Here and now is the reality in our lives - and it is only from the conditions of the present that our future can be generated. But our present addictions, demands, and expectations (the programming of our biocomputer) dominate our consciousness and force us to spend most of the time we are awake (and most of the time we are dreaming) in protesting and pouting about the here and now situation in our lives. This lowers our perceptiveness and keeps us from finding effective solutions to our problems. The Living Love Way to Higher Consciousness shows us how to break through this trap, to free ourselves, and to find our full potential as human beings.

Memorize these Twelve Pathways in order to implant them deeply into your consciousness. Memorizing helps you use them as programming in shaping your perceptions below conscious levels. Just reading them for intellectual understanding will not permit you to use them as dynamic tools that can make your life work. Use the Pathways in interpreting your moment-to-moment stream of con- sciousness. They can lead you straight into higher consciousness and enable you to find the love, happiness, wisdom, and fulfillment that is your birthright in life.

FREEING YOURSELF

An addiction is a programming (or operating instruction to your biocomputer) that triggers uncomfortable emotional responses and excites your consciousness if the world does not fit the programmed pattern in your mind. The identifying characteristic of an addiction is that if your desire is not fulfilled, you respond emotionally in a computer-like way and automatically play out a program of anger, worry, anxiety, jealousy, fear, etc. That which you emotionally avoid is just as much an addiction as is something you desire.

FIRST PATHWAY
I am freeing myself from security, sensation, and power addictions that make me try to forcefully control situations in my life, and thus destroy my serenity and keep me from loving myself and others.

Why do addictions destroy happiness? Are there some harmless addictions? Can't I have even one addiction? Aren't there good addictions like addictions for love, knowledge, or consciousness growth? Of course you can have one addiction-or any number you want, but for each one you pay a price in lost happiness. Since an addiction is backed up by the full rush of your emotions, each addiction from time to time puts you in a state of emotional warfare with yourself and others. They dominate your consciousness and keep you from peceiving clearly. Addictions separate you from others, for everyone is instantly valued by the degree to which you suspect threat or support. Addictions are not needed because you can do the same things and enloy the same life experiences on a non-addictive basis. Through higher consciousness, you can have every beautiful experience that life offers you.

All things in the world around us are constantly changing. Our bodies and minds are constantly changing. These changes, moment by moment, month by month, year by year, affect our ability to make the flow of our life conform to the arbitrary addictive pat- terns that we desire and expect. So we're caught in an absolutely endless moment-to-moment struggle to make the outside world fit in with our addictions. And it is always a futile struggle in the end. No one that ever lived has ever had enough power, prestige, or knowledge to overcome the basic condition of all lif~ou win some and you lose some.

The operation of our lower consciousness feelings is such that even if we satisfy many addictions during a day, the one addiction that was not satisfied will prey on our consciousness and make us unhappy. There is just no way to win the battle of our addictions. There are no addictions without unhappiness, although with the higher addictions (love and consciousness growth) you experience less suffering than with the lower level addictions of security, sensations, and power.

As long as you have addictions, your exquisite biocomputer- your mind-will be dominated by the vain attempt to help you find happiness by manipulating the world around you into fitting your addictions. A mind dominated by addictions is not able to tune in to the finer vibrations of the surrounding people and thin~just as a drummer who plays too loudly can keep you from hearing the violins and flutes of a symphony. To be fully here and now, you must be able to experience all of the instruments of the symphony. To live in the beauty of higher consciousness, you must be able to perceive both the grosser and the more subtle aspeds of the world around you. Addictions are not evil or bad-they just cost you too much in lost perceptiveness, wisdom, effectiveness, and happiness.

Addictions always cause unhappiness sooner or later. Preferences never do. When an addiction is not satisfied, you are unhappy. When an addiction is satisfied, you feel momentary pleasure, relief, or indifference. When a preference is not satisfied, you are simply indifferent-it was only a preference after all. But when it is satisfied, it adds to the texture and beauty of your life. Your ego and rational mind do not have to guard the source of your satisfaction because you are not depending on it for happiness. Upleveling all of your addictions to the status of preferences (or eliminating them if they cannot add to your joy of living) is a Living Love key to being joyous and loving all the time.

A practical rule of thumb for one starting on the road to higher consciousness is to grant oneself emotion-backed demands for physical necessities such as air, food if starving, or shelter if about to freeze-and all other addictions are sickness!

Only your emotional pnogramming determines whether some thing is an addiction or a preference. You must clearly understand that when we discuss giving up an addiction, we simply mean reprogramming that part of your brain that makes you restless, churning, and unhappy if a desire is not realized. Your living patterns may or may not be changed when you uplevel your addictions to preferences. It is vital that you fully understand that the growth we are describing lies wholly in reprogramming your automatic emotional programming it is not necessarily aimed at changing your external actions. You can do anything you prefer as long as you are not addicted. For when you are free of addictions, your actions will be characterized by wisdom and oneness.

