Can you give us some inspiration?

It is always fun to take different approaches, to look at things in different ways. Sometime during the past year we looked at the question of whether forgiveness is still important and we have also spent some time in the past talking about old stories. I want to revisit those themes today, but I wish to throw into the mix a couple of examples of individuals who have given absolute and full commitment to their awakening processes through addressing these two techniques.

Let’s start by taking a look again at stories. Everyone has their stories. It might be one about your upbringing and how it has affected you. It could be a tale of your unfair treatment at the hands of a friend or an employer. Maybe it is a story about who you think you are (or are not), about your strengths, or weaknesses. Your saga likely contains descriptors concerning your gender, nationality, race, age, religion, or political party or beliefs. These all might be a part of your story or, better stated, your stories. The only thing you can be absolutely certain about with your history is that it is not true. It does not represent either the truth of you or the truth of the world. These memories are all fantasies, illusions. It is not my purpose today to go into more detail about why these are illusions. If you would like to explore more about stories and dealing with them you might want to read this message.

Stories are absolutely connected with forgiveness. In your story, particularly if it is not an absolutely happy one, there are some “bad guys” and a “victim”; the latter is likely you. If you believe the story to be true, forgiveness becomes nearly impossible. You are trying to forgive something that never happened, to undo a wrong that was never committed. The forgiveness process is then primarily a task of recognizing that you are holding an untruth and letting it go. Whatever it is you incorrectly perceived as happening to you was a projection of your own guilt. The “other” has nothing to do with it. The forgiveness process has only to do with yourself, and you are innocent; there is nothing to forgive. As long as you hold on to the untruth that you did something that requires forgiveness, or had something done to you, that requires forgiveness, you will never get there. You have simply judged yourself for no reason, thinking a story was true.

What I want to do now is to provide you with a little inspiration in the form of two very different models coming from different paths who likely awakened through the process of releasing stories and through forgiveness. The first one may be familiar to some of you. His name is, or was, Bill Thetford. In his story, he was a highly educated and successful clinical psychologist and the head administrator of the hospital connected with Columbia University in New York. The reason you might be familiar with him is that he, along with his employee Helen Shucman, was responsible for the scribing of A Course in Miracles. For seven years they worked in secret with this project. The information came as an absolute surprise to them though they had asked for another way to live with the chaos of their professional world. Though the pair was fully committed to completing the transmission of the material, they were otherwise usually at each other’s throats. Bill and Helen completed the process and then drew to them those who would help edit and then release the book to the world. At this point Bill chose to retire, to leave the intellectual confines of New York where he had lived for 25 years, and to move to a more relaxed scene in California.

Bill had chosen to become a full time student of the Course, perhaps its first. At the same time, Helen said that she could not do that. Bill moved alone to Tiburon, north of San Francisco, finding himself mostly surrounded by Course students. He began to work with the forgiveness process. Bill had a lot of work to do. His life had never been spiritually focused and he had innumerable stories to clean up. After five years of fairly intensive focus, he chose to move to an even more relaxed and supportive community near San Diego. Now, nothing else mattered but letting go of all judgments, all blame. He focused on everybody from his former life. Bill was relentless in clearing the slate with all, with taking full responsibility, with forgiving himself. He made contact with some people from his past stories and apologized for his former behavior. Those who knew him during this period reported that he became more playful, happy, fun-loving and egoless. Bill completed that process and then in one moment on one day he left his body. The world perceived a physical death, but the doctors reported it as being painless and instantaneous. Bill spent ten years with this process. He pretty much started from scratch. Though he had spent ten years helping to bring the Course to the world, his work did not really start until he retired.

The second example is quite different, though he did share with Bill similar professional work being a doctor of psychiatry. Hew Len was a Hawaiian and a practitioner of an ancient island spiritual tradition called Ho’oponopono which teaches, among other things, taking personal responsibility for everything in one’s environment. Dr. Len began a job as the psychiatrist in a hospital for the criminally insane. Most of the inmates were locked up all day because of their violent tendencies. These were men who were not deemed to be sane enough to stand trial for their crimes. The staff he inherited had low morale, with many sick days being taken. On his first day Dr. Len greeted his staff, entered his office, closed his door, and did not emerge until the end of the day. He repeated this behavior daily while the staff grumbled about their lazy and incompetent new boss. But here is what went on behind closed doors. Hew’s office had a filing cabinet containing records on all the inmates. He began by pulling out the first file and reading everything concerning the man’s biography, diagnosis, and offenses. When he had a reaction to any information in a file, he took responsibility for it, realizing he could only see things that were his projection. Hew’s job was to work with his own personal forgiveness on the issue until no judgment remained for the inmate. He would proceed in this manner until he finished the file. Then he would go on to the next file and the one after that, eventually going through the entire filing cabinet. He did no one-to-one counseling. The staff meanwhile was going nuts, but here is what began to slowly transpire in the hospital. One-by-one, patients began to become less violent. Not as much medication was required. The inmates were able to spend more time out of their cells, being allowed into the common rooms. Staff morale began to rise. Workers reported greater job satisfaction. The patients began to be released, deemed to no longer be insane nor threats to society. After a couple of years the hospital was closed; there were not enough patients remaining to justify its continuance.

You may be sitting there saying to yourself, “Sure. How could that possibly happen?” This is the power of absolute forgiveness. This could come about only because in his heart of hearts, Dr. Len knew that only agape love is real and all else is illusion. He refused to entertain the falseness of his projections, choosing instead to be fully responsible for them, shedding the untruths for the underlying Divine love. His unconditional self love spread to all those in the institution, patients and staff alike. They did not even need to be in direct contact with Hew to feel his energy. It was not his job to heal his patients, but to heal himself. The most selfless thing you can do is to take care of your own process. In doing so you cannot help but to touch everyone around you.

So these are two stories. As you are choosing whether or not to make this kind of forgiveness the centerpiece of your life, I want to remind you that no story is in the now. They are all from the past, and the past isn’t real. When you hold on to a story, however that might manifest – non-forgiveness, blame, victimhood – you are living an illusion. You are not experiencing the now. Whatever happened in that story is not happening now, unless you bring it into your now. What these two individuals did was to notice when they were tracking mud on their carpet, to be aware when they were bringing in old stories and acting as if these were actually part of their now. Your job in the forgiveness process is to be absolutely present. In the now there is nothing to forgive. Even if somebody were to walk up to you and hit you in the eye – though you might have an immediate response of pain, anger, judgment, or desire for revenge – it is now, now. That event took place in the past. It has become a story. Actually it always was a story. It is all your creation. As you are able to release the story, everything surrounding it dissipates: the pain, the anger, the judgment, and the desire for revenge. It will be as if it never happened. And it never did. Don’t take my word for this. Try it out for yourself. How valuable would one punch in the eye be if it led to your awakening, if it supported you in always being in the now, in living fearlessly? What if it taught you to always take responsibility and to know that everything that happens is perfect?

All that you need to do is to start with one person and one story. Stay with that story until you have fully assumed responsibility and forgiven yourself. Stay with that person until no stories are left, until you have released them from all blame and judgment, until all projection has ended, until you accept the untruth of the story and have only gratitude for its part in your awakening. You will probably be ready to move on to another person to continue the process. Enjoy!

Good Now

Sanhia

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

Why not now?

Usually with these messages I’m answering a question that someone has asked, or I’m dealing with something that came up in a discussion or conversation with an individual or a group. But, this time I take full credit for the question. It is my question to you. Why not now? Do you look at your awakening process, your ascension, or your spiritual path and think that someday you hope to wake up? Do you assume that, sooner or later, you will drop your ego? If those are your thoughts I guarantee you that you are right. Someday it will happen, but it will not be today. And guess what kids, today is the only day you have. No matter how much you might wish it to be tomorrow, or even yesterday, it is always today. To say “someday” is to say “never”. It will never be someday. It will only be the eternal now. Why not now? The choice is now or never (fortunately in the eternal now you can always re-choose). Those are the choices you have. There is no tomorrow. There is no next year or next lifetime. There is only the eternal now. Everything else belongs to the ego. If you wish to release the ego, the only thing you can do is to be 100% in this moment.

