SELF STUDY

Weekly Focus: Keep It Simple Soul

KISS – Keep It Simple Soul, is a Self-Study program consisting of a series of weekly studies that are designed to support your spiritual growth and development. The selected excerpts, from Jim and Brian’s talks on Meditation and the Path of Sound and Light, will help keep your focus on your spiritual journey throughout the day.

Each week, read a selection, contemplate on its meaning, and begin to apply it in your life, both inwardly and outwardly. There are no posted dates for the weeks so whenever you start, begin with Week 1 and progress from there.

Click on the plus below to see the full selection.

Week 1

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 1

We are One. We are God’s Loving and that Loving is one eternal movement. It isn’t little components made up of different actions; it is one eternal movement of the Divine flow of Loving, and that’s who we are. It is for us to wake up, once again, and know that. Well, the world isn’t that. The world is the opposite of that, if you will. In this creation there is no Loving. There is love, which is a whole other story, but there is no Loving other than the loving that we bring to this creation. We, as souls, are the Divine Movement of Loving, and the Loving we are longing for so much to have in our life is right inside of you, and it’s right inside of each one of us. We are longing for that which we have, but we are looking in the wrong direction. Just as we are looking out of the Heart of God, not looking to the truth of who we are in the Heart of God or looking at the truth of God itself; we are looking away from, looking at the reflection of the light that is coming from God, and believing the reflection rather than the truth. So, we are chasing after the reflection of love, but are not realizing that we are the Loving that is being reflected out here. So, the key is – stop looking for loving in the world to fill you up; and go inside, and just let go of the world for the moment. Go inside and wake up to the truth of who you are as Soul.

Jim Gordon
Go Into Spirit To Awaken: 02/09/14

Week 2

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 2

Patience will lead you to Loving, and Loving will take you into patience. If you can begin to pay attention and follow that, you’ll see just how true this statement is.

If you want to be God-like then pay attention to that which is inside of you, these aspects of joy, enthusiasm, grace and gratitude, and patience. All these things are part of the aspects of the soul that are the aspects of God. It’s one in the same. They all will lead you back to Loving. If you can go to Loving first and find Loving first inside of you, you will find that out of Loving all these things will just automatically flow. It’s just up to you as to how you do that. It’s a very simple process. Stop looking outside and comparing yourselves to others and just look inside and know yourself.

Jim Gordon
Know Thyself: 03/21/10

Week 3

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 3

…The other distraction, if you will, is sometimes feeling stuck in our meditation, or having dry spells. It’s important, even at these times, to give our full focus to our meditation. And it’s not about pushing the door open inside but to really begin to turn it all over to God. That truly is a big part of experiencing the Divine.

Just turn it over to God, give it all up. Say, “Lord here I am. I give it all to you. I give you all my junk. I give you all my love. I give you my soul, my body, my life, the good, the bad, and everything in between.” Give it all up to God whether you’re in meditation or anytime throughout the day, and you’re going to begin to experience God’s loving in so many more ways than ever expected or thought possible.

We all have our fantasies, imaginations, and those can serve us in some ways, but they also create expectations. So when we can give up the expectations and the fantasies, we can go inside and stand before the Lord, loving Him with all our body, mind and soul. Keep your eye on God, the spiritual eye. It’s also important to keep our eyes on God because it is the eyes that will distract us from our focus on God and we’ll look down into the mind, emotions, imagination, and into the world where distraction lies. So let go of the fantasies, let go of the expectations and the desires. Look inwards and upwards, and begin to give up everything to God.

Keep your eyes on the Lord twenty-four/seven.

Brain Yeakey
Opening talk at Yarrow, Experiencing the Divine Meditation Retreat: 05/2008

Week 4

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 4

Meditation is remembering ourselves back into the truth of who we are. Remembering our selves back into the truth. And in our meditation, we can begin to remember. We can begin to wake up and remember the truth of who we are as divine. And then, once we have that, once we know that divine loving inside of us, once we begin to share that with God and know God’s loving with us, and it’s all one in the same, right there at the seat of the soul, that divine spark, and then we have a good reference point, so when we feel separate in the future, all we have to do is come back to that reference point, and we know the truth. At some level, we know the truth, and it’s easier for us then to get back into it. So that’s why meditation is so important – because meditation is our selves remembering the truth of who we really are.

Jim Gordon
The Truth Of Who You Are: 12/02/07

Week 5

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 5

For some, meditating for two and a half hours will be a new adventure. However this time works for you just let it be okay. There’s nobody watching you, there’s not going to be a test, there’s no expectation here. So don’t make it a hardship, or a demonstration to yourself or to anybody else. This is an opportunity for you to begin to open and expand yourself to greater freedom and liberation spiritually as well as physically. This is about you learning to be more present with God inside, and to let those things of the world that keep distracting you, just drop away. If you find that after half an hour, an hour, your body is a little stiff, it’s okay to move a little bit. Allow yourself to readjust, get your body comfortable. If you’re cold, cover up; if you’re warm, go ahead and uncover. It’s about making yourself a space that allows you to stay focused inwardly. It isn’t about getting into a position and staying in the position for 2 ½ hours no matter what. It’s not about suffering or proving a point.

Meditation is about you creating an opportunity where you and God can come together in loving, in joy, in peace. So approach it in loving. Approach it in joy. And go inside and discover the peace that really resides there for you because it truly is so, so close. Many of us are so distracted by the world and by our bodies that we don’t allow ourselves to experience it. This is an opportunity for you to have just that – that peace, that joy, that loving inside.

Jim Gordon
Excerpt of Jim before Meditation at Yarrow, Experiencing the Divine Meditation Retreat: 04/2007

Week 6

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 6

God’s Grace can come in and be with you in that meditation because you’re inviting it in, and if you’re not … invite it in. Invite God’s Grace in. What is Grace? Grace is the movement of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is that first Word that God spoke, and then out of that Word came all things. It’s that Word, that Sacred Name, that is the Holy Spirit. And it is that first Word that spoke “you” into creation. And it is that first Word that is ever traveling with you on your journey of experience as a soul through creation. What you want to do is invite that Grace in, invite that Holy Spirit in, invite that Sacred Name into your meditation. And the easiest way to do that is just close your eyes and speak the Name.

Jim Gordon
2015 Christmas CD

Week 7

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 7

Fear is nothing more than the misdirection of focus. When we look outside ourselves, into the reflection, we have come to believe that the reflection is real, and that whatever comes to us from the outer is real. But, in truth, if you look at it slowly, you’ll see that what is coming to you is you – your power, your loving, you – and it’s coming toward you from outside.

Maybe an easy way to understand this would be to imagine a pool of water and you are at the center of the pool. As you stand there the water is calm, still. Then you move a leg just a little bit and a ripple begins to move from you throughout the whole pool. Finally, the ripple reaches the edge of the pool and the wall reflects the ripple/wave back toward you. You see the ripple approaching and think something outside of you is coming at you or attacking you, and so you go into a defense mode, readying yourself for what is to come. You ready yourself to fight off the attack or defend yourself from outside forces.

The thing is, you forgot that it was you who made a ripple in the pool some time ago, and do not realize that the wave that’s coming at you is your creation. You are the creator of that which you now have concern about. You worry about what its purpose is, and you begin to imagine that it is going to hurt you, kill you, fight you, or take something away from you. So you go into defense mode.

We fear the unknown. We fear what we do not understand. This ripple/wave is coming from the unknown outside us. We think, “Who or what created this, and why is it sending it towards me?” We create all kinds of different stories and beliefs about the ripple and about its intentions and purpose, while all the time we are the creator of the ripple. But because we’re not aware of this, we begin to fight it and blame it. Because we feel as though the ripple has power over us, we give our power away to it. We go into reaction, and that reaction is the FEAR we created through an action. When we are confronted with the reaction of our action – the ripple returning to its creator – we react, and we get caught up in the process of, “For every action, there is a reaction.” And yet, we created it all. We created both the action and the reaction.

