CHAPTER 1

A path home to yourself

You have been invited here to share in the idea of Being. Be,such a little word ... but this two-letter word contains suchpower, power that is waiting to be used, embraced, and awakened.You might have discovered through your experiences that it is thelittle things in life that count the most. Well, this is one of thoselittle things. For a moment, I ask you to put aside your ideas of lifeas you know it and consider a concept of Being in a world of infinitepossibilities. In this world, anything you can imagine exists and isjust waiting to materialize.

All that is needed is your belief in that, whatever you choose tohave, those things or experiences will appear in your life. After all,at some level, you are co-creating every experience you have everhad or ever will have. Even if you don't realize it, you are doing justthat. Since you are sending these experiences to yourself, you havethe opportunity to walk through them with all that you are. As youmove into that place within yourself that words cannot describe andthat exists only as a feeling—a knowing—you will begin to accessyour true self. When you do, you will possess a greater sense of eachof those experiences by accessing the diff erent perspectives the all ofyou has about them. Maybe I need to define what I mean by the allof you.

As you travel through the dynamics of life, you create differentselves for each of your major interactions. You go from a child—anundefined free spirit ready to experience everything—to an adult socompartmentalized that you sometimes lose the very knowing youhad as a child. You allow yourself (and your mind) to be definedby so many externals that you forget who you really are. It is thesedefined separate selves that I am calling the all of you. Until now, thatis how you have allowed yourself to experience life—bringing to thesurface the self or selves you think are needed for each of your manyencounters within your day-to-day life dynamics. Those are usuallythe only selves that share in the encounters, so those are the onlyselves providing feedback and perspectives. This process might haveseemed to serve you thus far, but it is limited because the all of you(your complete self) was not present.

There are so many choices that you will be faced within your life,so why not begin to use all of what you gain from having the all of youactive with your experiences as a part of those choices? Some choicesyou make consciously, but so many more are made unconsciously,following the reactive-self programmed into you by the day-to-daydoings of life dynamics. Far too often, you go through life using your"just be" power without really giving it much thought. The beauty ofthis power is that it does not require your conscience thought to work.It just is.... It is waiting to express itself through you. Just Being bringsyou home to yourself to discover the very foundation that you use tobuild everything. Just Being is where you are when you stop doing(processing through the limits of the mind). It is what everything inlife, beyond your thinking self, is built on. When you release yourmind's grip on you, you achieve what is called the balance of nature.You observe how, in this undisturbed place, everything works in aharmony far beyond the limits of the mind. There are no schedules,no deadlines, no must-haves, and no to-do list. Time is not rushingby; there are no worries over not having enough time to get it alldone. Can you even imagine such a place within your own life? Yousee it, but you don't see it at the level needed to embrace that sameenergy and connection in your own life. When you observe natureoutside man's interferences, you see Being power at work in its purestform.

Everything you do in life is built on this foundation of Being,but you give little thought to that part of your process. So muchemphasis in life focuses on doing that when someone is asked, "Whoare you?", most often the answer is expressed as what the persondoes. "I am a lawyer," "I am a doctor," "I am a CEO," or "I am astudent in my junior year." The answers might be detailed in scope,but they are empty in true substance. These are merely aspects ofyour life to which you apply yourself to earn your living, increaseyour knowledge, and move up the ladder of success. These thingsdo not define you, and yet you get caught up in them as though theydo. You often wear your "doing self" as a badge of honor and are lostwithout it. Far too often, you find yourself out of a certain "doingplace" (having lost a job, for instance) and spend too much time lostin the "What am I going to do now?" state of mind. What you dois a part of your life dynamic, but it is only a part. You forgot thatyou first have to be something before you can do something. Firstyou are, and then you do. The question that begs to be answeredis, What is this something that you are? Seeking the answer to thatquestion begins a process that points the way to discovering yourunique foundation—your Being self. This awareness allows youto bring your Beingness into your doingness. After all, you are aHuman Being, not a Human Doing.

WHO AM I? This is such a powerful beginning of self-discovery.For with this one question, you start a journey into a most wonderfulplace.... Yourself. The beauty of this journey is no matter where youare on your path, you will have come home to yourself and the manypossibilities that exist there. On this journey, you begin to discoverhow many of the ideas you have about yourself are not really yours,but are, rather, the thoughts or opinions of others, which you chooseto hold on to. In your heart, you might not even agree with theseopinions but only accept them because you heard them from differentsources, or from people you respect or admire.

