CHAPTER 1

A path home to yourself

You have been invited here to share in the idea of Being. Be,such a little word ... but this two-letter word contains suchpower, power that is waiting to be used, embraced, and awakened.You might have discovered through your experiences that it is thelittle things in life that count the most. Well, this is one of thoselittle things. For a moment, I ask you to put aside your ideas of lifeas you know it and consider a concept of Being in a world of infinitepossibilities. In this world, anything you can imagine exists and isjust waiting to materialize.

All that is needed is your belief in that, whatever you choose tohave, those things or experiences will appear in your life. After all,at some level, you are co-creating every experience you have everhad or ever will have. Even if you don't realize it, you are doing justthat. Since you are sending these experiences to yourself, you havethe opportunity to walk through them with all that you are. As youmove into that place within yourself that words cannot describe andthat exists only as a feeling—a knowing—you will begin to accessyour true self. When you do, you will possess a greater sense of eachof those experiences by accessing the diff erent perspectives the all ofyou has about them. Maybe I need to define what I mean by the allof you.

As you travel through the dynamics of life, you create differentselves for each of your major interactions. You go from a child—anundefined free spirit ready to experience everything—to an adult socompartmentalized that you sometimes lose the very knowing youhad as a child. You allow yourself (and your mind) to be definedby so many externals that you forget who you really are. It is thesedefined separate selves that I am calling the all of you. Until now, thatis how you have allowed yourself to experience life—bringing to thesurface the self or selves you think are needed for each of your manyencounters within your day-to-day life dynamics. Those are usuallythe only selves that share in the encounters, so those are the onlyselves providing feedback and perspectives. This process might haveseemed to serve you thus far, but it is limited because the all of you(your complete self) was not present.

There are so many choices that you will be faced within your life,so why not begin to use all of what you gain from having the all of youactive with your experiences as a part of those choices? Some choicesyou make consciously, but so many more are made unconsciously,following the reactive-self programmed into you by the day-to-daydoings of life dynamics. Far too often, you go through life using your"just be" power without really giving it much thought. The beauty ofthis power is that it does not require your conscience thought to work.It just is.... It is waiting to express itself through you. Just Being bringsyou home to yourself to discover the very foundation that you use tobuild everything. Just Being is where you are when you stop doing(processing through the limits of the mind). It is what everything inlife, beyond your thinking self, is built on. When you release yourmind's grip on you, you achieve what is called the balance of nature.You observe how, in this undisturbed place, everything works in aharmony far beyond the limits of the mind. There are no schedules,no deadlines, no must-haves, and no to-do list. Time is not rushingby; there are no worries over not having enough time to get it alldone. Can you even imagine such a place within your own life? Yousee it, but you don't see it at the level needed to embrace that sameenergy and connection in your own life. When you observe natureoutside man's interferences, you see Being power at work in its purestform.

Everything you do in life is built on this foundation of Being,but you give little thought to that part of your process. So muchemphasis in life focuses on doing that when someone is asked, "Whoare you?", most often the answer is expressed as what the persondoes. "I am a lawyer," "I am a doctor," "I am a CEO," or "I am astudent in my junior year." The answers might be detailed in scope,but they are empty in true substance. These are merely aspects ofyour life to which you apply yourself to earn your living, increaseyour knowledge, and move up the ladder of success. These thingsdo not define you, and yet you get caught up in them as though theydo. You often wear your "doing self" as a badge of honor and are lostwithout it. Far too often, you find yourself out of a certain "doingplace" (having lost a job, for instance) and spend too much time lostin the "What am I going to do now?" state of mind. What you dois a part of your life dynamic, but it is only a part. You forgot thatyou first have to be something before you can do something. Firstyou are, and then you do. The question that begs to be answeredis, What is this something that you are? Seeking the answer to thatquestion begins a process that points the way to discovering...