Hi, everyone. This is Jim McCarty welcoming you to the L/L Research podcast, In the Now, Episode #50. L/L Research is a nonprofit organization dedicated to freely sharing spiritually oriented information and fostering community. Towards this end we have two websites: the archive website, LLResearch.org and the community website, Bring4th.org.

During each episode those of us at L/L Research form a panel to consider questions from spiritual seekers. Our panel consists of Gary Bean, Director of L/L Research, and Austin Bridges, Assistant Director of L/L Research, along with myself, husband to the late Carla L. Rueckert, scribe for the Ra contact and President of L/L Research. Each of us is a devoted seeker and student of the Law of One. We’ll be discussing questions that are sent to us from spiritual seekers around the globe. Our replies to these questions are not final or authoritative. Instead, they are generally subjective interpretations stemming from our own studies and life experiences.

We intend this podcast to be a platform of discussion as we consider questions that often challenge us to articulate our own perspective. We always ask each who listens to exercise his own discernment and listen for her own resonance in determining what is true.

If you would like to submit a question for the show, please do so. Our humble podcast relies on your questions. You may either send an email to or go to www.LLResearch.org/podcast for further instructions.

Again, I’m Jim McCarty and we’re embarking on a new episode of L/L Research’s weekly podcast, In the Now. Is everybody present and ready to go?

Gary is.

Yes, I am.

We have a quorum. All righty then, we have a question, too. They match. There is balance in all things, which is handy because our first question is about balance. Michael wrote us this question via email:

“Ra suggests the exercise of balancing opposite emotions. It makes sense for me to balance in both directions, even from the positive emotion to the negative since it feels as if there’s no judgment and not any preference expressed, which makes sense to me, but it also feels a little bit strange to balance kindness with anger.

I do not think there is a strong creative effect when the charges of any emotion are neutralized. On the other hand, I think one is more free to choose if an emotional charge is neutralized than when it is charged, even positively. The advantage of a positive charge, I feel, is that it is more creative and helps to experience the positive qualities of life.

How do you understand the teachings and what is your opinion about them?”

Gary, why don’t we start with you?

I echo Michael’s really good question in a couple parts. The want to start by first saying that the balancing exercises have always been a bit confusing for me. Like, why balance patience with impatience? Isn’t impatience a distortion of patience? And moreover, I haven’t really used Ra’s balancing exercises as they articulate them. You know, accentuating something so much, then allowing its antithesis to come into being.

That said, I still have contemplated the subject and I have some thoughts about the meaning and purpose of balance. In so far as I can understand the balancing exercises, the function is to help precipitate the understanding that you are a being of unity. As such, you contain every possibility, and every potentiality. If you see one quality manifesting in your experience, balancing helps you to understand you have the correspondingly opposite quality within you as well, though it may be dormant or latent or unexpressed. In this way, you dis-identify with the personality you think you are and identify more and more with all of the creation, realizing that you are not necessarily one particular set of qualities. Rather, you are all qualities. You are all things, and you contain all things.

Thusly, when conducting the balancing exercises, you:

A. See firsthand that you literally have within you every quality and…

B. As such, you have compassion for yourself and all other selves.

Thusly, you can integrate all things and you can be not so terribly moved, swayed, or disturbed by an experience. Instead, you are truly free to respond with a “finely tuned compassion which sees all things as love.” That’s what Ra said.

Part two. I don’t think the goal of balancing is to be neutral, per se, or maybe that word can apply. In #42.2, Ra says:

“The exercise of first experiencing feelings and then consciously discovering their antitheses within the being has as its objective not the smooth flow of feelings, both positive and negative, while remaining unswayed, but rather the objective of becoming unswayed.[…]

The catalyst of experience works in order for the learn/teachings of this density to occur. However, if there is seen in the being a response, even if it is simply observed, the entity is still using the catalyst for learn/teaching. The end result is that the catalyst is no longer needed. Thus this density is no longer needed.

