The Awakening:
You are invited
to take
13 STEPS ON THE ULTIMATE JOURNEY
by MICHAEL ROBINS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of contents.......................... 1
Dedication page.............................. III
Poem: A Mystery ........................... IV
The Awakening…….. 1
Essential Understandings...................................... 19
Great Promises and Quotations................... 22
Our Condition................. 26
The Solution................... 28
Step 1: Desire ........................ 30
Step 2: Create Space............. 35
Step 3: Breathe...................... 38
Step 4: Pray and Have Faith................. 41
Step 5: Be Still................... 46
Step 6: Appreciate and Be Grateful... 53
Step 7: Love.......................... 58
Step 8: Let the Awareness of Oneness Prevail.............. 66
Step 9: Forgive.................... 69
Step 10: Watch, Evaluate, and Choose..... 75
Step 11: Serve, Dream, and Envision....... 83
Step 12: Meditate.............. 93
Step 13: Identify, Dedicate, and Magnify. 104
Congratulations..................... 115
Writer’s Statement of Appreciation..................... 116
Endnotes............................... 117
Bibliography........................... 123
Enlightenment Project……… 126
Order Page............................ 127
This book is dedicated to my lovely wife, Andrea, Baby Lily, and to my inner helpers, without whom this book would never have been written and published.
“You must love, love, love above all else.”
In My Own Words,
Padre Pio
A mystery
awaits you,
who would enter herein
to begin again
what you have begun
along time ago
and perhaps forgotten,
only to remember again.
So, now, let us begin.
The Awakening
To begin, I’m going to share a letter I wrote to a person who wrote a book that profoundly influenced my life recently to illustrate how a book can truly make a difference in one’s life and radically transform it. The book arrived when I was 69 years old at a point in my life when I really needed it. Hopefully, the letter and my story will demonstrate the possibility of awakening to the great potential that waits upon everyone. Here’s the letter:
Dear, Sasha, thank you for being on the planet, for enduring such challenges, and for showing up in my life when you did. I love and appreciate you for the gift you have given to me and the vision you have for humanity and our world. Interestingly, I finished reading Outrageous Mastery on Valentine’s Day, but I didn’t know it was Valentine’s Day until my wife, Andrea informed me shortly after I finished the book. It was the first impactful Valentine’s Day I ever remember experiencing, and I decided to have every following Valentine’s Day become even more wonderful than this one- and the joy of the day is still happening as I type these words. What a day!
Your story was very engaging, powerful, and emotionally compelling. I had been reading the story to Andrea for two days since the book arrived on line. I feelingly followed your story of being cast aside without support by husband and family, who were very wealthy, and thrown into a world you knew nothing about, alone, without friends, without the supporting faith in the Mormon religion that you had previously dedicated your life to, with no money, no home, and six children to raise. What enormously challenging circumstances.
Your strength, courage, perseverance, faith, and determination to provide for your children and live wonderfully are inspirational for everyone.
I intuitively knew that your book held something special for me even before I read it. I was to later learn that we hold very similar beliefs and understandings, but I had hit a wall and was living behind it for more than 3 years when the meteor of your book collided with me and my world, which were just beginning to mobilize themselves back into purpose and passion, and propelled me into an entirely new dimension of awareness, feeling, and super readiness for action. I intuited as soon as I began reading your book that we had planned my wake-up call before we came to Earth, and now it was Jump Time as Dr. Jean Houston calls it.
Both you and I are messengers of the new truth that humanity is waking up to- that every individual is a magnificent creator with an unlimited potential and a unique gift for the world. I knew about that truth and potential, but I had not manifested it and proven its truth to myself experientially. I had written a book called Entertaining Enlightenment: 13 Steps on the Ultimate Journey 7 years ago, but never published it; I had created a guided imagery CD, called The Wonder of Wonders about how to access and experience our hidden, but real and true self, but never made it available to the public; and I had written hundreds of powerful poems about the great spiritual experience, but I never gathered them into a book and published it.
I was a force-field of wisdom, gifts, and good intentions, always getting ready to pour my abundance into the universe, but I never delivered. And at the end of three years, I was even beginning to lose my cosmic awareness and experience to some degree. My drive to share was falling into lethargy and forgetfulness. I began watching TV, especially Ultimate Fighting, which I watched almost every night, which was a very strange because I don’t like fighting, and previously I would almost never watch TV. I also started eating and sleeping a lot.
Then, I got an email from James Twyman, who wrote Emissary of Love, inviting me to enter a contest to become the Next Top Spiritual Author, but I was so out of touch with my identity and purpose that I didn’t even consider accepting the offer and challenge. However, in the next day or two, I re-read the email and immediately signed up. That was the beginning of my re-awakening to myself and my purpose. Christian Pankhurst, who had won the contest in England, was one of the coaches on the Top Author site who had an inspirational message that really resonated with me, so I began doing social networking on Face Book as he suggested.
It was similar to my experience with the internet. I resisted using a computer for 5 years when they became available, but once I entered the world of the internet, I caught fire, and it became a fast friend. It was the same with social networking, although my resistance didn’t take very long. As soon as I began joining groups and making friends, I was back in my element, and life took on a new excitement and possibility. I was pleasantly surprised with the wonderful people who were on there, their friendliness and willingness to help, the openness and readiness for social connection, how much love and value I had to offer, the coalition of groups joining together to contribute to and to change the world, and the new opportunities and energy that came rushing toward me. Once again, I had a calling and a passion, but I knew I needed to go beyond where I had gone before.
So, I begin to embrace opportunities that I previously would not have. I bought the DVD, Beyond Belief, the Movie and the book Outrageous Mastery. These purchases were rather unusual for me because I felt I had heard and knew it all, and, in a sense, I had, and did, because of the many years of devouring all the spiritual and self-help information I could find. But I didn’t want to miss even a shred of a new idea that might benefit me.
At that time, I had a very strong sense of frugality, although financially I was much better off than I ever had been. When I was younger, if I wanted a book, or a course, or wanted to go to a retreat or workshop, I never hesitated to spend my last penny to get what I wanted, or go where I wanted. But I had become frugal and cautious about expenditures by the age of 69. I had the idea that I wanted to save money for my wife’s retirement. She is 14 years younger than me and works much harder than I do to build our income. So, because I made much less than she did, because of my frugality, and because of my know-it-all-attitude, the approximately $35 cost for Beyond Belief, the Movie that piqued my interest was a bit of a stretch for me, and I never would have bought your second and third books for $97, but because you are the clever sales lady that you are, you lured me with a one- time $17 offer for the first one. And once I made that purchase, I knew I had to spend the $97 for the next two books, and immediately did so. Your money back guarantee (I love those), if I wasn’t 100% satisfied, made it easy for me to make to make the purchase, and your energy made me feel certain that you would honor your word.
Well, what I bought even went way beyond my expectations. Life instantly became more exciting and joyous, and I felt ready, insightful, alive. I had stepped back more deeply into my passion again, and I whole-heartedly encourage everyone to never quit seeking until you find your passion. There’s nothing like it. Carolynn Myss aptly asks, “Do you really want to look back on your life and see how wonderful it could have been if you were not afraid to live it?”
Even though entrance into the Next Top Author Contest helped me move back into an alive, purposeful, and exciting life, it was your book, Sasha, Outrageous Mastery that lifted me to the heights of brand new possibility. Again, it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know, except for your story, but it went beyond information in its alchemy of transformation. It readied me and made me certain that I was going to do what I had never done- enter the service I always wanted to enter, manifest the life I had been dreaming of, and make a profound difference in the lives of people and the world.
Love and Light,
Michael
Now, I can offer you that same kind of wonderful life through the journey offered in this book, but if my letter to Sasha has inspired you to check out Outrageous Mastery, definitely do so. I have read many masterful self-help and prosperity books, but Outrageous Mastery is entirely in a class of its own and offers strategies and guidance for creating your dream life that no other books I know of can match.
