Am I really supposed to accept everything that happens to me?

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In any situation when something happens, you have the choice to listen to the voice of ego or the voice of Spirit. If you listen to the voice of ego, you stay on the merry-go-round. You keep going round and round, or up and down, and stay stuck in the belief that this illusion is real. Or, you can listen to the voice of Spirit, which will eventually guide you back home. We have talked about this before, but I want to describe it today using different terminology. It is not always easy in the moment to recognize what is coming from Spirit and what is of the ego. Here is a method for making this discernment, to become more aware with whom you are playing and giving energy. The two significant terms here are acceptance and analysis. It isn’t hard to guess which aligns with Spirit and which with the ego, but I’ll tell you anyway. When you simply accept what is happening or has happened, whatever it might be, you are opening up to the voice of Spirit. When you attempt to understand, to analyze, and to deal with the situation, you are listening to the voice of ego. Spirit accepts; ego analyzes.

Let’s talk in more depth about what each of these choices is like. I the last message we talked about cause and effect. When you analyze, you are acting as if the effect is the cause. You are turning things around. You are looking at how to change the world. You are accepting the world as real, and as the cause of your problem. You are trying to make your world better. That is always the voice of ego trying to make heaven on earth. Remember that the cause is always within your mind, not out in the world. When you analyze, you are pretending that the world is cause. So, you may be thinking, “Sanhia, should I accept everything that happens to me without resistance?”  And I respond, “Yes”. This is what Jesus was referring to when he said to turn the other cheek. Don’t fight what is happening, surrender to it. Accept it. Know not only that you are the cause, which means that anything and everything that happens in your life that does not feel Divine is experienced because you believe that you are separated from God. You fear that you are going to be punished, deserve punishment, and need forgiveness from God. This is why you have created everything that is uncomfortable in your life. Acceptance is merely the acknowledgment that it could be no other way. The cause must be in you and so it is useless to try to change the world. Rather than trying to change the effect, you go to the cause. You change what it is in you that feels you are guilty, that judges yourself. What you want to heal is your belief in your separation from God, this thought that you are not worthy, this idea that you have sinned against God and been found guilty. These false beliefs are what you want to change.

Another side of the story is this. Spirit always, with no exceptions ever, anywhere in time, has a plan. Everything that is happening to you is exactly perfect and as it should be. Spirit’s plan for you is that you wake up and come home. Every event in your life is part of this wake up call. When you fight what is happening or try to change it after careful or not so careful analysis, you are questioning the judgment and ability of Spirit. Only the voice of ego would have the temerity to try and pull that off. Ego is trying to protect its own turf by claiming to have a better plan than the Divine plan. You have bought this promise lifetime after lifetime. The reason for acceptance is to have faith in the voice of Spirit, trusting that Spirit is bringing you the perfect thing in each moment. Acceptance is the shortest way home. No need to question, to analyze, to understand…you simply accept that this is the best way. If it is hard to accept, you can do the five-step process to ease your experience. Rather than asking Spirit for understanding, ask for support in letting go of your illusions and the belief that they are real. Ask for support in giving up your self-hatred and your fear of God, letting go of your self-condemnation. If Spirit in its plan provides you with understanding, then of course you will accept that insight, but it is not your job to figure things out. That is Spirit’s job. Your only responsibility is to accept what comes and to trust, knowing that Spirit will provide you with everything that you need. So, cover your ears. Shut out the voice of ego. Starve it. Do this through acceptance.

As you have the conscious intention to choose acceptance over analysis, you will become more proficient at it. You will find that the more often you choose acceptance the easier it becomes. All things begin to look more divine, especially in places you would have previously had difficulty in finding perfection. Eventually, everything will look Divine. That is the state of mastery that precedes the full realization of ascension. Jesus was able to look at those who were putting him to death and see them as Divine. He could see every moment as holy, including the one where a spear was jabbed into his side. He accepted. He saw the Divinity. He saw that nothing else was real. In full acceptance there is unconditional love. There is no pain, no fear. You will all get there. That is already in Spirit’s plan. You get there by taking one step at a time, by noticing where you are analyzing rather than accepting.

Let’s take a few more moments to look at the analyzing process so that you may more easily recognize it. You are so skilled at this ability of looking at another and seeing how they are making choices that are not in their best interests. You want to help them. You want to point out to them what they are doing. That is the voice of ego. What you see out here, what you see them doing, is you. It is not them. It is always you. Your self-analysis is projected upon another. You are trying to heal it out there, instead of taking responsibility for your own thoughts. You are trying to change the effect instead of the cause. The other person is always showing you the effect of your mind. When you recognize how that process works, you begin to accept the behavior of everyone else and stop analyzing them or trying to change or assist them. You simply acknowledge that you are seeing places where you do not accept yourself and you take that inside and forgive. You accept everything as yours and give it all to Spirit. Think about how much time and energy you spend thinking about and worrying about others. You may hold it as your holy responsibility to do that. But, that is all from the ego. It is all analysis. It is all projection. It is not your job to help anyone else. Your job is to save yourself and you do that by accepting everything around you.

So, with all of this time and energy not being spent in your habitual manner, what do you now talk or think about? What is left if there is no more problem solving or “loving” spiritual gossip to share? This is a big space; it can feel like an enormous void. You give that space to Spirit. You accept that everything you see is your projection of your separation from God. You work on forgiving yourself and God; forgiving the other….reminding yourself constantly that none of this out there is real. In truth there is nothing to forgive. Everyone is innocent and Divine. I am aware that you are surrounded by spiritual teachings that contradict this. You are to be the Good Samaritan. You are to help others. You are to be a “good” person. There is nothing wrong about helping another, but that is done by simply loving them unconditionally, by accepting them as they are. If you think it is your job to fix them, you see them as broken, not as Divine. That is the service you will provide them. And as you see them, so do you see yourself. So we have the blind leading the blind. This does not mean that you don’t help somebody who asks for help. Be kind. But don’t confuse the issue by thinking you are healing somebody by giving them assistance. For more on this subject you can reread the message “When should I share my spiritual perspective with others?” You have no obligation here. It is not your job to heal. That is Spirit’s job. Spirit may use you in the healing process, but not through your conscious deliberation of what is needed, not through your analysis of the situation. You give yourself to Spirit and wait for Spirit to direct you. If you truly want to help others, then realize your own ascension. That is the greatest gift you have to offer to the whole. If Spirit has a role for you to play, that will unfold. It’s not up to you. There is nothing to figure out. Let go of that weight. Free yourself. Your job is to simply accept everything. You don’t have to do the right thing. Whatever you do is perfect. It doesn’t matter. What everyone else does is perfect. It doesn’t matter. If it looks like somebody out there needs correction, the truth is you think you need correction. You are all Divine, but asleep. You have to awaken yourself before you can awaken another.

Let’s close with this image. You are watching a movie on a screen. You don’t like what is happening so you get up and try to change the screen. But you can’t do anything. The movie continues. That is because the movie is not created on the screen. It is created by cameras and then projected on the screen. The screen is the world and the projector is your mind. The only way to change what is happening on the screen is to change your mind. This means that what is on the screen or in the world is not real. Only your thoughts are real. So change your mind. The catch is that you don’t really know how to do that. So it all comes back to the thought for today. Accept the movie as it is. Take responsibility for it. Forgive yourself. Give it to Spirit in the realization that Spirit is the true creator of the movie. All you can do is accept what you are seeing. Stop analyzing the show and give it all to Spirit. It is so simple. Analyze, listen to ego, and continue to suffer. Accept, listen to Spirit, reclaim your Divine heritage, and go home. No matter which choice you make in this moment….