For the present, I would like you to put away all those outeropinions and base this exploration on only your opinions, yourthoughts, and the inner visions you hold about yourself. I wantyou to go one step further and base your views only on where youare within yourself right now. Never mind about who you were, orwhat you thought of yourself, before now. Discovering who you arenow is all that matters. Focus on comparing what you see with theidea of the greatest vision you have ever had about yourself, basedonly on looking inward. Release any and all comparisons to thingsoutside of you. Go deep inside and discover the all of you, hiddenbehind the many closed doors you have created by just reacting tothe dynamics of life. Behind each of those doors, you will discoverthe many treasures of your best self just waiting to be released andreconnected to you, by you, for you. Each is a gem of untold beautyand strength, assembled there to form the very foundation that isyou. When you get there, you discover a wonderful place within youthat has always been there, waiting for your visit, waiting to becomea part of you again, a reconnection to your true self. And, since allthis exists within you, you can visit as often as you like. After all,it is such a wonderful place, a place of such peace and awareness ...your peace. From here, anything is possible, because all your "JustBe" power extends from this place. All you have to do is decide toBe to uncover the infinite wonders waiting to be enlightened by you.You will find your uniqueness, your specialness, your strength, andyour love. Fly as you are, high above the seeming limitations thathave been keeping you from your full potential. Release any thoughtsthat do not fit with the you you discover yourself to be. Redefineany negative experiences or hurts that you still feel the need to holdon to, as the enlightenments that helped bring you to who you areright here, right now. You may discover that those were the veryexperiences needed to bring (or point) you to a greater sense of yourinner strengths. After all, remember, you sent them to yourself fora reason. As you move through the experiences in your life as you,those reasons are revealed.

CHAPTER 2

Your "Doing Self"

Uncovering your doing process

As a child, you came into this world as pure Being. Littlewas expected of you, and your presence usually brought greatjoy to everyone around you. You slept, ate, and observed the worldfrom a place of pure peace. All your needs were attended to withoutquestion or doubt. This is the period in your life that you know onlyfrom your experience memory. Since you had no language, as younow know it, this experience of life was retained as just feeling. Fewpeople have the ability to connect with their sense memories, becausewe have moved so far away from the way and the place in which westored those experiences. Slowly but surely, the Beingness of life wasreplaced with the Doingness of existence.

As you learned your language, you began to assign words todefine the experiences that you just used to store as only experience.That is how your parents and teachers prepared you for life in thisworld. They were just doing what others have done before them andpassing things on the same way they were taught themselves. Littledid they know that this process is the first step toward the creation ofyour "doing" self. The doing world of existence can be so loud that thequiet calm of pure Being is lost, sort of like how the hustle and bustleof the city noise can drown out the gentle sounds of nature. Now,those sounds don't go anywhere; you just forget that they are therebecause the sounds of the city draw all of your attention. After all,this is where you dwell, work, and connect with all the experiencesthat make up your life. The gentle sounds of nature have little todo with your day-to-day doing experiences, so you don't pay themany attention. You have to stay focused and build on those doingexperiences to survive, get ahead, climb the ladder of success andmany other such doing tasks. These tasks are what you use to defineyour goals in life. This and similar mindsets are how most of us havebeen taught to move through and process the experiences of life.

Early in my journey, I discovered that I derived much comfortfrom my ability to do many things well. My personal drive wouldkick in, and I became self-motivated. I taught myself the basics ofphotography, and my early interest in electronic engineering made mea natural when it came to computers. My skills behind the camera, myknowledge of anything computer-related, and my handyman skillsmade me the go-to person. I became the resource that many wouldrely on for the answers of how to do this or that. If I did not know theanswer, I could figure it out or find a solution faster than those askingfor help. My sense of worth was defined by this ability, although I didnot know that then. I made it my goal to excel at whatever I put myefforts into. I was living the adage "Anything worth doing is worthdoing well." Now, that goal was a good thing, because being a "get itdone kind of person" helped me build a successful business. At somepoint, there was nothing else to prove, so learning more just expandedmy knowledge base, but did little for my sense of self. I had reachedthe point where this ability no longer brought me any joy. Having thisskill and knowledge meant nothing to me unless I was being calledon to use the skills. I soon realized that I was using this ability assomething to define my self worth, which was not such a good thing.I still liked helping others, but it was more out of habit. This lackof fulfillment from my "doing" fed my desire to search for answers.Why would something I was doing and was good at no longer giveme the same satisfaction it once did? I discovered that my journeyinto Being had begun to reduce the effect and the power doing hadin my life. But, this was not revealed until much farther down theroad. It began as a simple shift and grew into a level of enlightenmentand understanding that now serves me well. My ability to help othersis still intact, but I do it out of service to others, which brings me adifferent sense of joy.

