My thinking is the doing.

All the problems you have in life are really only just one problem- the problem of separation. The diversity of all the various frustrations we seem to have in a given day is only a tactic used by your mind (your ego) to keep you convinced of the idea of insurmountable odds.

Insurmountable odds are the conditions in which the ego thrives since the ego’s only goal is to suffer. All those divers problems we experience each day are a highly sophisticated mental construct the ego creates to keep you distracted from the actual truth about you. So long as you stay distracted, you fuel a negative field rather than turning your attention towards actual Reality which is peaceful and well. This pleases the ego who continues to supply detailed descriptions of complaints and critical analysis of an endless variety of problems. The truth is, however, there is really always ever only one problem.

The only problem in this world is the illusion of separation. Feeling separated and alone is my only problem. It is the only problem there ever is, regardless of how many circumstantial variations may arise to confuse me. The number of variations of how the feeling of separation can be expressed is infinite. The resolution to every problem is bringing awareness back to the fact that we are connected and not alone, not separate. Physical distance is not an obstacle to having a connection.

While it is not possible for me to address or solve all the problems of the world, it is possible for me to recognize that they all – every one of them- share the same single, foundational problem. And so share the same foundation as my own problems. Addressing my own problem is addressing the whole world’s problems.

Make a list of grievances or struggles you are currently wrestling with and one by one, follow the thread of logic of that problem to its emotional reality. If you don’t like the word “emotional,” follow the problem to the basic unit of sensation in you. It is only a problem because the experience you are having hurts. So sit a moment and hold that particular hurt. Look at the quality of it and listen to what it is saying. The hurt is speaking in words and in pictures. Those words and pictures are the rope binding you to that pain. What are they? Write them down, or listen as you speak them to someone else.

Every problem leads to the experience of separation and the belief of being alone without support. The reason we feel alone and unsupported is because we think support needs to come from people, from the environment. When people fail to be there for us, we believe our whole motivational support system has been removed. This is the error in thinking that causes pain. We have placed our sense of identity and worth upon an external, temporary thing. We could instead place our understanding of self upon a non-physical concept of eternal energetic support which we have access to from within every second of every day. Energetic support is psychological support because everything we experience is done so psychologically. There is no other way of experiencing life. Even when another person connects with us, they do so on the level of our thoughts and logic.

In this world, we are individual people in individual bodies with our ‘own’ stuff- our own houses, cars, clothes… and our own constant experience of singular alone-ness. Feeling alone is the core of every frustration. Let’s look at a few common ones and do the math that shows our work.

Problem: This person is not interacting. They are not listening, calling, smiling, behaving in a harmonious way with me. Why does this hurt? I miss them. I want to connect. I feel alone. I feel separate.

Problem: There is no human to speak to in the sea of automation. There is no one to explain what I need, no one there to help… I feel alone. I feel separate.

Problem: My car doesn’t work. I can not go where I need to go. I need to go where I am going so that I can be involved, or so that I can get what I need in order to be/stay involved. I need to be involved because I feel alone. I feel separate.

These examples are of a material nature. There are also problems of a physical nature that may seem more ‘real’ or important than social ones, such as having a physical illness or injury. When we follow the logic of these kinds of problems, which speak of the very basis of being alive, we find a fear of death. A fear of dying.

The notion of death is the most concentrated form of the idea of separation. “Death” is when we “leave” the party of life. And so the core of all physical challenges be it, hunger, headaches, injury, or illness, is the belief that we have been removed from a situation we want to be in, a perception that we have been separated from who and what we love.

We have not been separated. The longing for connection is the connection, we need only know how real, how valid such sensations are. If I miss my mother, I am in that sensation with her, perhaps even more than I ever was…

To solve the problem of feeling separate, we must first fully grasp how deeply it is engrained in our way of seeing the world. We percieve the world as separate, isolated things which we can hold but never really reach. The world is more than what we see. The world is more than what we are able to touch or hear or hold.

The world is an experience, not a thing.

The world, in reality, is a culmination of what everyone is seeing, including animals and all sentient beings. It is not possible for me, or any single individual to see Reality in its entirety. Nor is such a capacity wanted or needed. Reality is already in that state, so it does not need another to fulfill a role already completed. This means we are never meant to know all Reality. We are only ever meant to understand the one aspect we have been given and to follow it wherever it goes for the joy of that movement. We are not meant to have answers. We are meant to explore and venture forth with an unshakable knowing of our connection to the greater picture. And as we need, aspects of that picture will be revealed. When we put down the impossible task of trying to know how to solve a colossal problem and just relax into the field of our own given role in this world, we discover that life is joy.

It is very stressful to keep up a need to be intellectually clever or physically agile or innovative. The impulse to do so comes from a fear of being excluded, being left out or left behind. This sensation is at the core of every single problem we have or will ever have. And this sensation is resolvable. The problem of separation can be resolved with an act of connection, a recognition of connection, and an awareness that all is always well.

When I think of someone I miss, deep within that seemingly sad experience, is the thinking of them, the love of them. If the sensation of love was not there, I would not think of them. And so, the the thinking of them is the connecting. They are there at my very thought of them. They are actually even more there than if physically here. How often are we in someone’s company without really registering them? It is only in our inner life that things are real.

When I think of the Seattle harbor, of the mushroom season in Autumn, of the cafe in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, or the room I played in when I was three… When I think of all the places, and their fragrance, their tone, and ambiance, am I not just a little bit there… while here? There is also here.

When I think of you, are you not also here?

If you were here, would we be fighting? How are we in my head? My discontent or my peace has no relation to proximity. My peace and my discontent are within. I bring that to wherever I go and whoever I know.

My husband is in the other room at the moment. I am filled with a desire to go and wrap my arms around him. The thought of it, the longing to do this is the doing of it. Recognizing that the energy is the substance places me in an eternal field of well being. So that should he be gone- away for work- or even away from this world, which we will all eventually be, I can recognize that my thought of the sensation of embracing him is equal to the doing. My thinking is the doing. This is true for all the people in my life I have “once” cared about. But no longer do? How could that be? Care is forever. And care is free. Care is the field from which we come and in which we always are.

When we make mistakes we do so from the event horizon of the great learning curve that is All That Is. We are the leading edge of energy which is becoming more of itself in new, unimagined ways. We can not possibly know all there is to know, if the knowing does not even yet exist in us. We are the discovering. It is in this way that we are forgiven… we are given to before… we are given the space to become before we have become it.

People hurt other people. Sometimes deliberately as a way of returning hurt received and sometimes accidentally out of a lack of awareness. And sometimes people hurt others in a combination of both conscious and unconscious revenge because our brains know how to distract us into a state of unawareness and negligence as a form of escaping “guilt free” from responsibility for the pain we cause others. If we have no awareness of how we are coming across, how could we possibly be held responsible for causing them pain? It is up to them to just toughen up and get over whatever bothers them, right?

The reality is, we are not separate. I can not hurt you without also hurting me. What I understand about a situation is my responsibility to explain and communicate. What I do not understand about a situation is my responsibility to stop and listen and receive an explanation. What I do to you, I do to me. What you do to me, you do to yourself. We are not separate. I can not really help you. I can only reach me. But reaching me, reaches you.