God Blesses You

Sanhia

Do you confuse cause and effect? 

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One of the biggest confusions that the ego throws into every situation is its determination of what the “cause” is and what the “effect” is. We are all familiar with the terms, “cause” is what makes something happen and “effect” is what happens. There seems to be no control over the effect. It appears to automatically follow the cause. According to the ego’s picture of the world, you also have no control over the cause. Therefore, you have no control whatsoever. To the ego mind, the cause is always out there in the world.  Perhaps because some person did something, it causes you to have something happen in your life. Maybe it is because the government infringes on your rights, because the doctor messes up, because the weather ruins your plans, and on and on, that negative effects come into your life. In that view of reality the cause is always out there in the world and you are a helpless victim with no control whatsoever over what happens. Shit happens. The universe is random or there is a spiteful god. Anything could happen to you at any time. You feel nothing but terror when you consider the future, not to speak of the immediate present. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it all. It is simply a chaotic universe. If that is the case you truly better live for today, for there is no guarantee for anything but the moment, and it may not last long. Anything might just fall out of the sky, ending life as you know it.

We are just having fun with you here. I want to remind you that the cause is never out there. It is always in here, in your mind. Please don’t take this scrap of information and rush off and blame yourself for everything in the world. That is another trick of the ego. It wants to know why, if you are the creator of all of this, you are doing such a lousy job. It does you no good whatsoever if you replace responsibility with blame. Responsibility is the acknowledgement that it could be no other way. The world is your creation, not God’s. You did this by making the choice to separate from God, create this universe, and disappear into it. However, you are unconscious of the part of you that made these choices – as you are unconscious of your Divinity. You are absolutely unaware that you are in heaven with God right now and this world is just a dream. If you were conscious of all of this you would wake up and leave the dream. This taking of responsibility is the third step of the five-step process.

Perhaps it is best now to turn to the five-step process, because it clearly shows the relationship of cause and effect. An event (or multiple events) is going on in your world. You react to it with fear and helplessness, believing it is something outside of yourself and that you are victim to it. Perhaps your brain-mind, your conscious thinking mind, assigns blame. Maybe you are not aware of what is causing your fear, but you clearly feel the discomfort in your body. It might register as a pain, a discomfort or an illness. This is the first step of the process, identifying the problem (effect). In the second step, you face the fear or the discomfort. You go right into it. Eventually the fear will transform. Because it is not real, your steady focus upon the fear allows it to transform to love. Then you are ready and able to move to the third step, as previously mentioned, and claim your Divinity by taking responsibility. You acknowledge that you, not the world, are the cause, and that it could be no other way because of your Divine nature. You could never be the victim. Remember there is no blame here. What transpires in the world is not real. None of it ever happened. There can be no fault, only confusion in your perception. The third step is to help clarify your perception. As A Course in Miracles (ACIM) teaches, “There is no order of difficulty in miracles”. No step in this process is any more important than any other. They all need to take place. In the fourth step, in the state of peace that you have found, you go inside and listen to the guidance. You go to true cause.

While you are in the illusion, while seeming to be in a physical body, you are always in duality. Even when you have moved into the third and fourth steps of the process and are experiencing peace, you are still in duality. If the experience remains of being in the world, of being in a body, you are in duality. Even though you may have the awareness that none of it is real, you are still fully in the experience of the illusion. If I were to say to you at that juncture to let go of the body and the world, you might ask, “But how?”  You feel yourself stuck in duality. What the fourth step is really about is turning your life over to the only force that can lead you home, and that is Spirit. Listen to and follow what Spirit has to say. No matter how supportive anything in the world may be for you – whether it be ACIM, these messages from me, other pure non-dualistic texts, guidance from any spiritual teachers or leaders, support from spiritual practices such as meditation or yoga – it has the sole purpose to train you to listen to and follow Spirit instead of the ego. The only thing that will take you home is a total surrender to the voice of Spirit within you. Everything else is still a part of the illusion because it recognizes the duality of Spirit and the ego. The ego will continue to throw its tantrums, but your job is to return over and over to the voice of Spirit until that is all that remains.

Once you have realized that everything is created in your mind, there is always a choice of what you instruct your mind to listen to. Ever since you have been in a body – lifetime after lifetime – you have chosen to listen to ego. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. You would be aware only of your Divine home. There would be no choice of voices to listen to. There would be only one, only Spirit, only God, only Divinity. In duality this will always appear as a choice, do you choose Spirit or do you choose ego? There are steps that you can take toward realizing your Divinity. The first step is to realize that you do have a choice. You can choose between listening to Spirit and listening to ego. The second step is to be aware of which voice you are listening to. Ego will always tell you that the cause is in the world. There are no limits to where the ego will assert itself. It will tell you that you are hungry because you haven’t eaten for four hours, that you are tired because you didn’t sleep well last night. The cause will always be out there in the world according to the ego. It never is. This is not to say you should pretend that the world doesn’t exist. While you are in a body you will have to have food and sleep. Otherwise you will die and come back to try it in another way. What is not true is that your discomfort comes from not eating or sleeping. The cause of discomfort comes from your mind, from your fear and separation from God, from your guilt. So, you create pain in your life. If you are hungry, eat. If you are tired, sleep. Don’t pretend that that has solved the situation. It won’t be long before hunger and sleepiness return. So it is with every other “problem” in your life. The situation is never healed. Eat and sleep, but remember that the truth lies within you. Remind yourself that the only end to hunger and tiredness comes through listening to Spirit. Eat and sleep, but give your discomfort to Spirit.

We have been down this road together several times. I wish to remind you that Spirit is always bringing to you exactly the perfect thing in each moment to guide you home. I want to remind you that, as ego is your creation and as the world is your creation, so is the existence of Spirit being there to guide you home also your creation. In your oneness with God, you have co-created your way to wake up. However, you are the sole creator of the dream. This is not God’s dream. Nobody else can wake you up, but yourself. Nobody else is dreaming this but you. Spirit can grab you by the shoulder and gently shake you and whisper to wake up, but you can pull the cover over your face and continue to sleep for as long as you want. Or…you can choose to wake up. For most people, if it comfortable enough to stay in the dream, they will stay. It is familiar; it is known; it feels relatively safe. Waking up is an absolute unknown to the unconscious mind. Letting go of the world is terrifying. As we mentioned in the last message, trying to create heaven on earth seems like a safer bet. You, however, have made the choice to try to listen to Spirit rather than the ego. Spirit is going to bring situations to you that feel uncomfortable in order to help you wake up. If you see these events as the cause of your suffering, you will stay asleep. As you accept them as the gifts that they are from your own true mind, you begin to awaken.