On this journey, you will discover that experiences just are, andthey become what you call them. (This is your strongest, but oftenunused, or misused, ability.) So, why not call them something thatempowers the true you? Stop assigning meanings based on howyou have been taught or what seems to be the accepted (so-called)"norm." Base your experiences on who you are or who you chooseto Be at any given moment. Look for, discover or decide the reasonsand the good in every experience, despite how it might feel to you atthat moment. Don't settle for the ways you have always done things.You have the power to decide what anything and everything is toyou. Up until now, you may have seen things only as how they affectyou at that moment and reacted to those feelings. You just did whatyou did when you felt what you felt. You also held onto the reactionso you could use it again when faced with a similar experience. Doyou create a guard (build a wall) inside you to block yourself frombeing hurt or affected like that again? Or do you just put that part ofyourself way back so that it would be harder for anyone or anythingto get to it again? Any of these methods or processes block andseparate you from the fullness of your Being. Over time, you becomeso compartmentalized that you have to work too hard to access allof you. Do this long enough, and you might even forget how. Fartoo often, you created a new smaller version of yourself to put out inthe world, but kept the best of yourself hidden away. Fear of gettinghurt replaced that childlike wonderful view of the experiences oflife as something to be discovered, explored and embraced. Littleby little, this free spirit, full of limitless possibilities, was replacedwith a mind-generated, lesser version of you. You moved through lifedefined by doing and were lost in a Doing Existence, going alongwith the so-called norm. Since this seems to be the way of the world,you feel as though you fit in. You feel that this is just a part of thenormal flow of day-to-day life. To do otherwise would make you toodifferent and out of step with those around you. You might even drawundue attention to yourself because of this difference. And you knowyou can't have that! Or can you?

How many times have you looked back and thought of thedifferent ways that you might have reacted to your many experiences?Did you find ways that were more desirable, more like the self youconnect with when you remove your fears? You know it has beensaid that "Hindsight is 20-20," so just imagine the outcome if, whenfaced with those experiences, that you had immediate access to thereaction you usually only come up with later. Well, you did, sort of,but as a reaction to (your doing self), not as the creation of (yourBeing self) your response. That is when you realize hindsight is justforesight without a future. You don't spend enough time lookingbefore you leap when faced with many of the experiences that affectyou, adopting a sort of "act now, ask questions later" sort of posture.What created this process for you and why do you think that is theway you should react? You spend a lot of time reacting to things in lifewhile allowing those things or opinions of others to determine whatyou do. What would have been the difference if you had looked atyourself in those experiences and asked, "Who am I in this?" Do youthink that you may have had a different response to that experience?At the very least, you might have responded in a way that left youno reason to look back and second-guess. When you create ratherthan react, you achieve the possibility of an outcome more to yourliking. By becoming more consistent with the self, you are beginning,discovering, and deciding to Be.

Until now, you have spent much of your life building a self, basedon external opinions, comparisons, and reactions. Just "doing" overand over again, reinforcing the self-created by this process: the DoingSelf. Everything you have been doing to this point has been based onwho you thought you were at any given moment. It could be no otherway given how you were taught. The change I want you to considerand take forward is adding conscious choice to the process. When youchoose, you decide; you become proactive in your experiences andbegin to "Just Be" from a place of knowing. Knowing just is, anddiscovering and deciding just who you are is the result. You beginBeing on purpose, using all that you are in every experience. Yougrow stronger and stronger in the process. Bring your Beingness intoyour Doingness and step out into the world with strides of greatnessthat is you.

As you travel through your life situations (or illusions of life),you have glimpses of your true Being self. You may choose to noticeit and write it off to not being yourself, or ignore it altogether. Th epossibility of discovering that self is with you always. It waits for youto awaken and choose how you will make it a part of your life. Th atchoice is and has always been yours. You make decisions every daybased on your mind-created limited idea of yourself. Basing thosesame decisions on such externals as how others around you mightreact to your choices. Although you are responding from the selfyou think you know, it is rarely your full self. Being your true selfis not something that you create through thinking, but somethingthat you are. It is what you experience when you stop thinking, stopdoing, shut out the noise of the world and just bask in the sense ofyour true self: your Beingness. In those moments, just observe, don'tthink, don't quantify—no need to try to classify, label or judge, butdiscover anew. In that newness, you are reborn to the next highestversion of the best vision you have of yourself. When that is yourvision, your belief, and your goal, that is the very experience youcontinue to create for yourself. The more you grow from within, themore you expand that vision of self. Each experience being you is anew opportunity to create and awaken (discover) all that you are.