The Infinite Meaning of Symptoms

The Infinite Meaning of Symptoms

by

A Brief Biographical Sketch

Carroll J. Wright, Ph.D. is a professional counselor, spiritual psychotherapist, alternative healer, and author/researcher in the field of transpersonal psychology. He has been in practice in Michigan, California and Virginia since 1958. He co-authored Image Therapy in 1967 with Paul D. Fairweather, Ph.D., and privately published a volume of prose and poetry in 1973 entitled The Invisible Mountain. Currently Dr. Wright has eight manuscripts in process of writing/publishing: (1) Radical Consciousness: The Cure for Spiritual Amnesia , already completed, written for the educated sophisticated reader;

(2) Spiritual Empowerment, already completed, written for the serious reader; (3) Frog Medicine: The Transpersonal Meaning of Addiction, in process, written for people interested in addiction, needs art work;

4) Love Cannot Be Tamed, in process, commentary on a classical poem on love power, written for a popular audience, to coincide with the current paradigm shift in consciousness; (5) Thirty Pieces of Silver: Trust, Betrayal and Transformation, completed, on the relevance of the Judas/Jesus story for the Christhood/divinity of every person;

(6) Archetypal Symbology, a book of archetypal symbols useful for right-brain transformation of subconscious programming; (7) Spiritual Psychotherapy: Disillusionment and Discovery, in process, an exploration of transpersonal psychotherapy for the professional audience. This manuscript has been superceded by # 8.

(8) The Spiritual Meaning of Symptoms: Paradoxical Shock Therapy, a book for the educated layman and serious practitioners and researchers in the field of spiritual psychotherapy, written from the perspective of Christian metaphysics and transpersonal psychology.

Carroll did his undergraduate work at Mercer University, Macon, Georgia, and his graduate work at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He did his post-graduate internship at Merrill-Palmer Institute in Detroit in marriage counseling and psychotherapy. Carroll was the director of two pastoral counseling centers in California from 1958-1980, and the director of pastoral counseling services in Virginia since 1980. He maintains a full-time spiritual psychotherapy practice in Harrisonburg and New Market, Virginia, and does writing and research in this field. His lifelong interest has been in the causes and correction of human suffering.

Dr. Wright’s primary emphasis is that our symptoms are signals of repressed or forgotten spiritual potential.

Spiritual Psychotherapy: The Infinite Meaning of Symptoms

Spiritual Psychotherapy is the process of learning through my symptoms and suffering how to appreciate the awesome fact that everything in this intelligent, compassionate, and purposeful universe is exquisitely designed for my Self-realization

Spiritual Psychotherapy occurs when you address yourself not simply as a social/bodily

ego

or a reactive stimulus-response machine,

but as an infinite spiritual being, a god in

the disguise of a human body and personality,

who has, through forgetfulness and mis-imagination, created a flawed and incomplete self-image and worldview, and is now suffering the pain of some form of unconscious symptomatic self-victimization

Furthermore, this symptomatic self-victimization is understood as an invitation by the Creator of this intelligent, compassionate, purposeful universe to transcend our temptation to repress or self-medicate our pain, and rather to inquire and look within it for the path to wholeness. This inquiring and inward- looking process of self-realization is called spiritual psychotherapy.

What Does "Spiritual Psychotherapy" Mean?

The five senses gather electronic signals from the external and internal environment and send these signals to the brain, but our senses do not know what these signals mean

The brain relays these signals from the senses to the mind, but the brain does not know what these signals mean

The mind encodes these signals from the brain into words, and assigns meaning to these words according to the semantic mind dictionary which it has built into the memory, but the mind does not have the power or wisdom to determine the true meaning of these words.

The mind may or may not offer these words to Consciousness itself to determine and empower the real meaning of this information for reflective choice.

If the mind does not offer its information to Consciousness, the ego mind remains stuck in its own story about itself and the world, with all of the consequences therefrom; if it does offer this information to Consciousness itself, the story is transformed and transcended into ever-present spiritual truth.

"Spiritual" psychotherapy recognizes the difference between the ego story and the real self because it addresses man as Consciousness itself.

Spiritual psychotherapy begins with the re-diagnosis of all symptoms in terms of the infinite potentialities of the person instead of just in terms of their physical and psychological fear-based limitations.

This book, The Symptoms of Infinite Imagination, assumes that you are infinite Imagination. Infinite imagination is another word for spirit, soul or consciousness. You have thoughts, you have feelings, you have physical sensations, but you are infinite imagination; you are a powerful spiritual being, a divine co-creator with God.

Everything that you see, feel, taste, smell and hear is a finite product of infinite imagination, including the world of nature (sun, moon, stars, trees, crocodiles and people) and the world of man-made stuff (cars, phones, furniture, toys, art, science) Imagination is the subject/cause; your experiences are the object/effect, result or product of imagination. Everything that you see and experience is the product of imagination. You may have forgotten that imagination is the most powerful force in the universe, and that imagination is what you are. Infinity-forgetting and identity-confusion is what creates our finite symptoms.

Symptoms and their accompanying pain are messengers of mis-used imagination and forgetful identity ignorance. Symptoms are God’s messengers and gifts to a preoccupied, forgetful world.

A symptom is not like a broken lawnmower. A symptom represents a conflict in your total belief system. A symptom is an identity issue. A symptom concerns your ignored, denied, repressed and unconscious spirituality. You cannot doctor a symptom with a pill because a pill only addresses the brain and the body. A symptom is a consciousness issue, not just a brain and body issue. Everything begins in consciousness and returns to it. The symptom indicates the dissonance between the mind and consciousness. That dissonance is created by the ego.

No one has created himself. We make up an ego identity, we invent our self-image and our self-esteem through our imagination, but no one creates the imagination itself. You may create your self-identity story through your imagination , but you did not create imagination itself. You are a spiritual being, and through your ignorance and confusion you have made up an ego that you call "you." Your ego is not you. You created your ego, but you did not create your self. Your self is a spiritual being that was created by God and you are as God created you. We have little idea about the truth of this, and so we believe that we are an ego, and that this ego created itself. You can create anything and everything except God and your true self. The true self is the one thing the ego cannot make. The ego can fool you into thinking that your self-image is your self but it is not. You can create experiences but you did not create the creator of these experiences.

That you did not create your self is the basic fact of life. Your symptom attests to this basic fact of life. If you were the creator of your self, why would you create a symptom you cannot fix? You wouldn’t do it. Since you are not the creator of your self, the symptom is there to witness to the fact that the ego you have made is not truly you. The symptom is created by the 1% Factor, the infinite imagination that no one can destroy, guaranteed.

These pains that you feel are Messengers. Listen to them. Turn them to sweetness.

Rumi

Spiritual psychotherapy is an invisible process because in fact you are invisible. Your body is visible but you are not. Even your aura may be visible, but the cause of the aura is not visible.

All cause is invisible and infinite. All effects are visible and finite. Scientists have been able to locate the brain, but not the operator of the brain. The Self (consciousness) will never be located because it is not defined and confined by time and space. The operator of the brain is not visible and cannot be located or measured except in terms of its effects. You are invisible and infinite cause. The story, and its tragic hero, the ego, are defined by and confined in time and space, but the creator of the story is not of time and space.

What Does it Matter if you are In the World and Of It?

It would matter if that was possible, but it is impossible. You may believe that you are of and from the world, but you are not. If you could be, then you would be inevitably be its victim, and your symptoms would be coincidental and meaningless.

Our story, however, is in the world, from the world, and of the world, locked into body and other time and space simulations.

But you are not of or from the world of the story, the world of time and space. You are not an effect. Time and space are not cause, but finite effects. You are from and of the timeless and infinite. You enter into time, space and body, but you are not of, from or the effect of these finite things. You are not controlled or victimized by anything finite, except in your story. Your symptoms bear witness to the fact of your transcendence to body, time and space.

In our story, however, we are locked into immanence and victimization, and we lack transcendence and freedom. Without spiritual awareness we have no transcendence, and we experience being victims of an immanent world. Immanence is no problem unless you empower it with the belief that it is ultimate cause. In eastern thought, immanence is the mother, and has a relative influence in that the physical world of time and space is born out of the mother principle.

In Infinity theory, we have postulated that God took on form, or immanence, without losing his transcendence, or father principle. The mother principle enabled the duality of the finite world to exist. We got locked into the mother through our first birth, and we have to be re-born from above (transcendence) to be whole. Beginning with our symptoms, Spiritual Psychotherapy is one form of the re-birth process. How does re-birth occur?

Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?"And he said, "Who are You, Lord?" And He said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do

Acts 9:1-9

Like Saul, we live in a persecutor-and-victim story, and we are "persecuting" the Self, and experiencing the symptoms thereof, until we meet the Inner Light, and transformation begins.

The Infinite Meaning of Symptoms

I listen carefully to your hurts, complaints, problems and symptoms. I listen to the attempts you have made to correct your problems and to self-medicate your symptoms. It is our general human assumption that symptoms are meaningless, irritating, unfair or frightening. Usually people come to counseling or go to a doctor to treat their symptoms. A symptom can be physical, mental, emotional, or social. A symptom is usually considered to be a sign of something wrong. In spiritual psychotherapy it is agreed that a symptom is a sign of something wrong, but a far greater sign of something that is right that has not been recognized. A symptom is a signal of ignored potentiality, lost ability, hidden power, an unrecognized gift. All symptoms are signals of our mis-understood spirituality. You are a spiritual being and there is nothing you can do about it, except to symptomatize or to enter into the depth meaning of your symptom, which is your spirituality. Spirituality is invisible and it is easy to overlook it. The only way that you can see your spirituality is in the mirror of the landscape of your life. Your body, your relationships, and your world in general is that mirror which reflects to you the condition of your spirituality recognition.

Let’s make a list of some common symptoms: Fear, jealousy, guilt, grief, anger, boredom, stress, depression, anxiety, arguing, flunking a class at school, getting demoted at work, an affair, authority problems, power struggles, health problems, financial problems, legal problems, verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, substance abuse, the victim or villain experience, communication difficulties, loneliness, losing a job, being broke, panic attacks, frustration, low self-esteem, submission or dominance, obsessive- compulsiveness, manipulation, lying, pornography, addictions, approval seeking, people-pleasing, the security-search, cynicism, passive-aggressiveness, win-lose games, greed, self-sacrifice, consumerism, fault-finding, gossip, etc.

Symptoms cover the entire waterfront from headaches to war. All symptoms have an element of war-likeness in them, an element of conflict and struggle. I trace the source of human suffering and symptomatology to three irreducible beliefs:

The first major cause of human suffering and human symptoms is the belief in separation, which is experienced as abandonment, rejection, loneliness, alienation, boredom;

the second major cause of pain and symptoms is the belief in lack, which is experienced as deprivation, not having or being enough, inadequacy, and the search for more.

the third major cause of stressful symptoms is the belief in entrapment, which is experienced as being trapped, enslaved, stuck, helpless, hopeless, and victimized.

These three causes can be reduced even further to one major source, our story. Our story is a carefully woven plot which hangs on the three beliefs in separation, lack and entrapment. This story is best characterized as a victim story. Even though a person may sometimes play villain and sometimes plays rescuer, all human stories are essentially victim stories, and eventually produce our symptomatology.

The discrepancy between "who we really are" and "who our story says we are" is what produces our symptoms and victim experiences. You can begin to re-vision your symptom as a messenger from God, a gift of the Spirit, a wake-up call from your Self to yourself. If you choose to ignore, resist or anesthetize your symptom, it will only go only further underground, regain force and later appear in a more drastic manner. Will you continue to be-head the messenger, anesthetize the positive meaning of your pain, reject the gift of your symptom, and remain asleep to your true nature?

You are fortunate at this time to be seeking psychotherapy through which you can investigate the life-liberating meaning of your symptom rather than remaining adversarial with it. You do not want to play any more games that you will lose. If you try to ignore your symptom, anesthetize it, or blame it on someone else, you will lose. All of your losses so far have come because you did not know that your troubles have any ultimate meaning about yourself. You did not know that conflicts and disagreements with others are a potential gift to yourself. That gift is the realization that your story is not you. Your story about yourself is not who you are and your judgments about others is not who they are either.

Paradoxical shock therapy does not condone or condemn the story and has nothing to do with our self-blaming or other-blaming kinds of irresponsibility. It only has to do with awareness and self-realization. You do not have to change any external circumstances right now, you only have to examine your thinking (cognitive distortions).

