Sanhia, how can we trust that the things you are telling us are true?

Wow, that is a question that gets right down to the nub! How can you trust that anything you are reading or hearing from me, or from any spiritual teacher or book, or from your own mind is true? Scary! What if you act as if something is true and it turns out to be a false teaching? Now you may have wasted your entire life or at least destroyed major parts of it for no reason, losing along the way the other opportunities that might have presented themselves. Life as you know it is over. As you may have noticed, there is usually a short answer to the question. The short one is that you can’t. As Bob Dylan said, “Don’t follow leaders; watch your parking meters”. You absolutely cannot trust anything or anyone. The second short answer is that whatever you may think the truth is – you are wrong. Is it the truth that whatever you think is wrong? No, wrong again. Boy this is fun. We are, nonetheless, winding our way toward where we want to go. I will continue by jumping in with both feet, which is quite a feat because I have no feet, by saying that there is only one truth. That truth is I Am. I could also say You Are, but I won’t because it is not for me to speak for you. I have no idea if you are. You are free to declare the one truth for yourself, I Am.  As you think about that you can ask yourself if there is any way it can be refuted. Can you say I am not? Can you say that you have no awareness, no consciousness? You might think that your awareness is only connected to this physical body and its brain. In that case, when the body dies, which by all evidence will be the case, you will not be any more. Maybe that is true. I guess you will have to kill yourself to find out if there is still an I Am. Or, you can start with the truth of your I Am-ness as a working basis for looking at everything else you think is true or that you think is false.

We call this considering of something as true or untrue – belief. The thing that separates I Am from all the other beliefs we are going into is that you do absolutely experience your being-ness. There is no time when you don’t experience your being-ness. A hypothesis for you to test out for yourself is that any qualification you might add to I Am is not true. Again, I am not telling you that everything else is false; I am asking you to check it out for yourself. The hypothesis is that any qualification you might put on anything in the world around you is false. That is what I suggest you test for yourself. You will likely find yourself in one of three places right now as you read this. One place is that you are holding the thought, “Sanhia, you are so full of shit. I can smell you from here.” From this position you believe that there are obviously diseases like Corona, extreme weather, falling rocks, and all other types of things that are dangerous to humans. You can provide endless items to add to this list of things you know are true. A second position you might take is that this is an interesting way to look at existence and you might want to think about it some more and see what you can make of it. In the third position you might think I am correct with my hypothesis, but you still experience your body as very real and have physical and emotional reactions to things going on in the world. It makes absolutely no difference where you place yourself on this spectrum. I could care less. It doesn’t matter. All three points come from a place of being asleep and not awake. The question you could ask yourself is, “Am I content with my state of slumber?”

If your answer to the slumber question is that you would like to wake up, the question now becomes one of what you need to do to shake yourself awake. It is likely that if you are still opening these messages you have some level of desire to wake up. On the other hand, maybe you are just fooling yourself. Maybe you like being asleep and it is just a fun game to entertain thoughts about non-duality, but you don’t really take them seriously. That’s fine. As we said, none of these ideas are true. I Am is all that is true. But if you are saying to yourself that you really want to wake up, then my work is done. My only job was to rattle your cage a little, to offer you the possibility to make that decision for yourself, or not. I cannot tell you what to do. It is absolutely your job, your responsibility to follow the road to truth. Nobody can do that for you, nor can you do it for anyone else. But, you ask, can’t you even give us a hint? Well, if you twist my arm – which I also don’t have, I am unarmed – I will say a few things, but don’t write them down in stone. Don’t make commandments out of them or a Bible or a religion. These are only general guidelines; your truest direction will come from a voice inside of you that will set your course if you allow it to. It will not come from a voice outside of you – hello, that’s me. You can listen to me until the cows come home, as they say, and you will still be fast asleep. You might laugh a bit because I can be amusing, but you’ll be laughing in your sleep, which might be less objectionable than snoring. If you want to fully awaken, the ball is in your court. You make that happen.

Okay, here are some of the promised hints. First of all, keep in mind that whatever you think is true, beyond I Am, requires deep examination. Look at it and look at it and….okay, you’ve got it. Question yourself about it. Ask it questions about itself. Do this in writing if you choose, or maybe speaking out loud. Stay with it until you either can prove it to be true or until you realize it was just an illusion; it is not really true. This truth is to be beyond the shadow of a doubt. It is to rely on no outside “experts” for validation. This can be aided by asking yourself how you can be sure that any “expert” is right. Most of what you believe is something that somebody taught you. How likely is it that one would open their eyes one day, look around, and out of the clear blue say that there is a pandemic around and it would be a good idea to take a vaccination? That is probably not an idea that comes to one through an inner guidance. These ideas of pandemics, disease, vaccinations, and death are all ideas you were taught. Perhaps the “authorities” that you give power to in your life said these things: doctors, scientists, media, governments, or friends.

How do you know absolutely that any part of what you “know” is accurate? If you actually look and look and question everything until you have irrefutable proof for yourself that a belief or statement is true, you will end up finding only untruth. If you commit to follow each trail to its bloody end, I guarantee you will go through terror, fear, and pain on every level. All your comfort areas will disappear. You will find yourself alone. Even your friends who feel like spiritual buddies will not be there with or for you. The cozy, warm beliefs you shared will not stand the test of truth and your co-conspirators will not be willing to walk this path of blowing up truths with you. You will find yourself separating from them and nearly all of society. Perhaps, if you are really serious about your pursuit of truth you will eventually find others who are similarly drawn. This will likely only happen when you have already done the heavy lifting and no longer require outside life support. If you are hoping in any way that your salvation will come from some place outside of you – like the second coming of Jesus, aliens from more advanced planets, or a master teacher – you will simply fall back into deep slumber. If you hold the belief in a savior, look deeply into it until you see your way through. You will have to kill the Buddha. As long as your actions are based on beliefs of how the universe is, you will remain asleep to the truth. On the other hand, if you grab that bull of “truth” by the horns and don’t let go until you are aware of the untruth, these beliefs will one after another fall away until all that is certain is I Am.