Week 8

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 8

Be responsible for your thoughts and your feelings, your actions and reactions.

How many times have you heard us (Jim and Brian) say those words? You listen to them for a moment and then, you just let them go. You never give them much thought; you never really think about what that means.

These words are key factors to soul liberation. If you really want to anchor yourself into soul consciousness and move beyond the soul and into the realms of Spirit and into God itself, these are key words to that action. It’s up to you to move into a state of responsibility with those qualities of yourself.

Remember this is a pathway of you developing a relationship with God directly. In order to develop that kind of relationship, it means that you will have to take responsibility for yourself in this world as well as the worlds beyond.

So often we get caught up in the world. We get caught up in other people’s reactions. We get caught up in so many things outside of ourselves that we lose sight of what’s going on inside, and yet, that is what matters. Jesus taught his disciples that what’s important is what’s taking place inside of them. That’s what this pathway is about. We have to be responsible for what is going on inside. What are your thoughts? What are your feelings? How are you living them and what are they focused upon? If you’re focused on other people and putting judgments on them, doing separation with them, not taking responsibility for your own actions and reactions in that process, then you are separating yourself from yourself, and you are separating yourself from God. Others are as much a part of us as our own soul is. We are all one in Soul, and if we separate ourselves from one part, we have separated ourselves from the whole. We have to move into a consciousness of loving everyone, of accepting everyone, of forgiving everyone … beginning with ourselves.

Being responsible for your thoughts and feelings is a dynamic action that will bring healing and balance and wholeness inside yourself, and it will help you to understand what it is to truly be in relationship with the Divine.

Week 9

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 9

There will be a day when you will realize the source of Loving. And you will realize that that’s the Loving that you’ve ever been longing and searching. You will realize that you don’t have to go into the world to find it; you just have to go inside. If you’re missing it, you just go inside. If you want more of it, you just go inside. That doesn’t mean you have to sit down, close your eyes, and meditate each time. You can focus inwardly with your eyes open – as you’re driving down the street, or shopping in the grocery store, or talking on the phone. All you have to do is look up and say, “Hey, hi. I am who I am. I am Soul first. I am Divine first and only. That is who I am, and that is who I’m living.”

If you find yourself feeling separated from the Loving, in what ever way you experience that separation whether it’s through the inner child, the mind, or the high self, LOVE them all. Love whatever part is in separation. Even if you’re not feeling the connection with the I AM, the Soul, the Divine spark, say anyway, “I love you. I love you so much. And if I have forgotten you, if I have separated myself from you, if I’m not participating with you, please know, right now, I am in Loving with you. And I ask you to participate with me in Loving. Let’s do this together. Let’s do this in oneness.”

The more you do that, the more you will come into the harmony, and the flow, and the joy of life.

Week 10

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 10

I had a wonderful experience in meditation. It was very, very simple. It was as if we were starting the whole day again and all of you were coming to class. I witnessed each of you coming into the room, not in your physical forms but, in your spiritual essences. I saw the physical body, but in truth, all I really saw of you was the divine spark of God that resides in you, and that which is truly you. That’s all I saw. It was very interesting because there was this part of me that was bowing to each one of you as you came in, with such honor, with such respect, with such loving. Some of you acknowledged it and said, “Oh that’s nice,” or “Thank you,” but were not sure what I was doing, and yet some of you got what was taking place quite quickly.

We are truly reflections of each other – what I was seeing in you was my own divinity, and my own divinity is your divinity, and your divinity is my divinity; we are all One. I began bowing to everything inside of me, inside of you; it was such a great movement of Loving.

Loving truly is, if you will, bowing. It is ever an action of bowing to each other. That action of bowing and the recognition of the loving that resides in us, the divine in us, is really acceptance – accepting us just as we are, and allowing us the permission and the freedom to be who we are just now. No matter what the condition of the body, or the circumstances that we are caught up in the world, the Divine that we are is never changing. It is ever perfect. It is ever Loving. It is ever a grace action. If we can begin to accept that we are divine and perfect right now, just as we are, and begin to live into that, then we can begin to do a life of acceptance – accepting things just as they are, in their wondrous perfection, in their Loving, in their presence, and see that as an opportunity to move into and fulfill whatever it is for us to fulfill.

Week 11

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 11

Living Spirit is really living the Loving. Because we are in this physical body, there is the physical expression. Everything we do truly is an expression of the movement of Loving regardless, if it looks bad or good, negative or positive; it’s all a movement of Loving, of God and expression. This is who we are – we are God in expression in every realm, in every experience, in every level of consciousness. If you, within yourself, began to find the truth of God in every expression, then it is simply a matter of living your loving, because living the Loving is the expression, the Loving is the creation, it is the experience; this is how we awaken to the knowing of God.

The practice of meditation is a means by which we can begin to awaken to the direct knowing of what that Loving is. We’ve often heard Jim say, “Make God first and God only.” Take that to heart and begin to form your life around the meditation practice itself. The meditation practice is the most direct expression that we can do in this body to awaken to the Divine. Begin to form your life, physically, around the meditation practice as the core activity in which you participate. There’s twenty-four hours in a day so it’s a matter of scheduling, which is a physical and practical means by which we can begin to re-organize our lives.

But what is it we are organizing? We are organizing those activities, those expressions, which we choose to participate in because these activities are important for us to do. All the choices that we make serve our experience through the expression of who we are. We can begin to look at the practice of meditation as our priority, our primary activity that we chose to participate in … because it is a choice.

Never make meditation, or anything for that matter, a ‘have to’. Make it a choice. When you begin to choose things, you will support yourself to awaken to the freedom of detaching yourself from the realm of time and space. Even those things in your life that you feel obligated to participate in, whether it’s family, or job, or friends, or whatever activities it may be, you can even come from that place of choosing. Every time you come from that place of choice out of your own freedom, it will set you free spiritually.

Spirit is free. There is no ‘have to’; there is no obligation, or karmic debt spiritually. Spiritually, it is all a choice. It is a choosing into our expression and what we want to experience. So choose. Choose what you want to experience. Choose your expression. Choose where you place your energy, your time, your focus. If your focus, and your choosing, and your wanting is to awaken to Spirit, to awaken to the Divine, to know yourself as Soul, to know God, then choose that; and choose how much, how often, and in what ways within yourself. It really is your choice.

Week 12

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 12

If we are going to understand this divine flow inside of us, we have to learn to live more from the inner, in the inner, and not try to bring the outer to the inner and understand it through outer interpretation. We want to go into our meditation, into our inner experience and innocence, not knowing anything. “I know absolutely nothing, and all I do know is that I’m here in my meditation to just love God and let God love me, and to live in that movement of loving.” Out of that movement of loving, the awareness and understanding of how to move and live in the inner will come. But so many people go into meditation, taking all these thoughts, all these ideas, all these beliefs with them, and they try to make the inner work according to how they believe it’s suppose to work.

Today while we were in meditation, I began to watch some of that going on. And I saw Spirit come in and try to work within the framework of our “want,” of how we think it should be, of what we expect to happen. Spirit was diligently working, trying to move the simplicity of God into the complex belief system that we’ve got running and that we’re trying to put on God. We say to God, “Well, this is what it’s supposed to look like so make my spiritual life like this,” and God is saying, “Oh, it’s so much easier if you would just relax into it, and be in it, rather than trying to put something on it, rather than defining it the way you “want” to define it.”

