ow conditioned you are

mental environment

What you think and what you do are guided by what you value and by what you feel is essential. Therefore, to learn of your self-expression you must learn what these things mean for you. Here, in order to begin to develop a truly objective view of yourself, you must first recognize the way you want to see yourself, the way you want to see the world and the way you want to see other people. Here you must face your pain and error, not to condemn yourself but with the desire to see and to understand. Here you learn to view others with this greater objectivity, not to condemn them but to see and to understand. The ability to gain this objectivity and this self-awareness comes by following the means that are provided in The Greater Community Way of Knowledge, for you cannot teach yourself these skills. You cannot lift yourself up. You must engage your personal mind in specific forms of education that enable it to come into harmony with your greater life and your greater mind, which are represented by your Knowledge.

You are expressing yourself continuously. Your thoughts are affecting the mental environment, and your actions are affecting the physical environment. You live in both environments. They co-exist together. You are becoming more aware of your physical environment, but the mental environment is still a great mystery to you. Everyone else is living in these environments as well, and they too are expressing themselves every moment of every day. The interaction between human beings, then, becomes quite complex. It is complex because people are unaware of their self-expression. They interact with each other, but then they have their interpretations of the interaction, which can be quite different from the interaction itself. When you are unaware of something, you make judgments in order to give yourself explanations upon which you build your assumptions about life and your sense of self. This complexity between human beings is not natural. In other words, it is not meant to be that way. It is complicated by the fact that people are unaware of their self-expression and because they are unaware of their self-expression, they base their actions and thinking upon assumptions, which may have little to do with reality as it is occurring moment to moment. This is what makes things complex between people. Indeed, if you think about this and consider it, it may seem hopelessly complex. How can one gain a real experience of self-expression and the interaction with other human beings without being governed by personal fear or personal preference, by judgments and beliefs? How can one have a real and direct experience that is not colored by these things or distorted by them? Indeed, because people are so minimally aware of the mental environment in which they live and have such little recognition of their self-expression, this problem can seem enormous and the solution can seem far in the future, if it is possible to accomplish at all.

SELF-EXPRESSION & THE MENTAL ENVIRONMENT

Chapter 12 SELF-EXPRESSION & THE MENTAL ENVIRONMENT

SERVICE OTHERS

SERVING OTHERS

You want your reward to give you greater awareness, greater affinity with life and a greater sense of your value and purpose in the world--not the value and purpose that you invent for your own delights, but the value and purpose that are intrinsic to your being here. This value cannot be exhausted. It will not leave you and will only grow as greater attention, time and energy are devoted to its expression and experience.

The Greater Community Way of Knowledge

he expectation of romance in relationship exacts an exorbitant price, both immediately in terms of time, energy and attention and in a long-range sense. People lose so much over this pursuit and how little is their reward--a few moments of self-inflated pleasure or self-abandonment or a few moments of physical sensation, none of which can be maintained for long. The reality of the relationship can seem very depressing in contrast to the thrill of romance. That is because people invest in the romance and not in the relationship.

POSSESSIONS

POSSESSIONS

Knowledge

Knowledge

Most of the pleasures that are damaging to people are damaging because the investment is great and the reward is very small. In many cases, there is no reward at all. There is only investment and reinvestment. Here we have the contrast between fantasy regarding the pleasure and the real experience. How often have you been disappointed by the real experience of something because the anticipation was so great and so inflated and you had invested so much? Then the real experience came, and it really was not that fine after all. Observe little children around Christmas, how their anticipation and their expectations are so great. The investment of time, energy and attention is so great, but after the gifts are all unwrapped, there is disappointment. The investment is great. The reward is small. Consider how many times you were disappointed by things that you had hoped would be wonderful and magnificent. Why the disappointment? Because the investment was great and the reward was small. Recall experiences where you made an investment of yourself and there was no reward at all.

PLEASURE

PLEASURE

pleasure

When people speak of religion and argue about which is best or truest or has God's blessing to the greatest degree, we must always ask, "What do you do for practice? What are you doing that is advancing yourself and enabling you to be exemplary to others?" That is the only question we need to ask about religion. God is not interested in religion, only in advancement. That is all that matters. If you think of it like this, it will make sense to you. You can leave all sectarian controversies behind for those who cannot practice.

