I was told by the doctor not to exert myself, that I must live a sedentary life, because I could drop dead at any moment. This scared me almost to death! After several days I said to myself, "I'm still alive! Drop this useless fear and instead use all you've got to see what you can do about it."

I resolved that either I get the answers or I'll take me off this earth, that no coronary was going to do it. And I had the where-with-all, enough morphine to do it-and in the most pleasant way. The doctors allowed me to have morphine to use when I would be overtaken by a kidney-stone attack.

The major thing I did after my coronary thrombosis was cut out from the world, one hundred percent. Formerly, I had been very active socially in the arts, opera, jazz, ballet and theatre, whenever I was in New York. It was my necessity for escape.

However, for three months I stopped all social activity, did no dating, and even cut out the weekend visits to my sisters and their families. I also cut off the phone.

It was a total cut-out from the world. I isolated, right in New York City. I'd only go out to buy food between 2 and 5 A.M. when the city streets were the emptiest. Stores were open all night in Manhattan. I saw no one except the grocer.

I was all out, hellbent on getting the answers.

I had spent over forty years of my life, mostly very unhappily. Friends would tell me, "Gee, Lester, you've got everything." I felt I had nothing.

I had a nice family and an unusually loving mother. I was given a good education. I was living on 116 Central Park South-and in the penthouse. My friends were many. But my life was unhappy and sick. I had suffered twenty years with hay fever, fifteen years with ulcers and a half dozen perforated ulcers, enlarged liver and kidney stones. About twice a year I'd get jaundiced. I developed migraine headaches. Then heart trouble. And fear, anxiety and frustration all my life.

After my coronary I was told I might drop dead any minute. "Don't climb a stair unless you absolutely have to," I was warned.

That was in 1952. I was forty-three years old.

I was desperate.

This fear of dying scared me more than I've ever been scared in my life. It caused me to conclude with determination, "Either I get the answers, or I'll take me off this earth. No heart attack will do it!"

And I had a nice easy way to do it, too-morphine that the doctors had allowed me for my kidney stone attacks.

That determination to get the answers was the thing that gave me full realization of what life and happiness are.

After a few days of fear of dying, I resolved that there was nothing I could do brooding about it.

I started thinking of a way out. I sat alone in my apartment and just thinking, thinking, thinking.

I had a problem and had to get the answer. So I sat me down and said, "Lester, you were considered smart. You were an honor student in high school. You won a scholarship when only three scholarships to Rutgers University were awarded through competitive, statewide examinations. You were an honor student in college." But for all of that, I was dumb!  dumb! dumb! I did not know how to get the very elementary thing in life-how to be happy! 

Well, what do I do?

All of my past knowledge was useless. So I decided to drop it all and start from scratch.

Okay. Well, what am I? What is this world? What is my relationship to it?

I began reviewing the little happiness I had known and it was always related to a woman.

"Oh, being loved by a woman is what happiness is!" Then I thought, "Well, here I am. I've had and still have lovely women wanting me. But I am still miserable!" 

I thought, "Then it's not being loved!" I began reviewing it again and I discovered that when I was loving them-then, I was happy.

Conclusion: my happiness equates to my capacity to love.

Then I went through a very keen process of trying to love others. I would review my past behavior. Where I thought I had been loving, I saw I wanted to be loved. For instance, when I saw that I had been nice to a girl only because I wanted something from her, I would say, "You son-of-a-gun, Lester. Correct that!" Then I would love her for what she was, not for what I wanted from her. I kept on correcting this until I could find no more to correct.

The next big awareness that came to me was what intelligence is. I got a picture of a single overall intelligence that each one of us is blindly using, available to us to the degree we do not cut off. I also discovered that I am responsible for everything that happens to me. Then I discovered that every thought materializes, sooner or later. Thereafter I took responsibility for everything that was happening to me. Looking for it, the initiating thought would come up in mind, and it being conscious, I would then be able to drop it.

I was letting go and undoing the hell I had created. By squaring all with love, trying to love rather than trying to be loved, and by taking responsibility for all that was happening to me; finding my subconscious thought and correcting it, I became freer and freer, happier and happier.

The picture of intelligence that I received I think is interesting. I suddenly got a picture of the amusement park entertainment consisting of bump-cars that are made difficult to steer so that the drivers continually bump into each other.
They were all getting their electrical energy from the wire screen above, through a pole coming down to every car. The power above was symbolic of the overall intelligence and energy of the universe coming down the pole to me and everyone else, which we were all using and bumping into each other, instead of driving along together in harmony.

We use this intelligence in life and we just bump! bump! bump! That was the first picture I got of life and intelligence.

We all have a direct line to that infinite intelligence up there and we are using it blindly, wrongly, and against each other.

For the first two months I was getting answers to, "What is happiness, intelligence and love?" As the answers came, I was gradually being unburdened of my miseries and tensions.

The very first insight was on love, seeing that my happiness was determined by my capacity to love. That was a tremendous insight. It began to free me. Any bit of freedom when you're plagued feels so good. I knew that I was in the right direction. I had gotten hold of a link of a chain and was determined not to let go until I had the entire chain.

Then I saw that my sum-total thinking was responsible for everything happening to me, and that gave me more freedom. I could control my life by undoing the compulsive behavior, all of which had been determined in the past, and was now subconscious.
 
