How do I deal with distraction?

We had a request from a reader to talk about the subject of distraction. What is meant by distraction? We could say that distraction is something that pulls you away from your focus on awakening. You have your intention or your awareness placed on one thing and something draws your attention in a different direction; you are distracted. To begin with, as with everything else, you are not a victim of distraction. In fact, it might be more truthful to say that you welcome distraction because it brings you back into safer territory. There is a fear that surfaces when you look deeply within yourself, a terror of releasing the lies and illusions you have lived with as well as seeing the things inside of you that you don’t want to admit are there. So, the distraction may be a very welcomed event. This is all part of the awakening process.

One type of distraction consists of things that happen in the outer world, and these events are constant. There is information coming to you from your cell phone, from television, from people that you meet, from world events, from governments and politics, as well as from wars, pollution and pandemics; all these things grab your attention and instill fear or other emotions. Am I saying that you should not pay attention to any of these things from the world? No, in fact I would say, “Good luck with that.” To try not to pay attention to them creates a conflict. You will bounce back and forth between the two in an unending dualistic fashion. Peace cannot come to you through conflict. We are coming from a basic assumption that you wish to experience your awakened state and that you don’t want to be torn by the craziness of the world. We have to admit that it is a pretty insane place. You could spend all of your time and energy noticing the craziness, mulling it over in your mind as you search for solutions. All of these efforts to fight it and to make changes are nothing but a fool’s quest. You will not succeed. The world is as it is. However, you can make use of the world’s distractions.

First of all, you can choose to pay less attention to them. Short of going to sit on a mountaintop, you won’t be able to escape the world totally. You can choose to not let your mind dwell on these distractions, to notice when you are, and to let it go and let the next thought come in. Secondly, as these thoughts do come into your mind, notice where your judgments arise, whether toward the world as a whole, a group, or an individual. As you find yourself upset and in judgment over what you perceive, I want to remind you that this is all projection. You cannot possibly judge others for something that you do not hold within yourself. You judge yourself for this, though you may be in denial, necessitating the projection. The ego mind wants to argue and say that you are not like that. As long as you hold on to denial, you will go on through your life, projecting, being incapable of doing anything about your projections, and experiencing sorrow, pain, and suffering. You will feel hopeless, until you finally just give up.

For instance, you see an example of violence in the world. You may feel sadness for those you see as victims of the violence and anger toward those you see as perpetrators. You might also feel anger directed toward those who differ in opinion from you about who is at fault. All of this you see as external to yourself in your thinking. You are righteous in your feelings. This is denial. Its opposite is acceptance, which might look like acknowledging that you are violent. This is the critical point. The ego mind does not want to take responsibility for its projections. This keeps you stuck. This is how distraction works. You are distracted from the truth of your own violence by the actions of others. Because you have little or no hope of changing anyone else or the world, you are helplessly stuck in a violent world. But, you do have full power to accept the violence within yourself. You can accept it without judgment, without labeling it as right or wrong. This is not about changing anything, including you. It is just noticing, just acknowledging. If you can’t get past your denial, you might look at where you have a secret wish for harm to come to those you are judging. Maybe you wish they were dead. That is violence. When you wish anything negative to happen to another, you are exhibiting violence. Are you absolutely certain there are no violent tendencies within you? Why do you avoid acknowledging the violence within you? Do you fear a punishing God? No such God exists; you are loved unconditionally. You are projecting your own belief in a need for punishment upon God. Are you afraid that you will not be rewarded with heaven, God’s forgiveness, ascension, enlightenment, or awakening if you admit to being a violent person? The only one standing between you and these “rewards” is you. Holding on to untruths keeps you separate from realizing the truth of God. Accept that you are violent. If you notice fear or judgment accompanying that, accept that also. Perhaps you also notice embarrassment or shame. Acknowledge that. The distraction is in believing it is somebody else when it is always you.

Connected with the outer distractions are those that come from your thoughts. Nearly every thought that you hold expresses a belief that is not true. Let’s say the thought expresses a judgment about your partner such as they hold you prisoner and don’t allow you to fully be who you are. There were events in the past that you projected onto your partner. Now you hold a belief that is “proven” by this imagined past. Today when you meet your partner, instead of being in the now – in this moment, you are living in the past with the lies you projected. You recreate something you never wanted to begin with. This is not your partner doing this; this is you. Your job is to not let yourself get distracted with untrue thoughts. Notice each thought that emerges in your mind. Ask yourself if that thought is really true. Is there projection involved? Is it my partner who doesn’t let me be who I am or do I do that to myself? Am I afraid to be who I am? Notice these things.

You are distracted by your beliefs that come from the past. Believing these thoughts keeps you from being present. This is not to say that the past and your thoughts hold no value for you. Technological information is valuable. You want to remember what you have learned about driving a car or using a computer. This value ends when your thoughts are about yourself, others, and what to do. Here the past can only confuse things. You know things about how to work with the physical world, but you know nothing about the truth of yourself and others, about divinity. You know something about how to survive in the world, but you didn’t come here to survive. You came to wake up. Thoughts cannot help you there. Finding the truth is a process of elimination. As these distracting thoughts enter your mind you recognize, one after another, that they are not true and you cast them off. When you have discarded what is false, all that can remain is truth. It is likely that every thought you have is not true, is a distraction from being present, from being awake. So, look at each one and then release it. If you give energy to a concept, you sustain an untruth and you remain in confusion. To paraphrase Socrates, “The only difference between me and those I meet is that, even though neither of us really understands anything, I know that I don’t know anything while they believe they are wise.” As long as you think you know, you cannot find the truth. You can reset your default reaction to each thought that enters your mind to be one of disbelief. Fears and hopes about what might happen in the future also distract you. These thoughts, too, keep you from acting in the present.

As you learn to ignore the past and the future you are left with the now. You ignore the distractions of your thoughts and notice what is truly present. As an example, say that someone stomps on your toe with their boot heel. You feel immediate pain. That is real. It is in the now. If you blame or judge the other for that action, that is not real. It is not a present reaction, but a thought about the recent past; it is likely a projection. As you release that thought and come back to the present you will likely find the pain quickly dissipates. What is real is the nature around you, the sun shining or the rain falling, the birds chirping or the dog barking. To wish that it wasn’t raining is to deny the reality of what it is and substitute your thought from the past about how the weather should be. You will never win that fight. It is insane to try. Accept what is. Release your thoughts. Analysis and interpretation are always misleading. Thinking you should or shouldn’t do something isn’t sane; these are just more thoughts from the past. You have been taught ideas by your society, your parents, your teachers, and your peers. You made a decision in the past and you believe it applies to the present. In the now, you never have to make a choice. Choices come from your mind and from the past. The now lets you know what to do. It is certain. You don’t have to decide what to do if a dog attacks or a car swerves toward you. You simply act. Knowing exactly what to do is sometimes called intuition. It is knowingness without understanding why you know. It is certainty that defies explanation. Sometimes this can feel perfectly natural. You eat when you are hungry; sleep when you are tired. You may want to sing or play an instrument, to draw or paint, to run or to swim. You do these things as expressions that move from within you, not because you think you should. If it is the latter, you will eventually meet resistance. The mind always tries to complicate things. It wants to dictate what and when you should eat, the proper position for sleep and the right time and purpose for creative activities. All of the craziness of distractions enters, keeping you from being present. This fills your time and saps your energy.

Finally, and we could have just as easily begun here, let’s look at distraction as simply not paying attention. This is a form of resistance. You have made the decision that you wish to wake up, to ascend. Most days you don’t focus on that intention. You go on living life as you always have, distracted by each little thing you encounter each day. You take your thoughts seriously without further investigation. Periodically you become aware of what you are doing and feel guilt, perhaps hopelessness. What is there to do? You can at least acknowledge how you are dealing with life. Intention for you does not seem to be enough. There needs to be a fire lit within. The whole world and all of your education and experience seem to oppose your awakening. There must be a passion to face all of this and to keep facing it. Without this passion the distractions will continue to control. Maybe you can generate such a focus. Perhaps things need to get worse for you before they can get better. Your situation might have to become unbearable. Spirit is always doing whatever it can to shake you awake. Your thoughts may judge this as good or bad. In the now it is always perfect. The process of getting there may be frightful and painful, but so is the illusion of the world. In the now there are no distractions. There is only the real-time perfection of what is happening and your inner guided response. Eventually the passion will come. It is your call, and your calling.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

How am I to deal with disease?

The message this month is perhaps going to be a little different. We are going to speak about sickness with a special focus upon Michael and Ulla. As we speak, Michael has experienced being sick for the past two weeks. We imagine that most of you have some kind of idea of what that might be like. For Michael it has been a long time since he has had such extended sickness, perhaps not since childhood. Ulla has known him for ten years and has never seen him sick for more than a few days. Part of Michael’s good health was fear based. As a young man he wanted to live as long as possible, a hundred – even two hundred years. He wanted to always stay in the best possible health. It was not just diet and physical practices, but most importantly mind over matter. Perhaps he believed he might need that much time to figure out how to ascend. Perhaps it was ego trying to show that it was stronger than the outer world. When others became sick he had judgment. It was their minds that created the sickness. They believed in seasonal health problems. They believed they could catch things from others. Several years ago I let Michael come down with a short sickness to help humble him. He was able to begin to release the health judgments he had been holding toward himself and others.

