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

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

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

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

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

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

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

Can you explain the terms ego and Spirit?

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

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

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

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

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

God Blesses You, 

Sanhia 

How do my home and relationships affect my intention to ascend?

We talked several years ago about home and having a sense of home. I encourage you to reread that message, but we are going to talk a little differently about home today. We have also talked about relationships before. Again, you may wish to review that subject, but we will go in another direction with the information today. Finally, we previously talked about intention, and of course you are invited to revisit that correspondence – in fact, it would probably be the most supportive of the three in fully receiving today’s communication. We are going to weave these three topics together for you.

Everything always begins with intention. Everything. If you do not express clear intent, you, by default, give your life over to the mass consciousness and to the confusion brought forth from your past lives. When you have the goal to experience ascension, the only thing between you and the full realization of your divinity is the illusion of time. That could involve lifetimes, but it will happen. Much of what we share with you is given with the hope that you might reduce the time it takes you to realize your divinity. Knowing what you want, expressing intention, and making ascension the most important thing in your life – these are the great time reducers. Whatever else you are considering, choices you have before you, confusions you have – ask yourself, “Is this in line with my intention to ascend?”

I want to specifically direct this focus of achieving the realization of your divinity in two ways: first dealing with home, then with relationship. I have mentioned several times about the ”mirroring” effect of others. Whenever you are around others, you see yourself reflected in them. Whatever you notice about them shows how you feel about yourself. Your judgments of them are your judgments of yourself. Your love for them is your love for yourself. If you feel yourself to be a victim to them, it is you who have created the attack because of your belief in a need for punishment. As you are conscious of this, you can use it as a healing tool. Your ego does not want to accept these reflections as you. It wants to project on others and to be a righteous martyr. Take this home with you. Work with this within the safety and security of your home. These are frightful things you are encountering. It is a great challenge. It is not easy to fully confront your illusions and your fear, even using the five-step process. That’s why we encourage you to create a safe home. This is a place where you will have minimal opposition from your mirrors. You will never escape them completely, nor would you want to if your primary intention is to ascend. On the other hand, if you are constantly challenged by your reflections, you go crazy. It’s more than you can handle.  Create a secure place; I call that home. For some of you this home is the place where you live. But for others your residence is not a shelter. For some of you, home might be a group you get together with, a close friend, or a quiet spot in the woods. That is where you feel protected. The first thing we are suggesting around home is that you make sure you have it somewhere. If your residence doesn’t provide such a haven, find someplace else. Look for a space where you feel nurtured and supported in your spiritual process.

If you are in a relationship that doesn’t support your spiritual process in a nurturing manner, I ask you what your first priority is? What is your intention? If it is your chosen purpose to become aware of your divinity, living day-to-day intimately with someone who does not reinforce this path makes that realization much more difficult. If this is the case for you, perhaps you have created a safe pocket within your residence. But, still you must venture out into the rest of the house and interact with your partner. The questions are ” What are you choosing?” and “Why are you choosing that?” Perhaps your response is to say that you know that your partner is your mirror and so you are using your partner to promote your spiritual growth by taking responsibility when you become upset over what is going on between the two of you. I say that is wonderful, but do you need or want your life to be a constant barrage of perceived attack from your mirror? If you are open and willing to see your fears and what your ego is telling you, there will be plenty of opportunities to experience your ego’s voice as you go through your daily life. But, if you are ”sleeping with the enemy”, it can actually be harder to change your story.

Let’s talk further about relationships. Some of you, as you read this, are saying, ”What relationship? I wish I had one.” If this is your situation ask yourself which is more important to you, realizing your ascension or having a relationship. Be honest. If being in a relationship comes first, it is not likely that you will manifest one that supports your spirituality. You will also likely find the relationship to be a co-dependent one, because you may be entering it out of neediness. What other parts of yourself might you be willing to deny to keep your partner from leaving? If you decide to leave, you have to begin the whole process over again. What will make a new relationship any different? I encourage you to be conscious of what you are choosing. Ask yourself what you really want from a relationship. What would leave you unfulfilled if it were not a part of your partnership? If you have expressed your intention to realize your divinity, how can a relationship be fully supportive if it is not based on a mutual desire to experience your divine natures?

