Robert Lanza – What are space and time?

This is an excerpt from the interview with Robert Lanza featured in the 3DVD set “Science and Nonduality Anthology Vol.2″. In this clip Robert Lanza talks about the fundamental assumptions in science about space and time.

A Balanced Life – Deepak Chopra – Part 1 to 3

Interview with Dr. Deepak Chopra on the TV show A Balanced Life. Host is Eileen Richardson. Topics covered are the Law of Dharma, Giving back and finding your life purpose.

A Balanced Life – Deepak Chopra – Part 2

A Balanced Life – Deepak Chopra – Part 3

How Aware Are You of the Words That Come Out of Your Mouth? ~ Dennis Merritt Jones

“Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”
~ Don Miguel Ruiz

While sitting in a restaurant today I had a major league “ah-ha” that really whacked me upside the head, and I would like to share this realization with you. Perhaps you might be able to relate with it (or at least know someone who will ), because at first glance it appears to be a very innocuous form of behavior based on the fact that we all tend to “do it” on a regular basis. It seems to be inculcated in our culture. Perhaps for that very reason it is something to which we all need to pay attention because it affects the emotional (and thus physical) well being of all of us.

The “it” to which I am referring is gossip, and the mindless spreading of hearsay, comments and rumors. As I sat trying to mind my own business while eating my lunch, the people in the booth directly behind me were “having” someone by the name of Jane for lunch … and she wasn’t even there! I honestly did my best to dial it out, but the energy of their conversation was all pervasive. They were talking about her in such a disparaging manner that it was painful to hear. It was in that moment that I became aware that I have also on occasion been a target of the same sort of mindless, groundless gossip and rumors. And yes, I too have also feasted on savory gossip and noshed on tasty unfounded rumors with others. In a microsecond, I understood that the pain I was feeling for Jane and those who were talking about her had became my pain because they were a reflection of me.

At some point or another in our lives we have all been the target of gossip and rumors, as well as participants in the spreading of them. It is insidious, toxic and yet, oh so juicy. Unless we are mindful and vigilant, it’s quite easy to fool ourselves into believing that what is coming from our minds, mouths and hearts is harmless idle chatter. That’s how gossip works. It’s hard to detect when we are in the process of gossiping because it is provocative and seductive, but most of all, it is destructive. Why is it that gossip is so prevalent among us? Many people find some sort of power in gossip because it represents “inside” knowledge that not everyone else is privy to. Some people find great comfort in knowing they can commiserate (in this context meaning “share their misery”) with like-minded people.

Others may find gossip and the spreading of rumors a passive-aggressive way of dealing with their feelings of jealousy or envy, or perhaps their own insecurities and fears. For others it may mean that by putting someone else down (who is seldom present) it somehow makes themselves feel more important. The reasons we gossip are legion, however, not one of them justifies the activity.

This message is a reminder of how easy it is to jump into the stagnate pool of mindless gossip in our workplace, our church, the doctor’s office, the grocery store and even our own homes and neighborhoods. From a spiritual perspective, understanding we are all one, it means that when we gossip to others about others we are ultimately doing damage to ourselves as well. Beyond the aforementioned spiritual reality is the fact that any person who will gossip with you about others will also gossip about you with others. I guess it’s an instant karma sort of thing.

Any way you cut it, gossip and the spreading of rumors is counter productive to creating a healthy relationship with life. Speaking with integrity in our daily interactions is a conscious choice we get to make every day.

I invite you to join me in using this test before we unleash words that may be less than impeccable. Before speaking to or about another person, mindfully ask yourself these questions:

1. Is it true? Do I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what I am repeating is accurate and true, or is it based on hearsay and assumptions that I or others have made without gathering all the facts from an impartial and reliable source?

2. What will I gain from repeating these words to others? Will what I am going to say be life affirming, productive and helpful to all involved? Will the world be a better place because I uttered these words? If not, why would I want to repeat them?

3. Is what I am going to say about another person something I would have the clarity, courage and commitment to say to their face, and if so, why don’t I do so?