Now we find something quite different. For two weeks he has found himself to be of very low energy, though that is slowly increasing. There is some physical discomfort, though that is slowly decreasing. There is almost no appetite, though that is also slowly increasing. But still after two weeks, there is not a lot of energy or appetite. Ulla expresses that she believes there must be some purpose or reason for this sickness, and wonders what it is. She also expressed how it touches her fear of losing Michael. She is a little pushy with Michael, asking him what Sanhia has to say about it. Before giving Michael’s response, I want to talk a little about how our relationship has changed since his days of desired physical immortality, culminating in ascension. Michael has come to accept the illusion of the physical. He realized the insanity of wanting an illusion to stay alive. Michael surrendered his physical death totally to Me. He let go of any need to control the timing of any of it, trusting me to take care of everything in the perfect manner. Truth is, I had been doing that all along. So, Michael’s response to Ulla was that Sanhia says to just be here now, to accept the perfection of this moment without wanting it to be any different. I would be less than honest if I were to say that Ulla was pleased with this answer. There were two reasons for this, first it did not leave her any opening for suggestions, “You could take this supplement or follow this action.” My directions specifically said to accept what was. Secondly, this left her deepest fear exposed, death. What if Michael is in the process of dying? This was quite a trigger! I joked to Michael how honorable it was for him to sacrifice his body so that Ulla could face her fear of death. Just kidding, of course.

I will say that Michael did a fairly good job of doing just what I asked him to do, to be present with this. His attitude about death is very clear; this body will die. It’s not up to him when it happens. It is only for him to accept and live whatever is gifted in each moment. So he has passed these days fearlessly, if not always comfortably. His challenges have been to look at where he is feeling discomfort, accepting what is felt rather than wishing to change it.

Now, as they say, life goes on. During the two weeks there were two, two-hour online spiritual alchemy groups scheduled. There was also a four-and-a-half hour in person spiritual alchemy group. Michael had no energy for any of these events. For the longer group, he was pretty much strapped to a chair with a blanket hung over him. None of this had any effect upon the channeling. I communicated clearly to Michael that it is part of his purpose and agreement that he let me come through. Even though he was without energy, all he had to do was to stand back out of the way. Fortunately, that required no energy. I was able to come through powerfully, saying what people needed to hear. I was filled with energy; I was my normal witty self. People did not even need to know what their questions were, because I was already there. Now that has been the nature of my relationship with Michael. However this further clarified things for him, as to the difference in our parts. If he had fantasized that his part had anything to do with the wit, the humor, and the precise comments, he was quickly disabused of that. Had it been up to his energy, there would have been no groups. It was so clear what the channeled energy was.

Michael is aware that there are only two things for him to do, the first being to follow whatever My wishes might be – mostly as channel and as scribe, but also playing and performing music on the side. Otherwise, his only job is to take nothing seriously and accept the perfection of whatever is presenting itself now. It is in that light that we have encouraged him to hold this sickness. It is a bit of a wild card he has drawn here. As it is now, what is there energy for? Mostly that would be sitting on the veranda in the sun reading, listening to birds, and enjoying the greenness and life. It doesn’t get much harder than that. Are things backing up on his computer, things that he has taken some responsibility for? Little by little I reel out a little energy here and there so that different tasks can be accomplished. The focus is that it is under my direction, that I, not he, am responsible. The first week I did not allow him to do anything outside of “our” work. This second week I allowed time and energy for several things. Everything took him at least twice as long as the “healthy” him would have taken. I reminded him that time did not exist and that if I chose to kill his body, none of this would be accomplished. Is he moving into a world where he takes on much less? Again, I am not going to tip my hat.

There is always a reason and perfection for everything that happens. Sometimes it is valuable for the individual to have an awareness of that reason. In this case with Michael we have nothing to say. Perhaps at some point We will say more, but we are not promising anything. What is there for him is to simply accept and trust the perfection of the now. The thought enters his mind, “What if this is still going on two years from now?” He looks at that and responds, “That is an interesting thought: Now, what’s here now?” Tomorrow does not exist.

Up until this moment we have been commenting only on Michael’s two-week sickness, not about anybody else. I would not tell anyone who is experiencing a physical disorder of some kind not to seek out relief or support. Follow your guidance. There is nothing wrong with amelioration of pain. Also it may be quite obvious why you are experiencing a certain ailment. Perhaps your guidance is telling you that you have been ignoring yourself to take care of others, and the sickness is a wakeup call to notice what your body wants. Sometimes sickness comes to tell you that you are too stressed and busy, that it is time to relax. There can be many wonderful messages that can come to you through a sickness. Please don’t let anything I have said discourage you from looking at what that might be. Again, I encourage each of you to do what you are guided to do. It is important that if it is someone else’s pain or discomfort you are concerned with, the guidance is still for you. You don’t receive another’s guidance. Even if this is your child, the fears are yours. The death confusion is yours. One of the misunderstandings around sickness is that the only satisfactory end is in a healing. Someone is diagnosed with cancer and they choose whatever treatment modalities they are guided to, whether from fear or from Spirit. For some it is considered a failure if the cancer does not go into remission. This is not acceptance of the perfection of the now. Part of the process of every sickness is full acceptance of what happens. Death fears may need to rise to the surface. Sooner or later you will all experience a physical death. If you surrender your fear around that now, you can live peacefully in the now with whatever presents itself. Without fear you are fully aware that there is no physical death; it is just illusion. If you are invested in a personal history, a past, a body, a future, and a continuing story, you will not want to lose that identity. You will fear that death and live in pain and suffering. Who you are simply is, with no attachment to any stories. When you realize that the game is not to be taken seriously, though it is to be played fully, you play whatever hand is dealt you.

Michael is aware that it is not his job to feel a certain way all of the time. However he feels, that is the gift for today – not wishing it were different, nor that he had more energy. Not even wishing that he felt up to cooking. Ultimately it all comes down to trusting your inner guidance. If you give your power away, whether to the medical establishment or to alternative healers, that is not following your guidance. They all have their agendas. It is unlikely that their thoughts encompass encouraging you to listen to your own inner voice. The doctor’s goal is to fight the disease and win. There is no place in that for accepting the perfection of the now. Again, there are no right or wrong answers. Your guidance may say to follow the medical model. Listen carefully to see if your choice is fear based, the hope that the expert will save you. You cannot be saved. You already are saved.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Why can’t I hear Spirit more clearly?

When you have a situation where you think you might want to have outside support – from Me or from somewhere else – what would happen if you instead go to your own inner guidance? Some people say that the response isn’t as clear as what is heard from Me or from other sources. They often feel that their ego voice interferes, that there may be fear present, and that the information often can’t be fully understood. It sometimes feels like the answer is in the form of a riddle and they are uncertain just how to interpret it. There also may be a hesitance to trust their ability to hear Spirit, or a fear that they might just be crazy to listen to and trust an inner voice.

The first thing to trust is that the part of you that hears the thoughts coming from Me and recognizes their truth for you in this moment is your inner guidance. The process of keeping this always one step removed from you is what keeps you feeling stuck. I’m trying to work Myself out of a job here. I am telling you what you know to be true, but you are projecting that truth out upon Me, rather than accepting it as your own. It may be time to stop distrusting your inner knowing and to be willing to hear it more and more clearly. Part of the confusion is that your ego mind does not want to hear the fullness of what Spirit has to say. If you project that voice outside of yourself, you can fight with it and not take full responsibility for what it is communicating. Instead of directly following your guidance you can give yourself the “luxury” of being in resistance for some period of time. I am of course joking when I use the term “luxury”; this is simply a time for prolonging your suffering. When you accept the guidance now as your own, or at least ask Spirit to help you in doing that, you can move right into and through your fear. It is always easier than you feared it would be, because it was never a real fear of a real happening. All that is required is for you to face it. Your guidance will encourage you to do that. I am always willing to play the role of the bad guy by telling you what you don’t want to hear. Eventually you have to become your own bad guy. Everything accelerates when you take responsibility for your guidance. When you acknowledge the voice as your own and are willing to pay attention to it, it will probably never shut up. It will keep on you until you fully surrender to it.

One of the ego fears that leads you to project these voices outside of yourself is the belief that others will think you are crazy. Then you can play the game that Peter portrays when Jesus is arrested. You can go into denial saying that isn’t your voice; that is somebody else’s crazy idea. You wouldn’t believe such a thing. “You must have me confused with someone else.” You can say that you read it or heard it from Sanhia, but he doesn’t speak for you. Perhaps I don’t. That is an important question to ask yourself. If this voice is also your voice, it may be time to fully claim it. It is not the world; it is not your parents; it is only you – your projection and your ego – that fears you are crazy. The only way out of that fear is through it. Since We are not holding your fear, the way out is not through Us. It is through you; it is necessary to go within and face it. This does not mean that you must go cold turkey and stop talking to Us. We are always willing to speak with you. It is about taking these words and owning them. Acknowledge that this is your inner voice speaking to you. That is why you listen. That is why you trust it. That is why you act on it. If you are truly doing that, it is unlikely that you will return to Us with a question that you have already asked. New questions may arise, but the old ones have already been answered for you in a way that you trust. If it does not feel right to you when I speak, stop Me then and question Me further. Otherwise, take it as your own and work with it. If further questions come, by all means feel free to ask.

