“Perhaps you can see the tree that you light as a symbol of many, many candles that have to be lit and be aflame within you, to bring the total consciousness to its eternal glow on the outer level of your manifest existence. Each recognition, each insight, each honest admission, each shedding of a partial mask, each breaking through of a defense, each step of courage and honesty where you take responsibility for your negativity, is a lighting of yet another candle. You bring light into your soul by bringing truth into your dark.”

If we are not concerned about what other people think…if we are secure in ourselves and true to ourselves, as we are right now…if we have the courage to be what and who we are, then fear can’t touch us. When we feel shy, then, we are unconsciously afraid that others will see we are not how we pretend to be.

From the perspective of the ego, right is good, wrong is bad. And yet, life doesn’t seem to actually work that way. If we look around, we see many people today certain they are right, that their side is right. The more entrenched this becomes, the more fighting and division and hatred there is. So fighting harder to be right is not leading anyone to peace. Fortunately, the ego’s reality is not the only reality there is. There is a greater reality that can hold a vastly different perspective, a bigger perspective, a better outcome. It’s the place of knowing.

We each must do whatever developmental work is right for us, without skipping steps. But whichever stage we’re in, if we resist the forward movement, we’re going to get stuck. Consider, also, that we all roll up into a group of people who are at a certain level of development. And what’s right for any given group at any given time will become obsolete—even destructive—at a later point in time…The state emerging now is about working together as groups. This means our focus needs to shift from the individual to the whole.

This spiritual path works from the outside in. It must. Because the outer layers of our psyche are what we have direct access to. For a moment, though, let’s look at this from the other end of the telescope. In other words, let’s look at how we’ve ended up fighting between ourselves, against ourselves and within ourselves. How did we get so lost?

One could say that God is who created spiritual laws. But it would be more correct to say God is spiritual laws. They are kind and loving, letting us choose whether to follow them. More aptly, we get to choose how much pain we want to tolerate.

You could say that the search for untruth—and more importantly, for how to correct it— is the whole point of incarnating. But how? Where do we even start? Believe it or not, the most logical place to search for the truth is to look for the untruth. We start by facing ourselves as we are right now. Where are we struggling? What in our life hurts? Where is there disharmony, conflict, unhappiness? For these are not random, unfortunate fates we can’t control. Rather, they are the natural results of untruth. And we only need to turn and face into our difficulties to realize this.

Hate is a very empowering feeling. It lights us up. The fact that it is so energized makes it very hard to just let go of our hate. But hate is never aligned with the truth of who we are. Since, at our core, we all shine the most beautiful rays of love. And we feel much, much better when love is what lights our fire. So if our goal is to feel love, we must get to the bottom of our hate.