There is a wonderful English term called procrastination, which means “putting things off”. This is not considered to be an admirable quality by the mass consciousness. The popular saying is, “never put off until tomorrow what you can do today”. My suggestion to people has always been the reverse, “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow”. Today is for what is really important. If there isn’t a significant reason for action, such as inner guidance or a strong desire, why give it time in your present? Put it on the back burner until it is time for action, if ever. Is waking up really important? If it isn’t important enough to give your full focus to it today, admit that and stop playing games with yourself. Acknowledge if it is not so important to you to ascend, even though it might be a fun game to play around with. Be honest with yourself and say that you are not choosing to awaken at this time. On the other hand, you may realize that you really do want to drop your ego, but you don’t know how to do it, so you wonder how it could be today. If the latter represents your thinking, you are at the right place at the right time. The purpose of this message is to explain to you what the eternal now means and how to always be here.

The eternal now means “this very moment”. Nothing else matters. If you can successfully stay in the eternal now, you will awaken. So, you commit yourself to waking up, to remaining in the eternal now. Nothing is of greater importance. With everything else you can procrastinate, except this – if you want to awaken. There is no “should” about this. It cannot come from guilt; it must come from a deep desire or even from total desperation. This is not a comfortable process to go through. It is easy for the ego to find a way for you to skip out on it. If, however, you are aware of the pain and suffering that the ego always brings and you wish to drop it forever; if you want to let go of the specialness, the victimhood, the neediness, the emotional swings, the grief, and of feeling unloved and unlovable, and you realize there is no other way, then go for it. You do that by being vigilant with every thought and feeling you experience. If you sense or recognize that the thought or feeling is ego driven, ask the hard questions. Is this really true? If it isn’t really true, what changes does that bring to what you do and feel?

Being committed to the eternal now and to awakening means that you embrace and welcome absolutely everything that comes into your life. You don’t reject anything; you don’t push anything away. You don’t say to yourself that this isn’t what you want. You don’t judge anything that happens as wrong or bad. You stop pretending that you are in control and that you know how your life should be. You realize that if you knew how to awaken, you would be awake. How silly would it be to know and yet to stay asleep. Obviously, you don’t have a clue what is good for you. Admit it. You have expressed to Spirit your wish to awaken, your wish to understand and live the truth, your wish to leave your ego. Therefore Spirit brings to you that opportunity in every moment. Are you embracing these gifts? If not, why not? Those are the questions to ask yourself. Is this the place where you think you know better than God, that you realize what would wake you up?

To awaken is to be enormously humble, the humility that comes from realizing that you don’t know anything. You don’t even comprehend what is good for you. In that humility, a place of trust is allowed. Everything that happens is for your greater good, no exceptions. Is it required that you understand the meaning of your gift? If it is for your good, would understanding really matter? It is acceptance, not understanding, that you seek. If it is for your greater good to understand, then explanations will be provided. It is that simple. If acceptance is hard, you have directions for your task for today. You believe something to be true that is not true. What is it? This moment is the time to do this work, not tomorrow, next week, or….. The alternative is to face the fact that you don’t really want to wake up that much; you only want a fun game. You will be able to enjoy the ego illusion more if you don’t pretend that you want to leave it behind. In that case, you will have a constant, lingering sense of failure, of not being good enough. You will have another reason to beat yourself up. That is the ego’s game. If you are honest about it being a game, you can possibly have fun, win or lose (but of course you will lose). In Spirit’s game, Spirit takes your hand and asks: “Why not now?” Tell me one good, true reason why you cannot awaken right now, one excuse for why you have to stay attached to the ego illusion and to take it seriously. Give me one proof why things have to be a certain way in order for you to be okay. Why not now?

An important awareness to have is whether or not you are presently in the eternal now. If you are thinking about something that happened in the past, no matter how recent or far back, you are not in the eternal now. Your job is to notice that your mind is traveling in the past and be aware of how that affects you at this moment. Are you angry? Do you feel victimized? Are you guilty, blaming yourself for past choices or actions? There is no way to be living in the past and also to be in the eternal now, awake, and free of the ego. One choice is to ask Spirit to help you let go of the past and to bring your focus back to the present. Maybe there is something you are holding on to that you believe about the past that it is time to release, to change that belief. For example, you might think that because your father treated you in a certain way you are left emotionally vulnerable. Is your father there in the room with you in this moment? Probably not. Maybe he is not even in a body anymore. Yet, are you inviting him into your present to control your life? Why do you choose to do that? In truth, what power can a memory of another person have on you in the present moment? The answer is none. You are doing this to yourself. How crazy is that? An idea has been planted in your mind about yourself that is not true and you are still repeating it to yourself. Look at this thought, this untruth. Whatever it is, it isn’t true. Look at it until you understand that and then choose your thoughts. If you are in the eternal now, nothing matters except what is in this moment. Your job is to do whatever it takes to release the past. Change your mind. When you realize, accept, and trust that everything that happens to you is perfect, that includes the past. It was absolutely perfect that you had the father you had. Spirit could not have done better. It was precisely what you needed for your spiritual growth. Your job is to feel gratitude for that, to feel love for all that your father did for you. Your vision widens when you see through Spirit’s eyes. Ego looks at the past and sees self as a victim. Spirit points out where your eyes were closed and helps you to open them to see the truth of what really happened. It doesn’t matter whether you opened them then or you do it today. Time isn’t real. The eternal now is real. What you see in this moment is true for all time. You can choose to carry your pain with you through all time or release it. The past is an enormous venue of not being here now. You can’t be two places at once.

Then, of course, there is the future. What if this happens? Am I prepared for that? All the fear that you feel over what you should be doing to create your best possible future takes you out of the eternal now. And what about all of the things you believe you have no control over: accidents, disease, death, world events? This is all ego insanity. There is no future; there is just the eternal now. If you are taking care of the present, you are taking care of the only place you will ever be. All happens in the eternal now. Anything that comes into your experience is perfect. Remind yourself that you have no conscious awareness of what that perfect is. All you can do is receive what comes with humility and gratitude. When you notice you have a fear about the future, your only job is to look at the truth of that belief. It is never your job to change the world. Your only task is to change your mind, to release untruths. If you are fully in the eternal now you will have no time for tomorrow. This moment will keep your hands and mind full. One of these days you will notice that all of those old fears about the future are gone. That day will be the one where you finally find yourself firmly rooted in the eternal now.

It is an enormous habit to be in the past or the future, rather than to be in the eternal now. It requires willingness, an intention, and finally a discipline to be here. Ask Spirit for support. Ask to be gently reminded when you are drifting. There may be work for you to do concerning your beliefs about the past and the future. The work you do with them is in this moment. If you are in the past or the future, you can be sure that you are not dealing with truth. Leave your little confused ego mind and go sit with us above the battlefield. Look down at your silly little you with loving acceptance. Enjoy the humor of your running around with your head cut off. Each moment you are a little more in the eternal now. You are willing to be shown the next step. That step is being shown to you at this very moment. In the scope of time, this challenge seems enormous. In the eternal now it is just one step. To return to the beginning, your only job is to be present. If you are not there, do whatever it takes to release time. Thoughts of hopelessness or helplessness are not in the eternal now. Neither of them is true. If the thought comes that someday, probably, everybody, including yourself, will wake up, my question is “Why not now?” Why do you want to put it off? You feel incapable of doing it right now. Why? Why stop yourself with an ego lie? Don’t give up on yourself. Why not now?

Good Now

Sanhia

Should we still be doing the forgiveness process?

I know how some of you react when you hear fingernails being drawn along a blackboard. The sensation is immediate and leaves you shuddering. If I were capable of having such a reaction, which of course I’m not, it would be triggered every time somebody said the word should. The answer to any question that begins with should is no. There is nothing that anybody should be doing. We would want to rephrase today’s question into something that allows me some scope of answers. You could say, “Sanhia, you haven’t talked about forgiveness for a while. You’ve been speaking of I Am, that we don’t know anything, and searching for untruth. We were just kind of wondering if it is still a valuable thing to be focusing on forgiveness as a healing technique.” That is phrased in such a better way, that is, if I believed in better or worse, that would definitely be better. Underneath it all with this question – and I am not singling out the person asking the question, it is simply a human ego thing – is the desire to check to see if you are doing it right. This is looking outside of yourself for validation. I want you to know that if your intention is to awaken, there is no wrong way to go about it. If your intention is not to awaken, it matters not what spiritual path you follow, you will not get there. The road that you will be traveling is already tough enough. Without intention, you will stop somewhere along the way and call it a day (or a life). Now, coming back to the question, the short answer is “of course”. Forgiveness is always a good idea. Forgiveness is based on the truth that you are not a victim of anyone, including yourself. Since nothing has happened to you from the outside, who do you have to forgive? The only true forgiveness comes from the realization that there is absolutely nothing to forgive. If you think there is something to forgive, it doesn’t matter how hard you work at it, you’ll never reach forgiveness. The thought deep down inside is that they are guilty, guilty, guilty, and in need of punishment. That is your deepest thought about yourself. You are guilty and need to be punished. Yes, forgiveness is always an excellent choice, and would you like fries with that?