This is not indifference or objectivity but a finely tuned compassion and love which sees all things as love. This seeing elicits no response due to catalytic reactions. Thus the entity is now able to become co-Creator of experiential occurrences. This is the truer balance.“ So, a couple more thoughts from me. Such an entity who does not have a charged response, but instead emanates love and sees all things as love—and does not have the vision blinded by separation and feels unity with all things—is and entity that is free from the illusion more or less. The entity is not confined by the conceptual barriers of the illusion. Instead, it has returned its consciousness to unity with the Creator. It is an awakening from the dream.

When you know you are seeing the movement of mirage, illusion, and dream, are you so disturbed or moved by it? Or can you instead witness and offer the most important and fundamental of services—the service of being? The service of being is a clear conduit to the Creator’s limitless love and endless love.

So, for the personal energy to rise through the chakra system and eventually unite with the energy of Intelligent Infinity through the crown chakra, the energy system needs balance. One chakra’s distortions cannot be pulling at the energy in a lopsided fashion or the mind complex cannot be in conflict with the body complex or the subconscious cannot be in conflict with the conscious mind and so forth. That energy needs a clear pathway.

By “discovering” the antithesis, we come to see that we contain all things. We can thusly open our heart wide and practice forgiveness and non-judgment, and make that pathway wide and clear. But, I conclude my thought by reminding Michael and anybody listening that I am just a seeker who definitely does not have all the answers. Back to the host.

Well, good job, Gary. For somebody who doesn’t have all the answers, you supplied a goodly number of them. Austin, what have you got to say about this topic of balancing?

To build off of Gary’s great answer, I also approached Michael’s question from a couple different aspects. The first aspect is one that Gary touched on, which is the idea of positive and negative emotional charges. Specifically, what might be considered positive and why we want to balance those. I agree with Michael and Gary that that’s sort of a confusing aspect, but I think that I have a bit of insight into that.

Like Gary, I can’t say for sure I totally, fully understood the idea of this balancing exercise, but taking the quote that Gary used, I also thought it was very enlightening where Ra says that balance “is not indifference or objectivity, but a finely tuned compassion.” They also say within that same quote that “this seeing elicits no response due to catalytic reactions.”

So, I think that the key to my answer lies in that idea. But first off, it seems to me that seeing all things as love is a positive thing. But according to that statement, it’s instead sort of a balanced or neutral state. I think that there’s a bit of subtlety here in what is considered positive in the sense that it needs to be balanced. Ra says that in seeing all things as love, there is no response due to catalytic reaction. I think that this is where balancing positively and negatively charged emotions might come in. I’ll use an example that Ra used, which is that of patience and impatience.

So let’s say that you are put into a trying situation such as dealing with an obstinate child or an obstinate adult who is trying their hardest to push your buttons and to test your patience. You find yourself tested, but you are able to manifest the patience needed to remain calm. You never break your patience and you’re able to find that you can act lovingly within this situation, despite the other entity’s most persistent attempts to break you. But in order for you to recognize that you were patient, you had to meet the friction that tested that patience, and essentially have that negative charge of impatience somehow manifested within you.

The patience is no doubt a good thing, especially for the positive entity, but I think that in this scenario, it’s still a response due to catalytic reaction. In a sense, the patience was manifested to counter-act impatience. That impatience, finding no outlet, is then repressed and sits within the unconscious unrealized. When an emotion such as that remains unconscious, I think that it will play games with our perceptions. We might end up projecting it or it might come out all in one big tsunami of emotion. Or, at the very least, it simply sits in our unconscious unrealized without us acknowledging that we, as humans, contain that as an aspect of ourselves. Like Gary was saying, we contain all things. We are three-hundred-sixty-degree human beings and I think that the balancing exercise is asking us to simply acknowledge that and to recognize that wholeness within ourselves.

Upon a truer balance, patience might no longer need manifested in a situation. That doesn’t mean it is replaced by impatience, but rather simply love. And perhaps in some perception, patience could be observed. Perhaps somebody sees you act loving in a situation with a person who is testing your patience and thinks, “Wow, that person has an abundance of patience.” But to you, you don’t recognize it as patience—which is counter-balancing impatience. Rather, your actions are simply a love reaction that is not defined as anything other than love. Actually, it is not reaction. Rather, it is just the simply the state that you’re in, unmoved by this other person.