Spirit will never give you more than you have asked for. Spirit will help you see where you have given power to the illusion, where you have become a victim to fear. This requires that you face these fears head on. It is not easy, but it is doable. Eventually, you will do it. The world is never the cause. When you fully realize this, the world can cause you no pain or suffering. There will be nothing to fear. You will know that the cause is in you and you will choose to go home. That is what Spirit is teaching you. When things come into your lives that feel painful, this is not a failing on your part. It is not a weakness. If anything, it is a strength. It is a sign of spiritual maturity, a sign that you are now ready for this test. You are ready to give this to Spirit, to take responsibility, to let go of having the earth be your cause. If the earth were at cause there would be only despair. Knowing you are at cause, that it is all from Spirit, from Divinity – there is nothing to despair of. Everything is perfect; all is aligned.

The thought for today is that the cause is always within you. Everything in the world is the effect from your mind’s cause, and you have caused it for only one reason. You have done this to help yourself wake up. If it is your deep desire to awaken, feel nothing but gratitude for whatever the world seems to bring to you. So simple. So pure. So beautiful. Just accept it with thankfulness.

Good Now

Sanhia

Can we create heaven on earth?

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Can we create heaven on earth? This is an exceedingly popular question, one that many spiritual practices and teachers give much energy to. Most people have little hope that there could be heaven on earth. They tend to possess a helpless victim-like approach to their existence here, though there is usually some hopefulness that something might improve. On the whole though, they expect there will always be problems. Governments will misuse their power. Businesses will always care more for their profits than for the environment or the well being of their customers. Health will be a concern; we are victims to disease and accidents. We will never have enough money and our bosses don’t really care about us. Relationships and friendships are not fully satisfying. Those that start out ecstatically devolve into, at best, a ho-hum day-to-day survival. However, many of those who are on a spiritual path as well as a lot of spiritual teachers have decided that all of this can be overcome, that we can have heaven on earth. Working with an understanding that we are the power in our lives and that what we focus on and believe in will happen gives us the power to determine our futures on the planet. There is an underlying truth in this belief, but when we look at the wholeness of what is suggested here, the insanity of trying to create heaven on earth may become clear to you. This idea has its birth in the ego; it does not come from Spirit.

When we look at creating heaven on earth, there are several things to be aware of. First of all, this physical illusion of the earth and the universe is based on duality; it is based on opposites. In divinity there is no polarity: no good and bad, no male and female, no hot and cold, no opposites. There is simply is-ness. The whole appearance of physicalness is based on the illusion of duality that does not exist in Divinity. One thing this means is that when you try to create “good” in the universe, an equal amount of “bad” must also be created. Opposites always balance out each other. “Good” cannot exist without “bad”. There simply cannot be heaven on earth without hell on earth. In duality, you cannot create one thing without creating its opposite. So, if you succeed in creating a “good” in this illusion, somebody has to create a balancing “bad”. To further confuse the issue, your “good” may be another’s “bad” and vice-versa. Everyone is trying to create heaven on earth according to their own personal model of what that is, and how to achieve it.  If this sounds insane, please understand that insanity is the basis of duality. If you wish to follow this reasoning as far as you can, then if you wish to create “good” coming out of others, you should create as much “bad” as possible yourself, so that the balancing energy could be released. If this is an absolutely insane proposition, welcome to planet earth. It is just a dance where every action brings an equal and opposite reaction.

Creating heaven on earth is an impossibility. Heaven is your true home. It is where you are right now, though you are having a dream/nightmare that you are in a physical body on earth. There is no real earth. Your true self is in heaven as you are reading this. So, here you are trying to reinvent the wheel, trying to create something that already is. In this case, rather than having God’s absolute perfection, we have humans who don’t believe in their Divinity and are therefore capable of using only a small fraction of their infinite creative power trying to compete with God in creating heaven in the midst of duality. It is not too hard to see the futility in this. But, it could be no other way, because this earthly physical illusion only came about as the result of a crazy idea. You thought that maybe you could create something better than God was capable of doing. That was an insane idea. Then you compounded this by going into terror and fear and disappearing into your creation to hide. All humans hold guilt about this choice to separate from God. Fortunately, you didn’t succeed. It was not possible to separate from God, any more than it is possible for God to judge you, withdraw His love, or punish you. It is possible to be in a dream, to be in an illusion where you forget who you are. You cannot change who you are, but you can experience amnesia in your dream.  Your job is not the impossible; it is not to attempt to compete with God, by trying – and failing – to create heaven on earth. Your job is much easier than that. Forgive yourself. Be aware that God has no anger or judgment about what you have done. In fact, nothing has really happened. Realize that the easy thing to do is to allow yourself to be in heaven, not to try to create the impossible on earth. It is not only easier, it is also inevitable.

You will all wake up from this dream and realize your true home. You have no choice about this. All you can do is drag your feet and slow your progress down on your trip back home. You can extend time, but time is just one of the illusions of duality. Only what is real can last forever. These bodies, this earth are finite. You are real; your body and the hell around in the dream are not. Even now, as you dream of being here on earth in a body, the truth of you is in heaven. Rather than focus energy on bringing heaven here, wake up! The heaven you will find yourself in will far surpass anything you could even dream of in this illusion. Instead of doing the impossible, do the inevitable. Rather than dragging your feet, lift them up. Let Spirit carry you home. By choosing to hear that voice each day you can shrink time. You can cut off years or lifetimes. In the long run, it makes no difference. Once you awaken, this will all seem as if it never happened. In the meantime, you experience some amount of pain and suffering. Why prolong it?

If you try to create heaven on earth, you will fail. This will bring about some amount of pain and suffering. The part of you that feels helpless at not being able to create heaven on earth, but feels equally helpless in figuring out how to wake up, can feel doomed to suffer until ascension finally happens. There is a fear of seeing the earth being slowly destroyed, of wars, of corruption, and of friends, loved ones and eventually yourself succumbing to disease and then death. Does one just have to put up with all of this, to stand helplessly by? That is one choice, but it is not the only one. You can focus your energy and intention on seeing that none of this is real, just like the show you watched on television the other day. Not real. Made up. Imaginary. As you get that, you can find that watching it becomes less and less painful. In fact, it may become quite entertaining. When you know it is not real, it is not so hard to experience anything. The closest you can get to creating heaven on earth is by realizing that everything that is happening is being scripted by Spirit for one purpose only, and that is to guide you to your awakening…to your ascension. It is there to help you become aware that none of it is real and that you are and always have been in heaven. This means that whatever is happening is perfect. Realizing that it is perfect, accepting rather than judging and trying to change the gift of Spirit, allows you to begin to experience heaven. Perfection is not something that you create; it is what already exists. Your job is not to make the world perfect; it is to recognize the perfection that is already in place. When you think that something has to change, you are not accepting the perfection.

This bears repeating. You do not need to change anything to bring heaven on earth. Spirit is taking care of that. All that you need to do is to relax and accept the perfection of Spirit’s gifts, to feel gratitude. Your only response is to Spirit, as you learn to ignore the insane ranting of your ego. You don’t ask for any part of the world to be fixed. The only thing you pray for help with is your willingness and ability to hear and receive Spirit.

Help me to trust the perfection that surrounds me. Help me to know that this is not real, that no child of God can ever be truly hurt, that death is an illusion. Help me to choose your voice instead of the voice of ego, to choose love over fear. Help me to choose to believe in my innocence rather than in my guilt. Help me to reclaim my true home in heaven.

