How this Book Emerged

 Written by Terry Mollner

 This Sensation of Oneness book is the culmination of giving priority to discovering the meaning of life since I was a sophomore in high school. Yes, that is when this search began. The delightful part is that I believe I have uncovered, and describe in this book, the last two layers of maturity of the skill of human self-consciousness into which all of humanity is now overly ready to mature. We will all do so as we have in the natural sequence nearly universally matured into the first five of what I have described as the seven layers of maturity in this skill. We will now also all mature into mastering the last two layers of this most important skill for each of us to master. Assisting each reader in that task is the primary purpose of Sensation of Oneness.

In A Personal Note at the beginning of Sensation of Oneness, I tell the significant stories during my life where I kept backing into the discovery of the smaller skills of the last two layers. I usually did not know that was what was happening. Only much later in my life did I realize they were smaller skills that were part of the layers of maturity of the skill of human self-consciousness. I also then realized I needed to understand they were structured as priorities, and their relationship with each other had to be honored as such. 

Therefore, here is A Personal Note from the beginning of the book. It is the best statement of how this book emerged. 

 A Personal Note

 Today, before reading a book, many people like to know the person who is writing it. I will write some paragraphs here to introduce myself to you. (One publisher rejected this book with the words, “It is a good book, but you are not famous enough.”) I am not famous. However, I think you will like knowing the following about me before reading this book. Of course, if you are not at this time interested in learning about me and how I came to write this book, jump to the Preface. It describes the three new and not widely known facts upon which this book is based.

I am now 77 years old. Like your life I suspect, my life has been divided into my public front office and my private back office. My front office is my roles in organizations and accomplishments. They are listed in a description of me in the materials of organizations where I am fulfilling or have fulfilled a role. What I have been doing in my private back office is what you will learn about me when reading this book. Its activities culminated in my discovery I could know, and as a skill choose to give priority to, the sensation of the reality of the oneness of nature.

The latter is a fact that is now the most popular theory in fundamental physics (the Holographic Theory). By default, it is a result of their discovery time and space (the assumption of separate parts) are mutually agreed upon illusion tools we invented. However, what it is pointing at is not primarily a theory or, for some, a spiritual belief. It is primarily pointing at a sensation we can be aware of and consistently know as the sensation within which we experience all other experiences.

In the next four paragraphs I will summarize what I have learned, and you could learn when reading this book. You may experience it as heady. Prepare yourself. It is heady. It will only be four paragraphs, but at this time it is the most concise presentation in words I am able to provide of what I have learned.

Enjoying the sensation of oneness is the skill of each moment primarily experiencing the three-dimensionality of the oneness of nature instead of the two-dimensionality of words. Frankly, it is that simple. However, until you have mastered in the natural sequence the smaller skills of each of the layers of maturity of the skill of human self-consciousness, and integrate them into the one fully mature skill, you can’t easily choose this as a skill you can consistently use and enjoy. (Herein I define “human self-consciousness” as knowing what we are doing while we are doing it and able to exercise free choice, eventually individual free choice, and later what will be described as mature free choice.)

I can now be consistently aware of and enjoy the sensation of oneness. It is the experience within which I experience the fundamental feelings that are a result of being able to give it priority: natural confidence, contented joy, and compassion. They are now more important than relative feelings of some derivatives of mad, glad, sad, and scared. By skill and choice, experiencing relative feelings are now third in priority, and using words is now fourth in priority. As you can see, this is the opposite of giving priority to the two-dimensionality of words.

Between learning words in childhood and achieving full maturity in this skill, I was giving priority to the mutually agreed upon illusions of words. There are over 6,000 human languages on Earth. Each is a set of mutually agreed upon illusion tools, labeled “words,” that allow those using them to be self-conscious parts of the indivisible universe. Maturing in the skill of human self-consciousness is a result of learning and using words. Using them was necessary for me to master the remaining smaller skills of the layers of maturity of it in the natural sequence to achieve full maturity in it. (But I am only good at it on Tuesdays and Thursdays!) While fully and simultaneously doing both of the following, it resulted in me giving priority to the self-consciousness of being the indivisible universe and second priority to the self-consciousness of being my physical body part of it. As you will discover, the first is the result of exercising mature free choice and the second is the result of exercising individual free choice.

The purpose of this book is to use words and guided experiences to assist you to master full maturity in this skill, the skill of human self-consciousness.

Those were the four paragraphs. At this time that is my best short summary of what I have learned in my private back office. It is also what you could learn from reading this book and doing the experiential activities in it.

(I searched hard my entire life to find a person who could help me in my self-eldering process to achieve full maturity in this skill. I never found someone who could do it. By default, I had to discover it on my own in the school of hard knocks. I am writing this book so future children can be skillfully and artfully eldered by their parents and others into full maturity in this most important skill for them to learn before they leave home. We now know their brains are sufficiently developed by their twenties to accomplish it.)

I can summarize my main roles and accomplishments in my front office in only five paragraphs. Then I will tell some of the stories of how I consistently backed into discovering some of the smaller skills of each next layer of maturity of the higher layers of this skill.

Here are those five paragraphs.

I am a co-founder of what is now a company with $37 billion under management and of a foundation that has loaned nearly $3 billion to reduce poverty. I am also the person who took the lead to save Ben & Jerry’s to live on as a boldly socially responsible company once it had to live inside a multinational corporation. Because of expansion into other countries, to solve its growing distribution problems it had to get bought by one of them: this became a problem for all our socially responsible companies once they became that successful.

Those are always listed as my main accomplishments, and the interesting part is I didn’t set out to do all three of them with any thought of making money. Here, in each case, is what I was primarily thinking about.

In the 1970s, I thought we needed to have an option in the investment community of investing in companies that are making the world a better place instead of a worse place. That became the Calvert Family of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds, now known only as the Calvert Funds. In the 1980s, I thought we needed a foundation that borrowed money at low interest rates and consistently loaned it, not granted it, at low interest rates to reduce poverty around the world. That was the Calvert foundation, now known as Calvert Impact Capital. In 2000, I thought Ben & Jerry’s, the best-known flagship of our socially responsible business community of the last half of the 20 th century, needed to survive once inside a multinational as a boldly socially responsible company.

The Calvert Funds was the first family of socially responsible mutual funds on Earth. Thankfully, that movement has now gone mainstream. Calvert Impact Capital was the first charitable non-profit to raise money at low interest rates to be consistently re-loaned at low interest rates to reduce poverty by raising the money through the national community of brokers, asset managers, and both small and large investors. Ben & Jerry’s, even to this day, is the only socially responsible company bought by a multinational to sign a legal contract that guaranteed it could continue forever as an independent and boldly socially responsible company. It can even take social positions on issues with which Unilever, who bought us, disagrees.

The important thing for you to take note of about my participation in these three firsts is, if I had gone to a business school, I probably wouldn’t have thought I could accomplish any of them: all three had never been done before. The second thing you should take note of is I accomplished being part of starting the first two when I was still in my late twenties and early 30s and usually living on about $5,000 a year. I was living frugally in group houses, didn’t have an automobile, and never experienced my basic needs not being met. (I am fond of saying to people who ask me when I am going to retire, “I can’t retire because I haven’t begun to work!”)

There are others, but these are my main roles and accomplishments listed in a description of me in the back of the materials of these organizations.

Now for the most important part of who I am. In my back office my priority was what as a sophomore in high school I described as “discovering the meaning of life.”

Here is the story of how that happened.

I was one of the first boys from the working class and ethnic communities in South Omaha, Nebraska, USA, to be accepted into the all-boys Catholic Jesuit high school, Creighton Prep. It was in the wealthy part of town. I had also accomplished the most prestigious thing of being on the football team that at that time usually won the state championship.

One day two guys on the football team I greatly respected, Jim and Larry, and I were given permission during lunch period to go to our lockers to get our history books to study for a test. When Jim said he had learned milk causes pimples, with great enthusiasm I exclaimed “Really!!!” In hindsight, I now realize I was fully giving my power to choose away. I was behaving as the lower-class person I thought I was in relationship to them. They fell all over the hallway hysterically laughing at my gullibility and lower-class behavior. I felt like a puddle anyone could walk through.

When open, my locker door blocked my view of them at their lockers. When I got my history book and closed my locker door, all I saw was their backsides as they ran through the swinging doors that led back to the cafeteria. Seeking an escape from everything, I ducked into the nearby chapel to avoid going back to the cafeteria.

While sitting in the last pew and tears falling on my pants, I eventually asked myself this question, “Who can I say loves me?” I couldn’t think of anyone who behaved lovingly toward me.

It was an overcast day, but in the darkness of the chapel I could see the crucifix over the alter and realized there was one person who loved me. God loved me! I got up on the kneeler and smiled in appreciation there was one person I could say loved me. Then just as quickly I slid back into sitting on the pew and realized that hadn’t made any difference when those two fellow football players were cruel to me.

After a period of thinking, I got back up on the kneeler and admitted to myself I was ignorant. I didn’t know why to do one thing rather than another. I decided I was going to take the first vow in my life. (A vow was what I understood to be the deepest level of agreement with myself.)

I would give priority to “discovering the meaning of life,” why to do one thing rather than another.

I then decided the strategy I would use to accomplish this goal. Each day I would attend Mass during the first part of lunch period to think for the purpose of figuring out the meaning of life. I did that the rest of my high school years and all during my years at Creighton University.

In my more important back office, up to now discovering the meaning of life has remained my priority my entire life. As you will soon read, now it is Eldering.

As you can imagine, the Jesuits loved witnessing me going to Mass every day and I eventually left Creighton University to enter the Jesuit seminary to study to be a Catholic priest. When I agreed to do it, I was clear with Father Haley my priority was to discover the meaning of life. He assured me I would be free to give that priority. Not only that. He also said they would strongly support me in that quest, including getting a doctorate in any field I wanted.

In the seminary, they wouldn’t let me read some of the books I wanted to read, especially one by a fellow Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who had been inspired by Eastern spirituality. I then realized they were training me to be a salesperson of their beliefs. I also concluded they had not only broken their agreement with me but because of this agenda were incapable of keeping it. I left.

When I returned to Creighton University and settled back into being there, I wanted to take some time to fully understand what had happened that had me end up in the Jesuit seminary. To think things through, one night I took a long walk on the circular path the Jesuits use for walking meditation in the garden behind the administration building.

I realized I had made the mistake of giving my power to choose to the Catholic Church. I thought the Jesuits were the one group I could trust to keep an agreement. I now knew they hadn’t been dishonest. Instead, because of their beliefs they were incapable of keeping it. I also realized, like the Jesuits, nearly every person I knew was trying to sell me something. I became clear I did not want to again make the mistake of giving my power to choose to another person or group.

(Again, in hindsight, I can see this was a reaction to the pain of the Jesuits breaking their agreement with me. However, my decision was a good one: I would no longer trust any individual or group with my power to choose. Instead, I would keep it and only study my direct experiences to identify the facts I would use to guide my thinking.)

This meant I had to throw out all my self-consciously chosen and, as much as possible, unconscious beliefs in my thinking and start from scratch. I was now fully willing to do that.

I also concluded there were two truths I already knew. First, I will only study my direct experiences to identify the facts I will use to guide my thinking. Secondly, I judged it was obvious there was always a reason to do one thing rather than another. With these first two beliefs I would start from scratch to build a set of beliefs to guide my thinking. This became the second vow I took with myself.

(Again, in hindsight, I think this was unconsciously a result of having learned facts were best found using science. It was determining them from a repeated study of present experiences. However, I was not using professional science, facts discovered by others. I was unconsciously using what I would label being a “personal scientist” by using “mature free choice.” It is the exercise of free choice that assumes oneness is a fact. Both will be described in the Preface. I now realize at twenty-one years old I had backed into giving priority to being a personal scientist and didn’t know it.)

As I was leaving the garden, it suddenly hit me that, if I was throwing out all my current beliefs, I had to also throw out my belief there is a God. That had me stop and return to the garden and again walk around its circular path. It eventually became clear to me I could not solely give priority to finding the facts to guide my life in direct experiences if I kept any belief I couldn’t repeatedly confirm was a fact in direct experiences. I also concluded if God exists, I will eventually experience God in direct experiences.

Dropping my belief there is a God was experienced as a big decision. But I realized this: if I was going to now give priority to only using facts to guide my thinking I could repeatedly confirm are facts in my direct experiences, I had to also throw out my belief there is a God.

I eventually left the garden comfortable in keeping my second vow to only give priority to discovering in direct experiences additional facts I would use to guide my thinking. (I did eventually discover in my direct experiences what I label “God,” but now God is not anything like what I believed God was then. I also learned to be comfortable not knowing what I don’t know. There is much you do not need to know and are still able to achieve full maturity in the skill of human self-consciousness, such as a direct experience of what you label “God.”)

When I returned to Creighton University, I also got frustrated at how slow learning occurred in classes. I began to go to the library, find the shelves of the books about something I wanted to learn, put twenty to thirty books on a borrowed library cart, spend an hour or so going through all of them to understand the full territory, and then left the library with two or three books I thought could provide me what I wanted to learn. In other words, I began to boldly take charge of my self-education.

I later learned I was better at thinking the most important things through on my own rather than primarily getting the answers to these questions from books written by others. For instance, when I was about thirty years old and new to the world of finance, I thought I should learn more about money in our lives. I took a day off to walk back and forth in my large bedroom at the time, talking out loud to not lose my train of thought and fill in any gaps, and think myself into understanding the basics about money. I had never thought much about money, and I didn’t like most of my fellow university students in business school because I thought they thought about it too much. (And they wore those heavy wingtip shoes! I may have been the first hippie in Omaha, Nebraska! But I also wasn’t aware of those values emerging inside me at that time.)

I concluded there was not a good reason why doctors, lawyers, and business executives made much more than waitresses and garbage collectors. It was just what had happened and didn’t have to be that way. I secondly discovered the most valuable thing I would have if I had a lot of money: free time to do whatever I wanted to do. Thirdly, I realized by living frugally I had already accomplished that!

It was during this day-long walk back and forth in my bedroom, where out my window I could see some of the downtown Boston skyline of tall buildings and a little bit of the Atlantic Ocean, that I concluded I should continue to give priority to following my heart to discover the meaning of life. I had already accomplished what much money would give me! I was not only free to do whatever I wanted to do but also free to give priority to what I most enjoyed doing. I was intuitively giving priority to doing anything I thought would both allow me to mature and make the world a better place for all rather than doing things where the priority was to make money.

It also became clear to me not only should I never give priority to making money, but I should also not be concerned about how much comes through me. What is most important is it never be my priority. It is a unit of measurement for exchanges with which I could buy anything. It is not giving priority to living a beautiful mature human life.

(Again, in hindsight, I was also not aware I was doing something very important you will read about when you read this book. I was giving priority to priorities, the pattern of thinking of oneness, instead of the pattern of thinking of the assumption of separate parts, this-or-that-in-times-and-places. Somehow, I had backed into also doing this.)

As you can easily imagine, to some degree this also explains why I didn’t get married until I was 49 years old. My priority was following my heart and every woman I was with eventually looked at me with that look of, “You don’t get it! Life is about a house in the suburbs, 2.5 children, a two-car garage, and a white picket fence?” Well, that is what it felt like to me—a business deal—each time she or I had to end a romantic relationship or when I had to end my first marriage. I was clear I was not going to commit to being with someone who was not also giving priority to discovering the meaning of life and comfortable living frugally if necessary to keep it our priority.

(I was with my first wife for twenty years from when I was thirty-seven years old, getting married only when 49 years old, and we still have a very close friendship. I co-raised her daughter, Jaime, from the age of seven years old. Her birth father and I are good friends, and I play a second grandfather role for her two children, Gram (age 9) and Lila Pearl (age 7). I also play a full father role for Stella (age 16). She is the daughter of a Lesbian couple who asked me to be a fully active father of the baby they wanted me to help them birth. In case you want to know how we did it, they provided me a ball jar and, with the equivalent of a turkey baster, they did it themselves. I know, TMI. But I thought you might like to know how we did it. You now know me as “Mr. Frugal”: this didn’t cost us a penny!)

Having lived in group houses with many divorced people who often saw their children only on weekends and were unable to do strong co-parenting with their former spouse, I was not willing to be in a committed relationship where we did not know the skill of consistently experiencing the joy of love and able to together do wise parenting. With each lover we were never able to figure out how to discover and invite ourselves into knowing that experience with each other as a skill we could sustain. By the time I was 70 years old, I had given up and concluded I would remain single the rest of my life. I judged I had more important things to do than continually taking the time to be exploring the possibility of a committed romantic relationship. As you will see below, that changed when I met Lucy.

I could tell many more stories from my life adventures but, before I tell you the story of meeting Lucy, let me point out a few other things I learned along the way you might like to know about me before reading this book.

First, I learned early on I could learn much more by being with people who were not like me than being with people who were like me. Therefore, I was always up for adventures to go to different places and joining different organizations with different people. Secondly, and also for that purpose, I valued traveling around the world to experience people living in very different ways than we do in the USA. I discovered much from being in other cultures. Thirdly, I have often begun experiments to learn things. The most important ones were being part of beginning three intentional communities. My goal was to discover how to re-village our lives in our modern context. I also went from being a high school teacher of theater and directing musicals, to being an actor, singer, and model in Chicago (I was in a four-page foldout in Playboy, it was a natural gas ad!), to substantial training to be a psychotherapist, to being a social and financial activist.

Since 2000, and after witnessing first-hand for months the sophisticated dishonesty on Wall Street when doing the Ben & Jerry’s negotiations, I realized I was one of the few people who had been deeply involved in spirituality, psychotherapy, community building, business, and finance. Therefore, I also judged I may be one of the people who could figure out how to take our human lives and organizations to the next layer of maturity possible for us. Because of these skills and experiences, and now having ample money, I concluded it was my moral responsibility to give priority to what I could do to have us accomplish this.

By that time, I also knew, fundamentally, this could only naturally, effortlessly, freely, and consistently occur in each human being by me discovering the higher layers of maturity of the skill of human self-consciousness and being able to introduce them to others. And in hindsight I realized discovering them had been my priority my entire life! I was all in. Accomplishing this became the third vow I made with myself.

I quit the boards I was on except the three main ones mentioned above, and my activities in other organizations, to focus on figuring out what the next layers of maturity for humanity might be. Since then, my discipline to remain focused on this has been writing books. They keep me thinking things through linearly, like when I was walking back and forth and talking out loud in my bedroom. I have written eight books, six of which have been self-published (I am not famous enough!) and the other two will eventually be self-published. That also allows me to provide them free on our website so people with cell phones all over the world can read them. This, however, is the book I was hoping I would be able to eventually write. It is also available on our website, www.sensationofoneness.org. (If you have bought one, thank you. You are funding this educational program.)

This is a short book that takes you, the reader, into learning the skills of mastering the last two layers of maturity of the skill of human self-consciousness. You probably already know the first five of the seven layers. Most people on Earth do. It also takes you into thinking about the ways it will change our romantic relationships, parenting, democracy, business, and ending poverty.

Finally, I thought I had figured it all out until I met Lucy. (I now know we are always ignorant of the next layer of maturity until we discover it in direct experiences, not only in words. In the meantime, we, self-consciously or unconsciously, think the layer we are operating on is the highest layer. This is especially true if we are not aware there are higher layers of maturity of this skill and, in relationship with the other layers, can identify the one we are currently operating on.) As mentioned above, I had given up on finding a woman with whom we could together figure out how to enjoy the experience of love.

Lucy and I had one of those love at first sight experiences. (Again, in hindsight, I now think the universe knows better what is best for me than I do. This has me now pay keen attention to its always occurring direct downloads of information into my thinking in sensations, feelings, and words. This reaction to meeting Lucy was one of the ways it kicked me in the butt to do what I needed to do to mature further. My assessment is most people on Earth today are not aware self-consciousness is a skill, there are layers of maturity of smaller skills to master it, and they are aware of the highest layers of maturity of it. I had fooled myself into thinking I had mastered the highest layer and, as you will see, I didn’t know I was still giving priority to words. Therefore, I was still operating at the sixth of the seven layers of it and didn’t know it.)

Lucy and I agreed we would not explore the traditional way of doing a romantic relationship. Instead, we agreed to consistently give priority in our relationship to what we both experienced as “the joy of love at first sight” and see what it could teach us.

I was fully aware the joy we experienced of love at first sight was the exact joy I wanted us to always know! It was the exact joy I wanted us to learn to know as a skill we could always choose as the container experience of our relationship! That was it! I had finally witnessed it naturally and effortlessly happening with someone! And I was now capable of always giving that joy priority in my relationship with Lucy to see what it could teach us! As you can witness as I tell the story here, I was very excited Lucy was willing to join me in this experiment. She did not understand it as I did. Today she says she was just “smitten” with me. However, she was fully aware of us having had the experience of “the joy of love at first sight” and willing to trust in me and it.

By this time, I understood the importance of giving priority to priorities in my thinking, and that was why I was able to consistently give that recognized joy priority in our relationship. As you will discover, it is the pattern of thinking of the assumption of oneness. As described earlier and now a skill, I had learned how to give it priority over the pattern of thinking of assuming separate parts. This is one of the main smaller skills we learn at the sixth layer of maturity of the skill of human self-consciousness. Therefore, I knew how to consistently do it.

It took me more than three years of giving priority to this joy to learn what it could teach us. I was seeking to discover what it was as a skill I could learn and consistently choose to execute.

I made several wrong guesses. Each time I had to again return to giving priority to the joy of love at first sight to sustain the experience of love in our relationship. Eventually I discovered what you will read as the four smaller skills of the Mature Elder layer of maturity. It is the last and highest layer I still had not discovered but thought I had! (I did not know I was still unconsciously, without choice, giving priority to words. I did not know sensation is the most self-consciously able to be experienced direct relationship with the rest of the universe.)

Then, one morning while meditating in the hot tub on our deck as I do each morning around 4am, I suddenly popped into experiencing the sauna shed in the yard as a three-dimensional sensation. I instantly realized that was a different experience than the way I just moments earlier was experiencing it. I then realized I had been previously experiencing it as a two-dimensional experience, as existing as a separate part in times and places. I had been unaware I had been primarily seeing the words “sauna shed” when looking at it and not primarily experiencing it in the realm of sensation, my most direct relationship with the other parts of the universe.

I then realized giving priority to experiencing it as a three-dimensional sensation was including the third dimension of oneness. I was now experiencing the sauna shed in times, places, and oneness and giving priority to the third one, the sensation of oneness. I realized I had popped into automatically doing that because, having already mastered the smaller skills at the sixth layer, I knew oneness is real and the assumption of separate parts is a mutually agreed upon illusion tool we invented. Thus, when including oneness, I naturally gave second priority to experiencing it as a separate part. While fully experiencing all three dimensions of times, places, and oneness being present, the total experience was primarily a self-consciously known sensation, not primarily words. (In hindsight, I now know this discovery could not have happened if I had not already mastered the smaller skills at the sixth layer. The smaller skills of each layer can only build on the mastery of the smaller skills of the previous layer.)

Finally, I realized that up to that moment in my life I had been unconsciously (without choice) always giving priority to words rather than reality, the three-dimensional sensation of self-consciously known oneness. I also realized I could experience it as the container within which the illusion of separate parts exist that allows me to be self-conscious.

Later, when Lucy woke up and came down to the kitchen, I gave priority to experiencing her and our relationship as a three-dimensional sensation. Without effort, we were instantly in that joy of love at first sight experience. I then more strongly realized it was not primarily words. It was primarily a sensation. I realized I had discovered what giving that joy priority for more than three years had taught me: reality is including oneness in all I see and do, and I can execute is as a skill by experiencing everything as primarily a three-dimensional sensation. That is adding the reality of oneness into a cooperative combination with the assumption of separate parts and words. That combination allows me to know the reality of oneness as a self-consciously known sensation. Not primarily a belief in words or feeling, but primarily a sensation, my physical body’s most direct relationship with the rest of the universe.

Not only that. Having discovered it using mature free choice, solely from a repeated study of my present experiences, I could now confidently know it, name it, choose it, learn to do it as a skill, and have it become a habit. Wow! I wanted to do the happy dance throughout the house!

With Lucy all morning long, I kept noticing I no longer needed to give priority to our joy of love at first sight to experience it. It was now effortlessly present, and I was able to have it be present both as a choice and as a skill I could execute.

I looked around the room. Everywhere I looked I experienced everything occurring in the now self-consciously known three-dimensional sensation of oneness. I later realized I had discovered full maturity in the skill of human self-consciousness is primarily experiencing everything occurring in the sensation of three-dimensionality. But I did not know that then. I would only later learn more of what I needed to know to have the necessary fundamental opposites fully present and not in conflict with each other: two-dimensionality (the assumption of separate parts) and three-dimensionality (the assumption of oneness). You will learn how to do that when you read this book. I had discovered it, but I did not yet have full maturity in it as a skill. There was more I needed to know to master it as a skill and turn it into a habit.

Ever since I have nearly always (of course there are times when I lose it) known and experienced the joy of the sensation of oneness as the container of all Lucy and I do in our relationship. We now know the sensation of oneness is not between the two of us. There is only one oneness. It is everywhere and we now know how to live self-consciously inside it together.

Lucy is not as introspective and intellectually oriented as I am, but she loves enjoying the joyful sensation of oneness with me! And we love enjoying it together! And that is what matters. Everything else is of such secondary importance, I notice I don’t ever give any of it serious attention. Each moment I give priority to fully accepting Lucy as she is and fully enjoy the skill of having the joy of love be the container of all we do together. (I have been in a men’s group for twenty-six years. Going against their encouragement to do it, the last seven years I have told them I wouldn’t do Match.com, but I would happily respond to love if it happened with someone. I am glad I stayed true to that agreement with myself.)

Lastly, I discovered something else also. It takes another self-consciously skilled person to know it with me to confirm for both it is real and not a fantasy of desire. When I primarily experience my relationship with Lucy as a self-consciously known three-dimensional sensation, and she responds affirming it as real and beautiful by joyfully joining me there, I know it is real and not a fantasy of desire. Experiencing it with the sauna shed was not enough. I needed it confirmed as mutually experienced as real with another self-consciously skilled human being as something we could mutually know and choose within the realm of self-consciousness. This is probably why people find attractive the joy of the mutual love experience with another person and the raising of children. It is a confirmation they are mutually living in the more mature realm of self-consciousness rather than just being conscious. The latter is doing what they naturally do at the highest layer of maturity of this skill they know. At the same time, lacking full maturity in the skill of human self-consciousness is why so many fail to sustain that joy as the container of all they do together.

Lucy and I now enjoy the sensation of oneness all day each day. I also know if I had used a checklist in my thinking to choose Lucy, our romantic relationship would never have happened. I only discovered what a perfect match we are after living together for years. I now know maturation cannot be escaped or stopped. Doing this experiment with Lucy is how that natural process of maturation showed me the way to master the last layer smaller skills I still hadn’t discovered. (I was very humbled by this. I was sure I had already discovered it, unaware I had only discovered it in words.)

I want you and your lover to know the skill of full maturity in the skill of human self-consciousness. Then the two of you have the option of mutually choosing to consistently experience the joy of love as the sensation of oneness within which you experience all other experiences. It will also reveal how to come back to it when one of you, or both of you, lose giving it priority. It is the skill of knowing how to give priority, individually and mutually, to the sensation of oneness that is always everywhere and able to be experienced. It is not something between the two of you. I now know it can only happen as a skillful self-conscious choice upon mastering the full skill of human self-consciousness. It is possible the two of you could learn these skills from reading this book and trying on the experiences I will guide you into experiencing.

Each moment and wherever you are, I also want you to have the joy of participating in the maturation of our human species on Earth. That joy also can only be consistently achieved by mastering the highest layer of maturity of the skill of human self-consciousness. Then you will not be able to stop yourself from giving priority in your thinking and actions to what throughout history has most often been labeled “Eldering.” It will also be described in the Preface. I think you will discover each moment there is nothing more enjoyable than Eldering.

Today, this is how I see who I am. I hope you choose to read this book and use it as one of your tools to achieve full maturity in the skill of human self-consciousness. We now know how each of us can self-elder ourselves into mastering the last two layers of it that up to now have not been widely known and mastered. As I think you will also eventually agree, they will soon be widely known and mastered by many.

I think you will also eventually agree maturation cannot be escaped or stopped. It is the fundamental process in this rascally indivisible universe.