My book teaches that there is a common human struggle uniting us all, with the props varying from human to human. For an alcoholic, one of the props is alcohol. For a gambling addict, it's gambling and casinos. For the sex addict, it might be sex. For the overeating food addict, it's food and eating. For the indebted credit card shopper, it might shopping, and materialism, and Keeping Up with the Joneses. For everybody, it's something. As my book says, "all humans are on the addiction spectrum."
Everyone has experience with temptation and what it feels like to be a spiritual slave or to feel spiritually imprisoned, as if being a prisoner in their own body, a spiritually unfulfilled prisoner trapped in the comfort zone, mistaking comfort, addictive indulgence, and temptation-caving for true happiness, which it isn't and can never provide.
In contrast, not everyone knows what it feels like to have this wonderful self-discipline (a.k.a. spiritual freedom) and the invincible true happiness (a.k.a. invincible consistent inner peace) that my book teaches one how to have. If you follow the teachings of my book, you will have this wonderful free-spirited self-dicipline and invincible true happiness, not just for a little bit, but every day, day in and day out, for the rest of your human life. Everyone knows what it feels like to not have it, but not everyone knows how amazing and invincible it rightly feels to have it.
Everyone knows what it feels like not to have it because even those lucky few of us who do have it now weren't born with it. We had to go through our respective 'dark nights of the soul' to be one of the very lucky few who achieve that kind of incredible spiritual awakening, which my book can help anyone achieve, guaranteed. If you follow the teachings of my book to the letter, you will get it quickly; I guarantee it.
We can talk about this common human struggle in the negative, as a struggle against temptation, addiction, cowardice, spiritual slavery, and spiritual imprisonment. The most common fundamental addiction is the addiction to comfort, it's to be imprisoned in the comfort zone as a coward instead of having the true happiness of invincible free-spirited and infinitely brave inner peace. Alternatively, we can word it in the positive as a beautiful struggle to free our spirits and struggle towards the infinite heights of manifesting our true loving conscious essence. In some ways, it's an endless struggle, but those of us with this wonderful invincible free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness) have learned to love the endless struggle and thus for us playing is winning and thus we have already won, and enjoy our endless winnings day in and day out.
For those of us who really get it, we understand that we've all already won, whether we realize it or now. We are all already in heaven, whether we realize or not. Failure and trying are illusions, as are shoulds and oughts, but an imaginary roadblock can be as effective as a real one and an imaginary hell with imaginary demons torments you just the same. The fact that a self-created self-controlled nightmare isn't real doesn't make it any less scary. We're all winners in heaven already, but the difference is simply that those of us with invincible inner peace realize it. It's a heaven so heavenly that even the hell-wishers get their wish, meaning hell is just a subset of heaven. The only difference is those of us with invincible free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness) realize we are in heaven and have stopped successfully wishing hell upon ourselves, while many of our other selves--meaning our fellow humans--still successfully wish hell upon themselves.
As my book says, not even a literal god can come between you and your choices.
When I see someone in hell, I smile inside myself, and I think, "Good for him; he's getting what he's choosing."
And, more deeply, he is me, just another me.
Live and let live. To each his own.
That's freedom. That's independence. That's self-determination.
And when you really understand what you are, what you really are, your true self, which my book can teach you, then you realize that deep down, in the strictest and truest sense of the words, the only real determination is self-determination, and all other determination is an illusion.
It can seem like a bit of a paradox: As you learn to more fully take extreme self-responsibility while accordingly not taking undue responsibility for non-self and others (i.e. practicing the principle of accepting what you cannot control and cannot change, and not infringing on the self-responsibility and spiritual freedom of others), you then, through that deep spiritual radical acceptance, start to better see your unity with all things and see everything as simply more self just in disguise. Monday-you sees the way Tuesday-you and Sunday-you are also you. You stop identifying with the Mondayness of Monday-you and start identifying with you-ness Monday-you, and that's when you start to understand the real you. Scott-you sees the way Tristen-you and Amaya-you are all one in the same. Man-you and woman-you see the way you are are one in the same. Human-you and dog-you see the way you are one in the same. Mammal-you and tree-you see the way you are one in the same. It can seem paradoxical or counter-intuitive, but it's nonetheless the case that by acceptingly seeing how other yous are really also you and to acceptingly see with unconditional loving acceptance how it's tautologically the case that you would absolutely do exactly as they do if you were in their shoes because it's not hypothetical: you are in the shoes, and what they are doing is what you are doing because you, the real you, are also them. It's only the shoes that change, never the wearer. In an important sense, everything that is done is done by you, either this you or another you. It's just a question of whether you did it on Monday or Tuesday or a different day; if you did it through that man's body or this man's body. It's just a question of outfit. You don't blame or judge anyone else for anything, because there is nobody else to blame. You don't blame anything else because there is nothing else to blame; all that is real is the singular shared self and self-determination. The otherness and separation are an illusion, and it's ironically and seemingly paradoxically that by practicing the principle of live and let live and holding in utmost esteem the ideals of spiritual freedom, self-responsibility, and self-determination that you both (1) most accept would-be others exactly as they are and (2) realize they aren't others. It's through the superstitious judgementalism, the moralizing, and the lack of respect for would-be other's self-responsibility that we give overemphasis and false reality to the illusions that separate us and make us forget our spiritual unity and the utter perfection of the world--of reality itself--as a perfect timeless whole.
And if you believe in a literal or figurative god, you then see God's will and yours as one in the same, as coherent.
Or, otherwise, call it the will of the Universe, or Mother Nature, or whatever you want it. Whatever you call it, he, or she--you will see it's will as coherent with yours, and yours with it. And then your shared will shall be done, gracefully, without trying. Failure is revealed as an illusion, which reveals a type of omnipotence and unifying thinghood-transcending singularity. The universe doesn't miscalculate. Reality is right. This world, this one real world, as a timeless whole, is perfect, both in its beautifully diverse and infinitely varying clothes and in terms of the singular spirit that wears all these outfits. The former is everything but consciousness, and the latter is consciousness itself, but the true reality transcends even that duality. Even dream and dreamer become revealed as one.
You cannot truly judge another, because there is no other to judge.
You cannot true hate another, because there is no other to hate.
There is only your beautifully diverse reflection in the mirror, to love or hate, to accept or not.
When you see someone making a choice that you might struggle to lovingly accept, don't think to yourself, "they made that choice," think to yourself, "I make that choice, when I wear that outfit. In this other outfit, over here in this other unique spot of spacetime, I make this other choice. What beautiful diversity! What wonderful free-spirited creativity!"
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.