If ascension is your highest intention, you might be more strongly supported in it through creating a safe home for yourself, rather than focusing on having a relationship. If this leaves you feeling hopeless, your issue for healing is hopelessness. Create a network of friends or groups that share and support your intention. Choose a home where you can work with your process, deal with your ego, face your fears, and focus on loving yourself and others unconditionally, without having anyone in your face. Also, work with your fear of never finding the right partner. Come up with a new story. What likely happens is that you will create the partner who fully supports you in your ascension process when you don’t need that person, when you are already doing that for yourself. If you are looking for a partner to come in and save you in your spiritual process, you are back to a co-dependent situation. Ask Spirit to bring a supportive partner into your life. This partner can magnify the effort you are already making. Nobody ascends alone. We are all connected. You are never alone. When the person is ready, the partner will appear.

Your ultimate relationship is with yourself and with Spirit. Your process is expedited when you are clear about your intention, create a nurturing home, and are uncompromising when it comes to choosing a partner who supports your intention. I am not necessarily suggesting that if your relationship does not feel supportive, you should move out today or have the locks changed. But, it may be time to initiate a different kind of conversation with your partner. See if that mutuality can be found. If your partner is not able to support you – you have a clear choice to make. Remember that your truest partner is Spirit, and Spirit always loves you unconditionally.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

How do I deal with the religious conflict in the Middle East?

We would like to further develop the previous message, What is a spiritual response to a world crisis?, beginning with the history of conflict in the area called the Middle East and how it ties in with religion, particularly the three major monotheistic ones: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The story begins with the oldest of the three, Judaism, and the tale, as told in the Old Testament, of Abraham. He was told to take his people to the land that is now Israel, and to begin a new religion that honored the one God. This land was not empty. From the outset we had somebody guided for religious reasons to take over a land that belonged to someone else. This Jewish god demanded obedience; there were severe consequences for breaking his laws. Years later, the story tells us, the Hebrews left and went to Egypt where they became enslaved, then, following generations of captivity, broke free behind Moses’ leadership. Forty years after this, they returned to the “Promised Land” and, again, other people were living there. In the name of god, they fought for and won this land. Over the next 1200 years there was a nearly constant state of war with other religions, mostly not monotheistic, for control of this land.

At times the Jews lost control and were subjugated. This was the case when Jesus was born, with the Romans controlling this land. Jesus was a Jew, we could say a rabbi, and not a Christian. He did not start a religion. But many who were not Jews began to follow some of his ideas, primarily through the influence of Paul. Thus, began the religion called Christianity, which was only loosely based on the words of Jesus. The half of his sayings that were eliminated were partially replaced by the inclusion of Old Testament, or Jewish beliefs. However, the wisdom of Jesus had little to do with the Ten Commandments or the idea of a “chosen people”. Jesus’s message was simply one of unconditional love and of personal divinity, that held everyone as divine. You love your enemy, because in truth you have no enemy. His teaching was at one with my teaching, as he was my teacher. However, historically, Christianity became the wolf in sheep’s clothing. The unconditional love and acceptance of Jesus transformed into a pattern of war and conquest.

Along came Mohammad and Islam, also tracing their roots to Judaism. Jesus was held as a prophet, but not as the son of God. On the one hand they were right; there is nothing special about Jesus over anyone else. What they missed, as did the Jews and the Christians, is that everyone else is as special as Jesus, that we are all sons and daughters of God. So, you had three different groups claiming to have the true knowledge of God, asserting ownership to the heart of their religion, Jerusalem. Over the years there has been a constant conflict over “the Holy Land”. When we talk about this dispute, we are not talking about all Jews, all Christians, and all Muslims. The clash is between those who could be called the fundamentalists of their respective religions. Fundamentalism results when fear is the basis of religious belief, rather than love. They are afraid of God and prostrate themselves before the divine. They do not respect themselves or see that they can find the truth within. Fundamentalists go to the sacred texts and claim them to be direct revelations of the thoughts of God. They try to find in the text the truth of what God wants them to do. They have the fear that the failure to do God’s bidding will bring His judgment down upon them.