When everything but I Am is gone there will remain an inner voice which guides you in each moment. You will be aware of a Oneness and a perfection, that there is nothing that needs to change. You will accept your role in the human drama and carry it out without question and without attachment to results. You will simply love the game. Now, perhaps some of you are thinking that these last sentences sound like beliefs. Wonderful! You are on the road to truth realization. I agree with you absolutely, absopositivily. There is no way to jump directly into the awakened state to see if this will be your experience. All you can do is to unwind the untruths to see what remains. Holding these thoughts as beliefs while you are still sleeping will leave you still asleep. I am simply suggesting that as you release all the false beliefs you have and go to your inner core, your Is-ness, your I Am; your experience may be something like that. But it is practice, not belief that will take you there. Look at everything. Question everything. Doubt everything, including all that I say to you. Believe nothing. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

As we let this entertaining discourse draw to an end, I want to again remind you that the words I am speaking to you or that you are reading are never the truth. I can only hint, and talk around the truth, and sometimes speak out of both sides of my mouth, even though I don’t actually have a mouth. I have said in the past that you are not really in charge of anything, that Spirit is in charge of everything and that all will happen at the perfect time. I still hold with that as I ask you what choice you are going to make here. Mostly, those who feel like they are making the choice to absolutely and fearlessly face the truth are not doing so because they got out of bed one day and said that it seemed like the time for truth realization. More likely they got out of bed (or couldn’t) and realized there was no other choice. “The world is hopeless and useless, and so am I. I have to do something to end this misery.” That’s a common beginning. There is a saying that when the student is ready the teacher will appear. I’m going to make a slight modification and say that when the student is ready the shit will hit the fan. That is when the student chooses to act. Yes, perhaps a teacher appears at that moment, but it is not the teacher that is important. All depends on the actions of the student. It is all connected. There is a Oneness and a perfection as you let go of what is not true and allow your inner guidance to lead you to the truth of I Am. You will find yourself acting in the world in a way that impacts others. You will do this, not because you know the truth, but because there is a perfect plan we are all a part of. When you are truth realized, you would never choose any other course than the one being presented to you. Your part in the perfect plan today might be to continue to play the loyal opposition, holding on to your “truths” and thinking everything else is bullshit. Everything has its purpose. Maybe your perfect place is to suspect there is no truth in your beliefs but you aren’t ready to act on it. Perfect – that is Spirit’s plan for you today. When it is time for you to wake, it will feel like you have no choice. Spirit will provide a swift kick in the ass and you are off to the races.

What is true is true. No amount of belief can make anything true or untrue. What is true is I Am. The rest of it is all illusion, nothing but smoke and mirrors. Within that dream you will awaken. It can be no other way. You will never accept this truth until you follow every untruth to its logical end and destruction. How long it will take for you to choose this makes no difference. Your level of intelligence makes no difference. Your spiritual discipline makes no difference. When the moment comes, it will happen. Is that time now? There is no correct answer to that question. You may make a start and be satisfied with whatever distance you come toward letting go, telling yourself that you are through for now. You may say that you are not ready now and then find things happening in your life that make any other choice impossible. As I said, my only job is to rattle your cage a little, to shake things up. Maybe something falls on your head or your toe stimulating you to take some sort of action. Maybe not. Maybe you are just left with the thought that Sanhia is full of it. I certainly am. I Am.

Good Now

Sanhia

How do I deal with my fear of death?

There is a popular saying that goes, “There is nothing certain but death and taxes”. Within the illusion we would agree that death is certain. Taxes….well….perhaps they are also, unless you can figure out how to avoid them. Just kidding…it is not possible to avoid them all without marooning yourself on a deserted island. We are going to look at death a little differently today. Most of you have a fear of death. I want to question the way that you look upon death and ask you to entertain the possibility that you truly hold more of an attraction toward death than a terror of it. You might be racking your brain right now and come up with the thought that at least those who commit suicide must feel some attraction to death, since they have made that choice. Perhaps you are questioning where the attraction is for those who seem to die from accidents, disease, old age, violence, war, and so on. I want to remind you that all death is suicide. It is all chosen. There are never victims.

So why – let us say you are willing to give me a little rope here to hang myself – would people want to kill themselves? Now we are starting to get somewhere. We will return, as we have done several times over recent messages, to what could be called the “origin story”. This is where you had the crazy, mad idea that it would be fun to create an identity, an individuality that was separate from God. This of course was not possible, it was just an idea – it never really happened; it is just a dream you find yourself in the midst of, believing it is real. You have no conscious memory of this creation, but what you thought at the time was that you killed God and took His place. Instead of God being your creator, you held yourself as your own creator of the new individual you, and as the creator of your experience. Now this means that you came into this illusory experience with blood on your hands. You believed that you had killed God. Spirit has a good laugh at this idea; it is a funny concept. However, God is all there is. God is the Creator and Isness of all and could not be destroyed, nor could anything be created outside of Him. But, you convinced yourself that you had actually carried out this violent revolution. You then created these bodies and this physical universe to disappear into. You covered your trail with a figurative branch of leaves to hide your tracks, not just from God, but from yourself. So now you fully believe that you are just these bodies, that you actually are these humans, and that this dream is real. In addition, you covered your tracks so well that you are in denial that you think you killed God. That guilt is just too scary, so you either project it on others (Jesus killers!) or naively go on killing Him (there is no God).

At the same time, deep inside you in your mind that is one with the Mind of God, you know that this murder did not happen. Your true mind knows that you are One with God and that you are Divine; that part of your mind – which we will call Spirit – does guide you and will eventually lead you back home out of the dream. However, the louder part of your mind – which initially came up with this crazy, mad idea and which we call the ego – encourages you to hold guilty over this patricide. “You only exist,” says the ego mind, “because you successfully killed God.” Your true mind knows that this murder was simply not possible. The ego mind provides the additional fear that you only tried to kill God, but he is still ALIVE! And he is coming after you!! Out of this guilt and fear you have created a body that is not really such a hot item. You may complain about companies that sell products with planned obsolescence, things designed to fail or become outdated, so that you have to buy a replacement product. That is just the kind of body you designed. It is designed to break down and die. Bodies are programmed to get sick, broken, old, and finally stop working altogether. Not to speak of the world you set it up to “live” in, which is certainly less than ideal much of the time. The bad news from this ego point of view is that death is certain. But the ego mind has also convinced you that death is necessary in order that you could possibly be forgiven by God. Maybe by losing this “life” you stole from God, He will forgive you. In a more perverse turn, your “death” proves that you are “alive” and have a separate existence. To the ego mind, without death you have no individual life. At any rate the deep fear is that God will get his revenge because He is more powerful than you. And so the insane lead the insane. God has already and has always forgiven you. There was never any judgment to begin with, nothing to forgive. You could not possibly have killed God. He has no part in this nightmare of yours and only sees your Divine presence. The part of you that is in the dream really wants to wake up.

The attraction to death is one part a hope for God’s forgiveness and one part a hope for help in waking up. But these are mostly not conscious thoughts. It’s also one part desire to get out of the hellhole you have created. Death can appear to be an escape from your pain and suffering. The truth is that the body is not real. There is no such thing as death. Life and death are not opposites. Death does not exist; it is just a part of the illusion. Only life exists. Anything that can die or end or change is not real. It has no life. Again, the body is not real, so it has no life. This event that you call death is something that has never happened and could not ever happen. Only form changes and form is not real. All form is illusory. That’s why we call the body and death illusions. You have set up this illusion so that it is necessary to die. In the illusion it may appear that you get another body and play this game again, and again, and again. Meanwhile the truth of you simply is. The human you has two choices. You can listen to Spirit about death or you can listen to ego about death. Ego tells you that death is either something to fear or to welcome, that it is necessary and inevitable. Accompanying the ego picture is the terror of absolute nonexistence, the fear that there is no continuation of you after the body dies. For many humans, that is the belief. That’s all folks. Poof! It’s over. Finito. End of story. Ego tells you that who you are is your body. From that point of view you begin at birth (or in utero) and then you are busy dying. You are on a trajectory, and the bull’s eye is death. This is what happens in the illusion of believing that you have a separate identity. A separate identity means you are separate from God. God is Life, which leaves you with what? Sooner or later the separate identity has to die. The whole idea of having a body is centered on death. Death gives the body meaning. That is why you have an attraction to death. Without death, the body has no meaning. You may have heard people say, or perhaps thought yourself that death is what makes life worth living.

Spirit, on the other hand, reminds you that you are not your body and beyond that, you are not a separate identity. You are One with God. You are One with each other. You are One with Spirit. All that can die is the separate identity, the dream. You cannot die because you are alive. You are created by God in the image of God. You simply are. There is no time; there is no space; there is no physicality. You simply are. Your only job while having the experience of being in a separate body is to wake up to the truth of Who you are. When you fully awaken there is no longer any function in having the illusion of a body. It might look to the world as if you have died, but for your consciousness it is awakening; it is ascension. It is leaving behind the illusion and personal identity, and consciously accepting your true place as the Son – One with God. Each one of you will do this.

Part of the good news is that it makes absolutely no difference if you die, because death is not real, your body is not real. The truth of you always exists. Perhaps part of the illusion seems to be the creation of another body, but that will not be any more real than the one you let go of. The only thing that is certain is that at some point in the illusion your eyes will pop open and you will go, “Holy shit! None of this is real.” And you will absolutely know it. You will absolutely know Who you are, that you are innocent and forgiven and unconditionally loved. There is no fear; there is no pain. There is no death. Death is just a part of the classroom that you are in. When you come to an absolute peace with death, neither feeling fear nor attraction, you are free. It doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t matter what happens to you or to anyone else. In the meantime, as you are working with your “death” energy, look around. Notice where you see victimhood connected with death: victims of Corona, victims of pollution, victims of substance abuse, victims of physical violence and war, victims of cancer. Wherever you see this victimhood, recognize it for what it is, that in each case the individual has chosen death – they have an attraction to the death process. If any of this is troubling to you, then you too have a similar attraction. Knowing that, you bring your victimhood and your fear/attraction of/to death to Spirit. You keep bringing it back every time it pops up. You ask to see death and victimhood through Spirit’s eyes rather than those of the ego. For those who in the illusion of your life have died…let them go. The truth of them was never who you held them as being, whether it was mother/father, son/daughter, brother/sister, spouse, or friend. That was not who they were; it was a part of the false personal identity of separation. Holding them in that earthly role is holding you in your role as a human, dealing with death, and in pain and suffering with just enough pleasure to keep you hooked into the cycle. On the other hand, as you are able to let go of this fear/attraction relationship with death you will find your time in a body to be increasingly peaceful, loving, and safe. If the meaning of life for humans is eventual death and you have no fear of death, then “life” as you have known it has no meaning. If staying alive no longer matters, how can anything else be of true value? What a step into awakening is provided by the realization that the only reason for anything in your so-called life is to help you wake up.

In conclusion, your job is to heal your issues with death. Deal with the guilt you feel for believing you killed God in order to have life, and come to terms with having hidden that belief. Your job is to remember that life and death are not opposites; they are mutually exclusive. You cannot have them both together. Life is eternal and true. Death is an illusion, having no reality. You do not lose your life when you die because your body is not alive. Your eventual awakening may not mean that you will immediately leave your body to die in the eyes of the world and abandon your separate identity. You may stay in a body for an indefinite period, with the awareness that none of it is real, as Spirit uses you as a pawn in Its plan for waking all of the Sonship. This never means that you ask Spirit for support in guiding another. Such a request can only come from the ego. Healing others is not yours to do. Recognize that your desire to help another is always your call for help and take your cry for help to Spirit. In an awakened state, Spirit will simply use you. This does not come from a place of a separate you knowing what should be said or done. You surrender fully to Spirit and are guided. It’s none of your business. Whether you stay in the illusion upon awakening or leave it is also not your call. Your only part as a seemingly separate individual is to wake up. Awake, you can have no thought separate from Spirit. I’ll set the alarm for you.

Good Now

Sanhia

What part, if any, should prayer play in my spiritual path?

Prayer is both more and less than what you think it is. That’s how it is in duality, folks. There are two sides to every question – and to every answer. The Rolling Stones were quite prophetic when they sang, “You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you nee…eed”. That is very connected to how prayer works. But, let’s start at the beginning. In the beginning you are One with God. At the end you are One with God. You are always One with God. Obviously, we need to find another place to begin. Going a little bit further down the imaginary timeline, we will say that in the beginning of this lifetime you were probably introduced to prayer in some way. Those of you who had any sort of Christian upbringing were likely taught prayers. You were to recite them regularly, especially if you were Catholic. You might say the “Our Father” or the “Hail Mary” or some other prayer you had memorized. Perhaps it was suggested that you pray to God or to Jesus and ask for what you wanted. Maybe you were told that all your prayers would be answered. If you did actually see results, congratulations are in order. If you did feel you had results, it was more likely from a personal request than from a rote prayer; that is, it was from a specific wish from you not from a form letter. These form prayers could not come from the heart; they were more of a duty, a ritual, which if performed correctly might win God’s approval, or at least cause him he to throw you a few crumbs. But, prayer does not operate that way.

Let me remind you that God doesn’t have a horse in this race. He isn’t even watching the race. God is unaware of this fiction you have created. It is not real; it is a dream. When you pray, you are praying to Spirit, who does have a relationship with your separated self and your dream.  God doesn’t hear your prayers; for Him you are together in heaven and this world is non-existent. Even if you send prayers to God, Spirit receives them. If you sent letters to Santa Claus at the North Pole, it was Spirit who opened your request. All entreaties go into the same letter box. Spirit hears every prayer and always responds. Always, nothing is ignored. However, as the Stones remind us you will get what you need. If your prayer asks Spirit to do something specific for you which affects the chess pieces on planet earth in order to make things happen the way you would like them to, you might feel that your prayer is not answered. It is not Spirit’s job to help you to create heaven on earth. There can be no heaven in duality, and attempts to make heaven happen in the physical help to keep you rooted in the illusion. Spirit’s task is to help you wake up from the hell you are in. Therefore, the most powerful and effective prayer is one where you ask Spirit for help in waking up. This might take the form of asking for assistance in transforming fear, releasing judgment, anger, blame, or guilt – asking Spirit to take those things from you. It becomes even more confusing if you ask Spirit to do something for somebody else. Spirit would not likely grant such a specific request for your own problems or dreams, but your friend’s “problem” is none of your damn business. One reason that you don’t always get what you want is because you don’t know what you really want. Most of what you think you want is what your ego desires, but your ego wants to keep you stuck forever in a body in hell. When you are asking to make your world a little more heavenly, you are asking Spirit to make the world real for you so that you can stay asleep. Why would you want Spirit to be an enabler for your ego addiction? Fortunately, Spirit is clear about Its job and will not reinforce your illusions without good cause. Spirit’s job may be more to shake you than to placate you. Maybe your problem or perceiving your friend’s problem is just what you need to help you to awaken.

When I say that your prayer is always answered, I mean that Spirit gives you exactly what you need, exactly the perfect thing in this moment to help you open your true sight. The clearer you are with your intention to awaken, the more likely Spirit will be in not giving you what you think you want. The truth of what you want is to reclaim your rightful Sonship of unconditional love and innocence. That is your true desire, not the shiny new bicycle (or Mercedes Benz, Janis). If you take this message to heart you will begin to realize that everything that happens in every moment is the answer to your prayers. Whatever is happening is the gift from Spirit that most supports you in this precise moment. This is how it has always been working, but how often have you said no to what comes, expressing your dissatisfaction or even contempt for what is happening? Your mind is constantly asking for more of this and less of that, as if you actually knew what would lead you to infinite bliss. While you are in fear and resistance, Spirit is offering you pure gold. All you have to do is say thank you and roll with it. How easy is that? The most effective prayer, again, is not the one where you direct Spirit in how to change your earthly physical world and experience, but the one where you ask Spirit to please take these blinders away from your eyes and help you to forgive, not take things so seriously, release your attachment to thinking things have to be in a certain way, and let go of fear and guilt. This is what you deeply long for, but don’t know how to achieve – so you pray for help from Spirit. If you have no fear, no guilt, no projection, no blame, and no anger – then what is left? Just the real you and your love, that’s what you truly desire. Your ego mind may be screaming “bullshit”, to not listen to this, that you don’t really want to surrender all the nice things in life or not heal your physical ailments. Empty promises, the ego never fully delivers because the illusion and separation can never bring you peace and satisfaction (yes, you can’t get no…).

In the duality, in the ego world where you feel like you have to figure out your salvation, this is such an enormous task, and one that you can never succeed at. You never will. There is just frustration. We are back to Sisyphus and the mountain and the huge rock. That’s the job. You never get there. You may feel closer one day and then the next you find yourself back at the foot of the mountain. Fortunately, there is no mountain; there is no stone; there is no job for you to do. There is nothing to decide. Receive the gift from Spirit. If there is anything that blocks you from doing that, ask Spirit to lift it away. You don’t have to do anything; just ask Spirit to do the heavy lifting. You don’t have to earn or deserve anything; you don’t have to figure it out. Ask and you shall receive, but ask for what you truly want; don’t sell yourself short. But even if you ask for what you don’t truly want, you’ll find out soon enough because you will likely get something else, or you will actually get just what you asked for and find it brings no lasting satisfaction. What you ask for is not as important as is receiving what you get. If you don’t know what to make of what you receive, again ask for support in accepting.

You don’t have to figure out what to do with today because you have already prayed for Spirit to bring you what is of value. All you have to do is open your eyes and go with whatever is presented into your moment. You don’t have to know why. It doesn’t matter. Understanding will come when the time is right. Not understanding makes it no less perfect. You have only one job today and that is to receive what Spirit brings. Your only prayer is that Spirit lifts any resistance from you. You may go through a period of insanity before the resistance lifts. Ego will not let go without a fight. You will only go through that “death” once. The only other choice is to go back to the struggle of living in hell on earth, returning to being Sisyphus in the attempt to reach the unreachable. It has been said many times to “let go and let God”. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say “let go and let Spirit”. As long as duality exists for you there is truly no space for God, but the linking presence of Spirit is always there. A reason that we talk about the importance of prayer, even though Spirit is always bringing you the perfect thing, is that it can help you overcome your feelings of hopelessness and helplessness to feel that there is someone out there listening and responding to you. Yes, Spirit is supporting you whether you ask or not, but your active involvement nurtures a sense of Oneness and a release from the separation that all humans feel. Beginning to feel that a dialog with Spirit exists is enormously reinforcing. What develops is that you begin to move way beyond ego needs into playfulness with Spirit and the universe. As you welcome what is presented you find what it is that you are going to play with today and it will be fun. Enjoy!

Good Now

Sanhia

Is compassion an important tool for awakening?

Many people would say that on their list of the qualities of a spiritual person, compassion would be near the top. If I were making the list, there would be no top….or bottom. Actually, there would be no list. To describe a spiritual person would be to describe somebody who does not exist, so the only item on my imaginary list of the qualities of a spiritual person would be non-existence, an awareness that they don’t exist as a separate person. But, let us go ahead and look at this term compassion. A common usage of this word is that one feels another’s pain, that there is a loving concern for and/or action in support of those who are suffering. This is usually considered to be an admirable thing. I want to remind you that in duality every action engenders its opposite. Compassionate acts are balanced by “inhumane” acts. This is not mentioned to discourage compassion, only as a reminder that the real changes happen on the inside, not in the world.

There is a great confusion around compassion. If you were to say to another that you are sorry for what they have experienced, that it must be painful and difficult for them – the result can be a reinforcing of the “reality” of the pain and suffering for both of you. Instead of focusing on the mind, driven by fear and guilt, as the true creator of the physical illusion, the resulting manifestation in the world is perceived as the cause of the pain. Everything is reversed. The inmates are running the asylum. If compassion is defined as doing the highest thing to support others in being free of pain, we would be helping them to wake up and realize their Divine nature. We would be supporting them in letting go of the illusion, the ego, and the world. The last thing we would want to do would be to agree that they are poor victims and to make the world real for them. The question then becomes one of wondering what the highest action is that you could take in that moment. The first answer to this, if you are human, is you don’t have a clue. You observe only with your senses. You see with eyes that tell you that objects are really there. Your other four senses also reinforce the “reality” of the physical. The only way to come to any knowing is to admit that you don’t know anything. You give it to Spirit. Let Spirit guide you.

To begin with, if you are seeing somebody as a victim….stop! That is never compassionate; it is an attack. They are saying they deserve punishment and you are in agreement. The last thing you want is for them to hold on to their victimhood, pain and suffering. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you point out how self-destructive they are being. That often won’t help them wake up, but may help drive them deeper into helplessness and stimulate them to take a poke at you. No, your first job is to not see them as a victim. If you are perceiving them as such, bring that to Spirit for forgiveness (remember nothing has really happened here, so there is nothing to forgive). Notice that this is the classroom they have been presented with. This is part of their wake up call. Nobody wakes up without facing their fears, without going through painful experiences. If you try to diffuse their painful experience and deny them an opportunity to face their false fear and wake up, how compassionate is that? Not only are you willing for them to stay in hell, but you are offering to accompany them. It is not a choice between reinforcing their suffering or educating them that there is nothing to worry about. The realization for you to have, as a human, is that none of it is your business. It is not for you to figure out how to be compassionate; it is only about how you can wake up. Whose eyes are you looking at all of this through? This is not about their situation; this is all about you. This is your projection. What ego part of you is seeing your projection as real? Are you feeling sorry for the other, and therefore for yourself? Or are you looking through the eyes of Spirit and seeing that none of this is real; it is not really happening. Nothing needs to be changed or fixed or healed. The only job is to stay there with Spirit looking at everything from above the battleground. What you end up doing is of little importance. How you hold what you do is paramount. Let Spirit guide you. Have no attachment to results. Remember, it is none of your business. You are at best an ignorant messenger.

As long as you think it is about them and not about you, you will not hear Spirit. Ego will be your guide. If you think you are doing the compassionate thing, that is just ego telling you how you are special – which keeps you separate from the unconditional love of God which knows no specialness, makes no judgments, sees no differences or separations. An alternative definition of compassion might be to feel Oneness with another. This can only be achieved by eliminating all separation. If you feel that they have a problem but you don’t, that is separation, not Oneness. Oneness would recognize that what you perceive in another is what is truly in you. If you see another being in pain, it is you who are truly in pain. That is Oneness. If you can take it to the next level and realize that we are all One with God, then none of this pain or separation is real. You can recognize the Oneness you share of being Divine beings who are asleep and believing in the illusion, that you are both in the process of awakening. The true use of compassion would be that realization, the knowing that their pain and your pain are not real, despite the “reality” your physical senses report. So let go of trying to be compassionate and instead try to see the truth. Try to see through Spirit’s eyes.

The most important point for you in this discussion is the encouragement to give up the ideal of compassionate behavior, of either being or having a savior. You cannot wake anybody else up. Only Spirit can awaken you. It is hard work letting go of the ego. Nobody can do it for you, nor can you do it for anybody else. Heroics are an ego game. You have but one job and that is to wake up. As an awakened being you fully know that none of this is real, that there is nothing anybody needs to be saved from. Short of that awareness it is a case of the blind leading the blind. Don’t be looking for a compassionate savior. You don’t need saving. You need to face the truth. If somebody rubs your face in that need, try to be grateful. It was a conscious or, more likely, unconscious act of compassion. It is your classroom.

If you were fully awakened, you would not likely be in a body, nor would you be reading this. Most likely you are looking through ego’s eyes. Not to worry. You have noticed what you are doing. Bring it to Spirit to help you forgive and let it go. Let Spirit guide your next step. Maybe Spirit guides you to an act or to words that don’t feel compassionate to you. Not feeling compassionate is of the ego. Worrying about how others may perceive and judge you is of the ego. Let it go. The most compassionate action in any moment is the one that most encourages awakening. Remember, you don’t have a clue what that action might be. The ego is not to be trusted, but it is the first voice you will likely hear. So, bring it to Spirit. Ask for help in releasing your judgments and in forgiving. Deal within yourself with all of these thoughts of victimhood and victimizers, pain and suffering. That is all yours. It is a heavy load to carry. Spirit will take it off your shoulders. If you succeed in giving it all to Spirit you will look at another and see only a Divine Child of God in the process of awakening. You would see yourself without judgment or guilt. You would surrender to that Oneness and allow yourself to be used without thought of what that should look like. No attachment to the action/inaction, the reception of the action/inaction, or the end result would register. If that isn’t happening just bring everything back to Spirit – over and over. You are already home with God. Your full realization of that is inevitable.

Good Now

Sanhia

What is the nature of power?

One of the greatest concerns or questions of humans is about the nature of power. Most of you, probably all of you, have some issues with power. As you look out at the world it seems that power is being used inappropriately, selfishly, and destructively and that there are victims and victimizers. Such a story! I want to talk about power and about how to be absolutely powerful. You can begin by letting go of every belief you have about what power is in the world. If you define power as the ability to affect your will upon your experience of the world, you may have an above average chance of succeeding at bringing some of your dreams into fruition. At the same time, it is unlikely that these achievements will bring you any lasting sense of peace or joy. If realizing those creations is your intention, you may as well stop reading now and find another source that will support you in being successful – there are many of them out there. You may have to go out and prove this for yourself, but I will tell you why succeeding won’t bring you peace. Quite simply, reaching your goals will not bring you peace because you haven’t a clue what will bring you peace. You are shooting in the dark. If you did know, you would manifest peace right now, because you are that powerful. If you think that finding the right partner, following the right career, reaching financial success, developing your art or talent, making the world a better place, or being in service to others will bring you peace, I encourage you to go for it. If you find you are still not at peace, come back and we’ll pick up the conversation right here.

The reason that none of these endeavors will work for you is simply that if you knew how to find absolute and lasting peace, you would have already done it. You wouldn’t be here in a body. The truth is that you don’t have a clue as to what to do to bring yourself a permanent sense of love, joy, and peace. If you want to act powerfully upon the world in such a way that it will bring you, and perhaps others, permanent love, peace, and joy – you don’t know what changes to make. The ones you have tried so far have been less than effective. You cannot change the world because the world is the effect and not the cause. The cause comes from your mind. You cannot change the world except through changing your mind. Your mind is real; the world is not. If you want to be absolutely powerful in the world, the first step is to give up your power, absolutely surrender it. Give it to Spirit. When you are trying to change the world you are also giving away your power, but in that case you are surrendering it to the ego. The ego promises that if you achieve a certain something you will be happy. Ego is a good salesman, but not so good at leaving the customer satisfied. Whatever is delivered is not enough. It cannot be because the ego is not capable of delivering pure love; it is rooted in fear. Now, you may wonder how you can possibly feel powerful if you give up all of your power, especially if you stop trying to make the world a better place. This may just sound like everything is hopeless and you are helpless and have to accept whatever shit comes your way. It sounds like you have to give up your free will. Actually, you don’t because you never had free will to begin with. You have nothing, so you have nothing to lose.

Now I am going to reverse myself. You do have free will to choose which voice you are going to listen to. Any attempt to change the world comes from listening to the voice of the ego. You can choose to listen to the voice of Spirit. Spirit has a plan. Spirit knows exactly what you should do. Each moment of each day Spirit brings to you absolutely the perfect opportunity for you to realize love, joy, and peace. That is all Spirit does, constantly – 24/7. At the same time ego says that this isn’t what you want; that isn’t what you had planned; that doesn’t seem to be the dream – 24/7. Only waking up from the dream will bring you love, peace, and joy. Ego cannot tell you how to do that. When you stop giving power to the world, the ego begins to die. It is so simple. Your only job is to say yes to whatever Spirit brings you in each moment. Yes, thank you! If you have any other reaction, bring that to Spirit for support. If nothing looks like what you thought it would, ask to have your doubt released. Request help in healing your judgment and guilt. Spirit is bringing the perfect event to support you in those healings. It is not the world or your body or your emotions that you want to heal, it is your mind – your mind that still wants to choose ego over Spirit, wants to hear the voice of fear instead of the voice of love. The only thing that stands in your way is your free will to choose the ego. The only thing that can help you is your free will to choose to give it all to Spirit. This is what free will truly is, your ability to accept or reject what comes to you.

You are not here to accomplish things in the physical world. Your only reason for being here is to wake up. Everything that happens in the world occurs to support you in that quest. Nothing has any other meaning. What happens has no other importance in the context of the world to you or to anybody else. It is all a dream. Again, the only thing is waking up. When you say yes to Spirit in response to everything, even if you don’t understand how it serves you, when you ask for acceptance, ego slowly loses its grip over you. Allow yourself to be reminded of your innocence and of how you are loved unconditionally. Forgive yourself and everyone else for these things that have never really happened. This is the true nature of power. It is unconditional love; it is forgiveness. Power is oneness with Spirit, with God. When you say yes to Spirit, when you accept whatever is happening, you align yourself with Power. When you resist what is happening and want things to change, not only do you feel the pain of fear and resistance, but you choose to go to battle with the Power of the universe. If there were such a possibility as victory in this imaginary battle, on which side would you place your bet? How can you possibly believe that you can confront the Oneness, the Power of God and come out on the other side with love, peace, and joy? How can you find love by flying in the face of the Isness that accepts you unconditionally? How can you feel joy by choosing the voice that says that you and the world are not enough, that demands that you prove your worth? Choosing the ego is insanity, but it was listening to a single mad idea from the ego that brought about this dream.

True power is acceptance without exception. As you move through your resistance, your projection, and your disassociation and bring true acceptance to everything or, at least, bring it to Spirit for support, peace begins. Out the window go the prayers to change what is happening or might happen in the future. This is the end of “I don’t like this, fix this, make me healthy, settle my financial problems, or bring me my soul mate”. Instead you have but one response to life: “Everything is perfect. This is exactly what will support me in waking up. Thank you. Help me to accept.” This is absolute power. This is absolute simplicity. This is a no-brainer. You don’t have to figure anything out. You don’t have to be smart. You don’t have to be talented. You don’t have to be beautiful or handsome. All you have to do is to accept. Just say yes. This is an absolute leveling of the playing field. Everyone has the ability to choose Spirit over ego, to accept rather than resist, to trust in Divine guidance rather than thinking you know better than God.

You may be thinking that this seems like an enormous mountain to climb. How can you develop this trust? How can you be certain that this is true? And even if it is true, it seems so hard to be able to actually accept everything. How can you possibly succeed at that? I don’t expect you to trust that whatever I say is true. On the level of words and thoughts, nothing is true. They cannot express eternal truth. You can only trust your inner guidance. If it wants you to go out in the world and make this better, for yourself and/or for others, to help those in pain, to save the environment, to find your own peace and purpose on the planet, then by all means do that. You cannot serve two masters. Follow the voice you most trust. If you have tried to create heaven on earth, have failed over and over, and feel a bit like Sisyphus, then push until the weariness and the hopelessness and the helplessness overwhelm you. Maybe then you will realize that you have no choice but to give it to Spirit, and will find inner strength to do just that. Let Spirit push that rock. Once you have made the decision for Spirit it is merely a question of execution. You pay attention throughout the day and notice where you are having an ego knee-jerk reaction of resistance to something, forgive yourself and give it over to Spirit. The more often you remember to do that, the more automatic it becomes. If you notice that you are still holding resistance, give it over again…and again…and again…as often as necessary. Not only will it get easier but you will feel this gradual sense of love, peace, and joy descending into your experience of the world. There is a tremendous freedom in the realization that the things you thought mattered so much don’t matter at all. Peace will replace fear regardless of what is going on about you.

You may still be guided in the moment to react to what is going on around you, to offer support and love. What will be missing is the attachment to the outcome of your actions. Spirit is always leading you down the quickest route home. Follow Spirit’s guidance and accept whatever outcome is presented. Always remember that if you are not experiencing peace you are resisting rather than accepting. Give it to Spirit. Claim your birthright, your peace and joy. Spirit holds the keys for you. Listen, trust, surrender. Experience the full Power of God.

Good Now

Sanhia

Is the ego part of me or is it separate?

We talk about the ego a lot. People are sometimes a little confused about what the ego actually is. Is it a real entity? Is it like the Christian devil? Is it something outside of us or inside of us? These are all very good questions. We will start by saying that the ego is neither inside you nor outside you because, in truth, it does not exist. Neither do you, not the part you think of as an individual and separate from others. The ego has existence only in the sense that the world has existence, and your physical body exists. It is part of the dream. We could say that the birth of the ego was that single crazy, mad thought that came into the mind of the Son of God that said “Maybe we could create something separate from God”. For an instant that idea flashed through and the mind of the Son of God entertained it. The thought was absolutely insane, impossible. Nothing can exist outside of God. Part of the Son’s mind found the idea to be fun and wanted to run with it. A second part of the mind of the Son recognized the insanity and dismissed the thought immediately. Since the idea was not possible, it could only manifest as a dream. What instigated the idea for that dream? We call that insane voice the ego. Still, there was yet a third part of the mind of the Son of God that found itself in the middle. It realized that the idea was crazy and couldn’t happen, but felt a need to rescue the first part of the mind. This validated the dream for both of these parts of the Son. Meanwhile, the second part simply held that the dream didn’t exist. This part warned the third part not to go after something that wasn’t real. You, the reader, are this third part of the mind of the Son. You came in to rescue, when there is nothing that needs rescuing. So it appeared that there was a split in the Son of God, in the Oneness, but nothing really happened.

You came attacking an enemy that doesn’t exist. You came to protect God who needs no protection. You came to take God’s place. This enemy is what we call the ego. The ego is the voice that tells you there is some meaning to this dream. It is the part of you that believes you can be separate from God. The ego is the voice of insanity. It only has the reality you have given it. If you were to ignore that voice and listen only to those who never entertained the illusion – which we call the voice of Spirit – it would disappear because it is not real. In truth, neither the ego nor Spirit is real. They exist only in the dream. In truth there is only Oneness. It doesn’t matter whether you consider the ego or Spirit to be a part of you or outside of you. None of the players here are real. What part of your dream last night was you and what part was separate from you? That seems like a crazy question. It was just a dream. Today it doesn’t exist. What difference does it make if that was part of you or not? It wasn’t real. Welcome to your life, to your dream. It is no more real. We could say that it is all part of you, because you are creating the dream, but that doesn’t make it any more real. No part of what you consider to be your separate self has any true existence.

Meanwhile, as you are experiencing yourself being in this dream, in this world – which I like to call hell, for lack of a better term – there seems to be both an ego and Spirit along for the ride. The important question is not whether an imaginary ego is inside or outside of an imaginary you, but whether you are listening to its imaginary voice or the imaginary voice of Spirit. Even though neither exists, ego keeps you in hell and Spirit guides you home, that is, toward the place of peace, love, and joy. This is a choice that I call a no-brainer. You may think that it is not that easy. Yes, that is the voice of the ego. The ego says that you are stuck with the world. It is real. The best you can do is to make it better. Is that voice within you or coming from the outside? If you are crazy, is that craziness from within you or from the outside? If the answer to a question you are asking yourself seems impossible to determine, you may be asking the wrong question. The right question is easy to answer. For example would you choose love or fear? Do you choose peace and joy or pain and suffering? If you tell me that you want love and peace, but choose to listen to a voice that can only lead you to more pain and suffering – isn’t that crazy? We call that dissociation. The important question is not this “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” query about where the ego is located, but whether the decider part of you, the part that is your mind, is going to listen to that ego – or not. As a human you have this illusion that you are separated from God and from each other, but that is not true. The truth of you is One. How can you be two places at once when you are not anywhere at all? There is no inside and outside. This question is an ego question. The truth of you is not even separate from the ego. The ego simply does not exist. The only question is “Are you going to listen to this insane voice?”

You all will wake up. You all will come home. It is a matter of time and time is also not real. It is only the way in which you measure your pain. It is certain that you will go home, because you never left. You are there now, if there was such a designation as “there”. This is only a dream from which you will awaken. Spirit and the ego are there with you in your dream. One softly invites you to awaken; the other encourages you to dream better. Where you are, even in the dream, is in the now. If your now encompasses listening to the ego, now feels like forever, is painful, and is hell. How painful does it have to be before you choose Spirit? Is it hot enough for you yet? Should we turn the heat up a little more? This is not a question of good or bad – Spirit good, ego bad. Ego is not the enemy. The world is not evil. It is just a question of truth. Spirit speaks truth, knows only truth. Ego lies, know only untruth. Your mind recognizes truth and will eventually choose it, resulting in the disappearance of the lie.

Let’s look at the elephant in the room. Your fear of God is so enormous concerning your alleged separation from Him, the ensuing guilt, and your hiding from his imagined retribution. Not only does this feel bigger than you can handle but also as something you can’t deal with by yourself. It amounts to a gigantic feeling of stuckness, magnified by the fact that you have a difficult time even facing the fullness of your guilt. Ego, like a good politician, promises all kinds of ways to avoid the wrath of God. Its promises are equally empty, providing at best a temporary reprieve from your guilt, pain, and suffering. Spirit makes no promises. Spirit only asks you to listen and to trust. Spirit holds your hand while you face your fear, rather than distracting you from it. Spirit faces your fear with you, whispering the truth of your innocence in your ear as you stand together. Spirit doesn’t ask you to confront more of your fear than you are able to handle. Will it be scary? Yes. Will you get through it? Yes. Eventually, all of it disappears: the ego, Spirit, fear, a separate you, and the world. Only your Divine Self is left. The truth of you remains as it has always been: One with God, One with the Son, in Eternal Love. The trip begins as you commit to listening to Spirit rather than the ego. Bon voyage!

Good Now

Sanhia

What is the meaning of the Coronavirus?

With the Coronavirus everybody is on the same page. You can search through your memory banks and be unable to find another time when the whole world was on the same page. Americans of a certain age remember the time when all of that country was on the same page following the Kennedy assassination or 9-11. Swedes had a similar unity around the assassination of Olof Palme. However, outside of your respective countries the effect was not so big and it became still smaller when extended to other continents. But here, now, everyone in the world is touched by the Coronavirus, no matter what continent, race, religion, or age. This is, indeed, a very interesting time. Look at what has been manifested here. Everyone has, seemingly, no choice but to focus on this phenomenon. It is affecting every aspect of your life.

As always, there are two voices that you can listen to, the voice of love or the voice of fear – the voice of Spirit or the voice of ego. You are surrounded by the voices of fear. There is no need for me to repeat the fear scenarios that are present. You can turn on the television, go online, or pick up a newspaper and be inundated with fearful stories and fingers pointed at those who can be blamed for causing, spreading, or failing to slow or halt the virus. My job today is to speak to you from Spirit, to remind you that there are no accidents and that everything is in perfection. You have a heightened opportunity now to choose love over fear. We have spoken often of the advice, and you have heard it many other places (thank you Ram Dass), to be here now, to be present, and to be in the Now. When you are absolutely present, you are with Spirit. When you are not present, you are with ego. All that truly exists is this moment. It exists forever. In this moment you are One with God; you are One with Spirit; you are One with me; you are One with each other. All there is is love.

The Coronavirus has been given to you by Spirit as an enormous gift to help you let go of the ego and be here now. Many of the normal distractions of your earthly experience are denied to you in this moment. You don’t feel the freedom to go where you want; you can’t watch the game on television or even read about it. You are likely at home most of the time, some of you not able to go to work. Your opportunities to socialize are minimized. What you do have is this enormous gift to help you let go. You can choose to be with ego, to be lamenting and sorrowful about what you are asked to give up, fearful or terrified about what the future might bring – or – you can receive this gift. You can revel in the stillness. You can take this as an opportunity to communicate with Spirit, to give all your fears, all of your judgments, all of your anger, everything that takes away from the peace that is your birthright – and give all of that to Spirit.

Now is the time to let death die. In the eternal now there is no death. Death is of the ego. It is not real. Yes of course, bodies die. You are not your body. You do not die. You cannot die. Jesus demonstrated that for us. This is a time given to you by Spirit to release and let go of all your fear of death. Give your death to Spirit. Know that if Spirit has use for you in your body to help all to awaken, you will stay in your body. If Spirit says that you have done what you came here to do and now it is time to come home into the Oneness, then you will let go of your body in love and joy, not in fear. That is not a death, but a full awakening. Invite Spirit into your heart today. Use your quarantine to be with Spirit. It is just the two of you; your challenge is to make it the One of you by surrendering your fearful, ego-based will. Ask, “What is it that you wish me to do with this space you have provided for me through the gift of the Coronavirus?” You now have this opportunity that you would not normally have. You would be so busy with your daily life and with what the ego says is important to do. Now this intervention precludes business as usual. Not only is there the space to listen to Spirit, but also the motivation to deal with those fears the Coronavirus has triggered in you. Besides the fear of death, you may be experiencing financial worries, loss of opportunities, fears about losing loved ones, uncertainties about the future, anger, or blame. This just might be the perfect storm that gives you the gentle shove that encourages you to let go of your attachment to the drama and finally surrender to Spirit. What an opportunity for healing! Now is the time to give all that fear, judgment, and projection to Spirit and listen to the message and guidance that are there for you.

While everything that has been said here goes to the core of what this event is truly about, we don’t suggest that you ignore the recommendations of health officials. Unless you are personally guided in a different direction, quarantine yourself, use proper cleaning techniques, pay attention to your own health signs, and strengthen your immune system. If you fear you may have may draw something your way, be conscious in protecting yourself. On the other hand, whatever happens is perfect and is in Spirit’s hand. Trust in God and tether your camel.

I want to encourage you to feel an enormous gratitude for this gift of the Coronavirus and for Spirit bringing this potentiality for awakening into your now. Take this opportunity to hold each of your mirrors, every other human, in a place of loving acceptance and kindness. Part of the magic of this gift is that you are all in it together. When you find yourself talking with another about this situation, ask Spirit why He has brought this person to you. Are you to receive something from them or is there something that you are asked to give. Allow whatever it is to happen. If you meet your neighbor and they are in pain or fear, remember he is your mirror. He is reflecting that part of you which may be hard for you to see. Give silent thanks for that gift and take your pain and fear to Spirit. Perhaps you have a gift to share with your neighbor about the perfection of what is unfolding, about his Divinity, about his safety – but first take your concerns to Spirit and see what you are guided to say to the other. It is not your job to heal them. That is Spirit’s work. If you are to be a tool for Spirit, He will let you know. It is your job to bring all the fears that are triggered by the Coronavirus and others’ responses to it to Spirit to be lifted to love. Always thank Spirit for this opportunity to awaken.

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

Is it part of my purpose to help heal others?

As you are working with your spiritual process, with realizing your Divinity, with noticing you are listening to a voice, with learning to discern whether it is Spirit or the ego you are listening to, and with learning to hear, trust, and follow Spirit – as you are doing all of these things and you look around at your friends, relatives, co-workers, and perhaps even strangers – you notice that they are making what seems to you to be wrong choices. They may seem to be acting in ways that bring them pain and confusion as they listen to the ego and make the illusion real. A very natural reaction you may likely have is to say to yourself, “Oh, if they only knew what they were doing!” You think that perhaps you can be of help to them. You could point out how they are listening to the ego, how what they are seeing isn’t real, how their choices cannot work out for them. You may wonder if that is part of your path. As you are gaining wisdom, should you be sharing it with those around you? My answer to this is a very simple and clear “No”. That is not your job. That is my job. That is Spirit’s job. It is not your job. Perhaps that is not what you wanted to hear. Or maybe you are letting go a sigh of relief.

Let me explain why healing others is not your job. There are myriad reasons, so I will wander about and touch on this and that. I will begin by reminding that when you want to intercede when observing another in pain – what you are seeing is you. This is where the voice of the ego in you likely goes crazy and says, “No! That is them.” No, this is your creation. Do not confuse the cause and the effect. Whatever you see in the world is your creation. Everything is created by your mind. You are not a disconnected observer. What you see is born in your mind, not in the world. So, everything in the world is your mirror. When you see another choosing ego, it is you choosing ego. The work, then, is not to fix them, but to heal yourself. Your only job, your only purpose for being here, is to heal yourself. You have no responsibility for dealing with what you perceive as others’ challenges or problems.

Now, your mind may be asking, “But, what if they ask me for help?” That is a different question. Any requests you receive for support are to be given to Spirit. Allow Spirit to speak through you. Trust what comes and share it with the one who has requested support. Then, let it go. Have no attachment to it being heard, received, or acted on in the “right” way. That is none of your business. Your only job is to share what Spirit gives to you and let it go.

When you perceive that another has a challenge or might not be choosing in the highest way, what is truly going on is that you are judging them. This can feel like a thin line, discerning what is noticing and what is judging. If any kind of emotional reaction is present, know that judgment is involved. This can include positive as well as negative emotions. Let’s take it a step further. The truth of the other is that they are Divine, as are you. Any lack you perceive in them is an expression of denial of their Divinity. Thus, you are saying that you, also, are not really Divine. A good rule of thumb to use when looking at others is that if you cannot make your perception true for all others, it is not true. To judge one person for something you do not judge another for is to create separation. When you separate any son of God from another, you separate yourself from God. You could, instead, think in the following fashion. When you observe someone acting from the ego, you can say that they are not fully awake yet. That is true of all who are in the human condition, including yourself. To single out one individual as separate from God, while holding another as special or connected to God, creates the illusion of separation and cannot be a true observation. God is unity and Oneness. Any differences come from separation and the ego. As soon as you label any one person as out of balance, you have separated yourself from them and from God. In truth, of course, you are never separate from God, but this is your human experience.

If you wish to realize the truth of your Oneness with God and to let go of this physical illusion, don’t ever take on the cloak of the wise teacher, of being the healer. That is not your job. That, again, does not mean that Spirit may not use you, but it is for Spirit to decide. In truth, you cannot help but to teach what you have learned, but you will do this through your surrender to Spirit. Your job is not to teach, but to learn. If you are in doubt whether the words you receive are coming from Spirit, say nothing. The same words can come from the voice of ego or Spirit. What matters is if pure love is behind them. If you are unsure whether it is your ego or the voice of Spirit wishing to express, err on the side of discernment and caution. Give your doubt and confusion to Spirit. Continue to give to Spirit all of your perceptions of pain or fear or doubt or victimization or victimizing that you see expressed through others. Your task is to love them unconditionally and see yourself as one with them. If that is too great a challenge in the moment, it is no biggie. Give it to Spirit. You are the one crying out for help. When you turn the situation over to Spirit, you don’t tell Him how you want things handled. If you have any expectations about results, you have not let go, have not truly given it to Spirit. Remember that thinking you knew better than God is what got you here in the first place. Maybe Spirit has a message for you to share, maybe not. It is not your business. It does not matter what is going on in the world. That is effect not cause.

Your business is to heal your separation. You do this through forgiveness and reminding yourself of your innocence, not by noticing the log in your neighbor’s eye. Your healing will never be realized through projection. Own everything you see as yours; ask Spirit to help you forgive yourself and open to God’s love. You become frantic to heal the other, because you are frantic to heal yourself. When you try to heal the shadow rather than changing the projector you cannot succeed. At best, you end up with good slapstick comedy. Remember that it is never about the form. It is never about what appears to you to be going on in the world. It is always about the content of your mind. Is your focus on the truth of your Divinity, your innocence, on you being unconditionally loved by God – or – is it on your fear and guilt, on the belief that you have been kicked out of heaven, on trying to please God? It is never about fixing the world. It is not about saying the right words at the right time to the right person. None of that matters. Yes, Spirit will use humans in the process of ending the illusion, but it never matters when or how. The end is already certain. It was decided before any present perception, words, or actions transpire. When you speak with the influence of the ego there will be a shadow of judgment in your voice or an attachment to the end result. You may feel the listener must follow your advice to a successful conclusion or you have both failed. When influenced by Spirit you may never know why He has used you, what the purpose is. Let go of any need to know.

Your job is not to do “good”. Good is one half of the duality and we all know what the other half is. One cannot exist without the other. Love does not recognize good or evil. It shines on all until everything is dissolved but truth. The reason you want to heal another is your desire to be rewarded by God. God may then single you out for redemption because you are better than another. How fortunate that you noticed their failure so that you can help them because you are better than them. Look God! No hands! Your imagined redemption comes only after you see your absolute equality with every Son of God. God doesn’t need your help. Let go of thinking you have a better way. Be humble. Give up your need to be an individual, to stand out, to be better. Just be. Instead of healing another, simply be kind to them; be loving. That’s what God does. No matter how many times you fall on your face, you are loved beyond measure. No matter what you do or feel or say…

God Blesses You

Sanhia