Having said this, forgiveness is a very hard thing to do because most of you, no matter how hard you try to convince yourselves otherwise, don’t buy the truth of non-victimhood.  A little inner voice whispers “bullshit” every time you claim you are not a victim. There are few satisfactions within the prison of the illusion that can equal that of seeing the “guilty” punished. It is so nice to see it happen to somebody else instead of to you. That’s a lot to give up. It takes a lot of courage to accept that you can only be doing these things to yourself and that it is all about your imagined separation from Divinity. So again, the shorter answer is of course, keep on keeping on. But there is a longer answer. There might be an easier way to be successful than working directly with forgiveness. I am not saying to forget forgiveness and seek vengeance for all of your “enemies”. I’m not suggesting you start your own little inquisition. It’s not time to reinstitute the rack and the thumbscrews. When you find yourself judging, being a victim, or lacking forgiveness, it is always a good idea to notice that and to choose differently. What I am saying is that if you think that truly forgiving is a hard thing to do, I am here to say that it is even harder than you think it is. Absolute forgiveness is a very advanced thought. You can repeat over and over to yourself that everyone is innocent, but that won’t make you believe it or quiet the little inner “bullshit” voice.

It might be an easier and a more direct route for you to take the happy idiot approach. By that I mean that you acknowledge that you don’t know anything. If your mind is going in a direction of judgment, the questions become: “Is my judgment really true? Am I really a victim of that person? Does that person really have power over me? Where did they get that power? How did that happen? Can I take it back? Did I give it to them? Were they just born holding power over me? Is all of this really true? Is that person as selfish as my mind is saying? What does selfish mean? If I give up everything in the world to pursue truth, is that selfish?” If you follow your lines of thinking, as I am modeling here, when you are in the judgmental process – rather than jumping to the end of the line and pretending that you know there is nothing to judge – you have a chance of changing your mind. Right now you haven’t earned that. You still believe in guilt and punishment, right and wrong.

Rather than sticking your head in the sand and pretending you are judgment free, look hard and deep at your thoughts. Is there anything wrong with affirming innocence and freedom from guilt? Of course there isn’t. But is it really true for you? Spoiler alert: if you are even having these thoughts it is not true for you. Are they absolutely innocent? Are you not a victim? Don’t look away. Keep investigating the truth in these thoughts. How enormous is it to give up victimhood? You will have looked at all the places where you feel yourself to be a victim, whether of another person, of nature, of your own body, of disease, of governments, or of the economy. You will have to follow many of these threads before you can unravel the untruth of victimhood. And this is just one aspect of judgment. Perhaps you are judging yourself and others for one of the “seven deadly sins“. This is an enormous work and it is one you must do if you wish to wake up. Hearing me say it or reading it in A Course in Miracles isn’t enough. You have to do the heavy lifting. You have to analyze every last thought that comes into your mind for its veracity. Let your mind follow these thoughts wherever they might take you. Wherever your mind finally rests, is it resting on the truth or do you need to go deeper? You may be wondering if your mind will ever get to rest. When you reach the truth you will be able to rest in the truth forever. At a certain point of following your thoughts, the remainder may just tumble of their own weight to join the debris of untruth you have realized. As we mentioned in the last message, you arrive at truth by eliminating all of the untruths until only truth remains.

It might not be easy for you to follow your mind, to stay with it, when you have been acting as if and believing that an untruth was true. What you will find if you stay with the process is that you know less and less every day. Getting smarter means unlearning untruths. Knowing more requires knowing less. Piling up more untruths cannot lead to wisdom. It is said that you shouldn’t believe half of what you read or hear. The wise person knows which half is which. The wisest person knows that the true half is infinitely smaller than the untruth portion. When you reach the point of absolutely knowing that a thought of judgment or victimhood is not true, how could you possibly still hold on to that thinking? So maybe the quickest and most direct way to release judgments is to go directly into the untrue beliefs you are holding. Then the judgment will fall away of its own weight. Without untruths there is nothing left to support judgment. The lack of forgiveness has been propped up by false beliefs.

A “should” question will never lead you to truth. Chase it down and find what isn’t true about it. As you are following the strands you may realize that you don’t do some things because you should, but because you want to. There is no “should” about breathing, you desperately want that next breath. Check out your “shoulds” and see if they are actually desires. Forgiveness is a wonderful concept and to whatever degree you are able to embrace it this is a great guide for you. However, if you desire to be fully successful at forgiving, look at the untruths you are holding. This includes any beliefs you have that you do things because you should do them rather than because you want to do them. Untruth realization is the easy way to forgiveness. You have enough of a challenge without making it any harder on yourself.  You have your work cut out for you. If you haven’t arrived at the place where you realize the untruth of any belief or thought, you have another think coming. Have fun with that!

Good Now

Sanhia

Can you explain more about others being my mirror?

We will start at the beginning here, well not all of the way at the beginning, but at the beginning of the story about mirrors. The idea of mirrors is a very simple one which the psychologist Freud discovered over 100 years ago. It is the idea that when people doesn’t wish to look at something in themselves because they have so much judgment about their guilt, they will project it upon others in hopes of making the others guilty and deserving of punishment. This is called scapegoating. It is now the other who is the problem rather than the self. You are off the hook…..except for one thing. The self judgment is still there, though buried into the subconscious. It doesn’t go away. Therefore, nothing is really resolved or healed. Let’s look at this process. The way that you can identify if someone is acting as a mirror for you, that you are projecting on to them what you don’t want to see in yourself, is that you will have some judgment about them. “Whoa!” you exclaim. “I can sometimes see that this projection thing is true, but I am certainly not a mass murderer. Are you saying that I am a mass murderer, but am projecting that on to someone else?” And I reply, “Yes”. But this idea of mirror sometimes requires looking a little deeper. First of all, this scapegoating is an attack on others, wanting God to kill them instead of you. That sounds at least like mass attempted murder. More importantly, the guilt that all humans carry and the real belief underlying it all is this idea that you have killed God. There is no truth to this; in fact it is totally insane to think that God could be killed. But you think you destroyed God in order to create an individual self so that you could be the creator of your world. This could give you a separate identity. Of course you didn’t kill God. You are off the hook there. You didn’t do that, couldn’t have done that. Nor did you create a separate identity, couldn’t do that either.

A part of you, however, believes that you did all of that. You do not want to look at that part of you. Nothing could be more terrifying. So you project that murdering part of you onto others and you feel like you are off the hook. You are not a murderer like they are. You would never kill someone. You hide from yourself the guilt you have for believing that you killed God. What would the consequence be for Deocide? That would have to be swift and severe. In addition to that denial there is a part of you that knows that it is crazy and insane to believe that God could be killed. But, if you wanted to do the deed and failed, that means God is still out there. He knows what was in your heart and He is out to get you. This is another insane idea – that God who is only love could want to hurt his only Son, created in His own image. But, nobody ever accused the ego of being sane, except for the insane.

It is so absolutely believable that there are evil people out there, because in this illusion that the world is real, you are its creator. You don’t want to look at your fear, so you create a world of diversion with plenty of targets to play the scapegoat. You have written this entire script and hired actors to play these villainous roles so that you can be innocent and maybe even a savior. In truth, nothing is happening. It is exactly like a movie. There are actors, a script, a director, special effects, and it is being filmed. What is actually happening? Nothing, it is not real. That is the truth of the physical universe. It is simply not real. You may think that I am exaggerating or trying to make some kind of metaphorical point with this. Not at all. I am totally serious, and that is not often true with me. As long as you believe that the world is real you will continue to hide out here and to pretend that you are not responsible for any of it. You will go on finding scapegoats and projecting your guilt and fears upon them. You can do that, as you have been doing, and there is no judgment about it, nothing is actually happening. It is all your drama, having nothing to do with anybody else. It’s all in your head. You can do that and suffer the consequences of guilt, fear, and feeling separate from God and from all others until you stop playing that game. The pain is self inflicted and ceases as soon as you stop administering it. Sooner or later you will stop the game. It doesn’t matter if it is sooner or later, because time is part of the game; it is not real. When you wake up you will find yourself in timelessness with nothing real around you. You won’t take anything in the world seriously. It’s a fun place to be.