The third phase was discovering and recognizing who and what I really am. I began to see that we are infinite beings with no limitations; that all limitations were only concepts in our minds, learned in the past, and being held on to.
  
When we see what we really are, we can see that we are not that limited being that we had thought we were, and we can then easily drop the limitations.

Working on those three things, I became freer and freer. My heart became lighter. I was happier, more at peace. My mind got quieter. Then my curiosity took me all the way. I said, "If this is so good, I must find just how good it can get. I'll go the limit."

I'd had a life mostly of misery. So when this wonderful thing of happiness began coming in, I wanted all of it. I doggedly kept at it.

And then all of a sudden powers fell in on me. I could know anything anywhere.

I saw there were people just like us on endless numbers of planets.

Then I took a look across the country to Los Angeles. I called up this friend and said, "In the living room there are three persons," and so on. I started telling him what was going on. Dead air! Suddenly I realized I had frightened him. I had to cut the conversation short.

I was amazed at the very pleasant sensation of watching divine laws in operation. The fascination was not the powers themselves, but the watching and witnessing of the divine laws operating. I really didn't feel like the doer.

I knew these things were not to be latched on to. I knew that ifI got interested in them, I'd stop progressing.

I had seen by this time that this world is a mentation-a dream. So to get interested in the dream again through interest in powers would trap me back into what I was wanting to get out of.

Toward the end of my period of seeking, lone day saw that, my gosh! This whole thing is like a dream in my mind, just like a night dream! And it's a dream that never really was any more than a dream you had last night was. Was it a real thing, that dream you had last night? No. It was only in your mind. But of course until one awakens out of this everyday waking state, it seems real to one.

The new reality was that I am, and that's all there is! That my beingness is the changeless essence of the universe, of course, I was punch-drunk, slap-happy, and in a state of euphoria.

In this state the whole world looks perfect. Looking at my body, I also saw this body as part of that perfection. This instantly corrected all my ailments.

Several times on the way up I'd get a realization that would so supercharge my body, I'd have to walk for miles and miles at a good pace.

Some of those realizations are really more than a body can take. You can't sit still. Many a time I was forced to walk off the new, intense energy.

I was undoing the subconscious hang-ups, tendencies, predispositions, realizing more and more that I am free, that freedom is my basic nature. I was getting freer and freer and I automatically went into a state where, having undone enough of the mental limitations, the real Self of me began presenting itself to me.

I saw that the real "I" of me was only beingness, was only existence, and that my beingness was exactly the beingness of the universe. And when I saw that, I identified with every being in this universe; I identified with every atom in it. And when you do that you lose all sense of being a separate individual, an ego.

When I saw that, that I AM the Amness of this universe, I then saw the whole world as just an image in my imagination, like a dream.

I imaged or dreamt that I was a body. And I'm dreaming right now that I'm this body.

In reality, the only thing that is, is Isness, That's the real, changeless substance behind everything. And you are that, too.

When I started, I couldn't have been much lower. I was plagued with all these ailments accumulated over the years topped with a coronary, and with deep depths of depression and intense misery.

Three months later I was at the other extreme; I was so happy I had a smile on my face that I could not take off. I felt  an euphoria and lightness that is really indescribable.

Everything of life itself was open to me-the total understanding of it. It is simply that we are infinite beings, over which we have superimposed concepts of limitation. And we are smarting under these limitations that we accept for ourselves as though they are real, because they are opposed to our basic nature of total freedom. However, they are just mentations, mental concepts.

Life before and after was at two different extremes. At first it was just extreme depression and sickness. After, it was a happiness and serenity that's indescribable.

Life itself became so beautiful and so harmonious that all day every day everything would fall perfectly into line. As I would drive through New York City, I would rarely hit a red light.

When I would go to park my car, people, sometimes two or three people, would stop and even go into the street to help direct me into a parking space. There were times when taxicab drivers would see me looking for a parking space and would give up their space so I could go into it. And after they did they couldn't understand why they did it. Here they were out, double-parked!

Even policemen who were parked would move out and give me their parking place. And, again, after they did it, they couldn't understand why they gave up their place to me. But I knew they felt good in doing what they had done. And I was thankful all the time.

But there wasn't anything I did in those days that didn't seem to affect everyone around me. My vibration made them feel good. It made them feel giving. It made them more loving. And so they would try to help me.

If I went into a store, the salesman would happily go out of his way to help me. Or if I would order something in a restaurant and after change my mind, the waitress would bring just what I wanted even though I didn't tell her. Actually everyone moves to serve you as you just float around.

When you are in tune and you have a thought, every atom in the universe moves to fulfill your thought. And this is true.

Being in harmony is such a delightful, delectable state, not because things are coming your way, but because of the feeling of God-in-operation. It's a tremendous feeling, you just can't imagine how great it is. It is such a delight when you're in tune, in harmony - you see God everywhere! You're watching God in operation. And that is what you enjoy, rather than the thing, the incident, the happening. His operation is the ultimate.

When we get in tune, our capacity to love is so extreme that we love everyone with an extreme intensity which makes living the most delightful it could ever be.

Love Eliminates Fear
Love Is The ULTIMATE

Source:

• Sedona Method

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