THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK, you have learned various ways to identify and release your domestications and attachments. You've learned how doing so can help silence the negative self-talk that produces suffering in your Personal Dream and replace it with unconditional self-love and self-acceptance. When you bring this spirit of unconditional love to your interactions with others in the Dream of the Planet, you see them through the eyes of compassion and you respect their choices even if they differ from yours. Through the power of forgiveness, you are able to move past the harm caused by others and see that they were doing the best they could at the time. In these ways, you are doing your part to create harmony in the Dream of the Planet.
You have also learned about the power of masks, the art of shape-shifting, and how you can shift for the benefit of another as long as it doesn't violate your personal truth. You are able to set goals that are consistent with what you really want, and you love yourself throughout the process of working to achieve them. In the end, you know that you are already perfect and complete, more than enough, and you will always receive exactly what you need in every moment. While you are grateful for the lessons you have learned from others, you now have the confidence to walk your own path because you know that everything you need is already inside of you.
Because you recognize the suffering that domestication and attachment cause in yourself and others, you no longer try to control those around you with anger, guilt, or sadness in order to force them to believe or act the way you think they should. You respect everyone's ability to make their own decisions, which means you don't project onto them a mask of who you think they should be. Because you accept yourself for who you are, you are now able to accept every other person for who they are. This is a dream that we are co-creating; we are learning from each other and respecting every person's individual perspective. No one is more important than anyone else. Engaging from this place of mutual respect for all beings makes it the best world possible.
In those rare moments when you do slide and fall into a trap, as a Master of Self you are able to regain your awareness and recover quickly. Rather than making things worse by lashing out, being defensive, or otherwise falling into chaos and joining the drama of the party, you now have the tools to regain your footing. Through the power of awareness, buoyed by unconditional self-love, you know that you are doing the best you can at every moment. You no longer need to distort the world around you to fit your perception. You know who you are, and as a result you can act and speak with complete confidence and without apology. Thus, your word becomes impeccable. Because you are engaging others with awareness and unconditional love, you have confidence that each action you take will be perfect in the moment. In all of these ways, you have learned how to become a Master of Self.
When we think of an act of forgiveness, it is almost always in reference to people we know, or those who have affected us personally. However, there is another type of forgiveness that is often overlooked, and that is forgiveness for the suffering that occurs in the Dream of the Planet.
To understand this type of suffering, let's look more closely at the two components that make up the Dream of the Planet. First, there is the physical world of matter, with its oceans, continents, winds, and shifting climates, where change is constant with every action. This is the phenomenal realm, or the world that can be seen and felt. Second, there is the world of human agreements, and these agreements are what give meaning to the material world. This is the world that is created in our minds and is based on our perceptions. The world of agreements is unseen, even though what manifests from these agreements appears in the physical world. While the physical world appears to move on its own, the world of human agreements by definition requires our participation. Let's look at two important events to emphasize the difference.
The first happened on December 26, 2004, when a tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed thousands of people in an instant. It was a tragic loss of life, but it is understood as something that happened via the movement of the earth, without any human agreement. While the outcome is heartbreaking, there is no one to “blame” for an event like this.
Compare that to another event that occurred three years earlier, on September 11, 2001, in the United States. This also resulted in the catastrophic loss of human life, but the cause was dramatically different, as in that case the impetus was a human agreement. Tragically, many people lost their lives because one group felt that it needed to subjugate the world to its vision of virtue with violence. In this type of tragedy, a sense of “blame” is placed on the perpetrators.
While it's perfectly understandable to be saddened and enraged over events such as these, and some of you reading this may even have been personally affected by one or both of these examples, when that sadness overtakes us we lose our perspective in the dream, and debilitating grief, depression, and, in the latter example, a desire for revenge can set in. In either case, getting lost in the sadness can trigger us to take a negative attitude toward the world, saying or thinking things like, “there is no use trying to improve the world,” or “the world is a terrible place.”
If you take this route, the fog has crept back in, as you are now living in your imagination, filled with fear and despair, and the Dream of the Planet has become a nightmare. You are taking the events of the world personally and letting them define you and your thinking. You have forgotten that during these tragedies, many people stood up to help the victims and survivors. Communities came together to heal one another.
While it's completely normal that both of these tragedies would evoke sadness, there comes a time when we move past the loss and choose to forgive the world for these events. You do so because holding on to the negative emotions generated by these events keeps you from evolving. That does not mean you forget what happened; it means that you don't want events like these to cloud your awareness and keep you trapped in the fog, unable to see the beauty that is all around you and keep you from co-creating the Dream.
Furthermore, a Master of Self understands that those who commit acts of violence (including gang members, terrorists, abusers, manipulators, and others) are actually the most domesticated and attached people in the Dream of the Planet since they have lost their ability to see the humanity of another living being. They are blackout drunk at the party, blinded by their belief system. They are so completely controlled by ideas that they can no longer see the humanity of their brothers and sisters.
To be clear, forgiveness does not mean apathy. Forgiveness in this context means that in order to create a harmonious Dream of the Planet, you understand that you are only responsible for you. You choose to let go of the anger and hurt in order to bring peace to your Personal Dream, and in that way you actually help the Dream of the Planet, so that one day tragedies that occur as a result of human violence can be found only in history books.
For a Master of Self, peace comes with forgiveness, by letting go of any poison that you're holding on to. If you let that poison drown you, then you become part of the cycle that has brought suffering into this world. To forgive the Dream of the Planet for the darkness is to forgive any place of darkness within ourselves.
Even when others make a choice to construct the Dream of the Planet by creating a nightmare, you know how to end the nightmare within yourself. Every time you choose to forgive, you heal the infected wound that causes you to cower in fear and hide behind anger. Choosing to act from a place of love rather than fear will always bring harmony to the present moment, regardless of what is happening in the dream. Forgiveness is an act of love, so in times of global difficulty I will say to myself:
I choose to forgive, I choose to engage, I choose to take action, I choose to use my voice for healing, and I choose to express the power of my intent through unconditional love.
I am a co-creator of the Dream of the Planet, and I choose to end the cycle of conditional love.
I do this, and I am letting peace begin with me. This is the Mastery of Self in action, and this is my wish and hope for you.