4. Will what I am going to say be using the power of my word in the direction of truth and love?

Before we speak, or hit the forward and send button, it would do us well to pause and become witness to our thoughts before they become our word. It was a great reminder for me this week regarding the importance of being impeccable in our word. I invite you to join me in using the power of your word in an intentional and conscious manner. Not just because speaking with integrity is the right thing to do, but because the world needs and deserves the absolute highest and best that we can bring to it. When we gossip and spread rumors we are declaring our own lack of wholeness. When we speak less than impeccably about others, we are affirming to the universe that hears our every word that we feel separate and apart from the whole of life. When we are not impeccable in our word we participate in creating pain and suffering for others, and that is not why we have come to earth. When we use our word in the direction of truth and love we honor God’s presence by creating harmony and peace, and that is why we are here. What we think and say matters, so being impeccable with our word seems like a great place to start. Now that is worth repeating, so pass it on!

www.DennisMerrittJones.com

What Is It Like After You Die? ~ Robert Lanza, M.D.

The question, “What is it like after you die?” can make you wonder about taking the time to ponder such philosophical babble. You might reply, “The only way to know is when you die.” Not so. You won’t know any more than you do now. Increasingly, scientists are beginning to realize that an infinite number of realities may exist outside our old classical way of thinking.

Our instinctual understanding of reality is the same as most other animals. This came into focus the other day as I strolled though a nearby field, stirring up butterflies and creatures of all shapes and colors. There were wildflowers that were brilliant yellow, some that were red and others that were iridescent purple. This colorful world of up-and-down was the extent of my reality. Of course, to a mouse or a dog, that world of reds, greens and blues didn’t exist anymore than the ultraviolet and infrared world (experienced by bees and snakes) did for me. In fact, some animals, including birds, possess magnetoreceptors that allow them to perceive information on the quantum level (indeed, some have even speculated that bees perceive a 6-dimensional reality to encode location information).

But regardless of these differences, we genome-based creatures all share a common biological (spatio-temporal) information-processing ability. I’ve previously written how reality isn’t a hard, cold thing, but rather an active process that involves our consciousness. According to biocentrism, space and time are simply the tools our mind uses to weave information together into a coherent experience — they are the language of consciousness (in fact, in dreams your mind uses the same algorithms to create a spatio-temporal reality that is as real, 3-D and flesh-and-blood as the one you’re experiencing now). “It will remain remarkable,” said Nobel physicist Eugene Wigner, referring to a long list of scientific experiments, “that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality.”

At death there’s a break in our linear stream of consciousness, and thus a break in the linear connection of times and places. Indeed, biocentrism suggests it’s a manifold that leads to all physical possibilities. More and more physicists are beginning to accept the “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum physics, which states that there are an infinite number of universes. Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death doesn’t exist in these scenarios, since all of them exist simultaneously regardless of what happens in any of them. The “me” feeling is just energy operating in the brain. But energy never dies; it cannot be destroyed.

So what’s it like when you die? Of course, during our lives we all grow attached to the people we know and love and can never image a time without them. I subscribe to Netflix and recently went through all nine seasons of the TV series “Smallville.” I watched two or three episodes every night, day after day, for months. I watched Clark Kent (Tom Welling) grow up and go through all the normal growing pains of adolescence, young love and family dramas. He, Martha Kent (his adoptive mother) and all the other characters became part of my life. Night after night I watched him use his emerging superpowers to fight crime as he matured, first attending high school and then college. I watched him fall in love with Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk), and then become enemies with his former friend Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). When I finished the last disk, it was like they had all died — it was all over.

Despite my sense of loss, I reluctantly tried a few other TV series, eventually stumbling upon “Grey’s Anatomy.” The cycle started over again with completely different people. By the time I had finished all seven seasons, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and her fellow doctors at Seattle Grace Hospital had replaced Clark Kent, et. al as the center of my world. I became completely caught up in the swirl of their personal and professional passions. In a very real sense, death is much like finishing a good TV series, whether “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Smallville” or “Dallas,” except the multiverse has a much bigger collection of DVDs than Netflix. Just like at death, you change reference points. It’s still you, but you experience different lives, different friends and even different worlds.

Think of a football field full of stacks of DVDs piled up to the sky. At death, you’ll even get to watch some re-makes — perhaps in one, you’ll get that dream wedding dress you always wanted, or a doctor cures the disease that caused your loved one to die. The story goes on even after J.R. gets shot. Our linear concept of time means nothing to nature.

As for me, I still have Season Eight of “Grey’s Anatomy” to look forward to.