So, that’s the aspect of balancing positive emotions that I think makes sense to me at least—seeing love as a neutral state, rather than a positive state because positive states are reactions that need to be balanced with internal negative states, which are states that the balancing exercise helps us to acknowledge rather than act out or anything like that.

Michael also talks about a creative aspect. I’m not a hundred percent sure what Michael means by creative effect or that a positive charge is more creative. Perhaps Michael is right in that regard, imaging in my mind, art, or just sort of creative problem solving or things like that. But I think that creativity could likely be expressed equally throughout the entire spectrum. At the very least, creativity is certainly a common attribute of negatively-charged emotions. There’s plenty of art out there that is expressing and realizing negative aspects that do not come from the positive charge of emotions.

But considering the neutral nature of love, I do think that love could easily be expressed creatively from a balanced standpoint. Similar to how a balanced person might be seen to be patient in the situation I was talking about earlier, maybe a balanced creative expression that is easily seen as being positively charged, is actually simply coming from a place of neutral love. I think that it’s possible.

When it comes to creative things, especially things like art, it’s important to think about what the purpose of art is. Perhaps a person who is balanced is less likely to have creative expressions like that. But art is here to help us understand the full spectrum of human consciousness, and it is here to help us balance and express these unconscious things that maybe we’ve put away. It perhaps brings to our attention the things that are maybe just begging for us to address them or the things that we just really feel need to be expressed.

So, it might be a good thing that from a neutral state art might not be expressed as easily because art might instead be an expression of the imbalanced. As such, imbalance is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s what we’re here to experience as humans on earth, both in positive and negative ways. We are to fully immerse ourselves in that and come to appreciate it.

My final thought on this is that the balancing exercise, and knowing what an ideal balanced person looks like is a good thing, but I don’t think that it should preoccupy our thoughts. Expressing things creatively is a way to know ourselves better and to appreciate the human experience. It’s okay to appreciate that creativity simply for the sake of expression or the sake of appreciating what we are here experiencing without the consideration of balance. I think that balancing can be a tool, rather than something we live our lives by.

So, those are my thoughts. How about you, Jim?

Good job, Austin. Well, let’s see, let’s see. I don’t think I would balance kindness with anger. I would balance it probably with unkindness or rudeness or brusqueness. Just want to get that little point out of the way.

We are all portions of the Creator. As Don mentioned in one of the early sessions, the Creator sends out this white light and that white light—due to various angles, rotations, speeds, and rotation of the photon—condenses into what we see as the creation, including us. We all are made of light. Everything is made of light. Our energy centers are made of light.

What we’re trying to do here in third density is begin or, I guess, continue our evolutionary process that began in first density and the second. We try to really put some consciousness on it here and to make a choice, either positive or negative polarity. In doing so, we will be able to continue on in our journey of attempting to gather again all of the light in the form that it was when the Creator first sent it out. We’re trying to become one with the Creator.

In the process, we learn a whole lot of stuff that doesn’t seem like it’s part of the Creator. As seekers of truth, we have preferences to have certain positive experiences of when to give love or when to receive love. We hopefully are wise in helping other people solve problems that they might ask us about, but though we want only to see the best and the highest of each person and each experience in our own lives, we will come in contact with every emotion that exists sometime in our life, I guarantee it. They are all out there and we will find them in the strangest of places.

So, we need to be able to deal with it because as Gary was pointing out, the energy centers need to be able to transmit the light from the Creator. The intelligent energy that comes from our sun’s sub-Logos will move through the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and up into the violet ray. This energy will move through smoothly if we’re able to balance ourselves. If we’re not able to balance ourselves, then there’ll be some problems there.

