I AM * YOU ARE * LOVE IS

by Curtis Christian

Overview

Throughout the ages philosophers, saints, and sages have described a state of pure love, bliss, peace, and joy. Many have studied the words of such beings and practiced their ways, seeking the experience of which they spoke. Still, until recently, few have experienced more than fleeting glimpses of such a state. However, humanity is currently embarking upon a shift where many of the seekers are beginning to experience themselves as they were created to be.

I AM * YOU ARE * LOVE IS explores basic truths of existence and experience that will deepen your understanding of the source of who you are. This book is not a magic ticket into the divine state that is so immensely sought after, however it can serve as a guide to aid those transitioning through the stage of spiritual seeking into the experience of being. Author Curtis Christian explains complex ideas, perspectives, and experiences in a refreshingly unique and understandable way, inviting you to accelerate your journey inward while making friends with the mind, expanding your awareness, and deepening your understanding of yourself and your experience. No stone is left unturned as commonly accepted spiritual concepts are questioned and examined from many angles, along with new, unique perspectives being offered for consideration. I AM * YOU ARE * LOVE IS serves as an elaborate invitation to awaken the message of your heart and begin expressing it to the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504352253
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	09/12/2016
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.52(d)

Read an Excerpt

I Am You Are Love Is

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By Curtis Christian

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2016 Curtis Christian
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-5225-3

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CHAPTER 1

THE CONCEPT OF LOVE

The mind is a friend. It offers valuable tools that can be utilized to consciously create the reality you wish to experience. Unfortunately, not everyone utilizes the tools of the mind in this way.

The mind often gets a bad rap. Even in the culture of spiritual growth, the mind is often made out to be the enemy long before the realization that it can be a friend. In meditation and other spiritual practices, the goal is often to transcend the mind. This is commonly done by suggesting to gently allow thoughts to float away and return the focus to the breath. When that suggestion is misunderstood, which is often the case, it can create an unintended resistance. Many times what gets resisted is a message from a friend. A friend who wants nothing more than to inform you that you may not have been using it properly, and to show you how to utilize it more efficiently.

There is an Internet meme I saw a while back. It stated something along the lines of a good friend is someone who would bail you out of jail, but a best friend would be sitting there next to you, talking about the crazy night you had.

The mind is that best friend. It has been with you through everything; it has created everything you have asked it to. It has gotten you into trouble, stayed by your side through all of it, and bailed you out when you were ready. It has told you everything you asked it to tell you and showed you everything you asked it to show you. Yet it often gets blamed for negative self-talk, called names like "monkey mind," and gets held responsible for many of the things in life that are not the way you want them to be. When in reality, every negative thought or event that has gotten blamed for sabotaging your experience of life has served as a road sign, constantly pointing at what is truly getting in the way of experiencing the life you wish to live.

The role of the mind is important in the discussion throughout this book, in part because it is the mind that utilizes language as a tool to communicate and build relationships. Language is an external representation that can aid in presenting much deeper aspects of yourself out into the world. It can be difficult to access many of these deeper aspects, so the exploration of the language that you present to the world can offer initial clues into what is going on under the surface. Misuse of this tool can create obstacles to experiencing the types of relationships you want and thus get in the way of experiencing the life you want.

Throughout the rest of this book you will be invited to explore these depths within yourself. This will include exploring the source of who you are, examining the primary experiences that pass through that source, noticing the emotions that arise in response to those experiences, and looking at the concepts that are often created to explain it all. Furthermore, we will look at how that collection of concepts provide a framework for what you create and project into the world. That framework can be built upon further with thought, some of which gets expressed through language. We will look at each aspect of this process, bringing awareness to any area that may be in direct conflict with who you truly are and provide the opportunity to transform anything that does not align with the message of your heart. We begin here by looking at one of the outer layers of this process, the relationship with the mind. Exploring ways to transition it from the nuisance it is often perceived to be into the resource that it was meant to be.

Mind with Matter

Mind with Matter is a simple idea, constructed to go one step beyond what is traditionally considered when utilizing thought to manifest a desire into the physical world. Whether you are creating art, attracting money, or facilitating the mind-body connection to move toward health and wellness, allowing mind and matter to work synergistically can facilitate a much smoother, and often quicker, process overall. It is a very slight and subtle shift in language, which is designed to facilitate a slight and subtle shift in perspective, laying the foundation for immensely powerful shifts in your life and your relationships.

The traditional perspective in the world of personal growth and development is to take on the idea of mind over matter. From that perspective if a person sets their sight on something and mentally focuses on their desires long enough, those desires will manifest. For many people that works. For just as many it is a slow undertaking. Repeating affirmations and mantras while creating visual images that are not representative of a person's current experience can lead to the desired change, but it is often akin to filling a bucket up with water one drop at a time. It can be slow and tedious, which results in many people giving up on their desire before the necessary time is allotted for the bucket to fill.

Much of the reason for the slow change and high drop off rate is that there is a conflicting message in the current view of manifesting by merely changing thought patterns. On one side of the coin you are told to accept the present moment as it is. On the other side you are told to use your energy, thoughts, words, and feelings to focus on a different moment; a moment that includes the environment and experience that you want as opposed to the way things actually are now.

With most things there is a space where the two sides of such a coin unite; where a paradox can coexist and each side unites to create the whole. However, when it comes to utilizing thought and language as a resource for facilitating transformation, there is very little guidance in how to allow both sides of that coin to simultaneously coexist.

If a person knows what to focus on and is able to focus on it long enough, the expected change will happen. I personally practice this every time a storm passes through. From the moment it starts looking like undesirable weather is forming outside and it begins to threaten travel plans, I start picturing nice, sunny weather. I picture wonderful road conditions and tell myself the weather outside is great and perfect for safe travel. Inevitably, the storm outside stops, the sun shines through again, the roads are clear, and the conditions outside mirror what I had been picturing the whole time. Sometimes I just have to tell myself these things and focus on the mental images for a few hours, days, or maybe a week. Typically, not much longer than that is needed.

When I share with people that I am able to influence the weather, they initially get excited and want to hear more. When I share examples like this as evidence of such a gift, they are less than impressed. The common premise behind affirmations and manifesting your desires, though, is very similar to this. Whatever your surroundings look like, just keep thinking and saying that it is different. If it does not change into what you want it to, you are not thinking or saying it enough, or not putting enough emotion behind it. Just keep it up, and eventually you will manifest your desire. This is the most common understanding of manifesting desires that I hear from people, whether it is coming from those who are integrating these principals in their own life or someone who is sharing this insight with others.

What often happens is that the outcome, whatever it happens to be, is used to reinforce the experience. If whatever a person was attempting to create comes to pass, they reverse engineer the evidence to fit the process they want to believe happened. If they were not successful in manifesting the desire, however, they will typically identify things they did wrong in the manifesting process and use the insights as lessons for the next time. Telling themselves it just "wasn't meant to be" or just forget about the unsuccessful attempt completely.

There is nothing wrong with any of this. It is actually human nature to try to make sense of our experience and take notice of things that confirm our own beliefs. There may be times when there is some truth in the way we interpret those things. Sometimes there really may have been lessons and learnings that can be used for next time; sometimes things perhaps really were just not meant to be.

What if the desired experience is going to happen anyway? What if in the same way a storm outside will eventually pass, whether or not a person spends the entire storm exclaiming and picturing otherwise, many of our own desires will come to pass regardless of how often they are verbally affirmed?

Utilizing the mind over matter mind-set invites resistance into the situation. It leads to a subservient relationship that attempts to use domination as a tool. With this energy, the mind is in control. What the mind wants will be willed to happen. Matter itself has no say in it, at least not from the perspective of the mind. Anytime it is believed that one thing has power over another a hierarchy is created that is conducive of an imbalanced, unequal relationship. What if there are times when affirmations and visualizations inadvertently bring in the dominating energy of the mind over matter perspective? What if internalizing that dominating energy actually creates resistance while trying to manifest a desire that was destined to flower into an experience regardless of how many times a person attempted to will its happening with the mind?

This is where the Mind with Matter perspective offers a more optimal perspective in facilitating the process of turning a desire of the heart into an experience in this reality. It replaces the dominating energy of hierarchical power and subservience with a cooperative relationship. This relationship allows a more seamless transition from the realm of the heart, where the desire originates, to the realm of the mind, where the construct for bringing that desire into reality is created. It also more willfully includes the actual matter that makes up the reality and allows a person to experience that desire.

That may all sound well and good, but how does that actually translate into reality? The initial step is simply to pay attention to the language you use, because language builds on the constructs that bring ideas into reality. Becoming aware of the language you typically use when translating your desires into experience will allow you to begin going deeper and notice the underlying energy you typically utilized in the creation process. When you are aware of the energy you are connected to, then and only then can you make a conscious choice as to whether that is the most optimal energy to draw from to create what you would like.

Collective Fields

There are collective fields of thought and energy that run throughout humanity. The existence of these fields is not something that has been verified by modern tools of inquiry, probably in most part because current technology is not yet able to detect any of their properties. In contrast, through either personal experience with the energy or through various teaching of others, many people are aware of their existence. Those who are familiar with their existence commonly refer them as the collective consciousness, the collective unconscious, or the collective mind. These fields of thought have been built up throughout the history of humanity, with energy and information being uploaded by everyone who has connected to these fields throughout this time period.

The intent of bringing up this topic is not to provide overly detailed information explaining the concepts behind these fields or to try to convince you that they exist. There are many books and sources that can be looked at for further inquiry on the subject if you would like more information in order to determine if understanding such fields of energy better is worth your time. The discussion here is primarily for those who already have identified these fields and work with them in some way. This is by no means a prerequisite to get value out of the discussion throughout this book. However, there will be occasional references to these fields and how to utilize the energy they contain to help bring a flow to the process of creating the experiences you desire.

The idea of collective fields is not hard to accept if you believe we are all connected or that we are all one. From this perspective, there is but one mind giving energy to one field of thought. Typically when the collective consciousness gets referred to, it is as a broader idea where there is one collective field. There is merit in looking at it in that way and creating awareness of how an overall collective field can influence individual experiences. And nothing that I share is going to negate that perspective; all humanity is in fact connected.

From my perspective this larger collective field is made up of a series of smaller fields that work in very similar ways. I have noticed that each thought, idea, or concept has its own collective thought energy, and it is these collective fields that surround individual thoughts, ideas, or concepts that make up the larger collective consciousness that usually gets referred to.

For example, there is a collective field pertaining to money, a field that is explored in greater detail in chapter 8. For now, simply consider the possible subfields that could exist within an overarching field of money. For some people money is a tool. It is a resource they use to get what they want, a means to an end. Their relationship with money is one of abundance and those plugged into that subfield are able to facilitate the attraction of money with relative ease.

There is another way to relate to the field of money that utilizes fear and lack. Those who utilize this energy struggle with money, barely scrape by, and likely create more debt than wealth, as they constantly struggle to make ends meet.

There are other ways to relate to the field of money. For some money is seen as the root of all evil. For others money is seen as something they are entitled to. For some money is all that matters and they spend the majority of their lives building up a stockpile of it. The overall collective field branches off into subfields of a particular concept and each of these conceptual fields further branches off into fields of those who relate to that part of the field in a particular way.

A few of these collective subfields are discussed in more detail throughout this book. For now, simply start bringing the possibility of such fields of energy into your awareness because each relationship you have with a particular field has its own set of tools that help create and maintain the way you relate to it. Often these are the same tools that others have used when connecting to the field and adding energy to it, thus they may not be things that you have consciously chosen and may not be the most optimal for creating the experiences you truly desire. Quite often if you have used a particular set of tools to create one relationship there is a higher likelihood you will use similar tools to develop other relationships, due to your familiarity with them.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from I Am You Are Love Is by Curtis Christian. Copyright © 2016 Curtis Christian. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction: Our Fundamental Desire, x,
Chapter 1: The Concept of Love, 1,
Mind with Matter, 2,
Collective Fields, 5,
Letting Go and Pushing Away, 9,
The Concept of Love, 14,
Chapter 2: The Language of Love, 17,
The Hopeless Romantic, 18,
Relationships Are Hard Work, 20,
Language Surrounding Friends, 21,
Giving and Receiving, 23,
Making Someone Happy, 25,
Falling in Love, 28,
Become Aware of Your Words, 29,
Chapter 3: The Science of Love, 31,
Constructing the Universe, 31,
Creating Life, 33,
Building Your Experience, 34,
Love Is All There Is, 36,
The Garden of Your Heart, 43,
Chapter 4: The Origin of Love, 49,
Awareness, 50,
The Spectrum of Awareness, 51,
Identification, 51,
Possession, 55,
Liberation, 60,
The Expansion of Awareness, 68,
Chapter 5: The Transformation of Love, 71,
Ignored Resources in Seeds of Emotion, 72,
Intention and Choice with Love and Hate, 78,
Love Is Still All There Is, 85,
Chapter 6: The Experience of Love, 93,
Sensory Experience, 93,
The Nature of Experience, 96,
The Attractive Force of Thought and Emotion, 101,
The Origin of Thought and Emotion, 112,
The Nature of Love, 118,
Chapter 7: The Desire for Love, 123,
The Friend Zone, 124,
The Desire to Be Seen, 130,
End the Friend Zone, 135,
Resources in the Friend Zone, 139,
The Desire to Be, 145,
Chapter 8: The Purpose of Love, 154,
Purpose in Life, 154,
The Spiritual Healer, 160,
Monetary Energy, 163,
Monetary Energy and the Spiritual Path, 166,
Love in Life's Purpose, 171,
Chapter 9: The Expansion of Love, 177,
You Are What You Eat, 178,
Air and Water, 180,
Sending Love and Light, 182,
Fake Friends, 185,
Love God, Love Yourself, 186,
Love Your Neighbor, Love Your Enemy, 188,
Sides of the Coin, 191,
Anti-Anything, 194,
Pro-Everything, 198,
Kids and Children, 200,
Be, 203,
Chapter 10: The Expression of Love, 207,
I Am, 208,
Love Is, 210,
You Are, 212,
I Am, Love Is, You Are, 213,
Final Considerations: To Be or Not to Be, 215,