One of the quickest ways to wake up is to stop projecting, to realize that whenever you judge another in any way whatsoever, it is yourself you are judging. If you don’t understand how that can be the case, it is your job to go inside and find the truth. Find your own guilt and self condemnation so that you can forgive yourself and release the lie of your guilt. You can’t forgive something you believe is real. You cannot forgive another whom you judge because you really have convinced yourself of the reality and wrongness of what you see them doing. You believe in your righteousness in judging them. End of story as long as you are stuck in that cycle. The first step is to accept that it is yourself you believe is wrong, guilty, and cannot be forgiven. Short of that there is no way out. You can have all of these “wrong” people executed and erased from your illusion, but the guilty one will still walk free. So, more perpetrators must be created in order to maintain your disguise. It is like the zombie movies. You can’t kill them; they keep coming back. As you are beginning to have the mental awareness that another is your mirror, even though you may have your doubts or not understand why, you can take that inside of yourself. Ask yourself what it is that is triggering you; what are you judging? Whatever you discover is what you are judging yourself for, what you don’t want to look at. Ask Spirit to help you look at that. Look right at it, through your fear. There is a terror here, a dread of being punished for doing this horrible thing. In truth you are innocent and you ask Spirit for support in that vision. It is only when you see the purported guilt as being your own that you are able to let it go, to reclaim your innocence. As you practice doing this, what will begin to awaken in you – likely drop by drop, perhaps in one grand explosion of awareness – is the realization that there is no “other” there. There is no other person doing these things you have been projecting. It’s all you; it’s all your creation. By doing this internal work you truly see that the world does not exist, it is just something emanating from your mind. You are creating something that you don’t want out of something that you don’t want to look at, and projecting it into the physical world. At the same time the ego convinces you that you are going to create heaven on earth somehow from your fear-based denial. How crazy is that!

When you take responsibility for your projections and forgive yourself for these judgments, you will stop creating places to blame in the illusion. Finally, all you create in the illusion is forgiveness, love, peace, and support for following Spirit’s plan, everything to gain and nothing to lose. The only way to experience a sense of heaven on earth is to create it within you. Absolute self love, forgiveness, and inner peace will lead to a projection of the same. No amount of affirmation, meditation, or wishful thinking will change your mirrors in the world. The only real change you can affect is in changing your mind. That is where your world is created. If you don’t face your beliefs and your fears, they will continue to manifest in the world. You are never a victim of the world; you are master of it. It is your creation. Look at your world and see what you are creating. See what you don’t want to face in yourself. Face it or continue to run up against it. Stop pretending it is someone else’s fault. That is good news. How can you possibly control and change them? You have probably tried. It is so much easier to realize that you have all the power. All you need to do is look within and claim it. Otherwise you will have to kill everyone else, and then there will be more at the door. It’s like the five-headed hydra; chop one head off and two more appear. It is so much easier, not to speak of effective, to face your inner demons. You can’t change the action on the movie screen; you have to go into the projection room. The projection room is your mind. What happens on the screen/in the world is not real.

This transformation from victim to master has to begin with the intention to do just that. However that intention, in and of itself, is not enough. If you decide to wake up by educating everyone around you as to how an enlightened person should act, you will not wake up. It is not others that need to change; it is you. This does not require one single other person to change their mind. No matter what your intention may be, if you do not face your own fears you will either be in fantasy, hiding from the world, or in frustration. As I have said before, eventually you will wake up, regardless of your intention. If you desire to wake up, but don’t find things too horribly bad right now, facing your fears may seem like a less than inviting idea. You won’t do it now and that is fine. Those who are willing to take full responsibility and go inside to face their fears, admit their projections, work with forgiveness, give everything to Spirit, and trust Spirit to guide them and to bring the perfect lessons are probably willing to do so because they don’t feel they have any other choice. They are experiencing too much pain to keep trying to hold up the illusion. Perhaps they have tried to change the world and have given up in utter frustration. It may take a feeling of having nothing left to lose before you are ready to confront your own mind. Why would you attempt this enormous work if you thought there was any alternative? Facing your fears and confronting the unreality of the universe is a frightful task. It can be done and it eventually will be done, but I won’t try to kid you into believing it will be easy. It requires you to face the guilt you have for having created this hell of a world. There is the dark night of the soul to be experienced. There are the forty days in the desert. For many that feels like more than they wish to take on right now. For those who have said “Enough!” there is support as you go through your transformation of awakening. Spirit is always there with you. You are never alone, though you may feel that way. Other humans will likely be of little use for you and will probably act out your projection that you must be nuts. There is no wrong decision here, but if your intention is to face and accept your mirrors and you are willing to stay with it, We are willing to be with you every step of the way.

Good Now

Sanhia

Are love and hate opposites?

One common question when looking at this world of duality, this illusion of opposites, is to ask if hate is the opposite of love. That’s a very good question. The answer is that love has no opposite, because it is not a part of the illusion. Love is absolute; it is truth; it is Divine. Love is the true nature of God and the true nature of you. So, you may be wondering, what about this love and hate that people are always talking about? They certainly seem like opposites. Yes, you are right about that because when humans talk about love they are usually not talking about Divine love, which we could call “holy love”. Holy love is unconditional. It is not something that can be earned, nor can it be lost. There is nothing you could do to change the unconditional love of God. Nor is there anything you could do to earn that love because you already have it. But in human terms love has many conditions. We will identify this conditional love as “special love”. It does have an opposite, which we can call “special hate”. Hate is absolutely a part of the illusion. There is no concept of hate in Divinity; it doesn’t exist. You could say that special love and special hate are opposite sides of the same coin, heads and tails, good guy and bad guy. They are part of the world of judgment and separation.

Let’s explain it like this: In this belief you have that you are separate from God and that God has disowned you, has cast you out, is angry with you and wants to punish you – in this absolute untruth which is nothing more than a projection upon God of your own guilt and self-judgment – no one wants to face that guilt and to feel that badly about themselves. Even those of you who are depressed and self-deprecating are not that depressed and that self-deprecating. There is no pain that could equal that of fully feeling the imagined separation from God. You don’t want to go through that and therefore do not want to take responsibility for having caused that separation. What you do then is to project that pain. When you project it upon another, they are now at fault for your pain and discomfort. That is called special hate. It might be an individual who you see as your enemy. Maybe you blame your mother or your father for your pain and troubles. Perhaps it is your ex who ruined your life. What happens is that through projection you make somebody the bad guy. Sometimes this projection is not so personal; it could be a politician, or a race, or a country, or a religion – but you create multiple evil ones. The, perhaps, unspoken direction you are giving is: “God! Get them. It is their fault, not mine. Look how I suffer at their hands. Punish them. Condemn them to hell. Bring me home with you. I am the innocent victim here.”

This creation of enemies and special hate is an ego game. It permits you to not take responsibility and look at your own creation of the illusion with all its pain and suffering. It allows you to hide from your guilt that you separated from God – which you never did – and to pretend that the guilt isn’t even there. That all may sound confusing, and it is! There is a double bind. You have guilt over something you never did, but you can’t get rid of this guilt because you refuse to even look at it or admit that it exists. How can you forgive yourself for something you never did if you refuse to face the fact that you believe you did it? Your ego convinces you that the way out is to find others to blame. This ruse is destined to fail because they are not at fault either. There is nobody to blame because nothing ever really happened. This is why forgiveness is so crucial. You cannot forgive yourself and blame others at the same time. Forgive them and yourself. Nobody is at fault. There never was a separation from God. God loves everyone unconditionally.

On the other hand, because you don’t want to go through life just hating everybody, you create special love. You create those who agree with you. They sympathize with your victimhood – “poor you” – and agree with all of your judgments. These friendships are built upon common enemies. But it can go much further. When you don’t believe that you are a good person or loveable, you create these people to come in and tell you how wonderful you are. This especially emerges in special romantic love. Here two people agree to hold each other up on a pedestal. In the end special love cannot work because it is created from fear. No matter how much your partner might tell you that you are loveable, deep down inside you are sure that you are not. You cannot fully trust their love because you don’t believe that you deserve it. This means that you don’t fully trust your partner either. And that is just the beginning. Special love is always conditional. You love the other because of how they make you feel, so you want them to always continue to make you feel this way. Change is a dangerous thing. Strings are always there. “If you loved me you would…..” Each person wants something from the other. At first it is so wonderful to feel wanted, then it slowly dawns on you – at least on a subconscious level – that you are codependent. Without them loving you as you wish to be loved you are not happy. That dependency slowly turns into resentment. What you used to love about your partner now drives you crazy. What used to be cute is now irritating. You rebel against the codependency. Having to be a certain way to keep the other’s love makes you a prisoner. You cannot be who you are in the moment, in the NOW. That is special love, which can gradually turn into special hate. They are opposite sides of the same coin. It is possible for two people to hold on to the special love through holding common judgments and enemies and friends, but this is at the cost of denying their Divine selves, being unable to look at their own or their partner’s guilt.