ACHIEVEMENT

You cannot carry on substantial physical achievement and spiritual achievement simultaneously. One must follow another because they both require too much time. It is possible that someone who has achieved something physically that is very substantial will have a real emergence spiritually and vice-versa. You cannot succeed in two realms simultaneously, though many people are trying currently. They are trying very hard to be magnificent in all aspects and do you know what? They don't make much progress in any aspect. You see, you can't trick the way things are and find a new way to slip through the loophole in life.

ACHIEVEMENT

PERCEPTION

PERCEPTION

The problem, then, is that people are involved with their thoughts and not with life. This creates a very great gulf in your experience.

when you say, "I create my reality," what you are saying is that you are creating an interpretation of what you can experience. If you can only experience this much of life, and it is all your interpretation, then you see your range of perception is very limited. But your Knowledge, which you carry within yourself, is capable of opening your perception completely. Without so much incessant thinking, wondering, asking, pondering, manipulating, planning and scheming, and so forth, the greater part of your mind, your Knowledge, can begin to show you things. It is not difficult to have direct experience. You simply must not be doing anything else.

The fact is you only create interpretations of reality. A better interpretation may be more pleasant temporarily, but you are still disassociated from yourself and life. It is this disassociation that must be bridged. Life is happening all around you, an incredible panorama. But you cannot experience it. Your Teachers are with you, helping you in amazing ways, but you do not know that they are there. There are genuine relationships waiting for you in life, waiting for you to be ready and desirous of them, but you must have the capability and the desire.

you can sit and be totally involved with your own mind and be totally uninvolved with everything around you, unaware of forces that are influencing you-forces that are helpful for you and forces that are not helpful for you. This is a profound disadvantage! This is why people are having problems. There is not a problem with reality, but there is a great problem with interpretation and self-absorption. At the very beginning of true learning, then, each person must become aware of their self-absorption-how much they are involved with their own mind and how little they are involved in life. Often it can seem very upsetting or disappointing and even insulting when you find out that you are actually experiencing very little of life and thinking a great deal.

people live in their minds and not in life. This is the source of all of your difficulties. You are more engaged with your ideas than you are with life. Being engaged with life means that you are directly involved and are having a direct experience.

When we speak of perception, we are speaking of your interpretation of the reality that you can experience. What you experience is interpretive. It is very rare that people have a direct experience of anything! Direct experience means that you are experiencing a reality that is beyond your interpretation. A very rare and great experience this is. It could be the common denominator of your experience, but in fact it is quite rare and phenomenal because 99.9% of your experience is interpretation of the reality that you can experience. When I say "the reality that you can experience," I mean that you can only experience a little bit of reality because of your limited capacity and range of perception. So, it is not merely the interpretation of reality at large; it is interpretation of the reality that you can experience.

Most people's problems are hypothetical anyway. There is the problem and there is the interpretation of the problem, which can be quite different from the problem itself. People say, "I want to have a relationship in my life now," which may not be the problem. So, why should I try to resolve something that is not the problem? The problem is not that they do not have a relationship, but that they need to develop something else that is more important! That is very often the case, but people do not see that as the avenue that they must follow. They are lonely, so they want a mate. But, I say "stillness."

he world needs the truth you have within yourself. The world cannot give it to you. But once you give it, the world will bear witness to Knowledge because Knowledge is everywhere. A mind without fear can see this. A mind with fear can only see its own thoughts and interpretations. It is not free to see or to know. It is out of relationship with life. Your life must be beyond this world for you to experience this because you are here such a short time. It is very important, then, to think about your life beyond the world.

First, you will find that this quality of relationship will come to you as you have something important to do in life. People who are actively engaged in life do not have to go searching for relationship. This is a fact. If you have found something truly meaningful to do in this world that it is natural for you to do

The Greater Community Way of Knowledge

The third level of education is the discovery of Knowledge. Here you begin to remember your point of departure and anticipate your point of return-not because you are anxious to leave the world, but because the meaning of your being here is entirely defined by where you have come from and where you are going. It is as if you went to school one day and you stayed there for eighty years and never left the classroom. Well, after a while it would be very difficult to remember what life was like outside the classroom. But when you leave the classroom after eighty years, more or less, you go home to your "parents," who are your Spiritual Family. It was just a very long day in class, that's all-so long, in fact, that it allowed you to concentrate on the classroom entirely. If you penetrate the membrane that separates this world from the life beyond, it becomes very difficult to concentrate on being here because the life beyond is so alluring. It is so attractive. It is easier to be yourself there than it is here. That is why you must enter the world in an amnesiac state to enable yourself to concentrate on being here.

