One Who Wakes | John Mark Stroud

We are Free!

January 7, 2018

Welcome Beautiful Friends!

When is a blog not a blog?   When you don’t post anything for months on end!  Hahaha!

A good friend recently pointed out that our latest post was over a year ago, and suggested that it might be time for an update.  We thought she was probably right.  So here goes…

We’ve just wrapped up 2017, and for us, it was quite a year.  We began a slow withdrawal from our public work, scheduling fewer Playshops, attending fewer events, and posting very little to our website or Facebook page.  As we dove deeper into Truth, it became apparent that no one really needed our help, even if they thought they did.  Our recognition was that texts, lessons, practices, techniques, and methodologies were second-cousins to the thought systems they were meant to replace.  They are largely designed to change one’s experience of Self, and are more often based on an assumption that correction or purification through discipline will alter what is essentially flawed within our being.

It begs the question:  Are we flawed?

It’s an uncomfortable reflection of the Original Sin concept which preposes that we were born as perfect creations of God, we sinned, we were cast out of Eden, and now we must earn our way back into God’s good graces. Ugh!  Can’t you just feel the air go out of your joy balloon?  You’ve just picked up a one ton sack of shit and it’s going to take you eons and hundreds of lifetimes to lay that burden down.

So what is that’s not true?

Some “new age” theologies tell us it’s not.  Instead we are perfect Beings merely maximizing the opportunities that this Earth realm offers to play with emotions and experience that cannot be had anywhere else in the universe.  We can pretend to be who we are not, and have an intensely real time while we’re doing it!  Eternal beings on a cosmic rollercoaster ride.  No harm, no foul.

Sinner or opportunist, you choose.  Or just maybe, there’s another option.

At the beginning of 2017, we began a series of webcasts called Beyond Belief into Presence.  When we started it we didn’t really know how it would unfold.  We just showed up every Tuesday night, open and ready to receive whatever message would arise.  This happened for almost six months, then the summer break extended into the fall, and finally the year ended with three very powerful sessions.

The purpose, so we thought, was to show people a way to drop their thought systems and beliefs, and move into the actual experience of Truth, exactly as it shows up for them.  It turned out to be transformative for the group’s members, in ways we had hardly imagined.  While BBIP started as a private group, we’ve now added the series to the website (you can see the tab in the upper right corner of the homepage).  We invite you to take a look if it interests you, and we suggest that you begin in chronological order, and pace yourself.  Each session builds on the previous one.

Meanwhile, we find ourselves in southwest Florida, Fort Myers to be exact.  We still take calls, we still enjoy visiting with friends as we travel.  It would be great to hear from you!  We love you with an infinite love and a perfect peace.

Cindy and John Mark