Some addictions are more costly in lost happiness than others. An addiction for having money in your bank account may yield less satisfaction than an addiction for having a Ph.D. But both keep you in a constant state of threat, both dominate your consciousness, and both keep you from fully tuning in to the beautiful spectrum of the world around you. And, of course, you do not need to be addicted to money or knowledge in order to acquire them. You can prefer to have money and knowledge (or anything else) and you will then (and only then) be able to totally enjoy whatever money and knowledge the river of your life brings to you.

Thus it is not the external circumstances that constitute your addiction - it is only your inside emotional programming that must be changed. And the wonderful thing is that it is fully within your ability to do so whereas up to now you have been hopelessly try ing to manipulate the outside world to conform to your addictions. You will live in a peaceful world when you eliminate your addictions and then spend your time making choices on a preference basis.

SECOND PATHWAY

I am discovering how my consciousness-dominating addictions create my illusory version of the changing world of people and situations around me.

We see things not as they are-but as we are. Every addiction distorts your effective processing (on both conscious and unconscious levels) of the enormous flow of information that is continually flooding in through all of your sensory inputs. Every second your biocomputer is receiving millions of electrochemical impulses from your sight, sound, touch, taste, and olfactory receptors, and the tissues and organs within your body. For example, each hair on your body is connected by a nerve to your brain. All of your internal organs are continually sending signals to your biocomputer, most of which are fortunately handled on an unconscious level.

The reticular activating system of your biocomputer is a network that selects what goes into your consciousness. It screens the data that it sends to your cerebral center - your master analyzer. This network can close down your consciousness and put you to sleep. It can turn up your consciousness and awaken you when you are asleep. This neural structure performs the function that is often referred to as the "ego." (See Chapter 22 for a fuller discussion of neurological factors that affect your consciousness.)

You can consciously pay full attention to only one thing at a time although your consciousness can switch back and forth with lightning rapidity. How does your reticular activating system (or ego) select what to pass on to your consciousness? It selects the information that is to go into your consciousness by following the programming that you have been putting into it since infancy. Thus your programmed addictions determine your experience of the world for they are the guides that your reticular activating system uses to determine which data will be suppressed and which can go into your consciousness and command full attention. In this way, you gradually develop an illusory version of the people and things in your world because of the enormous domination of your consciousness by the things you are programmed to desire and that which you are programmed to fear.

The more you live with your distorted version of the people and things around you, the more certain you will feel that it is the only "true" picture of the world. Thus you build up a warped pic- ture of yourself and the people and situations in your world. For your mind is such that whatever it believes is true produces a feedback that continually reinforces and molds your perceptions.

You should always be aware that your head creates your world. Your addiction patterns-your expectations, your desires, your attachments, your demands, your mental models - dominate your perceptions of the people and things around you. It is only when you become free of your addictive programming that you can perceive how things really interact in your world.

THIRD PATHWAY

I welcome the opportunity (even if painful) that my minute-to-minute experience offers me to become aware of the addictions I must reprogram to be liberated from my robot-like emotional patterns.

How do you spot your addictions? It's easy. You just notice the desires and expectations that you use to make yourself feel up-tight in various life situations. By tuning in to your minute-to- minute stream of consciousness, you discover the addictions that make you worried, anxious, resentful, uptight, afraid, angry, bored, etc. You thus use every uncomfortable emotion as an opportunity for consciousness growth. Even though you may still be feeling emotional and uptight, you begin to get at the roots of your ups and downs-your brief bits of pleasure and your long periods of unhappiness. And you begin to feel a deep satisfaction as you become more awakened and alive!

In the past you continuously tried to find people who would minimally disturb your complex security, sensation, and power addictions. However, a person for whom you feel little attraction is probably your most helpful teacher in getting free of some of your addictions. You will grow faster if you work on your addic- tions by experiencing someone that you usually would have excluded from your life. When you find that you can remain centered no maffer what he or she does, you will know that you have reprogrammed the addictions that created the separateness you felt. And although you have continued the relationship for your own growth, you will have offered the other person valuable experiences that he or she can use for his or her rapid growth (for example, the experience of being loved unconditionally). When you have reprogrammed the addictions that separated you in your feelings, you may have developed a love and oneness that holds you together. Or you may prefer to spend this time in another way-and it may then be more productive of growth for you to follow your preferenc~and be with this individual less (Or not at all) in the future.

