The newest release from Elizabeth Bluehorse, The Awakening is a departure from this talented author's previous volumes of historical and biographical fiction, and collecions of prose and poetry. The result of a lifetime's study, The Awakening plunges deep into the spiritual heart of mankind.

Following is the Table of Contents and an excerpt from The Awakening:

Table of Contents

Forward Note
A Note on Footnotes
Preface
Introductory Quotes

Chapter 1 - The Wake-Up Call
Chapter 2 - The Search for God
Chapter 3 - Seeking For Oneness
Chapter 4 - A Question of Love
Chapter 5 - Awakening
Chapter 6 - Of Fear and Evil
Chapter 7 - Lucifer - the Fallen Angel
Chapter 8 - In the Image of God
Chapter 9 - Of Heaven and Hell
Chapter 10 - Living In the Moment
Chapter 11 - The Fruit of the Earth
Chapter 12 - The Spiritual Side of Diet
Chapter 13 - Prayer and Meditation
Chapter 14 - Experiences Out-of-Body
Chapter 15 - All Beings Have a Voice
Chapter 16 - From Here to There
Chapter 17 - It's Not a Battlefield - It's Only the Final Skirmishes
Chapter 18 - The Form of Reality
Chapter 19 - The Creative Mind
Chapter 20 - The Four Pillars
Chapter 21 - Into the Manifest
Chapter 22 - Stopping the Illusion
Chapter 23 - Doubt
Chapter 24 - Beyond the Lie
Chapter 25 - The Awareness of the Spirit
Chapter 26 - The Awakened Ones
Chapter 27 - Through the Veil

Epilog

Appendix A

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Gems from The Awakening

Chapter 1
The Wake-Up Call

* For in the grand scheme of the Cosmos we will be surprised by the answers, and even more by the questions.

* Along this path we will walk amidst powers and spirits as ancient and as new as the wind.

* Along this journey, our greatest obstacle will be our own fear.

* We always tend to fear that which we do not understand. But, often with understanding comes great affection and peace.

* Fear is a product of the past. Therefore, it has no truth in the present and no validity in the future. Fear of the unknown is created out of our own limited, circumscribed consciousness. It is this, which blinds our Vision. It is this stranglehold from which we seek to break free.

* As we walk through life it would be unwise to believe all that will be told to us.

* History bears out the fact that mankind is quick to call the unholy Holy; that people have the unfortunate tendency to run to any pedagogue who pricks their itching ears; that they hurry to elevate to the status of a ‘god’ anyone who seems to be more learnéd than they. Often a fool listens to a bigger fool and thinks him to be wise.

* It is in the Vine that we are the Vine. Apart from the Vine, we are dust.

* Along the way, remember that you have been placed in the Universe to fulfill YOUR life, not that of another. Learning to cherish your own riches will keep you from coveting someone else's.

Chapter 2
The Search for God

* The encouraging thing about the myriad postulations that have sprung from the heartfelt grapplings of spiritual consciousness throughout the ages is that they all agree. Yes, agree.
I know that when one considers that throughout the ages of man’s ceaseless waging of wars and unnamed cruelty toward his fellow man, ‘God’ has been man’s ultimate excuse. And, in this endless barrage of “my God is better than your God” it seems that there should be some kernel of truth and justification, but there isn’t.
Even if the varying factions refuse to openly admit it, the heart of the Jew, the Christian, the Buddhist, the Moslem, the Hindu, etc., are at one in their perception of God.

* Through the living of life many people have developed misconceptions about God, about their relationship to their Creator, and about God’s Love for them.
Many people, because of pains inflicted upon them by other people, have come to project the resulting hurt, distrust, and anger upon God.
Because of the generational passing down of falsehoods, many people have developed a very erroneous conception of who God is.

* Seeking to create God in our own image is the truest form of idolatry. Man’s petty little conceptualizations do not dictate who and what the Lord God really is.

Chapter 3
Seeking for Oneness

* When we look at the ancient sacred teachings found throughout the world, one point presents itself again and again: that the ultimate message of Christianity, of Islam, of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Paganism, (and all those other ‘isms’ that we humans are so fond of); of all peoples who sincerely seek and reverence God the omnipotent Creator in all His Forms and Facets, while stating their truths in different words and utilizing different ideologies to illustrate their meanings, lies not in opposition. Rather, these ideologies embrace one another in peaceful fellowship - and so should those individuals who purport to follow their teachings.

* Peace is one of the great goals lying at the heart of any spiritual ideology - peace within oneself, peace between oneself and others, and peace within the Sacred Circle of all life.

* On a daily basis, we grope in the darkness of the illusions that surround us as we search for a sense of unity. If we strip away our learned prejudices and open our eyes to look on our fellows with compassion and a spirit of community we readily see that Oneness is not something that we need go in search of; that Oneness is not a commodity in which we are lacking. Rather, Oneness is a physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, historical, immediate, intimate, Eternal Fact.

Chapter 4
A Question of Love

* One definition of selfishness has been put forth as “the desire for control without love” - which makes for a very small and destructive existence.

* Love is that which puts us into action to consider and work for another’s greatest good, regardless of the personal cost.

* Putting another’s needs above our own should never mean servitude. In order to be a slave one must first succumb to a tyrant.

* To live in right relationship with one another we must each honor and respect the divinity of godliness that is our true nature as beings created in the Image of God.

* Love, being what it is, is in essence reciprocal. Love, like God’s very nature from which it proceeds, is innately circuitous. We cannot confer the benefits of love without receiving the same in return.

* Keeping score is never a part of love.

* In each act of kindness our impetus should be: “I do this with no thought of reward. The possibility of return matters not. I trust the Lord God to remember my acts of virtue as He remembers my tears (Psalms 56:8). I do this because it is the right thing to do, and I leave it in His Hands to remember me when I am also in need.”

* Love is one of those exquisite commodities that sees its true potential only when it is given away.

* It is often the smallest of deeds that precipitate the greatest affect, just as the smallest of moments make up the totality of life.

* When we leave this world our hands will be empty, but our spirits can be full, for the true treasures of life are those things, which cannot be carried in our hands; things found in those smallest of deeds, and in those smallest of moments.

Chapter 5
Awakening

* It is immutable Spiritual Fact that the purpose, intended activity, and fulfillment of every being is to know God.

* ‘Awakening’ is that act of spiritual growth that leads us out of darkness. ‘Awakening’ is immediate and eternal. It is the doorway that leads the soul out of loneliness and into the knowledge of its own unity within the vast embrace of Life.

* It is the way of knowledge that the more we learn, the more we learn that we have more to learn.

* Granted, to seek to know God is a tall order - one so simple that it is easily overlooked by the searching masses.

Chapter 6
Of Fear and Evil

* If we set our minds and hearts to know good, our positive energy will, in turn, generate good. If we set our minds and hearts to perceive evil, we will most certainly find it.

* The Truth about evil is that it is rarely overt. Evil dwells within illusion and delights in confusion and misconception.

* Our mis-understanding of evil, and therefore of fear, is a matter of personal and social perception. A perception that continually undergoes changes as one’s sociological and scientific knowledge matures and evolves. Throughout history, mankind has persisted in its practice of labeling certain events, phenomena, teachings, individuals, nationalities, creeds, etc., according to the prevailing perception of evil. In doing this, humanity has repeatedly robbed itself of blessing after blessing and refused to embrace immeasurable goodness because of its tendency to fear that which is perceived to be outside of its personal delineation of good.

* Preparedness is the key to maintaining peace within any situation. Transcendent occurrences are no exception.

* Again, it is an ongoing trait of mankind to fear, and therefore label as evil, that which is not familiar; that which we do not currently understand. In reality, it is this very label of ‘evil’ that so effectively prevents understanding from dawning upon our psyche, and keeps some of life’s greatest treasures hidden behind a veil of fear.

* Fear itself is an illusion that exists only within our own thoughts.

* Our own personal power is a treasure that belongs to each of us and must be guarded well. It is within our God-given abilities of choice to not give it away - to other spirits, or to other people. When we give into fear, we have given away our power.

* We get so caught up in our day-to-day lives that we completely fail to remember that we are but a part of the whole of the life of Planet Earth, and that we estrange ourselves to our detriment. In our arrogance, we live life on the edge of destruction when we deafen ourselves to the voices all around us and deny the presence of forces greater than ourselves.

* As each moment moves into the future, we must move with it. We must not allow ourselves to remain entranced with mirages of events that are no longer! Native American Shamans say that in order to embrace healing we must let go of the past, for it is in the past that we find the baggage and burdens that hinder our progress into the future.

Chapter 7
Lucifer - the Fallen Angel

* So who is Satan? Does it matter? Is this personification of destruction and evil a powerful angelic entity, or just about the size of a man? (Not meant to indicate gender - just an appellation for humankind.)

* So, what are we to make of this paradox? Perhaps the answer lies in that when Lucifer was thrown down from Heaven, he was stripped of all his angelic glory and God given power and authority.

* So, where does Satan get his power if God stripped him of his “first estate” (1st Book of Adam and Eve 6:7) when he was cast out of the Heavenly realms and is referred to as weak and having “no power left in him”(1st Book of Adam and Eve 51:11)? From mankind - from you and me. And, being the clever being that he is, we don’t have to provide him with any great amounts of power. He knows very well how to use anything he gets to its absolute fullest, knowing that wickedness, like love, feeds off of itself, ultimately creating a web of measureless interconnectedness that is often impossible to imagine.

* To overcome the ‘self’ is to overcome the Lie. To overcome the Lie is to see beyond the Illusion and reclaim the Reality of who we really are; of who we were created to be.

* In our daily lives it is the strategy of evil, of Satan, to distract us from discovering our true Goal in life - that of awaking to and embracing our legitimate identity as beings created in the Image of God and given dominion over the Earth (Genesis 1:26-27). To accomplish this deception Satan utilizes anything that he can fix our attention on - notoriety, debasement, riches, loneliness, poverty, sickness, and pain. He even manages to use our own accomplishments and personal satisfaction against us.

* In his ongoing battle against God, and his jealousy of mankind’s Divinely appointed station in God, Satan does not play fair - he strikes us right where it hurts - right where he knows he can get our attention. He ‘pushes our buttons’ and extracts from us all the personal power that he can manage to usurp.

Chapter 8
In the Image of God

* What does it really mean to have been created in the Image of God? ‘Awakening’ is to awaken to this immutable fact; this responsibility; this vast, eternal Reality - that we are created in the Image and Likeness of God.

* We are not merely animals driven by instinct, we are beings created in the Image of God. We must, therefore, behave accordingly in ALL aspects of our lives.

* There is the way things are, and there is the way things should be. We must stop following the crowd in the way that things are, and start living the way things should be.

* The power is in the obedience. By obeying the Lord we build up faithfulness and fidelity within ourselves. Through our obedience we acknowledge and engender our oneness with and in God. In truth, we discover that we are empowered by our very act of obedience. In regard to whatever point of allegiance we may consider, our submission raises us up, for it is in submitting to the omnipotence and omniscience of God, our Father, that we embrace our Unity with Divine Love.

* Our thoughts are the key to everything.

* If we are to know the higher mysteries of the Eternal, we must start by living rightly. To live rightly requires wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of and reverence for the Lord God. Without this reverence, the secrets of God and of His Creation continue to remain hidden from those for whom they were intended as a Divine Inheritance - those who were created in His Image. For it is that reverence for God, and for all things, that serves as the ‘checks and balances’, the ‘gate keepers’, within the realms of Divine power.

* To abide in God, and God in us - this is what it means to experience the fullness of having been created in the Image of God. To live beyond the Illusion is to actively experience the fact that our original form and personality is in the Image of God; that within Creation we are to be to our fellow creatures - the Image of God.

Chapter 9
Of Heaven and Hell

* In the reckoning of all things, the only treasure that maintains its luster is that treasure which cannot be carried in our hands. This ‘sowing’ that we are speaking of is not reckoned through the counting and accumulation of material goods. It is weighed out in the abundance, or poverty, within the sacred expanse of the human heart.

* As each individual consciousness passed into the vibrational frequency that illuminates this realm of physical space/time, that spirit consciousness passed through a ‘veil of forgetfulness’ (Wisdom of Solomon 17:3; Isaiah 25:7; Hebrews 6:19-20). This ‘veil’ causes a divergence in the celestial spirit’s awareness enabling it to experience the ‘world’ of the temporal. As a result, the projected awareness forgets the true self from whence it came, bringing about the phenomenon of ‘free will’ through which we are able to make the choices and undergo the learning which facilitates growth beyond innocence.
Just as Adam and Eve, we must learn that evil is simply rejection of the Truth; that to choose against God is to precipitate a disparity into the realm of illusion. For in true Reality, such opposition to God does not exist. If it did, God would not be God, Unity and Oneness would not call to us, death would devour life, darkness would be the master of light, and Hell would swallow up Heaven.
Childlike innocence is a resplendent treasure that we must seek to hold onto, for innocence of heart is that which draws us back to the knowledge of God. However, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, through innocence; through nescience, we succumb to deceit. But, in the experiencing of good and evil, we gain knowledge and wisdom that are able to make us stand.

* As we believe ourselves to be solitary beings, we wander through barren, desolate wastelands that are in Reality filled with a fecundity of life that cannot touch us, for we insist that we are alone. The Illusion that circumscribes our being seeks to convince us of our separateness, while in the Reality of God we are enveloped and filled by the Life that exists only as ONE.

* It is within the Father that Heaven encircles us and we are, even now, able to experience that Grace, Beauty, and Serenity that overspreads and permeates the Dwelling Place of the Most High. Therefore, to us who have been wandering the vast wastelands of illusion, amidst enslavement and doubt, ‘Heaven’ is receiving, embracing, and living that Abode of God that is uniquely and immediately ours. And, ‘Hell’, on Earth or in Eternity, is separation from that Abode.

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