It's possible for you to make your life a joy.
The full text of Mark's Way of Laughing is contained on this page -- no more links to follow, no fancy graphics to slow things down.
You're unlikely to read the full text at a single sitting, so bookmark this page for further reference or feel free to download it all to print out and read at home.
Please remember this is not another guide or guru telling you how to lead your life. This is just a helpful viewpoint you can use to set free you're potential for real joy.
Releasing the Fear that Binds
We would ask you to consider the magical creations of the mind. So many are bound in chains of fear that are a most effective bar to experiencing the reality of your true and essential humanity. You are just a thought away from the joy and fulfilment that is your potential. Yet habits of thought can create a prison and chains that will bind as effectively as the strongest steel, even though they are but thought-forms and can be dissolved by thought also. This can be done by identifying the patterns and habits that feed the thoughts and changing them - sometimes a very difficult task as it may be necessary to clear the patterns of generations that have gone before you, let alone tackling the great ropes that anchor you to your culture and society.
We would offer another way - part of what we would call the Way of Laughing - for its joyful light-heartedness. This is the practice of re-tuning the mind to focus on thoughts or images of love, freedom and delight - the images of beauty that you might observe in nature would be very effective for this purpose - such as a leaping dolphin in a deep clear sea, the soaring lark that sings to the sun, a horse running free as the wind, a laughing child, the grace and beauty of trees changing with the passing seasons, ripe seed bursting from the flower pod onto the warm earth... and so many more. Reinforce the thought focus with direct experience as often as possible via direct contact with nature (or through film and other media). Some music and poetry can also be wonderful paths to experiencing this way to freedom.
This re-atunement of the mind as a regular practice (we would emphasise the need to build this so that it becomes a part of your life and suggest setting aside a few minutes at regular intervals during the day for this most valuable 'day-dreaming') can often be more effective than focusing in on the problems which have given rise to those fears which are holding and binding. As you release your old chains you affect others who also have shared your prison and make a real and vital contribution to changing your world.
The Way Of Laughing
We would begin by telling you a story.
It occurred in this way:
The time was before the dawn of your world and the Way was very different from the Way you now walk.
We see a place of peace and green, deep in a valley close to the sea. It is summer time and all the creatures of this world are enjoying the fitness of the season and the delights of the marvellous warm air and cool water. The trees are tall and strong and the floor of the valley is carpeted with flowers of all descriptions, heavy with the scent of the earth and the dew. The sounds are rich and satisfying to the soul.
The place is Paradise, as you would say.
Into this place we arrive and marvel at the diversity of life and the beauty of the forms so various and so intricate. The playfulness and the resourcefulness are both enchanting and inspiring of our respect and awe.
We are visitors made welcome in this place of plenty and fruitfulness.
To walk in this place is like a dance, to sit is delight, to sleep is to be cradled in the heart of creation. We are happy without knowing it, for we feel ourselves welcomed and at one with the life-stream that surrounds and envelopes us. The pulse of this happy valley is a hymn of praise and we sense that unity and rhythm comes through diversity.
It sounds like the overtone of creation, a true note of joy.
This is the garden of Eden we hear you say, the Arcadia of the myths. You would be right, but you would also be wrong.
To label such a vision is to reduce and stifle its leaping, dancing spirit, its flying laughter and its creative ideas which transform constantly like a kaleidoscope that tumbles from one pattern into another of different but equal enchantment and beauty.
This vision also uses the multiple diversity that it creates to re-enchant itself and all for the sheer joyful necessity of being!
The dolphins are playing in the bay and you wonder how you might reach this place, to play with them and know the secret of their happiness.
We would ask you to come on the journey with us, to know the place intimately and completely, in the only way it can be known.
We will call this journey The Way of Laughing.
Laughter Light
Laughing is an interesting phenomenon that makes the cells light and very full of life.
This is how we see your physical reality when you laugh. It is a very merry, colourful play of light. The heart is filled with humour and thankfulness and there is no control by the ego. Just a burst of life and, in this moment, a union.
You might say it is an involuntary action, like sneezing and such, but it is more. It is an up-welling of the ridiculous, an awareness of the absurdity of separation and a kinship with the bubble of joy that unites, breaking down barriers of thought and separation and pride and fear and dignity.
We are referring to the spontaneous laughter that comes from the heart, not the mean, manufactured pretence that is dragged out to demean or belittle or hurt. This is not true laughter but a weapon of power.
Do not doubt the difference, you will feel it in yourself quite clearly. The fake laugh makes you feel small and mean and diminished because it separates further.
