Do I need to transform all of my fears before I can ascend?

We will continue this month with the theme of ascension. Many of you are doing a wonderful work here, facing your fears and perhaps dealing with them through the five-step process. When the energy in your body is transformed from fear to love, the transition is permanent. This does not mean that you may not create more fear in the future, but if you have the intention of aligning with and giving everything to Spirit you are not as likely to manifest new fear energy in your body. There is, however the residual old fear that you are still carrying with you.

While I do not wish in any way to discourage you from continuing to work with the process to transform any fear that you become aware of, I do want to give you the following warning. You may believe in an “incremental” approach to ascension. You may have the idea that if you chisel away at your fear a little bit at a time there will eventually be nothing left and you will realize your ascension. I want to give you a different way to visualize this. Those of you who have studied math in the past may remember the image below, or perhaps it will just trigger your math phobia. There is a function in geometry which generates an asymptote. This is a straight line that is approached by a curved line. The curved line gets closer and closer to the asymptote without ever touching it. The distance between the curve and the asymptote continues to be cut in half, but, in infinity, the curved line never reaches the asymptote. Close, oh so close, but no cigar. Cutting the distance in half will never fully eliminate it.

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Let’s look at how this relates to your ascension process. Though there is a finite amount of negative fear energy carried in your body, the five-step process also transforms it geometrically. You may think that if you keep chiseling away it will all disappear, but this is like the asymptote. It represents your ascension, while the curved line measures the fear you are continuing to transform. You keep getting closer and closer to realizing your divine self, but never fully realize it. The upside is that as you approach the awareness of your divine self, you experience more joy and less pain in your life. You likely find yourself providing more of your divine service for others. Your ego is less of an irritant. But you don’t fully realize your divinity.

Again, I am not suggesting that you stop working with your stuff. If you feel pain or fear, by all means reduce the pressure. Transform it into love. This leaves you much more capable of hearing Spirit and following its direction. What I would encourage you to let go of is the thought that facing your fears is enough. It is not by your work that you realize your ascension; it is by the grace of God. If it is not about eliminating all of your fear, what is it about? It is about giving everything to Spirit. In A Course in Miracles Jesus speaks of the sacred moment. This is when you absolutely experience the oneness with God. It is not something that can be forced into being. It happens when you give up all intention and become one with whatever Spirit is presenting. This realization does not require that you be free of all fear. You do not need to work and work until every last drop of fear is squeezed from your body. As we explained above, that is not going to happen. You can only approach that point, but can never reach it. There is no magic point on your curved line where you suddenly jump over to the line of infinity (divinity). There is no order. I can’t look at each of you and measure how close you stand to realizing your divinity. Your position on the curved line measures nothing about the timing of your ascension. It is only about surrendering to the sacred moment, about being open to Spirit and to the grace of God.

But Sanhia, you may be thinking, you are beginning to sound like a broken record. Give it to Spirit. Give it to Spirit. Is there anything else? Of course! If you are in pain, do the process. There is no reason for you to suffer. If you are pain free, but wondering what to do next – you give that thought to Spirit. There is nothing for you to do. Anything that you might choose to do would only get in your way. Your only job is to get out of the way. That may sound like a double-edged sword; the thing to do is not to do. How can you think about not doing? That seems crazy. Of course it is. Your entire creation is crazy. It is insane. Your mind can never think its way out of it. Enjoy your insanity, and give it to Spirit. There is nothing else to do, nothing to worry about. Any attempt to realize your ascension comes from the ego. It comes from the assumption that you are not who you are. It assumes that you are separate from God, when you are not. Only the ego can have that thought. The truth of you knows your divinity. The good news is that you are off the hook. There is nothing you have to do, nothing you have to worry about. Listen to Spirit. That Voice will remind you of the truth. You are already ascended.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

 

What Is the difference between ascension and enlightenment?

I have been talking about ascension for a long time. This has been the major focus since I began communicating through Michael over thirty years ago. For those of you whose native language is Swedish, there is no word that directly translates this concept. The closest is “himlafärd”, which means “a trip to heaven”. This provides a beginning in grasping the term, but still contains a sense of going somewhere. In English, ascending literally means to go up, again indicating the involvement of motion. A clearer understanding would be to associate ascension with the realization of your divine nature. The idea of “going up” assumes that your ascension is not right here, right now. The thought of having to travel to find your ascension only leaves you separate from its realization. However, there is also an accuracy in these literal translations because when you fully realize your divine nature, this earth plane loses any reality it might have previously held for you. In the challenging attempt to define ascension, I have often talked about what it isn’t. Ascension is not something that is realized through following specific practices, disciplines, or beliefs. It does not happen because you are good, or because you do things in the right way. Ascension is the full realization that you are one with God, you are loved unconditionally, you are love, that there is only love.

I have talked about all of this before, but today I wish to introduce another term which is commonly used and, at times, seems to be interchangeable with ascension. That word is enlightenment, which in Swedish translates as “upplysning”, meaning “putting the spotlight on”, a more direct translation. I want to compare these terms, beginning with a disclaimer. The differentiation I will establish is connected to the manner in which I define these words. Other sources may have different definitions. Enlightenment could be seen as a subset of ascension. All who realize their ascension are also, certainly, enlightened. However, those who are enlightened do not necessarily realize their ascension. What is the difference? Enlightenment means that you realize that this physical plane is all illusion. You understand that you are the creator of all that you experience. You know that time doesn’t truly exist, nor does your physical body. You realize that you are. That is your only truth. You always are. That full awareness is called enlightenment. Often, enlightenment is seen as the highest spiritual goal. It is a term that is used within the Buddhist tradition. The Buddha became enlightened, and so Buddhists seek a similar experience.