Good Now

Sanhia

What if this was the last day of your life?

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A question that sometimes is asked of a person, often in connection with their spiritual path, is “What would you do if you had but one day left to live?” This, of course, is not a question of what heroic efforts might save your life, but rather one that forces you to choose what is truly important. This necessitates a great personal investigation. What do you place such a high value on that you would be sure to make it a part of your last day on earth? Conversely, what things would you definitely not do, not waste your precious moments with. As you are working with this process, you are not limited to pretending that you have only one day to live, you can give yourself a week, a month, or even a year. Perhaps what remains undone seems large and would require more time. Whatever the time span, the purpose is to become aware of the deep passions and desires that you are not exercising in your day to day life, to look at how much of your existence is spent with things that are not truly meaningful for you. It is about using your time productively. On that level it is a wonderful process, but that’s not where we are going today. We are moving to another level. That is always what these messages are about…taking things to another level, or looking at things from an ascension perspective. So, let’s be a little counter-intuitive again today.

You have likely done some of this kind of work already, looking at what your passion or your purpose is. You are aware of what gives you joy. Perhaps you don’t fill your days with these things to the level you would wish, but you have awareness. You are not choosing to live your life in absolute denial of where your heart or Spirit leads you. So what is this different perspective I am suggesting that you take? If you are on a serious ascension path, rather than holding spirituality as an interesting hobby that you enjoy exploring, there is another way to play this game. If your intention is to realize your Divine self, to experience that this is all an illusion, and to let it go – and that this takes precedence over everything else – you may wish to look at what you would do with the last day of your life from a different perspective. Whatever your answer to this month’s question might be, that is what stands between you and the realization of your ascension. Whatever you feel is undone or has not been completed yet, is what keeps you tied to this body. You will stay until you either complete it or let it go. The purpose of the “last day” process is not one of learning to stop wasting time. Time is an illusion that cannot be wasted. It is not about doing what you came here to do. There is nothing that is really important to do here. This is not real.  If there is anything important for you to do (I am just throwing this contradiction in here because the ego mind goes absolutely crazy with inconsistency, while absolute truth can never be communicated in words), you have no clue in your conscious thinking mind what it is. But, there is a plan that Spirit has for you.

The best you might do with today’s process would be to say to yourself that if you have only one day (week, month, year…) you are going to listen to Spirit and do whatever you are directed to do. Anything else is coming from your ego. It amounts to your ego placing an importance upon you in this body in this illusion. Take some deep breaths and let this be assimilated into your being. What does this mean? It means that while you are in this process of waiting for the grace of God to lead to a full awakening to your Divine nature, you could be compressing time by looking at what you think you still have to do or want to do – perhaps what some people refer to as their “bucket list”. One choice would be to achieve all of those things so that they no longer stand in your way. The more efficient path would be to release the desires, to give up all your plans. Give them all to Spirit. If Spirit so guides you, take an action, but as for your ego self, there are no directions to be taken. You simply do the things that allow you to remain in your body in the moment…breathe, drink, eat, exercise, play with your mirrors…and then let them go. We are not just speaking of actions, of achievements, and of concrete goals. There may also be emotional, relationship desires you want fulfilled. Perhaps you want to feel loved or to have others express love to you in certain ways. Maybe there are spiritual gifts you want to demonstrate, such as translocation, channeling, time travel, or direct manifestation of objects. There is no limit to the number of things that your ego may want to experience. I wish to remind you that each one of these desires, including those that you may not even be conscious about now, keeps you rooted in the physical. They are all things you need to do in a body.

There is no judgment here. To be human is to have ego desires. There is no punishment for holding on to them. We are only suggesting that you become fully conscious of what your desires are. If you wish to release some desires, judging yourself for having them is perhaps the most inefficient technique you could come up with. Let them go when you are ready. A motivation for choosing to let go of these goals is to realize that whatever joy or satisfaction this experience or achievement might bring you, it will not relieve you of the pain of believing yourself to be separate from God. It will not bring you nearly the joy, pleasure, and ecstasy that are the truth of who you are when you let go of the illusion of being this physical body. You will get but a taste of Divine love.

It is a very simple process for today. Ask yourself what you would do if your time remaining in this body was limited; then let go of all need or desire to do those things. If that isn’t easy, give it to Spirit. If you don’t have the will to let go of something…go do it. Have that experience. Manifest it. Create it. One day you will simply say to yourself:

 “Enough! I give up all my desire for earthly experiences. I surrender it to Spirit and let myself be guided by Spirit to whatever actions are part of His plan for me while still in a body. Let me become one with the divine plan, which is truly my plan.” 

Good Now

Sanhia

Do we have free will?

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The question of whether or not humans have free will has always been a hot topic. The answer is yes…..and no. In the duality there is always duality. There is no simple answer. The truth of you, the Divine you, has absolute free will to create anything it desires. Absolute. There is no limit. In the illusion, your ego thinks it has absolute free will. And it does. It has absolute free will to keep you stuck here. That is the job of your ego, to keep you in the illusion. Otherwise it disappears. Your ego has a vested interest in your free will, both in your believing that you have a choice and that there is a right choice. In truth, in the illusion you have no choice. You have no free will whatsoever. It has already been decided that the illusion will end. The script has been written, in fact, the play is already over. The illusion ends; it disappears. You realize the truth of who you are and always have been. This is the truth of who you are at this very moment – even though you think you are this body and that the physical world is real.

Because the physical is not real, it cannot be sustained indefinitely. Things that are real last forever; things that are not real begin and end. Knowing this makes understanding easier. Just look around and see what lasts forever. Probably there is nothing like that that you can see. Your human eyes and senses are unable to detect anything that will not change and ultimately end. So, we come back to the question of free will. Your only “true” free will is whether you listen to Spirit or to your ego. As you choose to listen to Spirit, the voice of your ego grows weaker and weaker. Eventually you won’t hear it at all. Then the physical begins to drop away and you will fully realize your Divinity. You realize your ascension.

What you are referring to when you say you have free will is really the voice of your ego. It says, “I want to choose what I want”. Even choosing ascension is a choice of your ego. Your Divinity cannot choose to ascend because it is already in that state. You are not trying to achieve something here, only to wake up. To choose something is to believe yourself to be separate from it. Every choice you can make is an affirmation of separation. Whatever your ego tells you is the way to realize Divinity, comes from fear and separation.

The goals you have in this world come from fear and separation. If you say that you want to get your finances in line so you don’t worry about money anymore, if you are seeking a nurturing supportive relationship, if you are seeking to find your right livelihood – the work you came here to do – none of that will lead you to realize your Divinity. I am not suggesting that you never have earthly desires, but, even should they be fulfilled, you will be left with the need to replace them with other earthly goals. Behind it all will lurk a feeling of lack, a desire for what you don’t have. Your ego’s eyes are infinitely large, always wanting more, never fulfilled. There seems to be a gap where you feel separated from God. No matter how hard you try to fill it, the task is impossible. How can you fill an imaginary hole with imaginary achievements? Eventually, whether in this body or another, you will decide to give your life to Spirit. There is no free will about this. It will be the only choice remaining for you. You will ask Spirit to tell you what to do. You will tell Spirit you are here to serve and that your wills are One. Everyone will make this surrender eventually. You will give your free will to Spirit. Until that time you will continue to have pain, fear, and suffering on the physical plane. No matter what goals you may set for yourself, there will be no heaven on earth.

