Book 1: Enlightenment

Step 1: Beginnings

The Pathless Path: Ancient Yet Timeless

Fear not, you aren’t the first to walk this way. The great teachers of mankind have preceded you.

The first, perhaps, to note our collective dysfunction, or collective madness, was a man called Gautama Siddhartha, who lived 2,600 years ago in India. Only later was the moniker Buddha conferred upon him (literally, “the awakened one”). Around the same time in China, Lao Tzu became another of the enlightened teachers with Tao Te Ching. And for those of us raised on Jesus’ teachings, it is salvation.

What was this inherent dysfunction or madness of the human condition? Whether in Hinduism (maya means delusion) or Buddhism (hukkha means suffering) or Christianity (sin, in ancient Greek of which the Bible was written, miss the mark), all great religions point to the false path we tread.

What is that path? It is the path wrought by ego. Fear, greed and power all grow out of a belief in form, which is “seen” by the ego in us all but also a product of that ego. It is the material world.

What is the alternative? Simply, that awakening or enlightenment or salvation are possible by rising to a new consciousness. A consciousness that what is here and now, of this world, isn’t reality. Isn’t what matters. The truth, the reality, is that we are all together, all one. Our thoughts aren’t reality, just as that voice in your head isn’t reality. We are all of a source. That source is vast. Boundless. Not of this earth. Not of time.

It is simply our human form that is of this place, this time.

Believe that the universe has chosen us.

Want proof?

We are the only species to possess consciousness. To ask that which began this journey - Who am I? And in that moment, and from then on, the personal journey, that path you choose, and that sets you apart, is also connected to all things. All people. The source.

A consciousness that recognizes the ego in thought, while also recognizing that we are a part of something beyond this material-bound, time-bound existence in the here and now.

Both here, and not here. Both now, and not now.

The sorcerer knows who accompanies him on his journey. Wherever he goes the source joins him. Sustains him. Is in all others, is in all things, is beyond this earthly realm.

Step 2: Source

There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.
- Max Planck, Nobel Prize winning physicist

In the beginning there was nothing. Then, bang! The big bang. There, in that briefest of moments, there was creation. I chose that word carefully. Creation. For out of creation, there is life. For the universe then, and us today.

Think about it. We are all star dust. Everything you can see, everything you can touch, everything you can smell and hear has its origins in that moment. Quite simply, we are all made from the same matter. Once infinitesimally small, yet ever expanding.

Now, consider where you come from. In the union of sperm and egg, were you to look through a microscope, what would you see? A cell. In that cell is mostly empty space plus some particles called atoms. Further magnification would reveal mostly more empty space and a few particles called protons and neutrons. Don’t stop there because further magnification yields mostly more empty space and some additional particles called quarks and leptons…

A quark soup. Scientifically, 99.99% of who we are is space, the space between particles. Think about that. From formlessness comes form.

The same is true of trees, birds, blades of grass, the refraction of sunlight off of rain drops that manifests itself as a rainbow, the stars in the night sky.

Beyond matter, preceding the big bang by the merest of moments, yet also within us all, is energy. A force. A unifying force. As Max Planck informs, it is the force putting the particles in vibration that holds it all together. We all come from energy that has no boundary!

Think this a bit much? Watch The Space Between Atoms and see if maybe, just perhaps, what seems real isn’t in fact infinitely more wonderous.

If everything that you are materially, from your skin color to your shoe size comes from this source, why can’t the shape of your life?

The sorcerer is someone in harmony with that ancient yet never ending source.

Step 3: Thoughts

words work at the surface…
at the edge of consciousness

The words you place on things and people affects how you view them. It doesn’t matter whether you speak those words out loud or not. It’s your ego at work. In the act of placing a word on that object or individual, you have named it. You know what it is.

However, in truth you don’t know what it is. You haven’t uncovered any meaning. Rather, you have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, absolutely everything has unfathomable depth. And what you’ve done, by labeling, is simply describe the surface layer of things, not the whole reality.

Merely, the tip of the iceberg.

Steven Pinker gave a thoughtful presentation at TED on The Stuff of Thought. Essentially, he makes the case that the words we use reveal how we think. On that we can agree. What the sorcerer understands is that the words we use reflect our human condition. Our ego.

Language consists of basic sounds; the vowel sounds a, e, i, o, u. Air pressure, on the other hand, is what produces the consonant sounds of s, t, d, and so forth. Ask yourself this: what combination of such inherently limited sounds could ever explain who you are, or who that other person is, the world around you or simply the nature of being a rock?

Certainly, words are useful, are necessary. They convey meaning, at least at the surface of things. Just as they allow us humans, with all our inherent frailties, to connect with others.

