Introduction
So many of us awake each morning feeling twisted inside. We force ourselves to get dressed and begin our days in a world that seems oppressive, unyielding, and beyond our control. It’s hard to recall the last moment of true happiness we experienced. If you are one of the millions of people who are caught in this web of unhappiness, I am here to tell you it absolutely does not have to be this way. You have the capability of experiencing sustained joy, pervasive peace, and enduring contentment. There is a way to break free from your perceived limitations, which are based on habitually negative thoughts and false beliefs about yourself and life. In fact, the only reason you are not experiencing happiness and peace is that you, like almost every human being, have been tied up by these harmful ideas and the fear that accompanies them.
This fear causes you to seek satisfaction and security in the attainment of material goods or in the domination of others. You follow the path that seems sure to lead to happiness only to find that this feeling does not last long after you’ve seized that which you thought you lacked. Your fear returns. Your need to quiet this fear takes over once more. You go down another path, reach your goal, soon feel dissatisfied again, and then start down another road, and another, and another. Before long, you’ve turned every which way and can no longer see the point at which you began. You have become twisted by the fear that arose from your erroneous beliefs, which you have taken for granted for longer than you can recall.
So, what are these false beliefs, these thoughts that run through your mind like a hamster on a treadmill? They may be different for different people, but they all share a common link: disconnection. “He is better than me,” “I want what she has,” “My car isn’t good enough,” “I need a bigger house,” “I will be happy when I get . . . ,” and “Why does he get all the breaks but I don’t?”—each of these thoughts is derived from a feeling of being separate from others. As complicated as life may seem, these complications will give way to peace once you recognize your true nature, which is that you are a being of divine love, as is everyone on this planet. It is this divine love that connects us all. In a very real sense, we are all one. Only by recognizing this fact can you untwist yourself from the knot of fruitless paths you have taken over the years.
Whether by divine direction or plain good luck, you hold in your hands a book that has been designed to guide you towards the sole path to lasting happiness, which is the understanding that you and everyone else is made of divine love, the knowledge that you are not separate from anyone. This text offers a straightforward series of reflections and activities to help you shake off your negative habits and awaken to a consciousness of infinite joy and universal interconnection.
I have witnessed this miracle of awakening countless times. Students of the techniques outlined in this book have described reaching an all-encompassing awareness of their oneness with others, of being part of the Divine, which I call “Love” with a capital “L.” I describe this epiphany as “waking up as Love” because this realization is similar to waking from sleep and starting your day each morning. You don’t have to think about who you are once you’ve awoken from your slumber; you don’t have to make an effort to be yourself; you simply are. Once you’ve come to the understanding that Love is not outside yourself but within yourself and everyone else, you will not have to worry about negative habits or harmful trains of thought. They will disappear as soon as they arise. You will have untwisted your mind.
Unfortunately, our culture is living under a mass delusion that we are separate from Love. This delusion leads to a feeling of emptiness. We then try to fill this emptiness by acquiring, collecting, amassing, hoarding, or controlling things. These reactions are the results of twisted thinking. The truth is, however, that we do not need to reach, strive, or grasp for anything in order to feel divine love, or Love, because we are Love. It is what makes us human. Love is the unique impulse that animates our common form. No false, limiting thoughts can endure for more than a moment of gentle amusement in this highest state of being, this awakening as Love. You’ll be able to make the creative, unlimited choices necessary to rescue and uplift yourself, humanity, other species, and even the planet.
This book begins by showing you how we all create and carry pain-driven beliefs about ourselves, delusions that border on insanity. It explains how damaging these thought patterns can be to your life and to the lives of others. It outlines the process by which you hold on to pain that does not truly belong to you. It clarifies the way in which this adopted pain forms the basis of your limitations, from its effects on your personality and daily choices to your experience of the environment that surrounds you. You will find that this pain will hurt you and those around you if you do not wake up to the reality of who you are, which is Love.
You will then be guided through a set of reflective activities that will lead you to the awesome, jaw-dropping “a-ha” moment when you wake up and experience the deep knowledge that you are unconditional Love, and that there is nothing wrong with you. Finally, I will explain why it is time for our species as a whole to rouse itself from the sleep of unconscious negativity and embrace the awareness of being divinely interconnected.
As Buddha and Jesus taught, and as the Dalai Lama and others still teach, when you let go of your attachments to painful thoughts, objects, situations, you are immediately free to observe the world in peace. When you let go of your false beliefs about yourself, they are spontaneously and lovingly replaced by truth. In this state of true consciousness, you experience the bliss of endless peace and love, with no urgency or requirement to do anything. Yet this peaceful state also fosters a curious, helpful, creative readiness to do anything that might further the intentions of Love on Earth.
As you begin your journey, you will be led step-by-step to your own awakening, your own untwisting. You will first wake up from your delusional belief system to realize you are Love. You will relax into this truth, allowing your ego to lower its defenses, which it has built over time to keep you safe from imagined dangers. You will then enter your natural state of divine consciousness. It has always been there, prompting you to wake up and urging you to release yourself from your pain. It would never force this process on you but has been patiently waiting for you to be ready to take your first step.
If you are reading this book, I believe you are ready. It is your nature and right to experience all the joy, peace, and abundance that come with this highest state of awareness. Looking for happiness and fulfillment down every shiny new path is exhausting. In our exhaustion, we become thoughtless, harming ourselves and the planet through greed, selfishness, and anger. We never find peace. We end up twisted and tired. But you need not tire yourself any longer. You can become untwisted. You need simply to wake up.