Ego does not run the show here. Everything is directed by Spirit. Ego has absolutely no power; it all belongs to Spirit. Whether or not you pay it any attention, Spirit runs your life. The only thing you truly want is to wake up to your Divinity. Everything else is just your ego pulling your leg. Spirit brings to you in each moment exactly what you require to realize your ascension. Your only job is to accept what is presented. Welcome it. When you resist and think that what has happened is not what you want, you are trying to give control to your ego. Change your mind about that. Surrender your earthly will to the Divine will. You are simply agreeing to a done deal. Like it or not, Spirit is running your life. Let go of thinking that you know where your happiness and, eventually, your salvation lie. If you knew how to get yourself out of this illusion and into your Divinity, you would have done it long ago. Your life has already been scripted by Spirit. The end of the story is that you are back home. Your choices cannot affect this plan, though your cooperation may speed it along.

Your divine self played with the idea that it could create something separate from God. A “part” of you went off into that idea, into that dream. It was a dream because nothing real could be separate from God. We could identify the part of you that thought this separation could happen as your ego. It is the part that is in guilt and terror. The moment you created that dream, or that nightmare, God recognized it and created Holy Spirit to follow you into the illusion in order to wake you up and show that it wasn’t real. So, within this insanity of the physical world there is a voice of sanity. The truth of Spirit, of Divinity, never waivers. The duality jumps back and forth. On the one hand your ego says you can create anything you want here. You are God; you can create heaven on earth. On the other hand your ego says you are a worthless piece of shit who has failed at everything you have tried, deserving of punishment for your sins and ineptitude. Your ego is always in duality. There is constant conflict. In the truth of Spirit, you simply are. You are Divine. There is no good or bad, no judgment, only Oneness.

If you think of the most joy you have had in this body, it is a small taste of the infinite joy that is a part of your true nature. Some of you have had moments where you felt yourself stepping out of the duality into a place of peace and love. This, also, was but a taste of your true nature. Unlike this temporary appearance, your true self is eternally experiencing this joy. There is no other possibility.

In conclusion, you have the free will to surrender your free will. There is no choice to make. Choices only exist in duality. While you are experiencing this duality, it is the only place you can operate from. So, exercise your apparent free will by choosing Spirit over your ego. Establish a dialogue with Spirit. Your will and Spirit’s will are the same. Spirit will tell you what to do. Surrender to that guidance. Absolutely. All of your fear will come up because you are afraid of God. Ego tells you that only your free will can save you. Spirit reminds you that nothing can save you because you already are saved. So listen, surrender, wake up, and go home. Spirit tells you exactly what to let go of to give up the belief in separation. Your only job is to say “Thank you” and “What is your instruction today?” If you don’t hear a clear message, open your eyes and look around. Whatever you see is what Spirit has brought you today. You can do this. You will do this. Ultimately, you have no choice.  That is your terror and your salvation. Don’t forget the five-step process. It can help you move through the terror more quickly. Your free will is a prison. Give it up, and let the gates be opened. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do. There is only God, only Spirit, only love.

Good Now

Sanhia

Is there any place for fun on the ascension path?

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The last several messages have been somewhat intense, so I thought we would have a little more fun this time. In this message we will talk about fun, joy, and play. Perhaps you are taking things too seriously. If what you are experiencing is an illusion, why not have more fun with it? I have an assignment for you. Each time you find yourself being weighed down by the seriousness of your now moment, think up a joke about your situation. Make it so funny that you can’t wait to find an audience to share it with.

You are aware that your Divine nature is the truth of you. You understand that you don’t have a lot of control over how long it will take until you fully realize your Divinity and leave this physical illusion. In the meantime, since you have nothing really important to do – except, of course, whatever Spirit has in mind for you – you might as well have fun. If there is to be a choice between joy and misery, between fun and boredom…..is this a hard decision to make?

It is not so easy to have fun when you are feeling like a victim, so those thoughts and feelings will have to be jettisoned. It is also quite a challenge to enjoy yourself when you feel weighed down by lots of responsibilities. It is time to let go of them as well. Perhaps you feel that you have to earn your fun time, so you will work now and play later. Try turning that one around. If you are truly doing God’s work you will be feeling ecstatic. The teaching from the mass consciousness is that this world is a very serious place and that you have to apply yourself, work hard, and make the right choices or life will just run you over. Such a responsibility you have! When you look at that it is overwhelming. Sometimes it just makes you want to lie down and die. That couldn’t be any worse than living with that much pressure. But, unfortunately, it is not okay to die. That is not one of the choices. You have to let God kill you. Am I the only one seeing the humor in all of this? Instead, be counter-intuitive. Decide that nothing here matters, that there is nothing important to do. None of it means anything. You might as well dance and sing and play and do whatever is fun. This leads to the hilarious irony of the human condition. When you want to leave because you can’t take it any longer, you can’t. You are stuck. Even if you break the biggest taboo and off yourself, you will eventually come back and pick up where you left off. But, when you are having so much fun that you couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else, that’s when you might leave.

The world has it pictured that if you want to go to heaven, ascend, or get off the wheel you will have to work really hard. To achieve such a goal you have to pray, be good, and deny yourself. There is so much that is required every day, every moment. It’s impossibly hard. Then you die and you come back and do it all again. The counter-intuitive thing is not to try to do any of those things. You don’t try to be good. You don’t try to be right. You don’t try to do any of the things that the ego says you should do. Instead you ask yourself what would be fun today. What is your play in this moment? Even if there are dishes piled up in the sink, have fun. Maybe you put on earphones and listen to music while you are cleaning. Maybe you play with bubbles. Allow it to be fun. Tell yourself that if it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth doing. Joy becomes your value. This becomes your training. When that voice comes in and says “Yes, but you should….”, you jump up and say, “I know who you are! I don’t listen to you anymore.” You can recognize the voice when you hear the devil. The devil’s middle name is “Should”.

The funny thing is that this is true about everything. Whatever you think it is that you want – let it go. Just have fun. You think you want a relationship. Let it go. Look around at your friend’s relationship. Does that look like fun? Let it go. Have fun. Maybe one day part of your fun will include playing with someone else, someone who wants to have as much fun as you do. But, what is important is having fun, not having the relationship. If you have to give up fun to have a relationship, well that’s no fun at all. Replace the word relationship with anything else…money, dependable car, children who listen – it doesn’t matter what it is. If you really think you want whatever it is, then give it to Spirit. Spirit runs a highly efficient lost and found department. Everything gets to where it is needed. If it will truly increase your joy, it will come to you. If it is something that will end up taking away your joy, that will be a struggle – do you really want that? It’s a strange thing. You say to God or Spirit that you want something. You ask for it because you think it will make you happy. Cut out the middle man. Don’t ask for what you think will make you happy. Just ask for happiness. Ask to be eternally joyous. If you knew how to do that, you would have done it long ago. But admit that you don’t know anything, especially about how to be happy. So who are you to be demanding certain things, thinking they will bring you happiness. Be a happy idiot. Turn it all over to Spirit.

