We are alive. The animals are also alive and close to us in many ways. What is the difference between human life and animal life, and how can we use that difference to enhance our lives as individuals and as a species?

There are many things competing for attention. Your attention is precious. It is this knowledge of the magic of attention, that separates us from the animals.

We have the choice to gather and focus our attention, to place it where we will.

Now there is shift. We leave behind the absurdity of what we have learned is real. Now we shift from the illusory to the real. Now we enter into wonder. Now we enter into in appreciation. Now we enter into the sacred. 

Where is your attention? Is it possible to reshape your existence by shifting your attention?

Soon is the time when it is traditional to make New Year's resolutions. These are mostly too big for us. They have become a standing joke.

Make a resolution this moment to be as you truly are and inherit this gift that lies behind the agendas of our lives. One breath at a time. Here we really exist.

There is something we become aware of when we embrace the energy body. It is not how we have been taught or imagined. The energy body is beyond our imagination. We become aware of two primary characteristics of our energy body, it's total freedom and it's fierceness.
When dreaming with a being, I complained that in this reality, I am superb, my awareness is keen, I have a natural sense of appreciation, I feel very good. When I return, I will be subject to so many forces beyond my apparent control.The answer came. Devoid of your petty concerns and fears this is who you are. Here you are fierce there you are angry, here you are sad, there you despair. Here you are joyful in gratitude for no reason at all, except that you can perceive. 

There, things have to conform to an agenda. There, the concerns of others are paramount. Your kind sell yourself for gratification, for attention. In your world you have forgotten who you are.
The comings and goings of your life are immaterial, they have only the importance you give them. Here, you know that, there, you have forgotten. Yet the reason you are here in awareness, is because of the supreme effort and motivation you have for consciousness.

It may not seem the best of actions to put gold in the fire, yet we know that gold becomes purified and those things that are not of it's nature are transformed. Human life, the crucible of your existence is where you recognise your nature and become it, and that which is extraneous to your journey is destroyed and transformed in the fire of your existence.

The exigencies of your life will transform you. Welcome them, they are of your conjuring, specifically designed for exactly what you need.
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Here you are dreaming and your dream body holds sway. Yet daily life is a dream, your perception of it as an immutable reality, is flawed. You have become overwhelmed by your creation and believe you are subject to it. Awake! You are not constrained by anything but your own imagined feebleness. You are the instigator of what you perceive. Recognise your prowess.

Your dreaming body, your energy body is available to you but not when you doubt. Return to your world. Remember your prowess here, engage with the appearance and accept, but tread lightly.

Cultivate only immersion in your being and let it blossom. Your time is now, take responsibility for the thoughts and feelings you invite. To share your daily world is something even the highest souls yearn for. This sense of not-knowing is the battlefield that forges impeccable warriors.
Dream well-being, dream allowance, acceptance and acquiescence and you will give yourself to a greater dream. You are called, you have answered. Arise mighty being it is your destiny.

Become yourself, discover your audacity, discover your abandonment, it lies there in the detritus of your life.

You complain, shrink and shirk at what you yourself have created. You are embroiled in it, subject to it you think. An author isn't subject to his prose, why then are you overwhelmed by this that you have penned, that is your life?

The importance you give to things is a learned affair. Drop your attachment to your learning. Many strategies that your species have learned have served them well, yet they are worn. To make the leap into the age that is to be, you have to let go and trust that you have everything you need for this extravagant journey that is your life.

This tale is unbelievable; unbelievable to me who lived it but undeniable and true, so I have found my resolution to tell this extraordinary account of this incident from my life. 
I had complications with TB at the age of 30 so spent many years in a wheel chair, however by the millennium, 15 years later I had progressed to walking on sticks. I was though still in incredible pain and surges of electricity like energy would course down my leg making me scream. I became addicted to painkillers and my curtailed life. 
One night at a party filled with successful witty and charming people that were well disposed towards me I felt so low. It was an ideal party yet I had no energy to take part in it.

I found a room that was empty and turned on the TV. I thought about my wonderful life and how dreadful it had become, where I couldn’t even enjoy an evening with my friends. The pain and my bad humour were unbearable. I reached the lowest point of my life.

After a while I began though to think not of the bad times but of the good years the joy of friends and travel. Particularly I thought of Prem Rawat a man from Haridwar in Uttar Pradesh India whom I had met on my travels who had freely given me a meditation-like practice he called self-knowledge. I remembered how simple yet profound this knowledge was and how good it felt to practice.

It hurt me to think that I had largely stopped it. I knew in that moment that I couldn’t live any longer as I was. I swore to myself that I would practice what I had been shown every day. Although it was not always easy, I did this, and from that day every aspect of my life improved. If there were clouds in my day then I knew that the sun was behind then and the clouds would bring rain to nourish the earth and so me. My cup often half-empty was half-full and filling.
A life with joy and gratitude as its base, blossoms. One day I felt really good and was thinking of starting some gentle exercise. Knowing I couldn’t join a class with my disability, I went to the bookshop to buy a book on tai chi; hoping that in the privacy of my own home I could practice and attain a level that would allow me to train under a teacher later.

In the bookshop I found a manual on tai chi and then went to explore the other books. I had always been a fan of Carlos Castaneda’s writings about his magical apprenticeship in Mexico. On the shelf I found a book by him, that I hadn’t read, called The Magical Passes subtitled The Practical Wisdom of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico. The book excited me; filled with 

descriptions and pictures of physical exercises it seemed to fill the gap, left by his earlier work. I left with this book and returned the tai chi book to the shelf.
With little energy, in pain and debilitated from my disability it was slow work learning from the book yet it still enticed me and I started to generate a daily practice.

I had a great feeling of energy, optimism and well-being. Practicing these Energy Passes, (www.beingenergy.com) needed a fine sense of balance. I had little balance without my walking sticks. Time and time again I would fall to the floor and have to pick myself up again, yet I continued with it day after day. It was a powerful and re-vitalising process.
I had been practicing daily for 6 months I was falling less, my body was stronger and I was a lot more alert. 

Like every day I meditated eat breakfast and then practiced Energy Passes. By the time I finished I was tingling all over feeling exhilarated.

Sweaty from my exercise I went to the bathroom to shave and bathe. I shaved and before bathing happened to catch my eye in the reflection from a full length mirror. I felt an immediate longing, a deep sense of love and attraction and heightened concentration.

I tuned into this growing feeling of deep love for myself: In and out of a real yet dream-like state, I slipped. Feeling that something incredible was happening I renewed my attentions. My love and attention drew from the mirror another being, my energy body. For a moment I was horrified. However as the being called by my attention stepped from the mirror I engaged with and became it. I looked at my vacated body staring in the mirror. It was uncomfortable sharing a room with it so I left.

I went into the front room and practiced the Energy Passes I knew. Many more appeared spontaneously and I danced my joy and determination. Never had I felt such power and wonder in my life.I moved with no thought breath by breath soaking up the immediacy of being. A thought came to me after many hours “You have gone mad, do you really think that you have left your body in the bathroom?” With a surge of energy I banished this thought yet after sometime the nagging voice returned and I had to respond by returning to the bathroom. As I walked in I saw my body as I had left it.

My nausea returned and with the nausea fear, panic and religious thoughts of demonic possession. 
A calm loving voice filled me. It told me to calm myself and return to my everyday body as I no longer had the energy to sustain this non-ordinary state of being. Somehow I did return. I was back in my body, I felt drained confused and excited. 
I still did not know the full implications of my experience. Yet it was obvious to me that what we consider reality is only one level of perception: An outer layer dictated by our thoughts.

The next day I visited a neighbour, he offered me a beer which I refused saying with surprise, “I don’t drink alcohol.” He offered me a smoke and I made a similar reply. I was as astounded as him. I realised also that I had walked to his house without my walking sticks.
After my experience I read a lot about this fascinating subject and other similar accounts and got what happened to me in context a little. I was re-vitalised, full of energy which was flowing in a way it hadn’t since childhood. I was optimistic full of appreciation, awe and joy at life.

I was no longer in pain, in fact just the opposite. I had never known it was possible to feel this good. I felt decisive and free. With no need for pain-killing medication I easily stopped using it. My doctor was surprised to see me neither dependant on walking sticks or medication. She said that it was a miracle. 
It has been a long time since I had this magical experience, I have continued with my practices and became a Being Energy teacher. I am deeply grateful for everything and everyone including my own effort that has made it possible.

We choose to believe we are a story, compiled of fleeting perspectives arranged in a linear sequence. This self-conforming linear story we have agreed to, imprisons us. It takes a leap of faith, of abandon to let go of our story.  We are mesmerised by an agreement to a partial view. 
This choice though it has the 

elements of seeming choice, is no choice. It is incomplete, bound, by definition, by belief and at that, a constrained and limiting belief. We are in essence indefinable. Only by experiencing who we are beyond description can we come to belief, acceptance and then the knowledge and actuality of this energetic fact. 

Otherwise it is all too far-fetched. How can we be the tendrils of a myth hidden and hinted at, yet never defined, whilst everything defined tells us it is madness, a superstition, a lie?  Every time we define or believe beyond total self-belief, we limit our possibility to choose and actualise what we choose.

We are duped into collusion with the world through unconsciousness, to demand verification for something that cannot be verified until we leap without verification. 
Life demands a gesture from us. At death we will be forced to take that leap. 

We will see then, at that point, whether there is any safety net. Maybe by forfeiting the right to choose consciously whilst we are alive, we place ourselves in an untenable position.
Look for the leap that is being demanded today, it is our birthright, not to be relinquished.

The universe has entered into an alliance with you. You have all the cards, you may change some of them. The result of the game will depend on how well you play your hand. The universe has given you everything you need for the game, this extraordinary undertaking that is life. 

Life is like a movie. You have the opportunity to be the director, the star and the audience. Are you the director of your experience? Is it a comedy or a tragedy? Have you been so beguiled by the role you have chosen, that you have forgotten you are an actor in this production?

The movie is still playing out. The director's final cut is still to be made. The game is not finished. Smile you are on camera.

You still have chips on the table, there are new hands to be dealt. Look closely at what you receive, change what is necessary and play as if there was no tomorrow.