Everyone and everything around you is your teacher. li your washing machine won't work, you are being checked Out on your ability to peacefully accept the unacceptable. If you are addicted to your appliances always working, you will suffer. If you prefer them to Operate well, you will not compound your problem by superimposing your uncomfortable emotions on the here and now realities of repairing them.

Your moment-to-moment stream of consciousness becomes interesting and real when you experience everything as a step in your growth toward higher consciousness. You will soon begin to feel peaceful and loving almost all of the time. This is your consciousness telling you that you're using the Twelve Pathways more skillfully. Just keep going-you're well on your way!

BEING HERE NOW

One interesting aspect of the Twelve Pathways is that if you can follow any one of them completely on the deeper levels, you will he using almost all of them. They are systematically interlocking-and this makes it easier for you to implement them in action. Pathways Four through Six are particularly helpful in learning to live in the eternal now moment, although all of the Pathways reprogram you to tune in to the nowness of your life.

FOURTH PATHWAY
I always remember that I have everything I need to enjoy my here and now-unless I am letting my consciousness be dominated by demands and expectations based on the dead past or the imagined future.

If you are not enjoying every here and now moment in your life, it is because your addictions (otherwise known as desires, attachments, demands, expectations, emotional programming, models of how life should treat you) are making you dwell in the dead past or the imagined future. They are keeping you from being here now. All there is in your life is the eternal now moment-and your experience of this moment is created by the programming in your head.

Most people keep themselves on lower consciousness levels by endlessly chatting about what they did in the past or what they plan in the future. It is best not to hang out discussing the past or to let your consciousness dwell on the past, for the constant churning of your mind (and the torrent of words that issues from it) keeps you from fully experiencing the now moment in your life.

Nor will you generate the best future for yourself by being constantly preoccupied with thoughts of the future. If there is some- thing you need to do right here now-then get busy and do it. If you've done whatever you feel you need to do at this time, then there is no need to have your consciousness filled with thoughts of the future.

The real solutions to the problems in your life will come to you when you stop hassling yourself with your addictions and become fully tuned in to the people and things that are around you. When your Conscious-awareness watches your own body and mind and all the people and things in the world around you from a deep, calm place inside, you will find that there intuitively wells up within you everything you need to understand. You will have in- sights that yield exactly what you need to do in order to flow with the river of life around you.

You can only be here now when you instantly accept emotionally whatever happens in your life. If you wish to change something-fine. Do it. And you can make really effective changes when your consciousness is free of emotional turmoil. You will now be more perceptive and powerful because you are able to use the full resources of your great biocomputer to flow in any direction you prefer.

For example, if a tire on your car blows out, you can get mad at the tire, angry at the people who sold it to you, resentful at the extra expenditure now necessary-or you can keep your addictions from destroying your peace and serenity. After all, the blown tire is part of the here and nowness of your life. You can only make the situation unpleasant by getting uptight. Don't be addicted to your tires not blowing-uplevel to a very natural preference that your tires stay inflated and serve you longer. When a tire blows, you simply accept the unacceptable. You realize that this is a here and now reality in your life. Although you have lost the tire, you do not have to lose your peace and serenity-or send out vibrations that jostle the addiction patterns of people around you and cause them tension and anxiety.

Serenity is the end-and serenity is also the means-by which you live effectively. By fully tuning in to the now moment in your life, you will discover that you always have enough to enjoy every moment of your life. The only reason you have not been happy every instant is that you have been dominating your consciousness with thoughts about something you don't have-or trying to hold on to something that you do have but which is no longer appr~ priate in the present flow of your life. Here and now (not pasting and futuring) is the key to the optimal interaction pattern between you and the people and things in the world around you.

The meaning of here and now is beautifully illustrated by a Zen story of a monk who was being chased by two tigers. He came to the edge of a cliff. He looked back-the tigers were almost upon him. Noticing a vine leading over the cliff, he quickly crawled over the edge and began to let himself down by the vine. Then as he checked below, he saw two tigers waiting for him at the bottom of the cliff. He looked up and observed that two mice were gnawing away at the vine. Just then, he saw a beautiful strawberry within arm's reach. He picked it and enjoyed the best tasting strawberry in his whole life!

Although only minutes from death, the monk could enjoy the here and now. Our life continually sends us "tigers"-and it continually sends us "strawberries." But do we let ourselves enjoy the strawberries? Or do we use our valuable consciousness worrying about the tigers?

Notice that the monk fully responded to the physical danger in the most intelligent way. He ran from the tiger~and he even scrambled down the cliff while hanging onto a vine. And having done this, he remained fully in the here and now to enjoy whatever life offered him. Although death was only minutes away, he did not let thoughts of the future terrify him. After doing everything he could do, he used his precious consciousness to fully enjoy every moment of his life.