Here’s the link: http://www.tiny.cc/wowthisworks. Both Sasha’s and this book will bring you great value, but we take different approaches and the books are very different.
Before we begin, I invite you to answer a few questions, which will give you a sense of where you are and where the journey that the book invites you to go can take you. The answers can give you an incentive for the journey and also show you how far you have traveled after you have taken the 13 steps. To afford your answers greater expansiveness than mere ‘yes’ and no’ answers could provide, give each answer a value between zero to ten with ten being an absolutely resounding ‘yes.’
Of course, you can only really check your growth at the end of the 13 steps by being honest here.
Are you certain about your greatness?
Do you know that, no matter the circumstances you are in, life is designed for your happiness and that you are entitled to the very best in life?
Do you know how to claim your inheritance of joyful abundance?
Are you worry-free and almost always continually happy?
Do you know that you have a valuable contribution to make and that the world is incomplete without your gift?
Are you fearless and rooted in peacefulness?
Do you know, and do you see, everything that happens as a gift in your life?
Are you aware of the extraordinary value of this moment?
Do you love your body and its preciousness?
Are you certain that life can only get better?
If you study and apply the information in the book, you should be able to answer these questions with nines and tens, or, at least, be moving toward those numbers. Hopefully that is inspiring. However, even if you begin with high scores, the journey will still have gifts for you.
Your greatness is hidden by the kind of world we live in, by the values and beliefs it imparts to you, by your birth experience, which is a nightmare for a great many people, and by how you were raised. However, once you grasp even the slightest realization of who you are, the extreme value and opportunity of this very moment, and the valuable contribution you can make to the world, a magical adventure calls to you beyond anything you can currently imagine. You have a gift for everyone and everything in the universe, and when you truly know that in every fiber of your being, your life will change so radically you will not recognize yourself from day to day.
We live in a world where “1.02 billion people across the world are hungry.” 1 and “every day, 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes--one child every five seconds 2 when only a very tiny percent of what we spend on weapons of destruction could solve this problem. Something is seriously wrong with a world that has the capacity to end such a dire problem, but doesn’t. But you are empowered to help transform such a world.
And, obviously, the problem of hunger is not the only problem. There are a great many problems, they are increasing, and they challenge the very existence of our world, but these problems are all created and sustained by a limited understanding of who we are, and actually afford us great opportunities for service and change. The world is a reflection of our collective consciousness just as our lives are a reflection of our individual consciousness. Change your consciousness and both you and the world will change.
The core of all problems is not political, economic, or military. The thinking and actions taken in those realms just reflect our current collective self awareness. Most people think of themselves as their body and personality, not realizing that these are just the vehicles of expression, not their core identity. The wisdom teachings of the ages have shared this truth, but our tragic history in our quest for power and domination with its recurrent wars and inhumanity reflects that, collectively, we have not learned and demonstrated our true identity and its power.
However, there are more people on Earth who understand the reality behind appearances than there has ever been before this time, but there are not yet enough people who bear this understanding to transform the world back closer to its original purpose. Spreading the knowledge of our truth and oneness is our highest priority. When enough people understand what the world does not understand and reflect, the world will change and become what it was originally intended to be- a place where the abundance of the divine can be, and is, fully expressed in ever greater forms of expression. And you have the opportunity to be that valuable pioneer and transformer, who can make a profound difference.
When you understand and live from who you are, oneness, peace, love, harmony, cooperation, and the ability to create the life you desire become available, and you begin to move into the magnificence of divine intention and become a force that begins to solve individual and global problems. But education and actualization of this knowledge are quintessential. The optimal use of time is a high priority because we are in a race with time for the planet’s survival. The Awakening is one of many attempts to share the great potential and destiny of everyone and encourage that awareness to implement change. A quickening surge of awakening, cooperation, and transformation has already begun, and you will find it to be rapidly increasing.
However, that change always has been, and still is, a difficult and challenging one. New information has always been resisted even when its spread will be tremendously beneficial. History demonstrates that humanity resists change. Look at the resistance to Columbus’s discovering America because it was believed the Earth was flat; consider how Galileo was charged with heresy and jailed because he dared to say that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of our universe, how challenged and harassed Ignaz Semmelweis was by the medical community when he proposed a simple cure for childbed fever, or how maligned the Wright brothers were for saying that man could fly. Innovative ideas always meet with resistance and defensive ridicule. And to change humanity’s understanding of its identity is especially challenging because the ego fears change and, consequently, so much attachment is invested in the illusory, fragile identity humanity holds onto.
However, each new person who becomes aware of his or her true identity shifts the way the world is seen and contributes to the change that needs to happen. And a book that offers a step by step experiential process that enables its readers to test its ideas can make a definite contribution to that very, needed change, especially if its ideas are well advertised and brought before the public through many different avenues.
So, let me introduce the book’s originating idea by drawing a comparison between the human predicament and the storyline of the science fiction movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth.3 The hero of the movie comes to Earth to get supplies and assistance for his family who are on a dying planet. He is distracted, diverted, addicted, and overwhelmed by his earthly experience, and at the end of the movie, he is drinking himself into an alcoholic haze of forgetfulness and is very far from realizing and fulfilling the noble mission with which he came.
Although the hero’s state of affairs is more dire than that of most individuals, there is a parallel between the movie’s protagonist and every individual in the world in that they both come with a great potential and a high and noble purpose, but the many challenges, engagements, and distractions of earthly life tend to lure us away from, and block us from, remembering and fulfilling our primary and real reason for being here- to remember who we are and to magnificently express our unlimited potential.
The evolutionary progression of the Earth has consequently been severely held back to such a degree that special efforts have been put in operation for humanity’s awakening and Earth’s progression. Tellis S. Papastavro in The Gnosis and the Law informs us of little-known, but extraordinarily significant information when he writes that
“ . . . an unexpected event . . . came from Cosmic Law, telling the elite of the Spiritual Hierarchy, that the time has come for our Universe, along with the rest of the Solar Systems of our Galaxy, to advance to a higher sphere of Cosmic Evolution. . .”4
“Among the forty-nine Planets involved, it was the Earth that was found wanting and unable to take advantage of this opportunity which occurs once in many millions of years.”5
“. . . a time limit of twenty years was given… for man to improve himself . . .”6
“Should [the earth] fail to meet the Cosmic Edict, another ‘impending dissolution’ would be in the offing.”7
Since . . . “the past several millions of years to improve recalcitrant humanity met with failure,” 8 the brief time period of twenty years was indeed challenging, so a call went out to the “Cosmos for help.”9 The opening and making available of hidden knowledge, some of which is shared in this book, is one of many efforts to awaken collective humanity and its individuals and help her and them to fulfill her and their destiny in time.10
Therefore, this book has individual, worldly, and cosmic value. The extraordinary, hidden potential of humanity holds a vast wealth of possibilities. Life is a much more wonderful and incredible adventure than the average human even glimpses, let alone realizes, but the time has come for the beginning of the great awakening, and you are invited to have a significant role.
Our real, or ultimate purpose- the highest potential of every individual- is to rediscover and express our original, source greatness in ever greater forms of expression. I use the word ‘rediscover’ because the process is one of remembering. We have both an unconditioned self, which has been called our real self, out of which all life arises and is sustained, and a conditioned self, which we create through thought, feeling, and action.11
Many people regard the conditioned self as the only, and real self, but only because they are unaware that there is an invisible, generating consciousness that they are. We are all largely “wandering in a far country”12 of physical existence, and have forgotten our causational being and our inheritance of magnificence and abundance that waits upon us to afford us greater ease, power, enjoyment, and fulfillment, far beyond what we can currently imagine. However, we must, at some point, when we are able to feel the true call of our heart, remember our wealth and begin to express in the physical realm the pattern of perfection within us that leads to life mastery.13
Despite any limiting ideas we might have about ourselves and our possibilities, we are valuable, magnificent, great, and wonderful beings- all children of the creative source. That truth may be deeply hidden, but it is, nevertheless, a certain and wonderful truth, and the realization of that truth is enormously emotionally and vibrationally uplifting. Our destiny is great and secure, but we have, and can, put off its realization.
We have come “with a definite lesson to learn,”14 to discover, express, and share a unique and magnificent gift within us that will enable us to “. . .fill a certain place in the grand plan, . . . a place which no other Soul in the universe can perfectly fill.”15 by making a unique and valuable contribution to life that will benefit the world and delight us. We are valuable and powerful. “Even god and his angels cannot manifest in the human kingdom except through us as their instrument of expression,”16 and even that according to our free will. But we must first remember, know, and experience our unconditioned source self to realize and fulfill our potential.
Awakening offers an experiential process of 13 Steps that encourages and assists its readers to both remember themselves and fulfill their purpose. Why should you do that? Because, hands up, it’s the best of all possibilities for yourself, for your world, and for the universe.
Many perceptive thinkers, who observe the current manifestations in our world, believe this awakening is critical to the survival of our planet because, as Matthew Fox poignantly comments, “we are not a sustainable species on our present path of behavior.”17
Peter Russell, in his enlightening book Waking Up In Time, points out that our tremendous, technological growth has exceeded our attitudinal, emotional, and spiritual growth to such a degree that we must either mature and awaken spiritually or self-destruct.18
Therefore, the journey of awakening calls to us from both negative and positive poles. Many writers think we’re in serious trouble as a planet if a critical mass doesn’t awaken and help change the consciousness of the planet, and we’re headed for wonderful transformations and experiences beyond what we can even imagine now, if we do awaken.
The great truth of being and law of divine manifestation is expressed in the records of the wisdom of the great teachers of humanity, such as Jesus, Buddha, and Allah, who came to remind us of our true identity, purpose, and destiny, although many religious accounts of their teachings skew and misrepresent the purity of their ideas, causing much confusion. We need to be wary of the many additions to, and interpolations of, their ideas, put all statements to the test of actual experience, and not just be content with belief. There has been much misunderstanding of what they said, but the cycles of awareness continue to bring us closer to the truth of what they said and who we are.
A Course In Miracles expresses the idea of our inevitable destiny by calling the course “a required course,” explaining that our only option and question is, not whether we will we take it, but when we will take it.19 It is the same with the ultimate journey. We are on it. Our only choice is when we will become conscious that we are, however long that may take. You are offered here the opportunity to investigate and understand your true self and greater destiny, and briefly explore what it is like to travel upon the journey of all journeys- the ultimate journey.
Wallace Wattles, writing in the 1920’s, powerfully expresses the perennial wisdom of our genius potential that the journey invites us to explore. “Nothing was ever in any man that is not in you; no man ever had more spiritual or mental power than you can attain, or did greater things than you can accomplish. You can become what you want to be.”20
You are a co-creator with the ultimate power and are ever invited to create in that divine pattern. Again, this knowledge is not new; it is ancient, present even long before the teachings of Christ, who told us we could do what he did and greater things, and this book is another formulation and expression of the wisdom teachings of the ages, which brings us a contemporary invitation to remember ourselves, to claim our wonderful inheritance, and to begin to fulfill our destiny by taking 13 steps on the ultimate journey.
In the grandest sense, everyone is on the journey, even if a person is unaware that he or she is because everyone is, and has within their body, the reality of the true self they need to know, explore, and express. An unlimited expression of potential awaits you. You can create the life of your dreams. Yes, everyone will derive a different value from taking the 13 steps, but even people who have consciously been on this journey prior to reading this book will benefit from taking the 13 steps. So, let us begin the journey.
If you would like to go on the journey, it’s only $13 for an E-Book, pretty cheap for a trip these days, especial for an ultimate journey. You can send a payment to uragreat12@gmail.com on www.paypal.com, or we can arrange another form of payment.