So, the one thing I would like for you to begin to understand is that if this is what you are doing in meditation … let it go. Let it go, because that’s not going to bring you into a true level of meditation. It isn’t about the mind. The mind will try to make it happen the way it wants it to happen, and it feels good about itself. “I want it square, I want it three feet by three feet, I want this, I want that,” and we go into our meditation trying to make it all work into the mold that the mind has given us so that we can think we’ve had a good meditation at the mind level. But, it is when we go into meditation innocent, open, vulnerable, and just loving – loving ourselves, loving God and letting God love us – that we can move into a real divine flow, not the mind’s flow, but into a divine flow of inner experience.

Week 13

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 13

Where does God dwell?

God dwells at the spiritual eye center at the seat of the soul. There’s no place for us to go to find God. We don’t have to look to heaven and hope that somehow we’re getting God’s attention. We don’t have to try to do and be the right thing, hoping that God will look at us and say, “Okay, job well done.” All we have to do is realize that we are God. We are divine. We are God’s creation and God’s children. God created us out of the divine living loving essence that is God. All we have to do is begin that journey back to the seat of the soul. All we have to do is begin to wake up in meditation and know who we truly are – not the mind, not the emotions, not the imagination, or the body … but soul.

Week 14

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 14

The cave that the body of Jesus was placed in was a symbol of the cave at the spiritual eye center. In a sense, we have to enter into the cave of death, of separation from Spirit, at the spiritual center, and attach ourselves to the world through the mind. That’s death, a great sleep; the soul is now caught up in the downward and outward action.

Jesus then resurrected himself. He raised himself above all the physical elements and brought himself to life. By giving our attention and loving to Spirit, we raise ourselves up; we go into the cave, we draw all that is soul back to the spiritual eye center, above the mind, above the physical elements, and we resurrect ourselves as we wake up as soul. We have to wake up. We have to bring ourselves back to life – out of death and into life. That’s the resurrection. The next phase is the ascension, which is to look up and go back Home to God. We look up from the spiritual door of the cave, into the realms of Spirit, up to God, and we ascend.

As long as we are in the physical form, doing this practice of meditation, we are detaching from the world. Jesus’ actions were, “World leave me alone. Do not tempt me. I am ascending back to the Father.” He was stating the action of detachment; he was showing us how to detach ourselves from this world, instead of involving ourselves in it. “Be in the world, but not of it,” he said.

By doing a daily practice of meditation, we continue the ascension process, of waking up into God and ascending back Home from which we came. Then, when we take our last breathe, there will be nothing here to hold on to, to figure out, to look back for; we will just ascend and go back Home to God.

Week 15

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 15

The one thing that God has asked us all to do, as creative beings, is to keep our eye on God, to keep God in all things. Every day gives you an opportunity to do just that. As you move throughout your day keep reminding yourself – God first. Whenever you are walking, put God first in front of each step, and see what happens when you begin to hold a focus towards that. Think, “With every step, I am walking closer to God. Here I come. I’m coming God. I’m coming to you. You’re the only thing I have on my mind. You’re the only direction I’m heading.” Do everything in your life with this as you focus, the best you can. You’ll find that things will be just a little bit different, maybe not dramatically, but they will be different. By not putting the world first and by not making the things of this world first, you’ll begin to see what it is to live a more spiritual life, a really focused life. And then, you’ll begin to bring about a meditative life where you truly become a living prayer.

Week 16

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 16

The mind is a great controller. It loves to control. It loves to be in charge. But don’t let it do that to you. How can you keep it from doing that? It’s simple. You rise above it in meditation. You learn to live above the mind and wake up into the Soul, and let the Soul have dominion over the mind, rather than the mind blocking the Soul’s expression and trapping it in the world.

Let go and let God. Let God and let go. It’s one action, not two. Another way to put it is, let God. Just let God. Let God into yourself, let God into your daily life, let God into your problems, let God into everything. That’s the key here. That’s all that this process is about. It begins by you loving the Lord, you communicating with the Lord. You can’t hold back anything from God anyway. You can’t hide anything from God. God knows it all.

When I was growing up, I learned a lesson very quickly. I was a teenager and I had these little secrets I was hiding from the world, and in a sense, I was hiding from myself. I figured that I had this great facade and nobody knew what was going on, until one day my best friend described what I was going through inside. I said, “How do you know that?” He said, “Well, it’s really obvious. I can just see it in your face sometimes.” I said, “Well, don’t tell anybody,” and he answered, “I don’t have to tell anybody; if they look at you, they can see it.” And I realized, “Oh my God, that’s true,” because I’ve seen that in other people. We think we’re keeping these secrets, we’re hiding things so well and that nobody knows. But, why play the game? Why try to hide something? Why be ashamed? Why be afraid? Why be afraid to communicate with another person? Share your feelings. Share your thoughts. Share your frustrations. Share. Once you begin to communicate, a great and wonderful freedom comes forward, because the mind, then, has lost control, and your Soul will begin to have charge over everything.

Week 17

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 17

The Path of Sound and Light is a spiritual journey, and it’s really a journey that our souls have been on since the Soul was created. It isn’t something we’re just starting right now. It isn’t something that if you get initiated into this pathway that now you are doing the path of Sound and Light. The very moment your soul was created, you were walking this pathway, because you are the light of this pathway. God spoke, and with that spoken word, with that sound came forth the light; and that light, that very first light that came forward is the light of Soul. We are that light. We are God’s light. We are God’s creation. So, we’ve been on this journey of Sound and Light from the very beginning of our soul.

YOU are now in a new action within that journey, and that is to begin walking the pathway consciously, to live it consciously day in and day out, with every breath, with every moment of your life; it is to become conscious of you as soul living this pathway.

Week 18

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 18

A major part of effective communication is ownership. Own your process. Don’t say, “Well, it’s because what they did and what they’re doing in the world that’s causing all this distress in me.” In other words, don’t be saying, “It’s their fault.” No! That’s not effective. That’s just going to cause separation, resistance, frustration, and struggle. That’s what the world’s already doing. If you want to keep staying in the world, then go ahead and keep doing the ‘blame game’.

However, if you want to get free, then begin to take ownership of your own process with what’s going on. Deal with your own struggles inside. Deal with them in loving, and acceptance, and forgiveness, and then extend that out with others. But again, we have to do it with ourselves first. We have to OWN our own feelings.

What do we hear Jim say all the time? Take responsibility for your thoughts and your feelings, your actions and your reactions. We’re responsible for all our own thoughts, our own feelings, our own actions, and our own reactions, right? So, own up to it. These are your thoughts and feelings, your actions and reactions, not other people’s thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions. Sure, other people can trigger things in you, but they’re still your own. Whatever that is that’s triggered, that’s your own. Don’t expect others to change it. You can yell at them and say, “Change what you said so I don’t feel this way.” They might change what they say or do, and then maybe that stuff doesn’t get stirred up, but it’s still in there. If you haven’t taken ownership or responsibility for it by letting go of your charge of negative energy on it, then it’s still inside of you.

So own it. Owning it is how you begin to become responsible. You that owns it is the soul, and the soul is Loving. So, when you own your creation, it goes back to the source from which it’s come. Do you know what happens when creation comes back to the source? It dissolves and merges into the oneness, and it’s gone, it’s fulfilled, it’s complete. Karma is done. Haven’t we heard the phrases, ‘We reap what we sow’, ‘cause and effect’, ‘that which we put out comes back to us’, ‘what goes around comes around’. What exactly does all that mean? It means that what we’ve put out through our actions as the creator has caused some type of effect. We, the creator, will now get to learn from what we’ve created – through the karmas, through participation, through loving. Eventually, all that we’ve created that has gone out will have to come back to its source, its creator, which is us, before it can dissolve and merge back into the oneness, before it can be fulfilled.