When I answer your questions, I may pursue a path of “beating the ego senseless”. This may leave you feeling a little disoriented. Repeated reading or listening may help the message to sink in. That’s when you may notice other questions arising. Feel free to follow up those questions with Us. Continuing to focus on these issues and dealing with the fears that may come up will take much time off of your period of pain and suffering. Such activity does constitute making the guidance your own. The ego will continue to protect its turf until it doesn’t. Repeated focus on the guidance will lead to a place of full integration. You can return to external sources such as Me for reassurance, but there is always a level of distrust of self, of Spirit, or of God in that. We are training wheels. Eventually you will coast without Us.

Meanwhile, there may be a fear of the Oneness, a fear of going it alone. There appears to be a safety in having the support of other people, of relationships. This is always projection. The only way to realize yourself fully at home with the Divine is through your own personal relationship with Spirit. The desire to share your spiritual process with others may stem from the fear that you are not loved or loveable. Take that directly to Spirit. You are Love. You will never find acceptance if you seek it outside of yourself.

When you don’t trust your inner voice it may be because you don’t trust God. You project your inner misuse of power onto the Divine. You fear that if you were to allow yourself to be powerful, then you – as you fear is true of God – would become absolutely untrustworthy. You are Power. When you give your power away, whether it is to Me, to A Course in Miracles, or to any person or teaching outside of yourself, this guarantees you the right to resist. Resisting might look like pretending to not understand. When you go directly to the source, to the Divinity within you, there is no wiggle space remaining. You can resist the words you hear, but the inner guidance goes beyond words; it is knowingness.

Ultimately, the sharing with others becomes absolutely unnecessary for you. There will be no need for anybody else’s guidance. Sharing then becomes something you are guided to do for Spirit’s purpose, not for your own need. If it is Spirit driven, you will notice no attachment to outcomes or even to understanding why you were guided to share.

Spirit is speaking clearly to you right now. It is only for you to listen “softer”, to quiet your ego mind so that you can hear. I am not separate from you. When you open up to hear these words it is your inner guidance; it is Spirit that is being heard. That voice is always there, perhaps only whispering now, but eventually it will be the only sound you will pay attention to. The ego will slip away. The thought that you and I are separate will slip away. There is only the One.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Is the illusion a mistake?

This time there is no easy quick answer to this question that wouldn’t require a lot of explanation. We need to take a good look at where this question comes from. We have talked a long time over many messages about how what is in the physical world, in the sensed universe, is an illusion. It is not real; nothing is truly happening. As long as you consider the physical to be real, you invest it with a power and feel yourself to be controlled and victim to this universe, but that has things reversed. The physical universe as it appears to exist is created from your inside, though you may not be in conscious awareness or control of this. Your ignorance does not change the fact, any more than the truth is not altered by your belief or disbelief in it.

Let’s take a step back also for those of you who have been students of A Course in Miracles, which is a wonderful teaching, chock full of valuable thoughts. Like all teachings in the physical world, it is not the truth; it simply points. When people read ACIM, it can easily be used to justify their own confusion and project that into the Course and say, “But the Course says this…” One of the things that many people do in looking at the Course, including some of its teachers, is to hold onto a belief something like the following: “We allowed a single mad belief to enter our minds that we could create something separate from God and so we dreamed up the universe. It is not real; it just exists in our minds. God knows nothing about this imagined separation. It was a mistake.” Let’s start by looking at those two thoughts. If the universe was created by a mad crazy idea, this might suggest that it was all a mistake. My question is, “Really?” This proposes that God, Who is all loving, all knowing, all powerful, could somehow have something going on behind his back that he is oblivious of. Is that a little bit crazy? Does that sound like Oneness? God is everything and all is God except for…well, this universe. He is then unaware that His Divine Son is living in self-created hell? This sounds like a limited God. God can do anything except create a physical universe. There is a little confusion going on here. This leads to the thought that God has nothing to do with this universe, that it is your job to recognize your mistake and to leave this evil place and return to God. How alone, how separate that feels.

We also have the voice that asks why, if there is a God, He allows such evil to exist on the earth. This other “Course” voice responds that God doesn’t permit evil; he knows nothing about it. Now it appears we are stuck having either a malevolent God or an incompetent God. Let’s continue. This is getting more confusing all of the time. If God is aware of all that transpires in the illusion, how can a loving God allow all the atrocities that appear to transpire here in the universe? Why is there dishonesty, hatefulness, jealousy, anger, cruelty, violence, disease, and death? Why hangnails, God? Why? Why? If the universe is just a mistake then everything in it would also logically be a mistake. Did God make an enormous mistake here, whether it was a sin of commission or a sin of omission? Let us, for the moment, take the point of view that by definition God is Oneness, excluding nothing, therefore including the illusion. Remember that we are just playing with words here. We are not trying to prove anything because nothing can be proved. The truth simply is. We are just playing with these different thoughts that might be going through the mind. We play with the thought that our definition of God would make it impossible for Him to be unaware of the world. If God is intentional with the world and God is infallible, then God could not have created the world as a mistake. If it is all One how can anything be wrong? Everything simply is. There is, therefore, an absolute purpose in you being in physicality.

The question then becomes that if it is a given that God created the world and it is also a given that God cannot make a mistake, why did God create this thing? This is a place where I am not going to pretend to give an answer. Go inside and see what your guidance tells you. Nonetheless, I will say some things. For some reason, humans find themselves believing that they are in this illusion and that it is real and their bodies are real. As long as those beliefs are held they will experience pain and suffering. Whatever goals they set, whatever they try to achieve in order to break out of this – they fail at. The peace and happiness they desire is elusive, it is not realized. Nothing in the physical world can fulfill that hope. Only awakening can lead toward such a fulfillment. Nothing but the realization that everything is an  illusion can bring about peace.

As demonstrated by Jesus, and recently celebrated in the Christian churches, all will eventually ascend, will return to the Oneness. However, that doesn’t answer the question of why you are experiencing being here. Why are you going through all of this? I’m going to go back a little on my word, because I get to do that since they never communicate the truth. I’m not going to explain why God allowed this to happen, but I’m going to give some possibilities to play with, while not promising that they have any truth to them. In the Oneness of God, of Divinity, there is simply the Oneness. There is no place to express the Oneness, no place to express the Love. In order for the Love to be expressed, there must be a game played where duality appears to happen. There must be an other to love and feel loved by. So, you exist within that dream of duality as what feels like a separated being. Now the potential exists for God to express love to God and God to receive love from God. Without time, without physicalness there is no experience. Nothing happens. So, God wakes up one day, and of course there is no day because there is no time and there is no waking up because there is no sleeping, and says I want to experience myself today.

Perhaps as you are reading this it is, as Michael and Ulla are now experiencing, a beautiful warm, sunny spring day, perhaps with a cat sitting nearby looking out at all of it. The new growth smells of spring are present along with the explosion of colors from the newly risen flowers, and a greening that seems to appear everywhere. In the Oneness none of this exists. For God to experience these sensations as well as to have feelings, there must be the illusion of separation. There must be an observer as well as an observed. Duality serves this purpose admirably. Now God can have good sex. I’m just joking with you…a little bit. We are just having fun with this now. We can say with absolute certainty, this illusion is no mistake. There is clear purpose in everything, even though you might leave this body and never have an inkling of what it might be. However, as you surrender your ego to Spirit and you hear the Divine guidance within you, it will direct you as to how to spend the physical time. To the degree that you can give up your thoughts that you know better than Spirit or God about what will bring you happiness, about how to spend your time and energy, you will find yourself doing exactly as you want; you will find that your desires are absolutely aligned with God.

Let’s play this game in another way. What is more beautiful to the ear, the sound of a wonderful singing voice or that same voice with another in harmony with it? And maybe there is a third in harmony to them and a fourth in counterpoint coming in against the flow? Feel all the energy moving around that. How can there be harmony created without separation, without the physicality of sound waves and ears? What if God simply wanted to have television and you are the programming? God is just sitting there with his clicker enjoying the show. How about a comedy now? How about a drama? Click. Click. With your imagination you can create endless possibilities, knowing you are likely nowhere near the truth of it. But it can be fun, and doesn’t God like to have fun?

