As wildfires raged across Los Angeles, consuming homes and leaving communities in turmoil, a single social media post ignited a firestorm of its own. A prominent real estate investor, faced with the threat of losing his luxury home, turned to an unconventional solution—offering to pay “any amount” for private firefighters. What followed was an intense wave of public outrage and debate, with critics accusing him of tone-deafness and privilege while others defended his desperate plea.

A Rich Man’s Unconventional Plea for Help

Keith Wasserman, a prominent real estate investor and co-founder of Gelt Venture Partners, found himself at the center of a heated controversy during the recent Los Angeles wildfires. As flames encroached upon his Pacific Palisades neighborhood, Wasserman took to social media with a desperate plea in a now-deleted post: “Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here. All neighbors houses burning. Will pay any amount. Thank you.”

Posted on January 7, 2025, the message quickly went viral, drawing sharp criticism from the public. Many perceived his offer to pay “any amount” for private firefighting services as emblematic of privilege and insensitivity, especially as thousands of residents were being evacuated and numerous homes were being destroyed. Critics accused Wasserman of attempting to divert essential resources for personal gain during a community-wide crisis. One X user remarked, “Incredibly tone deaf.”

The wildfires in question have been particularly devastating. The Palisades Fire, for instance, has burned over 17,000 acres with zero containment, leading to mandatory evacuations affecting approximately 180,000 people. The economic impact is staggering, with total losses estimated to be as high as $57 billion.

Wasserman’s actions have reignited discussions about the use of private firefighting services by affluent individuals. Such services, which can cost up to $3,000 per day, are often employed to protect high-value properties. While some argue that hiring private firefighters is a legitimate means of safeguarding one’s assets, others contend that it exacerbates societal inequalities, especially during widespread emergencies.

The criticism was further fueled by Wasserman’s previous social media activity, where he had expressed disdain for paying property taxes, saying, “real estate ballers don’t pay any.”

The controversy also highlighted broader concerns about the use of private firefighting services by affluent individuals. Such practices have been criticized for exacerbating inequalities, as they allow the wealthy to safeguard their properties while others rely solely on public services. This debate mirrors past incidents, such as when celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Kanye West faced similar criticism for hiring private firefighters during the 2018 California wildfires.

In response to the mounting criticism, Wasserman deleted his social media accounts. Before doing so, he acknowledged the viral nature of his post, stating, “Mama, I’m going viral!”

Despite the backlash, some individuals defended his actions, suggesting that in moments of crisis, it’s natural to seek any means to protect one’s home and family.

Finding Private Firefighters

Private firefighting companies provide a range of services, including the application of fire-retardant materials, creation of defensible spaces, and real-time monitoring during fire threats. The cost for such personalized protection can be substantial, with services reportedly charging up to $3,000 per day.

The employment of private firefighters has sparked significant debate. Some argue that these services offer an additional layer of protection, potentially alleviating the burden on public firefighting resources. In some instances, insurance companies have incorporated private firefighting services into their policies, aiming to mitigate potential losses by proactively defending high-value properties.

However, critics contend that the availability of private firefighting services accentuates societal inequities, granting enhanced protection to those with substantial financial means while leaving less affluent communities reliant solely on public resources. Concerns have also been raised regarding the coordination between private and public firefighting entities. Instances have been reported where private crews operate independently, potentially leading to safety hazards and operational conflicts. For example, during the Glass Fire in California’s Napa Valley, tensions arose between private and public firefighters over issues of coordination and safety.

The ethical implications of hiring private firefighters during widespread emergencies are complex. While individuals may seek to protect their properties, the broader impact on community resource allocation and the potential exacerbation of inequalities present significant challenges.

On Privilege and Crisis

The controversy surrounding Keith Wasserman’s plea for private firefighters during the devastating Los Angeles wildfires sheds light on the broader challenges of wealth, privilege, and communal responsibility in times of crisis. While his actions have drawn intense criticism, they also highlight the desperation many feel when their homes and memories are under threat. This incident has sparked essential discussions about access to emergency services, the ethics of private resource allocation, and the growing inequalities exacerbated by natural disasters.

As climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of such events, society must grapple with how to ensure fair and equitable access to emergency resources. This moment serves as a critical reflection point, urging a collective effort to balance individual needs with the greater good in disaster preparedness and response.