In fact it might be wise to focus on exactly what your story is. We have been focusing on changing circumstances and other people for aeons, and we have only become more frustrated. Spiritual psychotherapy is not an attempt to fix you, but it is an attempt to challenge you to awaken from your dreams and nightmares to your reality, to the awareness that you are health, happiness, peace, power, freedom, music, poetry, truth and love. Whenever you are anxious or upset, you have been hooked and deceived by your story. All self-defense is story-oriented. When you can state the following sentence to yourself with understanding and conviction, you are well on your way to inner self-renewal:

I am an Infinite spiritual being, an amateur god, hidden in a self-limited human personality and physical body story, where I actively investigate and welcome with gratitude the meaning of any stresses and symptoms necessary to awaken me and keep me aware of the truth of the Infinite Christ power in us all

The problem with our story is that we believe it is our security, but the fact is just the opposite. The tighter we cling to our story, the more persistent our various symptoms will become. The symptom is the price you pay for unconsciously clinging to your script. It is not only the story about ourselves that must be corrected, but also our views of others and the universe as well. We are intelligent, caring, infinite beings, but our unconscious beliefs make us do stupid things. The essence of responsibility is to see why we do foolish things and to correct our misbehavior at its root rather than to just smooth it over so as to look good.

And so spiritual psychotherapy is not an attempt to teach you something you do not already know, but to remind you of what you have forgotten. The end point of this re-membering is that God is everything, not only our source and destiny, but the contents of our experience as well. There is only one of us. All of the rest is illusion, story, drama, games and suffering.

I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball; It will lead you in at Heaven’s Gate, Built into Jerusalem’s wall

William Blake

If you believe that everything happens for a reason, you can pick up the string of your symptom and wind it up as you follow it out of the cave of the darkness of your present crisis into the light. The string is your fear that you may lose what you have or not get what you want. The belief in that fear can be investigated and challenged until you find the truth blocked by your story, which is that you cannot lose what you are, and that you already are what you have always wanted.

The Seven Steps in Spiritual Psychotherapy

The fundamental question in psychotherapy is: why are you in counseling? What’s your problem? Are you hurting? Some people avoid psychotherapy because they do not wish to face this question "Are you hurting?" This question must be answered so that the denial of pain does not continue. Every person on the face of the earth has some suffering, some symptoms, some anxiety, some stress, some pain. We may be too ashamed and embarrassed to admit this and we may deny it, but every person has some stress and some symptoms which result from the beliefs in separateness, deficiency and entrapment.

The first step then in psychotherapy is to admit one’s problem, stress, suffering, and symptoms, as opposed to a state of denial
The second basic step in psychotherapy is to address the question of why am I suffering, which usually is answered by blaming someone or something else, even if it is one’s genetics, one’s body, one’s addictions, one’s emotions, one’s past, God, evil, etc.
The third step is acceptance of responsibility for one’s suffering and symptoms. As long as we remain in a state of projection and blame, we are bound and not free.
The fourth step is discovering what creates our pain and symptoms, exactly what one was trying to blame on others and what one is responsible for.
The fifth step in psychotherapy is the recognition of what the unconscious beliefs are that produce my symptoms and my suffering.

6. The sixth step in psychotherapy is to accept my symptoms as a blessing in disguise, because they point to my hidden potentiality

7. The seventh step to freedom is the awareness that my beliefs are doubtful and that I am no longer bound by an untrue finite belief system

The first 5 steps have to do with diagnosis and the last two have to do with revelation.

Why wouldn’t a person want to know that he or she has infinite hidden potentiality? Why would a person prefer to remain attached to a binding finite belief system? Basically, because such a recognition means seeing that my ego is wrong, and being willing to change one’s story about his identity. We have to admit clinging to our mistaken beliefs, even though those beliefs may be causing enormous suffering.

We had rather be right and bound that wrong and free. We would have to give up all of our blame and anger. Our whole system of judgments would collapse. Our whole system of paranoia and self-justification would have to go.

Our greatest love and our strongest hate arise from the same story, because our greatest love is our attachment and our greatest hate is our resistance. Attachment and resistance occur only within the story.

The key question in psychotherapy is: Do victims exist? Within the bio-socio-psychological model, we would have to answer yes. Victims exist, perpetrators exist, rescuers exist

Someone is to blame. We have rules, punishments, and protections to deal with the fallout from victimization. Someone is hurt, someone is to blame, someone is responsible, and someone must be punished. If a single victim exists, then there must be a system of law,

legislation, police, courts, jails, government, medicine, psychiatry and religion to moderate and enforce restrictions and punishments for the perpetrator.

If victims and perpetrators exist, then unconditional love cannot, even in heaven, unless we have a spiritual model of reality. Fortunately, unconditional love is reality and cannot exist in the psychological model, in our story. We give lip service to it, in our story, but that is all. None of us believes unconditional love, while holding on to the belief in judgment model at the same time. You can’t have it both ways. They are mutually exclusive, and so that leaves the judgment model in the story as an illusion. The whole good guy/bad guy mentality falls apart, and that is why we resist spiritual psychotherapy, because we are so attached to our judgments.

Letting Go

When you let go of the story, you experience non-story. When you let go of crime and punishment, you experience grace.

When you let go of judgment, you experience the unconditional

When you let go of illusions and lies, truth arises

When you let go of bondage, freedom arises

When you let go of the past and future, Eternity arises

When you let go of attachment to the finite, the Infinite is experienced

When you let go of fear, peace comes

When you let go of blame, forgiveness occurs

When you honor the positive meaning of your symptom, healing comes

The world of rules and law is where psychotherapy begins and the world of grace is where it ends. Symptoms seem to arise from conflicts within the world of finite rules and laws, but that is not true. Symptoms arise because of the discrepancy between the world of law and the world of grace. The self-image exists in the world of law, but you yourself exist in the world of grace. When you are identified with your self-image, you will have symptoms to remind you of that false self-identification, and you will blame that symptom on various conflicts within the world of law. The patient thinks that law will settle those conflicts. While it is true that some things may be mediated and settled, within the finite world of the court system, the big step is not really taken. While the conflict seems to occur between who is right and who is wrong, between the perpetrator and the victim, in the world of law both parties "lose," and neither is "right." The conflict is not settled because the guilt and innocence of both parties are relative in the absolute sense. In the relative sense, both parties have some guilt, and in the absolute sense both parties are innocent.

In the psychological model, one party is perceived as innocent and the other as guilty; one party is the victim and the other is the villain. To use injustice as a redemptive symptom, one must step out of the story. Psychotherapy is one vehicle for this realization, but unfortunately it is often not the case. Psychotherapy, like law, politics, science, education and religion, may unconsciously fall prey to the finite belief system of our story.

Whether you call our symptoms by the names of crime, sin, dysfunction, neurosis, psychosis, unfairness or other names, they are all indicators of an identity crisis. Who and what we are is the chief issue in symptom formation and correction. Spiritual amnesia is the single ultimate cause of all symptoms.

Diagnosis without the consideration of spiritual amnesia is going to miss the target. All relative diagnoses and treatments will only provide relative remedies, and the meaning and purpose of the symptom is aborted. Adjustments within the dream do not constitute awakening. Physical health as an end in itself is a short-sighted goal. Even the preservation of life cannot be looked upon as the ultimate goal of healing. As spiritual beings, we will survive and we will live forever.

The patient comes to therapy as a righteous innocent victim. He/she is hurt and angry and cannot forgive or forget. Her only alternative seems to be to be blamed and condemned as either a victim or a perpetrator. She wants to escape any further such actions because she has already done both of those things to herself. How can she be responsible and yet not continue to suffer for her crimes, sins, and offenses, either against others or against herself? She believes that her offenses are real and that punishment must be real. She cannot find release and healing within the world of law, judgments and punishment. She must take the leap of faith into unconditional love and forgiveness. She must awaken to the spiritual reality of self-realization and drop the entire story of judgment. When she follows the seven steps of spiritual psychotherapy she discovers the truth for which her symptom arose.

"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up."

H. M. Power

You can be whatever you are. You are whatever you dream.

Anonymous

The final frontier is not outer space, but the human imagination

Boeing

The Church of Infinite Imagination

WHERE DOES THIS CHURCH MEET? In your Infinite Imagination.

WHEN? Any time you choose.

WHO IS THE MINISTER? Dr. J, a voice crying in the internet wilderness.

WHAT DO YOU TEACH? Who you are.

UPON WHAT AUTHORITY? The Cosmic Christ.

WHAT BIBLE DO YOU USE? The inspired word of God, wherever it may be found.

WHO ARE THE MEMBERS? The New Humanity.

WHAT DOES IT COST? Your pityful self-image.

HOW DO I PARTICIPATE? Tune in daily at this address.

OF WHAT PRACTICAL VALUE IS THIS? The universe is your inheritance and the feast begins today.

WHAT IS INFINITE IMAGINATION? Infinite Imagination is whoyou are, and what you are manifesting in your life

.

IS THIS A RELIGION OR WHAT? Religion is an external psychological belief system. Infinite Imagination is your inmost reality.

WHAT ABOUT TITHES AND OFFERINGS? Whatever you give to your neighbor, you give to yourself.

WHO PAYS YOUR SALARY? I AM pays me, the same as who pays you

WHAT DO YOU GET OUT OF THIS? Infinite Imagination is the ultimate addiction.

WHAT IS YOUR DOCTRINE? Infinite Imagination is who you are.

WHY HAVEN’T I HEARD OF THIS BEFORE? The time has come for planetary awakening.

WHY DO I FEEL INADEQUATE IF I AM SUCH AN INFINITE BEING? You are addicted to your victim self-image.

I FEEL INSULTED. Good, that’s a start. Any human god should be insulted and angry, considering how we live.

HOW DO YOU KNOW I AM A HUMAN GOD? Because Jesus said so (John 10:34) and because you have symptoms of the fatal illness of ignorance.

YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW ME, HOW CAN YOU SAY SUCH THINGS? I have been a practicing psychotherapist for 40 years and I have seen the mis-used human imagination many thousands of times. And so I would like to give back something to you, to lighten your load.

CAN I HANDLE IT? It won’t be nearly as hard as the self-betrayal you are practicing now.

WHAT IF I DON’T AGREE WITH THIS NEW DOCTRINE? This teaching is as ancient as the perennial philosophy, and besides it will take It generally takes a year to grasp the main tenets of this new lifetime study. We have 25,000 hours of tapes playing in our psyche to cut through before we can get down to the constructive and free use of infinite imagination.

I HAVE TOO MANY PROBLEMS TO WORRY ABOUT SUCH THEORIES. You have too many problems because you create them through your unawareness.

I DON’T HAVE THE TIME. You are an Eternal and Infinite Being and that’s why this study is worth your full-time effort. I know because that is all I do. Otherwise, life is too boring. I mean, how many football games and soap operas can you stomach? How many sexual and financial struggles can you endure? How many drugs can your adrenals stand? Don’t worry, when you get tired of Peyton Place, you will be ready to move on to the Real Mystery of Infinite Imagination.

HOW DID YOU LEARN THIS? I just keep waking up to more and more of the truth!

I am a spiritual being, an amateur god, hidden in a self-limited human personality and physical body, where I actively investigate and welcome with gratitude the meaning of any stresses and symptoms necessary to awaken me and keep me aware of the truth of the infinite power of imagination in us all

If you can’t keep a secret, don’t read this book.

This book is not written for public display. It is for you and it is no one else’s business. The journey of self-discovery and self-mastery is the path of self-knowledge. I want you to understand where I am coming from and where we are going in this literary adventure. An advanced teacher ought to be able to state what they believe in one sentence. The above sentence is the formula for the therapy that I practice and teach. If you understand and practice what this sentence means, you will realize your wholeness and contentment. You may have symptoms of some kind, which to you may seem irrational, frightening, irritating, disabling or unfair, but you will realize that they are the doorway to your health and to your innermost treasures and unlimited potentials. You will realize your sanity, power, kindness and success as you understand, experience and practice the meaning of this simple but profound formula. This formula represents a paradoxical shock therapy, a radical application of the secret knowledge of the ages, designed to shock us out of the hypnotic, hidden, negative, belief systems which control and hamper our communication, our relationships, our health and our finances. If you write this off as blasphemy or grandiosity, you may continue to live with your story of superiority and inferiority opposites. This formula has no opposite because it is true of everyone. This entire book challenges us to wrestle with the meaning of this one simple formula.

The Qualifications for Disillusionment Therapy

Symptoms of unexplainable pain or illness

Disappointment and dissatisfaction

Disenchantment with one’s chosen self-rescue plan

Unanswerable questions

Unrelenting guilt, embarrassing shame, irrational anger or ungrounded fear

Failure of our ego tactics to work and to satisfy

A key figure in your drama fails, leaves or dies

Your dreams are broken

You take off your mask

You begin to see that the world is your mirror

You have not yet understood that the universe has only one all-inclusive purpose, your self-realization.

If this list of qualifications seem to exclude 99% of the human race, so be it. This net is cast only for the 1% on any given day, and 25% at best. I have no illusions that it could include everyone.

Who is Qualified to Benefit Most from Reading this Book?

If you still think you can solve your problems without spirituality, you are not qualified
If you still think you are or can be in control of your symptoms, you are not ready

If you still think a pill will solve your pain, you are not digging deep enough
If you still think someone else is responsible for your dilemma, you are not aware yet
If you still think everyone else but you needs therapy, you are not insightful enough
If you have no symptom, you don’t need a doctor
If you still think your pain has a finite cause and your ego can fix it, go for it

If you are not disillusioned, you are not yet ripe for healing

If your defenses of denial, projection and rationalization are still working for you and you are not yet ready for honesty, don’t bother with Infinity Theory
If something isn’t broke, why fix it?

The Good News is only available to the imprisoned, the broken hearted, the blind, the bruised and the poverty stricken.

If the mediocrity of consumerism and co-dependency still satisfy you, then you are not ready

If you are not yet asking soul-searching questions, then forget it

If you still have finite human hopes and dreams, pursue them

If you think a better partner, a better job, the lottery, or a better drug will cure you, go for it.

Don’t bother with spiritual psychotherapy if you think there is a solution to be found in dualistic philosophy and dualistic religion. The path of understanding is only for those who truly hunger and thirst for it.

If you think you have something finite to lose, why go for infinity, where you risk losing and finding everything

If you think you have something to lose, you are going to be protecting that finite thing, whatever it is.

If you think your ego game and tactics can get you what you want, you are not going to be interested in the disillusionment process.

Infinity Therapy offers only one thing, total disillusionment and total fulfillment. The only thing which keeps us from our divinity is our pet illusions.

The only thing that constantly devalues and deteriorates our self-esteem is our belief system.

The only thing that keeps us from salvation is our self-rescue plan.

The only thing that keeps us from enlightenment is our dualistic sick religion.

In case you haven’t noticed, I have just planted a psychological bomb under your comfort zone.

If you are not on already on the edge, you are not going to be willing to see the hidden dangers in your comfort zone story.

If you haven’t filed moral, financial, and emotional bankruptcy yet, just wait.

If you are not willing to give 9.6 minutes per day to the disillusionment process and to the discovery of your divinity, then you are not ready.

Jesus said that only one out of four would be qualified at any given time. Otherwise the seed of truth falls in shallow ground, rocky turf, bird-infested fields, and does not germinate, sprout, grow, flower and produce fruit. And so for some people, it may take four more lifetimes of soil preparation before readiness occurs.

Our story is a strange mixture of positive and negative illusions and it is very difficult to distinguish one from the other. Only the Spirit is qualified to teach us such distinctions.

RELIGION IS THE PATIENT

Is the Way of Understanding a new religion? Absolutely not. We have over 6 billion religions already in the world, because each person has his own.

What are the characteristics of sick religion?

Each religious viewpoint has its own health or unhealthiness, according to the degree that it allows self-knowledge and awakening to the limitations of our own self-prescribed story. Religion by any definition is one’s spiritual awareness. Sickness by any definition is something unhealthy.

A sick religion would be anything unhealthy in one’s spiritual perception. Religion is as sick or healthy as the viewpoint of the person. Symptoms indicate the degree of health or sickness that is present. The ability to diagnose the meaning of symptoms depends on the spiritual knowledge of the doctor. Every patient is his own doctor, so we are right back where we started, with self-justification.

Leonard Cohen has written a song with the recurrent theme "Everybody Knows":

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed: the poor stay poor, the rich get richer. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows. Everybody knows that the boat is leaking. Everybody knows the captain lied. Everybody’s got this broken feeling like their father or their dog just died. Everybody’s talking to their pockets. Everybody wants a box of chocolates and a long stem rose. Everybody knows.

My point here is that everybody knows that religion is sick, and no one has the courage to say so. What have I got to lose? Let’s face it: what else could be sick? Can you tell me? Man is a spiritual being, and nothing but his religion can be sick. His body is simply a reflection of his sick religion. While it is true that you can treat the body and make improvements, the mind will make it sick again if the mind is attached to sick religion. It’s that simple. So let’s quit denying it. Let’s face reality and take responsibility.

Everything Jesus said was addressed to the religious community and to the soul of man. He gave us the dignity of being spiritual beings. He didn’t stoop to blaming it on sociology, psychology, or philosophy. He laid right on the line where it should be: sick religion. And so did William James (the father of modern psychology) in Varieties of Religious Experience, and Soren Kierkegaard in The Sickness unto Death, and Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Wayne E. Oates in When Religion Gets Sick.

All six billion of us on the planet have probably made our own diagnoses of the illnesses of religion. We know something is wrong as

we listen to the news pundits' daily diagnoses of society’s fatal symptoms. My book is chiefly a commentary on the sickness of our religious perceptions. I do hope that the diagnosis here sheds some light on the facts that: (1) that religion is our basic sickness unto death (2) that everyone is religious to the core (3) that God is vitally involved in our human suffering (4) that in reality there can be no victims of this fatal disease.

Sick religion is without a doubt the chief patient. The symptoms of this condition are epidemic and evident to even the most fanatical denier. Everyone has this disease which I have nicknamed "frogitus." Frogitus is the inferiority complex or curse which turned all princes into frogs and froze all princesses into a state of sleep. Everyone has their own brand of frog medicine, which works only about as well as our prescriptions in general.

My best definition of sick religion is simply our ego-protective fear-based story about our human identity. Our stories are no more transformative than their authors.

Summary:

Religion (sick values) is the patient

Our self-limiting story is the germ

Mis-imagination is how the infection spreads

Self-crucifixion (and scapegoating) is the chief symptom

Paradoxical shock is the bedside manner

Forgiving Love is the cure

Awakening from our anemia and amnesia is the antidote

Resurrection is the prognosis

Jesus Christ is the New Archetypal Physicianwho has already healed our spiritual amnesia

Jeremiah says that the day will come when:

"I will put my law within them, and on their hearts I shall write it; and I will be their God and they will be my people. And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and his man his brother, saying : ‘Know the Lord’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." (Jer 31:33-34).

When that day comes, Christ will have returned.

When Solomon looked at all of our foolish stories, he exclaimed "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!" When Jesus looked at the same foolishness, he wept. Today when we look at the same foolishness, we have to inquire.

The Wolf At the Door

You are a perfect, whole, infinite spiritual being, exactly as God created you, except for your imperfect, finite, piecemeal sometimes inhuman story about it all. The story that we created in our fearfulness and short-sightedness, is such a mixture of fiction and fact that honestly we cannot tell the difference between reality and illusion. God will not be defeated. You are made in his perfect, total, beautiful image and He has guaranteed that at least 1% of that image cannot and will not be destroyed, corrupted, endarkened, lost or forgotten. It will not be forgotten because of our symptoms, even if for no other reason.

Even our most flawed creations and evil imaginations are evidence of our godhood. Even when the entire forest is burned down, there is a seed left hidden in the stump (See Isaiah 6). Our very ability to sow seeds of failure, destruction and corruption demonstrates our creative power. No other species on earth can make such a mess of life in the world as a human god. The extent of our depravity is exactly a mirror of our divinity. When our godly powers are released through our ego perceptions of the world, look what a manic-depressive mess we can create. Hidden in this travesty of confusion, I am just as God created me, except to the extent that I live unconsciously in the story that I have created about myself and the world. The infinite God is my creator and I am the creator of my limited and limiting ego image of myself, and my suffering is the difference between the two. Even though what I created is largely illusory, in no way can it undo who and what I truly am. The purpose of my life then is the re-discovery of my true self, beginning with the gift of my most anguishing and life-threatening symptom.

"What I feared has come upon me" is the cry of Job and everyman, and this cry is the necessary beginning of our call to rebirth. God cannot be truly met face to face until we have endured and seen through the worst fears that we have energized as ultimate. We do not know that our worst fear is unreal until that moment in time when we stare it fully in the face and see the truth dissolve it into nothing. All of the false gods in this ego world that we have created are gods of fear. We use the best energy of our days fighting off the wolf at the door, without realizing that we are creating that wolf in our imagination. There is no such wolf, and there is no reality to such fears. The Wolf at the Door is merely a nightmare, a fairy tale, a story we have told ourselves without awareness. Let us wake up to the fact that there is only God, and God is peace and love, and He exists in us as our true identity.

You want love? Unconditional love is your true nature

You want security? The Infinite Void is the source of all security

You want less stress? The peace of God passes all understanding

You want power? The Eternal within you is the source of all Power

You want freedom? Truth is freedom from your self-entrapment

You want to know? The fountain of wisdom whispers to you from within

You want enjoyment and pleasure? Consciousness is bliss

You want to escape mediocrity? Getting to know yourself is the supreme adventure

You want togetherness and belonging? You are one with God and the universe

You want creativity? Divine Imagination is creativity

You want motivation? The Spirit is your Inspiration

Where is My Good?

Where, when and how is My ultimate Good manifesting into the tangible here-and-now mystery called my finite experience? I struggle with my largely futile attempts to grasp the mystery of this process, but only now and then do I glimpse its profound power and pristine beauty. In those precious moments I begin to see and appreciate the fact that God is that process and that somehow I have attracted and drawn that experience to myself in all of its strangeness and misery for my own awakening and growth.

All of my notions of what my Good should be are shaken to the core when they do not match what I think is happening and should be happening. My vision is born again when I ask what these events really mean. The potential godliness of each present moment is not seen until I let go of judging it according to any of my preconceived expectations and standards. My so-called security and control mechanisms are constantly being revised and updated because they do not free me to realize and know the Great Plan, the ultimate composite will of God and my True Self.

Every single moment of my daily experience is then known to be exactly what I needed, my Ultimate Good, in whose strange package lies my peace and joy. That is what "I have plans!" really means. My plan is to become increasingly aware of the Great Plan and the Great Presence as it is wrapped in and manifested through the daily finite forms of my experience. The Great Spirit is always flowing through me, as twisted as it may appear to me within my story.

God’s Story is unfolding within my own frustrating belief system, in all of the confusing opinions and contradictory mis-imaginations that I have created. Each of those twisted narratives has its own ultimate meaning which I must become aware of, if I would unravel the symptoms and suffering that I am living. Each so-called "stress’ in my life is merely my mis-judgment of God’s gifts and of God Himself in those gifts. Waiting and searching for God and for my ultimate good, as though it could exist in some nebulous there and then time and place, is futile. There is no such time and place except right here and now. I am in paradise, although it is clothed in the tattered garments of my mis-judged experience. Suddenly I come to an opening in this human forest and I can look out and see for miles and miles from this mountain top on which I unknowingly live. Paradise is hidden in the drama and props of my daily experience.

Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot is a parody about our stupid, stumbling conversations while we are waiting for the arrival of Godot (our Good)

This play is a repetition of circular motions, echoes, actions, and gestures which moves within a prescribed circumference, the Cartesian circle seeking a reference point outside itself, …but Waiting for Godot has a structure which never defines a larger circle outside of the simple factual assertions and haunting epistemic questions which it makes. There are also many cycles and vicious circles in our ego story which never break out into the reality of Godot. The ego never looks within the symbols of its own story, but is always looking outside for Godot, who never seems to come.

God’s ministers have come to waken him from the dark dreams this story has evoked in his confused, bewildered memory of this distorted tale. God’s Son can smile at last, on learning that it is not true.

A Course in Miracles

Let us seek until we find:

the good hidden in our evil

the healing disguised in our pain

the light enfolded in our darkness

the potential mistaken for our emptiness

the unity inherent in our dividedness

the security underneath our insecurity

the blessing given in our adversity

the peace within our stress

the answer concealed in our questions

the strength ignored in our weakness

the genius masked in our stupidity

the freedom overlooked in our bondage

the joy implicit in our sorrow

the truth underlying our illusions and lies

the extraordinary possibilities in the ordinary

the courage denied in our fear

the riches unnoticed in our poverty

the love overwhelmed by our jealousy

the order within our chaos

the medicine signaled by our symptoms

the purpose arising out of our accidents and losses

the meaning lost in our tragedies

the sanity encased in our insanity

the aliveness erupting out of the death of God

the spirit symbolized in matter

the still small voice not heard in our noisiness

the infinity obscured in our finiteness

the divinity prohibited in our human unawareness

The Wolf at the Door is just a nightmare. Go into that door of your imagination and look around. Look carefully, deeply. The image of fear will disappear and in its place you will find the truth.

The God-State

The one thing that the human mind cannot readily conceive of is that God’s spirit resides in this body: that I am a child of God, an heir of God, that the world is given to me, that all of the qualities of God are gifts to me, that the mind of God is one with my mind, that the will of God is one with my will, that the love of God is one with my love, and that everything else is just a story. Any other will, any other mind, any other feelings, beliefs and manifestations are just part of the story of separation, lack and entrapment. It is truly unbelievable!

Even when you say or read these words, the mind cannot conceive of their reality. To believe that I am a 1000 carat sparkling diamond of light is incredible.

To believe that God is not somewhere outside of us, that god is within, is incredible. Is this body a temple of God? Is it true that in this son of God there is no disease, no lack, no poverty, no darkness? Is it true that all of our stress, fear, pain, doubt and warlike qualities are strictly illusions, strictly part of the story that we tell ourselves about this world and our place in it? Can you be aware of this for ten minutes? How about five?

Hear, then, your story in the dream you made, and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you believe that it is not a dream. A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as Himself. And in that dream was Heaven changed to hell, and God made enemy unto His Son. How can God’s Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge not, and he will waken.

A Course in Miracles

The mission impossible is to be aware of who you are. To remember your infinite nature, even 1 % of the time, would be incredible. 10% of the time would be a revolution. If we are awake 16 hours a day, 10% would be 96 minutes a day, dedicated to remember our divinity. We watch more useless television than that per day. Can we even do it even 9.6 minutes (1%) of one day? Who can remember for 9.6 minutes the truth and glory of God within? Jesus said "I and the Father are one." What a glorious realization! Jesus seemed to be aware of that incredible fact in some of the most difficult of circumstances and not just in a flash of prayer. He said that his own mind and consciousness is given to us and is growing in us, but if we do not receive and acknowledge this growth, it will be shut out by the circumstantial story that crowds in upon us from every direction in every waking moment.

Perhaps when we go into deep sleep at night, we enter that God-state, but can we reside in that God-state during the day, for 9.6 continuous minutes (1%) much less 96 minutes (10%)? Can we stay in that god-state long enough to realize that there is no disease, no poverty, no loneliness, nothing to fear? Long enough to realize that divinity is our natural enlightened state of being? No one can say "I and my Father are one" except the individual by the gift of the Spirit. No one can say it for you or about you. You can only say it for and about yourself. That is why Jesus could not teach it to others. He had to come to that realization and embody that awareness himself. To say that there is no evil and no lack, is a personal awareness that cannot be taught or conferred upon another. Is God perfect? Are you one with God? Then you too are perfect, except for your beliefs otherwise. Can you say unequivocally "I am separate from nothing; I lack nothing; I am trapped by nothing ? Aside from my story of self-deceit, I am free, I am one with the god-state."

I just now took 9.6 minutes dedicated entirely to the realization of oneness. At first there were words, thoughts, feelings, images. Then there was a stretch or jump or letting go of thoughts, words, images and feelings. There was a vast silence , a vast light, a vast peace. Words kept crowding back in and I let them go, but they returned again and again. Words about the god state are just a beginning, a springboard, from which I had to jump, a cliff from which I had to fall. I did not succeed in attaining the god-state of awareness for my allotted 9.6 minutes. I did sense that Eternity was right there, that Infinity was very close, but the word "Eternity" and the thought about "Infinity" were not enough. I just gave 1% of my day to an incredible mission impossible! Could I stand 10% of god-state awareness? Could the god-state become something permanent that could be simultaneously sustained while other things are going on? Could the God-state become the background music and awareness of any self-created story that my mind is running in the foreground? Is that the way life can be? Today I will try to determine if I can sustain any of this awareness while I am doing my usual routine.

The 1% Factor

Psychologists estimate that even the most talented people use less than 10% of their ability and most of us use only 1% or less. No wonder we are so frustrated! This lack does not appear to be merely a lack of effort but a constriction of awareness. Alan Walter has prepared a chart which illustrates this contracting of awareness as a loss of energy units.

Scientists tell us that the visible light spectrum is less than 1% accessible to our sight, and the audible spectrum is not much more. Both of these elements of the electromagnetic spectrum added together take up very little space on the chart. . The vast majority of energy vibrations in the universe are not accessible to human perception.

Brain physiologists report that of the 10,000 pieces of data available to our perception each second, only 5-7 bits can be sensed at once. That leaves 9,993 bits of data that are not active in our awareness. According to the research of Dan MacDougald, this limited amount of data is accessed through three major filters in the mind: fear, hostility and love. The fear filter only tunes into threatening and fearful data; the hostility filter only allows us to access irritating and negative data, and the love filter allows to see what is good in any situation.

Infinity Theory maintains that reality is not what it seems because our view of reality is shaped and controlled largely by our story. For example, we have a story that matter is solid and pervasive, but in actuality at the subatomic level there is less than 1% of what could be called matter in the entire universe.

It is as though there are dots and we fill in the lines between the dots with our imagination. Then we name things and they become objects in our semantic brain dictionary and we have little if any awe, wonder and mystery left about them. The infinite living universe has become largely (99%) a world of finite forms, a world which Buber characterized as an "It" world. The sense of "Thou" has been lost. Man the Manipulator has learned various tactics and strategies for "controlling" his environment, the success or failure of which becomes the measure of his self-esteem. But alas, in spite of all of man’s wishes to the contrary, control is largely a failure (99%) as a strategy.

The human sense of failure is one of the most painful experiences that humans have, especially in the light of our infinite potentialities.

Shrouded in a secret sense of shame, guilt and fear, we develop a mask of success which serves to temporarily hide our inner doubts and shadowy subconscious inferiority. This mask, however, does not work because of the appearance of what we have called our symptoms. As hard as we may try to hate and hide the symptom signal, it is not possible. In fact, the more we deny its presence and meaning, the more tenaciously and ferociously it re-appears in various forms to get our attention. Since we have no idea what a symptom means, we usually resist and reject is life-giving message.

I have argued in this book that the symptom is a symbolic life-giving message that appears as a humiliating representation of our self-deceptive ego story. I have listed elsewhere a half page of typical symptoms, whether they be called stress, headaches, or failure.

These symptoms consume so much of our energy (up to 99%) that we spend almost full-time trying to self-medicate what they represent. We are focused so much upon the survival of our ego story and what it masks that we have lost the awareness of our true divine identity and capabilities.

The infinite power of our spiritual self, which I have called the imagination, is now operating almost entirely (up to 99%) unconsciously. Our awakening to the infinite power of imagination, therefore, is our major task in life.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Jung

This awakening is called for in our symptomatic "problem". We are so controlled and victimized by our story, however, that we have little or no time for such intangible trivialities. We just want to be distracted or we go to the doctor for pills. In most cases, a terrific shock

is needed, and life usually provides that disturbance in our increasingly frustrating and annoying symptoms. The ego’s denial of this infinite universe is massive and almost complete at times (up to 99%).

I am arguing here that the denial and unawareness of infinity may be 99% but it can never be 100% because of the Grace of our Creator. 1% of infinite power remains as a signal of our lost imaginative connection to God. This 1% cannot be lost, buried, rejected, repressed, or forgotten. God has not left himself anywhere without witness. There is a door to the infinite universe within your self, and it is at least 1%. It is often called the "still small voice". In the scriptures it is called the "mustard seed". It is the tiniest of all the seeds, and yet when planted and nurtured it grows into a giant tree in which the birds build their nests.

The stone that the builders rejected (the Self) becomes the chief cornerstone of the entire edifice.

1% is all that is needed. That 1% Factor is the doorway to the Infinite realization of who you are. The 1% Factor, which I call the imagination, has been discounted and relegated to the refuse pile by most people and especially by western culture. Imagination has been discredited and discounted by such slighting terms as wishful thinking, fantasy, daydreaming, and unrealism

For the most part, imagination is reserved for artists, poets, children and women. The left brain dominates the right brain.

But just suppose that imagination is the door to self-discovery. Just suppose that its presence is signaled by our symptoms. Just suppose that imagination is God. Just suppose that this secret passageway to the limitless is already being mis-used unconsciously by every human being on a daily basis, which keeps us separated, deprived and trapped in a failure story. Just suppose that human suffering in all of its myriad forms arises from the abuse of the imagination.

Just suppose that the cost for the knowledge of this secret passageway to the infinite is not a million dollars or even ten thousand dollars, and just suppose that you would not have to go to India or to New York City or to graduate school, or wait til your dying breath, to find this door.

Just suppose that the price of admission to get your foot into the door of this infinite world is only 1% of your time each day! (1% of your waking time would be 9.6 minutes). Close your eyes and relax for 9.6 minutes. Whatever thoughts, words, feelings and images come into your mind, drop them and let your attention penetrate these forms. Do not get carried away with your story, with all of its so-called problems and solutions. Just breathe consciously. Your breathe is the spirit and it knows where that door is.

Your ego story cannot go there. Your ego has created the very story that causes you to ignore this still small voice and its secret knowledge of the 1%.

At some point in your dedication of this 1% of your day to this priceless journey, you will encounter a light. This living light is yourself, hidden under a basket of words, thoughts, and images, which we have called the story. In an ancient Japanese dialect, I discovered the word YAMI. As in many oriental languages, words are made up of images. In the case of YAMI, there were two images: a flame and a covering. YAMI means sickness

The hidden light is the cause of our sicknesses, and the symptoms thereof. Jesus said that we are not to hide our light under a bushel basket. Isn’t it interesting that probably for centuries, going back to the very beginning of language itself, it was known that sickness was a covered light. What is it that covers that light? I believe it is our story, our ego self-deception. And I believe that our story may have darkened our awareness up to 99%, but not 100%.

1% of your consciousness remains available, guaranteed!. Most warranties are only for a year or two. This warranty is forever. A warranty is only as good as the strength of the manufacturer. Fortunately for us, God’s guarantee is as good as God himself.

God created you in his own image, in his own imagination, and you are a spiritual being, guaranteed!

The fact that your finite story has covered up the awareness of this Light does not matter. 1% remains and that is all that is necessary for awakening. That 1% mustard seed represents the entire infinite mind of God that exists in you. That 1% Factor is alive and it is guaranteed. Jesus discovered that 1% doorway to the infinite imagination. In his consciousness, that seed took root, grew and blossomed into a giant awareness that continues to grow and produce fruit until this day. He said "The Father and I are one." He realized who he was, and he claimed that realization for the entire humanity. No one can realize this fact for you, that you are one with your source. Jesus stated it for himself and I must be able to state it for myself. No one can do it for me or to me. Until I make this discovery, I will remain a victim of my story of limitation, restriction, separation, deprivation, entrapment and suffering. And I will have symptoms, guaranteed. And those symptoms are the 1% doorway of return and awakening, guaranteed.

What is the basic problem in this world which prevents our self-realization? The major human problem is sick religion.

In the Japanese language, I am told, there is a symbol for the word sickness: Yami. Yami is made up of two characters, one of which is like a little box and inside of that little box is a flame-like character. Sickness then is a covered light. I was quite surprised to discover that this ancient archetypal understanding of sickness was built right into an oriental language. It reminded me of Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in which he said "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all that are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."

The peace of God is shining in me now. Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home.

A Course in Miracles

Every person has his or her own sick, distorted, perverted, incomplete, endarkened story by which he or she lives and dies. Everyone prays to his own homemade god all day long every day. Non-worship is impossible. We give our power and glory to something. We never stop seeking for the infinite.

It is impossible. We make our preferred finite forms into the infinite, excluding their opposites. In all opposing forms, God is excluded. In our rush for safety and our desire to be right and to succeed at our game, our world narrows and contracts until we are imprisoned in a self-fulfilling prophecy which is our story. But our Guaranteed 1% remains and cannot be destroyed, and appears in our symptoms.

Even after the ravaging fires of unbelievable human crises, a seed remains in the stump of the burned trees of life (See Isaiah 6). The remaining seed of imagination is all that you will ever need to recover your lost life force. That seed has always been present, and has been used for good or for evil, and cannot be destroyed.

A large sealed earthenware pot about 10,000 years old was discovered in an Egyptian pyramid. When it was unsealed, it was discovered to be full of wheat seed. When some of these seeds were planted, they sprouted and grew wheat!

Sick Religion

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted; to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4: 18-19)

Luke, the physician, did not miss Jesus’ mission to those who were sickened, impoverished, imprisoned, broken, blinded, and bruised by false religion. What is false, sick, crippled, incomplete religion? I see twelve characteristics of such stories that we tell ourselves:

An impoverished, debunked imagination
Blindness to the dominating power of our human story
Holds itself to be right and others wrong
Excludes most of humanity
Believes in victimization
Denies God’s humanity and man’s divinity
Motivated by a fear-based belief system
Blind to the redeeming values hidden in man’s problems, sins, symptoms and suffering
Lack of the ability to unconditionally love everything and praise God for all things
Denies the relative, finite nature of evil, sin, wrong, hell, satan and demons, as states of mind in our self-manufactured story
In our sick, entrapping, blinding, impoverished and incomplete religious story, we may be asleep, addicted, unaware, possessed, angry and feel hopelessly alone. Like Don Quixote, we may be chasing windmills of the mind. We may wear ourselves out listening to the same broken record or going around and around in the same rut.

But even so, who wants to hear the "good news" that his story is off-course, incomplete, entrapping and symptom-producing? Behead any such messenger!

Every religion, however organized or disorganized, has at least 1% of truth in it. Usually, however, there is not more than 50% of truth in it because most religions either deny God’s humanity or man’s divinity. And then comes that loaded question: did Jesus die for our sins? Of course, he died for the mistakes of our sick religions, there is nothing else worth dying for. But remember, even his death would do no good except for the 1% Factor, which Jesus never lost sight of.

Is every religion sick? Yes, to some degree, because all religions are dualistic

Is everyone religious? Absolutely, because we are infinite beings in a finite world

What is religion? It is whatever we think will hold us together and make us happy.

What about atheists and materialists? Every human has infinite beliefs about something, even about doubts or incomplete beliefs. There is no one without a belief system which he has designed for survival in the midst of a seemingly finite, chaotic, dangerous world.

Do even psychopaths and schizophrenics have the 1% Factor? Everyone has the same irreducible guarantee. We all have elements of paranoia and split thinking in our stories, to whatever degree we deny that we are one with God, with others and with creation. After one night that Jesus spent with a wild raging demoniac in the graveyards, the man became sane. Others returned to themselves when the "demons" of confusion, fear and sickness were "cast out." On the cross, a psychopathic thief awakened from his paranoid nightmare and entered into the soul’s paradise.

After a lifetime of rehabilitating the criminal mind, Dan MacDougald discovered that paranoia (fear) was the root of the psychopathic religion. Severe panic is also certainly a key to the condition of the schizophrenic religion. To listen to the voice of the religion of Republicanism, tune into the Rush Limbaugh show any afternoon. Everyone teaches and preaches his own brand of sick religion. What is yours? What is mine?

When Jesus announced the good news about our sick religiosity, people got upset. Who wants to think they are incomplete, blinded, imprisoned, poor, and bruised? And then he announced out loud the ultimate egocentric claim that "I and my father are one." In these six words, all false religions were laid bare because the hidden inner belief in every human story is that I am right and you are not, that you have victimized and robbed me. Jesus exposed our own hidden belief that we are the most inferior and the most superiors being in the universe. Of course, no one would admit to such a belief, and when Jesus seemed to be saying the same thing, people were enraged, so shocked and enraged that they did not hear the "rest of the story," and we rarely have until this day. What is the "rest of the story" anyway? Jesus told the "rest of the story" when he said: "Don’t you know that you are gods?" ( John 10:34) But it was too late, his destiny was sealed. At the very end as he was dying, he exclaimed "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." His death was totally about our ignorant, sick, human religions and their victims.

Until we see and admit the sickness of our own story, we are stuck. But not without symptoms! Guaranteed! The discrepancy between our narcissistic story and the truth of our oneness with God and one another is always signaled by symptomatic pain of some sort. Crucifixion of our self or others is inevitable until our psychopathic and schizophrenic stories are brought out into the light of day. Then we will see how self-crucifixion happened and how resurrection through The 1% Factor is accomplished.

And so how do we find The 1% Factor and awaken the power of imagination to its rightful spiritual function? The Bible only speaks of "evil imaginations" (33 times) because we have not understood and rightly used our imagination. Look all around you. Everything that your eye lights upon was created by imagination, was it not? Didn’t your automobile, your kitchen table, your clothing, and your pictures on the wall begin with imagination? Did not our creator fashion the sun, moon, stars, trees, animals and humans through His imagination? Are we not created in His or Her "image" ? Were we not assigned the task of naming things? Did we not mis-use our imagination in the creation of our human problems? Is not every single man-made object, language, story, invention, and relationship fashioned by imagination? Do not all of our mis-judgments and problems arise from "evil" imaginative strategies? Is not evil, fear and human suffering a creation of the mind of man? Is not forgiveness a function of an imagination restored to its god-awareness?

The scriptures tell us that the mind of Christ is born and growing in us. Is this spiritual mind not the mind of imagination? William Blake went so far as to say "Christ is your imagination". What kind of rank heresy is that, asks our logical mind? But just suppose that the 1% Factor is your discredited Christ function, the imagination. This imagination is perhaps the only door through which you can realize and say "I and the Father are one." Otherwise, religion will not compute, and we will remain stuck in the "evil imaginations" of sick religion.

I have asked myself how the spiritual function of imagination can be restored? How can it be made conscious that we have unknowingly created our own problems and suffering, all of them. Otherwise, we will remain irresponsible and symptomatic. All of our sick religions in the 21^st century are beginning to awaken to the redeeming power of the Christ function, which we all imagination. We have a lot of crow to eat. There is a lot of egg on our faces, all of us. But the Christ stands and knocks gently at the door of the 1% Factor.

Is everyone’s religion falling short? Absolutely, look at this mess we are in. Is there a redeeming factor in everyone’s "religion?" Absolutely! Guaranteed! Where is the voice of truth going to speak next? No one knows, but if you listen carefully, you will hear the 1% Factor in every event, in every communication, in every painful symptom.

It does virtually no good to deny, justify or patch up our fear-based, control-oriented story.

It would be more beneficial to step outside of this story and look for its contradictions, flaws and inconsistencies. Unfortunately, we have spent a lifetime creating and polishing this worldview, and we are so attached to it that we will defend it to the death. We identify this story and its strategies with our very selfhood and with our very survival. We’re ready to resist any real inquiry into the validity of our story. We have censors and guards set up at the entrance to the mind. Jehad means the willingness to die for my holy cause and to get rid of all infidels at any cost. Jehad is conspiracy theory squared. All wars are holy wars. All murders are holy murders. All hostility is designed to protect our story. All self-defense is defense of our self-conceived lies.

Imagination therapy is designed to get around these censors and defenses. Since imagination is the deepest uncensored level of the mind, you can get past the story and investigate its symbolic underpinnings without arousing as much reactive fear and self-defense. After all, what harm could there be in imagining two animals and having them talk to each other? What danger could there be in visualizing a door with the name of your symptom on it and going through the door?

What problem could there be in uncovering a treasure chest at the bottom of the sea and bringing it to the surface?

What threat could there be in staring into the eyes of a nightmare monster until its eyes become friendly?

How much strain would it be to imagine repairing and rebuilding an old house until it is livable and beautiful?

What is Fear?

God is not the author of fear. You are

Fear is a judgment never justified

Fear is a symptom of your own deep sense of loss

The thing you fear is gone

You are fearful because you have forgotten

The world contains no fear that you laid not on it.

Fear demands the sacrifice of love, for in love’s presence fear cannot abide A Course in Miracles

Fear is ignorance, blindness, prejudice, and misunderstanding. Fear is illusion. Fear is the only problem in our human story. Fear is the illusory belief system which says that we are separated, lacking and trapped. Fear is the unawareness which prompts our foolishness. Fear is the mainspring of our lies and deceptions. Fear is the wrongful use of imagination. Fear is the basis of all our symptoms. Fear is what we need to be aware of and to see through. FEARLESS is an interesting motto but LOVINGNESS would be a better one. If fear is illusory, we don’t need to fuel and energize such thoughts, feelings and activities any more. Love is the basis of the absolute sacredness of individuality. Love is the awareness that each person is completely and absolutely an individual expression of the ONE LOVE. Love is the insightful awareness that fear is an illusion. Fear is the notion that perfection and love are illusions. Love and fear are mutually exclusive. Perfect love casts out fear.

Psychologists talk about rational and irrational fears. Once you admit that any fear is rational, the floodgate is opened and every plague known to mankind enters that door. We should be afraid of trucks, war, germs, robbery, disease and death? Insurance companies are the richest companies in the world, and are fear-based. DSM IV is full of phobias and compulsions as well as addictions, all of which are fear-based. The word "cancer" carries tons of fear. All of our human stories are tinged with fear and survival reactions and tactics. Some of the great ones have said "Fear not." Or "Love and do as you please." True perception sees only love and only Good everywhere, inside and out, whether we are alone or together.

To see evil is to experience fear. "Resist not evil" means to keep your eye on the Good, on love. You can find many reasons to fear anything, but you only need one reason to see Good and Love: only Love is real. Rational fear is not rational. Why would love step in front of a truck? Examine that. Our fears are immature and our loves have to grow until they reach maturity or perfection, and then fear is gone. Gone where? It never was real.

We do many stupid things out of ignorance, and fear is ignorance. Love educates. Fear blocks true learning. Fear says that love is limited, weak and exhaustible, undependable, unreliable, unable to work in the world of business, politics, rehabilitation of criminals, prevention of drug abuse and alcohol abuse. But when it has been tried, it has worked. A whole book could be written on this. Fear says that love does not protect you from harm, and that there is much harm in the world that we need protecting from. We sell our souls for love because we believe we lack it The reason we have a problem with love is that love is trust. The ego prefers the control tactics of fear because we think fear is real and that control works better than trust. Hawkins’ kineosology proves that fear weakens. We spend a whole lifetime trying to control, and we fail, because there is nothing to control. Why does love need controlling? Why would you need to beg and fight for a cup of water when have a river inside of you?

Fear controls our mind. Love and all of its symbols is all that we could want. What are love’s symbols? Money and stuff. We are obsessed with money and stuff because they represent love, which we can’t see and don’t think exists. Things can become empty symbols of love when we cling to them instead of enjoying what they represent. All of the things in the world will not compensate for the awareness of what they represent. Possessions are simply love in form. Forms change. Nathan had motorcycles, cars, trucks, three wheelers, and a new house, but he lost his beloved. Now these toys mean nothing. All of the things he possessed did not make him a man. Only the awareness of love and its meaning makes a man. Power without love becomes powerlessness. Possessions without love leave one possessed and empty. Control and dependence on fear is a poor substitute for the trust in love.

Your thoughts and beliefs attract more of the same. Watch what you believe.

You experience what you attract

You attract what you perceive

You perceive what you think

You think what you fear or love

You fear or love what you imagine

Are you experiencing what you want?

If not, forgive yourself and choose again.

Re-imagine

Re-think

Re-perceive

Embrace love and let the illusion of fear go

Your world of experience will change

And you will attract what you want

Why is so much of our story and our identity fear-based? Programming. After centuries of fear-based experiences, perceptions, and imaginations, it is no wonder that the fearful collective mind controls us. The battle therefore is between the illusory fear in our collective mind, which is programmed, and love reality in our superconscious Self, which is not programmed. The failure of our fear-based programming and behavior is actually not a failure at all. The "failures" in our fear-based story is simply a consequence of our mistaken perceptions and mis-used imagination. These consequences we call symptoms, which are friendly reminders and life-saving red flags to help us to get back on course and to re-discover our true nature.

If love is a confusing word to you, just use the word peace, joy, or ecstasy, they all mean the same thing. All too often love is confusing because it is perceived as arising from outside of ourselves rather than from within. Of course, we can attribute peace, joy and ecstasy to an outside location also. But the truth of it is that there is nothing outside of ourselves, outside of our consciousness. You are infinite consciousness, however strange that may seem. The belief that you are a very small speck in an immense field is the direct cause of all of our self-esteem and practical problems. The full realization that we are infinite is a lifetime achievement, i.e., the challenge to regain and retain the territory of your infinite nature . Our programming against the reality of our infinite nature is spotty, however, and too shaky to stand. Although we have massive amnesia, everyone can begin to educate himself about the meaning of the fear-based paradigm of avoidance and control.

Scientists have discovered a black hole in space named MCD-630-15, a galaxy 130 million light years away. The equivalent of 100 million exhausted suns have been sucked into this totally black hole called a singularity, smaller than an atomic particle, out of which may be pouring a constant new source of cosmic energy, spinning incredibly fast. They have gathered tons of data about this phenomenon during the last decade, but they are constantly revising the theory in order to make sense out of this data.

This doesn’t seem so strange to me because we don’t have an accurate model for what we are seeing and for all of the data we are gathering in our own universe of experience.. I have called my current model Infinity Theory, in order to explain the mysterious phenomena we are experiencing in our daily lives. We know a little bit of how it works, but we don’t know what it is. A new model of the universe is emerging which is based on love’s reality, and not fear’s programming. (The Universe is a Green Dragon)

What does it mean that you are a spiritual being? Our identity story is comprised mainly of psychological and social conditioning, which blocks out the still small voice of our true spiritual identity. A spiritual being is characterized by a consciousness of the eternal and infinite meaning of our psychological and social story.

Jesus practiced a rhetoric of shock in order to break down preconceived associations

Harold Bloom

Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to that person.

Gospel of Thomas

All power in heaven and earth has been given to me

Matthew 28:18

I am the resurrection and the life

John 11:25

I am the way the truth and the life

John 14:6

I am the good shepherd

John 10:11

I am the light of the world

John 8:12

I am the bread of life

John 6:35

Courage! It is I. Be not afraid

Mark.6:20

I am the door

John 10:7

I am the vine, you are the branches

John 15:5

Who are you looking for?

John 18:8

Separated, Lacking and Stuck

Our low self-esteem story arises from the three fictional beliefs in being separated, lacking and stuck. To help locate some of the specific sources of these three beliefs in your story, please answer the following questions or complete the following sentences:

The sense of separateness or aloneness
What separative thoughts do you have?

What are you telling yourself that makes you feel lonely, isolated, abandoned?

Do you have emotions of fear, jealousy, guilt, anger, self-righteousness?

I most often feel separated from__________

I feel left out of_______

I would like to be closer to________________

I can’t forgive_____________

I am critical of others who______________

I envy others for_________________

I feel unworthy about___________________

The sense of lack, deprivation, or insecurity

I compare myself with__________

I feel inadequate about______________

I feel incomplete about____________

There is not enough _________________

I have less than____________________

I feel cheated of____________________

I would like to have more____________

A quality missing in me that I see in others is________________

If I could live my life over, I would_____________

I don’t have the ability to________________

3.The sense of being trapped or stuck

What do you feel trapped about?

I feel burdened with_____________

I am too involved with___________

I can’t seem to get out of____________

I feel handicapped by________________

I feel victimized by_______________

One habit I am stuck with is__________

An attitude I would like to get rid of_____________

An obstacle in my path is_____________

Scriptures to Remind us of our Unity, Wholeness and Freedom

The spiritual truth about these three beliefs is that separation is only found in our story, that deprivation is only found in our story, and that entrapment is only found in our story. The truth, outside of our story, is that unity, security and freedom are already ours to recognize and claim

Unity

Nothing shall be able to separate you from the love of God (Rom 8:35-39)

He is our peace, for He hath broken down the middle wall of partition (Eph 2: 14)

You that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled unto Himself (Col. 1:21)

You life is hidden with God in Christ (Col 3:3)

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ (Gal 3:28)

I pray that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfect in oneness (John 18 :21-23)

Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Matt 26:20)

Wholeness, security and plenty

We are not sufficient of ourselves, our sufficiency is of God (2 Cor 3:5)

My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9)

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want (Ps 23: 1)

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Phil 4: 13)

My God shall supply all of your needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus (Phil 4: 19)

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid (Mtt 5:14)

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Peter 1:4)

Freedom

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32)

If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you (Matt 6:14)

Perfect love casts out fear (I john 4:18)

Whosoever keepeth the word of God, in him verily is the love of God perfected (I John 2:5)

For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am in, therewith to be content (Phil 4:11)

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10)

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2) He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32) Now being made free from sin, you have become servants of God (Rom 6:22)

Not for Sale: Dollars and Sense

Not For Sale. Let’s talk about money. My brain doesn’t even function without dollar signs.

Everything has a price, right? Money makes the world go round, right? You’ve heard the old joke about the guy who asked a girl to go to bed with him for a dollar and she slapped him. He asked about $10,000 and she warmed up, but she said "What do you think I am!" I know what you are, he said, I am just trying to find out your price.

You can’t even drink water without a water bill, right? How far could you get today without your wallet, credit card or checkbook, right? You couldn’t even flip the light switch, make a cell phone call or start your car, right? Without a computer, you couldn’t even access the internet and download my free book, right? Everything has a price, right? When you see the word "FREE" you get suspicious, right? What is the scam? Nothing is free, echoes the skeptic. And neither is self-knowledge. In fact, self-knowledge has its painful price, but I would like to reduce that pain, so here we go.

As 21^st century westerners, we tend to compute value in dollars. What costs more is worth-more and what is free is worth-less. This book addresses a priceless process of meaning and purpose which is called spiritual psychotherapy, and I hope that just because this information is free, that it is not judged as worth-less. To the human mind, everything has a price; everything is for sale. And so I wanted to offer something that is Not For Sale.

Something priceless and price-less. Something you cannot buy no matter how much money you have, and yet something you can acquire even if you have no money. If this seems contradictory, confusing, paradoxical and radical, then it is no different from any other part of this book. For the first time in my life I can say that I do not want someone’s money. I mark it up to my karma, because I once accepted 30 pieces of silver for something priceless, but now I will not accept even a million pieces of silver for something beyond price. Actually this knowledge cannot be bought or sold by anyone to anyone.

We are very fortunate that the internet is a medium of democratic and free exchange. On the internet no one can say what should or should not be published. Value is determined by the reader. There has been very little expense per se involved in this publication, except the cost of my website. I do not wish to have any "intellectual property rights" to what you are reading. How can anyone own Infinity Theory or Disillusionment Therapy? If anything is free, it should be the Way of Understanding. If anything is valuable, it should be self-knowledge. If anything cannot be sold, it is self-understanding.

If you come and sit in my physical office or my virtual office, it might cost you $100. If you commit yourself to 9.6 minutes per day and to the thoughtful study of this book, however, it will cost you nothing per hour except your prejudices, your false belief system and your suffering. My estimate is that it took me 1000 hours to write this manuscript, which, at $100 per hour, is $100,000. If you had a 100,000 dollar inheritance due you and you only had to pay a finder’s fee, would you do it? If you were reasonably sure you could win a million dollars on the lottery, would you risk buying a few hundred dollar tickets?

If you are reading this book on symptoms, it is not because you bought it, because it is Not For Sale. If you paid $500 for this book, would you study it more seriously than if it was given to you for free? Is your time worth $100 an hour to study this document for 10 hours, for your own self-discovery? If you were paid $100 an hour to study this document, and it took you 10 hours, you would have earned $1000 and certainly you would then be qualified to say whether it is priceless information or not. If you do not give the 10 hours to it and you do not imagine that it is worth $100 an hour of your time, then in all likelihood you would not know whether it is priceless or not. You would not know for sure that you would win the lottery until you bought the tickets nor if you would get your inheritance until you pay the finders fee, nor would you know if this book priceless value until you give it its due.. My word about the value of this book would mean very little to you because I would be considered a prejudiced witness. If I give it to you for free, the only thing risk you take is 10 hours of study time.

My essential question is whether a price can be put upon self-knowledge. Can anything be even be compared to the value of self-knowledge? I doubt it. If you don’t have self-knowledge, do you have anything? I wonder. If you have everything in the world except self-knowledge, you have exactly nothing, don’t you? Therefore, self-knowledge is the most valuable thing in the world, isn’t it? What could you possibly give in exchange for it? Nothing. What can you put in its place? Nothing. What can you place along side it for comparison? Nothing. Self-knowledge cannot be bought or sold for any price, not even for a million dollars, not even for an inheritance, not even for a lottery. Without self-knowledge, you do not exist except in a dream world. And in that dream world, money is actually worthless. For to whom could anything be worthful or meaningful if not to you? The assumption that we know ourselves is ridiculous, considering that we only use 10% of our ability, and that the unconscious mind is so vast. The assumption that we know ourselves is also ridiculous because if we did we would not have symptoms.

Prices are funny things. Some rich people are paying a million dollars to have their bodies frozen for future resurrection. Some motivational speakers charge $3000 for a speech on how to sell. Some cars easily cost $25,000. Some designer dresses don’t even blush for selling at $1000. Stock market analysts may get $5000 an hour for their advice. Political fund-raising dinners go for $1000 a plate. Weddings now cost on the average about $20,000 and divorces can cost much more. Lawyers charge $150 to $1000 an hour to handle our finite legal disputes.

With the restrictions on my time and energy at 75 years of age, I feel that $100 an hour for the fastest track to self-knowledge on the planet at this time is a bargain. But I had rather just non-charge you for a map to this knowledge, which is an even greater bargain for you, is it not? You can’t even buy a map of Virginia now for less than $2.75, much less a map of human consciousness for whatever that is worth.

If you read this book ten times in the next ten years, you will get your money’s worth. Guaranteed!

Tom insists that he knows himself and self-knowledge therapy is a waste of time. He insists that he has no secrets to hide and that he is totally honest. Yet he cannot explain why he has a symptom nor can he get rid of it. He is not particularly lying to me or hiding things from me, but he is deceiving himself and hiding things from himself. It is strange that he is defending himself against some imagined accusation of mine that he is bad, when actually I am trying to show him that he is selling himself short.

The Value of Self-knowledge

Can I "afford" not to know myself?

Is there anything more valuable than self-knowledge?

Is it possible to live a whole lifetime assuming that I know myself when I don’t?

Does true religion mean knowing myself?

Does a fear-driven story mean that I do not know myself?

Is the presence of a symptom a necessary mandate to "know thyself?"

Is human suffering a clue to self-ignorance?

Does wealth indicate self-knowledge?

Does poverty indicate the lack of self-knowledge?

Can you survive and not be alive to your true identity?

Can you remember yourself for two minutes without loss of consciousness?

Do you give 9.6 minutes (1 % of your time) per day to self-knowledge?

If you are an average person, in your lifetime you will earn more than $1 million and die broke or in debt. What a cheerful thought!

There was a "rich" "young" "ruler". Now if you are rich, and young and a ruler, you have everything, right? But this powerful young rich man found himself lacking and sought out Jesus, asking how he might obtain "eternal life." He had kept the rules and played the game of life fairly, but he was not satisfied. Self-knowledge was lacking. His only obvious symptom was his dissatisfaction and his search for more. He wasn’t sick, he wasn’t poor, he presented no critical relationship, job or social failures or symptoms.

He wouldn’t be a candidate for psychotherapy. Yet he was not qualified for self-knowledge, because he was too attached to his story like the rest of us. He was counseled to give his fortune to the poor and to come and follow the inner path. But he chose not to let go of his self-identity story and he walked away sadly and was heard from no more. (Luke 18: 18-24) "How difficult it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God," Jesus remarked. Wed to our identity story for our security and happiness, we also refuse the inner path of self-understanding. However, it remains true that the only true wealth is self-knowledge, which cannot be bought or sold. True self-knowledge is the only infinite and priceless thing in this world. That is why Solomon advised above all things to get wisdom, and that is why Paul spoke of that "wisdom which leads to salvation" (2 Tim 3:15).

The Way of Understanding is priceless. It does not come easy. There are many stumbling blocks and blind spots to this priceless knowledge. It is the pot of gold at the end of the psychic rainbow. It is located in your heart where the issues of life arise. You cannot cheat about it, you cannot buy it, fake it or manipulate it. It is God-given and Spirit-directed. If you do not search for it above all finite things, you will not find it, because it is not finite, and it cannot be found with finite sight.

And so, should spiritual psychotherapy be charged for? How can anyone charge $100 an hour for something priceless? I haven’t found any other way to provide a quality search for oneself because you have to walk a treacherous inner path of symptom understanding in order to get out of this cave of psychic darkness. This intensely personal and invaluable journey requires a re-birth process for the modern man. Religion has often been so debunked, degraded and sickened that it is not a reliable guide to self-understanding for many people. .

Insurance companies pay partially for the relief of "medically necessary" psychic suffering, and the patient must pay the balance for the time, skill, and expenses of the psychotherapist. Psychotherapy may well include the "purchase of friendship" in some respects, but it symbolizes far more than that. It cuts to the core of our identity dilemma.

Back to money. My office expenses are $30 an hour before anyone walks in my door. If I don’t collect at least $60 an hour, I am operating in the red because insurance collection takes up equally as much of my time as counseling itself. And so, if you ever have the privilege of spiritual psychotherapy, please count yourself very fortunate because the Spirit is always present in the healing process. In this book, I cannot offer you psychotherapy, but perhaps a vision of its inner workings, and that is free, and that is my gift to you. May God bless you on your journey of self-realization, which begins with the awareness that the universe has no other purpose.

If you have done your due diligence, devoured this book and put in your 10 hours, I will answer any question I can handle in five minutes on the internet for free.Not for Sale: here we go with my "painless dentistry" disclaimer, but at least you won’t get a bill for anything on this site. Any price and any pain for your self-knowledge will be self-imposed.

In My Cyber Office I offer psychotherapy and supervision services for $100 per hour. But prior to this, you may wish to do due diligence in your study of this manuscript, as well as your 9.6 minute daily meditation, and to avail yourself online of the Yahoo discussion group on Disillusionment Therapy . Then you probably will not need my Cyber Office consultation services. This is not an ad for your business. Why should you pay $100 an hour for Cyber Office Services for Disillusionment Therapy?

WHAT IS IMAGINATION?

Consider these propositions:

1. You are imaginative
2. Imagination creates the phenomenal world
3. You create your worldview and experience through your imagination

4. You create good and evil in your worldview
5. Imagination is infinitely creative
6. Imagination is infinite
7. You are infinite imagination
8. You create infinitely
9. God is the basis of your infinite creative ability
10. You imagine who you are, you forget who you are; you can develop amnesia about who you are.

11. You often mis-imagine who you are
12. You can re-imagine who you are; you can refuse to re-imagine who you are

When you refuse, you develop a symptom of that refusal and yuu cannot explain that symptom to yourself or explain it away
If you get rid of one symptom of your amnesia, another appears
Symptoms appear where amnesia has occurred
Symptoms are the encoded language of the contracted imagination
Imagination is still functioning and creates dreams, visions, nightmares, archetypal symbols and symptoms for your awakening to Infinity.
You are "tried in the furnaces of affliction"

by all sorts of symptoms and suffering until you finally awaken completely from your amnesia.
Every belief system has a premise, a bottom line assumption, which, whether clear and known or not, governs the outcome or final product of the entire system.
Infinite Imagination is already the bottom line in every operating belief system, and it is this premise, this reality, which produces the symptom.
This premise was inborn by God’s choice, not ours. This premise is the hardware, our true self. Our own installed software, our story, has its own set of assumptions and limitations which run counter to our Inborn Christ pattern, and set up our stress parameters. This installed programming comes from our particular family and culture, as well as from the social collective mindset. The stress between the inborn Christ pattern (the true self) and the socially installed psychological programming (our story) is universal and inevitable. This dissonance is what we have called being asleep or dreaming nightmares. Awakening is our inevitable destiny.

22. God is buried in you, asleep in you, asleep as you, disguised as you and experiences your entire mis-imagined existence of stress and suffering, until you both awaken as conscious partners.
23. God’s life and your life are inevitably linked in Infinite Imagination
and without this awareness, you cannot be your Self.

24. God is infinite imagination
25. God imagined me individually
26. God created me in the likeness of infinite imagination so that I might create and imagine as he does

27. We are like the potter who shapes the clay pot of this world and when mistakes are made, we re-imagine what we have made without the defects. (Jeremiah 18)

The Great Fiery Altar

The Great Fiery Altar is an incredible transmutative meditation/visualization method.

This method of raising the energy vibration includes both forgiveness and praise. The conflict is first located through dualistic imagery and then it is presented as a gift (through praise) upon the altar, where it is transformed (forgiven) by the heavenly fire and then the new form is also praised. Whatever problems or images are uncovered by means of dream analysis, visualization or just ordinary therapeutic conversation, are decoded into imagery and taken up to the mountain top to the Great Fiery Altar for transmutation. All finite forms must be transmuted into their true meaning.

When the decoded energetic form of the problem islaid upon the altar, God is praised for the problem. "Praise God for all things."

Then the violet flames of heaven are called down to consume/transform the gift.After the smoke clears, the meditator is to be still and quiet, with an open mind and heart. He may (1) see, (2) hear or (3) feel a message as a return blessing, now or later. If there is nothing but a clear altar, praise God for that, relax and wait.

The Great Fiery Altar is a means by which (1) we release our fear-based judgments and stories, and (2) by which we praise God for our symptom, and (3) by which we discover the true meaning of the symptom, and (4) by which we discover the power of love.

It is important to understand the anatomy of the Great fiery altar method. Every word in our semantic brain dictionary is connected to an image, picture or symbolic component just one step below it. Just one step below this imaginal component, there is an energy vibrational force. And so there are three levels: words, imagery, and vibrational energy patterns or attractor forces.

Human symptoms have an inward as well as an outward form. A symptom can appear outwardly as a cancer, as a fight, or a social problem but it has an inward form as well. A symptom can have a feeling form, a visual form, a vibrational form, an imagery form, a sound form, a smell form, a touch form, a somatic form, or a social form. These outward and inward forms of the symptom can be de-coded and made conscious. Once the form is de-coded into symbolic form, it can be trans-formed. It can be raised to higher vibrational level of consciousness, for example, from fear (100) to peace (600). The movement is from conflicted story to transmutation to serenity.

The altar method, then, of transmutation, is to listen to the words of complaint, and decode them into their underlying symbolic or energetic form, and expose them to the higher energies for transformation.

The Cosmic Christ

I have found three symbols of the cosmic Christ archetype that I like. In this first picture we see the cross, the earth, and the infinite light

In this second picture, we see the Christ figure among stars, comets and planets

In this third, more abstract picture, we see the archetypal ring of harmony, which captures the oneness theme of the cosmic Christ.

The Law of Attraction

The predominant attitude which is held in the mind is reproduced in the outer world. This reproduction occurs through the vibratory energy rate of the particular attitude. For example, fear vibrates at a much slower vibratory rate than love, for example. If your attitude is one of love, you will perceive and reproduce love in your outer world of experience. You will attract loving experiences if your predominant attitude is that of love. If your predominant attitude is one of fear, you will attract fearful experiences. This can be compared to an electromagnet:

The Battery is like the body

The Coiled Wire is like the brain

The Nail is like the predominant thought or attitude

The Magnetism is like the vibratory rate that attracts all of our experiences, positive or negative to us

Jesus M.D.

By David Stevens, M.D.

"Jesus, M.D.," seems a little odd, doesn't it? But should it? The New Testament contains more than 75 references to the healing work of Christ. The four gospels record more instances of Jesus healing than of Him preaching or teaching. That is why down through the centuries, one of the cherished names for Christ has been the Great Physician. Yet, although Christians are aware of Jesus' focus on healing, most don't think of Him as an M.D.

Jesus didn't go to medical school or open a doctor's office. He didn't collect fees, make rounds at a hospital or deal with a managed-care organization. But He did take frequent night calls. He was a superb attending. Students wanted to match into His highly rated residency program. He developed and taught better ways to properly scrub because purity was godliness. Patients with the most difficult cases traveled far to see Him because He was a superb diagnostician, and His therapeutic plan never failed.

Dr. Jesus never closed His practice to new patients even though His waiting room was packed. He didn't require an appointment. Walk-ins were always welcome. He was incredibly busy. He couldn't go out in public without being stopped for sidewalk consults. It happened in church, at mealtimes and even on long walks. Yet despite the constant pressure, He remained compassionate and "high touch." And He maintained margin in His life.

Jesus, M.D., was an expert in treating impossible cases — blindness, lameness, heart failure, deafness, mental illness and even leprosy. He was an ophthalmologist, anorthopedist, an ENT, and much more. If you had to name His specialty, calling Jesus a missionary doctor would be most accurate. He dealt with overwhelming numbers of patients daily. He treated every disease. Most important, He had a mission, a purpose. He constantly used His encounters with sick people to share spiritual truth and bring them into a personal relationship with God.

The Inner Split

The Inner Split developed aeons ago, and due to its stressfulness, was buried and kept hidden. This Inner Dividedness motivates all of our strategies and prompts our reactivity. We make a "deal" when we get married that our partner is to make us happy and we will make the partner happy; that the partner will take responsibility for our unhappiness and we will take responsibility for the partner’s unhappiness. When this "deal" fails, which it must, we feel betrayed and disappointed, hurt and angry. It must fail at some point, in spite of our will power and ingenuity, because this Inner Split must be recognized before Self-realization occurs. Interpersonal betrayal is just an outward expression and mirroring of inner betrayal, of the Inner Split. Divorce is just an out-picturing of the Inner Divorce. The most painful of all human experiences, betrayal, is thus the door to a deeper inner healing.

What is this Inner Split that creates so much stress and pain that we repress and deny it, but all the while we are working full-time to doctor its symptoms? This split is between your story about your finite self and the reality of your Infinite Self, between your human self-concept and your divinity. This awareness has been hidden behind a veil of ignorance and fear for millennia.

There is a world of phenomena, but we do not live directly in that outer objective world. We live in our inner story about that outer world. In that story we live according to a finite concept of ourselves, and overlook our invisible infinite nature. We do not notice that there is a split between our world and our story about our world; and we do not notice that there is a split between our Self and our story about ourself. Therefore we are always living with stress of the inattention to this split. We concentrate instead on how to manage and manipulate the outer world so that we don’t have to feel the pain of this inner condition of splitness. When we fail to manipulate the outer world successfully, such as when there is the loss of a partner, the pain surfaces and we are upset by the betrayal of the "deal". We didn’t "own" the partner in the first place, how could we "lose" them? But because of our inner split and its pain, we tried to control the partner, as well as the outer world in general, in order to feel secure, important, loved, powerful. This control strategy, however, did not work, and could not work, and only added further to our stress and to the sense of inadequacy.

So how were you managing your inner split before this current outer crisis produced this pain? What were you telling yourself? What were you thinking? Were you saying "I can’t live without you, baby?" Or "I can’t live with you, jerk!" Or was your partner saying such things to their self?

Psychotherapy begins with the admission of pain and all of the related attempts to avoid, deny and self-medicate this symptomatic pain. If psychotherapy is to work, it must then proceed to the taking of responsibility for this crisis instead of blaming some outer person or circumstance for it. The patient wants an immediate solution to his pain lest he experience further guilt, shame or weakness. If the therapist rushes into "solution focused" counseling for the sake of insurance coverage, the patient will be the loser. Simplistic solution focused counseling shows that the therapist has not dealt with his own Inner Split. The door of opportunity will again be missed. The patient will experience a brief recovery and then re-focus his Inner Split issue somewhere else. Do you want to be a blind participant in missing the opening of a door to the soul? How easy it is to fall into the Mr. Fix-It Rescuer illusion.

What is this Opening of the Door to the Soul? I have been arguing that symptoms are the Opening of the Door to the spirit. Quick-fixing the symptom is trying to "take the kingdom of heaven by force" (Mt 11:12). Every time a new symptom arises, it carries a more insistent message, and we attempt more drastic "treatments." Both the patient and the therapist may be swept into the temptation to just comfort the pain and get rid of its "uselessness." We sacrifice meaning for relief.

But upon careful analysis .it is discovered that the so-called "problem" was originally considered to be a "solution" to some other problem. When the symptom occurs, the Door is Open. The door to what? The symptom is a signal of the Real Self, and it is accompanied by the pain from the Inner Split. The meaning of the symptom and its pain is an open door to Self-Realization. It is so easy to make rationalizations and excuses. It is so easy to tell ourselves that we don’t have the time or the money for self-awakening psychotherapy. Just give me a quick fix. I am too busy for such a nebulous luxury as self-realization, even if such a thing exists and were possible. I have other more important priorities such as survival, getting what I want, and avoiding what I don’t want. I, I. I. Which "I" are we talking about? Who has time for self-knowledge? I have to see who wins the football game. Which "I" is it that wants to win the game? Which "I" is so concerned about being a loser? Every step we take is hounded by the Inner Split and we don’t even see it. We only see what our programming and our scripts allow. The story controls our life. Our internal schizophrenia, our Inner Split, will not be ignored, however. There is no escape from its insistent message.

Look steadily at your pain and your symptoms. How did you create this for yourself? What does this creation mean? What were you wanting? Why did you want so much or so little? Why were you never satisfied or told yourself your satisfaction didn’t matter? Why did you make a fool out of yourself? Why were you so greedy, so selfish, so self-sacrificing, so impulsive, so withdrawn, so irrational, so intellectualized, so judgmental, so critical, so defensive, so hostile, so forceful, so self-punitive? Can you really look at that kind of behavior without self-condemnation and self-justification? Can you even consider that such things arise from your repressed spirituality and infinite nature? The Door to Awareness is Open now. Will you look or will you go on with "business as usual?"

Our Ego Story

David Hawkins summarizes our ego story very nicely:

The belief in cause is implicitly dualistic. We believe that we are separate doers. We identify with our thoughts, actions, feelings, and with our good or bad qualities, our career, etc. Thus the "I" becomes submerged in recognition into an endless morass of self-definitions. If they are good, we feel happ0y; if they are bad, then we feel depressed or guilty. All self-definitions are fallacious and equally misleading. The self becomes glarmoized as the hero or heroine of our life story and drama./ This self has to be right, has to be protected and has to survive. The self becomes the perpetrator , the victim, the cause, the responsible recipient of all of praise or blame. To transcend this identification requires letting go of all of the above mental propensities, the willingness to sacrifice these traits and habits to God out of love and radical humility. Fears and vanities crash when you realize the mind knows nothing. The mind deals in "presumptions, appearances, perceived events, nonprovable conclusions, and mentations which it identifies with reality. No such reality as that constructed by the mind actually exists. "When carefully examined it becomes obvious that all of our so called worthy opinions are worthless. These opinions stem from and are reinforced by positionalities, which bring on endless suffering. Memory is really just a record of past illusions.( 83 Eye) The phenomena of life are not caused by anyone or anything, but are just the impersonal, autonomous interactions of all the facets of prevailing conditions of nature and the universe.There isn’t a me causing this stream of consciousness.. For example, demand that your mind stop thinking and see if it does. The mind goes right on doing what it is doing because it is not acting out of volitional choice. The ego claims to be the author of all subjective experience. The time lapse between an internally sensed occurrence and the ego’s claim to authorship is about 1/10,000 of a second. The ego is merely an observer of these events, not their creator. The ego quickly edits whatever occurs in the thought stream, and claims credit for it. Distortion is built in and automatic. Once all of this distortion is released, there is an enormous aliveness that occurs, and the fear of death ceases. We can’t believe this "me" will come to an end. Death seems unfair, bizarre, unreal, tragic, , and makes one feel angry and frightened.

A Spiritual Psychotherapy Koan

We can summarize the entire message of spiritual psychotherapy in a one sentence koan: How can the ego be hurt, when you are not? Spiritual Psychotherapy is the growing awareness of the meaning of the struggle between the belief that the ego may be hurt, stressed, slighted, angered, fearful, bereaved, aggressive, prideful, depressed, suicidal, homicidal, psychotic, neurotic, or normal, but that your Self is not subject to any of these experiences. All of these experiences are the result of various opinions and judgments that you are holding in your mind as objective facts in the human identity story, and have nothing to do with the Reality of the Self. All of these states of mind are just experiences within the story, and this story is held together by the staples, glue, duct tape, bailing wire and rubber bands of ordinary dualistic perception and reasoning. The ego can be hurt, but you cannot. And so the koan is: how can there be no victim in a world of obvious fear and victimization? I find that there are no perpetrators or victims except within my programming.

Bill was able when he got anxious this week to say to himself "I am not upset for the reason I think" because there was nothing real to fear and to be victimized by, and therefore he was able to relax his compulsive acting out fear cycle by remembering love. I asked Bill if could visualize his anxiety and give it some form or shape. I asked him if his anxiety had any color, shape, form, weight, sound, taste, or feeling. He saw his anxiety as about the size of a softball, and said that it was very heavy. It was blue in color and made a screaming or screeching sound. I asked him if he could change anything about this softball. He reduced it to about the size of a golfball and it was lighter. I asked him if he could take it up a mountain. This turned out to be quite a struggle, but he finally got it about halfway up. I suggested that he visualize a large altar ( See The Great Fiery Altar section ) and place this ball of negative energy on the altar, and call down a purple flame from heaven upon it. When he did, he saw in the background of the flames a door. Eventually we got through the door and walked down a long hallway where he could see light at the end. Then he came out of the dark hallway into a garden, a very calm, peaceful and energized experience. He said that he felt like his real self.

I explained how this negative ball of energy had been transmuted into a higher energy form by exposing it to a more rapid vibrational energy field called the purple flame of heaven. We looked upon this experience as a modern form of alchemy in which he transformed something negative into its positive inner source. Also we noted that this was a shift from the outer to the inner. He was tempted to run back to the outer and to get involved with his behavior and it consequences and the tendency to believe that he could control it as an outside matter. He learned that you can go deeper into the inner core of a negative form and find what is really behind it. The original positive energy had, through mis-imagination, been turned into a negative energy, and through transmutation it was changed back into its original substance.

How to De-Code Your Symptoms

First, you regard your symptom as symbolic language about your innermost Self

Second, you begin to see pain and suffering as a teacher and not as an enemy, and to be curious about what its message is.

Third, you reflect on the possible positive meanings your symptom could have for you.

Fourth, if a crisis has cracked open the shell of your ordinary perception, you decide keep your foot in the door of this valuable opportunity for change and transcendence.

Fifth, you learn that to de-cipher the unconscious language of the soul may require some study, some reflection, some curiosity, and some investment of time in spiritual exploration. Spiritual psychotherapy is the chief discipline which verses itself in the depth meaning of symbolic and symptomatic language as it relates to your infinite nature.

Sixth, you ask yourself how your symptom exposes an unconscious and fallacious assumption that you are separated, lacking or trapped. You ask yourself in what ways your symptom exposes a fear-based story and control strategy which is not working. You ask yourself how your symptom and suffering point to ignored potentiality and spirituality.

Seventh, you begin to be suspicious about all of the compulsive "solutions" your ego cooks up which are supposed to "fix" your discomfort. You begin to be suspicious about how your ego always blames something outside of yourself for all of your problems, and to notice how that dis-empowers you.

Eighth, you begin to pray the true seeker’s prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know its me."

What is the Price of an Open Door?

What does it mean to say that the symptom door is now open? If you are disturbed enough to seek a therapist, it is likely that a door has opened or that you at least are close to it.

Mr. B described the loss of his wife, Joan, attributing his pain to this loss. I said: "Let us say that you believe that your pain is due to the loss of Joan." He brought up two earlier incidences in his life which were comparable with this loss.. At 17, he lost his first sweetheart of two years when she broke up with him. He grieved and withdrew socially for two years. When he was 3 years of age, his father came home from the war and felt he was kicked out of mother’s bed. In each of the three instances, he attributed his pain to the loss of a beloved woman. I suggested again that he be careful not to tell himself that losing the person caused his pain, but rather than he believes that losing the person caused his pain. He said that he supposed that prior to his loss of his mother attachment at 3 years of age, which is the loss that most psychiatrists had pointed him to, he could have felt a loss of the comfort of the womb at birth. I said that this too is a belief , and that the real cause could still be "something else". He was shocked and said that he did not believe in reincarnation. I pointed out again that we are investigating the assumption that beliefs cause suffering and symptoms. Otherwise we keep going around in circles because we are doctoring the symptoms rather than the real cause. As a business man, he agrees that unless the real problem is addressed, instead of just a symptom, nothing is solved. He has personally had 20 years of such doctoring to convince him of such a circular pattern.

And so whether it be a belief in reincarnation, or a belief that the loss of either or all of the three women were the "cause" of his pain, it would still be " beliefs" to which we are giving the power of cause. He was very interested in finding out what the "something else" could be. He asked if I could tell him. I said that whenever we use the language of our semantic brain dictionaries, we are automatically and unconsciously assuming that this language is pure and clear, and that words mean the same things to different people and that the true meaning of words is understood. I told him that our words have been socially programmed to carry the survival language of our stories. Our stories and our language about who we are do not necessarily serve us well. These stories are basically fear-driven and so is the daily language we use to talk to each other. In order to develop a bridge across which we may communicate therapeutically, we have to create a mutually understood therapeutic language. Otherwise, words quickly bring us into conflicted and confused meanings.

Earlier Mr B. had apologized profusely for his continual crying. He said that sometimes he is not even thinking of Joan and he cries. This makes him think that it may be "something else" that is causing his pain. One day this week he had a 24 hour period in which he did not cry. He had begun to think differently about the Joan situation when he had talked with an associate who also is going through a divorce since his wife cheated on him. This man was very angry. Mr. B felt for once that maybe this wasn’t all his fault, that perhaps his wife had not been really honest with him, although they had often talked and he thought their issues were out in the open. He reasoned with himself that she had omitted some very significant things which led to this separation. He said that it was not all his fault. This raises an interesting question as to whether anyone can talk about a No-Fault process, even in spiritual psychotherapy.

I said to Mr. B that we are on treacherous ground here, that it is not just a question of honesty, but of awareness. Perhaps they were both "honest" but just not aware of the real cause of their pain, and thus whether he rightly blamed himself or her was not the critical issue, and thus anger is not a solution either. I suggested strongly that one person cannot be the direct cause of pain in another. I reminded him of the deal that couples unconsciously make when they get married: you make me happy and I will make you happy, maybe; you be responsible for my unhappiness and I will be responsible for yours, maybe.

This "deal’ seems possible at the time and heightens itself into quite an infatuation. I am not denying that "love" exists in marriage, but this love is tainted with fear-driven stories which later emerge in their full fury to the surprise of everyone. Joan’s dishonesy was more like self-deception than lying. This painful crisis can be regarded as a door-opener rather than as a useless, wasteful tragedy.

Is there a No-Fault possibility in a relationship? When we get into the attribution of fault or blame, we are buying into the belief that time and space are the critical factors in our lives. We are hardly aware that there is a vertical or infinite dimension here, a dimension of non-space and not-time in which it is all happening at once, and no finite thing is causing any other finite thing. We are caught up in the belief that we are visible, finite creatures who are subject to visible, finite effects, from other visible, finite creatures. But if you are invisible and infinite, how could you be subject to visible finite things unless you believed it to be so? We believe that we are visible and finite, do we not? Isn’t that the verse and chorus of our songs! Isn’t that the plot and sub-plot of our dramas and stories?

And so, spiritual psychotherapy is a way of testing out the possibility that beliefs are the cause of our experiences and symptoms. But we have already said that beliefs are finite and that the finite does not cause more finite. Beliefs represent something infinite, and the infinite is the cause of all finite events. And so ordinary therapy assumes that beliefs cause events, and spiritual psychotherapy assumes that the infinite causes all things, for the purpose of awakening or self-realization. Even those painful things that you think you or your mate have caused, are signals of the infinite. In the entire finite world, there is nothing but the infinite. Each finite form is an expression of the infinite. Each finite form has its own invisible infinite core which is linked to the infinite core of every other finite form. God is All, expressing in and as, every finite visible form.

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