If you experience enlightenment, you continue to deal with the world about you, but with an absolutely different perspective. You are still in a body dealing with everyday life, but you no longer take it seriously. The only thing that remains real is self. You know that you always are. The enlightened one has no idea whether others have any true existence. I wouldn’t know if there is such a thing as “you”, an entity that also creates everything that you see. All that I can know is that your existence is my creation. In ascension, you have this enlightened perspective, but here is a distinction. When we speak of enlightenment, there is usually no reference to God. There is only the “light”, the eternal is-ness. The assumption of the enlightened one may be that the existence of God is beyond knowing, that all that can be known for sure is the existence of self. There are no answers to any of the deep questions such as: “Why do I exist?” “Where did I come from?” or “Why did I create this body and this universe?” Some who are enlightened will argue that your existence is all you can know. This knowingness of the unreality of the human experience allows almost all pain to evaporate.

The difference with ascension is that it does deal with these questions. It recognizes divinity and a creative source, which I call God. It understands that the earth experience and physical creations emanate not from God, but from the souls we call human. This manifestation came out of fear of God and separation from Him. We created this universe to hide from God, out of our fear of punishment. Without the acceptance of the existence of God, you can realize that all of this is a movie, but still have a vague sense of emptiness. The deep questions do not totally disappear. Strands of judgment persist. In fact, enlightenment might be the last refuge of the ego. The answer to the deep questions is that you are here to heal your relationship with your creator. Denial of His existence won’t make Him go away. He has nowhere to go. Nor do you. This understanding allows you to ask God, or Spirit, for support in aligning with truth, in reconnecting to your divinity. You realize the importance of forgiveness in the process. You become absolutely intolerant of the slightest judgments you might hold. You seek to see divinity everywhere.

There has been a great confusion because most of those who believe in God do not believe in enlightenment, while most of those who believe in enlightenment don’t believe in God. Ascension requires both beliefs. The connective energy is unconditional love. Without God, unconditional love may not be of importance. You could be enlightened, but not fully surrendered to and guided by Spirit. The void or emptiness of the enlightened state allows a place for the voice of ego, because your mind has not been fully offered to Spirit. In Buddhism, there exist bodhisattvas who are on the threshold of enlightenment but hold back, waiting for everyone to join them. They reincarnate over and over, coming as teachers. The confusion is that one’s primary reason for incarnating becomes the serving of others. This is in denial of God and your separation. It is the lack of recognition that what you see in others is only a reflection of yourself, which is all that you can affect. The ascended masters comprehended that their own realization of divinity was the reason for their physical experience. Ironically, their ascension is also the greatest gift they could offer to others in supporting spiritual development. Ascension understands the oneness. It knows that personal ascension raises all ships, shines light on all souls.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

How do I discern Spirit from ego?

We have been encouraging you to choose love over fear, Spirit over the ego. Some of you have asked how to tell the difference. Right now, any decision you make is likely to be fear-based, whether you choose to listen to the ego or to Spirit. If you opt for the ego, you do it out of fear of what might happen to you if you don’t follow its direction. When you decide on Spirit, you have the fear ”What if this is the wrong thing to do?” The ego is very good at playing that kind of game with you. ”Don’t you think somebody would have been doing it like that a long time ago if that was the way to do it?” ”What if everyone acted that way?” The main message from the ego is that if you don’t do as it suggests, something bad will happen to you. You feel that the only safe thing is to do what you don’t want to do. When you are listening to Spirit you think, ”That is what I really want to do, but I’m afraid to”. The fear is that you will get hurt by doing what you want to do. Deep inside you can hear what you really want, but you are afraid to act on it. The voice of Spirit is saying ”Go for it”. To sum it up, the easiest way to discern the two voices if you are doubtful is this: If you follow out of fear, the voice is likely the ego; if you are afraid to follow, the voice is likely Spirit.

Spirit will remind you that if you listen to the voice of the ego only one thing is certain. You will die. Everyone who has done things the ego’s way has died. You may be wondering where you find those who have listened to the voice of Spirit. The ego is correct when it tells you that there aren’t many. They are called ascended masters. The one you probably know best is Jesus. When you read his channeled message in A Course in Miracles, you are getting a training in how to listen to Spirit and leave the voice of the ego behind. The same thing happens when you study these messages. When there are few accompanying you on your voyage, the odds are greater that you might be listening to Spirit.

Mass consciousness is one of the voices of the ego. It takes great courage to choose Spirit over ego. Each of you have come back countless times hoping that you have set things up in such a way that this time you will pick Spirit. From where I sit, it’s a done deal. It doesn’t matter if you ascend in this body or twenty bodies from now. Nothing will stop you from realizing the truth eventually. You will get there. I have no fear for you. It doesn’t matter whether you listen to Spirit now, or not. And so it is with God, who sees only your perfection, only the truth of you. Even now in the midst of your fear, you are absolutely one with God, totally connected. Everything around you is illusory. None of it exists. You can ask God to stop all of this madness, to come down to earth into your hell. God won’t hear you. As we mentioned in the last message, while you are in illusion the best you can do is to talk to Spirit. Even when you begin to consistently put your faith in God, in Spirit, and in your divinity, there is still a step between believing and knowing. When you know, you will feel no need to talk to God because you are one. When you ask,”Can I talk to God?”, you are really saying you want to ask God for help. This is what you do when you pray. You may think your prayer is going to God, but it isn’t. It is heard by Spirit. Spirit sends you support to help you to choose the voice of truth.