A few who have come into the world will graduate from it. By this, I mean that they will not need to come back here again. You do not need to be a master to graduate from the world. That is very important to understand, particularly since mastery is such a relative term. Mastery in the world does not necessarily mean mastery beyond the world. We must think of mastery as relative to your situation now because this life is not only an experience in and of itself, it is preparation for your life to come and for life beyond the world. That is why much of your education will seem mysterious. If you can enter into the Mystery, you will enter a far greater range of participation that will make you more effective, more capable and much happier in the world.

Knowledge is not only your ability to perceive the truth and to resonate with the truth, it also contains the memory of your life beyond this world and your reason for coming here.

Now, there is only so much survival training that is required, and there is always a little bit that is needed ongoing because it relates to your need to provide income for yourself and to get along with other people. You live in a social setting as well as a biological one. You must survive physically and you must survive socially. To do this you must develop your personal self so that you can communicate and participate with people effectively and be able to manage the simple affairs of your life. This is ongoing because even with a greater emphasis in life, you will have to develop and cultivate your personal self to accommodate this greater emphasis. Do not expect God to come and give you a great mission in life until you have the capacity for it.

The first is survival in the world; the second is development of your personal self; the third is the discovery of Knowledge.

MARRIAGE

MASTERY

HIGHER EDUCATION

HIGHER EDUCATION

the third level of education requires profound honesty. It asks that you become a person who can look at life objectively with honesty and consistency. You are not trying to be a wonderful person now; you are not trying to be a villain, either. You're not even trying "to be." You are freed from the attempt to be someone. This is the greatest freedom you can experience in life. In a way, the quest to be someone has to be relinquished before you can be someone. Knowledge does not require that you become exemplary according to your standards. You cannot say, "I am going to use Knowledge to get more of this or less of that," because Knowledge is the Master in your life. It is moving you. You have set sails, and God is now blowing you across the world.

Knowledge takes you back to God while you are in the world, but it does so in a very specific way because its emphasis is practical, not magical. It is not about metaphysics, learning all about the sixteen million levels and the cosmology of all of the universes. That is for people who think and do nothing. The person of Knowledge is not concerned with these things unless they have a specific relevance to his or her function in life, and even then they are a temporary expedient and nothing else. If you want to know about mystical cosmology, then perhaps a teacher will tell you about these things to get your attention while he or she gives you something far greater. Mystical cosmology does not get you through the day. It does not attend to you when you are alone and miserable in your thoughts. It is simply a broader range of speculation. It may be a reprieve from your personal difficulties, but it is not the key to your freedom.

God works mysteriously. God is like a great attraction without a marquee or a billboard. God is pulling you along incessantly. Hopefully, the excess baggage in your life will be left aside sufficiently so that you can begin to experience the attraction itself, for this is the call of love to the lover. This is what you try to recreate with one another, this profound love and attraction.

There are things you must apply yourself to very specifically because there are two aspects to life: There are concrete accomplishments and there is Mystery. You must approach both. Mystery opens you to a greater assistance than you could provide for yourself and saves you from condemning circumstances. Applying yourself to tangible things enables you to reclaim your self-respect and to build a foundation that is sound and firm. That is what personal growth is for-to build a foundation for Knowledge. What other value does it have? The person you are attempting to improve will be shed like a garment when you leave. As you become stable, then you can represent something greater. Without Knowledge, you are still profoundly confused and subject to miseries. Without purpose, meaning and direction, your life is still a desperate event.

to be a student of Knowledge, allow your life to have its mysteries. Do not try to explain everything and justify everything. Knowledge will emerge within you once you have chosen that this be your life. You will become less certain about particulars and more certain about your purpose, meaning and direction. Then you will begin to find freedom from anxiety and ambivalence, and that is the greatest gift of all because a life without anxiety or ambivalence is completely rendered into the world.

to be happy and to have meaning in the world, you must concentrate on developing Knowledge and allow it to contribute itself where it knows it can be of the greatest benefit. This will fulfill your need for relationship and community.

the great powers in this world will become far more like each other out of necessity. Their opposition to one another will become increasingly theoretical and less meaningful in reality, and they will find that they need each other a great deal. They are like a husband and wife who cannot leave each other and must learn to get along because they love each other. Russians love you; you love the Russians. But when you love someone and you do not communicate, you harbor hard feelings and you become estranged. Along with this, the developing nations in your world will have increasing power in the years to come, and this will complete the requirement for a global community.

