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Nouk and Tomas: “This is not your intellectual brand of awakening. This is for those who genuinely want to undo the root cause of all suffering – the ego. We offer a guide for those who wish to participate in the daily practice of undoing their ego. Awakening occurs through the conscious application of three major principles being, Quantum forgiveness, Radical self-inquiry and Now moment presence. Many religious and spiritual studies are predicated on the belief that God created this world; our book is based on the principles of A Course in Miracles, which explains that God did not create this world, we did. From absolute Oneness, which is Infinite Love there emerged a “tiny mad idea” of separation, an illusion of separate individuals. We fell into a dream of this present world of time and space; a dream of duality. Our mission then, is to awaken from the dream, not to get lost in it or to even try to excel in it. This fundamental difference completely changes one’s approach to the journey of awakening. If you still believe that God (All that Is) created this world, you’re bound to experience some serious inner conflict which will always manifest as adversity or scarcity of some kind in your life. Why? Because if an all-loving God is responsible for creating this world of duality, including fear, hatred and death, then we haven’t got a chance of escaping. We are then truly at the mercy of God, victims of a random world totally out of our control! Take Me to Truth, Undoing the Ego, presents the concept of spiritual “awakening” in a way that can be simply applied by anyone at anytime, no matter what the circumstances by offering ways to practice quantum forgiveness, radical self-inquiry and now moment presence. It’s about unlearning who we are not so that who we are can be revealed and we are awakened.”

 

 

 

Nouk and Tomas: “The ego is the belief in separation. It’s the “I” we think is real, while participating in this dream world. It’s really a mass of uninvestigated beliefs riddled with fears, phobias and illusory memories. The ego projected this reality in order to escape the massive unconscious guilt that it acquired from the separation. If you (the ego) think you’re at the mercy of a force outside you that ultimately controls everything then you are in a position of “effect”; you’re at the mercy of something (God) that you think is the “cause”. All of a sudden, every disappointment in your life, from minor to major like death, is seen as being done “to” you, making you a victim. If on the other hand, you begin to embrace the idea that you (personally & collectively) made this reality, and that it is but a dream, then you’re in the miraculous realm of realizing that it’s all a projection of your mind. This perception invites a conscious awareness that in Truth, the world is really being done “by” you, and not “to” you. Now you’re in a position of “cause” and no longer at the mercy of “effects”. Through applying quantum forgiveness, radical self-inquiry and now moment presence, you learn to change your reaction to and experience of events. You learn to “Love what is” and your perception is cleansed. And because you’re realizing that projection makes perception you’re effecting a change at the nucleus level. You will no longer take things so personally, old patterns and habits will drop off and you’ll have more compassion and forgiveness. As you progress, your ego will begin disappearing and the blocks and limitations to experiencing profound love along with it. You’ll be free of the need to judge, defend, protect, sacrifice or control. Struggle also disappears as it’s replaced by an abundance of inspirational motivation that always leads you to exactly where you’re supposed to be. Undoing the ego delivers us from our severely delusional will. Once this “little” will surrenders to Truth, we find that the Universal Inspiration’s Will is all we are and all that we could ever want. On a practical level (the level of form) your life will reflect this integration in all your relationships with people, things, places and circumstances. The ego controls our every waking and sleeping thought and action. If 99.9% of our time is spent laboring through life with the ego’s perception, can you imagine what life would be like once you surrendered that burden? To surrender judgment and control is to experience intimately an indescribable joy that consistently permeates your perception.

 

 

Nouk and Tomas: “Well for starters awakening is not a glamorous affair. It’s really a demolition project. The ego loves to spiritualize the whole awakening process by suffusing it with the special beauty or power of certain objects, places and practices. It thrives on intellectual knowledge and is enthralled by amazing phenomena. While all these are OK in themselves, they often develop into spiritual bypass mechanisms if they become one’s focus, instead of the job at hand which is awakening. We need to remember that all these things, as great as they are, are still projections coming from our own minds and are occurring at the level of “form”. If we truly wish to undo the ego then we need to return our thoughts/intentions to the only level that’s real: the mind. Everything that exists in our perception is “caused” by our mind, so any real changes must originate from that source. Spiritual awakening is usually preceded by some sort of disillusionment, perhaps a relationship break-up, death, illness, identity crisis etc. It’s often heralded by the “falling away” of a long held perception. While this is usually the beginning, we find that the entire process becomes a succession of uninvestigated beliefs falling away. You might ask, “Why all this discomfort? Can’t we just awaken with love to love?” The answer is no, because as an ego, you don’t know love. The ego can’t possibly understand it, give it or receive it. Love is our natural State beneath our dysfunctional perception. To get to it requires the systematic dismemberment of its entire belief system. According to A Course in Miracles, there are six stages to be experienced and their purpose is the development of Trust. As the ego is undone, a new and profound layer of Trust is seen to emerge from within and mirrored back to us from our seeming outer reality.”

