The Letter to me from my greater Self…literally poured out of me one afternoon after I did a meditation on Joy. A friend of mine had recently started meditating again after a prolonged pause in her practice. We were talking about getting back into the regular practice of meditation and I asked her how she was doing. She explained she was meditating about the things in her life that had given her joy and happiness. She said it was wonderful.

During my own meditations I often experience deep and profound Peace with a sense of unconditional Love but it had never occurred to me to meditate on Love, Joy or Peace as the subject of my meditation.

I had, just the day before, stumbled on a marvelous piece of music by Steven Mark Kohn. It can be found on Belleruth Naperstek’s Healthful Sleep guided meditation CD, band 3. My sister had listened to it and said it was absolutely beautiful. Who meditates with music, you are asking? It’s wonderful, try it occasionally. The vibrational level of the composer is carried to you in the music and can be shared in its harmony.

I got in my comfy meditation chair, put on my headphones, closed my eyes and began breathing slowly, remembering the happy times in my life, focusing on each for a bit, like a slide show. In a few minutes the “slides” began appearing on their own, without consciously trying to remember anything; times I had forgotten were now coming forth in a marvelous parade of expanding Joy. I could feel the tears cascading down my cheeks and was elated by the experience. There has been incredible Joy and beauty in my life! I had just forgotten much of it.

The slide show continued for a while and then something occurred that, even now, leaves me tingling and grateful. The slides changed from happy times to many of the darkest times in my life, but my level of Joy just kept expanding until it surpassed anything I had ever experienced. I finally understood. Joy is a state of being. So is Love. So is Peace. They aren’t emotional responses to something we do or see. They are what we are.

I also could feel a real need to share my experience, hence this little book. Because some of the concepts offered seem to fly in the face of usually accepted spiritual thinking and practice, I was urged to try to keep my audience in mind while writing, so I try to. However, the human species is unique. We are, at the same time, the most glorious thing to happen on Earth and its greatest scourge.

There will be many instances in this book where accepted “sacred cows” are simply ignored. Almost all religious and philosophical practices, on some deep level, are actually dis-empowering because they create limits and barriers the Masters never intended; leading us to believe in labels we have heard applied to us and so we accept them as accurate.

Labels such as “sinner,” or “karma,” automatically leave us in a pretty much impossible position from which we must somehow recover before we can move forward. Many actually teach us there is something, usually outside our understanding and control, that we must overcome. Many rituals fall into this category and reinforce our imagined weaknesses and frailties by getting us to focus on them.

A New Myth starts from where you are right now with the accepted premise that you are indeed an Infinite Being. Whether you remember it or not doesn’t change your actuality.

We are Infinite Spiritual Beings in seemingly limited physical bodies. Expressing what we truly are while in physical form only requires us to change a few core beliefs and to suspend belief for most of the rest of what we currently hold to be true or real. Not really easy for adults, but definitely doable. Children do it all the time.

This work and Joy is for all mankind. It is offered with the knowledge that every human being is capable of the same and even more glorious experience. Infinity knows no limits and no boundaries. This is a book about empowerment, more specifically, your self empowerment.

The self help movement is so popular because the need for help, especially now, is so great. Where can one get help to learn to be free from all the agendas the worlds organizations have for us? If we watch the news on TV, read a paper or listen to our political or religious leaders, we are constantly deluged with negative messages, some of which may even sound positive on the surface. The underlying message, however, is clear; “You don’t have the power to deal with this, but we do.”

We have been taught from birth that there is an amazing group of people who know everything and decide everything for us and that group is called “they;” the omniscient, omnipotent “they.” How many times do we say something like, “Well, they said,” or “they know,” or “they did?” In reality we are simply repeating our own programming, aren’t we? Governments, religions, schools, family and friends all have agendas that require us to give them power so they can fulfill their agendas.

There is good evidence the cavemen discovered that easily frightened animals, like buffalo, antelope or sheep, are much easier to herd so you can get them to go where you want them to. About sixty seconds after man discovered that, politicians and priests came into being because humans, when frightened, will act just like other animals and follow almost any one who promises to lead them to safety. Politicians and priests have used the same technique ever since. Try herding cats and see what you get.

As a species we are not much farther along than our ancient ancestors. In many ways we have regressed. Our ancestors were much more self-reliant, responsible and stable than we are now. They didn’t have any other options. Besides that, their teachers taught them responsibility and duty by example. To their teachers, the choice to be other than self sufficient would likely result in real deprivation such as going hungry or freezing to death. There were no government programs to take care of them.

We have advanced technologically in almost miraculous ways but significant advances in life skills have eluded us as evidenced by the increasing numbers of those making the choice to divorce, drop out, give up, get violent or get addicted. The result of our choice to ignore the importance of life skills has resulted in a highly technical culture in which we see ourselves as disconnected from each other.

Many lives are hurried expressions of fear and worry because a large percentage of people are not even secure in the knowledge they can take care of themselves. Add to that the unbridgeable gap between where we believe we are and where the TV says we must be to be happy, successful, pretty, cool, etc. and we now live in a climate where stress is the major cause of illness. Studies show over 60% of all visits for healthcare are due directly to conditions caused by stress or made worse by stress.

We know stress is self-induced. Our brains react to thought by instantly creating the specific neurotransmitters dictated by our thoughts. The body then responds appropriately as the neurotransmitters act on the individual organ systems. In response to thinking something is worrisome, scary or threatening, our brain responds by making a special type of neurotransmitter called catecholamines. Among these are adrenalin and nor-adrenalin. These catecholamines prepare our body for either flight or fight.

Sure we have the flight or fight mechanism; we are mammals and that system is built in. However, we are the only species who obsessively worries when there is nothing to fight and no reason to flee.

We are currently being told to fear almost everything. The TV news is all about scaring everyone by reporting all the bad things going on in the world and, according to recent studies, it works. The incidence of anxiety and depression is soaring as evidenced by the numerous ads for anti-hypertension, anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications. The idea that fear is real is supported even by therapists. Obviously many of us don’t have an idea that we can actually learn to live without it.

Our inner dialogue determines our outer world. Most of our inner dialogues are dis-empowering, simply because we don’t know how to be empowered. A New Myth is about those inner dialogues and the decision making processes behind them which eventually create the world in which we live. This book is all about tools you can use to empower your self.

These tools are not new. They have been around for many thousands of years and are currently in use by every happy, peaceful, loving individual on the planet. The problem with tools is one must understand what the tool is for and how to use it. If that information is lacking, any tool just becomes a paperweight. So, A New Myth is an instruction manual for advanced life skills with the endpoint potentially being the expression of your Greater Self while you still have a body to enjoy it in.

Every decision we make begins within your self. In later pages you will see, “Each and every decision we make begins way down deep inside with a simple choice; dominion or dis-empowerment; there are no other alternatives.” From that point, we begin.

To Mental Mechanics