Inner Listening is a subject that is very relevant to everyone here. It has practical application in every circumstance and with every person you might meet. In fact, if you become proficient in practicing the things that we will speak of, you will have an opportunity to be far more effective in all your engagements and will be able to perceive things that are extremely useful beyond the realm of normal perception.

This has a very important spiritual meaning because you are at work reclaiming Knowledge for a long time, in time.

THE GREATER RELIGION

Developing Knowledge is a major theme in all of our discussions. Knowledge, relationships and communication permeate all true activity, true development and true progress. They give rise to your spiritual nature and destiny.

You are preparing to be a contributor in a new set of circumstances. You must have great confidence in your own experience in order to prepare because there will be little agreement around you. Perhaps you cannot define your intent, but that is okay because Knowledge is working within you. You are the forerunner of great change, but the great change will come in the next century, and it will be greater than what you experience now.

If you are with the world's evolution, you will comprehend what needs to be done by you individually, and you will not condemn the world for its inevitable course. There are many people who think, "I want the world to be fun for me, and I hate the world because it is not fun for me! I will not be happy until the world is fun for me!" So, you have another miserable person in the world, blaming the world for being itself. You are the architects of the next century. The results of your labors will be experienced by your offspring. That is how each generation builds for the next.

eople did not come here on vacation. Vacation is when you go Home. Then you lie on the beach-if there were a beach! No, you came here to work, to experience and to contribute. That is why your stay here is so brief.If coming to the world were a holiday, you could come for hundreds of years, but it's not a holiday. If you think it's a holiday, you will feel empty because life here cannot give you what you had before. The world does not possess the reality of your Spiritual Family, and so the intimacy and integration that are absolutely natural in your former state cannot be duplicated here completely. Yes, the world can be lots of fun, but only for those who are contributing because they are enjoying their own presence in the world. The world is bringing forth the value that they have brought with them. This is entirely natural and is no sacrifice.

The wars that are erupting now, like cancerous sores upon the world, are based upon tribes fighting to regain their identity, attempting to re-establish their former role, their territory, their spirituality, their government and their heritage. You will see many attempts to reassert the past in the times to come, but the past is gone. Many of these attempts will be quite violent and disruptive. That is why we must teach peace. That is why there is a great deal of instruction going on currently, so that people may have a greater spiritual capacity to undergo this tremendous transition.

There are three factors that will generate the forging of a world community. The first factor is that this is the stage in history where your world emerges into the Greater Community of Worlds, which it is destined to do, both from its own explorations and from the timely visits of many cultures from beyond. The second factor is that your environment will deteriorate to a very great degree, bringing about international crisis. This will require cooperation and will require citizens everywhere to become actively engaged in the maintenance-indeed, even the rescue-of your planet. The third factor is the integration of world economy. These three factors more than anything else will bring about a world community.

The change that must be forged in the next century and indeed in the centuries to come-for it will take several hundred years to bring it about successfully-is that the world must unite into one community. Now, if you think about that, it can arouse both great expectation and considerable anxiety because it holds the promise of a greater ability for humanity and also the reality that humanity will lose much of the heritage, identity and meaning that it has brought with it from the past.

new world order

You are all very fortunate to live at this period of time.

WORLD EVOLUTION

Chapter 14 WORLD EVOLUTION

world evolution.

MASTERY

Living The Way of Knowledge BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR BECOMING A MAN OR WOMAN OF KNOWLEDGE IN AN EMERGING WORLD

Very few people have this feeling of vitality in their engagement in life and so, to substitute for this, they seek excitement in relationship, some for excitement's sake and some in the name of personal growth. I can assure you there is not enough personal growth in the universe to justify endless involvements. What takes you beyond personal growth is that you become very tired of it, and you now seek refuge, relief and inspiration from something greater. Personal growth is very disappointing because you cannot expand the personal side of you very far. It always has great promise, and it is always very exciting when you are embarking on personal growth, but it quickly begins to get very difficult. Personal growth is natural when you are developing Knowledge, for your mind and body must now accommodate a Greater Power within you. This is the context in which personal growth has value and is governed by necessity and not by preference.

Many people expect or demand devotion from others but are incapable of giving it themselves, for they wish to bargain with their affection. They wish to make sure that their demands will be met before they are willing to give in. But you see, devotion is not negotiable. You do not bargain for it. It is not giving in. It is something that emerges from the very depth of you, so that you need not create it. It simply arises.

there can be a bond that is deeper than the personalities involved and stronger than any divergent interests or orientations. This is something that transcends personal realities and has purpose and direction. This is something that is not created by the people involved but is something that they discover together. It is a discovery, and yet it is a discovery with a purpose. It is here to do something.

Not everyone is meant to be in marriage-that is between husband and wife. That is not the appropriate expression of marriage for everybody. However, a relationship based upon Knowledge, recognition and purpose is meant for everyone. When you have experienced that, you will realize that your life is greater than your personality. It will be an experience that will be very confirming for you. Out of this relationship will come devotion, which is the highest expression of love in the world. Devotion is a quality that is very rare. It is not to be confused with obligation or bondage of any kind. It is a free gift that is essential to give.

We will be speaking of marriage as a quality of union that can exist in any relationship, for it is the quality, not the form, that matters.

True marriage is something that is a source of nourishment for other people as well as for the two people involved.

Chapter 5 MARRIAGE

A moment of recognition, on even a very spiritual level, does not confirm or initiate a genuine relationship. How many people have learned this painfully and at great expense? If you look about you, you will see people making all manner of mistakes and carrying out all manner of ideas and committing themselves to all kinds of things, with great justification.

Though your personalities may have difficulties and your orientations may be different, you will feel at home with them nonetheless because they have come from your Spiritual Family

The Creator offers Knowledge, and Knowledge is the foundation for relationship, and relationship is the foundation for success and fulfillment. You return to the Creator through a great network of relationships which are all bonded in Knowledge. Here you re-enter and re-experience the great fabric of life where everything is interwoven, but in a certain pattern and way. You will learn that you cannot join with anyone you want. You cannot be united with anyone you want. You cannot call anyone you like or love a member of your Spiritual Family, for you are destined to be with certain ones and not with others, regardless of attraction or affection. For it is true, is it not, that you can love dearly many individuals that you could never live with or participate with in any meaningful way, and yet you may love them intensely. But you could not function together. How often this is demonstrated in the tragic disappointments that people feel in their relationships with one another.

Their ???? must bond completely.

You will need a community of Knowledge because you cannot learn Knowledge alone. Even if you are experiencing something and you feel very certain about it, how will you be able to tell if it is real? How can you be certain that you are not simply creating a wishful idea? How can you be certain that you are not running away from something? How can you be certain that you are not aiming yourself at catastrophe? You have fooled yourself before again and again because you had based your life on ideas rather than experience. Now you are attempting to base your life on experience more than ideas, but the possibility for error seems as great here as it was before. Only the confirmation of another, a genuine confirmation, can substantiate the experience of Knowledge within yourself. And for you to recognize and to value this confirmation, there must be a foundation of trust. And this trust must be firm and solid. It cannot merely be an expedient thing. You will not know what to do, where to go or who to be with without the support of others. You will not be able to do anything physically in the world without the participation of others. You will not find your way through the wilderness without companions. You may enter the wilderness seemingly alone, but even your Spiritual Family and the Unseen Ones are with you as you embark on this great journey. You will not build your foundation for learning and living The Way of Knowledge alone because you will share it with others. What you will build, you will build together. And what this foundation is for, you will share together.

review your own investment in pleasure. Itemize the things that you are attempting to acquire or secure for yourself. Look at the investment. Look at the reward. Ask yourself, "Is this reward worthy of the investment?"

true value offers a reward that grows and yields benefits for yourself and others. Real pleasure is associated with achievement. You cannot escape this. It is a fact. Things are valued because they are useful according to the purpose that you hold. If something yields value according to your purpose as you understand it, you will value it. Even if your purpose is false and self-deceiving, you will value it nonetheless. Value and pleasure are therefore highly associated. You cannot separate them.