There are moments, days and sometimes even months where we must face our darkest hour. Sometimes this is represented by things happening in the world around us that create deep sadness, despair, and anger within us. Yet other times this can come about through our own inner world when we are going through some challenging emotions around our own personal experience. Often both the inner and the outer can intertwine and we do not always know what is our own sadness, anger and rage, and what is that of others or that of the world around us.

The first step to take is to focus on our breath while breathing in and out of our heart center. We can do this for some time, and then begin to deepen the breath by bringing it into the stomach while gently and lovingly guiding the breath as deep as it may go into the pelvis region. Then pause, and begin the inhale moving up through the body. See where the inhale stops, and then begin the whole process again. We can do this for some time until we feel at ease.

By focusing on our breath, we can tune into our very being and essence. This can be a form of meditation as well as a very healthy step to include in with other daily rituals of self-love, self-care and meditation.

Now let us tune into our heart. What is our heart trying to say? This may take some time as we are only now beginning to truly understand how important it is to listen to our heart. What is our heart trying to tell us about any given situation or emotion? The more this becomes a daily practice, the more the true safety of our very existence begins to become clear, and the more we begin to realize and make manifest our true hearts desire. On the outside, the more we practice this, the more we can become a part of co-creating a heart-based world.

“As we learn to tap into our heart’s intelligence, it increases our vitality, our resilience, and especially our health and happiness.”

-Dr. Rollin McCraty

Often the first instinct is to run away from these emotions and situations.  Now, if there is an environment or person who is unable to value and treat us as the beautiful souls we are, walking away and giving them space to heal what is going on within them can be a true act of love towards that person and our self. When we recognize that the behavior is not ours and is unwanted and harmful, we can walk away and bless them. Wish them well, wish them healing, and know that they have probably had a painful past that they need to heal. Forgive them, and move forward.

Forgiving does not mean this person or situation needs to ever be a part of our life again, yet it does allow us to create healing space for them while freeing us of the need to carry their emotions any longer.

Sometimes it can seem more difficult to let go and let the Universe handle the harm and destruction that takes place in the world around us. When there is injustice and great harm on the Earth, it is then most especially time for us to up our level of kindness, love, compassion, respect, humility, integrity and demonstrate what true healing is by being the light in times of darkness.

There is a very magical and powerful transformation from dark to light that takes place when individuals refuse to give up and give away their power, and instead up their game of self-love, self-care and kindness and compassion towards others.

“We have within us, a power that is greater than anything we shall ever contact in the outer, a power that can overcome every obstacle in our life and set us safe, satisfied and at peace, healed and prosperous, in a new light, and in a new life.”

Ernest Holmes

When we trust in our heart, follow our guidance, and discern what is right for our beautiful soul, we help the world to do so as well. There are situations and lessons that may arise, yet the more we learn to go within, and navigate them through our focused breath and heart space, the more we learn to let go and let the Universe, the more we learn to stand in our lighted power and walk into any darkness knowing by our very presence we will transform it.

Always remember, each one of us has a very beautiful and unique song to sing to the world. The more we shine our light like the stars we truly are, and the louder we sing our beautiful songs with our very own fragrance, the more the world responds with love. Let’s celebrate each other, let’s honor each other, and let us always remember that there is only one you and there is only one me. What are we waiting for, and when will we begin to light the world with our love? The time for me, and the time for you is now.

Let’s take three deep breaths together, tune in and turn up the love. Let’s follow the inner guidance of our heart so we can all arrive. We are growing, we are expanding, we are raising our consciousness and creating a new reality and thus a new world unlike any other. Yesterday already was, and tomorrow has yet to be, will you join us in filling today with hope, goodness, truth, love and beauty? We always have a choice. What will you choose?

Cover Image Credit: no more lookism discovered on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine

Ulonda Faye has a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies, and studied Peace and Conflict Research during her Masters program in International Relations. She survived a Near Death Experience during an accident that led her into Mind-Body-Spirit studies. She is a certified Wellness Practitioner, Rejuv Miracles Practitioner, and holistic esthetician as well as an ordained spiritual minister. Her services are available in person or through Skype and are offered in English and German. For more information, please visit fayenaturales.com

What intelligence quotient? Is there really a finely honed merit based tool for identifying the best and the brightest society has to offer? Like, off the top of your head: what is a neuron? How many neurons does the human brain have and what if we didn’t have any?