Week 19

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 19

It can take four lifetimes for us to learn just one lesson. That’s if we’re lucky, if we’re paying attention, it just takes four lifetimes. Learn your lessons now. Complete them now. Participate in your life. Talk within yourself. Talk with God. Talk with those around you. Share, be open, be friendly, be kind, and also, take care. If we put up walls with others, we have just put up a wall between us and God. Don’t have anything come between you and the Lord in the world, in yourself, or in Spirit. You put up just one wall and now you have separation. The mind may tell you, “Oh yeah, you’re really spiritual – you’re meditating everyday, you’re seeing the light, you’re having experiences.” But, if one wall stands between you and the Lord, you are still in separation and you are not being fulfilled in the way that you might think. Tear all the walls down, wherever they might reside in you, around you, in whatever way you can. And love God. If you do that, if you love God every moment of every day, chant the Name, and invite the loving into each moment, you will find that all else will fall into place.

Week 20

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 20

In your daily life, in your meditations for sure, always look up. Always look up to that divine spark that resides within. When your inner child, your mind, your high self start to stir things inside of you, when they start calling you to look down and get caught up in their conversations, in their reactions, in their wants and needs, it’s for you to say, “No. You join me now in looking up into the divine self that I am, for that’s truly who I am. I’m not you and I’m not going to live you first. I am of God. I am a divine spark of God. I am an expression and an experience of God in this creation, and I’m going to live God first and God only.”

If you do that more and more in your meditation and then take that practice out into your daily life, your life will change. Your attitudes will be very different. Your approach to life will be amazingly different; you will begin to truly understand the simplicity of living in Spirit and see just how simple life can be in this creation.

The challenge is this: the mind doesn’t understand simplicity. The mind doesn’t like simplicity. It likes things complex. It likes things difficult and hard. It likes challenge. And so the mind will ever invite us back into those things that are of the mind, ever seeing things as a challenge, as difficult and as obstacles, and whatever else it might appear to be for us. When that comes up just remember to say, “You know mind, I’m not doing you that way anymore. I’m not doing you first. It’s God first and God only, soul first and soul only.”

Week 21

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 21

So on this pathway of meditation one of the keys to it all is to keep it as simple as you can, That’s one thing we continually try to do is keep bringing it back to the simplicity of loving, of God, of just waking up and knowing yourself as soul. It’s easy to make it complicated, it’s easy to keep adding things to it: your wants, your desires, your needs, your judgments, your fears, your anger and so much more that you keep bringing into the mediation – trying to look at it, trying to figure it out, trying to understand it, trying to whatever, and that’s not what this meditation is about. This meditation truly is about you developing a relationship between you and God directly – no intermediary – just you and God directly. But it’s a different kind of relationship than what we often would maybe expect. God is loving. God is simple and to know to God in the truest sense, in the fullest sense, you have to let yourself come to that place of simplicity inside yourself. You have to approach loving, you have to approach God, and you have to approach your meditation, in very simple ways. The way to do it is to go in and just say inside yourself that at this time this is my time to be in loving with God, to allow myself to truly share my loving with God and to receive God’s loving. And anything and everything that keeps trying to come in to that action and interrupt it, take over it, demand of it – just dismiss it for a while.

Jim Gord­on
Hawaii Open Meeting : 07/11/15

Week 22

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 22

The Path of Sound and Light is a very simple path. It is an action of loving God in all that we do – in our meditation and in our daily life. It is also a very simple path inside in our meditation. A lot of times, people have been trained to look for the psychic, for the phenomenon, for the wow in their meditation. You are probably not going to have a lot of phenomena or psychic things happening or “wow” things happening in your meditation in that way because this is truly the path of awakening. And awakening is a gradual, internal and very simple process of a relationship between you and God, developing and opening and manifesting. And the one who assists you in that awakening process is the Holy Spirit, is the audible life stream. It is that voice, it is that sound, it is that loving action that is the Holy Spirit that God sends forth to all of us that is the one to begin our awakening. It calls our name in that audible life stream. It calls us forward, it brings us up into loving, it brings us into forgiveness, and it moves us in actions of acceptance, and through that we begin to awaken into the divine knowing of who we truly are as soul, as divine, as a child of God.

So, it’s important to really remember that and to really pay attention, to not look to meditation as time for phenomena – look to meditation as a time to be with the Holy Spirit, to be in that audible life stream, to be in that action of sharing your loving with God and allowing God to have that opportunity to be in loving with you, and to be receptive, to be open, to allow God in.

Jim Gordon
Living Each Day from Soul

Week 23

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 23

If you really pay attention, you’ll see in that movement, in a deeper way, a deeper understanding of what we as soul have journeyed through to open that door, to have that action of Grace move in us and through us. Grace is completion. Grace is the freedom of Loving. We often associate gratitude with that movement of Grace. Pay attention in your own life as these things unfold for you. Follow that movement, let the Grace carry you from one experience to the next, because when you can bring that action of Grace and attitude into the next experience, into the next challenge, that next challenge is that much easier. That’s where our burdens become light. That’s where we as soul become free and can walk through this world in a greater freedom, in a knowing throughout our experiences. If you want life to become less challenging, then truly pay attention and learn from all of your experiences because every time you do, I will guarantee you’re next challenge will become that much lighter because you are doing the inner work, you are working the inner journey – that is the journey of awakening.

Awakening is the inner knowing that takes place through the learning of our lessons, to come into the greater knowing of the divine, the greater divine that is within all things. We will come to know the divine in that movement and expression because that’s who we are, even through us experiencing it through the mind, the emotions, the imagination and the body. Pay attention to that movement inside. Discover. Come to know. Listen to yourself. Listen to your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own words. Listen to the actions you take in your daily life, because in that, it will reveal to you that which you are coming into of the greater understanding.

Brian Yeakey
Discipleship: 11/05/06

Week 24

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 24

When we come out of our meditation, we’re sitting in alignment, and we get up and start to walk away from our meditation, for a moment we are still in the alignment, for a moment we are still at the seat of the soul, and for a moment we feel fulfilled, and whole, and loved, and complete. And then our focus starts to go back down into the old habit patterns of this creation, and we begin to focus right back where we used to focus before. If it was the emotional nature that ran us, we go there. If it’s the mind that’s running us, we go there. The key is that when you get up from meditation, you stay focused inward and upward to the seat of the soul. Eyes open – eyes open inward and upward and focused. Eyes closed – focused inward and upward to the seat of the soul, so that the soul begins to have dominion over this creation that is your physical experience so that you as soul begin to have experience in the physical rather than physical looking for spiritual experience.

That’s a wonderful thing – to live in the soul and to have the soul be in dominion over this physical kingdom so that you the soul are now in charge. And now the mind, the emotions, the imagination, the physical body all look up and say, “And what would you like us to do today? What can we fulfill with you? What have we not done yet that you would like done?” And they begin to work with you, and all of a sudden, you have more energy, you have more clarity, you have more opportunity to fulfill yourself at this level. And you also don’t have that egoic push to fulfill, to have to prove yourself, to have to succeed in the world, and you do not have the sensual nature driving you on all the levels of this creation, and that’s important to remember. Pay attention to who is running you. Who’s in charge of you? Not just in the moments in your meditation, whether it be an hour or two hours or whatever, but in your daily life. Eyes open going through the day, who’s in charge? When you go to lunch, who’s in charge? Who sits there and reads the menu and decides what you’re going to eat? Who’s making the choices there? It’s a very interesting process to pay attention and see what’s going on.

Jim Gordon

Week 25

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 25

If you want to use right and wrong, then everything that you do in fear is wrong and everything you do in Spirit is right.

Brian Yeakey

Week 26

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 26

It’s always important to be present. Live in the NOW. Be present here and now so that you are aware of what’s going on now. Where are you coming from now?

“Yes, I know how it has been in the past. Yes, I know these spiritual experiences I’ve had in the past. Yes, I know how there have been these wonderful actions of Grace, and how that’s even moved into my physical journey and has created such wonderful changes in my life, but that was then. I am grateful for all that has taken place in my life in that action of Grace in me and through me, but what about now? What about now? That was the past. What about here and now? What is present now?“

Brian Yeakey
Change Through Action

Week 27

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 27

I don’t know if you have ever opened an oyster and begun to look for the pearl within the oyster. You don’t find the pearl right away. You might not even see a pearl in there unless you feel around in the meat of the oyster and find out if there is truly a pearl there. If you didn’t know how to find that pearl, you would open it up and throw it away thinking, “Nope there’s no pearl there.” You may throw dozen of pearls away not knowing how to find them. And that’s the key to this inner journey, too. Knowing where the pearl resides is one thing, but it is the knowing of what to do to reveal that pearl, to open up the nature of this creation so that the pearl is truly revealed; and just as you would have to dig around the oyster to find the pearl, we have to move through all the different realms of this physical creation that is the shell, we have to move through the physical, the emotional, all of it in order to find the pearl that resides within this body, within this shell.

And so that is the quest, and it is a very simple quest, but it’s also a very challenging one. Opening an oyster is rather challenging. You can’t just pull it open. It really is a challenge to pry that shell open so that you can see the inside. And that’s our consciousness. Our consciousness at this level is like a great shell, and it is strong. The muscle that is holding it shut, holding it tight, is very strong. If we go in to fight to open it up, to pry it open, we’re in for a great struggle. But, if we will go in and be patient, the oyster opens automatically. When it feels safe, when it feels secure, it will open in order to take in nourishment; it will open automatically and you do not have to do a thing but wait, be patient. And that’s how it is with this physical consciousness in this physical form. It’s better to sit in meditation and be patient, and allow what is natural to take place, which is a gradual opening.

Jim Gordon
Be Still And Know God

Week 28

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 28

Now, one thing to remember here – the love that I’m talking about isn’t the love of the world. The love of the world is a romantic picture, a romantic energy, and it has a lot of different feelings and qualities to it, and we ever trying to attach ourselves, and hook ourselves, and get into us that love energy of this level of creation, and it does have a dynamic quality to it. But the loving that is of Spirit, the loving action that is the Holy Spirit, and that loving you are, that living, loving essence of the Lord that you are, doesn’t have all of that. It isn’t of the physical creation and it doesn’t manifest itself in that physical way. The loving in Spirit is very subtle, it’s very quiet, it’s very gentle, it’s very peaceful, it’s very still, and at the same time, it is unbelievably dynamic and creative and powerful and filled with authority. But it doesn’t have the emotional longing and need, and want, and loneliness, and anger, and frustration that goes with the love of this creation.

So, when you’re in meditation and you are loving the Lord, don’t do it from that emotional place, and don’t expect to feel those emotions of love in that action of spiritual loving of the Lord. And when the Lord is loving you, don’t sit there and think, “But I don’t feel it Lord. I’m not feeling it down in the center of my heart. I want to feel it in my gut. I want to feel it Lord.” Don’t expect to feel it in that way. It’s a subtle, spiritual essence rather than a physical hard energy.

However, it does have a movement, it does have a quality, and as you begin to wake up in your own soul, and as you begin to understand the true essence of experience as soul, you then begin to realize the true Loving, the beauty of that Loving, the filling of that Loving, the movement of that Loving in a way that you can never ever imagine at this level. It’s more powerful and dynamic. It’s more expressive and fulfilling than anything in this world called love. So, don’t try to define it through the eyes of this world, through the definition of love that this world has given us, because it’s not that – thank God. It’s something so much more.

Jim Gordon

Week 29

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 29

Begin to pay attention, begin to look at the choices you’re making in your life, and really, really, realize that everything that goes into your life is a choice. Those things you like in your life, keep choosing that. If there are things you don’t like in your life, begin to make different choices. And as you make different choices, allow yourself the transition, the time it takes to move from one choice to another, not only physically in the time line of this world, but also internally, mentally, emotionally. Spiritually, it happens just like that. But then as the movement of Loving, of Spirit, expresses down through the levels of consciousness, it takes time, because this is the realm of time and space. So be gentle with yourself. Give yourself the time. Be patient with yourself in the choices you make as you begin to make new choices. Be patient with yourself if you’ve already made new choices and it’s been maybe months, even years, that you wonder why you’re still having the ramifications, the results from those choices that you’ve been trying to choose away from. That’s another definition of karma that I’m giving you right now. Choose your expression. Love your expression. Accept the choices. Forgive the choices where you’ve judged, made wrong, that it’s bad, because truly you’ve never made a wrong or bad choice; you’ve simply chosen that which is soul that has come to experience in this world. There’s no need to judge it. Make the choice to begin to love all of your expression, all of it. And I mean that. Every single detail of your expression, choose to love it all. If you really want your spiritual freedom, if you really want to awaken, to know that greater fullness, then make those choices.

Brian Yeakey
Returning Back To Spirit

Week 30

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 30

It’s part of the human soul’s journey – everyone in the world will go through things, and as that happens, you realize that it’s not the end of the world, you’ve not made a mistake, you’ve never done anything wrong or bad or evil. You simply have bought into and attached yourself to a movement of energy in the world so that you as soul can have the experiences that come with that; so that you can come into greater understanding, clarity, fulfillment, and wisdom through your experience of that which is of the world; so that you as soul can come to know this level of creation we have come to call time and space. That’s how the soul learns to walk through the experience.

The neat thing is, that when we really begin to realize the blessing of the downturn, when we are following or leading after that which is of the world that we thought was Spirit – when we come to realize that, that realization turns to a blessing, because the blessing is that you have now learned what that is. Once you’ve learned what the lesson is, the karma is done. You’ve learned the lesson. You are now complete and free to continue the journey now in a greater way; as the soul walks through those experiences and learns what they are, you as soul, now in that greater understanding, gets to move higher in greater wisdom through that experience. That’s the path of liberation that we are teaching here. It is not a pathway of avoidance, of judgment, of right and wrong. It’s a pathway of gratitude, of loving, and of acceptance, that even in the hard lessons we can actually have gratitude for those lessons because we have awakened to the truth and the dynamic of that movement of experience in this world.

So, the next time you find yourself in one of those downturns, begin to look and learn from those experiences because, really, when you look and you really learn from your own experience, you’ll begin to find the gratitude with you awakening that you as soul will have because you as soul now knows that you have fulfilled an important part of your journey and has come to that greater fulfillment through your experience in this world. That gratitude, I know, only shows up when you’ve completed the lesson. So, look to your learning, look to your experience, and look to the gratitude. When you experience gratitude, ask why is that? What is it that took place inside that you’re now experiencing this movement of gratitude in you and through you? Because, isn’t it funny that sometimes, even spontaneously, we can experience gratitude moving in us and through us just like that?

Brian Yeakey
Discipleship: 11/05/06

Week 31

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 31

This action of meditation is simply an action of awakening to that Divine Living Loving Essence. That’s it! And in truth, all we have to do is give it our focus, give it our attention, to participate with it. It’s all about participation. Experience comes through participation. It does not come through talking, intellectualizing, visualizing, wishing, hoping, fantasizing – even trusting and faithing are a couple of words thrown around in religious and spiritual circles. It comes through participation.

It’s up to us to participate with the Divine in order to become aware of the Divine, to know the truth…and it’s up to us. Firstly, we are not going to even do it unless there is an inner desire and here is a big key – this inner desire is often known as the longing of the Soul for God. It is that longing and desire that the Soul has for really knowing, and once again, experiencing its Oneness, awakefulness, consciously. Without that we are not going to even be interested or drawn to any spiritual action let alone what we are doing here in ILM. What we are doing here in ILM is a very direct action of participation to come awake and to know the truth.

Brian Yeakey
Living Your Truth: 10/03/13

Week 32

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 32

We all have our issues, and what are those issues? Well, those issues simply are whatever they are, and the journey of the soul is that working through what we call issues. Those issues are lessons; they are opportunities in which we’ve come into this world to learn through our experience. If we can begin to look at things more truly as opportunities of learning through experience – not learning though figuring it out, or memorizing the information, take the test, get an A or B or a C or a D. “I passed!” – but just allowing ourselves to be present in every moment, in any issue, and allow ourselves to experience, because that’s really what it’s about – it’s allowing ourselves to be present in the experience. And as we allow ourselves to be present in whatever experience, good or bad, the most horrible things, the negative, that which we resist and push away – when we allow ourselves to just be, to relax, to be present, that’s how we allow ourselves, as the Divine, to come into the full awakening and understanding of our life’s journey. The journey really is to simply experience, and it’s through the experience that we allow ourselves to come to fulfillment; it is through the learning that we come to completion that we’ve come into this world to experience.

Brian Yeakey
Austin Class: Greater Clarity on the Threefold Path 10/07/07

Week 33

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 33

One thing I found was not to place judgment against all those things that have caused separation. I did that for a while. I placed judgment on them because I knew that those things caused separation, and I didn’t like that; and I placed judgment upon myself and those things that caused separation, but what I did was I gave those things power, I gave the element of separation greater power over me because I was judging it. So, what was I doing? I was focusing on the separation. But the moment I forgave that judgment, and the moment I forgave that which was the separation, I found that I was able to move my focus back towards the Lord, and hold my attention on God, and then I found something quite miraculous – that God’s Love transforms everything if we would just allow God’s Love to transform us, and all that is in us, and all that is around us.

Jim Gordon
Threefold Path

Week 34

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 34

Meditation is really the only thing we need to do, but as we do that, it opens us up so that the Loving of who we are can extend through all parts of ourselves; and to me, the LAF, the self-study and moving into service, is a way to extend that Loving into all parts of ourselves. Just through the action of meditation, it opens the doors for all that to take place, but you know, just like that phrase that Jim shares: “Take responsibility”. It’s in the ‘taking responsibility’ that we now extend that Loving that we are waking up through all the different parts of ourselves and out into God’s creation. And it’s only through that ‘taking action’ and movement that we fulfill ourselves, because the soul is on a journey of experience, so we’ve got to allow ourselves the experience beyond ourselves to connect or commune with the God in all things, which meditation opens the door to.

Brian Yeakey
Austin Class: Time To Wake Up 11/15/15

Week 35

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 35

Restoration – the action of restoring the soul back into its true Home, awake and aware, and living in its fullness once again in its truest nature and loving. Even in the Psalms, it says, “He restoreth my soul.” And truly it is God that restores the soul to go Home.

All of you who have received initiation have been drawn into initiation because God is restoring you, is restoring you back to your true nature, your true beingness, and assisting you in letting go of the illusion and the action of separation, so that once again, you can live in that Oneness, live in the Loving, live in the fulfillment rather than living all that is down here. This is not fulfillment, this is not Oneness, this is not Loving. This is the realms of separation, and in separation we are separate from all those things that we long for, and we’re never going to find them in this world. It’s only by going within and doing the meditation, doing the action of loving, accepting, and forgiving, and taking responsibility for our actions, our reactions, our thoughts and our feelings, that we can truly participate in this action of restoration. Ultimately, it is God that’s pulling us Home. Ultimately, it is God that is restoring the soul back into its true awake state within God itself, but we have to do our part even while we are here. Our part is to sit down, close our eyes, go into meditation, go inside, chant the Sacred Name and relax into the Loving … and let the Loving lift us up … and it will. It will lift us up above all these things that cause us the agony, and the separation, and the pain, and the sorrow, and the grief, and will bring us back to that place where none of that resides.

Jim Gordon
Austin Class: Grace and Redemption 11/08/15

Week 36

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 36

Whatever we’re running in here, inside of ourselves, well, this world is a reflection. It is a mirror of consciousness. That’s why you hear Jim and I refer to it as the Lake of Reflection. It reflects back to us that which we are actually running inside of ourselves.

The way it reflects to us is what we project onto the mirror. Listen to what I’m saying here. What is reflected to us is what we’re doing in ourselves that we project onto the mirror. Get that straight, because I know a lot of people who walk the spiritual pathways, or so-called pathways, and they’re always looking at other people and what they’re reflecting back to them. This isn’t about the other person. Don’t look at what other people are reflecting back to you, because they’re not! They’re projecting on you what their process is. They’re not reflecting back to you your own. They are projecting on you what their process is. And guess what you’re doing to them? You are projecting your process onto them. Is this a little clearer? I hope so, because this comes up a lot. When I hear people ask, “What are they projecting back to me?” They’re not! They’re projecting to you what their process is, and you are projecting onto them what your process is. It’s called, Don’t look to other people’s projections; look at your own projection, and learn from your reflection.

That’s where the challenge is – when we feel projected upon, we go into reaction and we push back, and then we project our stuff onto them; and then they feel our projection and they react and project their stuff back onto us. And we can never get through it because we’re always butting heads and saying, “Oh my God! What is wrong with them?” And then we say, “What is wrong with me?” Nothing’s wrong with anybody. You just screwed up in the way you’re looking at it. In other words, start looking at your own projections rather than the other person’s. That itself, will begin to give you clarity and understanding of what’s going on. You don’t get the clarity and understanding when you’re caught up in what somebody else is projecting, and in trying to figure it out, and you keep personalizing it.

Brian Yeakey
Austin Class: Awake To Your Divinity 07/05/15

Week 37

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 37

You are Divine. You are a child of God. You are a spark that is eternal in God right now, and I say it all the time, that one day you are going to wake up and know you never left the Heart of God. I can say that because I know that to be true for myself, and I know it is for you. I have seen a lot of you and a lot more than just you in the Heart of God, living there, dwelling there in the Oneness, because I am One with you and you are One with me; we are not separate. We are One. We are God’s Loving and that Loving is one eternal movement. It isn’t little components made up of different actions; it is one eternal movement of the Divine flow of Loving, and that’s who we are. It is for us to wake up, once again, and know that.

Jim Gordon
Austin Class: Go Into Spirit To Awaken 02/09/14

Week 38

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 38

When you’re in meditation, we ask that you do one thing and that is to look inward and upward and share your loving with God and receive God’s loving; and in doing that, using the Sacred Name to align yourself into that River of Loving, that Sound Current, that liberates the soul. The meditation that we do is not about this world, figuring things out in the world, asking of God of anything for us in the world. When you share your loving with God and God shares loving with you, all that you need to be aware of, to know, to experience, is right there in that movement of Loving. And then you can begin to watch that Loving manifest in your daily life as you live into it more and more and more. The wonderful thing I have found within my own self, and the easy way by which I stay connected into that living loving presence that I am in God, is to realize and pay attention to the fact that I am, I am in Spirit right now, I am in the Heart of God right now … and you are, too. The only difference between me and you is that I have come awake into that knowing and you are yet to wake up; and that’s what this meditation is about, just as Rumi said so long ago, “Wake up! Wake up! And don’t go back to sleep.”

Jim Gordon
Time To Wake Up: 11/15/15

Week 39

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 39

The things that you are in judgment, fear, anger, and frustration with within yourself has to do with this body, imagination, emotion, and mind, and they are not, and never will be perfect. So, you may as well just get over trying to make it be so, and accept it just as it is. Accept yourself just as you are. Accept yourself just as you are physically, imaginationally, emotionally, and mentally. You will then, one day, wake up and know the perfection of your own Soul and will be able to live that knowing into all those other aspects of yourself. And then all that stuff that the mind, imagination, and body does will just be okay. You’ll accept it, you’ll love it, you’ll forgive it. And you will give it up to God. It’s great to forgive, but it’s greater to forgive and give it up to God. Say, “In case I didn’t forgive it all, I just give it up to you now, God.”

Brian Yeakey
Communion-In-Action: 02/15/09

Week 40

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 40

You’ve often heard it said, “Thy will be done.” Well, it really is allowing God’s Will to be done, and it’s an amazing process to begin to be vulnerable to the movement of God’s Will in your daily life, and to experience God’s Will moving into every moment of every day and realize that, “Oh my God. I’ve been asking for this, I’ve been praying for this – Thy Will be done, Thy Will be done.” And then, all of a sudden, you realize that God’s Will isn’t the will that you were praying for. You were asking for certain things in God’s Will. You were saying, “I want this and this and this…and let it be Thy Will.” And then God’s Will comes in, and it’s a totally different picture laid before you; and you’re saying, “No, no, God. Didn’t you hear me? I said I want this and this and this,” and God says, “No, you asked for My Will. I heard all these other things. Now, it’s My Will that’s going to be done. You have asked for that, and it will be done.” It’s learning to bow to God’s Will, and realize that if we can, if we will, bow to God’s Will, we will have in our lives more, greater, than anything we could ever ever ask for, imagined, believed ourselves into. It’ll be different but it will be more, and it will be just exactly what we want, what we need, where we need to be for our greater unfoldment and for that inner awakening.

Jim Gordon
Threefold Path

Week 41

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 41

A lot of us, one time or another, are going to focus on our own life, our own personal journey; a lot of us are going to just focus on God, and try to sacrifice ourselves because we dislike ourselves so much that we don’t want anything to do with ourselves and we want it to be about God. Haven’t we done that? But, it’s about all of it. You cannot separate it. Haven’t we already tried to separate? And what happens every time we try to deny or separate something, whether it’s a part of ourselves or ourselves in life, or life? Doesn’t separation usually cause more pain, more confusion, more disturbance? Sometimes, we need to live in a bubble because there’s too much stimulation and we’re overwhelmed from all that’s going on around us. Or what about going to spiritual groups, our minds get all confused. “Oh, my God! What is this thing ‘illusion’? I don’t get it. How can you say this world is an illusion when my experience here is so real?”

That’s why you’ll always hear Jim and I say, “At some point, let go of all the words, let go of all the descriptions, let go of what you think about it, what you even feel about it, and just come back to the true essence of who you are.” This is a simple pathway and it always comes back to the essence of who you are, and when you really know that essence inside of you, you’ll then know the soul. The only way to really know is to have your own experience.

Brian Yeakey
The Answer Is God: 04/13/14

Week 42

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 42

If we are going to understand this divine flow inside of us, we have to learn to live more from the inner, in the inner, and not try to bring the outer to the inner and understand it through outer interpretation. We want to go into our meditation, into our inner experience and innocence, knowing ‘nothing’. “I know absolutely nothing, and all I do know is that I’m here in my meditation to just love God and let God love me, and to live in that movement of loving.” Out of that movement of loving, the awareness and understanding of how to move and live in the inner will come. But so many people go into meditation, taking all these thoughts, all these ideas, all these beliefs with them, and they try to make the inner work according to how they believe it’s suppose to work.

Jim Gordon
Active Meditation: 03/09/14

Week 43

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 43

What we want to do now is go back to that time period in your life and begin to work free a lot of those voices that that child inside of you has heard that doesn’t really work for you, and begin to just listen to the voice of the child inside instead, to begin to distinguish what your mom told that child, what your father told that child, what your kindergarten teacher told that child, what the Sunday School teachers taught that child, what the neighbors taught that child, what your friends taught that child – all the teachings of how to live life; and you want to get in there and look at, and not just say, “Get out of here,” but begin to look and see what works and doesn’t work for you now.

All of what was given to us really can work, but we have to choose that its going to work for us and not just let it keep running with all this other stuff because if you let it all run together then all you do is short-circuit everything, and you sit there feeling sorry for yourself, and feeling very alone, and sit there wanting, wanting, wanting, and even then, it’s not enough. It wants more. That little child inside, no matter how many toys you give it, no matter how many ice cream cones you give it, it’s not going to be enough, because that’s not what it’s really wanting, but the world may have taught it that that’s how you get what you want – you whine, you cry, you beg, and then when they give you something physical, apparently you got what you wanted because you got something, but really what you were wanting is love, and that child inside is always asking of you, “Do you love me? Do you really love me? Do you really love me because I’m really being nasty and mean right now and are you still really going to be there and love me?”

If you’re a parent, how many times has your child pushed you right to the cliff and then over? Well, that’s exactly is what your child does within you. It may never have gotten what it needs from you and so it’s always pushing you right ho the edge and then attempting to push you off the cliff just to see if it can get you to listen, but if there are all these other voices blocking you from hearing the child inside, then you’re not really ever going to listen to hear what the child has to say because you are always having to deal with all these other things going on.

So you have to take an inventory of all the voices, and take an inventory of all the statements, and begin to weed away all those things that just don’t work, all the those things that you just don’t agree with, all those things that you don’t want in your life anymore…and there may be a lot. You may be very surprised, but because they are running as such a deep, deep level, it’s like an underground river – you can never hear it, you can never see it, but you can drill down to it and find it – some of these things are running so deep that you’re going to have to drill down in there to find it.

Jim Gordon
Keys To Inner Communication: 12/04/07

Week 44

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 44

We’ve just been asleep because we’ve allowed the guards at the door of all the fear and shame and embarrassment and guilt. In closing the door, it’s dark and we’ve gone asleep. But now we’re beginning to turn the light on and wake up. And this is the process by which that is done. But going back to where I began to make this the most simple easy action is to return to the first service of meditation and open up and invite God’s grace in. Oh God can get past the guards. So in other words, God can come in. The challenge is you getting out. But once that door is open and you’ve moved into that accepting responsibility and loving and accepting and forgiving it all, well then you have free access and movement to now step through that door because now nothing stands between you and God. So that you the soul can begin to now step beyond your own inner kingdom of all your own thoughts and feelings and actions and reactions and now into the greater kingdom.

Brian Yeakey
Developing Our Relationship With God: 12/13/15

Week 45

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 45

So this journey, this pathway, this experience is about your soul with the Holy Spirit, or God, and not all this stuff in the world – not these words, not these physical experiences, but you the soul with God’s Loving. That’s the relationship here, and it is through that Sacred Name, the true Name inside, the Holy Spirit that we call the voice of God, the Sound and the Light – that’s the real relationship, that’s the experience we’re going for, that’s what we want to come to know inside, in Spirit. It doesn’t matter if you have a relationship physically with Jim and I or not. It doesn’t matter one bit. All that matters is that you receive that Sacred Name and meditate upon the Name, and that’s where the true inner relationship is to be developed. Be aware of that. Spend time in meditation because that’s you spending time with God and developing that relationship. We don’t want you to develop the relationship out here with the personality. We want you to take the time to develop the inner relationship in the formless beyond the personality.

Jim Gordon
Discipleship: 11/05/06

Week 46

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 46

For a long time now I have shared about the Spiritual Eye and the three components of the spiritual eye and a little bit about how it functions and where we want to hold our focus in meditation which is more in detail about this with you, and then take you to yet the next level, the next phase, which is really an opening into a greater awareness, a greater experience besides just that which you experience in the Spiritual Eye itself.

So, if you remember, I said the Spiritual Eye has three components. The first part is that which looks downward into this creation, and its gaze is really focused into the physical, the astral which is the creative imagination, and somewhat into the emotional nature. And when we are focused downward through that part of the Spiritual Eye, that’s the realms we are going to connect to, that’s the realms we are going to get caught up in, those are the realms that will hold our attention and attract us down in that downward gaze. So, if you’re in meditation and you are focusing on that inward and upward focus, but something keeps pulling you downward in your gaze, pay attention to that and let it be okay. Don’t struggle and try to make it go upward if it doesn’t really want to. If it’s going downward, then there may be a reason for it and that is, there is something in those realms, within your consciousness, that is to be worked free. And so if you are sitting in meditation and your intention is to be looking inward and upward and holding your attention to God, but your attention keeps getting pulled down into that lower portion of the Spiritual Eye gaze, then let that be alright and love that which you are holding your attention to. Just as you would love God, now love that which your attention goes to, whether it be in the physical or the creative imagination or the emotional. Love it, and love it as you would love God, because that is what is standing between you and God in that moment. And that’s why your gaze has shifted. Your attention is going to go to wherever your attention is standing between you and the Lord. If your intention is to get to the Lord, to have your focus totally on the Lord, to be in loving with the Lord and to allow God to love you, and so your gaze is going to go to whatever is standing between you and God in that moment. When that happens, don’t struggle against it, and don’t try to define it, don’t try to figure it out. “Well, what is this? Is this a past life? Is this life? Is this something that happened with my parents?” Don’t play the game of figuring it out because all you are going to do is that energy, whatever that is that is standing between you and the Lord. Look upon it and love it. Love it, accept it, forgive it if there is an energy or an element of forgiveness that keeps wanting to move within you and stir. And love it, whatever it is, just as you have been loving the Lord. Love it and that will dissolve whatever it is that is standing between you and God so that once again your gaze can go inward and upward, back up into that higher spiritual aspect of the Spiritual Eye Center, and allow you, once again, to hold your attention on God rather on those things in this creation or of your body or whatever that might be that would draw your attention away.

Jim Gordon
Becoming A Living Prayer: 02/28/06 (Part I)

(See Week 47 for Part II, and Week 48 for Part III)

Week 47

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 47

So, as you move your gaze up, again the second portion has to do more with a horizontal or a forward gaze and that goes into the psyche realms, that particular focus or awareness opens into a small portion of the astral or creative imagination, into the emotional nature, into the mental nature, and a little bit into the etheric, well, really quite a bit into the etheric. So when you are in your meditation, and again we are holding our attention inward and upward toward God, and all of a sudden, you find your gaze going more forward or horizontal rather than vertical and towards God, again let that be okay, and whatever that is that is present with you in that focus, in that gaze in your meditation, again enter into the Loving, love it just as you would love the Lord. Love it and that Loving will dissolve whatever stands there; and if it still stands even in the Loving, move into the action of forgiveness, move into the action of acceptance, and that will allow the Loving to begin to move into whatever that is that is between you and God, and will begin to bring it into the harmony of Loving or it will drop away, because it cannot stand in the Loving. Anything that is not of Loving will drop away from Loving, or it will be transformed by that Loving and brought back into harmony with Loving so that it becomes a living expression rather than something that stops against the Loving, or holds the Loving from expression.

Jim Gordon
Becoming A Living Prayer: 02/28/06 (Part II)

(See Week 48 for Part III, and Week 46 for Part I)

Week 48

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 48

So, as we look inward and upward in that upper portion of the gaze, the third portion, we really are looking more up into the Realms of Soul and up into the very beginnings of the Realms of Spirit. There’s also a little bit of an element in that gaze that has to do with the very top portion of the etheric or the unconscious part of our being. And so as we are holding our attention into that, we want to do all we can to stay present, to stay awake, to stay aware, because that little portion that is of the etheric nature and that gaze that we are holding, can cause us to go unconscious, go unaware if we tend to have our focus a little more down to a horizontal focus rather than truly inward and upward. The higher we can hold our attention, the more we will go above the unconscious realms and stay present and stay conscious and wake up to the truth of who we are as Soul. But if we allow our attention to be a little more diffused or a little more scattered or more downward in its gaze, even in that upward focus it can still be down, we might enter more into that unconscious and find ourselves continually in our meditations going unconscious, and wonder why. It’s because as you are holding your focus inward and upward, there is something in the realm of the unconscious, in the etheric level that is attracting your attention. There is something there that you have placed in the unconscious or have created in the unconscious that is yet standing between you and the Lord. And it’s for you to clear that.

Jim Gordon
Becoming A Living Prayer: 02/28/06 (Part III)

(See Week 46 for Part I, and Week 47 for Part II)

Week 49

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 49

The Soul wants to fulfill its journey here. It sent that divine spark down here to have experience in this physical creation and it is now calling it Home. It’s calling it home because you are complete here, it is fulfilled here, so now live the fulfillment. Stop going out and trying to redo it again. That rollercoaster ride you’ve ridden so many lifetimes in the past, so many times in this lifetime. Aren’t you a little bored with it now? It gets old after awhile. Up and down, up and down. Why not find that level place within, that consistent place within where you and God are one, where that joy and that peace and that loving in you can go into the creation and you can move in it with ease, with grace, with peace.

Jim Gordon
Time To Wake Up: 11/15/15

Week 50

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 50

Once we awaken beyond the realm of illusion, once we awaken into soul consciousness and the knowing of who we are as soul, then we begin a new journey, a journey into the Divine, into the greater truth, beyond Soul. That’s what we call soul transcendence and awakening to the realms of Spirit, awakening to the fullest of God directly. That journey begins after the journey of awakening to soul, after the journey of the realm of time and space, or the realm of reflection. We have been so focused into this realm of time and space that we have forgotten how so incredible, so vast, so blissful, and so wonderful, the real experience of the spiritual realms are. It is absolutely magnificent to experience and to know your soul’s oneness with God, with the Holy Spirit. This is the greater journey in Spirit and it’s the greatest journey of all.

Do not let this journey become about getting free of this world; let this journey be about returning, experiencing, about being in that oneness of Spirit, in the fullness. Make that the journey. Make that inside of you. Make that your intention, your actions, your experience. Make it your experience. When that is your focus, guess what you’re going to get? Exactly that. So focus on Spirit rather than focusing on getting rid of your karma. Your karma will just drop away as you focus on returning into that Ocean of Loving. Hold that as your goal. Hold that as the ultimate result and experience.

Brian Yeakey
Returning Back To Spirit: 11/19/06

Week 51

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 51

We hear that word “responsibility” and it so feels like a burden at times, but when we take action, the burden becomes light because in the doing, the soul becomes joyful because it knows that it’s fulfilling what it came in to do. That’s why we feel so good when we complete something, when we do the homework, when we pass the test. We know that even the bad grades are a greater opportunity to keep learning, that truly there’s no failures. It is simply opportunities of learning because we, as Soul, as that Divine Being of God came in to have these experiences to learn and grow. So, go for it with gusto.

Brian Yeakey
Fulfillment Through Loving: 03/25/2007

Week 52

Keep It Simple Soul – Week 52

We’re here, Brian and I, to share with you that inner pathway of liberation, liberating yourself from this place where you are a stranger. You are a stranger, and you’ve been a stranger for the eons of time that your soul has been in this creation experiencing here. But you know what? When you first come down here and begin experiencing and you get caught up in the world and all the pleasures and the fears and everything this world offers, you lose sight that you are a stranger in this world. You begin to believe that you are really a part of this world. And you really get involved in this world, and that’s what you had to do as a soul to have experience here and fulfill what you came to do. But when you’re done with all of that – that desire, that need, that want to be involved, begins to deteriorate – if you’ve noticed that, pay attention to that and let that be your guide to ever sit down more and more and just go within and wake up to the truth of who you are, and wake up to the Home that is yours in Spirit and in the Heart of God, for you are the Living Loving Essence of the Lord. That is who you’ve always been, that’s who you will always be, and your Home is in God, your Home is in the realms of Spirit, not here. So take the time everyday to sit down, to go within, to meditate, to wake up.

Jim Gordon
Time To Wake Up: 11/15/15

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