Let’s return to the original question of how to discern the voice of Spirit from that of the ego. Begin, as always, with the intention. Ask Spirit to support you in this goal. Ask for the faith to follow your heart, even when you are experiencing fear and doubt. If the ego wins the battle, let it go. Forgive yourself and try again. The ego might win many battles, but it cannot win the war. Remember how the voice of Spirit feels. When you fully want something to happen from your heart, that is its voice. Remember that the guidance is always for you. Spirit won’t tell you how another should act toward you. It is all about you. This illusion is your creation. You can ask Spirit to bring you moral support, but any attempts to make specific people play certain roles for you is always the work of the ego. It begins, always, as a choice to listen to Spirit over the ego. You do it because you believe it is the truest thing to do. Eventually there will be no choice. The only voice you will hear is that of Spirit. I call that ascension.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

Why do I feel abandoned by God?

Some of you have expressed anger to me – perhaps not directed at me, though you may have wanted to shoot the messenger – because of things I have said about God. You feel that God doesn’t pay any attention to you, that He is not aware of your struggles and your pain. You feel abandoned because none of this exists for God. I can understand, on one hand, why you might draw that conclusion. I have explained to you that this earthly experience is all an illusion. Nothing in your physical world is real. The only things that truly exist are absolute love and divinity. This illusion you have created in the physical realm of bodies and fear does not exist in the mind of God. He does not see your experience. God sees only the truth in you. He does not see your fantasies of separation, judgment, and pain. He sees your divinity, your holiness. Hearing that causes some of you to feel that God doesn’t really care about you. He is just going to let you hang out here in your pain and suffering. All your prayers and cries for help are ignored. To your great surprise, I have a number of things to say about this “abandonment”.

If God could see your illusions, it would make them real. Think what that would mean. If your body truly exists; if this earth and universe are existent; if your pain, suffering, and fear are real; they will go on forever. When you die, and leave all of this ”reality” behind you, you will realize that none of it was actually taking place. This you realized after your last incarnation, as well as following the multitude of others you have experienced. When you no longer have a body, you still are, just a whole lot lighter without the excess baggage you carry with you now. All of the things that felt so necessary, vital, and important in your physical experience are gone. They are simply gone. If they were real, they would still be there. When you ask God to give them reality, be aware of what you are asking for. You are asking for your hell to be permanent. It is to your saving grace that God does not see your illusion, seeing only the truth of you so that you have the potential of also holding the truth.

Rather than abandoning you, God has sent the Holy Spirit. This is a difficult concept to fully understand. In Christianity, they talk about the trinity of God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit. Usually, even though the concept is alright, the execution of it is woefully inadequate. The Father is often pictured as judgmental and punishing; the Son is limited to Jesus, excluding all of the rest of the Sonship (which includes you and me); and the Holy Spirit is often simply not understood at all. The Father is the originator God – all loving, all powerful, all creative. The Son is you: whoever is reading this; whoever isn’t reading this; and whoever has, is, or will be in a body. The Son is created in the image of the Father: divine, all loving, all knowing, all powerful. But, a part of the Sonship has chosen to believe in a separation from the Father and fears retribution for that action. That is the case for all who have chosen human form. God recognizes that you believe yourself to be lost, but does not experience the trauma you have created. You are like a sleeping child experiencing a nightmare. The loving parent recognizes that the child is having a bad dream and knows that it is terrified, but cannot penetrate into the illusion. The parent knows that what is being experienced isn’t real and that sooner or later the child will wake up. The parent tries to lovingly awaken the child and to assure it that it is safe. It is the Holy Spirit that carries out this function.

The Holy Spirit is the intermediary between the Father and the sleeping Son. Spirit is designed in such a way that you can ask for Its support, supplicating to be brought into conscious alignment with the Father. I want to remind you that you are not being helped to establish alignment. You are already aligned with the Father. You are one with God. You are one with each other. What is lacking is the awareness of that oneness. This does not take away the truth of who you are, but it does keep you from having the experience of your divinity. Rather than living in the divine love of your birthright, you live in fear. By asking Spirit for support, you can realize your alignment with the Father. The role of the Father is to hold the course, to hold it steady, to hold the truth, to never waiver, and to never give any reality to the hell that you have created. The Father always sees your perfection. It is your role, as the Son, to give up the ego, to stop choosing to listen to it, and to choose divinity. To facilitate your process, God has created the Holy Spirit to help those of you who have chosen ascension, and want to give up fear and illusion. The Holy Spirit is there to give you a helping hand. He is aware of your illusions, but does not take them seriously. Your task is to believe Spirit, rather than the ego. Spirit is there to support you in constantly choosing love over fear.

You can ask God to come down to earth and enter your hell. God won’t hear you. Spirit will hear you, however. Even as your faith in trusting Spirit’s voice over the ego becomes stronger and stronger, there is still a step between believing and knowing. When you cross that line into knowingness, you no longer feel a need to talk with God, because you are fully aware of your oneness. In the meantime, rest easily in the knowledge that God’s love for you is eternal and that dissolution of your hell is a certainty. The consistent message from Spirit is ”lighten up, everything is moving forward perfectly”.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

What can I do with the fear I feel over Trump’s election?

As some of you may be aware, there was a presidential election this past month (November 2016) in the United States. Oh! You are all aware of it. Okay. How many of you were pleased and excited with the results? I don’t hear anyone cheering. How many of you were terrified by the results? Wonderful! You see, fear is what this election was all about. It was a thumbs up or thumbs down vote about fear. If your reaction was fearful, you were part of the thumbs up vote. You voted (or didn’t vote) out of fear. You have helped to create this election result. I say this not as an accusation, but as an encouragement to take responsibility for your creations. Fortunately, it is all an illusion…or we might all be terrified now. I’m not. I feel fine. There is only one reason why you are here now in a physical body on the planet Earth and that is to realize your divinity – to know that you are one with each other and with the creator God. He doesn’t care who is president of the United States. It doesn’t make any difference. If it makes a difference to you, you have given your power away. You are claiming to be a victim of outer circumstances or are perceiving others to be caught in the crosshairs. Either way it is a projection of your own fear.