Robert Lanza has over two dozen scientific books, including “”Biocentrism” which lays out his theory of everything. You can learn more about his work at www.robertlanza.com.

How Easily the Ego Can Seduce You ~ Ed and Deb Shapiro

We’ve been seeing a lot of ego-centered attitudes flying around Washington with the deficit mess, the frustrating GOP presidential wannabes and in London with the unbelievable Murdoch fiasco. Seems like the more power one has, the more the ego dominates: Me and my opinions are more important than the needs of others. There is no limit to the damage a powerful ego can cause, from the arrogant conviction that our own opinions are only right ones and everyone should be made to agree, to wielding and abusing responsibility and authority at the expense of other people’s lives and freedoms.

The ego could be the least understood of all our human qualities. It’s the “me” bit that gives us our sense of ourselves. This is not necessarily good or bad, except when selfishness dominates our thoughts, feelings and perceptions. A positive sense of self gives us confidence and purpose, but a more negative and self-centered ego makes us unconcerned with other people’s feelings; it thrives on the idea of “me first” and impels us to cry out, “What about me? What about my feelings?”

The purpose of the ego is to be in control, and so it keeps us focused in the realm of “me-ness.” It makes us believe we are the cleverest, best informed and most important, as easily as it makes us feel unworthy, unlovable and certainly not good enough to be happy. It is this misguided sense of self that is the root cause of so much distress, both in our own lives and in the world: wars are fought, families split and friends are forgotten due to this misunderstanding.

Fostering the delusion that only “I” is important, that me and mine must come before us and ours, the ego makes us believe we are something, that this something is different, special and unique, and that we are separate from everything and everyone else. When we become aware of our essential unity and oneness with all beings, then the ego becomes redundant and loses its job. It will, therefore, do whatever it has to in order to perpetuate its employment.

Creating the illusion that we are the dust on the mirror, the ego ensures that we believe we could never be so beautiful as the radiant reflection beneath the surface. Yet how extraordinary to believe that we cannot be free when freedom is our true nature!

Hypothetically, all we need to do is let go of the focus on “me,” of our sense of separateness, our need for distinction, the grasping and clinging to our story. But this is far easier said than done. In India the ego is represented by a coconut, as this is the hardest nut to crack. Traditionally, the coconut is offered to the guru or teacher as a sign of the student’s willingness to surrender his or her ego and let go of self-obsession. Such a symbolic gesture shows that the ego is considered to be a great obstacle on the spiritual path and an even greater impediment to developing true kindness and compassion.

As we evolve in consciousness, we move from the animal-like state of preservation and survival to developing our own identity as a separate individual. In the process we become more self-centered. The next step is the development of the true individual — one who experiences no separation between self and other and awakens loving kindness. We always remind ourselves what the Dalai Lama said to us when we met with him: We are all equal here. The depth of this statement always connects us to our humility.

The need to reach the top of the mountain, to accomplish our desires and be successful, is the natural impulse to move toward experiencing greater happiness. The difficulty lies in believing that success means being all-powerful; we forget that there is a difference between being powerful in the sense of being egotistic and controlling, and being powerful meaning full of loving kindness and compassion. True power is not corruptive or abusive, as we are seeing in Washington and London; it transcends greed and serves for the benefit of all.

Meditation cultivates awareness so we are able to see the ego at play, how manipulative and self-serving it can be and how it easily dominates our behavior. Such a reflective practice gives us the experience of no separation and reveals genuine compassion.

How does your ego rule you?

Richard Moss – Inside Out Healing

Join world-renowned consciousness teacher and healer Richard Moss in an exploration of the power of presence in your life. It is presence that frequently is the “difference that makes the difference” in your ability to enjoy life, heal emotional wounds, experience intimacy, and support the growth and transformation of others.

This inspiring book presents powerful principles, tools, and practices for transforming self-limiting patterns of thought and behaviors and for staying in the present even in the midst of very difficult feelings. Drawing from individual counseling sessions and utilizing practical exercises, Dr. Moss demonstrates how awareness and presence can be applied to support change in yourself and others, thereby creating a solid bridge between knowing and doing.

Richard Moss introduces his new book ‘Inside Out Healing’.

Richard Moss, M.D., is an internationally respected leader in the
field of conscious living and inner transformation. He is the author
of six seminal books on using the power of awareness to realize our
intrinsic wholeness and reclaim the wisdom of our true selves. He
lives in Ojai, California. Richards retreats include The Radical Aliveness retreat and Mandala of Being Training. His books include The Mandala Of Being, The Black Butterfly and The Eye That Is We.

Ghosts Among Us: Uncovering the Truth About the Other Side by James Van Praagh

James Van Praagh, world-renowned medium and best selling author of Talking To Heaven, releases his much-anticipated new book Ghosts Among Us – Uncovering The Truth About The Other Side.

Everyone loves a good ghost story. Perhaps the human fascination with the supernatural stems from the fact that most of us, at some point in our lives, have experienced something we couldn’t quite explain. From a very young age James Van Praagh was aware of a dimension that most of us cannot see, and he has dedicated his life to explaining it to the rest of us. Ghosts Among Us takes us on an incredible journey into the spirit world that brings to light one of our greatest mysteries — what happens to us after we die?

Van Praagh, the New York Times bestselling author and co-executive producer of the CBS series Ghost Whisperer, shares his knowledge and life experience about ghosts, a subject that can seem to many of us both bizarre and terrifying. But when the world beyond is explained fully by an experienced guide, dismissal and apprehension can be turned into knowledge and inspiration.

With incredible true ghost stories and surprising details about how ghosts actively participate in our lives, Van Praagh challenges us to question our perceptions and shows us how we can live more fully through understanding the world of spirits. Including eerily accurate readings, the author’s development as a medium, and detailed how-to information, Ghosts Among Us is an all-encompassing guide to the supernatural.

James Van Praagh, world-renowned medium and best-selling author of Talking To Heaven, releases his much-anticipated new book “Ghosts Among Us — Uncovering The Truth About The Other Side.”

Everyone loves a good ghost story. Perhaps the human fascination with the supernatural stems from the fact that most of us, at some point in our lives, have experienced something we couldn’t quite explain. From a very young age James Van Praagh was aware of a dimension that most of us cannot see, and he has dedicated his life to explaining it to the rest of us. Ghosts Among Us takes us on an incredible journey into the spirit world that brings to light one of our greatest mysteries — what happens to us after we die?

Van Praagh, the New York Times bestselling author and co-executive producer of the CBS series Ghost Whisperer, shares his knowledge and life experience about ghosts, a subject that can seem to many of us both bizarre and terrifying. But when the world beyond is explained fully by an experienced guide, dismissal and apprehension can be turned into knowledge and inspiration.

With incredible true ghost stories and surprising details about how ghosts actively participate in our lives, Van Praagh challenges us to question our perceptions and shows us how we can live more fully through understanding the world of spirits. Including eerily accurate readings, the author’s development as a medium, and detailed how-to information, Ghosts Among Us is an all-encompassing guide to the supernatural.

Right Here with You: Bringing Mindful Awareness into Our Relationships

In recent years scientists have discovered that mindfulness can reduce stress, improve mood, and enhance our sense of well-being. In this book, readers learn how mindfulness can be brought to bear in our relationships to increase intimacy, strengthen communication, and help us to find greater fulfilment.
Topics in this collection include how to open your heart and develop lovingkindness for yourself and others, how to improve communication through mindful speech and deep listening, noticing and counteracting destructive patterns, and discovering how intimate relationships can become a rich form of spiritual practice.
Chapters and contributors include:

• Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on what mindfulness is and why it lies at the heart real love
• Psychotherapist David Richo on finding a partner
• Author Elizabeth Gilbert on conflict and communication
• Psychotherapist and meditation teacher Tara Brach on the power of forgiveness
• Rabbi Harold Kushner on striving to give love rather than get it
• Novelist Jane Hamilton on a marital meltdown—and recovery
• Meditation teacher Susan Piver on the value of heartbreak
• Psychologist John Welwood on relationships as a path of personal and spiritual growth

Mindful Presence: The Heart of Mind Fitness Training ~ Joel and Michelle Levey

Much of our work with organizations and individuals centers around the development of what we call “mind fitness.” Mind fitness means having a mind that’s fit for action and insight. At the heart and core of this kind of mind-body-spirit training is the practice of “mindful presence” — the essential key to mind fitness.

In future blog posts, we’ll introduce and invite you to explore the various disciplines of mind fitness. While all of these are vital to success, foremost and foundational among them is the discipline of mindful presence, so we’ll begin here. This discipline is developed through the cultivation of mindfulness and the mastery of attention. Research shows that daily practice of mindfulness creates measurable changes in brain function associated with decreases in our vulnerability to stress and distress, increases our enjoyment of the moment, improves health and performance, increases our happiness, improves emotional intelligence and deepens the wisdom, confidence and courage we bring to life — and work!

The cultivation of mindfulness is essentially the practice of presence, deep listening and awareness. Mindfulness enables you to wake up and be more fully present to what is really going on in your inner and outer worlds, and to the stream of moment-to-moment change. Mindfulness offers you greater choice and the capacity to live-on-purpose as an alternative to living a reactionary life dominated by mindless habit and out of control reactivity.

The practice of mindfulness also provides a powerful tool to discover the true depth and dimension of our experience. As we see more clearly and understand more deeply, our insight grows and opens new dimensions of freedom, health and change resilience in our lives. Mindfulness is the basis of wisdom, appreciation and gratitude. Its essence is deep listening, an open, non-judgmental yet discerning quality of attentiveness that embraces every fleeting experience with acceptance, investigation and non-attachment.

To experience mindfulness in this moment:

Simply look out through your eyes right now and know that you are seeing.

Bring your attention to the easy natural flow of your breathing, being mindful of the stream of sensations as you breathe in … and being mindful as you breathe out … By being mindful of the natural flow of your breathing, you develop a way to anchor and stabilize your mindful, clear presence within the streaming flow of moment-to-moment change that is your life.

Allow this clear, natural mindfulness to welcome the coming and flowing of every element of your experience. Notice how every sound, sight, sensation, thought, feeling and experience comes and flows. Be mindful of the river of change that flows as your life with awareness.

Complement your mindful awareness with a gentle, self-referential smile — like a smile in your heart. This smile will help you maintain a sense of perspective, curiosity, acceptance and open-mindedness. Smiling gently in this way will also help protect you from trying too hard or being too self-critical in your cultivation of mindfulness.

Throughout the day, bring your mindful, clear presence to whatever you are doing and to being more fully present with whomever you are with.

Experiment with setting the intention to be more mindful and present with simple activities that have a clear beginning and end. For example, mindfully walk from the parking lot to your office, take a mindful shower, eat a mindful meal or go for a mindful walk or jog.

When your mind wanders or your attention fades, note the distraction as soon as you become aware of it, and then without blame or judgment simply refresh your mindful presence and return your attention to whatever you choose to attend to.

If you are like most people you have dozens, if not hundreds, of interactions with people in an average day. One powerful strategy for practicing mindfulness is to set the intention to engage in a significant number of daily interactions as opportunities to practice “mindful dialogue.” This involves being vividly mindful of what you see, hear or sense from the people you are talking with, while simultaneously being mindful of the flow of your own inner personal experiences as you are engaged in that dialogue.

Your practice of mindfulness can take two basic forms:

One is the practice of mindful presence in the midst of the ordinary activities of your daily life.

The second way to practice mindfulness is more as a quiet meditation practice. In this mode, you simply sit quietly, focus your mindfulness on the flow of your breath and mindfully notice the flow of experiences as they come and go. Be mindful of how the waves of the breath come and flow. Let this be your resting place and anchor of awareness. Mindfully notice how external perceptions come and flow from the world around you. Mindfully attend to how the sensations in your body come and flow. As thoughts or mental images arise, be mindful of how they too arise and pass. As emotions come to your awareness, be mindful of them as arising and passing in the clear space of your mindful presence. As desires, intentions or other mind-states arise, be mindful of how these similarly come and flow. With mindful clear presence, embrace the flow of your experience, with great curiosity, openness and compassion. Remain in this stream of experience for five, 10, 20 or 30 minutes at a time, and allow yourself to awaken ever more fully to the wisdom of your true nature, complexity and dimensionality.

Once you understand how to practice the discipline of mindful presence you can never say, “I don’t have time to meditate,” because mindfulness can be activated in virtually every situation and activity of your complex and busy life. This means that every activity and encounter offers you the opportunity to develop and strengthen your mind fitness.

As you cultivate this quality of mindful presence, you’ll begin to realize that you are part of a vast community of people in all walks of life and arenas of work who are engaged in this practice. Hundreds of studies have demonstrated the clinical and performance enhancing benefits of the mind fitness practice of mindfulness.

Over the past 20 years, the discipline of mindfulness meditation has become an integral element in the success path of leaders from many disciplines. In our own work, we’ve taught mindfulness as a core success strategy to thousands of leaders in hundreds of organizations around the globe. In our work with the largest, most successful division of Hewlett-Packard, mindfulness was one of the core values held by senior leaders as a key to their success.

During the once secret “Ultimate Warrior Training Program” (aka Jedi Warrior) that we co-designed and led for the U.S. Army Green Berets, we guided two A-Teams of Special Forces troops on an intensive 30-day silent mindfulness retreat called “The Encampment,” which equipped them with skills to succeed on a series of missions that no other teams had ever succeeded in before. One of our teams was later selected as the most outstanding team in the NATO games. This program was described by leaders at West Point Military Academy as “the most exquisite orchestration of human technology we have ever seen.”

At Google, we teach a course called “The Meditation and Mindfulness Laboratory” for leaders and software engineers seeking to de-bug and reengineer their own personal operating systems. At M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center and dozens of other leading medical centers and medical schools, we’ve also taught mindfulness disciplines to hundreds of physicians, nurses, faculty and administrators, and many of them have fully integrated these methods into their daily lives and work. Surgeons who train in mindfulness make fewer mistakes and have better surgical outcomes. In medicine, mindfulness also offers relief from a myriad of stress-related maladies and speeds recovery time.

The practice of mindful presence has also been a vital success strategy in our mentoring of numerous world class and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes who have stretched the envelope of success to new proportions. Just imagine what will be possible for you as you develop greater mindful presence and mind fitness in your own life.

Joel & Michelle Levey are internationally recognized speakers, authors, educators, and consultants. Founders of WisdomAtWork.com, the enduring benefits of their pioneering work in mind fitness, change resilience, collective intelligence and innovation has inspired leaders in hundreds of organizations around the globe including: NASA, World Bank, Google, Intel, Hewlett Packard, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Microsoft, Washington Athletic Club, NOAA, MIT, SportsMind, SRI International, Forest Ethics, EarthSave, U.S. Surgeon General’s Office, U.S. Special Forces, and The Clinton Global Initiative.

They are faculty at University of Minnesota’s Center for Spirituality and Health and Bastyr University Center for Spirituality, Science, and Medicine, and advisors for the International Campaign for Compassionate Cities. The Leveys’ published works include: Living in Balance: A Dynamic Approach for Creating Harmony & Wholeness in a Chaotic World; Wisdom at Work; A Treasury of Tools for Cultivating Clarity, Kindness, & Resilience; Luminous Mind: Meditation and Mind Fitness; The Fine Arts of Relaxation, Concentration, and Meditation: Ancient Skills for Modern Mind.

Mindfulness is the foundation for any successful meditation practice in daily life. It is the gateway to living in greater harmony and balance and opens the door for deeper wisdom and compassion to guide our lives-work.

In this excerpt taken from their class presented live online by eMindful.com, Dr. Joel & Michelle Levey explore the profoundly practical ways to weave the contemplative inner-science traditions into the fabric of your everyday life.

eMindful (www.emindful.com) is the leading Internet source for comprehensive health and wellness services. Courses include mindful eating, stress management, forgiveness, yoga, and Mindfulness-Based Chronic Pain Management. eMindful’s online courses offer cost-effective and convenient access to our internationally acclaimed team of experts with whom you may see, hear, and interact, live in eMindful’s virtual classroom, while still in the comfort of your home, at the office, or anywhere you can have a broadband Internet connection.

Eckhart on Prayer

Q: From the time I was a little girl, I was raised as a Catholic. I went completely full circle to denying God, not believing in God. And now, thanks to a large extent what you teach and share, I know that connectedness is there, awareness, Stillness is there. But I got the thought, why do I pray? Because if God is all-knowing, omnipotent, all-loving, and so on, I don’t think he/she/it needs me to say, “Psst – my friend is dying of cancer, can you help her?” I don’t think it’s necessary, but I enjoy praying. I’d love to hear your thoughts; what would be appropriate to pray for? Do you believe in prayer?

ET: Perhaps you can upgrade your prayers from petitionary prayers (“please make this happen”) to little mental pointers, towards peace for example. Little mental pointers still use concepts, because every prayer consists of words and concepts – to point, to help you go beyond concepts. You could say, for example, an affirmation – like what Jesus said, “I am the light of the word”. It’s an affirmation – it’s a concept, it points to a reality far deeper than the words. You can say, if you still want some petition, “please let me know that I am the light of the world”. Duality is implied usually, in the usual prayer.

It implies that there is God, and here is me, asking God. That duality is ultimately an illusion, because you are an expression of God. You and God merge. The deepest prayers, then, are no longer prayers as such. They are when you adopt a listening attitude rather than a saying of words. As long as you enjoy it, that’s fine. But gradually get away from asking somebody to do something for you, because that keeps you stuck in duality.

Affirmations, if they are done rightly, can be very beautiful substitutes for prayers. “I am healed and whole and at peace”. And after that, let there be a space. And really, the power is in that space. In the space, you experience that you are already whole. The outward form might tell you something different – “I am holy”, A Course in Miracles says. You are, and so it’s simply an affirmation of how it is. Healing, for somebody else – you are either with that person, or that person comes into your mind, that person may be ill.

The most powerful healing, I find, is to hold an image of that person and then go deeper into yourself, where the wholeness of life lies. Where nothing is needed, nothing needs to be added. There you find the wholeness also of that person – they are already healed at the deepest level, beyond form. So you go from form, into formlessness.

That is the healing that was practiced by Joel Goldsmith, he has a lovely book called “The Art of Spiritual Healing”. That is really not to dwell at all on the condition that needs to be healed, but to focus on the essential reality of that human being which is one with your essential reality, and go into deep Stillness where nothing is needed.

He would often get phone calls, sometimes in the middle of the night. Someone would desperately need healing, and they would tell him the name of the person and what they were suffering from. What he would then do is immediately put the phone down and go into absolutely no thought. For a moment he heard the name of the person, he heard what was wrong with them, and immediately let go of that, then for two or three minutes went into no thought – just absolute presence. There is absolute perfection in the realm of the formless. And that is the essence of the person who needed healing. So you take the form into the formless, where the form is no longer. No condition to be treated, nothing is needed, just go into that.

That was his way of healing. He was quite a powerful healer. That is the ultimate form of healing, and that really is the non-dual kind of prayer. It’s going beyond prayer where you say “Please God, heal” – you go to the very Source itself, that is inseparable from who you are, and is inseparable from who that person is.

Prayer can gradually become listening to God rather than talking to God. What does listening mean? Listening means there is a field of bare, pure attention. Listening does not mean that you are waiting for some answer, because then you are not really listening. In listening you are not waiting for anything – there is just a field of pure attention.

That is a much deeper prayer than any words. True prayer is where prayer also becomes meditation. Not even wanting an answer, it’s enough to be in the silence. Sometimes an answer comes, or the thing becomes resolved, sometimes, suddenly. Listen. Any trouble in this world, any disturbance, and they happen all the time – people around you, or a disturbance in the mind, goes into pure aware, listening presence. Listening is a way of speaking about presence. When you are present, it is as if you are in a state of listening.

Now, listening is usually associated with the auditory sense perception. But this listening goes beyond the auditory sense perception; it’s the state of consciousness that underlies the auditory sense perception. Everybody knows what that is like – because when you are really listening for some faint sound, what is the state of consciousness that underlies this listening for the faint sound? It’s a state of absolute, relaxed alertness. So when we say listening, it’s a helpful thing because everybody knows what listening means. I am just pointing out that it’s not the external sense perception that is the essence in listening; the essence in listening is the underlying state of consciousness, of absolute receptivity and alert presence.

This is why I believe that Jesus had parables about the servant and staying awake, because he doesn’t know when the master is going to come home. Many of the things have come down in a somewhat distorted way, because it was transmitted verbally, and then written down, and in the process some things got turned around or went missing.

I think he was talking about the attitude of that – a state of consciousness, the servant waiting just to hear the master come home. It’s waiting in a different sense from the normal thing that we call ‘waiting’, which is the mind saying “When is it going to happen? Why isn’t it happening yet?” – he uses waiting in a completely different sense. Many times Jesus talked about staying awake, that’s a very important part of his teaching – stay awake, don’t go to sleep, stay present. Any words you use in prayer, use them as pointers toward that. You could say “I am listening”.