Human brains on average have 86 billion neurons. If we didn’t have any we’d be a sponge which have zero… Interestingly we were taught different until someone questioned it? In 2005 Dr Suzana Herculano-Houzel discovered that although 100 billion was used in all the science text books and journals they were all wrong. None of her colleagues knew where that figure came from so she set upon discovering the true figure. After liquefying human brains she then counted the neurons using a formula.

It’s the same with intelligence – with so many different definitions what we actually have are educated opinions. Intelligence is a formally recognized, organized and categorized structure of human perception. “Catching on, making sense of things or figuring things out” are three characteristics most experts agree on. “Reasoning, learning from mistakes and abstract thinking” are some others. Then there’s the ability to make sense of it all and translate that. The time it takes between individuals is of course taken into account.

Age and its association with either intelligence or wisdom are misleading and constrained understandings of both. After all Einstein was a 25 year old patent clerk when his “Theory of General Relativity” created shockwaves around the world. He was quoted as saying: “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” He also said: “A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so” however the heyday of the twenty something physics genius is gone… Today’s average age for Nobel Prize winners in physics is 50 and over 65 for writers.

As with all good mainstream science we can dissect it, wrap it in a multitude of statistics, facts, figures and BS – then stick it into our textbooks. Now really much of the knowledge we retain is on a need to know basis not overcomplexity. Do most of us need to know what a synapse, a neuron or quantum tunneling is? Tesla said: “Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.” Tesla was hands on – believing much of theoretical physics lacked observed reality. It’s the reason why we can read dozens of different theories on its nature with none being real.

Speaking of real, the WAIS-IV, is the current test by which we measure IQ but it has many critics who say the tests are easy to manipulate. Much of this is done in the US as a means to a predetermined outcome. If I asked you why electrons don’t fly out of their orbits of the nucleus of an atom what would your answer be? This issue alone is too complex for the scope of this article because it indicts the entire educational system. How all tests are structured determines the outcome. Determines steering allocations of educational resources including federal discretionary funds. Besides there are plenty of books on the subject.

So then that aside, how smart are you in actual mind power? As of this writing the top three richest people in the world are each worth upward of 70 billion US. If we based intelligence on income most of the rest of the world would be mental microbes. If artistic talent were our measure, we would come to the realization that some of history’s finest artists died paupers.

Most top scientists will never win a Nobel Prize and live otherwise ordinary lives outside of being extraordinarily smart. The same can be said of many religious scholars like St Augustine whose writing is thought provoking and meticulous. In fact some of the most brain draining reads I’ve ever experienced involved philosophy which uses language to transcend mortal thought.

Above: ENIAC was 8.5 by 3 by 80 feet and weighed 27 tons.

Now here’s something I was thinking about: Arguably the first computer unveiled on February 14, 1946 was the ENIAC aka “The Big Brain.” The IBM-701 went public in 1953 and could do 16 thousand OPS (Operations Per Second). Today Intel’s fastest desktop CPU can do over 300 billion OPS. Today’s fastest supercomputer is the Sunway TaihuLight which has a speed of 93 petaFLOPS or 93 quadrillion OPS. So we’ve gone from 16 thousand to 93 quadrillion OPS in around 60 years. We might then conclude that these increases will continue exponentially and computers will shortly surpass the entire human collective in processing power.

While web searching even my most obscure concepts I came to an epiphany. We – the human race have unknowingly taken the next step in our evolution. Where in the past we could work on problems or ideas collectively, we couldn’t do it in real-time. Now we can almost instantly access and filter trillions of ideas and bits of data contributed by hundreds of millions of minds working virtually as one.

What also struck me is how rapidly “AI” (artificial intelligence) is advancing. Autonomous AI internet search bots will soon understand the content they gather using “AC” (Artificial Consciousness). Entire libraries will be read in seconds on quantum scales. These synthetic entities will be our greatest thinkers, inventors, designers, physicists, philosophers, physicians… They’ll access databases containing all the knowledge from the history of human existence. Only, as it may take humans years to go from concept to result, for AI we may be talking minutes.

Somewhere around here a metaphoric event horizon occurs as was predicted by Dr. John Lilly in his 1978 book “The Scientist” talking about “Solid State Intelligence.” Our machines will become self-reliant eventually controlling human thought through timeline manipulation. They’ll guarantee their own creation, evolution and man’s dependency on them. This for me was incredible – we came to the same exact conclusion years apart.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom suggests that if one were living in a virtual world it would be indistinguishable from a “REAL” one. Elon Musk like many others agree and fears we may already be living in a simulation meaning the change event already occurred. Contrary to popular belief this idea of reality being an illusion predates antiquity. It did not start with Bostrom nor with the Lillys of the world – everyone’s in on this game. Science or theology as in the Christian “Omphalos” hypothesis which presents that God created the world ten thousand years ago. The universe was already complete with stars, planets, Adam and Eve. Much like a well written simulated world program.

So now here we are in a simulation? However we exist, it’s real enough to us. Speaking of what’s real, we’ve touched upon wealth, talent, religion, philosophy, science… but the question was: “How smart are you?” The truth is that it doesn’t really matter because the quotient is an illusion. It measures what a committee decides intelligence is at any given point in time. This usually involves political and cultural interpretations. It doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly be good at math or will now create a great symphony. It means that like millions of others you’ll pass or like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg all University dropouts you can still go on to change the world…

Written by the author Robert Torres. http://RTR-Publishing.com https://about.me/towers3

A soap bubble may serve as a good symbol of our individual, separate existence, as it surrounds and protects us, but at the same time completely isolates us from the external reality and the other ”soap bubble” people. We may try to get closer to reality or to another person, but we are never able to reach them, as there is the wall of the soap-bubble. We are only able to see reality and the other people through the wall of the soap-bubble, which is tinted to various colors by our opinions and desires.

Three Basic Motivational Factors

According to humanistic psychology, we have three basic motivational factors that determine the birth of personal identity. One is the need to belong to somebody, the other is the need of safety, and the third is the need of appreciation.

These demands or needs appear in our life in the order listed above, and they are hierarchically connected to each other. It means that the need of safety only becomes important when our need to belong to somebody has already been satisfied, at least to a minimum extent. Similarly, the need of appreciation will be important when we already belong to somebody (it can be an individual or a group), and our need of safety, stability has been met to a certain degree.

Satisfying these needs is of primary importance for us, as they provide the foundations for our individual existence and personal identity.

All this also suggests that our personal identity is basically social, as belonging to somebody, safety and appreciation all depend on other people.

 The foundations of our personal identity are constructed in the first years of our life, when we are embedded in the society of our family. Our parents are the ones who help us satisfy our needs, and in this way lay down the foundation stones of our separate, individual existence.

A soap bubble may serve as a good symbol of our individual, separate existence

In the Safety of our Soap-Bubble Castle

Our parents and teachers ”blow up” the soap-bubble for us, when they satisfy our initial needs, and we soon regard our soap-bubble as our own personal identity. In the course of our life, we develop the soap-bubble into a soap-bubble castle that we regard as safe. Since we have no idea that we are soap-bubble people, we are immensely proud of our own soap-bubble, the construction diary of which is added to our own personal history.

A soap-bubble town

Our soap-bubble castle does not stand alone in some desert; it stands in one of the streets of a nice soap-bubble town, close to the other soap-bubble castles, as the need to belong to someone, our needs of safety and of appreciation will only be satisfied in interaction with other soap-bubble people.

But, as a consequence of our soap-bubble existence, all these needs will never be completely satisfied, as the walls of our soap-bubbles do not allow real connection and contact with others.

The walls of the soap-bubble are created by our sense of separation which destines us to eternal solitude, even if there are hundreds of other soap-bubble people around us in our soap-bubble town. In order to alleviate the unpleasantness of loneliness, we decorate our soap-bubble existence with nice images made of the individuality of our life, and we fill books with nice tales of our life. The images, the tales and the alleged safety of the soap-bubble town lull us into a false sense of security, into a beautiful dream.

False Sense of Safety

There are numerous signs in our life that all indicate how false our sense of safety is. One sich sign is the confusion in our relationships with other people. This confusion is brought about the fact that as soap-bubble people we will never be able to completely understand the others, and will never be able to come into real contact with them.

We are only able to contact other people through the walls of our soap-bubble, but the wall is tinted into different, distorting colours by our desires and opinions. The distorting coat of colours will be thicker and thicker in the course of our life, making the originally transparent walls more and more difficult to see through. We therefore never see reality itself, but only something that we believe is reality.

Every single individual created their own individual reality in this way, and the reality thus created is different from all the other individual realities.