I want to read you this second paragraph from #41.19. Ra says:

“The key to balance may then be seen in the unstudied, spontaneous, and honest response of entities toward experiences, thus using experience to the utmost, then applying the balancing exercises and achieving the proper attitude for the most purified spectrum of energy center manifestation in violet ray.

This is why the brilliance, or rotational speed, of the energy centers is not considered above the balanced aspect, or violet-ray manifestation, of an entity in regarding harvestability…”

Now here comes the sentence I think is why we do this, why we balance…

“…for those entities which are unbalanced, especially as to the primary rays, will not be capable of sustaining the impact of the love and light of intelligent infinity to the extent necessary for harvest.”

So, we need to be able to welcome in this love/light of the Creator when it’s time for us to be harvested, which apparently is now, so get ready for that. We need to be able to welcome it to the extent that we can use it as a viable tool for us to further our own growth, our own seeking, and our own service as we progress into the fourth density and hopefully beyond.

Now, Austin covered the first part of some more information that Ra talks about in session #5.2 regarding why we would want to be balanced. In order to make this coherent, I’ll recover it:

“To begin to master the concept of mental discipline it is necessary to examine the self. The polarity of your dimension must be internalized. Where you find patience within your mind you must consciously find the corresponding impatience and vice versa. Each thought that a being has, has in its turn an antithesis. The disciplines of the mind involve, first of all, identifying both those things of which you approve and those things of which you disapprove within yourself, and then balancing each and every positive and negative charge with its equal. The mind contains all things. Therefore, you must discover this completeness within yourself.”

You are a part of the Creator and you are complete. Even though you might be unbalanced in some way or other in various energy centers, you are still whole and perfect, and you still have the potential to be totally one with the Creator. Ra continues and says:

“Now the second mental discipline is acceptance of the completeness within your consciousness. It is not for a being of polarity in the physical consciousness to pick and choose among attributes, thus building the roles that cause blockages, and the confusions in the already distorted mind complex. Each acceptance smooths part of the many distortions of the faculty you can judgment engenders.”

Judgement—I underlined that. We have judgment, but we do not have understanding. So our judgment is likely going to be wrong time and time again. We cannot look at any action of any person at any time and judge it good or bad because we don’t know what went into that action. We don’t know what the motive was and we don’t know what the potential outcome is. This is true for us, too. We do the best we can to grasp the situation that we’re in and to move through it with as much harmony and love and equanimity as possible. But, what we need to do since we don’t understand purely and completely what’s going on, is to take every emotion that moves us away from that finely-tuned compassion and balance it with its antithesis. This doesn’t mean we’re need to carry out the negative emotions in actuality. Hopefully, we don’t. But mentally, we need to do that. We need to observe all the emotions that come our way and go through our being. We need to think about them. We need to balance them and we need to seek them within our being so that we are be able to accept the Love/Light Intelligent Energy of the One Creator on a daily and constant basis and eventually crystalize our energy centers so that we are able to be harvested and be of greater service to the Creator and those about us.

Any final thoughts or additional thoughts from either one of you on the topic of balancing?

There was a rare moment when all three of us had lengthy answers. Usually Jim is shorter, but I must tip my hat to both you guys. Brilliant replies. We obviously work together and relate to each other all the time, but it still doesn’t preclude the possibility that I can be blown away by something you guys say. So, thank you guys very much. No further thoughts from me.

How about you, Austin?

Nope, not from me. I echo Gary’s sentiment. Very privileged to be on this podcast with both of you.

Yeah, I wouldn’t go that far, but…[laughter] I am just kidding. [laughter]

It’s acceptable. Okay, Kyle sent this question via email:

“I started this journey seeking really only two years ago. Until I found the Ra material by way of David Wilcock, I thought there was something missing in my life.

I grew up staunchly religious, a Lutheran, and messages as dictated from the church seemed antithetical to what I felt in my core. Since finding the Ra material and subsequent materials through Q’uo and other messengers, I can say that I feel this so deeply in my being. However, this has been such a leap for me. My programming was too strong, that it’s been hard to re-center and ground myself in the teachings without wondering about how many corners or cliffs I might accidently fall off of due to my own misunderstanding and seemingly lack of cohesion with others in the world.