In the Way of Laughing we would ask you to distinguish between these two and know the difference for yourself very clearly before you proceed.
But you are right. To speak or write of laughing is to miss the point. Reading a menu or a recipe cannot satify your hunger!
Being superior
We are well aware that you like to feel there is an importance and significance to your life and experience. And, of course, there is - but not as you might expect.
You are sensing a very partial and selective reality in your present form. This is dictated by the will of the collective and your own desire nature.
You wish to belong and yet to stand out. To be acclaimed by your peers and well liked, at the same time as being superior and more able than them!
This is a very separate reality and a very lonely path, as you can be sure it does not emanate from love and fellowship, although it is love and fellowship that you crave while striving for goals that exclude them.
What a contrary and problematic situation to be sure!
Competition
We would say that the ideals of competition and the so-called survival of the fittest - whatever that really means - have brought much distress and despair.
It is hard to compete with love and humour, for the concept requires a separation of identity that overrides the instinct to co-operate and to flow from relationship and mutual support.
You each have a unique perspective and genius that is so precious yet so jealously guarded that it is rarely discovered, developed or expressed. You would rather bury this precious treasure than allow others the use and benefit of it.
We think you might call this cutting off your nose to spite your face and the Way of Laughing would see the comedy and tragedy of this foolishness.
Goddess
The time has come for your loving nature to return to the source of beauty and link more fully with the radiance of what you would call the Goddess in her full sense.
We are sure you realise that the concept of male and female is a very limiting one while also a beautiful expression of separation that yearns for unity.
We are aware of the partial description the term Goddess implies. We use Goddess as we reach for a word to describe the more generous and all-accepting qualities that you commonly associate with feminine expression.
The word God, in your culture at least, has had very strong associations with the dominance and power of the more masculine expression which, at this time, is not so useful in exploring the Way of Laughing.
This male expression has traditionally taken itself very seriously and stands on dignity as you would say. Very hard to maintain in the true union of joy and laughing we are attempting to explore here.
Energy
The most precious gift is shared and therefore enormously expands both the giver and the given, so that the gift become the impulse of a dancing energy linking the two viewpoints and enlarging both.
What you understand already about energy you do not readily apply to your experience, yet it is impossible for the nature of energy to be separate.
The impulse of the laughing bubble of joy is as close a metaphor (and literal reality) as we can find to describe this energy-expression. It is light and warm and playful, not prideful and dignified and serious. It is spontaneous and delightful.
Belief
Belief is as much a hindrance as it is a help in the area of the non-rational.
The time of beauty and laughing was and is a matter of trusting your experience at its broadest and most expanded, not rationalising but not imposing belief systems either. Consciousness of the moment and openness to the moment brings such an extension of awareness if you allow it.
Sadly, you have closed off from all except that which supports what you call consensus reality.
You are like a workhorse in harness and blinkers ploughing your furrow quite unconsciously across a paradise of plenty and fruitful abundance. The plough destroys much as it turns the earth but it also turns over the ground and focuses on the precious gifts that are occasionally brought to the surface in your furrow.
These gifts can sometimes reflect back to you, like little mirrors, the reality of the beauty that always surrounds you, but which you are almost completely closed off from in your blinkers.
The Harness Way
The Harness Way is a sad, mundane and weary way, rather short of laughing. The horse has a natural grace and joy which cannot find true expression in such limitation.
You put great emphasis on sticking to a focus, climbing the ladder, getting to the top, being better, smarter, more desirable and loveable - yet by what criteria?
These qualities of resonance with life, which make you really in love and of course immeasurably loveable, do not find much encouragement or expression in the narrow pursuit of the furrow.
Yet you still believe in the dream, the lovely, laughing world of Utopia and Paradise.... but only as some place other, as in a fairy tale for children, ever separate from your REAL life!
A Field of Daisies
Make a real effort to imagine that you are much, much more extensive that your everyday perceptions would lead you to believe.
It is as if you experience from a single petal of a daisy and are unaware of the other petals, the stem, leaves, roots and so forth when you are not only the daisy but a field of daisies, the field and the soil, the moisture, the light and the warmth as well!
In the valley of the Goddess in the Way of Laughing, you are all that gladness and abundance, every expression of life which plays and transforms is part of your being. Yet you would continue to plough the furrow and not realise the joy abounding all around you.
We muse on this situation and feel your fear and your anxiety. You have a strong fear of madness in you reality which prevents much exploration of your extensions and certainly prevents the open discussion of such possibilities, unless endorsed by one of your approved sciences.