As there are no two identicial individual realities, the realities, when get into contact, often collide with each other. Naturally, there are realities which are similar to each other, and the force of collision is smaller when such realities meet, and it is likely that they are able to come into a compromise and create a district in the soap-bubble town where they enjoy a higher sense of safety.

Another sign that points at the weaknesses of our sense of safety is the fear of death, which is present in every human being.

The big unknown arrives, and bursts our soap-bubble castle in an instant

Enveloped in the false sense of security of our soap-bubble castle, we are all afraid of death, which will put an end to our soap-bubble existence. The big unknown arrives, and bursts our soap-bubble castle in an instant.

We may pretend that death does not exist, that after death we will be in a bigger soap-bubble, or the master who blows the soap-bubbles will protect us from perishing.

These tales only alleviate our fear of death somewhat, but will not fully eliminate it.

The End of the Soap-Bubble Existence

What is able to put an end to the soap-bubble existence?

The first step is the recognition that our existence is built upon false foundations, that there is something wrong with it.

Without realizing that, we so strongly identify with our soap-bubble existence that we consider that as our basic and natural state.

But if we start to wake up from the dream of our soap-bubble existence, we realize very soon that there is something wrong with us in the world around us. Then the glue binding us to the world of forms and shapes begins to melt away, a space, smaller or larger, is created in us and-detached from the forms and shapes-we are able to contemplate the forces determining our personal life as eyewitnesses.

Now we realize that this soap-bubble life, this separate world does not exist at all, it has only been created by our identification with thoughts, forms and shapes.

The obligation and urge to build up a personal identity generates this separation, this soap-bubble around us almost automatically. Society then feeds and sustains the separation.

What are we without our personal identity?

We are the free space of the Consciousness

When we wake up from the sleep of personal identity we recognize that we are the free space of the Consciousness. We are not identical with the shapes and forms appearing in this space, but we are the space itself, the space that enables the forms and shapes to appear and that keeps the forms and shapes alive.

~From the book: Frank M. Wanderer: The Biggest Obstacle to Enlightenment: How to Escape from the Prison of Mind Games?

Read more articles from Frank M. Wanderer

“Meditation is a subtle, barely perceptible stream, in which you will experience a radical shift of the center of gravity. The manifestation, limited in time and space, thick and heavy, that you have formerly regarded as yourself, changes into a weightless but ubiquitous point without limits and dimensions. The massive creature, bound to the earth that used to be you, is now free from its bonds and begins to soar.” Frank M. Wanderer

An Effective Remedy for the Overburdened Mind

Our Mind is one of the most sophisticated, most complicated instruments in the world. In this modern, rushing world, however, the Mind is bombarded with information to the extent that it virtually overflows. On those occasions the amounts of unprocessed information whirl in the Mind so fast that we are sometimes afraid of going mad. All the unprocessed information demands our attention, naturally, every single idea may appear to be very important for us. Our body reacts to the rushing stream of our thoughts, and sometime we fall ill because of the stress caused by our overburdened Mind. Is there anything that we may do to alleviate the burden of our Mind, is there a medicine to treat the problem?

Naturally, the remedy exists, and its name is meditation. A good night’s sleep in itself has long been insufficient for our Mind to rest. At night our body sleeps, but the our Mind continues to rush. The enormous amounts of information absorbed during the day are processed by our Mind at night. It is done with the help of dreaming. Thus, by the time our Mind has finished processing the information, our body is awake again, and a new day, full of stimuli begins. Our Mind therefore does not have its due share of rest, and it is soon overburdened. All this leads to a stressful life, and our body may eventually become ill.

We have to consciously find the time for our Mind to have some relaxation and to have an opportunity to shake out all that useless information. We must therefore find the place for meditation in our daily timetable. During meditation, the Mind rearranges itself, it is refreshed and revitalized and rejuvenated.

Active Meditation vs. True Meditation

In your present, isolated state of Consciousness, based upon your identification with your illusionary self, spatial consciousness is not present in your life, so you are unable to experience Consciousness free of forms.

But you have read a lot about this subject, so you wish to bring things beyond forms and shapes under the control of your Ego, in order to stabilize the Ego and make it permanent. You have read or heard somewhere that meditation is the best method to that end, so you have began to meditate diligently.

The Active Meditation

But you are approaching meditation the way you do with other objects of the outside world. You believe that meditation is also an activity of the mind, a concentration on an objects (e. g. a burning candle), or your own respiration or a mantra.

Meditation is therefore something that you perform yourself. Through active meditation you wish to reach a higher state of the Mind, which is expected to give you happiness, satisfaction and enlightenment.

You start to practice meditation as an individual self, as an Ego. You make efforts to tranquilize your mind. This activity may be successful up to a certain level, when you suppress your thoughts and emotions with your willpower, reaching transitory peace in you. That state will be lost immediately, when you stop concentrating, meditating, and no longer sustain the effort, as your mind returns to its usual activities, the old pre-conditioned patterns.

Meditation therefore has not brought you the lasting peace you had been longing for and you had read so much about, the peace independent of your mind that reinforces your existence in the world.

Your personal identity is rooted in your actions and the results of those actions. Your personal history is the chronicle of your actions and achievements.

The idea of being active is therefore a product of your conditioned mind, your Ego. Ambitions to acquire, to achieve something all work as motivations for action in the Ego-dominated mind. The desire to control, to manage are also powerful urges to act.

As you have seen, these very same forces are the ones that spur you to meditate. It is, nevertheless, not a bad phenomenon, as active meditation is the first step towards real meditation. Active meditation consolidates the outermost dimension of Alertness, that, is attention, in you.

The True Meditation

Your attempts at meditation are futile because real meditation is, by nature, effortless. It does not create an artificial quiet, but allows the deeper dimensions of Alertness to surface. This is the deep internal Silence that constitutes the real core of man.

The spatial awareness thus acquired remains with you after meditation, for longer and longer periods of time. You will eventually no longer need meditation, as the deeper dimensions of Alertness are there with you, so every moment in your life will be meditative.

Real meditation is always without object and is never the result of an activity, but Presence in the space of Consciousness. This natural, effortless Presence is meditation itself.

The deeper dimensions of Alertness, the awakened Consciousness, the world of Silence, are beyond the mind. This Silence is not forced upon us by some concentration technique, but the indescribable but experienceable of living emptiness. Conscious existence in the space of Consciousness.

A Simple and Powerful Meditation Technique

Let us take a closer look at that, how are the deeper dimensions of Alertness increase their presence in you, and how are you able to get from the state of consciousness meaning ”I am this and that” to the state ”I am,” how can you replace active meditation with real meditation?

Let us start by observing that in every waking moment you experience that you exist, you are. This experience is, however, so common and familiar that you do not dwell on it too long. Instead, you are preoccupied by “who are you” and “what are you.”

That is how your entire life story is born: ”What was I, what will I be, what I want to become”. The Ego-dominated mind keeps revolving around these questions, creating the psychological categories of time, the past and the future.

The fact that you exist means that you are alert. The fact that you are conscious and alert is the result of the pure Consciousness in you! In the following we wish to experience that pure Consciousness, we want to enable that Consciousness to awaken to its own existence in and through us.

Once you are able to keep your attention on the object of your meditation, now try to divert your attention from it to the space in which the object of your attention appears.

Then a new dimension of Alertness opens up in you. The space thus opening and the Presence appearing in it are now there for you to observe, your attention is able to grab them. You experience that you are Consciousness, sensing the work of the mind.

Now shift our attention to that contemplating Consciusness, to the “I exist,” to the pure Presence. Try to find the core of the Consciousness, the idea of ”I am,” and who the person who has done the meditations before really is.

Submerged into the Quiet of ”I am”

Submerge completely in the feeling of ”I am,” allow it to remain in itself, prevent it from being connected to thoughts and ideas, to the works of mind. Try to find the silence, the quiet of ”I am,” and stay within that.

In the meanwhile, try to locate Consciousness itself. Do not only watch what you are looking at, but also from where and with what intensity you are looking at it? In what quality are you watching? Who are you in the process of observation?

Be in the state from which recognition emerges, be at the source of recognition, where you are able to see recognition itself. Be in Sight itself.

Do not worry about the operations of your mind, just stay in the sensation of ”I am.” Do not qualify, do not interpret! Stay in the sensation of ”I am.”

Whenever your attention wanders away, trying to get into contact with thoughts, trying to be manifested in some story, bring it back to the state of ”I am,” and keep it there.

~From the book:Frank M. Wanderer: The Flames of Alertness: Discover the Power of Consciousness! (This books presents the path from active meditation to true meditation)

Read more articles from Frank M. Wanderer