“IYLI” CHAPTER TWELVE: WITNESSING PEACE
Chapter/Step 12 of If You Live It (the book) describes the final doorway between you and your creator. It is the last illusion of the mind that needs to be transcended. It is the footsteps leading into enlightenment. It is the conclusion of working the steps found in this book to their conclusion and carrying that message out into the world for the rest of your days. You will arrive at Victorious Peace if you set your intent on it, surrender and forgive, and serve God by serving the world around you
AUDIO/VIDEO VERSIONs: SPOTIFY / APPLE PODCASTS / YouTube
CHAPTER TWELVE:
Witnessing Peace
Being the message…
As we move into this final step and completion of the program, we’ll be looking at the entirety of this step from two different angles:
Completing the 12th step means having worked the previous eleven in order, and now arriving at the point where you are willing to take another person through the process when the opportunity arises – it also means agreeing to incorporate the 10th and 11th steps into your life as regular modes of operation for the remainder of your life.
Arriving at the doorsteps of enlightenment, and what it takes to make the final run towards the realization of God as Self.
We’ll look at the first angle before we move onto the second lens for incorporating this work into your life. Reaching the twelfth step is no easy task, but neither is it a hard one if you started this program praying or begging for a way to create more closeness to God. The difficult nature of doing the work found in this book isn’t because anything is physically demanding, but because in order to complete the steps one must choose faith many times over through the process of surrender, forgiveness, and gratitude, and one must be willing to abandon the notion of belief that what’s found in the mind is the highest form of experiencing Truth.
The gift of the twelfth step, is that the program comes to an end as far as working steps are concerned, but from another angle, the program is truly just beginning. The program ends and yet begins at number twelve, because by this point, you have all the information needed to transcend the ego and fear in all of its forms, but in order to complete this step you have to be willing to take another through all twelve of them. Becoming someone’s sponsor is not to be taken lightly, and along with agreeing to do so requires some rules both parties must follow:
You as the sponsor, agree to take the next person through the steps the same way you were taken through the steps, not deviating from the process and/or creating new ways for completing them.
The sponsor never does this work for payment or gratuity.
The sponsor is not what works miracles in the life of another. They’re simply walking the next person through the steps which delivers love to another more abundantly, and it’s the love in abundance which creates changes for the practitioner.
The sponsor is not a bank for the person they’re taking through the steps, and is not to loan money to the stepper or provide housing or other financial means.
The sponsor is not responsible for the next person finishing the steps, only being available and willing to walk them through the steps as time permits.
All conversations between the sponsor and the person working the steps are kept between the two parties, unless permission is given to talk about experiences and conversations held.
No sponsor proselytizes this work as a means to recruit next steppers, but he/she must be willing to talk about their experience with the steps when asked by interested parties.
There is never to be sex between the sponsor and the person working through the steps, for this relationship is meant to be platonic and not one of dominance.
The sponsor only guides the next person through the steps, and never does the work for the person, always only sharing their personal experience throughout the process as a means for guidance.
The sponsor works around the schedule of the person taking the steps, never demanding the work be finished by the stepper in a particular timeframe.
The sponsor doesn’t dictate the time it takes for someone to finish the steps, but can leave the relationship if their time is being abused by the person taking the steps.
The sponsor is not demanding or for the purpose of placing any rules on the stepper, with his/her role only being a witness to their experience with the steps along the way, and as a guide for completion of the steps.
As far as further rules go, if more need to be added they will be with later publications and editions of this book, but for now, think of these rules as guidelines for a successful 12th step sponsor relationship.
The way someone becomes a sponsor is quite natural and easy but may not always look the same as another person’s experience. Before this book is published, those choosing to work these steps will have a forum and community to engage with who can serve as sponsors, but as time progresses and more and more people finish these steps and share a new life with the world around them as a byproduct of their efficacy, there will be more people wanting to do the steps than people able and willing to sponsor them.
As in AA, this program is one of attraction and not promotion. As a community, we’ll look at ways to work around the supply of sponsors and the demands of steppers. However, the easiest way to find someone to sponsor is by letting God know you’re ready to finish the program and be a sponsor, and when the opportunity arises, let people know you’re available to walk them through the program, while not shying away from doing so when presented an opportunity.
There will be much more information about the sponsor and stepper relationship via online resources and in-person meetings, but for now, I’ll say one last thing about the gift and blessing of being a sponsor before moving onto lens two of this chapter: the blessing of a sponsor is mutually valuable to the sponsor and the person working through the steps, because only the sponsor, based on their unique vantage point, gets the gift of seeing another arise at truth and find clarity in the process. The sponsor and the stepper are mutually blessed in this process, and the time needed to sponsor someone pales in comparison to the value added in their life by doing so.
Enlightenment is talked about in many ways and from many angles, with most parties in today’s world, not speaking from the subjective reality as experienced or witnessed truth, but from a place of reading about a change in perception from another’s viewpoint. This reality creates mystification around the subject and not factual interaction with truth. The term enlightenment in its truest sense just means a highly elevated angle of perception, marked with a uniquely similar way for how the world is witnessed and interacted with, observed and experienced by all throughout time who have reached such a level of conscious awareness. In essence, enlightenment is a condition of perception more than a physical alteration of attributes or a vernacular of magical belief-based phenomenon.
No person becomes enlightened, because once the condition sets in, the belief of being an individual person evaporates and what’s left is life without individual description as well as any attachment to the beliefs of duality or cause and effect. There are various levels of enlightenment just like there are various levels of schooling, with each one not better than another, but which build on one another through acknowledgment and evolved knowingness. When enlightenment sets in as one’s new paradigm of awareness, the moment and corresponding moments to follow are undeniable and without total description both physically and spiritually, other than to say it is without question, was not present the moment before it presented itself.
If the entirety of the world and perception has not shifted in a way that leaves the experiencer changed forever to such a degree where knowingness has replaced thinkingness, and “I-ness” is not present as all there is, enlightenment has not taken place. You won’t have to wonder if you’re enlightened, because the moment it arises is without comparison to date physically as well as through the lens of awareness, and without confusion or worry involved. Pure ecstasy, unbridled connection, unbound peace, and the inability to be anything other than what’s taking place, all converge and coalesce at the moment one finds their steps walking through the doorway of enlightenment, leaving behind any definition of self, replaced forever with the all-present knowingness that all is One, and life is more than imagined as possible only moments before.
Jesus the Christ was fully enlightened, as was The Buddha and Lord Krishna, as has been the case for others throughout millennia in varying degrees of intensity. The purpose of and innate experience with full enlightenment is not different in description for Jesus, the Buddha, Krishna, or others who have found their life forever changed by the innate knowingness at the highest degrees that God is in fact the Self, as well as everything else simultaneously, however, that does not mean that each person who realizes they are in fact that which created it, are here for the same purpose and outcome.
I mention the three people above to show the similarity for having an innate knowingness about God being all of life, but also to highlight their different reasons for taking on human form in the first place. Jesus incarnated for the purpose of providing salvation to mankind and to be an example of Love in human and sacrificed form. Krishna was Love in human form as well, but not to preach about heaven and salvation, but to teach about love and the pathway to God through the choices of action or inaction. The Buddha, unlike Jesus and Krishna, was not born enlightened, but realized enlightenment through his own determination for truth at all costs, and then taught his experience of reaching the truth of existence for the purpose of not having to reincarnate into physicality again.
All three physical manifestations of God were here to be examples and teachers, but all three had different ways of doing this and different languages and life experiences used to demonstrate their messages. All three individuals experienced the reality of divinity the same way, and because of their presence on this earth, as well as the presence of other enlightened beings throughout the ages, you too have the same opportunity to know that God is, as opposed to thinking God is probably real.
If you have a desire to change the world for the better, your only course of deliberate action should be to chase after Truth and pursue enlightenment, for every person that truly knows God and leaves just thinking about divinity behind, is another person who is in the world but not of it, and when you’re in the world but not of it, you change the world for the better by simply existing. You raise the levels of the sea for all of mankind so every boat floats easier in the water without even realizing it. What you are emanates out from the presence of what you are in varying degrees of intensity as well, so when fear and anger comprise your reality, you spread fear and anger with every step, but when you’re more love than attachment to ego, love is what goes forth from the presence of what you are in droves and waves, changing the world without having to do anything the world notices.
This book can help deliver you to levels of consciousness where you calibrate as love and even unconditional love by simply finishing the work earnestly and honestly, but it only poses the choice for a particular pathway which you must choose to walk down and complete. This book can help deliver you transcendence over the ego and fear in all of its forms, but the choice to walk the road of surrender, forgiveness and gratitude is up to you. What some of you reading this will one day know, is that you’re not what you thought you were, and you’re not in control of anything, but you’re actually that which witnesses and observes everything arising spontaneously in and around your locality of consciousness. Knowingness is different from understanding, just like enlightenment is different from life before the condition sets in.
Jesus was not on this earth to only be a pathway to heaven once your physical life is over. Jesus was on this earth to show how someone can experience heaven while still in the physical body, seen specifically through the quote “the kingdom of God is within.” The example of Jesus’s life is what this book is all about, and by working these steps and surrendering, forgiving and practicing gratitude, you too will know that Love was not only a person but also with God from the very beginning, just as God is not over there waiting to judge you, but right here and now waiting to show you the reality of Truth found at the end of a totally surrendered life.
The greatest gift that Jesus gave the world was the example for living which delivers a person face-to-face with their creator here and now, and through this book I do my best to take Jesus’s message, my experiential life, and the wisdom of other enlightened beings, all to provide an example of how to reach God experientially, and also to provide hope for all reading this, that if what I once was can be what is present now, so too can your life be forever changed by knowing that God is, and not just hoping there’s more to life than what meets the eye.
I mention the information about Jesus not to persuade someone to choose a particular religion, but as a means of saying, when you find God for yourself, you’ll know who Jesus was and is, and it won’t have anything to do with the religion created by man in his name. To find God innately in your life you can’t rely on religion to take you there, you have to go past religion and chase after the truth that religion is born out of. Religion is a paradigm of truth. Depending on your religion it may do a better or worse job of pointing towards higher truths, but just like this book, religion won’t bring you in constant contact with God, but at best can be something which helps the practitioner move closer to Truth during this lifetime. By practicing a religion or completing this book you’re not guaranteed a knowingness of God, for that depends on your karma this time around and other factors with regards to your devotion to finding Truth, but without aids like this book and religion, it’s extremely hard to ever know what choices to make next which will lead you into a situation where God stands pronounced on the other end.
This book is a pathway designed to jumpstart your spiritual life and create a working intent leading towards knowing God and not just reading about divinity. If you work these steps integrously, from start to finish, you will have a spiritual experience and awakening which will propel you towards higher and higher truths. The secret of this book and all 12-step groups is that the program found here and elsewhere is designed to have you walking in the footsteps of love, so that you stop just thinking about what you should do and become what you have the potential to be.
My story was not one where I found God through a religion, even though I not only grew up very religious but chose religion as my major in college. Once God was realized internally as all there is, the variable truths within the religion I grew up with re-presented themselves with glaring new degrees of truth and recognizable realities of fact with regards to the Christ and his reasons for coming into existence. But the religion was not the pathway for me to find truth and a real experience with the divine as that which is all there is. Have no fear if you live without the practice of formal religion, for you don’t need it to find God, and in many cases, it serves as a block to finding Truth. Just know that at the end of the road, if enlightenment is your chosen path in this lifetime, God witnessed as Love will be what you find waiting for you as the ultimate truth of life.
Just before the final doorway presented itself to what the world sees as Mason, the truth of “I, in greater or lesser degrees of intensity” arose within consciousness, and in your pursuit for finding God for yourself keep in mind one thing, God is only found through love, and being love is only possible through surrender, forgiveness and gratitude. You will not find God within grudges, resentments, wantingness, cravingness, desiring, or any other manifestation of the ego or through attachments to the world. God is not experienceable through the lesser localities of life, for to find God you have to be willing to walk the straight and narrow, make choices which are always based in love, forgive the world and everyone in it, and in the process surrender over all attachments and aversions to life. God isn’t a prize you win by beating someone or something. Experiencing God as your reality is a race you have to surrender over winning in order to reach the finish line. God is not found in a “sackcloth and ashes” existence, but in a surrendered one.
We are much more than meets the eye, much more than the ego/mind has any idea about, and yet when we find out the truth about life from the vantage point of enlightenment, one main truth that presents itself is that there’s no longer a person who becomes enlightened, but a reality that presents itself without attachment to any belief whatsoever, and that shows you for the first time that what you are is not what you thought yourself to be, with all that’s left being a persona within the world but not someone individually operating separately any longer.
There is nothing in this world greater or more valuable than knowing that you are in fact God, and I stress knowing this and not just understanding what’s written here. Every “ah-ha” moment in your life are glimpses of higher truths which serve to recontextualize your journey towards the highest truths, but when you know innately that the kingdom of God is within you, you have found the prize that all the money in the world cannot hope to buy. This book is a pathway to God, this book is a roadmap for living a spiritual life, and this book is nothing more than something you can use to help you on your journey towards Self-discovery.
If you have made it this far in the text, then you know what comes next is a worthwhile aspect of each step and chapter:
TRUTHS
(The Maha-Parinibbana Sutra) Those who are wise take care of those who are virtuous and faithful.
(The Upanishads) The wise person keeps silent and controls his mind. That which he knows, he keeps to himself.
(The Tao Te Ching) One who knows should remain silent.
(The Gospel of Thomas) Be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.
CONTEMPLATING ON TRUTH
A particular truth about wisdom is that the wise, through experience, know what to do with next steps more than the unwise know what to do with their first step. The wise have lived many lifetimes up until this point, where wisdom was not gained through guessing what’s right and wrong about a choice or an action step, for they have become wise by making decisions over millennia that create a context for now choosing that which sustains and promulgates life, truth. If one knows their self to be a person seeking wisdom apart from promoting such, they are already on the path to further wisdom, but the person who thinks they are the only path to wisdom will find themselves without the knowledge that the steps they take are less than prosperous. In my experience, as wisdom grows so does the knowledge that one’s actions at best serve others and the world around them, and although I’d like to say I was born able to help my fellow man and the world around me from day one, the truth is, regardless of why someone incarnates into physicality this time around, and no matter the level of consciousness they come into this life with, helping others who are virtuous and faithful is not a lesson learned until you yourself are virtuous and faithful and have been aided in that pursuit.
In my life, as an example, through a particular work situation this applied greatly, as the employer who paid for my services was not wise as for how to support virtue and faithfulness, and instead chose to stagnate potential through fear of overshadowing their own efforts within the field we occupied, with the outcome being less than thriving for the company. Virtue and faith in another, and guarding such things, does not mean that a person has to agree with the faith or the virtue of that person, nor fully understand their position towards life, but what it means is that when wisdom is present in an individual, they recognize faith and virtue in another are godly characteristics worth celebrating and protecting from the world, not characteristics of humanness worth envying or shining a false light on.
When we take care of those who are wise and faithful, we are taking care of our own virtue and faith. When we feed a virtuous person who needs a meal, we’re feeding our spirit and that of humanity’s as well. When we look after the needs of the faithful, we’re not taking away from the world but giving the best of the world to the rest of the world in more abundance. If you hope to become wise in your choices, first find others who are virtuous and faithful and help them find more truth in their own life. Help them find more peace in their life. Help them find more joy in their efforts. Help them have an easier time with worldly endeavors. Faith and virtue are treasures worth taking care of, treasures worth leaning into, and characteristics worth choosing if one desires wisdom.
Throughout the journey of this lifetime, there were many instances where I chose to share with another or with the world as a whole the insights I was having and the truth that was becoming clear on a moment-to-moment basis. I would share these insights for the betterment of mankind and for the betterment of my soul, but that story of sharing to help others was only something I told myself so I would have an opportunity to humble-brag about how life was operating for me at the time. There is the story of old that says not to throw your pearls unto swine, but this is not what this truth is alluding to. No, in this quote, the truth is saying what we are is what we are at the time, and what we are at the time is enough.
Not everyone is called to be a teacher or to have the authority of such, because not everyone is here this time around to take on the responsibility of such a duty. We are not to share our mind in the many ways the world now shares it because what most have to say isn’t worth a teaching moment, because most, if not almost all of mankind, is unaware that what comes from the mind isn’t worth sharing to begin with. In the world of anonymous meetings, they ask that you do not let the outside world know you are a part of the group, and not because what is happening within their meetings isn’t helping people. But what happens when someone within the group has a relapse after sharing with the world the mysteries of the rooms which have helped them grow over time? If a relapse happens it’s because relapses happen, but if someone proselytizes about anonymous programs far and wide and relapses after sharing with the world the miracle of the 12 steps, then the world judges the 12 steps and anonymous meetings as a whole.
The reason why the wise person chooses to keep to him/herself that which he/she knows, is not because what he/she knows won’t help the world, but through knowingness and the ushering in of higher degrees of knowingness, the wise person realizes that the best way to help the world is not to blabber about within it, but to continue on the path towards enlightenment so that he/she can be like the rising tide which helps all ships to float higher.
The best way to change the world is to change what you are, unless what you are is in a place of authority through righteous teaching, and even then, you’re not sharing with the world your truth, you’re sharing with the world the truth that comes through you at the particular time when sharing is what’s called for, and even then, the pursuit of higher truths is never ending. Our thoughts mean nothing. Our minds are not worth sharing as gospel. Whatever comes from the mind is limited to a paradigm of understanding that is best served over a lunch for one, not via a platform that serves the appetites of many.
Knowing is the gift. Knowing is the best place to find one’s Self. Knowing is one of the reasons why this life exists. Knowing is the way to more truth. Knowing is how we grow closer to Love. Knowing creates more knowingness. Knowingness is action through in-action. What is knowing? What is knowingness? Why should one remain silent who knows?
For centuries, wisdom like what is shared in this book has been lost on many because the level of truth that abides in the quotes above is often times and almost all the time, not relevant to understanding what the truth within even means, and mostly because the level of truth contained within the quote is unknowable to almost everyone on earth who reads the quote. To know means to have an inner connection to the divine that’s realized. Knowingness is a quality of consciousness that operates outside of the mind but within the knowable awareness of the witnesser and observer. The reason one should remain silent who knows, is because to even speak about God as being the ultimate reality of Self, is already set up to fall on deaf ears and leave inquiring souls wanting more from those who speak truth through wisdom.
Once someone who knows decides to speak about what’s known, what was once known becomes part of the known experientially out in the ether where neither knowingness nor witnessing reside, and no longer does it remain unchanged through inner awareness within the host where it generated. Meaning, to know something out loud is to share partial truths about the absolute. If someone remains silent in their knowingness, they remain fixed on the angle within which shows them the way to God as known and not just understood. When someone speaks publicly about the way to God or the nature of God, or the truth of God being the “I,” the audience is already left wanting more than they came for, because the knowingness of the teacher, regardless of the level of knowingness by the teacher, only provides context and a level of truth to be present, and it’s not the words which provide such but the presence of such that provides much. Spoken knowingness leaves more wantingness than it creates completion. To know is the gift. Knowingness for the singular flows forth from beyond as the gift of pursuing what’s unknown to many. The teacher has the responsibility to share what’s unknown to many, not because there is a different truth present than those who remain silent, but because it’s part of their karmic purpose for existing as a locality of consciousness this time around. They’re here to leave the serenity of the quiet spaces of knowing and enter into the noise of the content machine so others can find quiet knowingness as well.
Sometimes in life, one has to be aware of what is happening around them as much as what is happening within them. The world as most see it is actually not what they see, but a projection of what the ego presents as a viable way of perceiving the world and all of its goings on. You see, depending on one’s current level of consciousness, the experiencer, witnesser or observer sees something different from their locality of consciousness. Throughout the full range of consciousness knowable and realizable on this planet while attached to this body, we only see out in the world what we perceive exists, not what in fact is there. What we see out in the world is a reflection of what we see when we look inside the perceptions, but often, very few take the time to realize this truth, and thus, we have a world full of people who look outside of themselves for something to fix as opposed to within their being for something to realize.
I spent years looking out at the world with the belief that for importance, self-importance, I had to fix something because it appeared broken. Whether I saw an injustice or perceived a slight against a person or group of people, I was searching for ways to save the planet as opposed to ways to know thyself. Gandhi’s famous quote, “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” is a prime example of the truth relayed here in this thought through another’s wording. “The world you see doesn’t exist” is another famous quote by Ramana Maharshi, a 20th century sage, which sums up this thought nicely. All the time someone spends looking out at the world as broken or in need of help, is all of the time that the same person could be looking within to provide grace and help for their self.
At a certain point of consciousness, one no longer looks out at the world with anger or a desire to change anything, but they see the world as perfect for the process of undoing karma and making good on the need to grow closer to Truth. The world is perfect for the needs of man’s evolution towards the realization of what they truly are, and regardless of a leader in power, the way the wind is blowing, the heat of the planet, or the confines one finds themselves in materially, the world is the exact perfect place for this incarnation of what the world would see as you.
Jesus is quoted as saying, “The kingdom of God is within,” and what we as humans often times fail to realize is that Jesus is correct. As we surrender over our wants and desires, attachments and aversions, likes and dislikes, and as we do this continually, the kingdom of God is realized as being within you more and more.
STEP TWELVE
-
Having transcended fear and gained the knowledge needed to surrender over all attachments to the ego in all of its forms, I will be the change I wish to see in the world and likewise am willing to sponsor another in going through these steps whenever the opportunity arises.
STEP TWELVE PRAYER
-
My Creator, perfect is your nature. For everything great and small are displays of your wisdom, your love, and your power. May your will be my own, now and forever more. Thank you for the many blessings of life, the blessing of choice, and for the food provided to me this day. Please forgive me of my sins and provide me the grace to forgive those who’ve sinned against me. Lead me to recognize you in all I see, keep me focused on you above all else, and help me to love my fellow man without positionality. I surrender all that I am, all I believe myself to be, and all the world says I should be. I love you more and more each day – thank you for loving me more than that.