Did God put everyone to sleep in order that they could wake up? Is it like a game, like hide-and-go-seek? Everyone go hide and one by one We will find all of you. How much fun that was for you as a child! Is God playing that game? Again, I don’t know. God requires no justification or explanation. We know that whatever might appear to be imperfect in the illusion is indeed perfect. Whatever looks like a mistake is precisely how it should be. Whatever thoughts you have that things are not right keep you trapped in hell. When you are able to accept the perfection of everything happening in this illusion, you can experience heaven on earth. It is heaven because you are One with God, not because you have remade the earth according to your separated belief of how it should be. Again, we lovingly remind you that you haven’t got a clue. What would the purpose be in there being no value in something you are experiencing with your physical senses? Why would God co-create something with you that served no purpose? Believing this is possible can lead one into places of helplessness and despair. The value may not be the value you would attach to it. I can point out to you that some of the things that you have felt to have been the worst happenings that could befall you have turned out to be among the most valuable gifts you have ever received. They have helped you release untruth, fear, and confusion. Those events that don’t feel that way to you are simply gifts you have received that remain unopened. To complete that awakening journey (which requires you to go nowhere) nothing can remain in your thoughts as being a mistake. Instead you trust absolutely; you listen to that inner voice, whether you call it Spirit, God, the Divine Presence, Allah, Jehovah, Jesus, or Sanhia; you surrender absolutely to it and trust that it always has the perfect guidance for you. When you ask for support, it is brought to you in the most powerful and direct way possible.

In conclusion, there is a short answer. The answer is no. The illusion is not a mistake. There are no mistakes. It is all perfection. It is as it is preordained to be. You can choose to live in the loving trust of that perfection, or not. Even if you listen to your ego instead of to Spirit, it is not a mistake. You will realize the perfection at some point, no matter what you choose. You can choose it now. Finally, we offer this prayer: “Spirit, help me accept the perfection of the now”.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

It seems like the world is falling apart; how can I deal with my fear?

We wish to begin by returning to our definition of reality. It is quite simple. Something is real if it never changes. Anything that can change is unreal or illusory. When you observe anything going on in the world, change is involved. If everything in the world remained the same, no fear would likely be felt. Fear is of something different and uncontrollable happening. I suppose one could be afraid of the same horrible thing repeating forever, but your experience shows that the last thing you could say is that anything ever stays the same. The worst that could happen is that one undesirable thing mutates into another one. The only thing that ultimately matters is reality. None of the things that comprise “the world falling apart” matter in the end. Whatever is here today in the world will one day not be here. Everything that is presently in the world, was, at some time previously, not here – including the earth itself, the solar system, and the universe. All in the physical experience is transient.

You are. That’s it. Notice I have placed no words after are. I haven’t limited or defined you in any way. I haven’t mentioned anything about a physical body or a gender. I mentioned no nationality or religion. Nothing was said about a talent or vulnerability. I am only speaking of you. You are. That is reality. Any words that might be placed after are would not represent the true you. They would not be talking about anything permanent. This body will die, but you are. Beyond all physical existence, you are.

Every fear that you have is a child of your deepest dread – your death. When there is war on the planet, it is your own anxiety about death that is touched. If you feel worried about something happening to your children or other loved ones, it is all projection. It is your own demise that you don’t want to face. If you are worried about losing your job, behind that terror is your fear of death. No job, no money, no shelter, no food, and no health care – something will kill you. I can tell you the truth, or you can read it in numerous other places. There is no death. You are. You cannot but be. It is your Divine nature. You are. The part of you that is convinced that who you are is a body lives in constant fear of annihilation. You might be able to hide from it. You may bargain with the devil to gain immortality. Some do that by trying to be a “good” person in the hopes that God might smile upon them. Some try to leave their mark on the world so they might live on forever. Others hope to remain alive through their descendants. All of this is in the futile wish that you will be worthy, the hope that God might accept and love you, might welcome you back. This pointlessness is a wonderful thing. The attempt to be immortal guarantees a continuance of your sufferings. Behind this futility lies the possibility that you might finally say, “Enough!” You can’t earn immortality; you already have it. Trying to gain what you already have is a fool’s task. Not only is it unachievable, but it keeps you from enjoying your birthright.

Some years ago we spent a lot of time talking about fear in these messages. It is time to make a return. The only way that you can discover for yourself that your fear is not real is to fully experience it. Most people when confronted with fear choose either denial – pretending it’s not there – or indulgence – “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we shall die”, which could be drugs, sex, overeating, surrounding yourself with friends, throwing yourself into a cause, or becoming a workaholic. If you want to overcome your fear of death, you must confront it. You must stare it right in the face. What you will find if you truly do that is that there is no fear and death doesn’t exist. This is not something you can ever deal with on a mental level. Your mind can only succeed in making death real and justifying your fear. Nor is it a question of overcoming fear, which would only serve to make it real. That is the game of duality, creating separation and then doing battle with an enemy. It is a fight that will never end. There will be a perpetual supply of threats in the illusion, each one more convincing than the last. How much toilet paper can you stockpile before there is an end to fear? It is not about overcoming fear. It is time to leap right into the mouth of your terror.

Ask yourself where in the body you feel this fear, where it is being held. Maybe it feels like a tight ball in your solar plexus. Locate it wherever it seems to be. On a mental level you may “know” that the fear is not real. But this is not about knowing or understanding. There is nothing to change, and nothing you can do to make it go away. The belief or idea that triggers the fear isn’t real or true. What is there is any energy that seems to be going on in the body that you are labeling as fear. As you are experiencing these thoughts and feelings you can use the pointer we gave recently of “Next, please”. Allow that thought to go and let the next one come. That might be all it takes. On the other hand, you may find that regardless of the thoughts you dismiss, the feeling persists in the body. If that is the case, go into this feeling, face it. Shut down your mind. Make no attempt to explain, understand or justify the feeling. Don’t try to chase it away or destroy it. Don’t make it wrong or right. All of those activities make it real and give it “life”. Look at it. Feel it. Fully experience it. Go deep into this “fear”. Do this thoughtlessly. We have given you a technique for doing just this, though it hasn’t been mentioned in a while. If fear seems to be present in any form, it may be time to either dust this off or use it for the first time. If you click onto this link for the five-step process, you will find an explanation of how to do it, as well as a download which guides you through the five steps. It is also available on another page in Swedish. Your job – you have only one simple job – is to go into any fear you feel until it dissipates. This it will do because if you focus on something that isn’t there, without any thoughts in your mind, you will become fully aware that it is illusory. There is simply nothing present but the Love of God. The supposed fear disappears into the nothingness from whence it came.

As you are doing that, why not go for the gold? Look at your fear of death. I predict that when you look at this worry and see that it is not real and that, therefore, death is not real, your experience of life will be quite different. As you face your fright and watch it dissolve, so that you go through your days fearlessly, you are going to find yourself living in a whole new world. One thing you will become aware of is how fear-based your daily activities have been. You will be acutely aware of when a thing is done out of fear rather than from the joy and love of doing it. Until you stop reacting to God’s Love with apprehension, you will not know who you are. You will have no clear idea of how to behave within this illusion. Allowing the presence of fear makes you feel not worthy, as if you don’t deserve Love or peace. You do not merit Oneness; you are doomed to struggle for everything you wish to have. As long as fear is present there will be suffering and you will remain asleep in that nightmare. Fear is not the opposite of Love. It blocks out the Love so that you can neither see nor feel it, just as the clouds are not the opposite of the sun. When they dissipate you notice the sun which was always there. Without fear you can only act out of Love, you can only be the sun, because that is who you are.

I am not claiming that he was a great spiritual master, but about ninety years ago during that period known in America as the Great Depression President Franklin D. Roosevelt came on his weekly radio talk to the nation and declared, “The only thing you have to fear is fear itself”. Millions heard this message. How many took it to heart? Probably not so many, but truth was told to the masses through a new universal forum. This was coming from a man so crippled by polio he could hardly get up from his wheelchair. Despite this disability he became the longest serving president in American history. Whether people loved or hated him, and there were plenty of both, here was a voice of truth. That message is still there for you today. Go into your fear. Face it fearlessly or fearfully, but face it. You have nothing to lose but your fear, and it is of no value to you. You don’t want it. It protects you only from Love, from your Divinity. It serves you only as a wakeup call. It does not keep you safe or alive. Your life can never be threatened by anything. The body you are using has instincts born and bred into it that serve to protect the physical life. Instincts help you jump out of the path of a moving car. This is not fear-based. You don’t have time for fear to direct your escape. The anxiety comes afterward. It keeps you from ever crossing the road. Fear does not keep you safe; it sustains your pain and suffering. Terror deals with threats that are in the mind rather than in the now. Bodily death is inevitable. Fear cannot stave that off. But, the physical death, like the physical life, is ultimately meaningless. Facing fear will help you to understand that. Nothing stands in the way of your opening to accept the truth of who you are, except your fear.

Fear wonders how you can function in the world, taking care of yourself and your loved ones. Fear believes that is all on your shoulders. Fear does not trust God, Spirit, or Divinity. Everything is being handled on a level of perfection that is beyond comprehension, but fear is insisting that you have to be in control, handling everything, while at the same time knowing you are perfectly unable to carry out that task. You are afraid to trust and afraid of your own lack of power. What a double whammy fear packs. The only way out is through. Face your worst fears. Today. Now.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

What part do my old relationships play in my awakening process?

More likely than not, all your relationships could be called “old” relationships. You have a story about each one of them, from those recently formed to the ones you have had since childhood. More accurately, particularly with those bonds that are long standing, you have a multitude of stories. Within these narratives you define who that other person is to you: what they are like, what they provide for you, what you like and dislike about them, and the particular role or roles that you play in the relationship. You might be aware that you don’t seem to be the same person in each relationship. Perhaps you like the role you play with some acquaintances better than the person you find yourself to be with others, and so are more likely to seek them out so you can like yourself better.

Why do I call all relationships “old” and what does all of this have to do with awakening? Your natural state is to be awakened or absolutely in the now, taking nothing seriously as you are fully engaged with what is in front of you. In the now there are no old relationships. There is no history. If you are with another or even thinking about them, and you have any expectations based on stories or histories, you can know absolutely that you are not in the now. That means that you are asleep. You are not seeing the truth as it is. Your mind is creating scenarios about the other person and about yourself that have nothing to do with the truth of this moment. That’s what the ego mind does; it likes to create little dramas. What might it look like to be in the now with a relationship? We have talked recently about observing the observer. You have an observer who is looking at this relationship, at the other person, and at yourself, whoever this self is. It simply observes. Meanwhile your ego mind is making judgments based on what is observed. The truth of you, however, is the observer – not the analyzing mind.

It is not a question of needing to let go of old relationships that keep you stuck. Stuckness will then be created with any new relationship you attract, no matter how “spiritual” it might appear to be. It is also not a question of becoming a recluse and having no relationships, so there is nobody to create stories with. The ego mind will always find a substitute; you will find some place to project. Rather it is a question of stepping back to the observer, focusing on the noticing rather than your analysis of the noticed. As you are able to do this, you will see that every story you have about other people is false. If you are purely observing another from your true self, rather than from your analyzing mind, you will simply see their Divinity, and be absolutely in love with it.

This is a process that We invite you to play with in each and every relationship. It doesn’t matter if it is a relative or family member, a childhood friend, a longstanding friendship, an enemy, an old or present lover, a co-worker, a clerk in a store, a stranger you pass on the street, a celebrity you have never met, or a character from a movie, show, or book. This observing can be applied in the same way to every scenario. If you are in the physical presence of another person, recognize when you are doing more than just noticing. Pay attention to where there are any thoughts, expectations, judgments, likes or dislikes related to what is being observed with the other person. Just notice it. Be aware if a part of you wants the other to change in any way. Discern if you want to receive something out of the meeting. Notice that. In this awareness, the job is not to change yourself; it is not for you to stop having these thoughts. Just notice. If you have thoughts about changing your behavior, acknowledge that. Who is noticing? Your mind will likely keep active; your only job is to try to remember to recognize what you are doing.

By doing this you will, one by one, destroy every old relationship. These associations are based on stories. With them you tie yourself and the other up into specific positions and roles. The absolute freedom of the now is denied. Your behaviors and your perceptions are limited by these beliefs. In addition, your happiness likely is dependent on the other acting as you wish them to, leaving you upset much more often than you might wish. In the now there are no old fossilized relationships. Each moment is brand new. It has no history and is connected to no future. For some reason that is beyond the understanding of the mind, another person is brought into your presence. What a curiosity that is! Why? What is this all about? The only way to find out is to watch and see what happens. Whatever it is has never happened before and will never happen again. It is absolutely fresh. It is now! It matters not if this is a person you have never encountered before or a partner you have spent decades with. Let everything else go and allow yourself to experience this now.

A Course in Miracles reminds us that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. To the ego mind it feels more difficult to deal with the older relationships in the now, to hold them in a different way – particularly those with family. How do you view your parents, or your children? Most of you no longer live with your parents. One or both of them may no longer be living. With or without their physical presence, you still have a relationship with each of them. All you need do is to pull up the memory of an old story. You find yourself having a physical reaction, perhaps your heart beats faster or you are flooded with emotion, and all this with no physical presence. A parent may have done something that felt hurtful to you when you were seven years old. Now you are fifty and you pull the story up and feel hurt all over again. This certainly is not your first bout with this memory and will likely not be the last. Can you join me in appreciating the humor in the situation? Any outside witness could testify that your parent is not at the present moment doing anything to you. It’s just you doing it to you, while projecting blame on your possibly senile or dead mother. This is not living in the now. In the now you have no relationship with anybody who is not in your physical presence. But, since you already have the story pulled up, why not take a step back and watch it from your observer self. Look at it. Again, if there is any judgment or emotional response, that is not the watcher. Notice that. Who is noticing that? Keep stepping back to the watcher who sees the story, sees the child and the parent, and sees the adult replaying the whole scenario. The observer doesn’t take any of it seriously. This watcher doesn’t believe it is real or unreal. It doesn’t blame or take pity. It just notices.

For those of you who have such stories with your own children, let’s look at this from the viewpoint of your “home movies”. As they are growing up, your mind perceives all their vulnerable, fragile places. You feel a need to help them survive in the world with these deficiencies. Perhaps they are now adults, living on their own. These old stories keep being projected in your mind and you worry about them. Based on a story that was never true, but just a projection, you carry with you a constant pain. Then, just to add even more humor to the situation, your children probably react negatively toward this interference in their lives. They don’t want your story running their life. They may hide much of their life from you. The story keeps you from a now relationship with them, with another adult. As with the stories with your parents, notice all of this from the observer. A few laughs can usually be helpful in this process. Be aware of the fear, judgment, and guilt. Step back and watch from your observer self. You may be experiencing your noticer if you find yourself having feelings of absolute love for your family members. This love doesn’t worry about them and has no concern over whether you have done enough or done the wrong things. All that is experienced is a loving acceptance of what is.

This applies to every relationship. What stories are you still holding about any romantic relationship that broke off? Look at any specific groups of people. What stories do you hold about the other gender, about certain generations, about specific educational or intellectual levels, about financial status, about race or nationality, about religion or the lack thereof? The stories are endless that the mind creates. Each one locks you into a place where you are not free in the moment to truly be with others, whether in your thoughts or in their physical presence.

Having read all of this, you may still feel helpless in your ability to get to your observer self. How do you stop looking from the ego mind? You start by paying attention. If you simply stand still and accept all your mind stories, you will remain in the same cycle. Begin with a willingness to observe from your watcher self. It might sound trite, but where there is a will, there is a way.

There is a conundrum here. We are talking about a difference between Oneness and duality. You cannot hold the two simultaneously. The ego mind can only operate from duality. The truth of you can see only Oneness. How do you leap this chasm from duality to Oneness? The answer is that you can’t. The only thing you can do is to be aware when the ego mind is operating. You can notice that you are creating and operating from a story. Who is doing the noticing? That’s a good question to keep asking. You have no ability to control and change the mind that is creating stories, judging, and being overcome with emotions. Rather than futilely trying to become the noticer, you might ask yourself what qualities the noticer wouldn’t have. As you notice your mind or emotions acting in certain ways, ask if those are traits of your noticer. Ask if what you perceive is actually true. If you keep looking at these activities and are brutally honest with yourself the answer will eventually be no, these are not qualities of the observer. It is not possible for the noticer to change the noticed, nor would the noticer have any desire to do so. All that you can do is to slowly increase the frequency with which you are able to notice. At some point there may be a synaptic leap from duality to Oneness. You can’t make it happen any more than you can make a seed grow into a plant. You can nurture it through cultivation, but you can’t force it. At some point you may suddenly be fully aware of the absolute insanity and humor of the ego mind and stop using it.

Meanwhile, you have one simple job. Notice. You don’t have to change yourself, anybody around you, or the world. Just notice. There is no better place to focus this awareness than with your relationships, so that they can all become new relationships. Each meeting with another becomes like good improv theater, flowing with what presents itself, enjoying the spontaneity of the interchange, and allowing your guidance to carry you. There is no question of where it’s going, only an enjoyment of where it is.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Why is it so difficult to accept everything that happens in my world?

I agree with you. It does feel hard. The ego way, the way you have all been taught in one form or another, is to be ruled by negative emotions. However, it does not serve you or the truth to point fingers at the outer world for your difficulties. You brought all of these challenges in with you. You manifested in your world what you believed to be true. Your ego tells you that it is good to have negative emotions. It serves you to get angry with those who do what you think is wrong. It benefits you to complain about what you don’t like. Your ego supports you in feeling yourself to be a victim; this is so much better than to be a victimizer. In this the ego helps you perceive things in such a way that you are always innocent and the other is always guilty. We could draw up a long list of ego supported negative emotions, each one being a subset of fear. As long as you allow these negative emotions to rule your life, of course, they will. You will remain asleep and out of touch with Spirit.

The world around you, your creation, will slap you on the back and tell you what a fine job you are doing, that you are all in this together dealing with an unfair and painful existence. Waking up is leaving the way of the world. Why is it so hard? Because it is so hard. If it were easy We wouldn’t be writing these messages and you would all be awake. It is hard because you still have a strong belief that your ego is right and most everyone around you seems to be in agreement. Mostly it is difficult because you can’t find anybody else to do this work for you. You have to take responsibility for choosing to awaken and then you have to do the heavy lifting. Meanwhile the world, to the degree that you show your hand, thinks you are totally nuts. You can’t blame anyone else for your failure to awaken. It is totally up to you. I understand the enormity of the challenge, but you have no other choice but to remain asleep. And that isn’t much of a choice because you have already begun to distrust your ego and there may be no going back. Rather than having a foot in each world, you will find no place to call home. You will awaken if you “keep your eye on the prize”, but it is going to take time. It will not happen all at once.

Let’s begin with negative emotions. If you were to decide to eliminate them from your life, it wouldn’t happen quickly . Even if you choose to jettison anger, you will keep getting angry. Your fears won’t quickly dissipate. You cannot effectively drop these negative emotions by making a mental decision, but everything starts when you have that intention. The next step is to pay attention to your behavior. Notice the negative emotions. Do your best not to judge yourself for having them, to not throw more fuel on the fire. Your job is not to judge, simply to notice. The goal is to be constantly aware, but, again, this won’t happen overnight. That is all there is to begin with, so let’s play with this a little, take it for a walk in the park. You go outside in the morning and find it to be either warmer or colder than you would like. You silently complain, or to another if you have a companion. “Why isn’t it warm the way summer is supposed to be?” or “It’s too damn hot!” This is not accepting what is. It is having a negative emotional response to the moment. You enter a store and run right into a person you don’t want to meet. “Why do I have to see him? Oh, no, he’s coming toward me! He’s going to want to talk. Why does this happen to me?”  Little things happen all day long. “Oh! I dropped my favorite cup in the sink and it broke! I got it from my grandmother! I am so upset”. Little things. It doesn’t need to be bombs dropping in Ukraine, viruses, or governmental actions. Any little things you react to each and every day are what you are to notice. Your job is to be aware of your negative responses to them. You can come up here and sit with Us and observe, “There I go”. Together we will look without judgment. You notice that it happened. Then you see if your perceiving was judgment free. The more often you are able to catch yourself, the more often you will be able to do so without judgment, or you will at least be aware of the negative emotion of judgment. Again, this is not about changing your negative emotional responses; it is just about awareness.

Let’s look at your negative emotions from another point of view. What possible benefit can you reap from having a negative reaction to a situation? Is your reaction to the weather going to change it? Is getting upset with running into that man in the store going to make him disappear? Will your upset over the broken cup put it back together? You may have been told that there is no use crying over spilt milk. That may be true. Your negative emotions do not help to eliminate undesired outcomes. They do succeed in helping you to feel bad. How would you feel if you didn’t have the negative emotional reactions? How would it be if you simply accepted what is? “This is what the weather is today.” “I guess Spirit wants me to meet this man today.” “It’s just a cup. I have others.” Why not let go. Why choose upset when peaceful acceptance is a viable and more productive choice? You can be joyfully in the now or you can be consumed with negative emotions. This is why I tell you that everything that happens is perfect. I have designed everything to support you in awakening. In your awakened state you will understand and welcome this perfection. Negative responses do not allow you to be present, to receive the gifts, to feel the Oneness. When you choose fear over love you cannot experience the Divine Now.

This lack of efficacy in your negative emotions may help motivate you to do this work. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose, except the fleeting pleasure that sharing your pain with another brings. If you think your negative emotions bring something of value to you, I encourage you to spend some time with that thought. Look deeply. Is it really true? Is this something that you want? See exactly what the benefits are to you. As long as you find plusses there, you will surely stay with them. Otherwise continue to pay attention. With the intention to leave behind your negative emotional responses, for now you merely observe. The transformation will happen in stages and only as quickly as it can. How can you be free of negative emotional reactions if you have one when you notice you are still having them? That may be a little convoluted, but think about it. Nothing more is asked of you than the awareness of when it happens. Noticing is what you do in the now. Negative emotions are never about the now. Someday you will be fully aware of how silly they are.

It is Our job to assist in the transformation. If you set the course of awakening and then begin paying attention, We will bring you everything you need in order to let go of these habits. We will take you step by step at the pace We know is right for your awakening. As we’re sitting up here together in the clouds, looking down on the battlefield, We will assist you in the noticing. Feel free to ask Us why We brought something and to ask for support in receiving the gift. Listen. You might hear a response. Sooner or later it will happen, and then it will happen more frequently. You may not be able to hear Us over the loud chatter of your ego, so it helps you to quiet yourself as you climb up next to Us. If you can’t silence your ego, then simply notice that and the accompanying feelings. Waking up does not require finding the holiest place on the planet, or going there and falling at the feet of the holiest person on the planet and saying, “Show me the way.” You do it right here, right now. You notice; you pay attention, and you listen for the inner voice. No special place, no special person, no special practice. One way you might recognize the diminishing of the hold your ego has over you occurs when you begin laughing at yourself as you notice your negative emotions being expressed.

In conclusion – and of course there is never a conclusion because there is no beginning or ending; there is no time – what makes it so hard is two things. First is when you believe in your ego and trust it is telling you the truth. It is when you justify the righteousness of your negative emotions. “Anyone would react this way to this horrible world!” This makes awakening nearly impossible. There must first be a willingness to stop surrendering to the negative response. Most of you are more likely involved with thing two. It feels so hard to change your ways. The answer again is that this is not your job. Changing behavior in the outer world is not what awakening asks of you. A little willingness is all that is needed. That, along with a commitment to paying attention more and more often, is all that is called for. It becomes a matter of persistence. Nothing sexy or “woo woo” about it, just showing up and noticing. Then, like Michael and Ulla’s cat when she catches a mouse, you bring it to Us and set it down at Our feet as an offering. We know what to do with it and are always grateful. We will do the heavy lifting and present you in turn with your next gift. If you have difficulty fully receiving what appears – no problem. You still have your intention; you are still trying to notice; and We have an endless supply of next gifts for you. Another time you will notice or you may have no negative reaction. Celebrate! Pop the cork! More will follow. Here is Our money back guarantee. If you express an intention to leave your negative emotions behind and pay attention to when you don’t, they will begin to fall away over time. As they do, you will find yourself increasingly recognizing the perfection that each moment brings to you.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Can I learn how to channel?

The short answer to this question is yes, anyone can learn to channel. The first extension to that response comes in the form of another question. Why do you wish to channel? Let’s talk about what this channeling is. I would describe it as directly hearing Spirit’s Voice. It is your job as a human desiring to awaken to learn how to hear Spirit speak within you. That is everyone’s job, a task that you will all eventually master. It may or may not be your job to share that with others. That is none of your business. That is up to Spirit’s plan; it is My business. If you have a desire to be a channel for others, if that is a goal, know that that comes from the ego. That wish sprouts from the ego need to prove that your separate individual self has some special value. This stems from your imagined separation from God, your fear of God, and your hope that some specialness on your part might invite His forgiveness and that you could now be welcomed home. As we have mentioned many times before, all of this is absolutely crazy and unnecessary. The only separation that exists between you and God, between you and Divinity, between you and Heaven is in your imagination. Your return home is a consequence of your self-forgiveness, not any choice of God’s. If your intention is to channel – even if you were to have some success – the focus of the channeling would be to maintain the separation. Your ego mind is not capable of truly choosing to return home; it will always hold the illusion of separation. However, you can still set the intention to return home and ask Me to intervene. And if I wish to come through you as a channel as a part of your return, I will do just that.

Let’s take a little detour. Some people have approached Michael about their desire to channel as he does, perhaps channeling Me. They ask for guidance in doing this, or in some cases believe they can just step in and begin. I would like to tell you some of the story about the channeling I do through Michael. To begin with, this was an agreement made before Michael began the illusion of this incarnation, though he did not consciously remember this promise. However, I often whispered in his ear and he was open to the spiritual direction in which I was guiding him, though he was often quite confused and had no idea where it would lead. I exposed him to the idea of channeling through books about channels and books that were channeled. He became aware that some of the best information available was channeled, though certainly that was no guarantee of quality. I put him in the physical presence of people who were channeling. Nowhere through any of this did Michael have a conscious intention to channel nor did he have any belief that he was a person who could channel. Quite the opposite was the case; he did not consider himself to be intuitive or to be in possession of “psychic” abilities. What happened was that I continued to speak into his ear and he heard me without any idea where the voice was coming from and followed the guidance as it came. He took steps that the mass consciousness of the world considered as absolutely insane. He accepted, though not without resistance, what I brought to him. I don’t tell this story to in any way suggest that Michael is special. He was simply keeping his word with me, holding to – despite fears and uncertainties – the pact that he was barely conscious of, following a course that he was constantly surprised by.

I told Michael as much as he could receive at any given point. Though it sometimes felt to him  that it was a little bit too much, I only stretched but never broke him. I know exactly what is necessary at each stage. The stretching is required for there to be opening, for the awakening process to progress. When it was time to stretch him into an awareness that he was actually channeling – something that had felt to him to be just a conversation in his mind – I asked him if was willing to let me come through. He asked “Who?” I replied, “I think you know.” He responded, “Sanhia?” I never answered the question, but simply repeated, “Will you let me through?” Though he wasn’t absolutely certain I had answered his question, he assumed that I had and that allowed him to say, “Yes, but I don’t know how to do that”. And it went from there. At that time it was an enormous stretch for him to accept that he was channeling the ascended master Sanhia with the accompanying stories of the Apache lifetime where Sanhia ascended and his previous incarnation as the disciple Thomas in the Jesus lifetime. These stories were not actually true because none of the stories in the illusion are true, but they have their value. If I had said to Michael as we began our conscious channeling activity that this is Spirit speaking to you and through you, this is the Divine Voice, it would have been more than he could have handled. He had his hands full trusting that he was channeling Sanhia. In the beginning My message was diluted because Michael was not ready for the full power of God to come through. That time has passed. It is time to come fully out of the closet. This is and always has been the Voice of Spirit. You may continue to refer to me as Sanhia. It makes no difference. This is the voice of Spirit coming to you. As I speak, Michael doesn’t exist. There is only this Divine Voice guiding you home, a beacon, a lighthouse. I am speaking in this manner through Michael because he agreed to it and has now fully surrendered to allowing My expression. That is his job. He is happy to do it. He performs this task, now, fearlessly. He has no other function and is aware of that.