When one holds guilt, there can only be special relationships. The purpose of relationships is to project the guilt away either through special love or special hate. Ultimately all special relationships keep you stuck in the circle. The exit from this vicious circle always lies in forgiveness. You can begin by forgiving those for whom you feel special hate. You can only do this by accepting that this is all an illusion, that they have done nothing, that there is nothing to forgive. This illusion is all your creation. They are merely acting out your orders. For those whom you feel special love, set them free. Look at your expectations. What do you want from them? What is their part of the agreement that allows you to continue loving them? Notice also the places where they don’t seem to be holding up their end, places where you are already beginning to withhold your special love. Again focus on forgiveness. Bring all of this to Spirit. If you want to wake up, if you want to follow Spirit’s guidance which leads you to experience the truth of your Divinity and of the holy love that is you, it is absolutely necessary to give up these special relationships, the special hate and the special love.

It is a given that as a human you will have both special love and special hate relationships. That is part of your classroom, part of the battleground. If you did not have those relationships you would not be in a body. If you always saw every human through the unconditionally loving eyes of God – asking nothing of them, not judging them, seeing their divinity – you would also be holding yourself as Divine. If you were holding yourself in that way, you wouldn’t be here – at least not for long. Remember not to judge yourself for having special relationships. They are necessary to your awakening. Notice them and bring them to Spirit. Your intention is always to replace the special relationship with the holy relationship. The holy relationship is one where you have fully forgiven the other for what they have done – or more precisely for what they have not done. It is a knowing that everything in the world is illusion and that the truth of them is Divine. The holy relationship demands nothing on the part of the other. It doesn’t even matter if they have intended to cause you pain. They might be filled with judgment about you. Your job is to see them as Divine, though perhaps asleep. You take responsibility for any pain, knowing that only you could create any suffering, out of your own guilt. The other has done you the Divine favor of pointing out that you have guilt so that you can bring it Spirit for release. Through Divine eyes each relationship becomes a holy one. Reciprocation is not required. It is absolutely irrelevant whether the other has any commitment to realizing holy love. What is there is your mirror. If they seem to be denying you unconditional love, that is your creation. That is what you are denying to yourself. This is never about them. It is about you. Go to Spirit. Ask for support in releasing your guilt and accepting your innocence and the full love of God. When you only feel love coming to you from all others, you are realizing holy love. Only you can block holy love and only you can ask for it to fill you.

This does not mean that you need to throw yourself to the wolves by surrounding yourself with those who most challenge your ability to feel holy love. Spirit will bring you the lessons you need to learn. You can even learn these lessons alone by allowing your memories to come in to your mind, looking for where special love or special hate remains. It makes no difference if the specialness feels minor; love is either special or holy. That would be like saying to God, “I don’t hate you, but you’re not my favorite god.” There is no in between. There is the absolute unconditional love of God and there is specialness. This may seem to be an enormous gap and you are likely wondering how to cross it. It will probably not be in one big jump. This is just like we have discussed before when we have talked about choosing to stop listening to ego’s voice and instead listening to the quiet gentle voice of Spirit. You begin by noticing when a relationship is expressing either special love or special hate. This is the most important step. Your ego has convinced you forever that there are good people and bad people. It is a big deal just to notice that you are playing that game. You are halfway home. Great job! Congratulate yourself for noticing and bring it to Spirit. Remember the forgiveness work is Spirit’s and not yours. Your job is to notice your illusion, bring it to Spirit, and listen for any guidance. You do this over and over. There are no special people, neither especially good nor especially bad. There are only Divine children of God, asleep and in the process of waking up. Again, your job is simple. Notice when you think somebody is special, whether you experience it as special love or special hate. Bring it to Spirit and ask for help in converting the specialness to holiness. There can be no greater trade off for you then exchanging special love for holy love and experiencing the full love of God.

Good Now

Sanhia

What is the difference between judgment and discernment?

I have been asked the question of what the difference is between judgment and discernment. What a question! I’m kind of looking forward to hearing the answer to this one. I think you are all pretty clear about judgment, although you may still continue to practice it. Judgment no longer gets many positive reviews in the spiritual press. Jesus said, “Judge not lest ye be judged” and “First take the beam out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye”. Judgment, in truth, is merely projection. You judge in others what you judge in yourself, but don’t want to face. Sometimes you do go directly to the source and judge yourself. All judgment comes from guilt and fear. It comes from the insane belief buried deep in your mind – which you don’t want to look at or acknowledge – where you believe that you separated from God, deciding that you could do a better job than God. You then created this universe and these bodies to disappear into, to hide from God – to then live with your judgment, self-judgment, and fear of retribution. These are not new subjects; we have talked about this before. It is crucially important to notice where you are holding judgment, whether of another or yourself, and to bring that to Spirit, asking to be able to let it go. It is always helpful to remember that whatever we judge is not real and never happened. This is a dream. You did not separate from God. God loves you unconditionally. You and everyone else are totally innocent. Ask Spirit to remind you of this and to help lift the load off of you.

But we didn’t come here today only to talk about judgment. We have another key term here, and that is discernment. Let us see if we can discern the difference between the two words. One who was arguing in favor of the importance of discernment might say that it is valuable to be able to look at a situation without judgment, simply noticing what is going on. Perhaps what is noticed is that somebody is doing something that is likely to bring them pain and suffering. Your discerning perception shows that they are choosing this rather than the joy and peace of God. You don’t say that the person is bad or wrong for doing as they are doing, for that would be judgment. You simply notice. What might be the value of that? You could support them to make a different choice, helping them to avoid pain and suffering, perhaps, instead finding the forgiveness of God. Well, that sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Let’s think about this a little bit. If you are discerning that another is not making the best choice in a situation, it would imply that you know what the best choice would be. Hmmm….. That kind of makes you like God, doesn’t it? As the man used to say, “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” Isn’t trying to replace God what got you into this mess to begin with? If you know everything about what’s good for everyone else, does that mean you have absolutely no inner suffering or fear of your own, that you are absolutely at peace and at one with God at every moment? Hmmmm….. If you are still in a body, probably not.

It’s a slippery slope. It’s one of the ego’s favorite games. “I’m not judging you; I’m just noticing what you are doing. I’m very sensitive, you know. I just pick things up.” One of the first lessons in A Course in Miracles says there is no order of difficulty in miracles. Nothing is harder than anything else. There is no order of difference in judgments. No matter how the ego tries to sugarcoat it, each and every discernment is a mild judgment. To think that another is not acting or speaking in the manner that best supports them is a judgment. It’s hidden in what feels like love and caring and concern, but it is no less a judgment, still a projection, in truth an act of hate and fear. It is not your job to save anyone else. Your job is to save yourself and even that you cannot do alone. You must humble yourself before Spirit and ask that your guilt be removed and that you see through the all-loving eyes of God. The Will of God may be for you to say something to another person. This comes from your surrender to following your inner guidance, to your commitment to hear and follow the voice of Spirit. It has nothing to do with your discernment.  It is a matter of obedience, not of wisdom. If you feel doubt about whether the voice you hear is Spirit or ego, then hold back. That is called discretion. The first and loudest voice is usually ego. Listen deeply. Breathe. See what is there. Err on the side of discretion. When it becomes clear, when there is no question, when you feel the peace of God – go ahead and act. If you are truly speaking from Spirit you will have no attachment to how your words are received, or to what the listener might think of you. If one of those qualifiers is missing, it is probably still time for discretion. Discernment is the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Let’s take this a step further. You all have opinions. You have ideas about how things should be in the world. Perhaps you have political opinions. You think certain types of laws or leaders are better for people and for the world. You have ideas about how people should treat each other. You have thoughts about what is the best food or diet, what music is better, how one should dance. You have thousands of opinions about how things should be, about what is good and beautiful. Those are all judgments, each and every one of them. If you truly want to wake up, you will give away all of your opinions which are expressed in terms of what is good or what is right. In truth those are insane ideas. It is not of value toward your awakening to evaluate what you see (project) in the world. The important question is whether you are viewing what you see through ego’s eyes or Spirit’s eyes. Any attempt to try to make the world a better place through your opinions and actions serves to demonstrate your belief in the reality of the world and temporarily cements your place here. This, again, is your ego inspired try to replace God through this attempt to create heaven on earth. And, as my favorite question goes, how’s that working for you so far? Every opinion you have is a burden. It weighs you down and keeps you from being free.  You have no need for opinions, discernments, or judgments. They don’t serve you in any way. Let them go.