If it is a pleasure to give up pleasure, how do you give up pleasure? Is pleasure only an avoidance of pain? If so, pain will attend you and follow you like a shadow, for pleasure and pain are very associated. Therefore, if you seek pleasure to avoid pain, you produce more pain, which requires more attempts at pleasure, which produces more pain, and so forth.

But what about the pleasures of the world and all the myriad pursuits that are undertaken to acquire them, to keep them and to ward off their dissipation? What of these? Clearly, given the excesses that you see about you, the pursuit of pleasure can be seen as utterly destructive and demeaning. Examples of this are so common and take so many forms that you need but look at human life around you to see their many expressions.

It is a pleasure for us to speak and to convey to you a greater body of Knowledge as well as a Greater Community perspective, which you and your race will need in order to progress. Our pleasure in this is born of the fact that a gift is being given to you through us. This is the greatest pleasure. This is the pleasure that has no boundaries and does not wear off. It is a pleasure that can be conveyed and resonated through many minds. Therefore, it grows rather than diminishes as it is passed along. It is a pleasure born of Knowledge. It amplifies itself. It is a pleasure unlike any other pleasure that you can find.

PLEASURE

your life as weaving itself within the world

I speak as one who knows your nature because I understand the fabric of life into which your life is interwoven, and I do not see you as separate or apart from this. I see you as part of a greater tapestry of life, a greater tapestry of life in this time, in this world, in this place, in these circumstances, for the tapestry is changing. Let us not confuse, then, your life within the world withyour life beyond, for they are different. If you think they are the same, you will underestimate your life beyond the world, and you will overestimate your life within the world, and you will make some grave misinterpretations of your abilities and your nature while you are here. You are working in a very limited context. You have physical and mental limitations while you are here. You have experienced these limitations, perhaps painfully, but you need to understand them, and you need to recognize them without self-condemnation, for you have limits. You are working through a limited vehicle in your body and a limited vehicle in your mind. The spirit of you, which we call Knowledge, must exercise its Wisdom and its beneficence and its purpose through these limited vehicles and through the circumstances that you face in everyday life.

Knowledge will not give you what you want, but it will give you what you need and what you long for. Wants and wishes are temporary things, so changeable, so influenced by the world. The flames of your passions and desires can burn hot or cold, depending on what is stimulating you and how secure you feel within yourself. Knowledge is not governed by such emotions, and you cannot make it come into a relationship that you may want.

if you choose without Knowledge, Knowledge will not follow you. You may believe fervently that you are doing the right thing. You may even believe fervently that you are making the right decision. But if Knowledge does not go with you, you have no stability, no certainty in your endeavor.

known

Without your essential relationships, you cannot function at a higher level. You need relationships simply to survive here. At a fundamental level you need others in every aspect of your life to support and assist you, physically, emotionally, psychologically and even spiritually.

Living The Way of Knowledge BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR BECOMING A MAN OR WOMAN OF KNOWLEDGE IN AN EMERGING WORLD by MV Summers

Of course you're in a limited state. Being in a body is a limited state. It's a great nuisance carrying around this hunk-feeding it, housing it, keeping it clean, clothing it, making it beautiful, keeping it comfortable and attending to its many aches and pains. A nuisance, my God! Don't you just want to fly away sometimes? But the body is the garment you wear in being in this world, and it enables you to communicate here.

When people begin to practice inner listening, the first thing they encounter is all these terrible things, these thoughts they could never think. "God, I had this terrible thought! Only crazy people think thoughts like this!" Or they have terrible images. "Oh, God! I am the source of these images! I must be an awful maniac!" Your thoughts reflect what you see outside, the best and the worst, the most loving and the most hateful. But your Knowledge is beyond all of it and you are not apart from God.

The world, like your mind, can be a terrifying place to be. Its appearances are frightening and threatening, and it is in chaos with great, insurmountable problems-just like your mind.

it is no fun to be God without God. It is a very great challenge, yes! "Be the source of your own life! Determine your own life! Direct your own life! Control life around you! Have influence over others! Command your body! Command your mind!" This is kind of a little god, you know. A tiny little god. But it is no fun to play god because you are alone.

When you listen, you will hear things that come from beyond the web itself. You will realize, in time, that your thoughts and your thinking are no more than a web that you are caught in-a web of your own design, a web that you have designed with others and that everyone is designing and reinforcing constantly. But the web is transparent. You can see through it, you can hear through it and you can feel through it. But you must become very still to do so.

The more you try to be God without God, the more isolated, alone and estranged you are.

People want to be God without God. That is what has produced the world.

t is protecting you and guiding you even now, like a great force that you cannot see but you can certainly feel. In times of distress or great difficulty it will manifest itself more sharply to you, and you will know that there is a guiding Presence in your life. As you become closer to it, you will start to feel it every day-unifying you, keeping you from error, orienting you towards people and situations that are truly nourishing and beneficial for you, bringing helpful change and making your encounters with others truly meaningful.

relationship with yourself

you will realize that there is still much fear within you. There is still much ambivalence. You are still afraid of what you possess. And so it takes time to resolve these matters.

When you begin to listen inside of yourself, you hear the chaos of your own thinking and begin to feel your discomfort. If you are patient and observe these things without running from them, you will pass through them because they cannot keep you from what lies beyond. What keeps people from being free is not their external circumstances. It is their own mind and their own thoughts. They are prisoners to their thoughts. They cannot stop watching their thoughts. It is as if you were watching a movie on a screen and you could never tear yourself away. The screen then becomes ever more real to you, for you have no contrast. You have no experience to remind you that it is just a movie you are watching. As a result, it has greater and greater impact upon you, and you are become a more captive audience with every moment. These things which make you suffer, cause you pain and drive your behavior are only thoughts. They are vaporous things. They have no substance. But for you to look beyond, you must not be afraid of what lies beyond them, for what lies beyond them is a wellspring of tremendous love. What lies beyond them are your true Teachers.

Hidden deep within you is your calling in life, waiting to be activated, waiting until all the internal and external conditions are ready for it to emerge and express itself. The change you are feeling in your life is largely to prepare you for this emergence. Happiness and disappointments both open the way for you here. When you begin to really feel Knowledge working in your life, your life will begin to make sense to you. Your past will not be a record of painful encounters. It will be a demonstration of the importance of the way you are truly meant to go.

you are sent from God to be a message. Your life is a message

WISDOM FROM THE GREATER COMMUNITY Volume I Marshall Vian Summers

Take all of the energy that you might use currently in complaining about the world, com plain ing about other people, complaining about your govern ment or complaining about life, and bring that focus and energy to bear in preparing for the Great Waves of change, in building a network of support with other people and in educating your local community. The majority of people are unaware that the Great Waves are coming, and when those Waves arrive, they will not be ready.

The Great Wavesof ChanGe: Navigating the Difficult Times AheadCopyright © 2009 by The Society for The Greater Community Way of Knowledge.

This evidence consists of extracts from the Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Standing Committee on Banking and Commerc

Central bank deposits are a special kind of money generally used only by banks and governments and therefore not generally regarded as part d the money supply in the hands of the public.

Ninety-five per cent. of all our volume of business is being done with what we call exchange of bank deposits—that is simply book-keeping entries in banks against which people write cheques?

the need for a currency gold reserve was to-day largely psychological so far as domestic currency was concerned?

the volume of purchasing power to be issued through the banking system was not necessarily to be limited by the supplies of gold

f we eliminated that from our Bank of Canada Act, the gold provision of 25 per cent. as against Bank of Canada note issues, it would not affect the monetary policy or the monetary situation in Canada at all? Mr. TOWERS: It should not; no

HOW MONEY DISAPPEARS

PAPER CURRENCY TO PURCHASE GOLD. Q. Now, as a matter of fact to-day our gold is purchased by the Bank of Canada with notes which it issues .... not redeemable in gold ..... in effect using printing press money .... to purchase gold? Mr. TOWERS: That is the practice all over the world

"Money is Memory," which is forthcoming in the Journal of Economic T

, money itself is in-trinsically useless

monetary economies can be viewed as merely large interlocking networks of gifts

Narayana R. Kocherlakota