The reason for voting at all is simply to select the candidates who most embody the love that you have in you, that most suggest that the loving, trusting, divine energy that is the truth of you will be expressed and shared with others. Whether or not the president of the United States seems to embody that energy makes no difference to you. The question is, ”Do you embody that energy?” Are you a being of love, light, and truth or are you a being who is spreading fear and darkness, guilt and blame? It is a very easy choice: love or fear. For those of you who are choosing fear, congratulations. You have elected the perfect leader – even if you did not vote, even if you are not a citizen of the US. The residents of Sweden and other countries feel strongly affected by the election results, also. It is a world event. If you are feeling fear, that is a choice. Nobody is forcing you to be afraid of what will happen because of this election. When you are choosing love, you know there is only perfection, that everything is happening exactly as it should. You trust in what is presented. The plan may not be obvious to you, but that does not mean that it is not present. In the previous message we talked about faith. Faith is where you go forward and act without proof, operating in the trust that divinity, that love is all there is.

How can this election outcome be in service to the planet, when your brain-minds are saying, ”No, this is going backwards; this is not going in the right direction”? Yet at the same time, more and more souls on earth are making the conscious intention to realize their divinity. These beings are giving increasing trust to this process. Trust that this election is a part of that continuity. I will tell you a few things to whet your appetite, but ultimately it is you who are to go inside and ask Spirit to help you release your fear about the election and trust in its perfection. One of the ways that the election is serving is that for some of you it is important to see the world improving in certain ways. It is vital that what you see outside match what you want to feel inside. Actually, you have the process reversed. What you see in the world reflects what is going on within you. All we have at this point that we can look at is an election. Some votes were cast and winners were declared. Yet some of you already are rushing ahead and projecting the most horrible things occurring. Does that come from love or fear?

A great gift from this event can be realized because some of you on the spiritual path are looking to be saved. You are hoping for a great leader to come along to rescue you. You will never be saved from the outside. There is nothing there for you to be protected from. The fear is illusory; it is not true. No matter who is in power in the world’s governments – what they do or how human bodies are affected – they are absolutely incapable of doing any damage to the truth of you or anyone else. The part of you that doesn’t believe that has created this test for yourself. Think back eight years. Remember how excited many of you were at the results of the election that had just happened. What hope you had for the world! How peace would come! How racial equality would be achieved! A whole new period of harmony and love was being ushered in, The Swedish Nobel committee even awarded Obama a prize in anticipation of the great good he would do. Now, eight years later, how did that dream work for you? For many there is a disappointment. Perhaps in eight years you will be disappointed that the Trump presidency was not as bad as you thought it would be. Or would you call that a pleasant surprise?

Now it is time to step up and take control and power over your life. Why give that authority to Donald Trump, especially given what you think he will likely do with it? But why give it to anybody? Except Spirit. Let this election be a great healing gift for you. Give thanks, not only to Donald Trump, but to all those who voted for him as well as those who stayed away from the polls and didn’t vote for his opponent. Give thanks to everyone that you judge for the results of this election. Acknowledge them for giving you this golden opportunity to take your power, let go of the belief that you are a victim to outside circumstances, and know that there is only love, only Spirit acting here and everywhere.  Nothing else is real. Ask Spirit to support you in realizing this. Forgive Donald Trump and his supporters and the non-voters. Forgive yourself. Forgive, forgive, forgive. Love, love, love. You have a wonderful opportunity here. I encourage you to take it. I encourage you to be open to the possibility of love and see the divinity in Trump and in yourself. It is you who controls your destiny. Your leaders can neither make you nor break you. Only you get to do that. Give yourself a break. Give yourself a hug.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

Why doesn’t money feel spiritual to me?

Michael just pointed out to me that we have never directly addressed money in these messages. Ulla says that money seems to be a problem for everybody. It is funny that even though you have largely done away with physical money in your modern economic system, it remains just as big a problem. When we talk about illusion, what better place is there to look than at money? What value does that piece of paper have? You can’t eat it or drink it. You can’t build a house or take a trip with it. All you can do with it is give it away, or stow it away. Money is an absolute illusion; it has no value in and of itself. Even the coins that once were precious are now made mostly of low cost metals. You often replace money with a little worthless plastic card or even digital numbers in cyberspace. The thing to understand about money in all of its manifestations is that its primary purpose, as is true with absolutely everything else in your life, is to support you in realizing your divinity. You are immortal, divine beings. That is what you came here to realize.

Money is a tool to help you do just that. You may believe that the purpose of money is to help you survive, but your survival is guaranteed. Your ego may scream out that you don’t just want to survive, you want to survive and stay in your body. If you think that money is what allows you to stay in the body, and the ego uses the body to stay separate from God and in pain and suffering, then money must be the thing that keeps you trapped in your earthly hell. If we do away with money, can we eliminate pain and suffering? It is not quite that easy. Ask those who have tried to live outside the financial system.

