DELIBERATE DEVOTION: Introduction & Prologue
With reverence for the quotes found in this book and for how they’re used to demonstrate certain areas of focused intent, they were compiled and provided not to represent the quoted as agreeing with this work or endorsing it, or this book endorsing them or their behaviors both past and future. Should anyone along the way choose to have their quoted words removed from future editions, please let this be known and we will grant your wish.
INTRODUCTION…
This book, in many ways, is like other devotionals you have read or come across, taking into account it was designed as a daily read, a daily meditation, and a daily reprieve from the moments to come before the day starts or continues in rapid succession. Most of you reading these words are familiar with the concept of a daily devotional, but what we have here is similar in scope but different in magnitude – this is a daily contemplational. The difference being, a devotional is aimed in a direction outside of oneself, whereas a daily contemplational is aimed inwards and outwards.
The creation of this book was modeled after my own journey, a tale we’ll dive into deeper throughout the prologue, but suffice it to say, here in your hands now is a book which has the power to change your life for the better. Whether you find yourself in a place of sadness or satisfaction, this book can help deliver you further into the arms of Love than youhave experienced to date with another of its genre. The design of this book follows a pattern of upwards movement throughout the scale of consciousness, with the precise design of these pages delivering escalating truths curated for one’s evolution of consciousness through inward reflection and outward application.
No one holding this book came across it by accident or by chance, for this book was written to be a guide when the reader was ready for higher truths. This book is in your hands because you need it, you’ve prayed for it, and whether you realize it or not, you were brought to it because something in your life is screaming internally for more truth around a particular aspect of Life or many aspects of a life lived in a more fulfilled fashion.
The book itself is broken into sections, with each section representing four weeks’ worth of contemplative writings, quotes from around the world, and prayers dictated directly from the Holy Spirit. I claim no ownership over the inspiration found within these pages, no ownership over the quotes, prayers, thoughts or conclusions within its covers, however, there is nothing found within these pages that is not truth. Nothing within this book will lead you astray from God or from Love, Truth, or from your religion of choice. If you have no religion, this is also a quality daily motivational for you, as it claims no religion to be superior or dominant over another, nor does one need religion to find the value in the pages to follow.
Every week starts with a truth found within holy scriptures of one kind or another taken from the book IF YOU LIVE IT, followed by a personal thought inspired from experience and a connection with the divine that presents itself today as a current reality. Daily, there are several things you will notice on each page, one being a quote, the second being a prayer, the third being a number in the middle of a starburst, with the last being a brief description of the author of the quote for the reader to place the provider. I do not subscribe to the entirety of the quoted authors’ works or viewpoints, however, the quote itself is what was found worthy of including within this book. I included the bit of information about the author should you choose to knowDELIBERATE DEVOTION further about the original source, or should you choose to investigate further who these people are whose wisdom is shared as part of the process towards transcendence.
My recommendation for each day, for those of you who enjoy recommendations, or for those of you who want the most out of this spiritual experience, is to keep a small booklet of blank pages of paper next to you when reading a new week or new day, and then transcribe the DAILY TRUTH and DAILY PRAYER on it, which in turn will then go in your pocket as something reflected upon throughout the rest of your day – a couple minutes here and there as you go about your normal day. Before going to bed, supposing you use this book as part of your morning routine, on the back of the page you ripped and placed in your pocket, I would write down what the quote means to you after contemplating on it throughout your waking hours. You might be surprised how much the truth of the prayer and the quote mean to you after an entire day spent contemplating on it.
When this book starts being a part of your daily life, do not be surprised if all of a sudden, as if out of nowhere, life changes as a result – for embracing a spiritual life is what this book is all about, living your life like a prayer is what this book is all about, and if you find your inner-life turned upside down, you will know the book is working. If you find yourself opening up more, crying more, smiling more, helping more, being of service or self-reflecting more, you will know this book is working. For those of you who desire enlightenment, you can use this book as an aid on your journey to Self-discovery. This book can act like a compass pointing towards truth, and if you find yourself stuck in certain moments of despair due to the inability to escape aspects of the mind, turn to any page for help or dive into the section best fitting your current state of affairs.
Best practice for consuming this book is starting from day one and completing 365 days straight of contemplations, but if you’re more like I was at earlier points in life, simply opening the book to any page is another form of correct usage. I cannot stress the importance highly enough of transcribing what you see on the page you’re working through onto a separate piece of paper, as there appears to be magic in the actual putting of pen to paper in deliberate devotion to contemplative truth. Don’t leave truth up to the mind to process without having the body react consciously in the process, so be sure to write down the thoughts, truths and prayers every time you start a new month, week, or day.
So far, in this particular journey, contemplation has been found more useful for personal clarity, surrender, forgiveness and gratitude -- far better than periodic and secluded meditation as formally practiced, but even if you are a seasoned meditator, the practice of contemplation will only broaden your spiritual scope of experience.
No one who endeavors to finish this book should feel obligated to finish it should they grow overwhelmed by life changing around them, as this book’s completion is not for everyone on their current journey towards Truth, and it might only be serving as a primer for now, like a seed planted awaiting springtime showers. However, I can promise you one thing, if this book remains on your shelf while waiting for it to call your name towards completion, and it will call your name at a certain point, it will be part of your story for years to come with regards to a year where everything changed for you.
One cannot walk away from completing this book and not have a life changed for the better -- it’s simply not possible. The calibrated level of truth found within these pages is life-transformative, and just having this book in circulation will one day draw you to it when you’re ready.
There is a companion book to this one entitled IF YOU LIVE IT by the same author and publisher. These books taken together and practiced in conjunction with one another will have the effect of delivering heaven on earth subjectively for the spiritual participant. But with regards to this book alone, you will not be sorry you chose to buy it, receive it, find it, and eventually complete it. And if I can be totally honest with you, the reason I know it will change your life is not because I hold my writing to be remarkably self-evident, but because I was but a willing channel for it to come through. The words found within this book are completely rare in their appointment, and they’re rare because everything found within these pages is truth, without an ounce of personal agenda by the author, and without a moment of desire wanted or praise required for the outcome it produces in your soon-to-be-changed life.
PROLOGUE…
Most prologues double down on the introduction while creating a degree more context for what the book you’re about to consume consists of. However, this is not a prologue for most books – here, we will dive into why this book was written, what it can be used for, and why it has the power to change your life for the better every time you work through it.
This particular life for the author, for the most part and for many years, could be characterized as a constant push and pull of the will run wild versus God’s will for this lifetime. For the vast majority of years alive in the body the world calls Mason, more energy and more time were spent actively rebelling against righteousness and hiding from God than most experiencers can account for in two lifetimes. Years were spent making choices worth being ashamed of, while continually and deliberately doubling down on those choices time and time again, attempting in each occurrence to drown the sorrow felt in the inner most beingness of conscious reality with getting/consuming something to sooth the pain.
On July 4th, 2017, time stopped somewhere in the early evening hours, and God showed up in a way that was undeniable. After years on the lamb with regards to living out a higher purpose for being in the body, the experiencer aspect of humanness came face-to-face with a choice, a choice which presented itself other times before, but this time when the choice was presented there was a knowingness it would be the last of its kind: choose Life and another way to live, or die and have to do it all over again. Subjectively, time stopped, and the world phased out of focus, the body stopped feeling and the mind was no longer obeying any thought patterns related to previous moments leading up until right then. As vision was reduced to a single internal knowingness without any doubt presenting itself, an inaudible voice came from within beingness screaming softly that the moment at hand is vastly different than the moments catalogued prior. What the moment and knowingness presented was simple, but what was a person to do with the ultimatum built on a solid foundation of denying a better way to live so far?
What you don’t know yet, and leading up until that night, was that an alcohol addiction had reached a point where life was no longer worth living. Regularly, attempts to plan out a quick death while driving a car had been presenting as a viable alternative to continue living, but the courage needed to actually unbuckle the seat belt at high speeds while aiming directly at a wall never came. I was regularly drinking myself into oblivion, close to homelessness and full of despair, sickness, physical and emotional agony, and to a point of no return should drinking continue much longer.
Drinking wasn’t fun anymore, with those days being long gone if they had ever truly been there at all. Now, drinking was executed to hide from the constant fears the mind managed to manifest once drinking no longer became just a casual past-time. I was drinking because I feared success, but not success in the way most people would think about it. I feared the type of success that meant I knew what my purpose in life was and part of the reason I was alive, but I couldn’t imagine ever living up to it, or for more clarity, I had no clue how to get from point “A” where the truth was known, to point “B,” where the truth manifested as reality.
Many years before the fateful night in 2017, in fact, 12 years prior at twenty years of age, I had my first moment on record where physicality no longer consisted of the sensations one usually experiences, and where the time-continuum grown accustomed to by most departed from its normal guidelines of A leading to B causality and became A and B meshing simultaneously. That night in 2005, the reality of a power greater than myself stopped time and spoke directly to me through the unopened lips of another human, from their being to my being, direct and without interruption, all without spoken words or verbal communication. In this form of conversation at the soul level, which lasted for a good while but seemed as if to finish in a flash, I was told things non-verbally that no one knew except God, answers to stimulus which arose internally but had been left unsaid to another human. I had questions answered internally that until then I didn’t know had actionable, definable and definite answers. I left a changed man once being in communion with a degree of God’s infinite power known as Love – I was more confident, relaxed, and more ready for a life to come, but a man who now had more questions about answers than answers realized. After that night, as the hours crept by and turned into days and then days into weeks, and weeks into months, the realizations that were made available the night God stopped me in my tracks started turning into worries about how to accomplish what was shared with me, mixed with a personal ego whispering other choices into being which were not in alignment with the new path laid out.
For a time, it felt possible to rationalize and choose both God and the world with the same amount of energy and I assumed this combination would still leave God and a righteous life victorious overall, but how wrong this assumption was, almost dead wrong. I was ready to live my own life, one filled with the stuff of teen-focused coming of age stories, and one where saying no to what the world had to offer was not an option -- I was ready to have fun without worries and embrace poor decision-making head on, all without knowing whatever fruits would be found along the way would be fleeting and without lasting sustenance or ongoing value. I wanted the women, the fast times, the late nights, and all the funny stories worth telling over brunch to friends that are part and parcel with living fast and free. I wanted the college experience I heard about, whereas following God’s insight would have meant anything but the reckless seasons I hoped were soon to follow. I was twenty when this choice about adulthood was to be made but wasn’t yet in college due to an illness late in a prolonged high school career. Choosing a destiny devoted to the service of God by serving mankind seemed to be a choice worth making down the line, but only after living for the sights and sounds found apart from familiar white steeples and regular Sunday communions. I tried straddling both worlds for a time, however, the fruits of the ego proved to be constant persuaders of living a life spent hiding from the sunlight while chasing after pursuits best left in the dark.
Fast-forward twelve years almost to the day and we come full circle to a time paused once again by the presence of God posing another similar question. Despite the many times I chose differently in the past, this time with an equally reckless abandon, I was ready to give life one last shot and accept God’s outstretched arm. I chose Life over the world that night, and what vanished immediately was a desire to take another drink or make any further decisions rooted in fear – and just like that, based on a single choice, I was transported back in time to a reality where life in front of me was worth more than what got left behind.
Almost instantly, once saying yes to a higher truth and good-bye to a life of hiding, the same connection to a wordless divinity felt all those years prior re-presented itself as if no time passed at all, as if forgiveness isn’t attached to time but outside of it just waiting on its string to be pulled. The gift of instant forgiveness erased all of the time running, and all that was left was the sense in the immediate timeframe that not only had God not gone anywhere nor forgotten about me, but grace was always there with an outstretched hand just waiting for me to accept the handshake.
On July 4th, 2017, God pulled me from the depths of a living hell to the heights of a subjective reality where love was more present than any other time in memory. That night, for the first time in many years, the clouds above the head parted ways and allowed sunshine to sparkle unabated, and for the first time in a long while, all the fears that filled the mind and body earlier in the previous hours, days, weeks, months and years were gone, and ultimately replaced with the subjective experience of warmth on the soul and daylight on the face of life yet to be lived.
Unlike other times in the past when I pleaded for God’s help with the outcomes of poor decision making, and then after experiencing some relief as a result went right back to making the same poor decisions, this time I put resolve and promise into action steps when presented with God as an actionable choice. I found myself immediately moving towards help in the form of a 12-step program. Along with the 12-step group, I found the written works of a couple people important for the next phase of life’s journey: Byron Katie and Dr. David R. Hawkins. Byron Katie was the first author I found in the self-help world that allowed me to put her work to practice, and the outcome of doing so was a major revelation: we have thoughts but we’re not our thoughts. Quickly, what followed was the realization that we have a mind but we’re not the mind, and if these two revelations were correct, logically what followed is that we have a body but we’re not the body. And in cascading fashion, many other similar revelations sprang forth into consciousness leaving me as the host effortlessly moving towards higher and higher truths. Dr. Hawkins became my greatest spiritual teacher next to what would come later in the recognition and appreciation for Jesus the Christ and Lord Krishna. Dr. Hawkins had done something no other person had throughout history, he created a quantifiable chart of understanding consciousness (the characteristics of God which we call omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence), and with the help of his teachings and the use of his chart, I began charting my own progress from hell to heaven and applying what was learned into my own knowingness of the world around me and how it works.
As the magic of working the 12-steps began manifesting within my physical and mental life, spiritually I was experiencing something growing more and more powerful within every daily experience -- love was filling me up. From July 4th, 2017, until the moment of writing this, life has morphed from danger to physical life to the regular experience and witness of God imminent. What I feared impossible at age twenty, fully manifested as reality on March 21st, 2018, when Satcitananda set in for the first time. Life was never about physicality again, nor was it about fear in any form or love limited in any way. The peace of inner ecstasy that was ushered into beingness was unmistakable, and the way in which I now operated within the world made it clear subjectively that the reality of God was self-evident and self- revealing, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. At this point in the book, I do not have time to go into the states of consciousness found scattered pointedly within this book, or the states of enlightenment that became a reality over 2018 and beyond, but suffice it to say, subjectively, life today is nothing like life before March 21st, 2018, just like life on July 3rd, 2017, was nothing like life on July 4th, 2017.
Consciousness went from experiencing hell as an experiential reality, to experiencing life in such a way no limits remained, and where heaven is a known reality while on this plane of existence as well as a reality when one leaves the physical body behind. Consciousness didn’t stop evolving in upwards trajectory after the initial onslaught of higher truth settled in as a new subjective reality, but from the undeniable physical and spiritual sensations of all-encompassing ecstasy that goes along with Satcitananda, an awareness of the reality of divinity continued growing and leaving in its wake a more direct witness of Truth made available with each day that passes. Every moment of every day now is without definition or attachment, perfect in nature, without attachments to wants, desires, cravings, fears, or poor decision making fueling the next probable choice. Today, like mystics who have reported similar states of old, I can attest to the fact that at a certain level of consciousness, the reality of divinity becomes known and not just read about, and what some would call miracles, happen regularly now as the unfoldment of every moment presenting itself anew. Today, synchronicity is constant, and today, I can honestly say to all of you reading this, one has to do nothing, save the practice of service to your fellow man, regular surrender, forgive everyone for everything all the time no matter what, and then witness the gratitude arising which follows, in order to have a life only dreamed about.
What was made known overtime was the gift at the center of the 12-step program and Dr. Hawkins’s work, was the power of letting go of attachments and aversions to belief systems, and by which the mind/ego can be transcended, leaving only truth as observable, and along with it a constant and genuine happiness mixed with perfected contentment. Today, joy is present as a continual reality, and it’s not conditioned upon someone else’s response to me or how the world treats this personage, it’s an eternal joy present in knowingness which transcends understanding. Today, there is no longer a person present separate from anyone else or the world around me, but what is present is an awareness that enlightenment is the byproduct of setting one’s intent north and chasing after God through the continual surrendering over of the lesser for the greater. A person doesn’t become enlightened, just like a person isn’t their body, enlightenment sets in like a condition, but unlike a physical condition, enlightenment is experienced as the lens through which reality is witnessed and observed. No person is enlightened, but once enlightenment sets in, what someone inhabiting this lens of awareness knows is there is no individual person present, now or anytime in the past. Just as known is that God is not somewhere else in the universe, but everywhere in the universe at the same time, as well as being that which writes these words now, and no different than that which reads these words now. God is imminent as well as transcendent, everywhere, all things, all the time. God is here and there, not just over there observing over here. God is not singular and in a single place awaiting a single time, God is plural and all the time, just in varying degrees of truth present within subjective realities. What we all are and what God truly is in this place, as clear as this entity can describe through words, can be understood in what follows: I, in greater or lesser degree of intensity, present.
This book is a byproduct of the altered states experienced, witnessed and observed today. This book is partly a description of life currently from a mile-high viewpoint and partly an exploration of escalating levels of truth unfolding from page to page. This book was designed to deliver anyone who works through it from hell experientially to knowing more firsthand about the realities of heaven, as well as to aid a fellow traveler from traversing current parts of understanding heaven to a more densely heavened life. This book was not created to be declarative in any way or made to force anyone to believe what’s written within it. This book is a gift from the Holy Spirit to the world, and in the form of a daily and digestible, bite size, filled, lumped together nuggets of truth that escalates in its power and truth.