 

 

 

Nouk and Tomas: “A paradigm shift is required and it becomes easy once you understand and practice it. We’re not talking the old brand of forgiveness here. That sets both of us apart because if I’m big enough to forgive you for the awful hurt you caused, then I’m setting myself above you and I’m making myself a victim. I’m giving you absolution for doing something of which I was a victim. I’m forgetting that there’s really only One of us here. You’re my own projection and while you appeared to offend, I must remember that there’s only one ego here appearing as many. So if I want to awaken out of this dream, I need to remember that you’re appearing here to give me an opportunity to forgive you, by realizing it never really happened at the Highest level. In fact, when I’m forgiving you, I’m actually “overlooking a mistake” that your ego, which I projected, seemed to make. Every time I view it this way, I’m forgiving myself and undoing another great chunk of the unconscious guilt that keeps me in the birth and death cycle. So, when someone offends us or presses our buttons, we could view it as an opportunity to apply quantum forgiveness. We could remember that our Purpose is to awaken and see that every forgiveness opportunity that presents itself, gives us the chance to surrender another great chunk of ego that’s been obscuring Loves’ presence in our lives.”

 

 

 

Nouk and Tomas: “Before our awakening, Tomas (my co-author) and I were married. We later reached a point of awareness where in order to save our relationship we decided to end the marriage. This sounds crazy to the ego, but let me explain because there’s quite a miraculous outcome to all of this, and it will continue to reverberate far beyond our limited perception. In the beginning, we viewed relationship & love much the way the rest of the world does. He was there to meet my needs & I was there to meet his. We fell in love, joined in a commonly accepted goal, got married, had a precious daughter and each pursued our own careers’ journey. In relationship, the ego always has an unconscious goal of which we’re not aware. Its catch cry is, “seek but never find”. And it makes sure you live out its prediction, even if it looks like you’re the victim of circumstances. Unknowingly we enter a relationship, each with two independent self-seeking goals. The ego seeks to be “special” and its need is for pseudo-worthiness which it aims to take from another for itself. In a secret pact, it agrees to give its partner part of its own special pseudo-self in exchange. The problem for all worldly relationships is when one or both partners fail to meet the ego desires of the other which is inevitable. This is where our “special” relationship fell apart. In 1990, we were introduced to ACIM and I knew without a doubt that this was the Purpose for which my life was intended. Like many new comers to a spiritual path, I made some pretty terrible misinterpretations and a lot of mistakes in those early years. It was explained to us that Love can never end, can never be terminated & that Love can never turn to hate. This was absolutely profound! On the deepest of levels I knew this to be true, but how to achieve it? We saw at that time, that the institution of marriage (for us back then) represented the ego’s special relationship. And seeing that, we both decided to embrace a whole new Love, one of which we had no clue about. Our story is radical; you don’t have to end a marriage to enter into a Unified relationship. It’s just that we were pioneers at the time and extremes seemed to reign. In the book we talk about the miraculous Unified relationship (Holy Relationship) and the transformational process from the ego’s ‘special’ relationship to the Unified one. We have since discovered that Love cannot ever die, disappear or end….and that there’s absolutely no limit to it. Only the ego imagines that it experiences love turning to hate. Why? because as young children and now, as children in adult bodies, we’ve never been “seen”. No one has ever really seen us, because most of the love we’ve ever experienced was of the ego. It was a pseudo love that never reached & touched our core. Even our parents as loving as they may have been, were still largely in their mistaken identity, the ego. So the sad fact is that most of us have been raised and judged by the ego perception of our parents and others. Without a truthful mirror of who we are and perceiving from our own uninvestigated ego, imagine trying to love others? We can’t see another truly, neither do they see us, so how in the world can we believe that Love can never turn to hate or diminish? For Tomas and me, we learned the meaning of love through the dismantling of our old relationship in the quest for a Holy Relationship (Unified Relationship). We bravely surrendered the ego props of judgment, expectation and guilt and started to see each other as a part of One Self. We dared to practice truly seeing each other. As we learned to accept each other without the usual judgments, and underpinned by the desire and willingness for the highest outcome for each other regardless of our fears, we grew to experience a Love that exceeds our wildest imaginings. In seeing the other as yourself, the chunk of ego that previously kept you trapped in a dualistic world falls away and all of a sudden you’re seeing, experiencing another dimension here while you’re in the dream. ACIM calls this “The Happy Dream”. Now you really are a miracle worker. We hear so much about “Oneness” in spiritual teachings but rarely do we get to witness and really participate in its awesome dynamic. That’s because we don’t practice Oneness consistently. Every time we take offence we’re not seeing Oneness, we’re seeing duality and reinforcing it in our perception. To see Oneness we must practice it! Its miracle can only be known through extending it in spite of what the ego interprets as threat. For instance if someone offends you, you realize two things, 1. That this is your own projection, and 2. That the offence is coming from their ego. Any attack or judgment is always a cry for love and being so, it deserves a loving response which is always forgiveness. The only way to reach a critical mass in terms of manifesting miracles and undoing the ego is to consistently practice the dynamic of forgiveness and boy did we have to practice with each other! ‘The Miracle will justify your faith in it’. We are living proof of it.”

 

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Gene Bogart is the Producer and Co-Host of the highly successful Gary Renard Podcast.

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