I guess what I’m wondering is how you all got to the place where you felt fully invested in this path. What happened in your lives and brought you to this place of knowing? I wonder this only because I feel alone in this journey physically and knowing how you all came to where you are would help me, just the knowing of it.

I’m not sure that makes much sense, but I’m not saying I doubt the path I’m on. I’m just wanting to hear someone else’s story. Is that something you can share? Specifically Austin and Gary, since there’s so much written on the founders, though I don’t know Jim’s story at all. I don’t know if this is of import or an unimportant detail that attracts from messages, but personally I’m curious about how you got where you are and how it has changed your life.”

Gary, how would you like to share your story with Kyle?

Well, heads up to the listeners that we’ll probably go a little bit longer on this show because my reply will be little bit longer since I couldn’t help but respond to one aspect of Kyle’s question before launching into my own reflection of my story. Firstly, I want to speak to Kyle’s apprehension, which is not uncommon, by making a couple comments. Kyle, you definitely have misunderstanding. You definitely have blind spots and you are definitely going to make, what you could call, missteps. But, you are not alone in this regard. This is true for every person on the planet.

Personally, I have misunderstanding and blind spots. I have made tons of missteps in the past and expect to make tons more in years to come. To be human is to err. As Ra said, without the potential for misunderstanding there would be no potential for understanding. So, spiritual evolution, in my understanding, is not about ridding yourself of these qualities. It is not even about getting it right, per se, or about attaining perfect understanding or knowledge. It is about trusting yourself, trusting where you are, and trusting who you are. It’s about leaping into the unknown and having faith that you are on the right track.

Why is this helpful? Because when you trust that no matter what road you take you cannot make a mistake, your vision is not being clouded by fear, by consuming worry, by gnawing self-doubt, or by self-attacking judgment. You are able to make discerning choices more clearly. And this trust and acceptance doesn’t mean that you sit inertly in negative circumstances. It just means, as I was saying, that your vision is not clouded. I would contend that it is the human programming that you identify within you that says, “Be worried, be afraid, be apprehension. Don’t fuck it up!” It is your heart, it is the Creator within you that says all is well. You are perfect as you are.

To that worried portion of you that I share in common with you, I would reorient the attention to focus upon keeping on. Keep refining your desire. Keep returning your attention to love. Keep seeking opportunities of responding to the call of service and keep finding your highest and best and release all the self-judgment.

Now I want to get to what was actually the heart of his question: how I got to where I am. Sorry for that prelude. I mentioned that I have misunderstandings and blind spots. So, let me assure you that I don’t know how I keep my head glued together some days. I am frequently overwhelmed by the great variety of catalyst that needs juggled every day. This world really overwhelms me at times. I find ample opportunity for worry, fear, and express anxiety. I find countless moments of forgetting the principles of spiritual evolution as my vision becomes entrapped in the world of shape and shadow, the world of lower chakra blockage where concerns for security, safety, self-identity, health, happiness, and so forth rule the day.

That said, I realized this year that over 50% of my life now has been spent upon the path of spiritual seeking. I awoke, as it were, at 18 years old and I look back upon my life and I see an identifiable arc of evolution. Since awakening I have grown leaps and bounds in self-understanding and self-acceptance. In retrospect, it’s clear that one identity died as a new, more authentic one slowly emerged. One of my own greatest challenges and source of catalyst on this journey has probably been a lack of self-acceptance. I used to be viciously hard on myself with self-judgment, a quality that tied into enormous social anxiety.

Early on in my spiritual path I used to be almost crippled in social situations. Nowadays, I still feel residuals of that energy, and will often avoid social situations where I don’t know people. But I have grown significantly more comfortable in my own skin, and I’m more able to communicate my thoughts and feelings. I’m also more able to be with others, more able to love, and more able to be ME.

