine

 

    This information Jonathan Ashford brought back will resonate, uplift and help guide when you're ready to hear it:

    “It was made very clear to me on the other side, that the information that I have is for those who are ready to receive it. One of the messages which was very clear is that it’s for the one, not the 99. And coming back, it’s kind of like, well, who’s that one? Who’s that one person this is for? But you get to this understanding that the information is catered to each individual. It’s for the one, the one, the one, the one. And everybody hears it in a way that helps them. 
    But the message is, if I could say there is one message, is everything that I was shown was based on love. It’s the glue that holds together who we are, what we are, reality, the formless. It’s understanding that everything can be boiled down to love. Even the worst day of your life is a loving day. But you can only get there when you wake up. You can only get there if you make the free will choice to try and remember what you are and live consciously. Otherwise, it will never make sense.

    There are a few reasons (why we come here over and over again). I like to remind everybody that if you chose to come back here, you came to serve. You serve the whole with your next breath. There’s not anything you need to do or change. But you do serve the whole. We’re all tools in the garden that get picked up to be used appropriately when they’re needed to be used. So, we all experience what we need to experience through others, through our circumstances, through what we experience in life. If you lived in that cave your entire life, you wouldn’t experience much. The reason we come down is to remember. You could say it’s to remember love. And you could say we turn away from the sun so that we can remember that there’s a sun behind us, and turn back and experience it. So, it’s always going out to return. And most people try to intellectualize their way there, but it’s more about the free will choice of remembering love, not intellectual love, not conditional love, but unconditional love.

    And unconditional love is saying there’s nothing to worry about. I go on forever. Death isn’t death. Unconditional love is knowing that there’s a benevolent force in the room with you at all times. It doesn’t sit in a throne somewhere. Unconditional love is recognizing everybody here has the same amnesia and they’re just doing what they’re doing because of the amnesia. And when you wake up, you can grow in compassion in ways that are beyond measure, just recognizing that that neighbour you don’t like just doesn’t remember.

    (Our future depends on) 2 possibilities (according to) the visions I’ve had recently. Those 2 possibilities are right back to that free will choice: whether I choose to live as an awakened being OR I’m asleep. And that directly affects what we will experience.

    Everybody asks me how to change the world. How can we help? And I give everybody the same answer. ‘Wake up.’ You awake changes the world. I was shown this on the other side. Imagine that the billions of people in the world all wake up tomorrow and everybody’s awake and are loving beings. What happens? Well, the earth stops. This whole reality stops. The whole reality here is based on contrast, because the contrast is the sandpaper that wakes you up to what you are. And if you no longer need it, what’s the point of contrast? 
    But it’s the understanding that it’s not about volume, it’s about authenticity. So, it isn’t well, if we only get 3 million people to wake up, we’re safe. It’s more about there’s a hand that moves pieces on a board, and we’re the pieces. Are we giving it the opportunity to move us in a way that benefits the whole? Or are we fighting the hand? When you wake up, you don’t fight the hand. You know that the hand is there for you. You know that the hand is there for all others. But if we’re in our intellects and our egos, we fight the hand because we’re viewing reality through our own intellect and our intellect has its own lens of what it thinks is right, wrong, good, bad, where we want to end up. 
    So, it’s a time of surrender. Surrendering to the fact that you’re something more. Does everybody need to wake up? No. But those who are close to waking up, should.

    Interviewer Q: Do you fear death?
    Jonathan Ashford (JA): No. Not at all.

    Q: If you met somebody that was grieving over the loss of a loved one, what type of advice would you give?
    JA: I’ve done it many times. I speak to a lot of widows and people who are about to pass. And I tell them, imagine yourself as the ocean. And then a warm or cold air hits the ocean and you turn into fog. And then a warm or cold air comes again and you turn into a cloud. And a warm or cold air shows up again, then you turn into the rain that falls back in the ocean. Were you ever not the ocean? The ocean was always there. Death is nothing more than a change of state. 
    You’re not going anywhere. You’re not lost. You’re not in some other realm. You’re just the fog now or the cloud or the rain. You’re still in the same room. You’re still here. You still have access to everything, to everybody. And I often tell people to just speak to them because they can hear you. Everything here is alive. Everything here is connected. And it’s just understanding that we’re no longer in form. We’re just formless. But we’re not gone.

    Q: How would you explain what God is in all of this? 
    JA: I think God, as I understand it in my experience of it, it’s so many things. It’s love. It’s a binding force. It’s a personality. It does have a personality, and it does have a sense of humour. 
    Can it be a guy with a long beard and a tunic? Sure. Can it be invisible forever? Sure. It can be whatever it wants to be. But, it’s knowing that all things have it within. Your doorknob is God. Your door is God. The paint on your wall is God. You are God. The air is God. Your clothing is God. Everything has it within. It’s the circle from which all things come. And all things are constantly connected to it. Is it one thing? No. Often, I refer to it as they because it is many. It’s many things. It’s all things. If you’re breathing air, you’re breathing God. 
    We try to personify it. We try to make it into a human with a certain level of power that makes certain decisions. And it can be that. But, honestly, it’s much bigger, and it’s much more. And it’s something that moves pieces on this board of existence for something greater. And it’s just the reminder to say your existence was never your own. It was never your existence. It was ours. We’re all together in this. We’re all just holding hands through it. And when you understand God, the All, the Universe, the Source, plays a part in literally every second of your existence. When you wake up to that and acknowledge it, life changes.

    Q: Can you give us some practical ways to live our lives, to make the right choices? 
    JA: Yeah. It’s going to sound really simple, but I just tell everybody to pause for a second before you make a decision. Just 1 second. Just 1 second of pause. We tend to be reactive, right? We’re human, so we’re very reactive based on the inputs we receive, or we’re instant like a calculator. But do the math. Do it longhand. Take your time. And try to make a decision based on the infinite you rather than the desire that the human has.”
    Jonathan Ashford "DEAD for 3 Hours & Who He Saw Changed Everything! (NDE)" 50-minute interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl3RJ-DIUiY     

    To appreciate where Jonathan is coming from, invest two & a quarter hours in Rick Archer's excellent, in-depth, recent interview: Jonathan Ashford: C‑Level Executive’s NDE, Life Review, and Radical Spiritual Awakening https://batgap.com/jonathan-ashford/ 
    A 40-minute documentary for a condensed overview: "The near death experience of Jonathan Ashford" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXSnS2jMY4k

    Other excellent Q&A style interviews also well-worth immersing yourself in:
    Jonathan Ashford "Dead for 3 Hours, What I Learned will Change you" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyeHC2wGdAY
    Jonathan Ashford Q&A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRplu6SjXrQ 
    From Zero to Enlightenment: Jonathan Ashford’s Near-Death Experience 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMA8kApZVGk