Keep in mind, as the sorcerer does, that the words we use, the thoughts we convey, can be of the here and now, through our prism of ego, or they can expand beyond, part here yet with awareness of something beyond the physical, the material, the time-bound.

Thoughts and the words we use to convey them only covers so much. It is only the edge of consciousness. There’s so much more to the sorcerer’s understanding in the all-too short time he spends in this time-bound realm.

Step 4: Ego

the self is earthbound…
the being is boundless

There is no “I.” Get used to it. (It’s difficult, I know. Boy, do I know.)

Remember, we’re all a collection of atoms stumbling around, driven by forces. Where did this notion of “I” come from? Early on, as a baby, and then progressively as a toddler, we learn self; first by associating the sounds of the name we are given by our parents as self, then through our toys (and should they ever be taken away, a fit is sure to follow because part of me - “mine” - is taken away). Some people never move beyond this phase.

The ego is an illusory sense of identity. Albert Einstein, no slouch when it comes to time/space, referred to this illusory sense as “an optical illusion of consciousness.” Ego is a construct. It is born out of past experience. It is mainly our identification with things and labels which subconsciously enhance our sense of self. It is ego-identification. And it is these identifications, these attachments, which are at the root of our self-made dysfunction.

Ego is always stoking the need to stand out, the need to feel special, to be in command, to get more. Underlying it all is fear. The fear of being nobody, the fear of death, the fear of….

In the material, ego-driven world, one can never get enough. Just as, you never measure up. In the form as you see yourself, you will always be better than some, and inferior to some. However, in essence, in being, you are neither inferior or superior; you are simply life itself.

Our dysfunction, ergo ego, is neither right or wrong. It is human nature. It is a part of becoming. It is a level of consciousness that is, in the main, subconscious. The ego requires an identity; it simply doesn’t care which one. The sorcerer understands the delusion, even laughs out loud in a crowd when he finds himself observing his ego and its wants. After all, how could he have been taken in by something so transparently false for so very long!

Self worth isn’t a function of things. Yet with the ego it’s never enough. The ego wants to want more of what it wants. And, as you’ve no doubt experienced, no amount of physical things satiates. The ego is greedily insatiable. It must have more to identify with. And the more it gets, the more addicted it becomes. There’s never the payoff of happiness since there’s always more to want.

The sorcerer recognizes that the need is more structural than content based. He turns that hunger inward and outward simultaneously. And in the doing, finds a higher level of consciousness. His true identity is consciousness itself, rather than what his consciousness had identified with.

“Being” isn’t something that can be thought. It can only be felt. As the Buddhists say, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.” This saying is a true reflection on the nature of thought. The sorcerer feels the oneness that resides in him, and in this feeling, the light of consciousness illuminates his essential identity as consciousness.

When you hear that voice in your head and for the first time notice that voice as ego manifested, you will also realize you aren’t the voice but the one who is aware of it. In essence, your essence is the awareness that is aware of the voice. This is when you are becoming free of the ego. You are moving from a subconscious automaton of mortal man to an observer with higher consciousness.

With this step, the sorcerer becomes free of his earth-bound self. He is now experiencing both the here and now, and the source that is boundless.

Step 5: Now

In the past or the future there is ego
in the now there is a Presence

In truth, the ego revels in its resentment of reality. It derives as much pleasure, as much identification, with negativeness as with anything fleetingly positive.

How many of us, for how much of our time here, spend it saying to ourselves, “In the future I’ll be happy when I acquire this. I will be happy when I become that. If this, that or the other happens…”

Is there no peace?

The sorcerer understands that when he is feeling negative there is a root cause, some real or perceived pleasure being derived by his ego. When that happens, his identity shifts from ego to awareness.

Life, and the peace to live it well, isn’t at some point in the future. It is right now, moment to moment. You cannot live life in the future. Nor through the pain of the past. It’s field is right the hell now. It cannot happen anywhere else.

Happiness is in the now. Unhappiness isn’t, for the most part. Its roots are often through some disconnect in the now. In Zen, a satori is a moment of Presence, a stepping out of the voice in your head, a moving away from the triggering thought processes to a spaciousness that can put brackets around a feeling of emotion and a realization of the space that extends beyond it. The sorcerer relinquishes resistance, enters an aware state, one with what is, within and without.

Eckhart Tolle, in The Power of Now, has this observation: after two ducks get into a fight, which never lasts long, they will separate and float off in opposite directions. Then each duck will flap its wings vigorously a few times, quack quack quack, and in so doing release the surplus energy that built up during the fight. After this flapping and quacking, they float on peacefully, as if nothing had ever happened. (If it were two humans doing the fighting, how would it end?)

I smiled when I first read this observation. Imagine, learning from a duck!

If your life is to some degree unsatisfactory, keep in mind: You don’t have a life. There is no such thing as “my life.” This is the delusion of separateness. You’re thinking “I” and life are two. Yet what “I” could there possibly be apart from life, from being?

The sorcerer recognizes the oneness of life in the now. The suchness of the moment. The now is always already as it is. What kind of relationship do you want to have with the present moment? In the asking of that question, in that awareness comes peace, because life is always in the now.

Step 6: Oneness

As above, so below.
As within, so without.
- The Emerald Tablet (3000 B.C.)

Life is always now; it is what is and what happens. It isn’t what happened earlier, nor what could happen later. Ego is past (identity) or in the future (fulfillment). Ego cannot be aligned with the present; it must ignore, resist and devalue the now to feed itself. Make a friend of the now, and the ego must diminish.

Time is the horizontal dimension of life. It is the surface of things. It is the content. Yet there is a vertical dimension, or depth of life. Whenever you allow a moment to just be as it is, you dissolve time. You are now in the now. You are now conscious of the Presence. You are Being.

The sorcerer knows that when he is in the present, the Presence will flow into and transform what he is doing. There, then, is a power to that moment, that activity. In that aliveness comes joy. The joy of Being emanates from consciousness itself, in the moment and of the moment. It is being one with oneself.

In stillness comes oneness. It is found in inner space. It is essence.

What we see, hear, touch, feel or think about is only one half of reality. It is, by definition, form. The second half of reality is formless. It is nothingness. It is the space that holds the stars. It is the stillness when we hear nothing. It is consciousness; being alert of the stillness of inner space while things are happening in the foreground.

You cannot seek inner space as if you were looking for some thing, as if it could be grasped. You can only be aware of this formlessness within you when you experience the sweetness of Being. It is the sensing in the moment the Presence that I am.

Not I am this, or that. Simply, I am.

The sorcerer therefore seeks to allow the moment to be as it is. He allows his senses to meet the absence of form, the stillness, and thus the formless conscious that lies behind perception and makes all perception possible is no longer obscured by form.

Try it yourself. In the silence of the early hours before sunrise, go out and gaze at space. Sense the vast depth of space as your own depth. Something within you will resonate with the stillness as if in recognition. In that moment you will then know that sacred stillness that has no form to be more deeply who you are than any of those things that make up the content of your life.

All form is transient. Things change. The peace that comes from knowing space, stillness, is not of this world, not of form. It is formless. It is boundless. It is eternity.

Step 7: Intention

All things are, at their core, energy. They are vibrating energy fields in ceaseless motion, whether they be inanimate, like the chair you’re sitting on, or alive, like you and me. What we perceive as physical matter is energy vibrating at a particular range of frequencies. Likewise, thoughts consist of the same energy vibrating at a higher frequency than matter. This is why they cannot be touched or seen. Negative thoughts are on the lower end of the frequency scale, positive thoughts reside at the higher end.

Negative thoughts, negative emotions, disrupt the energy flowing through the body. Fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, hatred, envy - all conspire to affect the heart, the immune system, digestion, production of hormones, and so on. Conversely, positive thoughts and emotions have the opposite effect.

A simple act of kindness raises serotonin levels in the person who gives kindness. It also raises serotonin levels in the receiver. Moreover, anyone observing the act of kindness also gets a boost in their serotonin levels.

The sorcerer thinks and feels in advance of where he is going. His intentions become orchestrated space time events of what he intended. He reverses the ego’s process (When I get this > I will do this > I will think this > I will be like this) to one of actualization (I will be this > I will spontaneously fulfill my desires > I will do the things that are necessary > I will receive everything I want).

What you give, you receive. Outflow determines inflow. As Albert Einstein queried: “Ask yourself whether this is a friendly universe.” Do you believe in abundance or scarcity? Both are inner states that manifest as your reality. If your reality is based on the dysfunction of the ego state, that life is lacking in love, respect and money, for instance, then sure enough that is what is your reality.

The sorcerer knows that abundance comes from within, yet he rejoices when the abundance without reawakens what’s within him. The warmth of the sun on his cheek, the sweetness when biting into succulent fruit, the boundless aliveness that surrounds him on a summer’s walk.

The doing itself, rather than the outcome, now becomes the essence of living. Consciousness of the Now flows not only into what you do, but how you do it. Acceptance of what happens, and what is required, is first. Enjoyment in the present moment, as a creative moment, as the feeling of joy that flows into (not out of) what you do, comes second. Enthusiasm, enjoyment with a purpose, comes last. Doing with vision.

With this state of consciousness, in the Now, the creative power of the universe flows through the sorcerer. He is the outlet through which the boundless energy flows from the unmanifested source of all life. His intentions are in harmony with the source, and thus the miraculous manifests.