How did I “get” here? Identifying cause and effect isn’t so easy for me. I can’t pinpoint one moment or one activity and then link it to results. Rather, I can speak to a long trajectory of determined seeking. In that trajectory I can see incremental but steady growth. Beyond the initial moments of the path, especially discovery of the Law of One books, there were no real glorious breakthroughs where I said suddenly, “Aha! I see!” or “I’m at the next level!” There is only a looking back and saying, “My God have I changed so much.” So, I just kept following my lights, putting one foot in front of the other.

There have been countless moments over the years that I would, what I would call, deviate from the path. That is, to focus on distraction, self-gratification, or intoxicants at the expense of spiritual discipline. But, for me, it’s been literally impossible to forget my seeking overly long. No matter which way I face, no matter which direction I travel in the moment, my inner compass will always reorient me to my north star, the goal and heart of my path.

And along that road there are so many tools that help, all of which you’ve probably come across or know already in your heart of hearts. Principally among them is meditation, of course. I don’t think there’s anything more powerful or potent in our own hands to affect our self-transformation or to deal with exactly what you’re describing, than meditation. Other helpful tools are connecting or working with other spiritual seekers, studying of spiritual materials, self-investigation, and finding and strengthening my desire, my will, and my faith. All of it perhaps falling under the umbrella of discipline and sustained effort over the long term.

That which will transpire in your life is a function of your desire and that discipline. Find it. Grab hold of it. Aim it. Exercise that desire slowly, steadily, quietly, and with—key word—persistence. This is not the work of a day or a week or a year, but a lifetime. We are each on a very long journey, and where you are right now, Kyle, is where you need to be. It is perfect. There are no mistakes. So keep digging within and find out what it is you truly want and I promise you the road will meet you right there, precisely there. It is a perfect mathematical and creative relationship between your will, desire, and faith, and that which manifests in your life.

And thank you for the very good question! Back to you, host.

Good job, Gary. Okay, Austin, you’re on. How has your journey been going for you?

I appreciate Gary’s willingness of open sharing and articulate nature of his answer. My answer will probably not be quite as articulate. But to give some background to my own journey, before I came to the Law of One I was a staunch atheist. Sort of how Kyle grew up staunchly religious, I think that being staunchly atheist is very similar. But, that sort of painted my journey to becoming comfortable. I wouldn’t say that comfortable is necessarily the right way to frame it, but I went through a very similar experience as Kyle is going through—at least at the point where he wrote this question—of feeling very lost and feeling ungrounded and like he might fall off a cliff.

When I went through my own awakening, I thought that I was going crazy. I thought all of my friends were going to abandon me. I thought this world was going to cast me out because this transformation I was going through almost felt like it was liberating and ultimately a positive thing in my life. But it just felt so alien to me that I thought that I was going to be a completely unrecognizable being in the eyes of everybody else, as well as myself. So, I set off to find some grounding again as a staunch atheist and as somebody who appreciated and still appreciates a strong skepticism and investigation and evidence-based beliefs and evidence-based findings.

I went through a series of investigations into both the spiritual path, as well as the idea of channeling and the type of spirituality that awoke within me. So basically, I used my skeptic attitude to attack this problem. Since it was channeling that essentially woke me up, my initial investigation was into channeling. I spent a good year or two just absorbing as much channeling information as I could that I found online. A main result of that was realizing that a lot of channeling information is either repeating the same thing or would be sort of negatively tainted, as Ra might put it. There’s a lot of things that indicate a mixed contact. But through this investigation, I found enough common themes within channeling. I think that this is similar to what Don found in the beginning as indicated in Secrets of the UFO–that there is a common theme among all these messages.

So, there is something objective about it, which is the goal of the skeptic and the material objectivist. We want to find an objective quality to these things. So, I did that and I had my own experiences with channeling that indicated the same thing, which eased my wariness a little bit. Then I just started applying these spiritual practices to my life and seeing the results, especially of the things I learned from the Ra material. Feeling and seeing the results of what I found in the Law of One helped me to realize through experience that I wasn’t becoming some unrecognizable alien being that was going to be considered just wacko crazy. Instead, I felt more comfortable in my own skin, like Gary was talking about. I started feeling like I could actually relate to the world on a deeper level, rather than lose my relationship to the world. Just living that life and applying it and experiencing it helped me find my grounding.