There is a saying, "A coward dies a thousand deaths; a brave man only one." For all of us, death is a part of our future. But we do not have to become what the existentialists refer to as the "living dead."

We can always find things we can magnify to threaten our security, sensation, and power addictions. Or we can consciously perform whatever action is needed and then turn our attention to enjoying everything we have to enjoy. And we always have enough to be happy if we are en,oying what we do hav~nd not worrying about what we don't have.

FIFTH PATHWAY

I take full responsibility here and now for everything I experience, for it is my own programming that creates my actions and also influences the reactions of people around me.

Whenever you are unhappy, your emotions are telling you that people and things are not fulfilling the addiction patterns you have programmed into your biocomputer. But you usually do not talk to yourself in this realistic way. Instead, you blame your unhappiness on somebody or something outside of you. You say things like, "Mary makes me jealous," or, "Bill makes me mad." But what is really happening is that someone is doing things that do not conform with the patterns of your addidion-and your addictions are making you unhappy. When you take full responsibility here and now for all of your feelings and for everything that happens to you, you never again blame the people and situations in the world out- side of you for any unhappy feelings that you have. You realize that it is an evasion to blame "others." You've been doing it to yourself!

You can stop being a mechanical, computer-like person who views himself as "pushed around" by the world when you realize that only you can "push" yourself. You begin to see the connection between your emotional programming and your suffering. You start doing something about it-which means reprogramming yourself.

Your mind creates your universe. Your expectations, demands, hopes, fears, addictions, motivations, past experience, your lan- guage system, your individual accumulation of ideas, theories, and intellectual stuff, your emotions, the structure and functioning of your nervous system and the feedback from your entire body all interact in a complex way to produce your perceptions-the "pic- ture" you create from the energies you receive through your vari- ous senses from people and things around you. Your perceptions are thus a joint phenomenon of the observer and the observed.

You receive a feedback from the people and things around you that continually modifies your processing of incoming sensory data. For example, a loving person lives in a loving world. As loving individuals flow through their moment-to-moment lives, their gentle, accepting consciousness is mirrored by the people around them. As the Proverbs remind us, "A soft answer turneth away wrath."

Similarly, a hostile person lives in a hostile world. If you go about with rockness inside you, if you view others as competitive to you, if you have a thin surface politeness with instant anger, ridicule, and antagonism when things don't go your way, you will create people around you that have exactly those characteristics. In other words, your actions create the reactions of people around you-except when you are with people living in the Fourth (or higher) Center of Consciousness. Conscious beings remain loving and centered no mailer how tense the drama around them.

The world thus tends to be your mirror. A peaceful person lives in a peaceful world. An angry person creates an angry world. A helpful person generates helpful, loving energy in others. An un- friendly person should not be surprised when he or she meets only people who sooner or later respond in an unfriendly way. A happy person finds the world filled with happy people-for even unhappy people experience temporary happiness and joy when they are with a genuinely happy and joyous person!

Sometimes people mirror you but with a reverse image. When you are addicted to one side of a polarity, you can create the opposite polarity around youe example, if you are compulsively and addictively neat and orderly, others around you will tend to be more sloppy than usual. If, on the other hand, you are addictively sloppy, you can create neatness responses around you. The polarity of your programming may evoke an opposite ego response in the people with whom you interact.

As you grow in consciousness, you begin to realize the hun- dreds of ways in which you create the consciousness of everyone around you. And, of course, they reciprocally play a part in determining the contents of your moment-to-moment consciousness. This feedback of consciousness offers exquisite cosmic humor when you clearly see what is really happening. ...

As you understand your polarities and free yourself, you begin to tune in to everyone in their deeper levels of being-where we are alike and experience oneness together. When you free yourself of your addictions, you help to free others of their addictions.

Your predictions and expectations are thus self-fulfilling. Since your consciousness creates your universe, all you have to do to change your world is to change your consciousness! It's the only way to live in a beautiful, joyous world. As you learn to use the Twelve Pathways to become a more loving, conscious being, you will find yourself living in an Ocean of loving, conscious beings. Without trying to change others, you will be acting in a way that is maximally effective in helping others become more loving and conscious.

SIXTH PATHWAY

I accept myself completely here and now and consciously experience everything I feel, think, say, and do (including my emotion-backed addictions) as a necessary part of my growth into higher consciousness.

The Living Love Way to Higher Consciousness is based on the in- stant emotional acceptance here and now of that which you previ- ously regarded as unacceptable in your life. Acceptance simply means that you won't cause yourself emotional conflict because of our current perceptions. Emotional acceptance doesn't mean that you have to continue living the rest of your life with any particular person or situation. You are free to do anything you prefer to do- but don't be addicted to the results of your actions. If someone does something that "hurts your ego," you will grow fastest if you con- sciously regard him or her as your teacher who is enabling you to discover which addictions you will have to reprogram.

You really savor living when you consciously experience everything that you feel and do as taking place in the theater that we call our world. You see yourself and others as actors in the daily drama of life. But the real you is not your body or mind. You're not the actor. The real you is your Conscious-awareness. And your Conscious-awareness is just digging the whole show from the audience.
Shakespeare wrote, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women, merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts."

When you watch the entire drama of your life and that of other people from the safe vantage point of the audience, you begin to provide a distance that enables you to see your addictions more clearly. You will find it easier to completely accept the addictive dramas that you have to play out on the stage of your life. You will find a turned-on joy in consciously experiencing everything as a necessary part of your growth into higher consciousness.

To grow in the Living Love Way, you do not have to drill yourself and criticize yourself with military precision. Just experience everything in an accepting, relaxed, and conscious way-and realize that every one of your experiences is perfect for your here and now growth into higher consciousness. Your addictions will gradually fade away when you use the Living Love Pathways to consciously interpret your moment-to-moment stream of consciousness. Don't push the river-just experience the river consciously from the vantage point of the Twelve Pathways.

INTERACTING WITH OTHERS

Flowing-not manipulation-is the way of higher consciousness. Flowing means moving with the forces around us-being in tune with the vibrations of the people and things in our environment. Flowing enables us to find the love, beauty, and peace that we are missing in our lives. But flowing is impossible based on the models of how to be happy that we learned in our childhood, for we cannot flow or harmonize when we are the slaves of our addictions. Our addictions force us to manipulate ourselves-and others. As adults whose minds and bodies have completed their structural growth, we have the potential of flowing in the river of our lives in a beautiful, loving way.

SEVENTH PATHWAY

I open myself genuinely to all people by being willing to fully communicate my deepest feelings, since hiding in any degree keeps me stuck in my illusion of separateness from other people.

As you begin to uplevel all of your addictions to the status of prefer- ences (or eliminate them entirely), you will discover that you no longer have anything to hide from other people. It then feels good to be able to communicate with each person exactly what you are experiencing. As you grow into higher consciousness through eliminating your addictions, you will be able to drop all deceptive, subject-object manipulation in the games you have been playing -the money game, the security game, the male-female game, the prestige game, the power game, the knowledge game, the expert game, etc. These can be beautiful games to play when you play them consciously and lovingly, but they generate suffering and unhappiness when you play them addictively.

When you are not completely open and truthful to all peopl~when you are trying to hide a part of your inner feelings~you continue the illusion of separateness from others. Hasn't everyone been caught up in the addictions for security, sensation, and power? Are you under the illusion that you have desires and feelings that are so horrible that others will be shocked? Or are we really all one? Deep inside, all of us have experienced this self- imposed suffering and isolation that keeps us from being peaceful and loving-even though we may not have perceived it as self-imposed. We have all been in similar predicaments at one time or another in our lives.

One of the ways out of this wall of isolation is to communicate, "Well, here I am. This is what my addictions are making me feel here and now. I accept myself (including my addictions) as being on an unfolding journey toward a peaceful, loving state of higher consciousness."

When you're around someone who is experiencing fairly con- tinuous states of higher consciousness, you can be sure that he or she will unconditionally accept you exactly where you are now- for he or she has travelled over the same road and prefers to help you. You can grow fastest and enjoy the trip most (even though your remaining addictions make it a bit rocky sometimes) if you can relax and just communicate fully.

It feels so good to be able to just open up and let people see all of you. You'll be amazed at how quickly they can then cut through their drama and accept you without the phony masks and roles with which you previously identified. You have every right to feel exactly as you feel. If "others" are bothered, that's their problem. You're their teacher giving them experiences they need to repro- gram their addictions-just as they are your teacher enabling you to find your addictions.

When you consistently use the Pathways, you do not have to scream, viciously attack, or otherwise unduly threaten another person in order to communicate your deepest feelings. You don't need to lay judgments on people or prove them wrong. You just talk about your own consciousness. Instead of, "You are horrible and I don't want to ever see you again," you can say, "You've put me in touch with one of my addictions, and right now I feel so angry at you I don't want to be with you." When you just talk about your own consciousness, you give both yourself and the other person a better chance to work through the addictive programming that produces the illusion of separateness.

The Ninth Pathway suggests that you give yourself a short period of time to work through the emotion caused by your addic- tion. But if you are at the beginning of your consciousness growth, you may find it more important to communicate quickly so that your relationships are always "up front." Remember, hiding separates; openness unites.

As you grow into higher consciousness, you will become aware of the many ways in which you have been involved in complex role playing, with hidden "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" that create complicated patterns of demanding and expectation. You can work effectively toward the "us" space when you genuinely and openly communicate your feelings and reveal the security, sensation, and power dance that you have been doing. You will find that you can usually cut through these ensnaring dramas by expressing your preferences clearly to yourself and others. You will realize that open communication of your innermost feelings helps your ego (and the egos of other people) to get free of addictive programming which in the long run only produces unhappiness and alienation.

EIGHTH PATHWAY

I feel with loving compassion the problems of others without getting caught up emotionally in their predicaments that are offering them messages they need for their growth.

All your emotional problems are created by your addictions. Your growth into higher consciousness consists of becoming free of these traps. When you interact with people who are still involved in this automatic computer-like emotional programming, it is important that you learn to feel their problems with loving compassion, but without gelling caught up emotionally in their predicaments. Compassionate understanding-yes; pity and commiseration-no.

Compassion means that when you empathize with the predicaments of other people, you silently send out the vibration, "Yes, I know. I've been there too. It's OK to feel the way you do-how- ever, try to see that it's all drama. Life always has its 'tigers'-and we do what we can about them. But above all, let's be sure to continuously enjoy the 'strawberries.' There are always enough strawberries to enjoy our here and now if we don't put all of our attention on the tigers!"

Compassion means that you understand the duality and separation they are creating in themselves by rejecting what is here and now in their lives-but you do not get caught up in their poignant drama. Compassion means that you realize that you can do the most for other people when you stay centered and high and loving whenever you are around them for they are playing out their addictions, suffering because of them, and hopefully picking up the messages life is offering them. Compassion means that you love and serve them from a clear love space, and not from a compulsiveness or guilt motivated by your remaining security, sensation, or power addictions.

You learn not to give gifts that you cannot emotionally afford to give. When you resent helping someone, this creates obligations, duality, and separation. You cannot psychologically afford to give such help, and the recipient cannot afford to receive it. The price in personal distance and separation is too high if you give to avoid a feeling of "guilt" or from a "should" or "ought" motivation. When you help someone because of a feeling of obligation or duty rather than free-flowing love, you may find yourself resenting the person for needing your help. These negative feelings can prevent you from being sensitive to his or her real here-and-now needs, and doing or saying what would really be helpful. Very often just being in a loving space with a person as you listen to him or her is more helpful than any advice you could give.

When you can "help" someone with a feeling of love and oneness-you just do it because it feels good to you. When you feel oneness with another, there is no giver or receiver-there's just us here. It's like one hand washing another. You are just letting energy flow through you.

When you are with someone who is trapped in the suffering caused by addictions, you use this as an opportunity to work on your consciousness. The greatest thing you can do for "others" is to remain happy and loving when you are with them. You do not get caught up as a supporting actor no matter how tragic the role they are playing in the drama of their life. It's their thing to play this role. They probably chose this role (either consciously or unconsciously) and are clinging to it. The best way to give them a chance to free themselves from their addictive trap is for you to avoid getting caught up emotionally in the "stuff" that they are taking so seri- ously. They are not that "stuff" with which they are identifying. Behind all that, here we are.

As the Law of Higher Consciousness suggests. the game is to "Love Everyone Unconditionally~lncluding Yourself." As you begin to increase the number of people for whom you feel unconditional love, you will be aware of the many security, sensation, and power dramas that each of them is busily playing out. You realize that you cannot, in practice, have enough time and energy to love everyone you meet if you have a "bleeding heart" response to the heap of problems people are creating in their lives.

Your life works best when you love, serve, and flow your loving energy-not from a lower consciousness motivation of "I am helping you," or "I will save you," but simply from the awareness that "the universe gave this energy to me and it feels good to pass it along." As you become more conscious, your energy will increase. And also, as you become more conscious, less of it will be drained by your own security, sensation, and power addidions. You will then liberate a continuous stream of energy which will flow into loving and serving people around you.

NINTH PATHWAY

I act freely when I am tuned in, centered, and loving, but if possible I avoid acting when I am emotionally upset and depriving myself of the wisdom that flows from love and expanded consciousness.

When you are emotionally upset, you energize the addictive pat- terns of other people who are also caught in the lower levels of consciousness. They will mirror your uptightness, and will not be tuned in, perceptive, and able to fully understand what you are trying to tell them. They will reflect your inner conflicts, for you will trigger their addiction~nd this will interfere with effective com- munication. The things you do or say when you have stirred up your emotions and the emotions of other people will be handled in a way that is destructive of peace, love, and oneness. You may be able to pull a power trip to make something happen-but it will not feel right to all concerned. And the future consequences of your actions will cause greater future conflicts.

Bad vibrations, like the measles, are contagious. Every time you interact with anger, resentment, or fear, you add a little rein~ forcement to the addictions from which we wish to be liberated. You know the story of the man who bawled out his friend, and the friend went home and fought with his wife, who spanked her child, who then kicked the cat.

Now let's turn it around-for good vibrations are also catching. Let's be the man who complimented his friend, and the friend went home and kissed his wife, who was so extra loving to her child that he gave the cat some milk without even being asked!

To avoid adding to the total sum of the bad vibrations in the world, unless you are in physical danger, wait until you are tuned in, centered, and loving before you act. Then your perception and wisdom may lead you to choose a more effective course of action. But even if you do the same thing that you originally intended to do, it now has a better chance of success because the consciousness level of everyone concerned is elevated. Instead of acting out a drama of addictions, you are, here and now, communicating as a tuned-in human being telling what you feel and what you prefer.

The Seventh Pathway and the Ninth Pathway put you in an in- teresting predicament. The Seventh Pathway tells you to communicate your deepest feelings, and the Ninth Pathway says for you to withhold your communication, if possible, until you are perceptive, centered, and loving. What this means is that you are always ready to be completely open and to communicate with people, but if you are caught in the grip of a disturbing emotion, you give yourself a little time to work on your addiction-rather than acting out the fight-or-flight feeling you have triggered.

A part of your growth into higher consciousness will be associated with how perceptively you handle these two Pathways. You can use the Ninth Pathway to hide-or you can use it to delay your responses to people long enough to give the other Pathways an opportunity to rescue you from the negative emotions you have triggered. Always remember that you cannot put off for long your making an u~front communication of your deepest feelings if you wish to be conscious, perceptive, and loving. Unexpressed feelings act like a cancer in your brain that malignantly spreads-warping your perceptions and bringing you alienation and suffering. You thus learn to use the Seventh and Ninth Pathways to create more and more aliveness and beauty in all of your relationships with other people.

DISCOVERING MY CONSCIOUS-AWARENESS

The Twelve Pathways give you a complete solution to every emo- tional problem in your life. Whenever you experience uncomforta- ble emotional waves, you will find that the Pathways are always ready to steer you around the rocks into the peaceful waters.

TENTH PATHWAY

I am continually calming the restless scanning of my rational mind in order to perceive the finer energies that enable me to unitively merge with everything around me.

When our wonderful biocomputers are dominated by our addic- tions, our consciousness is scattered and harried. Our conscious- ness is then like a television set that drifts from the channel, that turns off when we want to use it, that sometimes won't stay turned off when we wish to sleep, that is subject to fading, and that will tune in only the lower channels. We would not tolerate this type of performance from a television set, but unfortunately most of us are so accustomed to the poor performance of our minds that we often accept such inefficiency as "normal."

What is meant when the Tenth Pathway tells you to calm the restless scanning of your rational mind? As you grow in awareness, you will begin to realize that the activity of your rational mind is generally sparked by your security, sensation, and power motivations. You are trying to hold onto something you do have, get something you don't have, or avoid something you don't want. You discover how your rational mind has become a pawn commanded by your ego to "rationalize" your security, sensation, and power demands and expectations. You begin to see that many of the "clever" things your rational mind devises to say to other people just turn out to be separating and alienating responses that keep you out of the "us" space.

As you lessen the heavy load of addictions you have been carrying, your rational mind becomes quieter and quieter, and you begin to increase your insight and perceptiveness. You begin to have a choice that was not available before regarding the things that you say and do. You begin to tune in to the finer energies around you when the precious space on the screen of your con- sciousness is not occupied by the emergency alarms triggered by your addictive security, sensation, and power models of how the world should be.

The Living Love Way enables you to live in this powerful realm of higher consciousness by seffing you free from your addictions, goals, and expectations that you have unknowingly programmed as essential to your happiness. For the structure and function of your biocomputer are such that this addictive programming triggers your thoughts, ideas, and words in a persistent and dominating way.

The cultivation of preferences (in place of addictions) does not keep your rational mind churning and scanning-for preferences are not sought after goals that keep you restless. With preferences, you simply flow along in the nowness of your daily life. Whenever the here and now offers you a choice, you pick the one that most fits in with your preferences. But either way-everything feels all right. Your rational mind is not excited into restless, striving activity. Preferences let you stay in touch with the here and now in your life. They enable your mind to become calmer and calmer-until it functions as a powerful, quiet, one-pointed, peaceful, effective ser- vant to your consciousness.

Thus the Living Love System enables you to transcend tensions, anxiety, and conflict into a flowing acceptance of all of life. Your escape from lower consciousness levels helps to free you from the restless scanning of your rational mind so that you are con- stantly in touch with that deep, calm place inside of you from which you peacefully, lovingly, and blissfully watch the drama of your life.

ELEVENTH PATHWAY

I am constantly aware of which of the Seven Centers of Consciousness I am using, and I feel my energy, perceptiveness, love, and inner peace growing as I open all of the Centers of Consciousness.

The Seven Centers of Consciousness (explained later in this book) consist of a seven-step scale that can tell you each moment of your life exactly where you are in your journey toward higher con- sciousness. By using the seven-step consciousness scale, you clarify your minute-to-minute drama and add realism and depth to your life. You discover that your energy, love, insight, and inner peace will fluctuate up and down when your consciousness is involved in the lower three Centers. As you learn to uplevel your con- sciousness, you unlock enormous energy. You enjoy being able to unconditionally love and accept everyone. By letting yourself grow toward the higher Centers of Consciousness, you find the beautiful inner peace that you have always sought in your life.

In Living Love we work to integrate all of the Centers. Everything in your life has aspects on all of the Centers. You begin your growth toward higher consciousness when you first escape from being preoccupied with the lower three Centers of Security, Sensation, and Power-and uplevel your consciousness to include the unconditional Love Center and Cornucopia Center. Then you begin to watch your drama from the Conscious-awareness Center. By seeing your drama from this meta-center you impartially witness all your thoughts and actions on the five lower Centers. In the next phase of consciousness growth, one goes behind this Conscious- awareness Center into the Seventh Center-Cosmic Consciousness-that peaceful place where one has eliminated personal boundaries and has unitively merged with the surrounding world.

TWELFTH PATHWAY

I am perceiving everyone, including myself, as an awakening being who is here to claim his or her birthright to the higher consciousness planes of unconditional love and oneness.

Everyone you meet, including yourself, has the capacity for clear perception, wisdom, effectiveness, peace, and love. We are equal beings. But unless one has consciously worked toward higher con- sciousness, this hidden splendor within may be smothered by the addictive games that keep one separated and isolated. It will help us in our journey to higher consciousness (as well as being most helpful to others) if we regard everyone, including ourselves, as fellow travellers on the road to awakening.

We begin to realize that everything we do is either a skillful or unskillful attempt to find love and oneness. Even if someone yells at you or hits you, he is trying to manipulate you so that you can fit the pattern of his addiction~and thus permit him to love you in his conditional way. When your ego permits you to see the here-and- now actions of people with perspective, you realize that there is practically nothing that anyone can do that you have not either done or wanted to do at some time in your life. We're just not that different from each other. Our egos and our rational minds keep us continually judging other people so as to put them in the wrong and thus give us a supposed advantage. A conscious being simply sees, with a compassion that is born of insight and perspective, that everyone is on the road to awakening. We learn to love others by accepting and loving ourselve-and vice versa.

You realize that in place of the judgmental terms (such as good and bad) that we use to separate ourselves in our consciousness from each other, the simplest and most helpful ethical standard is to see things as degrees of separateness and oneness. You view the thoughts and actions that separate you on the lower part of the ethical scale. The thoughts and actions which unite you are on the upper part of the scale. Instead of labeling things "good" or "bad," you simply use your insight to determine to what extent your thoughts or actions separate or unite you in your feelings toward others. That which makes you feel separate tends to keep your life from working effectively, and that which enables YOU to experience love and unity permits you to harmonize your energy with the energies of the world around you. Whenever you are in doubt about whether to do something or not, just ask yourself whether it makes you feel more separate from people or more loving toward people.

When you see how it all is-when you see everything that happens in your life as a moment-to-moment acting out of the great drama of your addictions-you will realize how you constantly smother the potential that you have within you. Higher consciousness means that you experience a flowing harmony with all of the interacting people and things in the world around you. This permits you to emotionally accept whatever is here and now in your life. Higher consciousness is not a mystical, metaphysical, far-out state. It is a practical, beautiful state of mind which is your birthright as a human being. Return to Top

THE SEVEN CENTERS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

1. THE SECURITY CENTER.

Ken Keyes was one of the most charismatic and acclaimed philosophers of the modern personal growth movement. He was founder of the Science of Happiness and the Caring and Rapid Healing Center. He wrote a number of books, including The Hundredth Monkey, The power of Unconditional Love, How to Enjoy Your Life in Spite of it All, and The Handbook to Higher Consciousness.

Keyes claimed that through the use of his methods he spent almost all of his later life in a state of nearly constant happiness. A fair number of people claimed that he and his methods helped them to move in that same direction. Perhaps his only lasting legacy, and perhaps the only one that he himself would care to claim, is that he developed a system that enabled himself and other people to live their lives more happily.

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