Today, Jewish fundamentalism is responsible for many of the policies of the Israeli government and its refusal to provide a home for Islam in the Holy Land. Islamic fundamentalism is responsible for terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. Christian fundamentalism, which has a particularly strong influence on the government of the United States, accepts neither Judaism nor Islam as true religions. Even in Europe are found judgments about Islam and Judaism, seeing the former as intolerant and terroristic, and the latter as controlling international money. That is the situation as it appears to exist today.

I am speaking to you as neither a Jew, a Muslim, nor a Christian, but as a divine child of God, because that is all there is. If you look at these three religions, you will find that the majority of their followers are not fundamentalists. They are trying to find a place of unconditional love and acceptance through the tenets of their religion. They want people to take care of each other. We have just heard the Pope come to the United States with a message to share the wealth, to work to end the vast differences between the haves and the have-nots. This has always been the message of Muhammad, as it has been a tradition within Judaism.

All of this comes back around to and hinges on the teachings of Jesus. Yes, Jesus said to take care of the poor, but his deepest message is the one that is the key to the whole situation in the Middle East. This was to love your enemy, and in fact to see, in truth, that you have no enemy. He was talking about the concept of the “mirror” as I have shared with you on many occasions. What you judge in another is what you judge in yourself. It can be no other way. To bring peace to the Middle East you first find it in your heart to love every single person there unconditionally. Let go of your judgment. Let go of your belief that any child of God could be a victim – not the refugees, not those who are imprisoned or tortured or murdered, not those soldiers who have been physically or emotionally damaged. There are no victims here. The way you care for people is by seeing the divinity in them. When you see their divinity, you cannot see them as a victim. You don’t have to travel to the Middle East to accomplish this peace. At the same time, as you hold on to your judgments, you are feeding the fire there.

Drop all stereotyping. If you notice that you are having thoughts about a person because of their religion, let them go. Let your thoughts be about the individual, rather than the group they represent. Then, look into that individual’s heart and see who he or she is as a unique child of God. If you find that there is a part that you have difficulty loving unconditionally, that is the part of yourself that you judge. Do the work on yourself, not on them. This is how you bring peace to the world. You don’t have to leave your own living room. It is not about arguing with others or convincing them. If you hear prejudicial statements, notice if they upset you. If they do, the healing is to take place within you, not within the other. Use some process to move the energy. It can be the five-step process, Ho’oponopono, A Course in Miracles, or whatever works for you. There is no one way. The belief that there is one way leads to fundamentalism. If you think that your spiritual techniques are superior, you are feeding the flames in the Middle East. It is okay. All on earth is illusion anyway. However, you  will not experience your own ascension while holding feelings of superiority or inferiority.

Remember that it isn’t real. In the atrocities that you hear or read about, no souls were injured in the production of that movie. These are all divine, immortal, eternal children of God. There is no damage. The part of you that feels that there was damage is the place to begin your healing. It is the place within you that doubts your own divinity and what Jesus taught when he said, “This and more you shall do”. This and more than what Jesus did. Let the peace begin with you. Know that it is all perfect. It is all as it should be, exactly what you need in order to experience your personal divinity.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

Is there divinity in everyone?

I would like to suggest a small procedure for each of you to practice in addition to the five-step process. As you go through your day and different people come into your awareness, attempt to see their divinity. Some people may present a larger challenge for you than others. You may find yourself having a judgment about a person for some reason. Remember to be aware that he or she is your mirror, and it is with yourself that you have the judgment. Then you can use the five-step process to work with that energy. But, you can also try to stay present and see that person as divine. Remind yourself that no matter what they are doing, what they have created, or what energy they are putting out – all is perfection. The truth of them is divine and whatever is happening has the purpose of helping you to realize that.