A big part of this was, like Gary was talking about, a lot of meditation. I think I have never meditated more than those first two years of my awakening. I think I really needed it, especially then. I would sometimes come home from work and meditate for like an hour and a half almost every single day. I think that attributed a lot to my finding grounding and feeling like I maybe wasn’t going crazy. Another thing that helped me feel more grounded was branching out and finding other types of spirituality that aren’t so out there as the kind that we deal with—that isn’t speaking to aliens, essentially. I found a spiritual system that felt more grounded in my own belief system of skepticism and evidence in the work of Ken Wilbur and the Integral Institute, as well as the works of Carl Jung and things like that. Those are more relatable to society, so those helped me feel like I wasn’t going crazy.

But, the primary point, I think, is something that Gary also touched on. I don’t think that we’re necessarily meant to feel completely at ease and completely grounded on this path. Kyle even talks about wondering about how many corners or cliffs that he may accidentally fall off. I think that is an interesting analogy because the Fool Tarot card has been modernly interpreted to be dancing towards the edge of the cliff that he might fall off of. Ra talks about how essentially the Fool is the role that we’re playing on our spiritual path. We don’t know that there might be a cliff in front of us. It’s an act of faith to continue on the path despite that. I don’t know what happens to the Fool fifteen seconds after the depiction on that card, but I don’t think he falls off and dies. I think that the whole point is that it’s a cultivation of faith. As the Fool walking this path, there are cliffs. We don’t know where the next step might lead, but taking that step is an act of faith and cultivating that faith is the hallmark of the spiritual path. That’s, I think, the most I would have for Kyle.

How about you, Jim?

Well, let’s see. I didn’t have a unique conscious independent thought until I was twenty-one years old. I was what you would call a ‘late bloomer’. I just followed the expectations of my mom and dad and went through most of the way through college with the idea that I would join the company that my dad worked for as a grocery store manager. Then 1968 rolled around and the Vietnam war and something happened—not sure, it might have been something in the water. I started thinking for myself. There was, of course, the hippie revolution, that I had to partake in, which opened up lots of doors. Some of them were drug-induced. I remember one especially. I heard this voice inside my head and it said, “You don’t have to be stoned to be here.” I thought that was interesting.

So, at the time I was in Florida in Teacher Corp and trying to work with inner city kids. I got another degree on the way to who knows what and I decided that I didn’t really want to teach. My life up to that point seemed to be a decision of not to do this and not to do that. I didn’t want to go into business. And so, I didn’t pursue my business degree in economics. I thought maybe I’d like sociology, so I got a sociology major. Nope, didn’t want to do that either. That’s when I decided to go into the Teacher Corp where I realized that I don’t want to teach either.

A lot of people would see those as failures. I saw it as perfect steps along the path because it got me where I was going, I think. I’m pretty sure it did. I ended up in Colorado at Adventure Trail Survival School learning a technique of self-therapy called “Brain Self- Control.” This technique taught that working with dreams and assaying and neuro-dramas helped to actually get the energy of the brain into the frontal lobes where it wants to go—if you could just get rid of those blockages you got in the way.

That was a very life-changing experience. I decided to try to do the same thing my teacher had done. He had the philosophy, “each one teach one”, so he invited and advised people to go get their pieces of land and to start their own schools. That’s how I got to central Kentucky. I bought some land and built a log cabin and lived there for a few years and started my own school. I had a couple of classes, but no big breakthroughs for my students, though. I guess they needed a better teacher.

Then I heard Don and Carla on the radio. A year later, I had a chance to meet them. After about a year of coming to their meditations, I joined them. It wasn’t too much longer after that that the Ra contact started, which was certainly a life-changing experience. It continues to change my life to this day.

I got to tell you, Kyle, I have no idea how that ever happened. I don’t know if there’s anything that really got me there. I am so blessed by that experience and I can hardly believe I was part of it. So I think that you just do what Gary and Austin was suggesting and just follow the path that’s right in front of you right now. You have made plans before this incarnation for how you want to grow and what you want to learn and how you want to serve. Trust me, they’re all there in place and they’re developing as they should. So just do what you’re doing and keep your eyes and your heart open and all will be well because all is well.

Any final thoughts on this topic, guys?

Not from me.

What Austin said prompted me to offer one more thought about my own path regarding the sense of feeling lost or feeling lonely. That is very common among Wanderers. In my own path as I transitioned from one world to the next, as Austin described his own transition, all my values and priorities changed. I went from being a very social person to hibernating in my bedroom, living with my parents, and questioning things. It was only in retrospect that I could make any kind of sense of it, but during those times it was a long, dark night. It was difficult and it was painful. I could reach out and call anybody I wanted to, but I no longer felt connected even to my own family for a while. That had to be reintegrated later on.

To this day—it’s 2016 and I’m 36 years old—I’ve been studying the Law of One for sixteen years and have been immersed in this L/L Research world. I have met the most beautiful people and have a network of family and friends, but to this day, I get stuffed into little dark corners inside where I feel kind of cosmically alone here in this world. It’s a pretty terrible, terrible feeling and things just don’t make sense. So, those things tend to revisit the seeker throughout their life no matter how no matter how much spiritual work they’ve done.

But if you do some research on the concept of faith and Confederation channeling, you’ll see a concept repeated again and again about how the function of third density is to intentionally confuse you and to spin you around so that you don’t know up from down. It’s only from that place of confusion and disorientation that you can turn to faith and take that leap into the unknown and say, “Even though my mind can’t make sense of things and even though I’m not exactly sure which way to go, I am just going to jump and trust that all is well without evidence and without qualification.” Then, out of that courageous act, flows your life. Then comes the next step and the next. And it is through that act that support comes, too, and that you begin to find your balance and your feet again.

So, that’s all I wanted to add. Austin or Jim, any more thoughts for Kyle?

I think that’s all for me.

All right. Now that I think about it, there is one more quick thing I wanted to bring into this episode, but I left it downstairs. So, if you guys don’t mind, just keep recording and I’ll get it.

We’ll keep recording the silence.

We’ll give our listeners the chance to meditate.

Well, you know, maybe Gary’s just involved in another type of balancing. You know, forgetfulness and remembering. We’ll both see. This is probably going to be a really good piece that he’s got there because having to run downstairs to get it? That’s a lot of work to get a thought that I guess is written on a piece of paper.

He’s in the kitchen.

He’s in the kitchen.

Maybe he’s…

He probably got hungry and decided to go down and get something to eat here.

[singing] Happy 50 episodes to you, happy 50 episodes to you. Happy 50 episodes to Austin or us. Happy 50 episodes to you. And many more.

So, this is Gary. I hope we don’t decide to cut this out. This is our fiftieth episode at In the Now and it’s pretty much Austin that manages this show and keeps it running. He collects questions from seekers and responds to seekers. He keeps them all in a database and arranges them for us for the show. He does the recording and he does the publishing to the website. He does the summaries and everything else. All Jim and I have to do is show up and reply to questions.

So, on our fiftieth episode, we surprised Austin with a cake to say, “Thank you!”

So, a round of applause from everybody listening for Austin.

Thank you. I don’t have a speech prepared.

I think we got Austin speechless. Okay folks, you have been listening to the L/L Research’s weekly podcast, In the Now. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please visit our websites, L/L Research.org and Bring4th.org. Thanks so much for listening and a special thank you to those who submitted questions.

If you’d like to send us a question for the next show, please read the instructions on our page at www.LLResearch.org and please know that we love you all.

We hope that you have a great week. We hope you’re getting in the holiday spirit. I hope all your Christmas shopping is done and your decorations are up and you can sit back and relax. New episodes are going to be published to the archive website every Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. Have a wonderful week. We love you all.