Let us start with looking at the connection of fear with money, the anxiety that there isn’t enough. Money is the best way that you know to attract what you desire into your life. Whether you are looking at the basics of food, water, shelter, and clothing, or the extras that seem to make life worth living, there does not appear to be enough money. You may decide to sell yourself out. You may take a job that you probably wouldn’t do if fear were not raging in your mind. Some of you have mastered this denial process by finding work that provides some enjoyment and/or pays relatively well, but if you won the lottery, would you wish to continue with your job as it is? For many of you, your story is that your job takes too much time and energy, has too many distasteful qualities, and leaves you with too little money. The choice seems to be between either working harder or being poorer. There may be fear around deservedness, and poverty can be seen as the only route to heaven. Jesus warned us about the spiritual dangers of the love of money. When you place financial success as your most important goal in life, you have chosen a goal that has no value. If you believe that money will bring you happiness, you are deceiving yourself. No matter how much you create, it will not be enough. Which billionaires have said that they have enough and have stopped accumulating wealth (the answer may be those who are beginning to look at their own mortality)? But the deception is equal if you believe that poverty will bring you happiness. Remember that money is pure illusion. What do you value? If your priority in life is to experience your divinity, the purpose of money is to support that happening. Perhaps you wish to attend trainings or workshops, go to retreats, or receive sessions for your spiritual and physical healing. You don’t feel that you can afford them, so your spiritual growth feels blocked off. You can’t afford to ascend. That is quite a story.

We begin the healing of your relationship with money by reminding you that the dollar, kronor, or other currency is the illusion of all illusions. It is not real, but exists simply as a temporary convenience. It is a bridge. When you can fly, you don’t need bridges. Money provides an easy way to exchange. It releases you of the need for barter, where you must find the person who has what you want and also wants what you have. Money provides a basis for trust where you give service one place and receive service in another. Eventually there will be no need for it. Fear of lack requires you to keep score. As you realize that the supply is infinite, the need to keep track disappears. You don’t have to wait for the world to get there. You can go there at any time. You can go there now. You cannot experience your divinity while you are carrying fear about money. Is it possible for God to be unable to generate enough? Is there a limit to the creative power of God? If you believe that you cannot generate enough, you have separated yourself from God. You must not be divine. Part of my job is to shake you gently and remind you that you are divine. Listening to your ego is the only thing standing in the way of manifesting whatever you desire in the moment. You choose to pay attention to your ego instead of to Spirit. Your ego says you are undeserving and that there isn’t enough to go around. It tells you that wanting more is selfish and takes away from what others can have. It warns you about what God does to selfish people. The way to ascension, according to the ego, is to do without, to be an ascetic. On the flip side, the ego tells you that those who have abundance have sold their soul to the devil, and they will burn in hell forever. You will be rewarded for your suffering.

What a story! When you decide to stop listening to the ego, your experience will change. It probably won’t transform all at once, because it is difficult to stop listening to that lie instantly in its entirety. Ask Spirit to come in and guide you to the truth about money and manifestation. The function of money is as a medium of exchange so that you are supported in the moment as you are following your path or doing the service you came here to do. Money is not a diversion for you. You can be fully focused on love and supporting others to realize their divinity, as you realize your own. Do the work of listening to Spirit and letting go of the ego. Keep your eye on the prize. Whatever is essential for today will be there. There is no need to worry about tomorrow, because it never comes. You are always in the now. You are always supported by Spirit. When your fear about money surfaces, use the five-step process. Go right into the face of your fear. You will never be able to accumulate enough money to lose the fear. If you are working a job or staying in a relationship because of fear of money, fly into the face of that fear. Staying is a slow death that will not allow you the true happiness of realizing your divinity. If you want to do something that supports your purpose, but worry about not having enough – spend the money. Trust. Do the process. Remember that it is all illusion. It is just a movie. Play the role your heart is set on. God is on your side.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

Can you explain the terms ego and Spirit?

In past messages, we have used the terms ”ego” and ”Spirit”. Perhaps this is a good time to define what we mean by them. Those of you who are or have been working with A Course in Miracles may be familiar with how it uses these words. We will treat them in a similar way. We would begin by reminding you of the truth of who you are, of your personal divinity. You are created in the image of God. You are one with God, who loves you unconditionally no matter what you might choose, do, or think. However, the part of you that we call your ego does not believe this or trust it for a minute. Your ego, in fact, is terrified of God and believes that you are separated from Him. It thinks that God is angry with you for this separation and is going to punish you. Your ego’s agenda is all about protecting you from God. One of the ways it does this is by punishing you, before God can do it. Another way of dealing with this fear is by trying to be ”good” in the attempt to win back God’s love. Your ego is absolutely insane. It’s crazy. Your ego believes that you have to try to do everything right. You have to eat right, wear the right clothes, meditate in the right way and with the correct frequency, have right thoughts, treat others right, and so on. This comes from the belief that you are separate from God, which you cannot be, never have been, and never will be. It is an absolute impossibility. The nature of who you are is a child of God. You are created by God in His image, and there is nothing you can do about it. But, your ego doesn’t believe this. Your ego will do anything to protect you from God.

Your ego is the voice of fear, anger, jealousy, hatred, pain, suffering, doubt, and self-flagellation. None of it has anything to do with God’s love. We would put it this way. God simply does not see your illusion of separation that you have created here through your ego. He does not see it.  God doesn’t see this hell that you have created. He does not even see those moments when this world your ego has made feels blissful, even heavenly. Even the ecstasy you might experience on the physical earth pales in the face of the true joy, love, and creativity that you are. It is but a taste of it. You may have heard that the human mind only uses five or ten percent of its full capacity. What if it worked at 100%? When you experience bliss in your body…enjoying the beauty of the earth, dancing, having sex, eating food, sharing love with another, or whatever the connection might be…you are at best only experiencing 5% of the totality of the absolutely unlimited bliss, joy, and love that you are. Happiness is a very relative term. If you are receiving electric shocks and then they stop, you may feel happy. Happiness can only exist if there is also unhappiness. Divinity is infinite rather than relative. It has no opposite; it is the ”is-ness”, the truth of who you are. Your ego, meanwhile, is fighting like hell for that 5%, while denying the existence of the 95%.

What is Spirit? Spirit is a little harder thing to put your finger on. It is not physical, nor of the material world. We could call Spirit an intermediary between you and God. Whereas, God does not see this physical-ness, this illusion – in fact you created it so that you could hide here from God – Spirit is able to see it. Spirit is in between; it is absolutely connected and one with God and at the same time can recognize your confusion. You can have a direct communication with Spirit about your inner turmoil which you are unable to have with God, who doesn’t recognize anything about you but your divinity. Spirit can enter into your dream and help you transform it. When you ask Spirit for help – some people use the term “pray” – it is the same thing as asking Jesus or any other ascended master for help. The ascended master is a soul like you, but has recognized oneness with Spirit and can act in this realm while also being absolutely connected with God.

Your job becomes very simple. You can listen to your ego or you can listen to Spirit. You can be guided by your ego or you can be guided by Spirit. You make the decision. It takes a very conscious intention to choose Spirit because the world around you tends not to. The world around you will probably reflect that you would be insane to choose Spirit, even the mirror that claims to be religious. What do you do in the face of such overwhelming opposition? First comes the recognition, the knowing of which of the two you are listening to, your ego or Spirit. If any of the qualities above, which were listed at the beginning of the second paragraph, are present – you are listening to your ego. If you are listening to Spirit, the following qualities might be present: first of all, trust, and secondly an absolute integrity (being true to yourself). Your ego wants you to act in a way that is not in line with your true self, out of fear of what might happen if you are true to yourself. The trust and the integrity fit hand in hand. Meanwhile, your ego is warning you of all of the consequences of going down that road. When you are listening to Spirit there is never a competition, never an either/or, never winners and losers. Spirit always speaks with unconditional love, free of judgment. Your ego speaks from fear and always has limits, competition, and the need for protection.

The next question might be, ”Okay. I know I am listening to my ego, but how do I stop?” First you set an intention and you invite Spirit in. You ask Spirit to guide your life. After you have done that, there are two main things you can focus on. One is to have a constant awareness of when and how your ego is acting. Ask yourself how Spirit might guide you here. How would Spirit choose? What might Spirit say to you? If an answer doesn’t come quickly, ask Spirit to send you support. The second thing is to practice forgiveness. Your ego operates out of guilt. That is its main fuel. Forgiveness destroys guilt. If you could eliminate guilt from your life, your ego would starve to death. It needs your guilt or the guilt of others, which is easy to find. You simply point your finger and say, ”It is your fault”. But we know that everything you see around you is just your own reflection. It doesn’t matter whether you perceive it in yourself or another. Remind yourself that it is an illusion; that person didn’t do anything to you. You haven’t done anything either. You are all innocent. You forgive both. You constantly search for the guidance of Spirit, and you continuously forgive when you realize your judgment is in the way. A good benchmark for telling whether your judgment is in the way is to see if you have any. If you do, it is in the way. Nothing is too big or too small. Choose Spirit. Ask for support. Forgive. Know that you are always loved at every moment. Know that you do not have to do one thing to deserve that love.

God Blesses You, 

Sanhia 

Why is it hard to let go of victimhood?

In the last message, we talked about recognizing your “old story” and choosing to let it go. But, you really have to want to let it go, and you don’t always want to do that. Sometimes, things have to get so bad that there isn’t anything else to do but to let the “old story” go. I am a believer in the idea that the least pain brings the greatest gain. You don’t have to really suffer to grow spiritually. If you are proactive and get out in front of things, you can choose to have your spiritual progress be as painless as possible. However, the part of you that we call the ego – the division that doesn’t believe in your divinity, thinks you are separate from God, and believes you are going to be punished for this separation – wants you to hold on to the victimization. It seems safer. Remember that the ego isn’t sane; it is absolutely crazy. It believes in insanity. And it draws immense pain and suffering to you.

I want to talk about how this operates for you. The ego says to fear punishment by God for being guilty. There is a hesitation to ever admit guilt. The ego tells you that to admit guilt is to invite the inevitable punishment. What you do then, is to project. Why is your life not working? Why are you upset today? Why are there problems? Because he did this. Because she did that. Because of the government. Because of my boss. Because of my parents. There is always a place to put blame. Unfortunately, blaming never helps. The ego claims it is buying time, that it is protecting you. But blaming never brings joy; it never brings peace or a sense of love. It creates feelings of helplessness. Blame leaves you always victim to the whims and the actions of others. Always. That is an illusion, because victimhood is a lie. It is not the truth. You are the creator. You are the divinity. Whatever exists comes from you, even if you are not aware of your part in the manifestation. As long as you pretend to not be responsible for your creations, they will continue to attack you. You will continue to fight them and to suffer.

I think that most of you can recognize yourself here. But some of you also play the game of ”Woe is me”. You tell yourself that you are so horrible and weak, and you go about accusing yourself instead of blaming others. However, if you look deeply, you will probably find many judgments of others mixed in with the self-blame. The ego thinks that by taking blame it might be able to avoid the wrath of God. But blaming yourself is the same thing as blaming others. It is an illusion; it is a lie. And, it never makes you feel better. It never heals. Remember that in the eyes of God there is no blame, no judgment, and no separation. God sees only your divine nature. For you to experience your divine nature, give up all blame and guilt, take full responsibility for everything in your life, and forgive yourself for every judgment you are holding about yourself and others. When you find the going to be tough, that is the place for the five-step process.

I began by saying that you are to be fully willing to give up your “old story”. There is a very good reason, according to the ego, for holding on to this blame/victim pattern. It manifests in a variety of ways, but they all have something in common. To the ego, it feels like there is a lot to lose by giving up victimhood. There is a comforting security blanket in being the helpless victim. This is something you can share with everyone around you. It is said that misery loves company. You go to your friends and you tell your pitiable story. ”Look what (fill in the name) did to me”. ”Guess what happened to me at (fill in the place)?”. ”You won’t believe what this jerk driver did”. It goes on and on, and your friend hugs you and says, ”Oh, poor you. I know how that feels”. You have this great connection and it feels good in the moment. It is a way to immediately sense love coming from others. They support you. This may be the only way that you know how to feel this love. The glow doesn’t last, however. The pain of being a victim remains. If you do decide to let go of your victimhood, there is a fear that others will abandon you. If you stop joining in the game of enabling victimhood, of supporting it in others and allowing others to support it in you, what is left in your relationships? Maybe others will grow angry and judgmental toward you? How will they react if you stop sharing your blame stories? What if you suggest to them that they give up their victimhood and claim their full power? ”Who the hell do you think you are?” they might say. There is a tremendous fear of taking your power. The ego judges power. It is terrified of it.

There is a similarity here with the experiences of those who choose to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. In that case, you want to give up an addiction to substances, as opposed to an addiction to blame. You may find that you will give up many of your friends and relationships, because they only share and support your addiction. You may choose to replace these people with others who are opting to take their own power. A great change may be required. Parents with younger children might have the fear that if they gave up their attachments, they might not be there for their kids. You might lose your marriage, your parents, or your job, along with your friends. You will become a social pariah. The ego does a wonderful job of spreading this kind of terror.

Ultimately it will come down to one question for you. Are you tired of this shit or not? Do you want to hold onto your victimhood and your unhappiness because you have the solace of fellow sufferers? Is that worth it? If the answer is ”yes”, you will continue with your “old story” until the answer becomes ”no”. If you want, now, to experience your divinity, feel your power, know only love, peace, and joy – you say “no” to the ego. You choose to let go of all judgment and blame, and refuse to have pain, suffering, and failure be part of your life anymore. Now, you are ready to let go of the “old stories”. You are willing to transform the fears you have been holding in your body into love. This will take some time, but the rewards will begin to be felt immediately. You don’t have to wait until life breaks you. You can be proactive. Choose to listen to the voice of love. You can experience the minimal amount of pain by choosing now. The more completely you commit yourself, the less pain you will feel. When you make this choice for yourself, ask for support from Spirit. It is there always. It always has been there. It has only been waiting for you to ask.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

What do you mean by my “old story”?

For some of you there has been some confusion over the first step of the five-step process, misunderstanding the meaning of your ”old story”. Your ego tells you stories all of the time about your experiences and what they mean. For example, your brain-mind might say, ”I am really good at athletics”, or ”I am a good problem solver”, or on the other hand, ”I just don’t get along with the opposite sex; I don’t know how to talk with them”, or ”I never have enough money”. As you repeat some of these tales, they fill you with confidence and power. Relating other narratives may leave you feeling uneasy or even terrible. There is a sense of ”that’s my story and I’m stuck with it”. These are the “old stories” that we are talking about, the ones that bring you discomfort, the ones that hurt. We call it a story because it is something you have made up. It’s not the truth. Anything that is not about unconditional love, joy, and passion is false. It is an illusion. Today we will talk about these “old stories”.

You don’t have to live with them anymore. You may not want to hear this, but you are living with these old tales because you are choosing to do so. Nobody is forcing them upon you, though your narrative may state that others are, indeed, forcing your story upon you. If your account is, ”this isn’t my story, this is just the way the world is,” you are denying your divinity. You are pretending that someone or something else is running your life. As long as you hold on to that fantasy, it will be true for you. My job is not to tell you to change your perception. That’s your job. I am simply here to tell you that there is no story you are stuck with. That is the simple truth. Let me retract that. There is one story you are stuck with. You are the divine, innocent child of God. You are all powerful. Everything in this world is your creation. You are stuck with that. You can deny it, but you can’t get rid of that story. It is the only statement that is absolutely true. All of the others are optional; they are whatever you want to choose.

You can hold on to painful stories as long as you wish to, but I encourage you to remind yourself of your divinity regularly, daily. Emphasize to yourself that you are the loving, infinite, immortal power behind everything in your life, even though your ego may be screaming out ”I don’t believe that; I’m not all of that!” Remember that God loves and blesses you always, no matter what you do. Replace the story of the punishing God with one of a loving God. Let that be your daily focus.

For now, we want to direct our energy toward dealing with these “old stories”. They are simply things that happen in your life that cause you pain. It may be that you are not fully conscious of having a story. It might just feel like your experience. Something happened in your life and it hurt. You can feel where you are carrying that pain in your body, both when the event happened and when you recall it to your memory. That is an “old story”.  That is what we are talking about transforming through the use of Spiritual Alchemy. The five-step process will only work well if you decide that you don’t want the story anymore. You may have an unpleasant “old story” that you are not ready to let go of. That’s fine. Hold on to it as long as you wish. But, if you are ready to let go of what is painful in your life, you can do that. Be honest with yourself. Either way the story is serving you. You are not a victim. If you are ready, you can do the process.

There is something else I would like to say about this process of letting go of the “old story”. It is a habit to play your tale over and over in your head or through sharing it with others. Every time you revisit the “old story”, you give it energy; you feed it. It lives and it continues. If you have done the process and the story comes back, likely, there is another level of the energy to be transformed. Acknowledge it and redo the process. You don’t always get every bit of it at once. You transmute what you are able to each time. Eventually, the pain will all be gone from your body. Remember that you are not chasing the fear away, you are transforming it into love. Meanwhile the fear affects you on every level. Eventually it kills you. You leave and come back and do it again with a new plan. When you have made the decision to let go of the “old story”, really let it go. If the story comes back, repeat the process. To repeat the tale is to hold onto it. The only catharsis that comes from the retelling is to feel the pain that you are carrying, so that you can focus on it while doing the process. Otherwise, do not give attention to the story either mentally or verbally. Your story is fed when you receive pity from others. It can be a helpful self-discipline to simply stop. See what happens. Replace the “old story” with your divine story. Ask yourself how a divine child of God would react in your situation. In each moment you are choosing whether to feed love or fear. Be vigilant in noticing which you are giving life to. Don’t allow yourself to focus your mental energy on the ego’s fear.

You are love and you are loved. Keep your focus there. Step by step you are moving toward the full realization of your divinity. You will get there. That is a given. The five-step process merely accelerates the movement. Alleviating the suffering now; that is a choice. God only sees your divinity. Everything in this world is your creation. We encourage you to take your power and to use it, inspired by the love that you are. Have a wonderful now.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

What is a spiritual response to a world crisis?

As you are working with your own spiritual healing, realizing your personal ascension, and perhaps using the five-step process, there often seems to be a stark contrast between the spiritual work you are doing and what seems to be the “reality” the world is presenting you with. One of the current “realities” is connected to the situation in Syria. This appears to be a complex political situation. The Mideast was destabilized by the Afghani and Iraqi wars instigated by the United States. This led to the formation of terrorist groups in the former Iraq. These groups spilled over the border into Syria. The long-standing dictatorship in Syria began to experience a civil war. Of the groups opposing the regime, ISIS emerged as the strongest. For those of you who are intent on rescuing to make the world a better place and to supporting the “good guys”, it is hard to find a champion. In addition, an extremely large number of Syrians have felt that there was no choice for them, in order to protect themselves and their families, but to flee the country and to seek refuge elsewhere. Many of them have fled to Europe, because there were few good options in the Middle East. That is the stage that has been set.

The situation tends to trigger extreme reactions for some people. One response is, “How can we take care of all of these people? We have our own problems. We don’t want to accept more Muslims in our country because their ways and beliefs are so different. We would have to take care of them, which is expensive, and they don’t want to follow our laws or respect our way of life.” On the other hand are those who say, “Oh, these poor people. We have to do everything that we can to provide them with a safe haven, to help them to get there, and to assist them in starting their new lives.” Oh, and another response for many people is one of hopelessness. The inner voices might say, “What can I do? This is all too big for me to make a difference. It just isn’t my problem.” All of these viewpoints come out of a place of fear. For those who do not want to take on the responsibility of helping there is the fear of lack and the fear of becoming victims to the refugees. For those who want to take care of the refugees there is often guilt, which is a manifestation of fear. It is the belief that you have behaved badly and that you will be punished if you don’t somehow make up for it. This all comes out of the illusion that there was a “wrong” and that it, therefore, can be corrected. Hopelessness is the fear that one is powerless. The ultimate fear is of death. You can also reread What am I to do with death? for help in dealing with this issue.

It is time for us all to take a deep breath and to collectively take a giant step backward. Let’s look at this whole situation in a different light. First of all, it is absolutely essential to remember that whatever you see in the world is a projection of your ego. If you see chaos, if you see victims, if you see people who don’t deserve help because they are responsible for their own troubles, this is a projection of your ego and how you perceive yourself in the world. The first step to take in healing what feels to be enormous world problems, and specifically the situation in Syria with the refugees, is to look and see where your fear is attached. Take responsibility for it and realize that this is about you, not about them. Looking at the situation with unconditional love, taking full responsibility for your own life, you might consider Syria and say, “My, this is an interesting opportunity for healing that they have chosen for themselves.” You would not see victims. You would see powerful children of God who have collectively chosen to create a situation that forces them into enormous change. Such change always leaves wide open the opportunity for healing. In your own life, your greatest opportunities for healing often come in the face of what appears to be adversity.

Deal with your own fear that is triggered, perhaps using the five-step process, and see this as an enormous spiritual gift for the Syrian people as well as the people of all the countries that are also deeply affected. Then you can look at these people freed of your judgment, guilt, and the feeling that you have to do something to help. Rather, you can see their divinity and the opportunity they have created. You can go into a place in your heart and see if you are guided to support this healing process in some way. Only from this place of unconditional love and acceptance can you be guided to an action that will truly support the spiritual process of another. Remember that the solution to a problem is never about changing others or changing the outside. It is always about taking responsibility, about looking at the situation and acknowledging, “This is me”. The solution lies with healing yourself. If you absolutely succeed in that, your personal ascension will change the world.

This is an enormous challenge. It is one thing to choose to be a monk and to go into solitude to work on your spiritual process. It is another thing to stay in your community, your family, and your work where you are dealing with the energies of others and are exposed to much of what is transpiring in the world. But, this is the challenge that you have chosen, to be in the world but not of it. You might wish to go back and read two messages that dealt with world problems for further support: How can I change the world? and How do I deal with my environmental fears?You have created Syria for your own healing. This a great gift and an opportunity for you. We encourage you to make the most of it and to find that unconditional love within you. And to live there.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia