LET'S RELAX. Let's forget that we're spiritual and remember that we're human beings. Do you recall that human beings often make mistakes? They often fail. They're not perfect. Spirituality suggests perfection. The expectation of perfection generates stress, very similar to the stress we got involved with spirituality to relieve. We're stressed at work, so we come to a spiritual place to relax, and now there's stress because we aren't spiritual enough.

I have resigned as a spiritual person, having earlier resigned as a spiritual teacher. In this post-spiritual reality I am simply a human being. So we don't have to pretend. We can be completely honest in a very simple way.

What I would like to know is, what is it that is deep inside of you? What would you like to express? What would you like to feel? What would you like to show? Not because it's important or special or spiritual, but because it's authentic, because it's actual, because it's passionate. That's the life that's important. We could talk about whether there's a self or no self, free will versus no free will, and endless important topics. Or we can get to what's important in our actual life.

What's really going on? Take away the spiritual idea - pretend you never went to a spiritual talk in your life. Spirituality is like the myth of the emperor's new clothes. The emperor says he has new clothes, and we have to pretend that there's some special thing - enlightenment, oneness, and so on. Those are the new clothes. We've all agreed to see that. The emperor wears the special clothes, not us. But if the new clothes of spirituality are in fact in our imagination, then the emperor is in fact standing there in his underwear. We're all standing there waiting to see who will be the first one to state the truth. So let's each one of us be the first one to state the truth, and as the child shows us in that story, the truth is what you see. Without any envy, without looking around for agreement, without considering what will happen if you speak the truth. You are responsible. You are. Whether you're a self or not a self, whether it's free will or not free will. You're it, and so am I.

It's not just that you don't have to change yourself, it's that you cannot change yourself. That realization is your freedom. If you can simply give up improvement, then all the stress and all the pain and pressure becomes something else. It's not that these things go away, that we can have a stress-free or pain-free life, but these things come as part of the life-stream, not as something to fix.

So what will you do with your life if you're not busy fixing yourself? This opens up a big question about the creative life, a very different question than how do you get enlightened. An immense amount of life energy is available to live a creative life. When I don't spend it on fixing something that is an illusion, it is just as it is. It's radically simple. Let's declare the end of all special people, and let's all be common people who are just as we are. Now let's set about creating what we want to create. When we come up against a barrier or resistance, that is just what it is. When it releases and opens and energy flows then that is just what it is. You'll start to see an interesting thing - that resistance and energy are the same thing. This is the full range of life, and we've been trying to force everything into one tiny range of life - peacefulness, flow. But life isn't like that; life is like it is.

The thing we've been chasing we already have. The question we've been asking isn't the question we need to ask. The real question is, if life is just as it is, what shall we create? It's not doing nothing, it's what shall we do?

If I don't love right now there is no possibility that I will love right now, but that says nothing about what's next. What's next could be absolute love. But when I try to connect from this "not love" and push into what's next through some technique, some idea to get to that thing that I want, it doesn't work. It would be more accurate to say, "I don't love." There's no way, no way to what's next. What is next does not come from what's been. And this is very beautiful actually. This is why the reference to the past is so utterly useless, because in the next moment everything may change - I may love completely.

It doesn't come from anywhere - it's not causal. Nothing before it, nothing after it.

You can finish your process of transformation right here and now. It's very simple: never refer to the process of transformation again. The idea of transformation is finished.

The whole spiritual game is a scam. It's an operation that attempts to extract value in return for nothing. Pretend that we're in a real estate seminar and I'm going to sell you building lots in Hamburg, but I don't own them. That's a scam. Now the spiritual con is that I'm going to sell you building lots in Hamburg and not only do I not own them, but you own them already. I am selling you something you already own. This is the awareness game. How do I convince you that you're missing something so you can pay me to give it to you? You already have it. You're already aware, you don't have to buy it from anyone.

If you want transformation, live a creative life. Risk that life every moment through creativity and love and connection and speaking the truth. As aware human beings responsible for this life, what are we going to create together?

I'm asking you to actually step into that "what is," and see if it has anything to do with your concept of it. When I step into that energy, it's nothing like what I thought it was. It doesn't care at all about my ideas. It doesn't care at all about free will or no free will, or any philosophies.

The life force could produce anything, including transformation, change, something completely and radically new and different. If it is a field of all possibilities, then everything's possible.

Go into it directly. If you think you have no free will, then live that "no free will" and tell me about the energy. Not from the conceptual self, but from the energy itself. Speak from what is. We imagine that what is, is silence - we've been told that what is, is silence. When we get to this idea of what is, we become paralyzed. I'm saying that what is, is energy. Energy can speak, it can live and work and have families. It is that. It is the ordinary manifest world that we're living in. That silence that you can't speak, that can't function in an ordinary life - this is an idea. If you want to see the quality of what you see, go to what is manifest.

© 2008, Steven Harrison, All Rights Reserved

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Excerpted from the book Love Of Uncertainty. Copyright © 2008 by Steven Harrison. Reprinted with permission of Sentient Publications, LLC, 1113 Spruce Street, Boulder, CO 80302;www.sentientpublications.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Harrison is an international speaker on the topics of consciousness, human development, relationship and alternative education. He is the author of Doing Nothing, Being One, Getting to Where You Are, The Question to Life's Answers, The Happy Child, What's Next After Now? and The Shimmering World. His books have been translated for numerous foreign language editions.