This is something that is there for each one of you. I am constantly speaking to each of you. You have the choice to listen or not (as you have done for lifetimes). There is no problem if you can’t hear me within yourself. Ultimately you will. If you are hearing/listening to what I am saying, you have the choice to follow or not. Channeling ultimately entails the willingness to listen and the courage to follow, nothing more, nothing less. This does not mean that you will operate in the way that Michael does. You will be led to your unique expression. I will use you to touch others, as you are being touched now. How that will be is none of your business. That is My job. Your job is only to surrender, to allow yourself to be led. Any fear you have of surrendering and to giving up the idea that you know what to do comes from the ego. This is not a battle between Me and your ego. There can be no conflict between truth and illusion. As you listen to and accept truth, illusion simply disappears. As you develop your ability to channel me and to follow my guidance, the voice of ego will grow dimmer and dimmer.

The form that the communication with me will take will vary for each of you. For some of you it may be more visual or using other senses than the verbal. What will be consistent for all is that the message you receive will pass the test of truth. If anything that you are receiving is fear provoking or causes pain or a feeling of separation, it is not fully Me you are channeling. This is not to say that you won’t ever have fear about following the guidance. At any rate offer the fear or confusion up to Me and ask for help in seeing the truth. That truth is always centered in the absolute and unconditional love of God, in the Divine. It is always about your total innocence, that you have done nothing wrong and could not do anything wrong. There is never anything to forgive. You are the Divine Child of God. When My Voice reaches you, it will reinforce all of that. Anything outside of that is not My Voice. Ask Me to lift you up so that We can look down at the illusion together and see the truth. My guidance will always lead you to your next step.

None of this matters. None of the experiences you are having have any value, except as support in your awakening process. If you think anything does matter, ask for support in seeing that it doesn’t, and in seeing what does. You all will become channels of love and truth through Me. It can be no other way. Let go of any thought that it should appear in a certain way or at a particular time. Release any thought that you should be a “channel” for others and simply channel the messages that are for you. I will take care of everything else.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

What do we do with the war in Ukraine?

I have been asked to address the war in Ukraine. The first thing to notice is who is whispering in your ear and triggering fear. The answer without exception is that it is the voice of the ego. If you have been listening to the voice of Spirit you would be filled with acceptance and peace. Looking at this war would be no different for you than watching the sun rising in the morning sky. The ego voice asks, “Sanhia, how can we be in peace in the face of war?” You have the question reversed. It could better be stated, “How can there be peace in the world when there is war within me?” That is where the war exists. The world is never the cause; it can only be the effect. The cause remains within you. If you support one side over the other, you are creating war. You are filled with judgment, separation, and the perception of differences. You are guided by anger and blame. You are seeing a world populated by victims and victimizers. This is all projection. It is your guilt, your helplessness in the world, your fear of God. It is your fear of having no control over what might happen to you, of your own victimhood. It is your fear of death. All of this is ego projection, every bit of it.

The big question is, “What is real?”  What is it that you fear happening? Is it your fear for what might happen to others, or is it really fear for what could happen to you? The ego voice wants to convince you that your concern is for others, for the victims of the bombings, for the refugees, for those who have lost family members or their own lives, for the loss of homes and the destruction from the bombing. There is no way to be gentle about this. The ego is whispering bullshit into your ear. This has absolutely nothing to do with anybody else. It has only to do with you. This is your fear of death, of loss, of victimhood. This is all your projection. Corona did not do a complete and thorough job of relieving you of your fear of death. Of course it couldn’t; that is your job. Spirit can supply you with the classroom and the lessons, but only you can take them to heart and search for the truth. Death as you know it, the death of a human body is not real. It is no more real than the body itself. The body and the death of it are your creations, not God’s. The fear of death is the fear of something unreal happening to something that doesn’t exist. The fear is your creation, so only you can release it. There is no change that can happen in the world to release you of your fear. The movement can only take place in your own mind. Now you have been presented with another opportunity to do that. For those of you who are in Sweden the pot is sweetened as the war is closer and the refugees are at your door. For you in the United States the pot is sweetened by having your old nemesis, Russia, the evil empire that vowed to bury you, once again rearing its “ugly” head. How much fun is this? The illusion of the pandemic has been replaced in one fell swoop by the illusion of war.

As long as you believe that who you are is your body, you will fear death. All around you will appear to be violence or the threat of violence. When you absolutely realize that you are not your body – that you are not a physical being but are Divine and eternal; that you simply are – the death of the body will have no meaning for you. In this awakened state it will not matter; you might even be looking forward to the leaving. There is no in-between place here; either you are a body or you are. If you hold on to the reality of your body, your fears will remain with you until you become so tired of it that you finally choose to focus on Spirit and the truth hard enough to break through the wall of untruth. How do you do that? Stop feeding the illusion. When you realize your fear is being projected, whether it is upon those who seem to be victims or those who appear to be the perpetrators, notice what you are doing. Take responsibility. Your only job is to release untruth until all that remains is the truth. Seek the truth and it shall set you free. The existence of fear indicates you have work to do. Bring that to Spirit. Come sit up here above the battlefield with us and observe your ego self operating in the world. Watch without judgment, simply observing the “human condition”. You are not asked to change how you act in the world, only how you hold those actions, whether they are your own or those of your mirrors.

Let’s look at this from another perspective. You believe that certain individuals or groups are controlling what is going on with this war. Whether you hold Putin, Russia, or hidden forces or conspiracies within other countries as being the responsible party for the hostilities, it is actually Spirit that is bringing everything about. There is only one reason for the existence of these events and that is to help each one of you to wake up. That is the only job for you to take on in the wake of this war. When you feel badly for what is happening to others and wish to change those outcomes, you are expressing an arrogance that is far from the humility that can lead to awakening. This “caring concern” is an expression that you can do Spirit’s work – God’s job – better than They can. You are acting as if you know what’s best for everyone. Yet, you haven’t even figured out what is best for you. Is it good for you to live in fear and guilt? If you were correct that the world should be peaceful, you are stuck in a bit of a quandary. The world has never known peace. If peace is what we should have, why has it never happened? Are you going to spend the rest of your human existence in a futile battle against what is? You think that we should not have war when the earth has always had war. You think that governments should tell the truth and serve their citizens when they have always lied and served themselves. You believe that brute force should never be used by the strong over the weak, but it occurs daily. So, what planet are you living on? If you think you can change “reality”, you are holding on to an enormous illusion. The world is exactly as it is. For any step forward for mankind there will be a step backward. It is not, never has been, nor ever will be the purpose of the world to be perfect, to be heaven. It was created by you as a place to hide from heaven. Your job is to wake up to that and to find the kingdom within, not try to do the impossible. Wherever you try to take on the work of Spirit you have everything turned around. You are clueless about how to wake up, perhaps even unaware that you are asleep in a dream world, yet you think you know what other people should have in their lives?

Now you may find yourself in absolute confusion. You may be wondering if you shouldn’t at least be feeling sorry for the Ukrainian people. These “people” don’t exist outside of being your projections. It is for yourself that you are feeling sorry. It is you who is both the attacker and the victim. It is time for you to stop attacking yourself. It is time to stop blaming God and to start taking responsibility. It is time to stop waiting for a savior and realize that you are the only one who can do that for yourself. Spirit can help you, but only to the degree that you will allow. If you think the problems lie outside of you, Spirit can do nothing other than use your belief as a club to beat you into submission. It is you who have to call off the dogs. So, we return to the vital questions. What do you believe that is not true? Look at where you are in competition with God, thinking you know the best plan for others. Notice where you have refused to take responsibility for your part in the creation of the illusion, pretending you and others are victims to it. Look at how you take the world seriously as if it were real and the truth of you and others were actually these bodies. See how you think that material things actually matter.

The bottom line is that the war is within you, not out there in the world. If you desire to be responsible and caring, bring peace to the war you are waging. Give up all your attacks and blaming of others, which are acts of war. Stop holding others as helpless victims unless that is truly what you wish them to be. See Divine children of God. Hold yourself in that light. It’s a big job, but not so big a work as trying to create heaven on earth or stopping a physical war in the illusion. This challenge is one that you can actually succeed at. Since it is you who have started all war, you can also stop it. Nobody else can control what you do with your next thought but you. Nobody has power over you. What is going on in Ukraine does not matter. What is going on inside of you is everything. Spirit has brought you an enormous gift, right on the shirttails of Corona. You have an opportunity to choose love over fear, to awaken. It is not your last chance, but your life will remain driven by fear and helplessness until you decide to grab on to the horns and wrestle one of those monsters to the ground. Now is as good a time as any.

Good Now

Sanhia

What is freedom?

If you are an American, you have been told since you were young that you live in the land of the free. Freedom is the watchword for America. But what does freedom mean? For some, perhaps, it means that you are able to do whatever you want to do. Within a society, that could become a problem. Perhaps exercising your “freedom” gets in the way of somebody else exercising theirs. Am I free to take your car? So, it seems we need to journey further to discover what true freedom is. There are certainly limits on what any person is free to do, or we are left with a lawless society where the strongest take what they want.

If you think that your freedom depends on controlling things outside of you – such as other people’s behavior or world events – you will always fail and feel frustrated. You will be unable to control those factors, setting yourself up for misery. There is also the fear, the confused belief that you have to protect your freedom; you have to fight for it. This is the idea that others will try to take your freedom away from you, so freedom comes only at the price of eternal vigilance. Where is the peace in that? What is actually transpiring here is projection. The only one who is coming after your freedom is you. Nobody else is capable of doing that to you. I am going to pick on America a little bit here with its ideology of being the land of the free. Why are children forced to go to school? Does that teach freedom?  How many people go to work each day out of freedom? How many of you look at your partner each day and see “the old ball and chain”? Where is the freedom? You are free to choose whatever you want each day, but you choose to wake up next to your jailer. Is this freedom? That’s a rhetorical question. This is living life from fear. This is thinking you have to sacrifice to hold on to the little bit that you have. Of course this is not freedom, and it is not just an issue for Americans.

When you say that you want to have something or to do something, is that actually your true desire? Perhaps in the mass consciousness of your society you have been taught that you should pick a goal and succeed at reaching it. Within the scope of that, the goals you have to choose from may be narrowly defined. Maybe you are told that you should find a job that provides you financial security. Perhaps the teaching includes having a nice home and providing for your retirement. So, based on this you choose your goals, but do you really select them out of free choice? Are you listening to what your deep inner self really wants or to what the mass consciousness tells you that you need to have? The first question to ask yourself when you insist on your freedom of choice is, “Is it really true that this is what I wish to choose?” Is this somebody else’s wish for you? Is it a wish that comes out of fear? Is it a wish that comes out of a desire for approval? If you were to say to a child, “I’ll bet you can’t wait to grow up so that you can get up and go off to work every day!”, you would likely not get a positive response. It is unlikely the child will exclaim, “Oh, I can’t wait to do that!” To the child such an action more likely would feel like a loss of freedom than something they would want to choose. Freedom for children is doing what they want to do each day; it is playing. By the time most children grow up they have been brainwashed into believing that doing what they want is not an option as an adult.

So, there appears to be a great confusion about what freedom is. My guess is that if you have not done a lot of internal inquiry here, then what you think you want is not what your inner child wants at all. You do have the “freedom” to choose as directed by the mass consciousness and to find out that it doesn’t bring you satisfaction. Maybe the mass consciousness belief is that if you have enough money you can choose to do what you want. The conundrum is that no matter how much money is accumulated, it will usually not seem to be enough. When is it safe to stop? Never.  Money does not buy freedom. The accumulation of money is based on fear. If the fear is not confronted, no amount of money is enough; the fear persists.

Let’s go in a different direction. Many of you are familiar with the song lyric that says “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”  This is sung in a sad, plaintive manner from one who appears to be at the bottom and not so happy about being there. On the other hand, those of you who have hit that bottom may have found a freedom there. As long as there is a desire, a hope, a goal, a relationship, money, the possibility of success or of a better world, or anything else you could have attachment to – and the thought that such achievement is still within reach – you are not free. Without realizing the object of your attachment, you will not be happy; you will not be fulfilled. Nothing left to lose can mean “no attachment”. There is nothing else that can be lost. Is that freedom? If it isn’t, we might be getting warm.

In the awakened state there is no attachment. There are no goals. That doesn’t mean that you live without anything in your life, it simply does not matter what is there. It doesn’t follow that the life is void of meaning or activity. Whatever appears or happens is perfect. We are getting closer to a sense of what freedom is. One cannot be asleep and free. True freedom requires being in the awakened state. If that is true and you wish to be free, then you will choose to wake up. This choosing, however, becomes a goal and so there appears to be a vicious cycle. You cannot wake up without intention, but the very fact of choosing this goal keeps you in attachment and asleep. This is what we call a conundrum. The part of you that is trying to figure out how to wake up is absolutely incapable of succeeding. Only the ego can have goals. Spirit has no goals. The ego can only succeed in self-sabotage.

How can you possibly navigate this duality? One solution is to give your freedom of choice to Spirit. Spirit both has and knows the plan. When we talk about giving it to Spirit, letting Spirit guide you, many have the fearful reaction that surrendering to the voice of Spirit means that you have to give up your own free will. Isn’t that a loss of freedom? You would have to sacrifice your desire for the dictates of Spirit. That’s an interesting point of view. To have freedom, you must give it up. You surrender to Spirit, letting It direct you, trusting that whatever is presented into your life is the perfect thing, and accepting it rather than fighting, resisting, and wanting to change things. This is what will bring you freedom. You give your ego’s free choice to the One who can choose for you. This process will certainly be accompanied by terror. The ego, which has chosen to wake up, doesn’t really want to. It does not want to relinquish the sense of separation, whereas freedom absolutely demands that you do so. Ego will throw tantrums as well as all possible obstacles in your path in an attempt to derail this surrender. The irony of ironies is that if and when you totally surrender your freedom to follow Spirit’s will, you will discover that what Spirit wants you to do is totally aligned with what you want to do. What will have changed is that you will have total joy in the doing and not a thought for the outcome.

Freedom is having zero attachment to results. In the duality you cannot always succeed in reaching a desired outcome, so any attachment you have will bring about a sense of loss, unhappiness, and you will find yourself on a rollercoaster. The outcome is not in the moment, so any focus on results brings you out of the eternal now and into the slumber of the ego. When you are awake nothing matters, with the exception of the moment, and it is joyous. Think of the freedom of a child at play. The joy of the sand castle is in the making. Tomorrow it will likely be gone and the child will be making something else. There is no freedom outside of the eternal now. If your behavior is being controlled by anything from the past, you are not free. If your thoughts are in the future, trying to bring about some particular outcome, you are not free.

Freedom means you are free of responsibility. When you hold the thought that you or others are responsible, you are chained by that thought. What is the truth here? It is absolute insanity to think you are responsible for someone else. How can you determine what they will or will not do? How can you decide what will happen to them? That is all Spirit’s job. It’s none of your business. What an enormous freedom you will feel when you take the step of giving up the thought that you have responsibility for others. Feel that. Now you are responsible only for your business. Is that the truth? Are you truly responsible for all that you do? Probably not since most of your actions are conditioned responses you have not freely chosen. It is your thoughts that matter, not your actions. More importantly, Spirit has a plan for you that is better than any you could ever come up with. What you have been calling responsibility is actually irresponsible. You are trying to take over the work of a master, and failing completely at the task. You don’t need to be responsible and are absolutely incapable of doing the job. Feel the lightness that comes with relinquishing that work.

Wherever you look out on your life and see a place where you don’t feel free, that is where you have chosen to give your power to something outside of you. Freedom happens when you take your power back, bringing it inside and giving it to Spirit. In truth, Spirit already has it. You simply stop working at cross purposes. Most people think of freedom as trying to hold on to something they desire, but it actually is letting it go. If you wish to choose freedom, letting go of all attachments and following Spirit – how do you go about doing that? The first step is having the awareness that if you are feeling distress of any kind, whether it is fear, physical pain, disease, or emotional discomfort; it is a sign that you have given your freedom away. You have an attachment to and have made yourself a prisoner of some belief that is not true. Pay attention and notice what situations are triggering that for you. You have a belief that you need to control something outside yourself to be happy. You have given someone or something power over you.  Ask Spirit for support in letting that go. Your behavior won’t likely immediately change, but as you watch yourself taking these self-destructive acts, as you sit there with Spirit and observe the craziness of your patterns, as you remind yourself that you have nothing to gain by them, the activities will naturally begin to lessen.

Whatever you think you need to have in your life situation to make you free leaves you a prisoner. Real freedom comes when you release your attachment to absolutely everything. Am I saying that you should all quit your jobs and leave your spouses so that you can be free? Changing the outside will not give you freedom; it is how you look at it from the inside that sets you free. What would you choose today if you were really free? If you have been acting from fear you probably don’t have the slightest idea what you would choose. It is a gradual process you will go through when you give the wheel back to Spirit. It requires you to investigate each belief that is driving your behavior and look for the untruths. It is in feeling what it is like to no longer be a victim of anything, to no longer need anything or anyone to change. Perhaps in a future “now” you will be guided to make a big jump. This will neither be a jump away nor a jump toward. It will simply be your truth in that moment, your guidance from Spirit. There will be no second guessing. There will be no guilt. You will not be chained to your choice. Each moment will bring another. Each one will be guided. Each will be an exercise in freedom.

Good Now

Sanhia