This is very unfortunate but most effective in keeping the blinkers on and the single petal perspective. Seemingly humanity can bear very little reality, not because it is bleak but because it is too much, too playful and not nearly serious and sober enough.
So let us take an imaginative journey together along the Way of Laughing. You can get off at any point you wish and we assure you will not go mad.
Through the Heart
We are so happy that you want to be with us in the Way of Laughing.
It is a beautiful and very bright path, full of delights and surprises that well up from your essence and work through the place you call your heart centre. You will experience a stretching, sensation in the centre of your chest, like opening. The Way of Laughing is to journey through the opening of the Heart centre.
We would start by giving you some very simple exercises in preparation for this magical journey.
1. Light Heartedness
Focus on your breathing and allow your breath to become a little slower and deeper than usual, nice and easy and regular with no strain, just a sense of flowing with the rhythm of air and lungs. Enjoy this physical experience for a few moments.
Now imagine that every in-breath expands your heart centre outwards, rather like bellows, so that progressively the heart centre is expanding according to your breathing. At the same time, see the breath as a very sparkling, clear, light-energy, so that the heart is becoming filled with more and more light.
Do this light-heart-breathing for a few minutes until you feel an inner peace and light as a slight buzz of energy in your chest. If you can do this exercise outside in a natural and peaceful setting so much the better, then you will find it even quicker and easier to attain the light-heartedness that we are aiming for.
Affects on your Life
Would it be so very bad to take a few steps on the Way of Laughing just to see where it goes and what affect it has on your everyday lives and experience?
This is the testing ground of all inner processes and you can be certain that what you experience in the outer realm reflects the processes of the inner course.
So if your life is perfectly resonant and in accord with your greatest fulfilment you may not need to step with us on the Way of Laughing, for probably you are already dancing along it!
No Wiser
We do not want you to think the Way is the answer to anything.
It is merely a shift of perspective and, in this respect, refreshing and sometimes transforming. It is not another dogma or 'truth', as you would say, for you to adopt to make you better than others or wiser or more knowledgeable.
If you really step into the Way of Laughing such ideas are really risible! How could you be better or wiser than yourself?
Instead, perhaps you might experience yourself as more inclusive, more free and connected, which certainly feels lovely, but it is just another extension into the multiverse of possibilities and realities which are truly infinite.
What do we know, after all, that is not wholly and completely known by you already? You may not have tuned in to a particular frequency or resonance before, that's all.
Re-membering
By becoming more aware of what is most ordinary and familiar to you will help you to re-experience yourself as connected to the All and Everything. Try this exercise.
2. Re-membering yourself
The next practical step you might take is to practice remembering in the moment. This involves becoming aware of as much as possible that is happening now, whatever your circumstances, wherever you are. Do this for a few moments only and you will be amazed by what you discover.
You will become aware perhaps of sounds you had not previously noticed - those that are close and those that are farther away. You will notice how your body feels. Is it warm or cool, for example? Perhaps it is different at temperatures in different parts. You will become aware of your breath, the scents you can discern and so forth.
It can be helpful to begin by closing your eyes, for the eyes are your most developed or relied-upon sense at this time and so it is easy to become lazy about how and what you see- very selective and on automatic, so to say. By initially closing out the sense of sight, you become more intensely sensitive to the stimuli of other senses.
After you have gathered as much information as possible with your eyes closed, open them and you will perhaps be surprised to note that certain things now appear somewhat changed to you. If you were to try this exercise several times each day you would find it beneficially affects your perceptions and memory. You will literally be re-membering yourself in relationship to the All and Everything and gradually this becomes natural once more.
On waking
Another step on the Way is to begin your day with a fresh thought. We call this a refreshing Wake-up Call!
3. Wake-up Call
At the time of waking we recommend that you have what we would call a fresh thought. This will refresh your thinking and set the tone of your whole day. To do this we suggest you take a subject which might be abstract but better still something related to your life and to your day ahead, examples might be My Journey to Work, The View from my Window, Breakfast, What I Like about my Partner, etc.
Next you take your subject and turn it about so that you are relating to it the other way around. Thus you become your journey to work, you become the view from your window, your breakfast(!) or you become those things that you like about your partner etc.
If the thought is more abstract such as say, 'Reality', or 'music', you invest yourself in that thought so that you become real to yourself, you become the music etc. This has an interesting effect and unites you with the subject, ultimately loosening the boundaries and limitations of subjective and habitual thinking.
We recommend you try this for just a few minutes with one different subject each day.
Time Enough
The time is always now.
We are aware that you know this in theory but tend to forget it in practice. If you could realise this fully you would never need to rush or feel out of sync. because you are always 'on time'. There is always enough time and it is never too late although you may find that you have expectations relating to time and what you believe you should fit in. This is quite a crazy idea.
Imagine it abstractly - you are attempting to reduce your life experience to a sequence of pre-ordained events that must be organised into a length of tubing which you have marked off in equal lengths called Enough Time.
Even your clocks have traditionally marked time in a circle (which is somewhat less bizarre than the tube idea). Your digital clocks are rather disturbing in this respect as they tend to contribute to a sense of time disappearing and life being ticked off, counted down and out.
This is not real. This is not even the reality you experience.
Think about it. Consider some commonplace experiences- of sitting through a very dull lecture, talking to your closest friend, painting a picture, watching a thrilling film. Let us suppose each of these activities takes two hours of clock time. Subjectively you experience the lecture as twice as long, the film, perhaps, half as long.
And, when you are truly absorbed in the act of creating, as in painting a picture for example, your experience moves outside time altogether.
When you were a young child a year seemed huge, an almost unimaginable length of time, a school week dragged and the summer holidays or Christmas never seemed to come. As an adult you notice the years pass rapidly and you complain that you 'lose track of time'.
So you actually experience time according to your involvement and interest and in relation to how much time you have already recorded, how old you are, as you say. Constantly you speak of time (your language is saturated with descriptions relating to time) and so reinforce the illusion, summoning images of decay and loss.
Christmas
The way of the Christ Child is the Way of Laughing, the innocent Holy Fool who dances through the world connected to the All there is and the Everything.
The child who still dances in your heart will show you the way and so today on this celebration of that birth, in every moment, in every heart, take the hand of the Babe and gaze into the wise, innocent eyes and know your true essence.
This child is you and you encounter this child in all you meet for all you meet are a reflection of you and this holy babe. This is the babe of the spirit, born into the human heart, the radiant spirit. Jesus, Horus, your beloved Gautama, are born each moment in the heart in this way.
This is a laughing free spirit, not sombre and serious but playful and engaging, always inspiring contact and joy. There is no separation and the earth sings with delight in all her beauty at the ever-present moment of the birth, a cry of pure creation.
Each moment is now.
Your 'perfect being in the heart' meditation is a very fine way to align with the awareness of this birthing of yourself in each moment. The energies of the universe are very direct and you are dancing with them in such a paean of light and sound radiances all at once and yet remain so unaware.
What a fascinating condition to be sure!
Free Will
We are very thrilled with the way so many of you remain steadfast and faithful to Spirit in the face of so much opposition or conflict from your own beliefs and training.
The human spirit has often been described in this way as indomitable and the growth point of the evolution of the All, due to the concept of free-will and so forth. Free will, as you know, is relative to the conscious awareness available to the mind. Many believe they have free will but are distressed when life appears to deal them hard blows and painful situations.
Such is the interaction of the mind with what you experience that you are often unaware of the creations you have birthed. They can come from ancient roots of training and belief that are passed generation by generation with small modifications but no real awareness or effort to discriminate.
We realise this sounds rather heavy-handed and so would rather emphasise that you can choose right now to dance your path and create a more radiant and joyful experience as you do so.
The choice comes when you become ready to let go of fear and dependence on others and embrace instead the All and go free, blessing all you touch with a laughing lightness.
In any situation you always have a choice, but it is necessary to become conscious of what your choices are. So often you say 'I have no choice' but this is either fear or laziness, or both!
The greatest courage is to look and see what is your heart-felt truth.
What will lighten and ease the fear is to discover what the fear is, what are you running from, hiding from? Often we think it is your glory and your beauty. That you choose to filter from your experience the glory of all that you experience and much, much more.
Each and every experience is a mirror for you to see more of yourself - of course you know this, but do not live by it. Instead you would be separate and alone.
Too Simple
The Way is so simple that you often dismiss it as foolish or naive.
The human intellect is rather arrogant in this respect and would play games impressing itself with its cleverness and yet refuse to look at what is right here because it is too simple to be taken seriously.
If you would take things much less seriously you might avoid so many pitfalls of pride and arrogance, which are ways of terrible blindness and waste. So little joy, so much puffed-up self-importance, which is supreme loneliness.
We would love to see you playing with possibilities and potentials, asking more questions rather than needing to persuade others you have the answers.
Being Right
It is very restrictive and closed to creative thinking always to have answers. Also it is just silly to need to be right, whatever that means.
We are very interested in this common attitude in humans which makes them feel superior and clever.
Who are you fooling? Nobody except, perhaps, your little selves.
This is such a waste of your potential which is always to be connected, extended and fulfilled. You think you must be right or be left behind -an obsession with position and direction!
Life is not a race. There are no winners, no losers. Some of you choose to stay in the painful illusion of isolation, that's all.
The absurdity of your judgements of yourselves and each other is so wasteful and cruel. It is like valuing one leaf over another, or over a root or stem.
All is one, darlings. This is our song.
Stretching Yourself
Learning to use muscles that are out of practice is not easy or comfortable.
We see the excuses you make to yourself when you do not wish to make the effort and it is the same in exercising the ways of being we are exploring here.
It is not difficult to do once you have decided to do it in consciousness. It is the decision and the remembering that are the keys.
This is why the Way is simple but the first steps are hard to make. So much blocks and distracts and diverts you.
You would be so amused to see the lengths to which you will go to avoid consciously embracing the new!
The Devil you Know
There is such a false sense of security bound up in the familiar however uncomfortable and painful it may be - it is the devil you know, as your saying goes.
But why be prepared to settle for locking yourself up with old devils when you can dance with the beauty and joy that is your birthright and your essence?
These freedoms frighten you perhaps and you are right to see that they require an understanding of real responsibility - to yourself - which is to all life, the whole of creation in its myriad and changing dance.
To limit yourself is to limit the consciousness of this glorious expression, of creation itself.
Walking Consciously
We would ask you to try to take a few small steps with us, just for fun.
Why not? You can judge by results as you go, assess how you feel and what are the effects in your life - judge by the fruits, so to say.
The steps are small but essential towards opening up your perception and consciousness of what you really are. They consist of some physical exercises, the breathing into the heart and Conscious Walking, as follows:
4. Treading the light
Imagine the streaming light that is your core energy flowing down your spine and down your legs to the soles of your feet. Breathe the light down to your feet consciously for a few minutes and then become aware that wherever you step you are sending light through the feet into the ground. This will set up a resonance and you with begin to feel energy travelling up from the earth through the soles of your feet in response. Thus a beautiful flow begins and you start to tread consciously -delighting, alighting on the ground with every step and receiving the rich blessing of the earth as you go.
This can be so inspiring that you may begin to sense the rhythm of the earth and then you can dance along the songs that reach you through your feet.
In Your Hands
The feet are very important contact points for the extension of awareness, but perhaps even more extraordinary are the hands:
5. A loving touch
To energise the hands first rub them together vigorously until they feel warm and glowing. Now bring them almost together, open palms facing, but not touching. Move them gently a little farther apart, then a little closer, until you feel the energy flow between your hands. If you are in a darkened room you may detect a glow of light between your hands now.
As with the heart-light exercise, feel the flow of energy in the form of sparkling, white light expanding from your heart centre and flowing down your arms to your hands and fingertips. Breathe into this image for a few minutes to increase the flow.
Become aware that your hands are now sacred tools of gifting and receiving, so that whatever you touch is now blessed with the flow of love that extends through your palms and fingers.
Experiment by touching several objects reverently and consciously, as you do so feel the quickening response that signals back to you through your hands. Touch, stroke and caress with infinite care and sensitivity. You will sense now how impossible it is to be really separate from that which you touch.
You Are What You Eat
You have often used the expression "you are what you eat" but rarely do you experience the full meaning of this.
We would ask you to try applying the same awareness techniques to the food you prepare and eat. You should look upon your food as an ally and companion on your journey transforming itself and you in the dance and exchange of energy.
Your chosen foodstuff has an intimate relation with you that begins when it is grows and takes the journey to union with you. You will absorb this material and life force and therefore it is of real importance that you are conscious of your choices in this process and that you befriend the life forms that will be uniting with you.
This is true of all forms of food and of the processes that it undergoes in the journey to your table. Honour and respect are vital otherwise you will perpetuate the cycle of self-disgust and disease that is the hallmark of much of humanity's relationship with what they eat.
Fast food and unconscious eating habits, diets as punishment, and the idea of food being bad for you are all contributing to the sense of alienation and separation that so upsets you. However, to come into wholesome relationship you must endure the truth that you are truly what you eat and your physical manifestation bears all the truth of this.
Consider the painful horror of your new food diseases which lead to madness and poison because they are bred of madness and poison.
All is one, darlings.
Security
The Way we suggest is very freeing and in that sense it can cause you to fear for your security.
Think of this word 'security' which you apply to possessions, money and prison. It is truly a self-created prison that will restrain your being and your joy for it does not permit spontaneous engagement with life. Such is the impulse that can override the most basic instincts of survival.
Consider the tragic consequences of those who die in a burning building because they stay behind trying to save their most treasured possessions - this is madness.
The need to hold and possess has overridden the vital force and tragedy ensues.
Conflict
We are very interested in the contradictions that you seem to live with.
Peace is maintained apparently through the development of more sophisticated weapons, love is conditional on rules and judgement and you have food mountains to stabilise the economy while half the world starves.
Living with these conflicts, it is not surprising that the mind does somersaults in an attempt to rationalise and justify such paralysing situations.
The real irony is that it only causes you to experience more separation and loneliness and fear. A very vicious circle, as you would say.
If you could only relax and respond simply and directly from a clear heart, so much of the fear would fall away.
The next step is to move from the direct experience of your physical senses to the extension of your imaginative faculties.
You use the creative power of your imagination as the pivotal mechanism of your whole sense of reality. However, as you know, this is mostly automatic and unconscious and reinforces the ideas that you carry and the beliefs that you hold about how the world is.
A good example is in the area of your science where, despite published evidence and discussion, most of humanity remains fixed in the habit of the outmoded idea - look at the newer studies in your physics compared to the very material viewpoint that was formerly held.
Despite the fact that the idea of an inert and fixed universe has not been supported by your science for nearly a century most of humanity still subscribes to the old view.
The Sins of the Fathers
It is very easy to see how your view of reality is reinforced by assumptions and inherited language and the structures that underpin them, as passed from generation to generation.
You might see these as the sins of the fathers!
The greatest sin, we would suggest, is that you prefer not to think, and feel safer when your assumptions go unchallenged even when they are very uncomfortable and disagreeable to live with.
Having such a powerfully creative mind is of course a grave responsibility if you choose to make it so - we would suggest rather that you allow this realisation to lighten your burden and enable you to delight in all that is as a beautiful continuum of creation recreating itself in the ever present moment.
This is a very light thought if you allow yourself to play with it as it means you never carry any burden as all is in this one moment of awareness and you are presently all that you have been, are and can be - which is limitless!
Use Your Imagination
We wonder if you can let go of the common concept of the imagination as something which is connected with the make-believe or fantasy.
The imagination is your primary creative faculty and it is this faculty that underpins your reality.
If you use the creative power of your imagination to make the appearance of the world about you, with its limitations and exclusions, then with less blinkers or constraints you can see that the imagination is also the tool by which you may extend your experience of reality.
You have consigned the imagination to the lowly place it holds in your heirarchy of values as a very effective safety net. We might suggest it has been a most successful hatchet job and clipped the wings of your potential most effectively. Thus humanity is safe from the realisation and responsibility of what it creates.
Once you step over this barrier of belief and thinking you cannot separate yourself from anything else and therefore you cannot blame so-and-so or such-and-such for the state of the world or your circumstances, for you have played a vital, if unconscious, part in creating these conditions.
You do best not to respond to this thought with despair but with great joy.
As your experience of yourself as an individual is as direct as you get to the creation, you need only restore your relationship with yourself and live freshly and directly, not second-hand or by proxy.
You can only take responsibility for your particular expression of the All, but if you could really do this, what a delightful transformation that would be! No longer would you blame others for your life, but you might choose instead to dance with a light heart and imagine things a little differently.
So at any given moment you can change your relation with life and therefore start to move into the awareness of infinite possibility.
MAKE IT SO as Jean-Luc Picard would say!
Making it So
So how do you practice the creative use of your imagination?
We would suggest you do this in small ways that will affect your life directly so that you begin to see this process in action. Firstly it important that you note the following:
6. Get Creative
A. Choose something that you care about. The emotions need to be engaged in the process- in other words, it needs to matter to you. Then it will be heart-felt and this will add great energy to the creative act. This is true about anything you create and is the difference between a work that has soul, as you would say, and one that is empty and sterile. You need to give the creation life force, an existence of its own.
B. Visualise and sense the reality of your intented creation as if it is fully present and already exists. Engage as many of your senses in this exercise as possible, some may wish to reinforce their creation with artwork or words. Words have power so choose them carefully. You will be familiar with the concept of affirmations. This is similar, always energised with the wholeheartedness of sincere prayer. This is prayer in the sense of loving praise of the creation and your part in its dancing transformation.
C. Consider carefully the motivation for your creative act. The effects will be as petty and thoughtless or as joyful and gifted as your being allows and you will experience the effects in your life in direct relationship with the original intention. This is why the classical mystery schools taught that you should know thyself. Without this awareness your creations will be chaotic and haphazard. Then you will blame fate!
Stirring the Soup
You need to know that all your (often thoughtless) thoughts and feelings contribute to the creation of the world you experience.
Your immediate environment is a very direct reflection of these thoughts and feelings while, as you widen your scope, your influence becomes increasingly diluted by the contribution of the thoughts and feelings of others.
You might picture this creative atmosphere like a very dense 'thought soup'- somewhat similar to the airwaves to which you tune your radios.
The consensus reality, as you would say, is created from this thought soup which retains a relatively stable picture due to the systems of habit and thinking that humanity has in place.
However, consider the different atmospheres you experience when visiting different countries with different cultures and languages (and language is a strong glue to patterns of thinking). You can feel the pervasive mindset of a place - which is its people- whether is more material, more physical, more co-operative, more violent, more prejudiced, more spiritually biased and so forth.
This is a very real phenomenon and you would do well to tune in a little more to your perceptions of these atmospheres for you can learn much from this finer sensing. It will give you good cause too to take more loving care of your own part in the creation no doubt.
Strong, conscious, goodwill and light-heartedness can have an very far-reaching effect on the world for most of creation is unconscious and rather conflicting so a good, bright clear beam travels far indeed, dispersing much of the fog.
Think of a lighthouse or beacon.
Lighten Up
If you could make lighter work of life you would be amazed how naturally and easily things flow.
It is conflict that causes stasis and blocks creativity. In many ways you think too much and so keep yourself unconscious. This is to say rather that it is the way that you think that is limiting and closed rather than to suggest that you should not value thinking at all!
The habitual way you are taught to think is rather linear and self-serving in the way of maintaining the narrow harness and blinkers.
Making Pictures
If you have experience and evidence that throws into question the truths you hold dear it is more honest and truthful to explore beyond the old truth or belief and ask more questions.
Yet so often you prefer to discount the evidence of your own eyes or ears or other senses than to allow that the reality you experience isn't the whole picture or even the only picture.
Actually it would be more useful to consider that not only is the picture constantly changing but that your interaction with the picture is vital and creative. So there is in a sense no picture without you.
These ideas may seem paradoxical or tricky but it's merely to shift your viewpoint as we suggest in the exercises.
Then you are dancing the path of the Way of Laughing.
Prisoners of Fear
It is very difficult to throw aside the habits of a lifetime and let go of the fear and pain that binds you.
These conditions are truely prisons of your own making and you are creating prisoner, jailer and jail.
Look and you will see that the door is wide open, the manacles unlocked and yet you cower in terror. This is a terrible oppression of the spirit and is played out in all areas of life. Fear, breeding cruelty and pain exacting more pain.
It is the endless cycle of despair which seeks to destroy the heart and its dancing spirit, but still it does not succeed, for where their is laughter you will find independence and strength and joy. Light enters the heart and incredible gifts and abilities manifest.
The courage and nobility of the human spirit is so beautiful, we wish you could love it in yourself and nurture its pathways.
Our Way of Laughing is just one such pathway.
The Mirror of Life
The delightful thing about life as you experience it is that it holds everything that you need for your growth in each moment.
You are not essentially seperate from what you experience and it is a reflection of you so that you can look and see exactly what you need to do by looking at your creation.
Do you like what you are manifesting or would you like to make some changes?
The decision is yours and is as instant as your will to make it so. Closer than breathing as you would say and everything you actually need is right in front of you if you have the way of seeing it.
This is a knack and the blinkers have often been on so long that it is difficult to see clearly or broadly. But you only need to decide and it is done.
Flex those unused mind muscles and you will unfold a whole new world or, really, worlds!
Enjoy the process and each moment and you will find the changes are already made - you are undergoing the transformation as you read this.
An Expanding Smile
We are very glad when we see you are happy.
This is an inner contentment that is like a smile that expands you within and opens the whole of your being to the infinite possibility that life holds for you. It is an awareness of having a foundation that does not depend on material effects but that is residing on the pulse of life itself and that gently breathes within you - mind, body and soul.
If you can rest with this and trust this essence as the basis of your reality you can expand infinitely with a sense of belonging and communion.
We know this sounds perhaps abstract but the sense of it, the feeling that accompanies this belonging is very palpable and in a sense your greatest reality. It is reality when the blinkers are removed and the fear dissolves away and you realise you just are - whatever your circumstances.
And what you call death is the ultimate illusion and the ultimate prison which keeps you bound and reduced.
So now we will face this matter of death.
Dying to Live
Death is a big idea for you and you use the fear of death to stop you living fully.
This is a form of living death and prevents the full creative participation in the moment that really living your reality involves.
If you consider the idea that everything and all your experience is in the moment, that is outside of and including all time, then the death of your body experience and the transformation that extends from this death is a simultaneous experience with all that you are right now!
So how can you fear what is happening all the time, or more acurately in no time? It is part of what you are, your wholeness and the experience of being human.
The fear and superstition that surrounds this particular experience is a learned response and built in to the particular blinkers and harness you wear.
That does not make it true or really real, although it becomes more powerful the more you invest your creative imagination with the fear of it.
This fear of the unexplained and the unknown is reflected in all areas that extend beyond what you might call ordinary reality and effectively keeps you on that straight and very narrow furrow we have already mentioned.
When you participate in life fully and joyfully your transform your experience and anticipation of death also - this means a full responsibility for all that you are and can create.
Thus the changes that take place with the death of the body can either be the culmination of all your dread and fear or it can be a glorious step into another extension of reality, actually much less limited and hidden that the present way of seeing.
In effect, you create your own death experience.
Who is Living Your Life?
In many ways, the way you approach death is an opportunity and a creative act.
So is all your life experience and it can be made more conscious and extended with a shift of viewpoint including the confrontation and appraisal of your fears.
You may discover that when you truely examine your fears they are not what you expect. Perhaps they are not even yours! This is useful in all areas of your experience where you come up against the barrier of fear. So often this is founded in the past and often it is an unsought inheritance, perhaps from your culture, society or family.
It is useful to have a look and decide who is leading your life and whether you want it to continue in this way.
We would stress that it is rarely quite so simple to unravel these beliefs and prejudices as to say this one comes from so and so, that from such and such. Often it is a tangle of collusions. Very often it seems you prefer not to think, find it more comfortable to follow than to lead your own life.
The tragedy of this really becomes apparent when you face death and wonder what the point of your life has been, where was the joy and the delight - then you become afraid and death seems like the enemy which snatches away your opportunities to lead a different life - and you are at angry at death when really you are angry for not having lived more fully.
Dearest dear, know that it is all in the palm of your hand and it is all happening right now.
You choose it all.
While the realisation of how partially you have entered into life so often comes as you face death, this is essentially a great gift, for it is quickening you and opening you so that you have the opportunity to move into the next experience with more consciousness.
Sadly, however some instead move on feeling only bitterness, blaming circumstances outside themselves for their situation. Shift viewpoint and you will see that each step extends from your own engagement with, or separation from, life.
Death is not your enemy it is part and parcel of your life and what you are.
Making Love
Making love is the phrase you often use to describe sex, usually in connection with romantic relationships and emotional attachments.
We would suggest that on the Way of Laughing each step is a creative act of making love to life, of falling in love with life and choosing quite consciously to respond with rapture.
This is quite free of issues of dominance and superiority, control and power which underpin human relations whether personal or in business and everyday transactions.
This is also apparent in your relations with the natural world- you talk of taming nature, cultivating crops and husbanding animals! (What a curious expression that is.)
We would ask you to look at this assumption of dominance.
Why are you so threatened? How can you be less than what you are? If you need to be better and greater than anything else then you cannot flow from love which is infinitely respectful for, and delightes in, all expressions of life.
You feel cut off from life because you cannot love and respect yourself and you cannot create love, make love as you would say. This is a tragic illusion. Again we say how can you be less than you are?
You contain the potentiality of all life. The blueprint of the cosmos is carried within you, as it is within a leaf and the call of a dove.
You really exist in a fog that screens you from this extraordinary beauty, this complete oneness.
Go Your Own Way
Look at your lives.
Look back at the story, the turns and twists of fate, as you would say. We ask you to consider, is it not an extraordinary story.
As you think about the chapters of your story we would ask you also to feel it. Sense the disappointments, the joys, the fears and the achievements. Be honest, this is for you.
Do you begin to sense any patterns emerging? For example you might notice that you always avoid challenges or maybe you run before you can walk. There are lots of ways you may express your patterns.
Now consider whether or not these patterns you see running through your life are useful to you, joyful.
You may not have been aware until now of how very much they have directed your story. Maybe you would like to take care of the direction more consciously, to make different choices, choose to respond to life differently.
You might call this Living Your Way. It is what it says you will then really live your path, conscious and in each moment.
We offer this little message with love that you may enjoy your own Way of Laughing.
All is One!