However, spirituality seeks to participate in right actions and discontinue negative actions not based on fear but on a person’s own best interest. This is a great difference. Fear only causes us to want to do things and see if we can get away with the action. Fear is a negative emotion and causes resentment and lack of freedom to act.

However, if we really believe what we have studied in these podcasts so far, then doing right actions and avoiding negative actions do not flow from fear, they flow from wanting to grow in spirituality and flowing with the way things really are.

What we do, good or negative, every little thing we do, pushes over dominoes that go in every direction pushing over other dominoes. Finally, the ring of dominoes will come full circle and hit us in the head. The difference between our push of the first domino and the one that hits us in the head is that the one that finally makes full circle has momentum behind it. In other words, the things we do will come back to us with much greater force than our original action induced on the first domino.

We, as we have seen in the past podcasts, live in a closed system. Everything is connected. Therefore, there is no such thing as an act simply flying out into space with no consequences. Every act will have its consequences. It is not a matter of getting caught, it is a matter of the way things are.

What are Right Thoughts? Thoughts of compassion for beings who cannot help but be just as they are because of cause and effect. Mercy on those who offend us because we realize they are simply grasping, trying to make things different than they are. We send thoughts of acceptance, joy, happiness, inclusion, wisdom and understanding. All negative thoughts of hate, greed, and aversion are poisonous not only to us, but to the energetic fields around us thus setting up the conditions for a NOW we will not enjoy in the later NOW.

ISNESS. NOWNESS. RIGHT NOWNESS.

Do you remember a single moment in your life that wasn’t right now? Can you say, “Wow. I had a good time yesterday today.” Or, “I had the most wonderful tomorrow today.”

Of course not. All we have is NOW.

Accepting the NOW frees up all the energy you have been using to resist the now. Think of all the regret you have expended over your past and worry over the future. That activity of regret and worry caused you to not have a good now. So, you tried to fix it with more worry, fretting or going to buy something or fill the void with another person for a short night of avoiding right NOW.

However, we assured, you will never escape right now.

We can make our nows better though, even blissful, if we accept everything as it is and then act in ways that will produce better nows.

All our thoughts, words and actions are like tossing sand into a fan: they blow right back in our faces. If you don’t want sand in your face, throw flower petals in the fan. Then, you will be covered in color and fragrance and happiness.

Make the commitment to change your NOW, NOW.

The only spiritually mature response, the only reasonable response, is acceptance of how things are night this moment.

You have been trained all your life to believe that life happens to you. Oh, yes. You have been carefully trained to forget that you happen to life. Because you have believed that life blows you around, whisks you away in its wake of circumstances leaving you to dog-paddle or sink, you most likely have felt quite victimized most of your life.

This leads to the belief that your life, your problems, your circumstances happened to you and left you stranded on the desert isle you call your life.

The difficult truth is this: your life is totally and absolutely your doing. You did this to yourself. Either you directly caused your circumstances or you failed to respond in a spiritual way to the circumstances that assail us every moment, day, year and second.

Your life is exactly as it MUST be based on the causes and effects in your particular life. You life can be no other way than it is right the moment.  Taking responsibility for your own life is one of the greatest spiritual steps a human being can make in their lives.

Victims cannot grow, they can only go with the flow of what happens to them.

Now, since you sought out this podcast series and have listened this far, you obviously want something different in your life. You don’t like where it is going or where it is stopping. That means you want to change. The good news is this:

You can remake your life because you made the one you have now. If you made it, you can remake it. However, most people never take the leap of responsibility. They can’t imagine they are responsible for their own unhappiness.

The ramification of this truth that everything is the result of cause and effect is the fourth of the great truths that lead to a truly spiritual lifestyle. This truth, unlike the others, is harder to accept. It takes maturity to cross the bridges of this and the next podcast.  Spiritual maturity is the ability to accept the obvious truth without running away; without hiding and pretending the truth is not so.

Here is the fourth great spiritual truth: everything is exactly as it should be. There can be no other conclusion unless you undo the universal truth of cause and effect. Perhaps this truth would be easier to bear if we say it this way:

Everything is as it must be right now. Right this moment, everything you see, feel, hear, experience, know, expect, want, long for, dream of…everything right where you are including listening to this podcast is exactly as it must be. Due to causes and effects, they can be no other way

This fourth truth that everything is exactly as it has to be erases blame and inspires fantastic compassion. Compassion causes us to overlook the actions of others. Compassion understands that people are as they MUST be as a result of their causes and conditions.

Hatred, blame, anger, resentment, and desire for revenge are all very negative emotions. To have them inside us, they become causes and we radiate them for we have no other choice. There is no hiding these powerful causes. They will produce effects in our lives no matter how we try to suppress them or hide them or put a bandage on them.

Think of all the people who have hurt you, frustrated you, mistreated you, used you, taken you to the cleaners, deprived you or molested you. Feel the hate and dismay. Now, look at them this way: because of causes and conditions, they acted as they had to act at the time. They really had to choice because, most likely, they were unspiritual and in the dark about reality truth and wisdom.

The third great truth is just as obvious. It is not a secret truth or something hidden from the eyes of people. It is not something you need to search for on the top of a mountain in a monastery or at the feet of some guru.

The third great truth is this: everything is because something else is. Let me say that again: everything is because something else is. It is the nature of the system. Scientists and physicists call it cause and effect. For every cause there is an effect. Yet, every cause is not independent; it also is the result of a cause. Every cause is an effect and every effect becomes a cause.

Because of that, this. Because of this, that.

I.                    Everything has a beginning and an end.

II.                  Nothing is as it seems

These two truths, so fundamental and self-evident have wide implications for the spiritual life. They are available to everyone! They are part of Universal Spirituality. They are reality. They are obvious. You don’t need any revelation from anyone to know that these two truths are foundational to what we see and who we are. And, they will change your life if you believe them and retrain your brain through meditation to remember them.

Let’s look at another great benefit of the truth that everything has a beginning and an end.

Knowing this, remembering this and accepting this, believing this will bring into your life a beautiful new perspective. When you realize and accept it, you will have to admit you yourself have a beginning and an end. When you quit fighting that truth, you will open your eyes to the wonder of Immediacy.

Immediacy. Right now-ness. Your time is limited. There is no reason or value in wasting time. Time is short. Life is short. Time-wasters are blinded to the simple truth they have an end coming as surely as the sun will rise on us like it did on the Egyptians and Mayans.

Most people cannot take this. They turn their eyes away from it. They choose the darkness because they cannot bear the light of truth. It is too painful and frightening. Most people spend most of their lives trying to forget it or get out of it somehow. Death, they think, happens to everyone else, not them…at least not now.

So, they live a life either dwelling in the past (which cannot be repeated or erased) or they dwell in the future trying to prepare for what doesn’t exist.  By dwelling in the past and the future, they forget the now which is the only time any of us really have.

On the spiritual path, we experience the boon of immediacy. Now. Right now is the time for everything. If you have goals, now is the time. Concentrate on the now and put your whole heart into it. Throw yourself into the now and you will not believe how your next nows will be.

Now, as we look at the connectedness of all things, we will see that even the simplest act like “running to the store” becomes a wonder and exciting journey…if we are awake and if we understand.

Spirituality’s goal is to relieve suffering through understanding of the way things really are through observation. Listen as we take a small “run to the store” and see the wonder of the world around us that will fill us with gratitude.

How can all this be? Wonder. Awe. These are the wonderful emotions that flood anyone who really believes these things and allows them to dictate their behavior. Remember, belief brings behavior like clouds bring rain. Or should I say, non-clouds bring non-rain? See? The world we live in is a wonderful place if you lift up your eyes to the truth you were born with.

You have simply forgotten and now you are beginning to remember.

Look at the one you love or the one you hope to love someday. They are a miracle. They are an assembly of parts that are not them, yet, there they are. How precious they are! What a miracle they are! How they should be honored and cherished because they can never be again! At least not like they are right now! Air, water, minerals – all non-human parts – yet, there they are in your arms or the arms of your imagination!

Spirituality will lead you to embrace others in a new, awe-struck way. They are all, along with yourself, miracles: unique, wonderful miracles even if their understanding is faulty and they have failed to remember. If anyone gets on your nerves, don’t get angry at them. Be patient. Remember, they have failed to remember. But they will. Why?

Because misery will drive a person to spirituality eventually. There is no need to preach at them or force anything on them. Misery will drive them like a merciless cowboy drover forcing the cattle to the slaughter. Eventually, misery will either turn a person hopelessly bitter and disappointed, or will drive them to remember the obvious and become the spiritual being they were born to be. Simple as that. Complex as that. Be spiritual and let other people’s circumstances drive them to spirituality.

That is what patience is. Out-waiting negative situations and doing nothing until they change…and they will change. They must. Why? Because everything changes.

Anger will vanish from your life. Why? Because anger is the result of impatience. Anger tries to make something change before it is ready to change on its own. Anger resists the normal pattern of the birth, life and death or situations. You simply cannot get angry if you have patience. Anger wants change right now, right this minute. However, the changes that anger sets in motion usually creates more negative situations you will have to out-wait. Therefore, anger is useless if you really believe that everything changes and that everything, every little thing is temporary.

Also, your delight will increase! Delight. When was the last time you can say you were truly delighted?

Start today with your new belief system of everything being temporary. If you believe this obvious truth, then everything you experience that is good is precious. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be savored, delighted in and paid attention to in great detail. Delight is the positive side of patience.

Patience out-waits the negative until it changes. Delight enjoys that positive because it will change! Let’s see, are these things, patience and delight spiritual qualities? Absolutely. They are perfectly in harmony with our new remembering of old truth.

At the heart of observable reality through an electron microscope, everything seems to be made of the same stuff. And that stuff is energy. Energy and nothing but energy.

No “I”” and “they”. No, “We” and “them”. No “this” and “that”. Just “IS”. It all just IS. We have learned to perceive the IS as this and that; I and them; you and me; chicken and goose.

The scientists, by expanding human sight, have climbed the mountain of spirituality and found others already at the top: those who sensed these things might be so throughout all of human history.

The ISNESS of everything is ultimate reality. The THATNESS of everything is conventional reality. And they are both real.

Two: Ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is the other way things really are. This is where the technology of Physics and Quantum Mechanics have opened doors of understanding to us beyond what we may have expected.

We all are too acquainted with conventional reality. We have been deluded into thinking this is the only reality. Conventional reality is real. No doubt. But, so is another type of reality out of which conventional reality grows.

However, we are all much more alike than we are separate.

In fact, take this challenge. Notice someone walking down the street. Think very carefully for a moment. You know 99% of what there is to be known about that person. 99%. We are all very much alike which will lead us to compassion and mutual understanding.

Yet, we all feel as if there is an “I” in there somewhere. Some people think their “I” is their soul or spirit or other invisible part of them. One woman I know thinks here “I” dwells between the center of her forehead extending about three inches. Yet, when I asked her to please show it to me, she couldn’t.

Where do we get the idea that “we” exist apart from all of the non-we parts that make us up? The first time I thought of this question I was terrified. I had fear run through my veins like ice. We have been trained since youth to understand “yours”, “mine”, “theirs”, “ours” “over there” and “over here.” In actuality, we are all hard pressed to show anyone the “I” we so dearly defend.

But, let’s take a good solid look at what meditation is. First, meditating comes from a Latin word that means to “chew the cud”. In other words, meditating means to mull over something you have learned and mull it over and over until you make it a part of who you are. Meditation has to do with reprogramming your own mind to think different thoughts based on the new presuppositions you are learning on the spiritual path.

Meditation is like physical therapy for the mental world. In physical therapy, we learn to use a limb that has been damaged. In meditation, we learn to repair and relearn to use a part of us that was taught incorrectly about the universe. Meditation, reprogramming how with think by reflex is not something can do for you.