I am not suggesting that you never make a decision. I am not saying that you should not have a preference for one food over another when you are hungry. When you are hungry, eat. If you want to hear a certain kind of music, listen to it. This is not a suggestion to not follow your desires while you are in a body. Just don’t get hung up in the rightness or wrongness of your desire. And certainly, don’t think that because something feels good for you that it should be good for everybody. There is no right diet, right way to breathe, or right sleep cycle. Eating, sleeping, and breathing are neither good nor bad. They are simply necessary while you are in a body, so just do it and get on with what you are here for, which is forgiveness and waking up. I don’t want to be accused of beating a dead horse, but right/wrong is duality which is of the ego and the world. The Oneness of God is loving acceptance. The ego’s opinions can feel so good in the moment, but beneath that is the need for defense, for separation, for making yourself seem righteous in God’s eyes – wanting to throw others to the wolves so that you can be saved. “God take the meat-eaters. Spare me. I don’t even eat eggs.” Opinions are about separation. They are from the ego. They are what keep you from realizing your Divine innocence, perfection, and Oneness with God. Be a happy idiot.  When you think you know something, it is time to give that thought to Spirit. Let go of believing that you know and allow Spirit to show you the way home. You have tried to do this on your own for countless lifetimes. You have had seemingly endless opportunities in this incarnation. It is never too late. Now is the time. Let go and let Spirit guide you.

One last thought, and this may go without saying but I will say it nonetheless. Judgments, discernments, and opinions take you out of the now. There can be no judgment without duality. There have to be things to choose between; there have to be past experiences; there needs to be future opportunities. Without duality and time there can be no judgment. There are no two ways about it. When you are in the Divine now, in the holy moment, there can be no discernment, no choice. You look at your brother and see the Son of God. You see your mirror there with absolute love and acceptance. You see only Divinity. If any judgment is there you are not in the now, you are off somewhere else, somewhere unreal. Instead you are comparing, analyzing, and thinking. Your Divine mind does not think, it knows. In knowing there are no alternatives; there is simply truth; there is isness. If you can think about something, it is an indication that you don’t know. Thinking will never bring you to knowingness. You’ll never figure it out. In the holy moment at One with Spirit the truth lies. It is revealed: there is no effort on your part. This is a zone without judgment, without guilt. You are simply an innocent, free, and unconditionally loved Child of God with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Good Now

Sanhia

How long will the Coronavirus last?

Interestingly, in the past five years there were two messages that drew the greatest attention. First was the perspective on the election of Donald Trump and in a close runner up position (and the polls are still open) was the previous message on the Coronavirus.  It seems that what draws our attention is the biggest fear, which is not in the least surprising. Fear is mother’s milk for the awakening process. I now hear the question voiced as to how long the Coronavirus will continue to be appearing to run the show on the planet. Is it ever going to fully go away? Will it fade away only to return? Is it just the first in a wave of epidemics still to come? Is this to become a permanent part of life on earth now, like airport security and terrorism? I love these questions. First of all, it is not my job to make predictions about the future. I only predict certainties such as that you, the reader, will wake up. When that will happen is a prediction and that is none of my business. My only job is to tell what there is for you to hear in this moment about the truth of yourself and the events going on around you. The choices that you make with that information are your business and not mine. I know that you are coming home, the timing is not important – unless you are experiencing severe pain or fear. Then it may be time to take a bigger step. Thank you, Coronavirus.

We have recently talked about the psychological subjects of projection and dissociation. Projection, again, is where you pretend that what is actually going on with you is being expressed by another. Dissociation is where you have spiritual intention but conveniently live your life as if it weren’t there. You have awareness of the truth, but continue to make the old, comfortable choices that fly in the face of what you want to achieve. Everyone does both of these things; it is human nature. Fortunately, you are not human, but Divine, and are thus fully capable of overcoming both of these habits. There is an aphorism which states that there are no atheists in a foxhole. A foxhole is a trench a soldier digs to hide in and shoot out from at the enemy. We don’t wish to argue for the veracity of that statement, but rather to notice its suggestion that when the bullets are flying and death feels near, people tend to look at the subject of God and prayer in a different light, often making profound changes in their lives. So let’s replace foxhole with pandemic. The greatest gift that is coming now is that this virus is forcing each and every one of you to face your fears. Ultimately behind all fear is the fear of God, but that is not necessarily the one you are directly confronting. More likely you may be facing the fear of death, but it also might be felt as fears about financial support, scarcity of food, bad health, or separation from loved ones and on. The greatest gift that you can ever receive is the one that triggers the most fear. Maybe you don’t want to hear that. The part of you that dissociates wants to believe that this world is real and that it can be made livable if not heavenly. You want to believe that what happens here really does matter. The Coronavirus and the election of four years ago are here to remind you that things here don’t matter. If they did, it would all be too hopeless. So, maybe if the scariest thing happens and all of your buttons are pushed, you will wake up and realize that none of this matters, except as stimuli for awakening.

If you are asking the question, “How long is this virus going to last?” you are asking the wrong question. What then is the question? Perhaps the question is, “Why do I fear it lasting?” This is the gift. This is why Corona went viral! Come on, laugh with me here. What most scares you? You can choose to disassociate and listen to the ego. You can try to fight and hide and resist the fear or to pray that God/Spirit will come in and rescue you. Or, you can look at your fear with Spirit, asking for help in staring right at it. Ask Spirit to help you welcome the fear in. Look at all the extra time you are being given to do this. Thank you, thank you Coronavirus for all this time. You just never stop giving gifts. All the things that you thought had to happen every day turn out to not be essential, whether it is your work, entertainment, sports, or whatever else has been disrupted. Yet here you are – alive and still breathing – dealing with your fear. And the illusion of the world goes on. And you go on. Eventually the world will no longer go on, but you will always go on. Even that is a little misleading because going on suggests the passage of time, so it is more accurate to say that you always are. You will always be. Your fear will disappear, but it will persist as long as you resist. It will not leave by pretending it is not there. Face your fear. Go right into the heart of it. Do the five-step process. Embrace your fear. It will dissolve. There is nothing there; there is only love. You won’t know that until you are courageous, until you stand up to it and look it right in the eye. The Coronavirus is here to encourage you to do just that.

Though you share many of the Corona gifts with others, some are special for just some of you. Perhaps you have been working too hard at your job. You have been too busy, too stressed. You haven’t allowed yourself to have the space to be alone, to be silent, and to listen to your heart. There has been no peace and little time to be at home. Now you have this gift. Perhaps this space is terrifying. If so, face it. This is an enormous gift for you. On the other side of the fear are countless treasures. Nobody will go back to business as usual if and when the virus winds down. All has changed. Those of you who have reveled in this free extra time will not relinquish it easily. You may choose to hold on to the more relaxed and free pace, to the peace. Some of you have found value in places where you did not hold it before. All of you have experienced some changes in your values. You may have found that you can live without and even thrive without things you thought were necessary. Spirit is here to remind you that there isn’t anything you can’t live without. You are dependent on nothing. I encourage you to take some moments today to think about the gifts the Coronavirus has brought to you, and to feel and express gratitude for those things. Take some time also to acknowledge the fears that remain. Give thanks for being made aware of those fears – they have nothing to do with the virus, you have simply projected your own fears there – and face them. What an invaluable gift the Coronavirus will have been if you wake up on the other side fearless; if you wake up trusting Spirit and willing to listen and follow. What a gift if it helps you give up your addiction to the ego.

Countries have had varied responses to the pandemic. You may have found yourself upset with the way that your country has responded. Perhaps you have judgment with the hoarders, whether it is of toilet paper or other products, or with those who are trying to cash in on the virus. I encourage you to let go of that victim thinking. See the perfection of what Spirit is bringing. These actions you judge are expressions of fear. Your judgment makes them real. Have compassion. On one hand trust Spirit to provide you with what you need when you need it. More importantly, remember those whom you judge are your mirrors, your projections. You have taken the last bit for yourself in the past, even if it was just the last piece of pie. You have done something that went against your heart to make money. That is you. Do you want to keep yourself in hell? Ask Spirit to help you forgive yourself, to realize your innocence, and to feel the absolute love in which God holds you. The love is real; the toilet paper is not. Which do you want more? Is it really more important to win a tug of war over toilet paper than to release your guilt, pain, and separation? Wake up. Forgive. Bring everything to Spirit. Give thanks to the virus for encouraging all of this movement.

Some of you are feeling bored with being home, feeling confined and restless like a prisoner. Remember that there are no accidents and there is no such thing as punishment. You can look at this experience from the perspective of Spirit. What does Spirit want to communicate to you? Deep down inside, what do you want to be doing? Now you have the space to find this and to act upon it. What is it that you have denied yourself that wants to emerge? For some this awareness is clouded over by the guilt over not being productive as the ego dictates that you should be. But now you have this gift of time and space. Nothing is expected of you. You are free. You don’t have to prove your worth. You don’t have to earn your way. Be a child again. Before you can unwrap this gift of time you may first need to face this fear, this guilt over being “inactive”.  This is also a wonderful place to use the five-step process. Let your fear and guilt dissolve so that you can hear Spirit’s loving, guiding voice. Imagine the joy in feeling free of the burden of guilt, of feeling your true innocence, of the ecstasy of following your inner voice. That is where you are headed. The Coronavirus is giving you this glorious opportunity to choose Spirit, love, joy, and freedom over the ego, fear, guilt, and imprisonment. The ego is not evil; it is not something to fight. It is simply something to not give energy to because it does not lead you to love, joy, and freedom. There is no better time to fully commit to this choice in each moment of your quarantine. Stay home forever in the heart of God.

Good Now

Sanhia

How can I become One with God?

A common statement or intention expressed through many spiritual disciplines is that of becoming one with God. People ask me,”What in the hell does that mean, Sanhia? And even if I think I have some idea of what it means, how could I possibly achieve that?” There are so many fun ways we could answer this question, so let’s see how many roads we can go down (How many roads can a man go down before they call him God?). “How do I become one with God?” is one of those nonsense questions. To be horribly trite, it is like asking a fish how to become one with water. You are now one with God. You have always been one with God. There is no time, no past, no present. You simply are one with God. You could not be anything else. That’s just how it is. Well, that was a short message! ….. Okay, we’ll go on to the next part. Being one with God without being aware of being one with God is not so desirable. When you have a fight with your partner it does not feel like you are one with God. When you are stuck in traffic it does not feel like being one with God. When you listen to or read the news it certainly doesn’t feel like you are one with God. So, I ‘m guessing you want to know a little more about the realizing side of this reality.

We have told this old story before, so I’m not going to go into great detail about it, but let me give you just the outline. The story goes like this: God created you in His own image…..which makes you an angry old man. Wait, that’s not the right story…..that is the one about you creating God in your own image. This means that you have no physicalness; the truth of you is absolutely one and in unity with God. At the same time you are not God, but are the Son. You did not create yourself. Like God you have no beginning or end, because there is no time. You simply are. In your infinite creativity you had a thought, a crazy, mad thought. “What if I could create something separate from God, something apart from God, something God didn’t know about?” That thought took off like a runaway train. Part of you disappeared into that idea. That part decided to create an identity, uniqueness, specialness. That all seemed like a great deal of fun; it seemed absolutely fantastic. The truth, however, was that no, you couldn’t do that. You are one with God, You are absolutely connected. There is no part of you that isn’t a part of God. God is everything; nothing could be created separate from that. So that mad idea couldn’t create anything real. It remained an idea. The universe it spawned was not real, only an idea. As you birthed this idea, you, the One Son, splintered into millions, billions of pieces – each one with an identity separate from the others. This allowed you to create this imaginary universe of specialness. Well, we all know how that worked out. It’s so funny; you have to join me in laughing at all of this. You created your specialness, your individuality, your separation from God and you discovered it was a terrifying place to be. Alone! In pain! Having to defend yourself constantly! That’s how it feels for the human believing he is separate from God. So the question is not one of how you become one with God, it is one of how to remember who you really are – that you are one with God. You cannot create what already is; you can only deny it. You have spent eons in that denial out of the fear of God’s anger. You project that He wants to get revenge for your abandonment of Him. Some of you take this denial into a place where you convince yourself there is no God, therefore nobody to punish you. This only frees you to stay here perpetually in the hell of your creation with no way out. This is the planet of free suffering. I hope you are still laughing with me here.

Now we come to the really meaty part of this message. You know about this work. You have an understanding about the importance of forgiveness, stopping the blind adherence to ego, listening to that soft, gentle, humorous, loving voice of Spirit, and letting that voice guide you home. To some degree or other, with whatever amount of dissociation (remember last month’s message) that is involved in your process, you are slowly waking up to the awareness of this truth of yourself as one with God. I want to tell you about the biggest crevice you have to leap over, the largest challenge you face. Some of you have felt this already. For some it is so scary I almost hate to tell you about it. You might not sleep well tonight. But, then you probably aren’t sleeping well anyway. If you look this fear straight in the face, you might begin to sleep better. Well, here it goes. You came into this illusion, into this dream or this nightmare, with your own personal identity. The only way out of this dream or nightmare is to leave your personal identity at the door as you exit. You can’t take it with you. Your personal identity is your separation from God, not to speak of the rest of the Son-ship. To realize your oneness with God you have to abandon this illusion of having a separate identity. Otherwise you keep cycling around in this place that feels so distant from heaven, so far away from home. You remain with the pain, the suffering, and the guilt that we have talked about so many times, that you are so familiar with. But! And here is the crux of the matter. Giving up your personal identity feels like a permanent death, not death as in death and rebirth, or reincarnation. This is the black hole death, the void. This is the nothingness, the terror that the ego feeds in you. Actually it is the ego that will die, because it exists only in separation. This fear tells you that you have no existence outside of your personal identity. The truth is just the opposite; you have no real existence in your personal identity. You want to feel nothing but love, but that is not possible here. You want to feel unconditional acceptance, to experience that you are absolutely guilt free. That cannot be accomplished without releasing the separation of your personal identity. Each one of you will do that eventually.

You have had other lifetimes where you had different names and different bodies, perhaps a different gender, race, or religion. None of those things are you. You are not this name that calls you to dinner. It has nothing to do with you. It is like you have come to a strange planet knowing nothing about it and you pick up a foreign object wondering what it is and you make up a name for it. Let’s say you call it glook. So, to you it is a glook, but it is not. That is simply a name you have given to something that doesn’t really exist. You are not your name.  You are not your body. You can keep trading these bodies in. There is only one thing you truly carry with you from lifetime to lifetime; that is your guilt. You can be certain that as long as you hold on to your identity, your guilt will be waiting for you in the next infant version of your separation that comes flying down the tube, or more likely is reluctantly pulled from the womb, from not your true mother into not your true home. The guilt and the fear will be right there with you. That’s all that you carry with you. This identity that you hold as so valuable is your pain and suffering.

Sooner or later the weight of that will be so strong, you will be so exhausted by it, that you will be ready to let it go. If that day is approaching for you, I can give you a few hints to make it easier. Whenever you see another and see them as different from you, remind yourself that they are not. Remind yourself that there are only two things that all humans ever express. They either say “I love you” or “Help me”. That’s all they do. That’s all you do. You are all exactly the same. If you meet somebody today and you do not feel “I love you” coming from them, they are crying out for help. If you have a hard time receiving that plea it is because they are your mirror. You are projecting your cry for help onto them. Thank them for being a fellow traveler in pain. It’s not your job to remove their pain; your job is to remove yours. Thank them for the reminder and stop the separation. Give up pointing at them, making them to be the one in pain. Don’t blame them. Don’t make them the asshole. Don’t make them the cause of their problems, or yours. Don’t feed the separation. Don’t allow yourself to feel superior…”well at least I’m not as bad off as they are”. Every time you choose separation, you choose to remain in hell. Every time! Pretty silly isn’t it. As we look at it together, isn’t that a really funny thing? You think it is somebody else when it is really yourself. You could choose to forgive and love, but you have chosen to project and blame. And then it hurts you! And all the time you pretend not to be doing it. You have to see the humor in that, so laugh with me and let it go. Forgive yourself and the other.

You are all in this together. That’s why we suggest that you be as kind as you can with each other. When you are kind to another you are kind to yourself. When you are kind to yourself you may actually reach the point of realizing your innocence, that you don’t deserve punishment. If you look out at one other, just one person, and think he is guilty and should be punished – you can look at the other six billion and see them all as innocent – that one is you. That is you that you want to send to hell. It just takes one, but let’s be honest – there is more than one such person for you. Each one of them you wish to see punished is you. So funny! Laugh again with me. So simple! The ego wants you to stay in separation, in guilt, in pain; Spirit wants to wake you up, bring you home to the love of God. It’s not a hard call to make. Come here with us. We will look at everything with you and help you to laugh. And always, as always……remember…..

God Blesses You

Sanhia

Why is it so difficult to let go of the illusion of the world?

Most people have this experience – we could call it schizophrenia – where on the one hand they understand the spiritual truth of pure non-dualism on a mental level; they read these messages and have read and studied A Course in Miracles, perhaps multiple times. That side of them believes in the truth of oneness with Spirit and with God and correspondingly disbelieves in the ego and the reality of the physical world. Yet when it comes to the push and shove of daily life, they seem to live in another world.  There appears to be such a split. They ask, “Why, Sanhia, is it so hard for me to live the truth? Why do I know that it is all a dream, and yet take the dream so seriously and get upset and angry, am filled with judgment, pain hurt, fear, and feelings of victimhood. I know it’s not real, but I am still overwhelmed by all of these feelings! Why Sanhia? Why? Can you help me?” I can’t help you because there is no problem here. I hope you are laughing with me now. You are just being human and cannot be expected to be behaving any differently.

There is a term that psychologists use that goes back to Freud called dissociation. Freud also talked about projection, where people assign their own self judgments to others so that they can live with themselves (though probably not so happily). Jesus also told us all about this phenomenon. Dissociation can be described or explained in the following way: you want to change your life, to change your experience of things, to give up all of the pain and suffering and to implement a new plan; but a part of you disconnects from that new plan and does the same old thing. You sabotage your own strongly desired program. The old story simply continues to run your life with all of the old pain and suffering included. Even though you consciously say that you don’t want this, you keep doing it. That is dissociation; that is schizophrenia. In therapy, you have decided on a course of treatment, but you don’t seem to be able to carry it out. In spiritual healing, you decide to listen to Spirit instead of the ego, but the ego keeps running things.

Why would anybody do that? Why would they act against their own self interest? The short answer is, “because the ego made me do it”. A slightly longer version is that it is more comfortable to keep choosing the ego. It could be said that the known devil is preferable to the unknown devil. So far you have all survived while listening to the ego. It may have been painful, but it is familiar. It is comfortable like your old clothes. A big part of you doesn’t want to let go of that. And…what is this unknown? What would you be letting go of the ego for?

Before answering that question, let’s take a giant step backwards. As a child you often felt pretty helpless in a hostile world. Your protection was to build a wall and hide behind it. You didn’t let anybody penetrate that wall. In your private world you were an innocent victim of your parents, teachers, siblings, neighborhood bullies, and whoever else seemed to be more powerful than you. You blamed them for your troubles, and forgiveness was out of the question. The truth behind your wall and behind everybody’s walls was that you were terrified of God. This fear felt too dangerous to face, so you hid it, even from yourself. In this way you could pretend that God would take pity on you and punish those who were so harsh to you. The only problem was that none of that was true. You now have the spiritual awareness of why it wasn’t true and why it ultimately wouldn’t work for you then, or now. But, you also have this habit, and it seems to have kept you alive.

So, you are not just letting go of the ego; you have to tear down this entire wall that has seemed to protect you, though at an increasingly high cost.  And what are you getting in exchange?  You are willing to give up the pain, the fear, the suffering, the anger, the judgment, and the victimhood. You will also be giving up your personal identity, which is absolutely tied up in all of this. For you to fully release the illusion, you will have to fully release your attachment to your separate identity. This is fertile ground for the ego to grab hold of. Are you sure you are ready to do that? To become One with God and Spirit it is necessary to lose your uniqueness, to lose your sense of self, this sense of you. That is what letting go of the ego entails. What you do then, unconsciously of course, is to keep a foot in each camp. On the one hand you keep your spiritual disciple going through reading, studying, affirming, and asking Spirit for support. On the other hand you keep the other foot firmly planted in the ego’s camp, holding on to your specialness and that of others. So you have your support group of people you judge as specially good and the opposition group which is specially bad. You have special love and special hate. You hold that for yourself as well. You tell yourself all of the things that make you a special person: you are on a spiritual path, you recycle and care for the environment, you are against war, and you try to help the disadvantaged, and so on. You pat yourself on the back for being good. Then your special hate for yourself surfaces and you judge yourself for failing to be perfect with your spiritual practice, for not eating well enough, for losing your temper, for catching yourself judging, and so on. So you bounce back and forth between being so enlightened and being such an asshole who will never get it.

Boy does ego like all of this back and forth crap. If you choose Spirit you have to let go of it all, the special hate and the special love. This is enormous. It is bigger than your separated mind can even hold on to. That’s how big it is. The fear is gargantuan. There is no way that you can survive it. Sanhia! What are you saying?  I mean that you as a separated, individual self cannot survive. If you let go of the ego comfort zone and pull that foot out of the game you will leave your personal identity and fall back into the Oneness of God. Sooner or later you will have to do this, but right now you are driving with a heavy foot on the brakes. The only choice you have is for how long and how slowly you want to rip that bandage off. The fear is usually way too big to rip it all off at once. For one thing you have no idea how long the bandage is, nor how many hairs will have to be ripped out. Beyond that, you have no idea what replaces the bandage and the accompanying pain. You know what a separate self feels like, but Oneness can feel like it might be an endless void. You have no conception of what the experience of “no you” is like.

Spirit demands nothing. You will never be forced to come home. Spirit knows that of course you dissociate. Of course you try to maintain your separate self. That’s what humans do. No problem. There is nothing you have to do about it. You are not wrong to continue, nor are you right to stop. But since you do want to listen, Spirit whispers to you to notice that you dissociate. Then Spirit suggests that you have a willingness to look right at the areas where you have a special hate toward yourself or others. If you say to me that you don’t have any hate for anybody, I suggest you are dissociating. It is fear provoking to admit your hate and judgment. Everybody in a body carries hate. It goes with the territory. You hate yourself for separating from God or you project that hate onto God for abandoning you. The fear is that if the hate is exposed, God will punish you. That is an insane thought, expecting something God is not capable of. But, if you pretend it is not there, you can’t deal with it. It remains hidden behind your wall and you stay in the hell of separation. Part of dissociation is pretending you are healed when you are not, pretending that you don’t have a problem. The ego here might suggest to you that since the problem isn’t real, there is no reason to look at it. But, you believe it is real. So, look right at it.

You look at it, not because you have a work that you have to do to transform this fear, but simply in recognition that you have a judgment. Notice that you have this judgment, this anger, this hate; become aware that you feel you are a victim, that you blame this person, that you blame yourself, and on and on. Just be conscious that you are doing that. Bring that to me. Bring that to Spirit. We’ll look at it together. That’s all you have to do. When you look at what is not real side-by-side with what is real, only the truth will eventually remain. The fear will disappear, will evaporate, will be burned away. This is like the second step in the five-step process. Love and fear cannot long occupy the same space. Do this throughout the day. Whenever you notice yourself experiencing any of the aforementioned manifestations of fear and separation, don’t try to hide or ignore what you are feeling or believing. On the other hand, don’t accept it in helpless self hatred. Look right at it and invite me, invite Spirit in at that moment. Ask us to look at it with you. Let go of the judgment and just look with us. This can be called “looking down upon the battlefield”. We will see you acting from this dispassionate viewpoint. We will remind you of your innocence and that you are unconditionally loved. As we watch together, you will become aware that you are the only one judging, and will realize there is no benefit to you from continuing, but plenty to gain from loving yourself. The fear is too great to face alone. Fortunately, you are never alone. You are always welcome to come join with us. Welcome us in. Invite us to gently shake you and to point out when you are dissociating. Allow us to remind you that it is safe to bring those judgments out into the open with us.

Good Now

Sanhia