This includes ascension. Look at the fuel you have given to the ego when you ask for that. “You think that you can ascend? You think you are good enough for that. Oh, you’ve got a lot of work to do.” And you are off to the races. What you want is total ecstasy. When you experience that in a body, there is an opening to realize ascension. Ascension is not getting out of jail; it is the knowing that there is no jail. When in doubt, laugh. When unable to laugh, cry. Then let it all go. You probably didn’t hear it here first, but “don’t worry, be happy”. Remember always….

Good Blesses You

Sanhia

What do you mean when you call the world an illusion?

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We have talked many times about the illusion, but there has never been a single message fully describing what is meant by this term. Now the time has come. I am going to start with the ending and then go back and fill in the spaces. This is the ending: Everything, without exception, that you experience in this physical world is an illusion. Everything. None of it is real. No exceptions.

Now we will take a giant step backward. In the illusion, you can do that. In reality, there is no place to take a step and no time in which it can be accomplished. What is reality? Let me tell this as a story. In the first part of the story there is God. God is unconditional love, unlimited creativity, unlimited power, and unlimited joy. There is no duality, only the is-ness of these qualities. These descriptors are human terms and unable to do justice to what Jesus called “the Kingdom of God”. The only thing that is absolutely true and real is this kingdom. In the second part of the story, God chose to create beings or entities in the image of Himself. Remember, as always, that the language is limited. There are no serviceable gender free terms, but be clear that divinity, that God, does not have gender. There is no duality in divinity. As a default, we will refer to God as “Him”. To continue, these entities were created in the image of God, beings of unconditional love, creativity and so on, and, of course, gender free. These could be called the Children of God.

In the third part of the story, a group or a portion of the Children of God, who A Course in Miracles calls the Son of God, in their infinite creativity, decided it would be fun to construct something that would be secret and separate from God. To begin with, this was an impossible task. There can be nothing separate from God. I will now use the term “We”, because you and I are a part of this group. We are One with God and God cannot be separate from Himself. We allowed ourselves the thought that we could create separately from God and then went into that creation. We then experienced the illusion of separation. This experience was not real because we could not actually create something separate from God. We could say that this creation was like a dream. We went into this collective dream. God could not see this dream any more than a mother can see her child’s dream. In the dream we felt separate from God and had our first experience with fear. We were afraid that we could never find our way back to God and that He would be angry with us for creating behind His back. These fears were false. It is not possible for God to be angry or judgmental. However, in this nightmare we had created, all of this seemed possible. The ego is what we call that part of us that feared God and believed in the illusion.

In this way we created the physical universe. It is a part of this dream, of this illusion. We have been hiding here in the physical from God. The truth of us is still One with God. This is just a bad dream. As soon as God recognized what we had done, he created the solution. He imagined the means by which the part of our Divine selves stuck in the nightmare could reconnect with the Oneness. Because there is no time in Divinity, the solution was instantaneous. The problem was immediately solved. You could say that it was over before it began. Boom, boom. However in the illusion there is time. There is duality. So, it seems that we have been trapped in this dream for thousands upon thousands of years, for lifetime after seemingly endless lifetime. Trapped. The idea we have of hell is right here. This earth is it, but it is not real. The idea of heaven is our true home, the Kingdom of God, the place of unconditional love and unlimited joy. The challenge for us through these eons of time in the illusion has been to simply wake up to our Divinity, realizing that we are and always have been the Children of God. I have called this waking up our Ascension. These physical bodies are not who we are.

This entire physical world, every aspect of it, is an illusion. We created it, not God. This is our nightmare. As long as we hold onto it and defend its reality, it will seem real. The ego’s job is to convince us in whatever ways possible that the illusion is real and that we have no choice but to stay here. The solution that God created is called Spirit, or Holy Spirit. Spirit is the intermediary between God and the illusion. God doesn’t directly experience our dream because it isn’t real. If He were able to observe it, it would make it real. That’s the last road we would want to go down. Then our illusion would be true and we might really be stuck here. Fortunately, this isn’t the case, and God cannot get directly involved with things that don’t exist. Spirit, however, is the link between God and our ego illusion. We can listen to the voice of Spirit and be led home, or we can listen to the voice of the ego and continue spinning through lifetimes of pain, fear, and suffering. Sounds like a slam dunk choice here. However, the ego is whispering in your other ear telling you not to trust Spirit, asking you how these things that you can feel can be less real than some ideas that probably aren’t even true. Ego tells you that your divine nature is the illusion and that God is out to get you. You will have to pay for what you have done. You are guilty, guilty, guilty. Why would you want to go home to a God who is just going to punish you? Instead, you play all kinds of games trying to win God’s favor and His forgiveness. You project blame onto others, hoping God, and yourself, will be fooled and will go after them instead. All of this is impossible because there is no judgment or favor to be won. How can God love you more than unconditionally? It can’t be done. The only thing standing between you and realizing your Divinity is you. It is your choice to listen to the ego and to believe its claims that this illusion that keeps you trapped here is real.

Your job is to remind yourself every day that everything except your divinity is illusion. NOTHING that you see in this world is real. No exceptions. Scream it from the rooftops. The bodies are not real. The objects are not real. The stories are not real. The weather is not real. Your problems are not real. Money is not real; well, you probably knew that. None of it is real. The only thing that is real is your Divinity and unconditional love. Whenever you make something else more important than your Divinity, you stay trapped in the cycle of pain, suffering, and illusion. That’s all there is to it. It is very simple. When you feel trapped, give it to Spirit. Spirit is the link between the illusion and Divinity, so that you can ask for support and guidance as you deal with your fears and difficulties in the illusion. Spirit is, always has been, and always will be involved in every moment of your life. Spirit directs your story, presenting you with exactly what you need in this moment to find your way back home. Meanwhile, the ego is telling you to fear the gift of Spirit, so you push away in terror what Spirit brings to you. Maybe Spirit brings a death into your life. When you resist what Spirit brings, you are saying that you want to stay here in illusion rather than go home. Spirit is bringing death into your life to show that death is not real. It is bringing a material loss into your life to show you that things don’t matter. Spirit brings failure into your life to show you that your earthly goals are not important.

The question again is a very simple one. Do you want to listen to the ego, which will have goals for you in the physical, or do you want to listen to Spirit, realize your Divinity, and go home? The more successful you are in reaching goals in the illusion, the more attached you will be to staying there. This is why Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. You can’t take it with you, not one part is real. It is all part of your dream. That is what I mean by illusion. I am not using a metaphor. I am trying to express as clearly, directly, and honestly as I can. There is nothing in this physical world that is real. You are to give up all attachment to everything physical and to trust that Spirit is always there bringing you exactly what you need to find your way home. Trust everything that comes into your life. Give up the fight and the struggle. If that is hard, give it to Spirit. If it is still hard, do the five-step process in addition. That is also a gift from Spirit to you.

Everything that happens in your life is guidance and a gift from Spirit to lead you home. Nothing here can ever be lost because nothing here is real. It is all illusion. Spirit will play with your attachments until you come into that full realization. The illusion and duality dissolve as you listen to and trust only Spirit, letting the ego go. Then you have no need for the illusion. You have no reason to create heaven on earth because your true heaven is right before you and infinitely more fantastic than anything you could dream up here. Welcome home.

Good Now

Sanhia

Why is it so hard for me to forgive?

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It may seem that forgiveness is a common topic in these messages. That is true. It is true because there is probably no single concept that is of greater importance than that of forgiveness. If you wish to realize your ascension, it is absolutely central that you learn to forgive fully and completely. Without forgiveness, it is difficult to experience unconditional love. To try to love without forgiving first, is putting the cart before the horse. Forgiveness is what drives your realization of your ascension. The most efficient use of your energies is to figure out how to truly forgive. That’s where we are going today.

One of the reasons that forgiveness is difficult for you is that you may understand it to be something that is bestowed upon another because they have done something that requires forgiving. Whatever act that they have committed, you recognize it as a crime. You decide that it needs to be forgiven because otherwise you are stuck in this ego cycle. If you are a “good” person you will learn how to forgive them. What actually happens is that in this process you ever so subtly (or perhaps not so subtly) suggest that you are better than the offender. You will be the bigger person and forgive them for being such an idiot. I exaggerate to provide a little humor, but this is precisely how the attempt at forgiveness often takes place. You are still holding on to the judgment when you try to forgive in this manner. If you look deeply within, you will find that the forgiveness has never really taken place. Your belief is that the person has done wrong and needs forgiveness. No matter how much forgiving you do, that person still has done wrong. This misunderstanding is why forgiveness is so difficult.

The first step in true forgiveness is to acknowledge that nothing wrong has been done. To repeat, nothing wrong has been done. The judgment that a wrong has been committed needs to be released. The truth is that the other person didn’t do anything. If they had done something real, something that could truly hurt another, the victim would be hurt forever and ever, for eternity. Nobody has the power to do such a thing. The truth of all human souls is that they are Divine children of God and exist forever. Nothing Divine can be hurt. Only something that is not real can be damaged. Whatever it is that you are judging in this other person did not really happen. To repeat, it did not happen. Nothing real can be hurt. When you judge someone for the action you perceive them doing, it is no different than judging them for their previous night’s dream. There you can recognize that nothing really happened. It is the same in your “waking” world. The action that you have judged didn’t really happen, nobody was really injured. Nothing real, nothing Divine, can be hurt. You will wake up from this physical illusion too, some day. So, this is your job. You don’t forgive another for what they have done because you are a good person, above them and better – so that you are able to forgive. Rather, you realize that there is absolutely nothing to forgive.

Let’s look at it from another perspective. We talked several messages ago about how you define yourself. How many of you define yourself, in part, by what other people say to you or about you? Nothing that can change is real. Nobody can hurt anyone else. How could spoken words have any effect upon you? You are Divine. How can the illusion affect reality? It is time to turn this around. Nobody does anything to you. No one. There is nothing to forgive because no one does anything to you. This illusion is all your creation. You have created other people in your physical life. In this illusion of being human, you “hire” others to say and do things to you. Imagine that you have written a script. You hand it your friend and ask them to read it to you. It says horrible things about you. They ask if you are serious about having them read it out loud. You tell them to go ahead. They tell you how horrible you are. Then you get upset. You feel bad about yourself and are not happy with them. Pretty silly, huh? That’s exactly how it happens.

You are getting a two for one today. First, you are realizing that there is never really anything to forgive in anyone else. The second is to realize that whatever anybody does to you has come from your instruction. It is the only way it can be. They are telling you the judgment you have about yourself. They are telling you what you have not forgiven yourself for, the illusion that you believe to be true. As long as you pretend that it is them and not you that is the source of this information, you are stuck in a pattern of having to be superior to them for the harm they have done. As you accept that you are the source of everything that is not Divine, you realize that you have made up this whole fairy tale, this whole story. The forgiveness called for is of self. If you think that you have been wrong to think or act as you have, does this mean you now have to be better than yourself and forgive? How can you do that? You might believe that you can be better than another, but how can you be a better person than yourself? That gets pretty tricky. Now is the time to realize that this is all absolutely crazy, that there is nothing to forgive.

You have been projecting your beliefs upon God. You have created an unforgiving God. Now it gets even trickier. If God is really the one judging you, and you want to forgive, you have to be better than God. Then you can forgive yourself, which God obviously can’t do. This is the insanity of the ego. When you look at it in black and white (as you are doing now), it’s a pretty funny story. It’s really humorous. Close your eyes and feel the enormous freedom that comes from absolute forgiveness. This is not the forgiveness of your sins, but the forgiveness that says there is no sin. There never has been sin. You have always been loved unconditionally. There is nothing you ever could have done or ever could do to change that. Nobody is defining you as in need of forgiveness but you. You do not have to grovel before God begging forgiveness. Only you are holding the judgmental picture of yourself. Let it go. No amount of pleading will ever buy you forgiveness. No amount of atonement, no penance, will ever be enough. You cannot perform community service for God. You cannot make up for what never was and never will be. Such actions can only keep you in the cycle of judgment and fear. Forgiveness is only made easy when you know there is no need for it. Anyone can do it. No special skill is needed. You don’t have to be better than anybody else. There is nothing to do. Be like God.

Good Now

Sanhia

 

How do you define yourself?

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Today’s question, rather than being one that is asked of me, is one I wish to ask of you. The question is “How do you define yourself?” If your only answer is that you are a divine, eternal, unconditionally loved and loving, infinitely creative child of God – and that is all that ever comes into your mind when you think about who you are, that is fantastic…..and you can stop reading now and enjoy your oneness with God. There may be other ways that you see yourself that seem to stand in the way of realizing personal divinity, even if you have been making efforts to see the truth. For example, you might define yourself by some traumatic event that has come into your life, which was painful when it happened and you cannot forget about it or let go. Perhaps you tell this story to others, maybe often, and/or it regularly comes up in your thoughts (click for an introductory message about “old stories”). These are places where you allow yourself to believe in your separation from God. Rather than one traumatic event, there may be a painful pattern you have noticed in your life, perhaps dealing with money, relationships, deservedness, loneliness, or lovableness.

There are two things I wish to say concerning these things you hold about yourself. The first I have already mentioned. You define yourself by these issues. This is part of who you believe yourself to be. That’s why you relate these stories to others. It gives your fearful ego self a boost to have others understand what you have been through, and to receive some compassionate thoughts from them. Some of these identities you have carried for so long that it is difficult to imagine yourself without them. Not only is letting them go difficult, it is fear provoking. Who would you be without this story? An example of this is a parent who has lost a child, who thinks they can never recover from this and will never be the same again. Another example could be the belief that you were shaped by how your parents raised you. A third could be that money is always a struggle for you. Whatever your story is, it defines you.

I mentioned there were two things I wished to say. The second is to remind you that your story is not true; it is a fiction. It is a movie that you are acting out a role in. You are pretending to be a victim of some event or series of events. It simply is not true. What is actually there for you is an enormous gift. Whatever you see as an anchor weighing you down in your life is a blessing from Spirit. Whatever limiting, fear provoking message this event is telling you is something you came in with in this body. Out of the fear you brought with you, you created the event. You didn’t do this to punish yourself. It was part of your pre-planning for this lifetime. You created this to overcome the false beliefs and separation from God that you have carried through all your incarnations. You are presented with these enormous gifts so that you can choose to overcome. There is no real consequence to holding on to the story, other than your continued pain and suffering in this body and the next and the next, until you decide to let this illusion go. God doesn’t care how long you hold onto it. He doesn’t see your story. He sees only your perfection. God can only see what is real, which is the loving, divine you.

If you want to take the bull by the horns, if you want to be proactive – make a pact with yourself. First, become aware of these limiting definitions that are less than divine. Notice the stories you tell yourself and others. Agree to stop telling them. If one comes into your awareness, do the five-step process. Now, look at the fear connected with this story until it transforms. Let go of the hopelessness of feeling that you will have the story with you forever, and look it right in the face. The reason that you cannot seem to get away from it is because it is your creation. It will follow you wherever you go until you confront it and let it dissolve. It is not real, but until you look at it and feel it fully and completely without backing down, it will feel real. This is not a work that anybody else can do for you. In fact you will likely react angrily toward anybody who would try to help. That would probably be too frightening. You need to be in control here. The action is to come from you. You are to admit that you have chosen to be a victim. Nothing has happened to you. It is 100% voluntary. Because you have chosen the “old story”, you can unchoose it. The truth is that only things that are real can stay forever.

Something that can assist you in being proactive with this “old story” is to change it in your mind. Ask your guidance to show you how this “old story” has already been a blessing for you or how it could be seen in that light. For example, if you have had a severe financial crisis in your life, you might now recognize that you have survived the “worst possible thing” and no longer have the same fears about money. If you have a parent who you felt treated you in an abusive way, you could thank them for doing such a loving thing because it forced you to find your strength within you, to love yourself instead of looking for approval from others. There is always a true story in the gift presented by each piece of this identity you have given yourself. Ask for support in finding the truth of the benefit from each situation. Now you can burn your candle at both ends. At one end you face and transform your fear. At the other end you see the event as a blessing. Develop the habit of doing both of these things until you notice your fear evaporating and everything being a blessing for you. There is no reason or need for you to continue to suffer or be a victim any longer, absolutely none. Nor is there any judgment if you continue to do so, absolutely none. You are free. Choose as you will. Go in peace.

God Blesses You

Sanhia

 

What spiritual practices should I be doing? (Part 2)

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In the previous message we began discussing the question of what spiritual practices you should do, focusing primarily on those that touch on the physical and mental planes. It is highly recommended that you go back and read that message if you have not already done so, or as a review before continuing today. Now we will talk about the emotional plane. One suggestion that is often proposed as a spiritual goal is to suppress any feelings other than those of unconditional love. The attempt to do this encourages some to choose celibacy and/or to live in a meditative retreat. This seems to make it easier to hold only the highest feelings, only love. If that is your goal, you may suppress or avoid every other kind of feeling, so you will carry anger, fear, judgment, jealousy, and other negative emotions around with you unconsciously. You won’t want to see them and there may be no triggers present, no mirrors to reveal them to you. Other sources will encourage just the opposite. They will say that the best spiritual practice is to vomit all of your feelings on whoever is around you, to not hold anything back. This idea holds your raw emotions as something pure. Both of these approaches consider your fear and negative feelings to be real.  The monkish approach is “out of sight out of mind” while the purging approach assumes that when you express the emotions, they are gone. Neither ends up working very well. In the former case, the emotions will eventually surface; in the latter they will surface over and over again. Expression does not release the fear because you still believe it is real.

There is nothing wrong with fear; it is simply an illusion. If you hide from it, you make it real for yourself. If you push it out on another, you also make it real. The only way to deal with an illusion is to go into the heart of it to see what is there. Face your fear. If you stay with your fear, you will eventually realize it is only illusion. It will disappear. It will transform. Only love will remain. This is why we recommend that you do the five-step process. Love is not something you find by running away from fear or by casting it off of yourself, it is what you realize when you go to the bottom of whatever is before you. It is absolute truth. It is all there is. Love is what is left when all illusion is gone. There are no words to describe it. Love is not a state you can try to attain. All you can do is face all your fears until only love remains. When you are in the illusion of fear, consciously or unconsciously, the fullness of love cannot be experienced. Do the process or simply ask Spirit to support you in facing your fears. There is nothing wrong about holding on to your fear, but it is no fun and leaves you feeling separate from God. The five-step process will not guarantee your ascension. It is not a spiritual practice. It is a tool, but it is not intended as a crutch. Facing your fears simply makes the period of time easier to bear, while you are in a body waiting to realize your divinity. We are also not suggesting that you drop any or all of your spiritual practices. If you enjoy them, if you are guided to do them – do so. Try not to feel needy about them; let go of any attachment to your practice.

Last, but not least, is the spiritual plane.  Here we have meditation and prayer. Many teachings suggest that if you meditate often enough and long enough, you will realize your divinity. The Buddha did it, didn’t he? If you are not being successful, you must not be doing it good enough or hard enough. Good luck with that. Of course there are wonderful benefits from meditation. You can have improved health, more calmness, more energy, more focus. Most of this, however, relates to making the illusion better. The true heart of meditation is in giving everything to Spirit. To meditate with a goal of improving your experience in a body will keep you anchored in the physical. The focus is on giving to Spirit rather than to the ego. Giving importance to this practice is an act of the ego. Give up any pride connected to the length and depth of your practice. Do it from your heart; release the need for a schedule, for an enforced discipline.

The bottom line is that whatever plane your spiritual practice is connected to, if it has as a goal to improve your life, you are trying to create heaven on earth. Thus you will always be at cross purposes, because you created earth to hide from heaven, to hide from God. As you are deciding how to focus your time and energy, how to realize your spiritual goals, a constant question to hold is whether or not the practice is designed to enhance your physical existence. If that is the goal – be honest with yourself , there is nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy yourself – this is not the same as choosing to realize you ascension. Ascension is letting go of the physical. This does not come through reaching physical goals. It also does not come about through the denial of the physical. Fasting, celibacy, and physical discomfort make you more aware of your body, not less. This is why the Buddha spoke of the middle way. Both lack and excess leave a focus on the material. As you become aware of a particular importance you are giving to any spiritual practice, remind yourself that it doesn’t matter. What you choose to do or not to do really makes no difference. As you realize that it doesn’t matter, it becomes much easier to give it to Spirit. If you think it matters, the ego is attached to doing it right. If there is no “right” choice, then why not trust Spirit to choose for you. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You can trust that your ego choice will leave you rooted in your body, feeling separate from God.

You may doubt your ability to hear Spirit. Be willing to do nothing until you hear something. What if you fear you may not hear Spirit correctly? Trust and follow what you hear. Then keep listening. Following Spirit is not a one-time thing. It becomes the only constant in your spiritual life. The more you trust, the better you will hear. What evolves is a great simplicity. The ego’s attempt to control all planes and make all the right choices is exhausting. You never get it figured out. There is always a new idea, a new direction, a new discipline. You will always be second guessing yourself. Giving it to Spirit makes it so easy. You simply accept that you don’t know and trust whatever comes. If you have fear, face it. If you have confusion, give it to Spirit until you become mindless, only following the guidance of Spirit. Nothing else matters. Spirit might suggest that you follow some spiritual practice for a time. That is guidance for you now, not for anyone else or for always. Spirit is always in the now. All guidance is, at best, half-truths, designed to lead you out of your ego mind. Let it. Let it be simple. Let it be God.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia