CONTENTS*

1 Expanding our awareness and exploring our fascination with creation | Podcast

There are three conditions for us to experience ourselves in our true identity as universal spirit:

1) We have to be willing to tune into it…The only snag is our own misperception that all this can be found only in a galaxy far, far away.

2) We will need to get up-close and personal with the parts of our consciousness that have gone off the deep end into negativity and destructiveness…

3) We need to use our thinking apparatus to reach out to the universal spirit and create, and we need to realize that we create with both our conscious and our unconscious thinking and willing…

2 The evolutionary process and why we can’t stop it | Podcast

We may periodically have the universal dream of either riding on a train or being about to take a train, anxious that we may miss it, have missed it, or are getting off the train…So, do we follow the movement of the train, or do we stay behind?…

We may not always choose consciously, but we do always choose intentionally. For instance, if we choose to go on a path of self-searching, hoping to find more meaning in life, we are making a choice—just as we are making a choice when we choose not to do this…Choices, choices, choices. Do we want to follow our inner evolutionary process or stay behind? We got options…

3 How consciousness evolves between individuals and groups | Podcast

The swing of the pendulum, alternately emphasizing individuation and group consciousness, has been in motion since mankind first set foot on planet Earth…Over the past few hundred years, the emphasis has been on the individual. We were learning certain lessons related to individual rights—we have the right to be ourselves, to be different, to not conform, and to become more self-responsible. As we turned the corner into the current century, this phase approached its end.

This doesn’t mean the individual is no longer important, but rather the emphasis must now shift once again to the group…Whereas group consciousness honors and supports individuals, mass consciousness eliminates them. Mass consciousness not only doesn’t require individuals to stand in their own right, it thwarts this, imposing conformity and blind following.

4 Claiming our total capacity for greatness | Podcast

As we humpty dumpty our way down the road of personal healing, we will increasingly come to believe that it’s possible to resolve our inner problems; we can put ourselves back together again…Level by level we go, traversing a spiral configuration until the circles become so small they converge into a point…Then the way becomes so simple—we just walk out of the final turn of the spiral into the simplicity of love…

So in the beginning, our work must be focused on facing whatever negativity is within us: our faults of self will, pride and fear, our wrong conclusions about life, and our selfish, destructive attitudes…All this must continue as we roll forward into the second phase of our work: claiming our total capacity for greatness…

5 Facing our deepest fear and unfolding our greatest longing | Podcast

It is convenient to believe that after we die, we’ll revert to our whole and heavenly selves. Not so fast…The aspects living in the darkness of fear and doubt will stay unconscious after they leave the body. This is what perpetuates the illusion that physical death is like dropping over the edge into extinction. But no worries, the not-yet-awake aspects will get to come back again—and again—until they eventually wake up…

Let’s see what it would mean for us to personally experience this state of awareness and be in deep union with God…In this state, we have no fear. Our whole being is permeated with a sense of being utterly safe and at home in the world…You could say we feel cozy with life. Life fits us like a glove…The vibrational frequency of this state of safety bears no resemblance to a false faith Bandaided over faulty ideas…

6 Finding balance within instead of banking on outer rules | Podcast

When things are out of balance, disorder and disharmony abound. These are the necessary agents of disintegration that will simply and inevitably lead back towards integration and therefore balance…When we do the work of uncovering our unconscious bits and cleaning them up, we are reestablishing balance…

Balance doesn’t come by way of a mathematical formula; it’s not a fifty-fifty deal. For example, what’s the right balance between sleep and being awake?…The long and short of it: we have to look within to find the right measure…But human beings like to find refuge in rules; we like hard and fast directions we can accept without thinking…

7 Rolling with change and overcoming fear of death | Podcast

There is actually the seed of a plan buried in the heart of all divine substance, and the designs call for continual growth—for expansion—to infiltrate all that is…Contained in this motion are limitless possibilities for expressing, creating and being…When the expansion music stops, we fall on the floor and break…

Implied in the movement of expansion is the willingness to change. Or perhaps we’re more familiar with the countermovement we feel in our soul—the fear of change…

8 The pain of injustice and the truth about fairness | Podcast

The pain of injustice contains much more than can be expressed by this word “injustice.” Because our pain is not just about injustice that is happening to us in the here-and-now. It includes a fear that we live in a world where destruction can happen—and there are no safety valves. It’s the fear that there’s no rhyme or reason to anything, and that nothing we do—good, bad or otherwise—will have any effect on the outcome…

But that alternative is what the dark forces whisper into our ears. They want us to remain in pain and confusion, disconnected from the greater reality of life. For if we stay in the dark, we’ll rail against the pain of an unjust universe; we won’t see the beauty of God’s creation and the justice that permeates it all. We won’t see the truth that—really and truly, Scout’s honor—it’s all good.

9 Why lazy is the worst way to be | Podcast

When we’re weak and won’t stand up to evil in others—when we won’t fight for the truth—we’re encouraging evil…We fear that if we stand up for decency and exposing the evil, we’ll be the one who gets ridiculed. We sell out in order to not be rejected…

So here’s something interesting to ponder: the active principle in distortion—as murderous and harmful as it might be—is never able to cause as much damage as the receptive, passive principle in distortion. So the lowliest attribute on the bad-ways-to-be scale of humanity is not to be hateful, it is to be lazy.

10 Spotting the tricks of our ego and getting over ourselves | Podcast

The human mind is like a fragment of stained glass in a gorgeous stained glass window: it’s part of something greater, but by itself, it’s only a small piece…It is our goal then, through the process of incarnating, to figure out how we fit into the Big Picture. Trouble is, we think our fragmented self—our ego-consciousness—is the end-all and be-all…

The ego then is a separate fragment that is under the illusion that to enlarge itself will mean to blow itself up…But we need to do exactly that: let go and expand. In short, we need to get over ourselves…

11 Four avenues for reaching the cosmic nougat at our core | Podcast

Just imagine what it would be like to have the total absence of fear. For many of us, we’re so unaware of all our fears and so used to them—it’s like we’re a fish and they’re the water we’re swimming in—it doesn’t occur to us there could be life beyond our fears…So in this state, there can be no worry or anxiety; nothing makes us feel restless…

This is an experience that’s at once spiritual and emotional as well as mental and physical; it envelops a whole person. And there are four keys that make it possible to attain…

12 Four pragmatic steps for finding faith and addressing doubt | Podcast

We often think of faith as a blind belief in something we have no way of knowing…And indeed, if that’s what faith’s about, it would be right to discard it. For who wants to be stupid and believe in something that has no grounding in reality and can never be experienced as truth?…This perspective keeps us perched on a platform from which the only things that are real are what we can see, touch, know and prove. From here, we will never have to leap into the unknown. But here’s the rub: the only way to expand and change is by leaping, gulp, into the unknown…

True faith involves several steps, or stages, each highly grounded in intelligence and reality…So step one in acquiring faith is to consider that new possibilities exist of which we currently know nothing…There is nothing unrealistic about this approach. There is no blind belief called for…

13 Landing our desires by letting go of our demands | Podcast

Eastern philosophies are big fans of the notion that desirelessness is ideal, postulating that having desires hinders ones spirituality. And this is true. But it’s only half-true…Because it’s impossible to create if there is an absence of desire. Creation requires our ability to visualize a new state of being, and for that we must have a desire to have said state. It all comes down to how we go about this…

If our desire is overly strong and too tight, there is a misconception underneath it that says ‘I must have it.’ So the desire is not really a desire, but a demand…Then if life doesn’t give us our way, it is bad and unfair. Then we’ll go on to prove how unfair life is through the dismal results we create with our unfair demand. Dog, meet tail…

14 How to visualize living in a state of unity | Podcast

When we embark on a spiritual path, our growth and expansion propels us toward new experiences and higher states of consciousness…This is an abundant snowball that turns out smiley faces…

One essential aspect of our creative process is visualization. Because if we can’t envision the state we want to grow into, it will be hard to ever get there. We need to see the prototype provided by someone who’s gone before us…

15 Surrendering to the double-sided nature of duality | Podcast

We actually all start out our journey back to heaven by climbing out of the dark depths of hell. In fact, we start out in such a state of darkness, there is essentially unity. Only as we develop and our consciousness gradually expands does the positive polarity come into play—oh, hello duality…So duality is actually a step in the right direction. On the far end of the spectrum, when we reach our full potential, we will once again be in unity, but this time without the frowny face…

What we really need then, at this point on the tour, are some travel trips for overcoming duality…

16 Relaxing into the struggle to find the oneness | Podcast

To our way of seeing things, we have been put into a world that is an objective, fixed place; everything is ready-made…Submitting to this version of reality, false though it may be, seems to make the most sense…To a degree, this assessment is correct. We do need to accept the world the way we find it and deal with it on its terms…At the same time we have a new vision of things rising up from the fog…

With this new awareness, we know—in our gut, not just in our head—that there is only good, only meaning, and nothing to fear…Knowing this is not a burden; it liberates us and makes us feel safe…But also by knowing this, it may be tempting to skip over all this grappling with duality. Let’s just go straight to the good stuff. This type of thinking comes from a childish desire to be king of the hill, even if we have to cheat our way to the top…

*The order for reading these teachings is flexible. Follow your intuition and go where you feel called. If you get stuck on a teaching, move on. Sticking points may indicate something important to explore more deeply, but don’t let a speed bump derail you.

©2016 Jill Loree. All rights reserved.