There is a habit of unconsciousness. Unconsciousness means not being aware of your divinity. It becomes a routine to go through your day and not think about your divinity. It can be a pattern, beyond that, to obsess with things that are diametrically opposed to the idea of divinity – things such as sadness, lack, unhappiness, fear, and so on. Seeing the divinity in others is simply a discipline to help you become conscious instead of unconscious. As you are going through your day and you become aware of someone, let’s say a stranger, you may react in a habitually protective manner. You are careful not to show yourself until you find out who this person is. You might feel threatened by them. Often you are looking at this being from a place of judgment. Do you like this individual or not? Is this somebody you can connect with? Is this human enlightened? What we are suggesting is a whole new way of observing a stranger. Instead of looking at them with eyes of judgment and fear, look at them with the eyes of unconditional love. Instead of looking at them from the brain-mind, look at them from the belly-mind. This doesn’t mean that you try to ignore or repress any uncomfortable feelings you get around this person. If you have such a reaction, you keep looking at this soul from your belly-mind and love them unconditionally. You accept them fully as they are. Your brain-mind has only one job now, and that is to say that this person is divine as you are divine. This being is a piece of God. This individual is an eternal immortal soul. Perhaps the person is unconscious of their divinity. Remind yourself of the truth, so that you can look upon this soul with the eyes of unconditional love and acceptance, seeing or at least looking for their divinity.

If what you are experiencing with this soul does not feel divine, your process is to let go of your brain-mind, because it doesn’t seem to be helping right now. Coming from your belly mind, send them unconditional love. Silently express this acceptance and seek the understanding that they are in your life to deliver an important message to you. Let go of the fear you have of their message and welcome it. Your process is to accept the other. This is like a walking meditation. See the perfection in everything and everyone you meet.

The process can be even more challenging when practiced with your friends and loved ones. Here you have a history of a pattern of judgments and ways of reacting. You already have a big story in which they play an assigned role. It can be harder to let go of your unconsciousness with those close to you than with your perceptions of a stranger. In fact, your judgments of strangers often are directly related to the way in which they remind you of somebody you know. Keep looking at your friend. See who they are and love that person unconditionally. Imagine what a joy it would be to realize that you are traveling around with divine friends, that your partner is divine and that your family members and coworkers are divine. What a difference that would make! What a supportive world you would have to live and play in.

This process of seeing the divinity of others is not limited to when they are in your physical presence. There are also the times when others come into your thinking or your brain-mind. Be conscious at these times, also. Are you being judgmental in your thoughts? Are you upset with them? Are you worried about them? Remind yourself of their divinity. This is a piece of God that has taken human form, just like you have. In the face of this divinity, how do you now look at their actions? The first thing, of course, is to affirm their divinity. Secondly, take responsibility for any difficulty you are experiencing, knowing that has to do with you and not with them. Finally, ask for support from your guides, angels, higher self, inner knowingness, and from Spirit to help you understand how and why this is divine. Find a way of seeing the perfection of what is transpiring.

Practice seeing that perfection and divinity in everyone you meet each day, friend or stranger. Where do you see the divinity in this individual? What do you appreciate about this being? In the discipline of doing that you will begin to see yourself in a conscious way. All of the time. When you see the perfection of what is happening, you stop taking others’ drama seriously. You won’t get drawn into their story of victimhood or lack of divinity. You may pay attention to it, but you know what it truly is. You may or may not share this awareness, based on how receptive the person is to hearing it, but your reaction no longer fuels their “old story”. Otherwise, there is nothing for you to do but to recognize the perfection and the divinity.

One of the beauties of looking for the divinity in others is that you can’t change their actions. With yourself, you have the illusion that there is something you should change. You believe that if you could just be different, you might experience your divinity. With others, you have no power to change them. All you can do is to love them as they are. What a gift that is. Seeing the divinity of others is a perfect complement to the five-step process, which is a way to accept yourself unconditionally. If you remember to practice acceptance with just one soul today, and perhaps with another tomorrow and each day thereafter, you will experience a profound movement. Why don’t you start with the next person you see or happen to think of? You are simply divine!

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

What can help me to forgive?

I have referred to mirrors off and on through the years. Those of you who have worked with me directly have heard me talk about them. Now it is time to give the subject some deep reflection (pause for laughter). Jesus spoke of mirrors. He said to remove the log in your own eye before judging another. He also said, ”judge not, lest ye be judged”. He had much more to say on the subject, but the writers of the New Testament didn’t know what to do with the information – they didn’t understand it – so it didn’t make the final cut.

We can begin by saying that everything that is physical is not real. Your ego is telling you that what you see and touch is real, but it is not. That which is real exists forever. Everything that is physical is temporary. Where does the physical come from? It comes from you. You have created it. When I say you, I am talking to you, the individual reading these words. Everything, without limit, that exists in the material realm is your creation. God has nothing directly to do with it. God created you. You created the earth. This is your game. Again, I am talking to you specifically, not people in general. You have the illusion that everybody is experiencing the same physical ”reality”, but if you check out any of your stories with anybody else who was ”there”, the tales don’t completely line up. If your political affiliation differs, they may not line up at all. No two people ever experience the same thing. You each have your own illusions. There are places where there is a great agreement in your stories; we call this mass consciousness. But there are also areas of great disagreement about the illusion. However, the ego believes that it is all reality rather than illusion.

The ego asks what the purpose of all this is if it is not real. It doesn’t want to hear an answer, and there is no answer that would satisfy, because the answer is, ”None”. If your ego were to fully accept the meaninglessness of your physical experience it would have to accept that it, also, has no purpose and it would disappear. All the ego does is to keep you believing in your separation from God and from your divinity. The ego cannot exist in the space of unconditional love. When you are in a permanent state of unconditional love, all you do is channel your divinity. Your ego stays out of the way. It disappears. You continue to operate in the physical realm, but you don’t take it seriously. You recognize that it is not real. What can possibly upset you if nothing is real? Instead the world becomes a place where your divinity plays. Your divinity created this illusion as a tool for your ascension, not for you to be fooled into taking it seriously. When you absolutely realize that it is not real, that everything physical is an illusion – you will have realized your ascension.

But we came here to talk about mirrors. If you wish to go the shortest distance or take the least time to experience your divinity and release your ego, it is quite productive to work with the concept of mirrors. It goes like this. Everything that exists in your physical world, including yourself, is your creation. Your ego thinks everything and everyone else is separate from you. They are not. Their physicality is your creation, as yours is theirs – but that is none of your business. When you observe another’s actions, what you see is you, not them. That’s all you can see. Everything you see around you is you. You are the creator. If you find yourself in judgment of someone’s actions, it is yourself you are judging. I can hear your ego at work already saying, ”What do you mean! I would never kill someone, or start a war, or kick someone when they are down. I would never do that.” Yes, you would. In fact, you have already done it – though perhaps it was in a previous life – and you haven’t forgiven yourself.  You are still judging yourself. In fact, you can’t even look to see it within yourself because you have so much judgment. So, you produce a ”scapegoat”. You create somebody else to commit the action you can’t forgive in yourself. The game the ego plays is to judge others instead of judging yourself. When you understand that, you know there is not even a reason to forgive, let alone to judge anyone else. They are simply doing as you have bid them. In fact, what you can do is to bow down to that person and thank them for showing you what you were unable to see in yourself. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Now you can forgive it in yourself. Whatever you did had no permanent effect. Nothing real was hurt because nothing real can be hurt. There is nothing to forgive.

Once you have taken ownership of the action you have judged in another, do whatever you can to forgive yourself, starting with having the intention to do so. The five-step process is always helpful here. When you realize that nobody has ever done a thing to you, that it has always been your creation and that, beyond that, none of it matters – you are realizing the truth of who you are. None of it matters. All that matters is love. It is that simple. This is what the mirror is about. It doesn’t matter if you see something, hear about it, or read about it. It doesn’t matter if it is ”truth” or fiction, whether you see it on TV or in a movie, or read about it in a novel. It makes no difference. Wherever you find your mirror, your job is to let go of the outwardly directed judgment and to acknowledge that this is where you judge yourself. This is where you have the illusion of guilt and separation from God, even though God never experiences any separation or judgment. Never. It’s not in the job description. God is unconditional love and unlimited creativity. That’s it.

Out of your unlimited creativity you have manifested this physical illusion and placed yourself in it in such a way that you have forgotten who you are. It’s a maze and you have been trying to find your way out of it. The way out is to realize there is no maze. Use your mirrors to get out. See where your illusions lie. Forgive yourself. Find love and laugh a lot. The illusion is pretty funny when you stop thinking about it.

God Blesses You,
 
Sanhia 

Why is intention necessary?

Many of you celebrate the birth of Jesus. There is a great deal of confusion about who Jesus was and what his significance is for us today. What Jesus came to show us and to demonstrate is our personal divinity, that we are children of God as he is. That is the message. It is one of resurrection, not of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. However, you hold this belief in suffering in your bodies. The crucifixion story was written down and passed on in its present form because that was the energy that mankind was holding 2000 years ago. Martyrdom could be accepted, but the divinity of people was not part of anybody’s story. It threatened all existing orders.

The picture of God that is held by many people today still has nothing to do with the essence of unconditional love and unlimited potential that is the divine creative force. We were made in the image of this God. What has happened, in the popularly accepted view, is that God has been created in the image of man – man in ignorance of the truth of his divinity. All the negative emotional energies that are held in a fear-based life are projected upon God – an angry, punishing, judging, jealous God.

We want to recall that there is one overriding message that Jesus came to teach, that we are divine. We are the power in our lives. We create everything that happens. How do we do this? Some of the truth was recorded. He said to ask and it will be given. You must ask. It comes from intention. This is what we want to talk about today. You created a planet of free will where you can choose anything that you want. You cannot unchoose the truth of your divinity, because that exists above and beyond this physical earth, without limit. Nothing can destroy you or another human soul. You have choice only over your experience here. Once you leave, the veil lifts and the emotional baggage you were carrying is gone. Here you have a choice. You can opt for fear or love. If your intention is to go with fear, your experience will justify your selection. Everything that happens to you will prove the correctness of your intention.

If you do not intend to claim your divinity, you will continue to deal with pain and suffering. Experiencing your divinity is not likely to happen accidentally. You begin with the intention. You must ask. But, simply asking without taking action can make for a very slow realization of your divinity, one that might not be fulfilled in your present incarnation. You have all of this fear energy in your body. You are carrying it with you from this and former lifetimes. It continues to manifest negative emotional experiences where you have depression, anger, hopelessness, jealousy, or fear of lack. It helps to have your aim be true and consistent.

It is not enough for your brain-mind to think that you are divine. There are many wonderful books out there about the spiritual nature. Reading them will not give you an experience of your oneness with God, nor will reading this message. Your timelessness is experienced as you transform the emotional energy that is held in your body, and your brain-mind is incapable of doing that. You cannot think your way out of this. Affirmations will not bring about the realization of your holy nature. You carry this energy in your body, not in your mind. Your brain-mind reacts to the emotional energy in your body in a slavish manner. It is an endless loop. You create situations out of the beliefs you hold. Then you have a negative emotional reaction to the situation, and your brain-mind jumps right in. It chooses blame and victim thinking. Your brain-mind may try to squelch the negative emotion in the body, but it fights a losing battle. In the end, it is not about changing your mind or thoughts. Intention is about taking action in alignment with Spirit.

You certainly want to act out of love and your true desire. In order to do this, let go of self judgment and move to unconditional acceptance. No matter what. The fear you are holding in your body refuses to allow you to do that. The ego is basically screaming out, ”Without me you are nothing. I am all that is protecting you from oblivion!” It is an impossible task to successfully argue with this fear that doesn’t believe in your divinity. You can only embrace it with love. What is required is an intention to not try to cover up, hide from, or change this energy of fear in your body. Have the intention to love it, to welcome it, and to simply watch it. If you observe it for long enough with acceptance, the fear transforms to love. It is that simple, because it always was love. That is all that is real. The fear is an illusion. We have just described the second step of the five-step process. This is what we call Spiritual Alchemy, the transforming of fear into love.

The commitment is to do the process with the fear-based emotions every time they come up – until they stop surfacing, until all that is left in your reaction to every situation is love. You will continue to create the situations that will trigger your fear until it is dissipated. Then those same situations, if they were to arise, would be answered only with love. At that point when your response to everything is love, the question may arise – ”has the world changed or is it my reaction that has altered?” The truth is that both have transformed. There is no difference. There is no separation.

If you feel that you are responding only with love, but you buy into others’ illusions – you see them as hopeless, sad, or victims – you are projecting your own fears. That energy is still present; the other person is simply holding up a mirror for you. Take the feelings they trigger for you. Silently thank the other for showing you what you are still holding andgo back to work on yourself. You cannot change the experience for anybody else. This is the planet of free choice. Everyone has the right to be a victim and to suffer – as you have the birthright to be fully free and claim your divinity. It is not your job to do this for anybody but you; but it is your job to see them as divine, no matter how they perceive themselves.

Christmas is a wonderful time to celebrate the birth of your awareness of your divinity. In the dark of the year you can shine your spiritual light on your own darkness. Allow it to be there and embrace it with your love. Every candle you light can be a symbolic gesture toward this commitment to loving your emotions. You are divine.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

How can I change the world?

For many people, the spiritual drive began with a desire to change the world. You looked out at the many problems afflicting the planet, maybe racism or sexism, homophobia or pollution, global warming or poisoned food and water, inequality of income and opportunity, or political corruption, and you said, ” I have to do something!” Some of you spent years fighting battles against seemingly unstoppable forces. Some of you gave up; some went into cynicism and depression; some are still fighting the ”good fight”. This message is for all of you. It is time to stop fighting; it is time to let go of the cynicism and depression. It is time to claim your full power.

The attempt to change the world comes from a place of love, but it is driven by fear. Like everything that is powered by fear, it is destined to fail because it is built upon a false foundation. When you remember that the world is your creation, that it is a reflection of your own consciousness, what is it that really has to change? Two thousand years ago, Jesus changed the entire world. He changed things not by attacking the Roman Empire or the Jewish religious and political power base, but by becoming his true self, by recognizing himself as a child of God, by seeing the divinity in every other soul, and by sharing this message with those who chose to receive it. There was no force. The only battles were internal ones. Those battles were won by letting go, by realizing that all is one, that all is divine, that all is love.

If you insist on seeing good guys and bad guys out there in the world, you will always experience a world of good guys and bad guys. If you fear that the rich will always control things, your experience will prove you right. If you love everyone unconditionally and see them each as innocent children of God, created in the image of their Maker, you will see joy and peace on earth. You will experience the bliss of ascension. You will provide the greatest gift to your fellow travelers that you could possibly have to offer.

Where do you begin? You begin by loving yourself unconditionally, by loving yourself no matter what you have done, felt, or said. You take responsibility for the faults you find in the world and recognize them as judgments you are holding against yourself. Then, let them go. Love yourself to heal yourself. Heal yourself and you will heal the planet. Transform your fears. Trust in the perfection of everything, of every action, of everyone. This is the only way that the planet moves forward; progress in the human spirit happens because of the internal work of one individual. The progress is magnified geometrically as two or more souls heal themselves. To heal is to become whole. The truth is that you already are whole, so healing is just a matter of realization – of seeing the truth about yourself.

I am not asking you to bury your head in the sand and to ignore what is going on in the world (though you might want to skip the evening news). Notice, but don’t judge, realizing that you are looking at a mirror. The more you notice, the more you have to work with in your internal healing process. Where you see the illusions of pain and suffering and victimhood, remind yourself that what is really there is divinity. Love, love, love. All you need is love. The Beatles were right. You are loved beyond measure. You will realize that. You will love yourself beyond measure. You deserve to experience that now.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

Is it possible to ascend and be in a relationship?

Relationships are central to the healing process. Notice that when you created planet earth as the set for your personal movie, you filled it with many characters. You did not choose to heal alone. Each other person acts as a mirror to you, reflecting back clearly who you are – or at least who you feel yourself to be. When you love something about another, you love that same quality in yourself. When you are judging another, it is over something that you judge yourself for. Ascension is that place where you unconditionally love yourself and others, having no judgment, seeing only divinity. It is easy to hide your feelings from yourself, but difficult to mask your reactions to others. When you recognize this truth, you welcome all experiences with all people, knowing that being triggered by the words or actions of another is a gift that can help lead you to the truth. If you are willing to fully accept the experience and the feelings, take full responsibility for them, and choose to move through the fear – you will find love and peace.

The committed love relationship can be central to this process. This is where you choose to be with another from whom you can see a great amount of love reflected. You may choose to live with each other or simply to be in regular close contact. Sexuality is usually a part of this relationship. What makes the committed love relationship most powerful is when both partners have made a clear intention to themselves, to Spirit, and to each other to use the relationship for ascension. We will call this an ascension relationship. Such a relationship provides a ”home” energy that is safe and nurturing to help empower you to see with unconditional love your more challenging mirrors in the other parts of your life.

In an ascension relationship you take full responsibility for everything that happens. You do not hold your partner responsible for anything that takes place. You do not take personally what your partner says or does. When you feel yourself challenged by judgments, blame, fear, or guilt you talk about these things with your partner in a spirit of love, asking for support (or giving support if your partner should be the one coming to you). An ascension relationship is not chosen to fulfill a need or a lack, but to accelerate the process for two people who have already chosen love over fear, who have already committed to realizing their divine nature. It is a relationship that sprouts from the desire to love the other unconditionally and to be of service to the partner. Of course, the love is returned over and over, but to seek another in order to feel loved will not result in an ascension relationship because your partner will have to respond in certain ways in order for you to feel fulfilled.  This is conditional love, and you can be sure that it will not lead to ascension.

If your partner is not in conscious agreement, you can still use the relationship for your ascension, but it is a slower and more difficult process. You love unconditionally and have no expectations of your partner. They probably won’t be there to support you when your stuff comes up, so you take responsibility for doing that yourself. It can be easier to be alone, than to try to heal through such a relationship. You may also find that healing through an ascension relationship has become too hard. You may simply have evolved in different ways. It is always alright to leave any relationship. Trust your heart. Your commitment is to yourself first, to your passion, and to Spirit. The commitment to your partner comes next.

Remember your most important relationship is with yourself. Love yourself unconditionally. You deserve everything. You deserve love. You deserve your perfect partner. You deserve ascension. It is your birthright to be free from fear and limitations. I love you.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

How can I protect myself from natural disasters?

Some of you have been concerned about the tsunami in Japan, whether about the death, the destruction, or the radioactive danger. Natural disasters are some of the most challenging concerns for the evolving consciousness to make peace with. I will not say anything here that I have not said before, but there is often an enormous gap between the hearing of something and the full integration of that idea into the cellular level, the absolute knowingness of its veracity. I will repeat:

  1. There are no accidents. There are no victims. Everything that happens on this planet happens through conscious or unconscious human creation. If you have fear of what you might create unconsciously, give clear directions to Spirit. The world is your mirror. What do you wish to be looking at? Notice what your fear is and speak to it.

 “I choose to remain protected from natural disasters.”

“I choose to remain protected from man-made disasters.”

“I choose to remain protected from terminal dis-eases.”

Finally do the five-step process.

  1. You are immortal. Your physical body may die, but the truth of who you are can never be destroyed. Your unconscious may draw to you a life ending event, but the truth of you will remain untouched. You are always safe. Repeat:

 “I am always safe.”

You are an innocent unconditionally loved child of God, infinitely creative.

Your body is an illusion that you have created, as is the earth.

What is real is the infinite love from which they were created.

If it is not about love, it is not real.

      3. Everything is perfect. Whatever happens is always the best thing that could happen. Your unconscious does not work against your best interests. On the contrary, it has to work around the mixed messages your conscious mind is sending in order to best bring you what your deepest desire is. Repeat:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 “Everything is perfect.”

 Even though you are not aware in the present moment why something is perfect, it is still perfect.

The understanding will likely come later, but allow the trust to be there now.

Relax into the knowingness that there is only perfection.

Don’t worry; be happy.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia