How can pain be a gift?

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The following was taken from a recent group session.

Sanhia: If the now includes a feeling of pain … that is perfect.

Participant One: It should be nice. but it is not nice. It is painful. If perfection is pain, then maybe it is perfect.

Sanhia: If there is the experience of pain, and the thought appears and is held onto that “I wish I weren’t feeling pain”, there is pain about pain. The wishing away of pain does not make anything better. The thought that it shouldn’t be here doesn’t change anything.

Participant One: I feel so embarrassed of being overwhelmed by the pain.

Sanhia: You can not change the event that triggered the pain. You cannot stop the feeling of grief. You can choose not to dwell on thoughts that the event should not have happened or that you should be reacting differently. These thoughts do not change what is. They certainly don’t help you feel better. So, you notice the thought is there and let it go. Continue with the feelings rather than with the thoughts. Whatever is here now is real. The thoughts want to take you somewhere else. Stay here. If pain is present, remain with the bodily sensations. You will be better off not even labelling these feelings. Notice what is felt and hang with it. One thing about the now… it is constantly changing. Stay with the feeling until it changes and then continue with what comes then. If you notice yourself wanting the feelings to move in any direction, let the thought go and allow the feelings the freedom to express or move however they wish to. Your body is an amazing healing machine. It will do whatever needs to be done if you simply let it do its job. What happens if you just stop exercising that muscle that wants things to be different and refuses to accept what is? One thing is certain; if you try to change what is to what you want it to be, you will fail.

Participant One: But it feels like I am failing at everything.

Sanhia: That thought comes from the ego mind belief that you are running the show. If you are not running the show, how can you possibly fail? Things simply are as they are. You didn’t create them that way. Why would you have if you had that ability? How self-destructive would you have to be to create what you absolutely don’t want? That is a crazy idea! You cannot change things; you cannot make them better. You wouldn’t even know what would truly be better. What is now is perfect. We know that because that is how it is. Let the energy of the mind be filled with letting it be, with finding gratitude, or with experiencing whatever feelings seem to block gratitude.

Participant One: But it feels like I must have chosen this on some level. I can’t tell if it is a gift or a disaster.

Sanhia: Precisely. You are powerless to change the situation but able to be present with it, to see it as it is without your thoughts. This is giving it to God. There is no need to understand why it is happening, to be able to see it as either a gift or a disaster. It simply is and you experience certain bodily sensations along with it. If you fight it, you fight God. You will “lose”, that is you won’t be able to change what is and you will experience pain in trying and failing.

Participant One: But I am going to have pain anyway.

Sanhia: Then accept that you have pain. Try not to give it a label, but experience what you are feeling without trying to change it or make it go away. Leave your personal will out of it.

Participant One: I can do lots of things to try to not focus on it. I can go to work, watch a film, call a friend.

Sanhia: I am going to speak to a part of your mind that will recall this talk from time to time. There will be a moment when you realize that everything is as it should be, that everything is perfect no matter how it feels, that there is no part of you that would ever want things to be any different. You will have the experience that everything that is here right now, without exception, is here to support you. There is nothing but life. So, in whatever way in this now you are able to stop resisting and look at life in the face as it is, you are opening up to having this as your constant awareness. On the other hand, every time you push the now away, say “take this cup away from me”, or want something else, you are prolonging the period of pain and agony. Pain is transitory. If you simply feel it, it will last a little while, morph, and then disappear. If you don’t face it, avoid it, or try to push it away, the pain will just hang around. You will drag out the suffering for a long time. I am planting these thoughts so that in any now they may float to the surface. You might ask why you are shooting yourself in the foot and will instead embrace whatever is there.

Participant One: I like the picture of the water which accompanies my Life Path number in my numerology chart. I feel like I am on the shore watching the water rush past. Why don’t I just jump in? Maybe I can do that. I can feel both the joy and the fear of jumping in.

Sanhia: I have been sharing some “Michael” stories with you of late. One thing that you might notice from them is that the things that encouraged him to let go of ego mind more than anything else were the times that were so hard to accept. He did not grow nearly as quickly when things worked out as he wanted them to. There was always value in those experiences as well, but the benefits tended to be more temporary. The things that were the most painful, those he did not want to have happen, were the ones that proved to be the greatest gifts. Right now, you can express gratitude for the gift without having a clue what the gift is. You can take time to really look at it and feel it instead of pushing it away.

Participant One: I understand.

Sanhia; You can decide to stop fighting what is. A nineteenth century Indian chief from a north-western American tribe, known as Chief Joseph, after watching his people repeatedly lied to and massacred by the American government, finally surrendered, stating, “I will fight no more forever”. He stopped fighting and accepted what was. Spirit/God will remove everything that stands in the way of your awakening, if necessary. Nothing real can be lost. For some people a great amount of loss, pain, and suffering is required before they decide to fight no more forever.

Participant One: (tears)

Sanhia: You can fight for seemingly forever, but you can stop fighting in an instant.

Participant One: I can feel where that fighting spirit is; it is right where the pain is.

Sanhia: Let’s play with this a little. Let’s say that you feel something that you call sadness. If possible, let the label go and just notice the feeling. Now it is another moment, and you notice the feeling is still there and you feel it in your heart chakra. Your mind wants to take over and explain why you are sad. Your situation is horrible, and anybody would be feeling sadness. You have now lost track of what is present and are instead watching/listening to an endless loop of the story. This mind view is all you are allowing yourself to experience in the now. Nobody is forcing you to keep your attention riveted to your story. This is your personal will acting. Rather than experience the freshness that the present always has, you are stuck in this endless loop. It’s a little like holding your breath. This is not so good for the health. Try paying attention to the fresh thought that comes as well as the fresh feeling. Notice but don’t hold on to it. There is a children’s game called hot potato. A roasted potato is tossed to you. If you hold on to it you will burn your hands, so you lob it to another who flips it to another and so on. Your thoughts are like hot potatoes. In the now you would not hold on or you would be burned.

Participant One: People keep reminding me of my story when I meet them. It’s hard for me to speak about what I’m going through.

Sanhia: You don’t have to share with them what is there, but for yourself – notice. They are reminding you to notice your now. If they seem to treat you as a “poor you”, that is your mirror. In any case you can thank them for asking but share only if you feel guided. This is your now. There is nothing you must do. You do as you are guided. If you feel a need to decide, know that your personal will is acting. When Spirit is ready to act, you will know. There will be no decision to make. It is not your job to make others feel that you are doing alright. Your job is ever simpler. It is just to be present with what moves now. Otherwise, you will have nothing to give to others but your pain and your fear.

You won’t always have your pain, but if you are willing to have it, to experience it, and to go where it leads you, it will have served its purpose. The bright light of love is always on the other side. The pain is necessary to burn away the clouds of your illusions, the untruths you hold about yourself and life. Let it do its valuable, irreplaceable job. The gift is always there. You deserve to feel the truth of your Divinity, which can only be found in this now.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

How can I learn to love myself?

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We have a question that came in response to the previous message on co-dependency. It is paraphrased here.

Many of our problems seem to come from not being loved as a child, and then we feel we have a black hole inside that needs to be filled. All spiritual answers I have heard are saying the same thing, that you must love yourself. But how to love yourself if we don’t know how to do it or even know what love is? How do we get to know if no one shows us? I’m sure the answer is true, but I feel a big blaming towards the one who doesn’t have love. My feeling is that the ones who have love in their life should show the others love. I have read “You shall love others as yourself” from Jesus. He didn’t say, “You have to love yourself first,” as I often hear from spiritual books and teachers. That has always made me wonder, feel, or sense that this interpretation can make people more egocentric.

Thank you for that wonderful question. Hopefully we will deal with all aspects of it. I wish to begin by saying that not many, but all your problems come from wanting your personal will to have precedence over the Will of God. They germinate from your wish for what is to be different than it is. What is is the will of God. It is God’s gift to you in this moment, the perfect thing for you. It is given with love because God is Love and could give nothing else. It can feel painful to you because your personal will wants something else, contrary to what God is providing. If you maintain that separation, you will suffer and feel unloved. This has nothing to do with how you were raised. Your perceptions about your upbringing have everything to do with your beliefs and projections, in your separation from the Divine Love of God. I will tell you the absolute truth about your parents. They, Divine Children of God, were doing the best that they could. Mostly they were choosing personal will over Divine Will as all humans do most of the time. If you want to know how to love, begin by thanking your parents for not only doing their best, but for playing the role that needed to be enacted in your life to best support your awakening process. Your work now is to go inside and see where you hold your parents in judgment; that place where you do not love them is where you also do not love yourself. Ask Spirit or God to assist you in receiving the gift that your parents were and are for you. Wherever you feel less than full acceptance, that is the work for you to do. To be a victim is to say to God that “You are wrong”. It is to choose your personal will over that of God. It is to state that you think you know better. It is to condemn yourself to misery and separation from feeling the Love of God. While believing that God didn’t give you what you wanted, it was you who resisted and didn’t want what God gave you. Give up your separation. Give up your personal will. Stop fighting what is, while wanting things to be different. This is what being in the now is. Have the intention to accept God’s Will for you. Trust what is here now, knowing that it is the highest and the best thing.

The question about loving yourself, the spiritual teaching…I can understand your confusion. How does one go about loving oneself? How do we define love? What is it? Other good questions. It is said that the truth that can be written or stated is not the whole truth. Words cannot explain what love is. We encourage you to approach these questions using the process of elimination. What is not love? We have already provided one enormous hint. Choosing personal will over Divine Will is not love. If God is Love, then not choosing God’s Will is not choosing love. This likely means that everything you have ever learned about love is probably untrue. If it is about getting your personal desires met, it is not about love. Look at all the goals you have for your personal self. Wanting to feel loved is a goal for your personal self. Stop striving for those things. Instead focus on receiving the love that God is giving you each moment of every day. See what that is. Reread the last message and see all the aspects of co-dependency that are mistaken for love. Anything you wish to receive from anybody else is not an expression of love. Those are expressions of lack, of neediness. God provides everything you need in the now. Looking elsewhere is a refusal to accept the Will of God.

You are not a hole that needs to be filled. You are a Divine Child of God, perfect as you are. The human condition is belief in separation from God. That is the biblical fall. It encompasses not feeling loved or loveable, of feeling guilty. This has nothing to do with your parents. It has to do with you. This is not blame. This is the human condition. You share it with everyone on the planet. Everyone’s job is to let go of their personal will and to follow the Will of God, to accept the perfection that God is presenting in the ever changing and morphing present. Whatever you are experiencing now that is not acceptable to you is your creation. That is not blame; it is how it is. If you pretend this is not your creation, you give away all your power. When you choose to want your will to rule, you create these painful experiences to appear to be real. Use your power by surrendering it to God instead of pretending to be a victim. To say that others who have love should share it with you is an expression of victimhood, of co-dependency. You are saying that you need somebody else to do this work for you, but they cannot do that. You are in charge of your experience, not them. If they could control your life by determining whether to give you love, you certainly would be a helpless victim. Fortunately, this is not the case.

Nobody can show you love because others act as your mirror. If you are not loving yourself, if you are not accepting yourself as you are right now, then you will not find that love reflected at you from others. Oh, you might bask in it for a while, but the feeling of being loved won’t stick. To ask for others to show you love is not a realistic request. If another is living in love, they can only spread that love to everyone else on the planet. This is not even a choice. If others are not in such a space, they have nothing to give. In either case, the effect on the one who feels unloved will be nil. So, to ask for others to share love with you is a futile gesture. That can only start with you. Then you can begin to receive what has always been there for you. The irony, of course, is that when you are capable of receiving love you have no need to do so. Again, give up your personal will’s need to be shown love, and surrender to the Will of God who will always rain love down upon you. Again, in the final analysis, only you can do this work. Nobody can do it for you. That may sound frightening; it may leave you feeling helpless, but ultimately it is the most empowering thing that you could hear. To feel love, you do not need anybody else to do anything or to act in any certain way toward the world. You have the absolute power here. You are not and cannot be a victim because it is all in your hands.

Let’s go back to the statement about spiritual teachers saying that the first thing is to love yourself and your fear that this might lead people to becoming more egocentric, just thinking about themselves. If one’s interpretation of loving yourself amounts to looking at what you want to have in your life and feeling that you deserve to have these desires met, then that is an endorsement for following personal will. That is not surrendering to the Will and Love of God. It could be said that it is an act of thinking you know better than God what is best for you. It is an act of resistance to God’s Love. It does not demonstrate trust; it is not an acceptance of the now. If that is how “loving oneself first” is interpreted, you have a good point. Now, looking at the biblical statement from Jesus which is often interpreted as, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” there arises a curious question. If you are not loving yourself, does that mean not to love others either? Perhaps this is not a statement of putting yourself or others in the supreme position, but one of expressing the Oneness between you. You are encouraged to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, not so that you have a technique for getting what you want, but as a statement of fact. As you do to others, you at the same time do to yourself. It can be no other way. There is no separation.

Your job, as was mentioned in the last message, is to take care of yourself. As you do that, there is no problem with having the intention to give loving service to all others around you, not because it is the right thing to do, but because it requires you to be in the now and to pay attention to loving energy. As you do this you become aware of every place where you hold a judgment about another. You own that judgment, realizing it is one you hold toward yourself. You work with that in yourself until you look out and see nothing but loving acceptance of the other. Truly loving others is quite an accomplishment that should keep you busy for a while. If you hold the thought that your feelings of love are other people’s responsibility, that you don’t know how to love yourself so they have to do it for you, to teach you how, then I am sorry to inform you that you will remain unhappy and feel unloved and separate from God for as long as you hold onto that belief. This is not blame. This is how it is. Fortunately, you have absolute choice here. You can choose to follow the Will of God instead of your personal will. You can choose to accept and face the now to see what that is. Ultimately, we are not talking about a question of love, particularly in terms of what most human’s understanding for that term is.  We are talking about will. Is it your will or is it God’s Will?

Let me bring this to a conclusion by reminding you about how you might go about surrendering to the Will of God while releasing your personal will. This is not a formula. This is not telling you the way to do this. This is not written in stone. These are simply pointers. Ultimately, your inner Divine Knowing will guide you. To begin with, you can notice two things. First observe your thoughts. Be aware of when the thoughts indicate that you don’t want things to be as they are or where you want the future to be different from the present. Notice when the thoughts are about being a victim of your past. As you are aware of these thoughts, do your best not to act on them. Just be conscious they are there in your present. Don’t allow your mind to follow long trains of thought along those tracks. These are thoughts from your personal will. Notice they are there and give them to God, to Spirit, to Me, to Someone Else. Holding on to the now as being unsatisfactory creates the illusion of separation from God, and therefore, from the Will of God. How it is right now is God’s gift to you; whether you understand it or not doesn’t matter. Your only task is to look at it as you release your judgmental thoughts. Try to really see what is here. Focus on that rather than on what is not here. As you become practiced in this you will notice that what is here is in constant motion, changing, morphing, reforming. Replace your thoughts about how it should be or about what is missing with your awareness of what it is.

I said there would be two things and that was the first. Secondly, notice that you might be having emotional reactions to what is in your now, both connected to the noticing of what is happening and to your thoughts. These feelings are your reactions to your beliefs in separation. You are reacting to what isn’t rather than to what is. Notice those feelings and stay as present as you can with them. If your mind wants to rationalize the feelings as being caused by this or that or feeling victim to whatever this or that is, notice and let the thoughts go. Whatever your mind is focusing on as a cause is not here now. If a cause should be here in your now, then action might be appropriate, but usually it isn’t present. A car headed directly at you is in your now. Your parents are not likely here now, nor are world events you have read or heard about. What is here right now? Your feelings are here, so accept them. There is no need to act on them, just let them be present and release any need to change them or to judge yourself for having them. Simply experience them until they are no longer in your now. Wherever your feelings or your thoughts try to lead you, do your best not to follow. Stay with what is happening. It is that simple, though not necessarily easy. Your habit is to follow the ego driven personal will, but God is in the now.

God’s Love is in the now. God is within you. You are Divine. You will never experience that just because I am telling you who you are or should other people share that with you. If you are feeling separate from God and lack trust in the perfection of what is being brought to you, you will not likely experience your Divine Nature. When you don’t accept the now, you are expressing distrust in God and choosing your personal will over God’s. If you want to follow God’s will, stop! Stop following your own will. You do this through practice, by welcoming and saying thank you to whatever is there, and by fully accepting your feelings without trying to change them. You can do this. You are Love. You are Divine. As your Creator is, so are you. One and the same. Could not be different. The awareness of this arrives as you stop resisting God’s gifts, as you let go of efforts to try to change things or to make yourself better. That’s part of the reason that We say:

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Can you explain to us about co-dependency?

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This question surfaced in a group several months ago, but now the time has come to respond to it. We will begin by talking about what is referred to as the special relationship in A Course in Miracles. The special relationship is a co-dependent relationship. Since most human relationships are special, they are in most cases co-dependent. If your mind wants to limit the term co-dependency to extreme or diagnosable relationships, it is aiming a bit high. But first, let Us step back and define the special relationship. It has been some time since we have mentioned this, and likely before many of you began reading the messages. In the special relationship one person wants the other to act in a specific way, to play a certain role. For example, you meet someone and they make you feel special; they make you feel loveable. Whatever it is that they do that makes you feel good or special, you want them to continue. This is co-dependency. You have a need for them to keep on doing those things that make you feel so wonderful. Normally in the special relationship this neediness goes both ways, but let’s just stay with you for now. There is a flip side to the co-dependent relationship. This is where the words or actions of someone you spend a bit of time with seem to cause you upset, pain, or negative emotions. You blame them for your negative reactions. You point the finger; You think you are going through what you are feeling because of them. This is a co-dependent relationship. Special relationships usually have a mix of both the positive and the negative triggers. As we have talked about recently, these liaisons involve projection. We have focused more on the negative aspect there, where you don’t wish to see yourself as having a certain quality so you can then convince yourself that it is the other and not you who is that way. This is co-dependency.

The projecting goes both ways, though. If you are unable to see yourself as loveable, you let another do that for you. The biggest problem here is that, as with all projections, deep inside you believe it isn’t true. You don’t love yourself or believe that you are deserving of love. Sooner or later your denial surfaces and you prove your partner to be wrong. You will not be able to continue performing for them and they will not be able to always act as you wish them to. It feels so good to have someone tell you that you are loveable, but you don’t really trust that. You begin to resent having to perform for them. You become upset if they change in any way or show you anything but unconditional acceptance. The honeymoon is over. The flame of your relationship was based on the other causing you to feel in a certain way, but now that has blown out. The things that used to turn you on begin to turn you off. This is the normal trajectory of the co-dependent relationship. If you doggedly hold on to the need for them to complete you, the battle will rage on and on. The negative aspects of projection may grow to exceed the positive ones. At this point you may decide to pull the plug. Since the problem is with the other, you have obviously picked wrongly. You seek another relationship. Until you give up co-dependency, reclaim your projections, and take responsibility for everything in your life as your creation, the new relationship will go through the same cycle. In despair somewhere along the way, you may decide to stay with the relationship you have, withdrawing from your partner and settling for feeling separate and unloved, deciding on some level that is all you are worth. Even then, there is still the possibility that you can stop looking to your partner for the love you want. The only solution, whether choosing fight or flight, is to come to the point of recognition that this isn’t working and it is time to try something else.

Sometimes in this special relationship you feel that you must take responsibility for the other. This often happens for parents, but it can just as well be a part of a committed relationship. Now you are doubly trapped because the bond is not only unfulfilling, but you have too much guilt to be able to leave. The other person needs you, or so you believe.

So, what is there beyond co-dependency? The relationship that is not marked by specialness can be called a holy relationship. In this association you have no desire for the other to be or do anything different from what they are now expressing. You accept them as they are. You love them without conditions. It is not possible to express unconditional love for another unless you are already doing that for yourself. When you are fully accepting yourself, you notice where you have guilt, where you are judging, where you are unkind to yourself, where you are experiencing strong emotions, and you commit to loving, accepting, and forgiving all of that. You take full responsibility for what you are thinking and feeling about yourself. You own your projections mirrored in those who trigger you. You do not allow these projections to go unchallenged. Remind yourself that this is you. This is what you are not wanting to face in yourself. Notice what you are holding to be true about yourself from both your own thoughts and from your projections and ask if those thoughts are really true. Work with all of that. Own it all. Take responsibility and sort through it. Look nowhere but within for the love you seek. Where you find this challenging, give it to Spirit, give it to God.

Let go of those thoughts. Don’t hold on to them or follow them. Don’t act from them. Notice them and move on. If the thoughts return, be willing to stare them in the face. Look deeply to see if there is indeed truth there. I know they are not true, but you must stay with them until you too know it. You are the Divine Child of God, made in the image of your Creator, an entity of love. That’s all you can be. Anything else you are holding on to is not the truth. It stems from the belief that you have separated from God. That is not possible. That is an illusion. That is the illusion. The holy relationship is your relationship with the Divine; it is only about unconditional love. The only function of the special relationship is to show you where you are co-dependent and not giving everything to God. It is an opportunity to recognize where you hold untruths about yourself so that you can realize your Oneness with God. Your relationships with others don’t exist in order for you to get something from them, but as places for you to give love. You have no need to be completed. You are whole. It is never about changing another or yourself. It is all about accepting the Divinity which is the truth of all.

I want to remind you that co-dependency is not limited to the perceived negative aspects, to the places where you judge or feel yourself to be victim to another. It is just as significant with the things you perceive coming from others that you consider to be positive. When you know that you are love, created in the image of God, how can you have any need to hear that from another. The latter expression can only feel good to you, feel special, if you have doubts as to its veracity. Whether the reinforcement from others feels to be negative or positive, it is just a pointer to where you are holding yourself separate from God. Give silent thanks for the reminder, take it to heart, and go to work.

Over time you will find yourself unable to hold on to the praise of others. You will perhaps begin to doubt their sincerity. You decide they are just being nice or that they have ulterior motives, they want something from you. They’re buttering you up, “kissing your ass”. The bottom line is that you cannot receive from them something you don’t know to be true. If you know its truth, the praise is redundant. Otherwise, it may feel good for a moment but, like with any drug, the effect begins to wear off and you desire another hit. You start to do things to win other’s approval. Perhaps you do things to prove they are wrong in their praise. The bottom line is that you cannot receive from them something you don’t know to be true.

If you know you are love, you will have nothing but love for others, no matter what they might say or do. As you are practicing loving yourself unconditionally, letting go of all guilt, judgment, self-hatred – think about loving others unconditionally. Have the intention to give love to everyone you meet, rather than looking for what you can get. See their Divinity. Look through their pretence at being human and unlovable. Observe the truth of them. Know they are doing the best they can and offer whatever you can to lighten their load. Have a holy relationship with everybody. Above all, have that with yourself, particularly when you are aware of its absence. Be kind, loving, and gentle to yourself and ask for Spirit to come help you release your personal will and surrender to the Will of God, Who only loves you.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Is a long life something to be valued?

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We had a question from a reader in Taiwan who wrote (and I am paraphrasing):

Life in its natural state is pure energy, so why do we call “life” a gift? Why is there an obsession with the longevity of life? Does Sanhia wish to return to the “solid body” and low vibratory life conditions again with all the uncertainty and challenges? I am aware that the Asian cultures – the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, at least – have a need to jump on the bandwagon of living long and being healthy, as Spock and the Vulcans said, “Live long and prosper”. Of course, one should take care of health, but as to how long one can live, who knows? Long life can be like longer sentences on “Death Row”. Sooner or later, it is all over; the body deteriorates; and we become a burden for others and ourselves.

It seems that the reader has a fairly good handle on the question, but we will go a little deeper. Since time does not exist, how can it have a value?  Living long has no meaning if time is not real. What those of you who are reading this are doing now is living. Otherwise, you would have difficulty opening this message. You are in the now, and that’s all there is. There is no future. If you believe it exists, I will ask the questions, “Where is that future? Can you get there from here? How do you do that?” If somebody has an answer to these questions, please write back and we’ll have a conversation. The same questions arise with the past. All that is here is the present and in these few moments that you have been reading, how many presents have there been? As soon as you try to describe what is happening, you are referring to the past. The present is constantly moving and morphing. Any attempt to explain or understand it pulls you out of the now and into the past. You are no longer fully experiencing the present. If you accept that time is real and has a value, it might make sense to think that more time is a good thing. However, as the reader pointed out, if your experience of life in your body is hellish, then perhaps a longer life is not to be desired, and time instead holds a negative value; a shorter life might feel more desirable, less time in hell. Those who choose suicide might hold this negative view on time and earthly experience.

The reader asks if I would wish to return to a “solid body”? This is another crazy question, one that implies that choice exists. I simply AM. I do not act out of choice but flow with the Oneness. If you believe in choice, you are constantly pulled out of the now into your mind to search the archives for information to guide that choice. This is in lieu of letting yourself be present and going with the flow. It is a recipe for hell on earth. Less time or more time doesn’t matter. All that matters is now. Your reasons for leaving or staying all come from thoughts from your past, which, as you may recall, doesn’t exist.

Some cultures, in fact most modern cultures, place a value on a long life. They believe it is a tragedy when someone dies at a young age, the younger the person the greater the catastrophe. Even with somebody older, perhaps quite along in years, the death is still often held as a tragic event. All kinds of medicines, surgeries, and treatments are invested in, sometimes at great cost, to sustain the physical life. It is as if more days of life has a positive quality in and of itself. Rather than accepting that all will die, there is an attempt to fight what is, which eventually will be the person’s physical death. Why would one want to live longer? That idea can only come from a mind that is not in the present. In the now you are alive. You cannot live in the past or the future. If you are thinking about living longer, you are no longer in the now; you have stopped living. That is to say that the only place you can experience life is in the now. You can’t experience it in the future or the past. You are then pretending to be someplace else. You are in a dream within the dream. Whatever reasons there are for being in this dream exist only in the now. Having a focus to live long, means not living now. This connects with the words expressed in the last message about goals. I know that none of you are like this. but you might know of someone who denies themselves certain pleasures in the present out of the belief that this will help them live longer and have greater health in the future. Sacrifice today for tomorrow. Well, that’s a good plan. Perhaps if you deny yourself everything that might make the present more enjoyable you could live forever. Just kidding, well just a little bit. Seriously, if joy can only be in the future and you only can live in the now, your self-denial will be forever, and your joy will be for-never. .

There is only one reason why you are here and that is to awaken to the truth of yourself. The only place that you can do that is in the present. It doesn’t matter how much time you give yourself in order to wake up, that awakening will always remain in the future. But guess where you are. You are stuck in the now. How do you get to this future where you will be awake? Again, please write to Us if you can explain that one so that we can discuss it. If you know how to do that you are sitting on a gold mine.

We have another little matter here. Let’s just say that you could convince Us that having a long life would be a good thing, how would you go about creating that? We are assuming that you find life to be bearable enough that the thought of longevity doesn’t scare the hell out of you, or at least it scares you less than the thought of death. You must now have the belief that you can affect the timing of your earthly departure. Perhaps you are jogging every day, working out at the gym three times a week, eating a vegan macrobiotic diet, abstaining from alcohol, tobacco and drugs, fasting and purifying your body, doing yoga, meditating, and more. Are you certain that will lead you to living a longer healthier life? Are you sure that an object won’t fall out of the sky and land on your head? Are you sure that your electric car battery won’t explode?  Do you know for certain that a terrorist won’t step into the store where you are shopping and blow himself and you up with his strapped-on bomb? Obviously, we’re just having some fun here, but wouldn’t it be ironic to come to such an end after giving your present over to guaranteeing a long and healthy life. The question again is, are you certain that no such present could happen for you?

The larger question is are you certain that you can control the future, that future that doesn’t exist? Are you sure you have that kind of control? How’s your track record? Has everything in your life come exactly as you have had it planned so far? Be honest here. This is your present you are thinking of sacrificing. If things always happen according to your hopes, go for it. When you celebrate your two-hundredth birthday, send me a postcard. I know, all communication will at least be electronic by then, but you catch my drift. The rest of you recognize that things don’t happen just the way you want them to. I will point out though, that if you are in the now, absolutely, and notice what is happening, you will know that all is occurring perfectly, and you would choose to change nothing. Your thinking, planning mind doesn’t have a clue what is in your best interest. What is in your now is absolutely in your best interest. It is necessary to see it, to not resist it but rather to welcome it in, opening to the wonder of it. You might as well. It is here and isn’t going anywhere. The last place to be is in the illusory future or wondering how long this now is going to last.

Let’s get on to the real biggie. Wanting to live longer is about the fear of death. If you are living in the now, totally present, there is no time. You are fully living. In truth, you are always fully living, but when you are not present you can become oblivious to that. Can you remember a time when you weren’t conscious, when you didn’t feel alive? If you can, please add that to your list of messages you can send to me. Tell me what that experience was like. Oh wait, how could you do that unless you had some consciousness in that moment. Not wanting to die is the fear of no consciousness. This is the terror that many do not want to face. The belief is that you are your body and when your body goes, so do you – down a black hole, into oblivion, never to exist again. The only way to deal with fear is to be totally in the present with it. Go right into that fear, that chasm, that void. See what is there. Feel where you carry it in your body. Use the five-step process with your fear of death.  A famous songwriter once penned the lines, “He who is not busy living is busy dying”. Living is done in the present. If you are somewhere else, you are busy dying. Not only that, but you likely think that death is real. Believing in reincarnation is no different than affirming the existence of heaven and hell. It is avoiding the now, trying to mask the fear of death with a happy, or terrifying, picture of what will happen after your body dies. Everything you could possibly wish or hope for – all your dreams are right here in this moment. It has nothing to do with your body. The body is merely the form in which you are experiencing the now. The future and past have nothing to inform you of. In the now is the absolute knowing of the truth of you, of your isness that cannot be destroyed.

The script has already been written. Where, how, and when the death of your body will occur has been determined. You are only fooling yourself if you think you can have any control over that. When I say that you all share the purpose of awakening, that is not to say it will be experienced in the present incarnation. Those of you who are reading these messages or are actively focused on living in the present have a higher likelihood of such realization, but nothing is guaranteed by your efforts. You are all aware of people who think a spiritual focus such as we write about here is insane. They accept the world as real and want to either make it better, get their share of the pie, or are hopelessly despondent. Perhaps they believe there is no God or Oneness or whatever It might be called, or that it is just a random universe, and we are all victims of whatever might be coming down. Without any thought or intention toward waking up, it is less likely for them to experience that in this now. That is fine. It is written when that stirring will begin. It is none of your business. If their thoughts and actions disturb you, it is just mirroring the part of you that shares the same fears and beliefs. Thanks for the reflection. What is certain is your awakening. The timing is known, just not to you. It makes no difference in the illusion of time if it happens now, in ten years, or in ten lifetimes. It makes no difference. When you wake up, time stops. Past and future dissolve; there is just now. When that is your truth, it will not matter how long it took to get there, because there is no awareness of a past. Meanwhile, the more you can succeed in remaining in the now and not letting your thoughts lead you, the more possibility there is for peace and joy now.

I want to return to the very beginning of this month’s question. There seems to be a concern in the reader’s mind as to whether life is really a gift. Everything is a gift! Everything happening in each instant is a gift. It is only the mind rejecting what is given and thinking something else to be better that keeps this gift from being received and enjoyed. Only an unquestioning mind unled by past thoughts can achieve this. The questioner goes on to suggest that a long life isn’t something to wish for or wish onto another because it will just make your prison term longer. Yes, if you are not in the now, longevity may mean more time in hell. However, an early death is no reprieve; it simply postpones the awakening to another bodily experience. Nothing wrong with that, but equating being in a body with suffering comes from not living in the now. Seeing life as a struggle, as a negative thing, comes from not living in the now. Being in the present has nothing to do with how long you will live. It has nothing to do with time. The gifts are simply here now waiting for you to embrace them. Those things that are real do not deteriorate and break down. Death is a gift for the one who can go no farther towards awakening in this body. Your life is forever. The death of this body, like its birth, is just a story, just a movie, just an illusion. The truth is here in the now.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Why should my goal be to not set any goals?

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A question has arrived from a member of a recent online group. I had lightly mentioned during the session that it could be your goal not to have any goals. A later discussion with the person’s family brought up many doubts about the advisability of such a course. Talking with family and friends is always an excellent way to have your doubts and confusion expressed for you. We’ll start with the word “should”, which I didn’t use. I suggest replacing that word with “could”, or “would”. “Should” implies a right or wrong, suggests that if you are “good” you will do it in this fashion. The statement that was made was not that it is wrong to have goals and good to not have goals. And, if you are following along at this point, how crazy is it to have the “goal” not to have “goals”.  The statement was made in jest, but also in all seriousness. Duality requires that something be said, but not worshiped as absolute truth. What we wish to do is to investigate what is involved in the whole goal setting process.

One of the ideas put forth by the pro-goal faction is that there can be no progress without goals; for individuals or the world to improve, goals must be set and reached. Is that really true? Let’s take a closer look. To begin with, goals are set by the mind. The mind knows only what it has learned in the past. Therefore, goals can only seek to achieve what already exists. The mind runs on old stories. These goals can only reinforce old ideas about how things should be.  People who are truly innovative, who help bring about remarkable change in the physical reality do so by ignoring their minds and what they have been taught. Instead, they observe what is and follow their inner guidance leading them to ideas that have not surfaced before. We could go back into history and witness those like Copernicus and Galileo who ignored what was taught to them about the earth being the center of the universe with everything rotating around it and observed what was to be seen through telescopes. They went inside to find explanations for what they observed. Or look at Einstein whose ideas went counter to everything that was taught in math and physics. He ignored all of that, in fact he was reported to not be a good student at all, being too busy seeing what he saw and going to his own intuitive guidance to find explanations that were not available in the world. New ideas do not spring out of old knowledge.

We could take a sidestep here and demonstrate the difference between being present, seeing what is there, and following inner guidance – all of which is not goal oriented. How can you have a goal about something that you know nothing about? Einstein developed theories that absolutely changed how we look at time, space, and matter. Later physicists have expanded upon these insights through their own observations and inner guidance. Parallel to this were goal-oriented scientists who chose to take these concepts learned from Einstein to develop a weapon that could be used to kill countless thousands of individuals. The old idea of war and destruction was a part of the justification for such goals. Even though centuries had shown that war never leads to peace, they took these old ideas and set a goal that allowed them to destroy two entire cities. It is very difficult to have a goal that doesn’t incorporate old ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, or should and shouldn’t. While humans continue to set goals as they have, nothing is learned. Past mistakes are repeated. War and poverty continue. Environmental degradation increases. There are fears that the ultimate result of human goals will be the annihilation of the planet. It could be. Goals are based on past learning and past learning is wrong and has never worked. Notice we didn’t say partially wrong. Past learning is all wrong – we are not talking of learning that allows one to function in the world, such as operating machinery and computers, cooking and finding one’s way around, but learning what life is about, what is important, and what is true. Something in the past may have been true for that moment in time, but it is not for today, not for now. Those answers lie in the present, not in the past. The past is not creative. It is repetitive. Repeating the same failing ideas will never make them work. A world that is not working cannot be made to work with the same old beliefs and ideas.

Why do you set goals? This is a place where being completely honest with yourself is important. Perhaps you believe that the realization of that goal will bring you happiness, peace, security, or love. I suggest that you look at your personal history at those times you have realized personal goals. Have they brought you any of that, other than the momentary high when the goal is first reached? Is that happiness, peace, security, or love sustained? Does that continue to be felt in your day-to-day life or do you compulsively set new goals to try to get that feeling back? Perhaps one sets the goal of being wealthy. Does that person ever have enough money? Is there a constant desire to accumulate more, perhaps more than could even be reasonably spent? So, the question remains of why the goal is being set. Again, honesty is important. If you are lying to yourself as to the true reason, how can you ever be satisfied? Is it because you want to feel that you have been successful in life? What is success? Who decides that? Whose approval is being sought? I suggest that you look long and hard for the true motivation for the goals you set. If you seek to feel at peace, then be at peace now. There is nothing that needs to be done. Peace is not earned. It is here right now, right in front of you. If you desire to feel loved, then love yourself now. Love everyone you meet today. Love what is happening now. Notice when you are not expressing love. Don’t decide that you need to be different in the future. Let go of unloving thoughts right now. Don’t feed them. One reason why goals fail is they are dishonest. You do not truly seek the realization of the goal; you seek something beyond that. What do you really seek? Where is it? Do you know exactly how to get there? My guess is that if you knew how to get there you would be there now. Why would you procrastinate for a minute? Instead, you have this belief that achieving a goal will bring you where you want to be. But it doesn’t do it. You don’t really have a clue. You are following somebody else’s formula for how your life should be. That formula is not working for them either, but it is what they learned.

Let’s take another sidetrack here. One of the greatest misunderstandings that most minds accept is that you have free will. You believe that you have a choice and your choices matter. You have no choice. It doesn’t matter what you do. Everything is predetermined. It is all planned. It is known exactly what you will do in each scripted moment. You will realize your Divinity, but you will have no idea where or how this awareness will come. Everything is in motion constantly moving you to that realization. You can go kicking and screaming, thinking that you know better than God, rejecting the Divine plan and trying to replace it with your goals. You can fail and suffer. Or. You can open your eyes and see what is before you. You can watch that plan unfold. You have no need to understand why things are set up as they are or why you are here. You are here. Nothing you could try to do will change that. The plan is far grander than anything you could imagine. You can welcome it and enjoy playing in it. Everything is offered right now, not in some nonexistent future. The past doesn’t exist either. Try to find your way to either place. Where are they? There is just the glorious now, all yours without even having to ask. There is nothing you can change no matter how much you might wish to. There is nothing you would wish to change if you truly let your thoughts go and accept what is here.

If there is something that is your special thing to bring to the world, it won’t come from the past and no teacher or teaching or idea can tell you what it is. If the past knew what it was, it would already have been done. It must come from the now. If it is yours to do, it cannot be anybody else’s. How can someone else tell you something that only you can know by being in the present, seeing what is there, and listening to your inner direction? How can anything you have been taught about who you are, or should be, and what kinds of goals you should or shouldn’t have be true for you? Is everyone supposed to do the same thing? Why are there so many different people then? That seems rather wasteful and inefficient. On the contrary there is something unique about you. You don’t discover that by being directed by your mind and all it has been taught from the past. That’s where you find how to be like others, rather than finding your own uniqueness. You learn how to be another crazy person in an insane world. So let that mind go. That’s what true creators do. They see what is in front of them in this very moment. They learn to hear and trust their inner voice, their inner guidance. This is about what to do right in this moment; it is not about goals for a nonexistent future. If there is a goal for you, you don’t know what it is. If there is a goal for you, it is for you and not for anybody else. You have a unique role to play in this awakening process. You find it, not by going where your thinking says you should go – as your thinking is faulty – but by listening and letting go of your mind to see what you are drawn to, what is drawn into your life. Everything is being provided; it is not your work to figure out what to do but rather to follow the trail that is being presented.

Everyone is here in a body with a common purpose. That purpose is to awaken to the truth of their Divine nature, to the truth of who they truly are. You are to be a loyal follower of your purpose. Your purpose is set. As long as you agree to let your life be led by your mind and old thoughts, you will remain asleep. Whatever goals you set are built on sand, not solid ground, and the whole structure will eventually collapse. You will be frustrated in your attempts to realize what you have dreamed of. Don’t take my word for this. Go ahead and set your goals. Give them everything you have. If that works for you…wonderful! If someday you realize this is not bringing you what you hoped for, come back and we’ll talk some more.

As you are awakening to the truth of you, which can only be experienced in the now with a silent mind; as you are now ignoring or no longer following the untruths that you have learned; as you see what is truly in front of you and you work with it rather than resisting it and attempting to create something different; as the Divine voice within you becomes increasingly clear – then you support others in doing the same. If you wish to end poverty on the planet, you let go of all beliefs you hold about scarcity. When you notice those thoughts arising, you do not act on them. You simply notice the thoughts and let them go. When you believe you do not have enough, you manifest poverty in the world. Goals emerge from a sense of not enough. That lack becomes your gift to the world. What is right in front of you is all you could ever need. Goals emerge from a belief that the world is not as it should be, and that it is your responsibility to change it. How has that succeeded? How many people have been trying to change the world and for how long? Every improvement that comes from human attempts is two edged. Every plus brings with it a negative. That is the nature of duality. Technological advances are used in war. Medical advances are used to keep people sick. It’s a big business. Money, rather than being used as a tool to help share what is there, is used for competition with winners and losers. Love is used to control others, to keep them where they are wanted. Again, be honest with yourself as to why you have your goals. Save yourself a lot of time and trouble. If you want to trust that you have enough wealth, do that right now.  What do you truly need that is not before you now? Let go of the dreams of accumulation and the future. You don’t live there. Accept the wealth that is offered right now, the beauty of nature, air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, and people to be with and to love. Go directly for what you want. Find it in the now rather than shuffling everything off to an imagined future that never comes. If you want to be happy, then be happy! It is right here in front of you. Look. Accept what you see. Welcome it. There is nothing to change. All that is required is to be present with it, to flow with the ever-changing moment. Notice the insanity of your thoughts.

We will go back to the original question, the humorously offered suggestion to have the goal of having no goals. That suggestion might be softened by saying to have the intention to have no goals. You notice when you have a goal and instead of trying to reach that goal you simply recognize its existence in your thoughts. Interesting. Is the goal something that can be realized now? No, it is off somewhere in the future. The goal is never fulfilled in the now. So where is happiness? Where are peace and love and fulfillment? They are all out there in the future. Where do you live? You can only live in the now. When does the future arrive? Never. Why sacrifice your now, the only place you will ever be, for, the future, where you will never be? But this is what you choose to do when you have goals. The insanity is in having goals. Sanity is living in and loving the only place you will ever be. Seems to be a no brainer, which is a fortunate state of affairs because you just might stop using yours.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

How can I see ego as perfect?

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In duality there is Spirit and there is ego. Most spiritual seekers label Spirit as good and ego as bad. In oneness there is no judgment; there is no comparison; there is no separation. We have spoken many times about accepting the perfection of the now. If your ego is speaking in the now and you wish to shut it up, to be rid of it, to be beyond it – are you accepting the now? Everything comes from the Divine. Notice that “everything” is in bold, italicized, and underlined. Everything comes from the Divine. Ego comes from the Divine. Spirit comes from the Divine. Everything is in perfection. Everything happens exactly as it should.  Everything is already written out, has already happened. You, the reader, believe that it is happening now and that any possible outcome could result from this present moment that is being experienced. You believe that what you choose to do or not do will make a difference in that outcome. You think that the moment is not perfect enough so you have to roll up your sleeves and get to work to make it more perfect. The mind says that ego is not part of the perfection and needs to go, that ego tells untruths and fills you with fear. Since everything comes from God, He apparently made a mistake here and it is your job to correct it. As I love to say, “Good luck with that”. Only ego could suggest that you can do God’s job better. Only ego can suggest that you should try to get rid of ego. What you resist persists. The ego may be many things, but it is no dummy; it is not self-destructive.

So, let’s turn it around and accept the perfection of ego’s presence in the now, that its pronouncements are exactly what you should be hearing. I could just leave things at that; leave you to meditate on it, and call it a day. The last few messages have been rather long and we each deserve a break. But….I’m going to play with this a little longer. The only reason that you are able to hear the voice of ego is that part of you believes it is speaking the truth. You suspect there are some things you need to fear and that you have to protect yourself, defend yourself, attack, blame. Again, ego can only speak these things in your ear if a part of you believes they are true. One of the great ironies – and I love irony, which is perhaps all there is in duality where opposites exist at the same time – is that in duality you can’t have Spirit without ego. Spirit indicates where home is and ego reminds you of why you are both terrified of and ill-equipped for going there. If you listen carefully to Spirit you will hear that there is nowhere to go; you are home now. Ego screams out, “The hell with that! This doesn’t feel like home.” It then proceeds to reel off a litany of all the characteristics that your true home should have; it should be a heavenly place where there are none of the negatives, only the positives. The ego promises that one day if you work hard enough, you will get there. Other days in despair it cries out that you will never make it; it’s hopeless.

Your mind might ask why God would create such a thing as ego which fills you with such confusion, untruth, and suffering. Why does God want you to experience doubt and fear? One of the ironies is that at the same time that God has arranged everything and it is all fixed in the illusion of time, you are the God that has done this. It reminds me of the old questions, “If God is all powerful can He create a rock so heavy that even He can’t pick it up?” So here you sit, the Child of God, not knowing who you are. You are here for no other purpose than remembering that you are the Child of God, but you have absolutely forgotten it. If someone were to suggest that truth to you, you would not believe them and would probably shove them away, at least figuratively. You believe that you are something small and inferior and sinful and deserving of punishment. Sometimes you try to convince yourself that you are more than that. This whole argument is ego arguing with ego. But this is the thing…without the ego you will never find your way home. Ego is there as a nearly constant reminder of what separates you from the truth. Ego isn’t responsible for that; you are doing it. The truth of you is pretending to be the untruth of you. Ego has this wonderful job of reminding you of what you are doing to yourself, so that you can see it and feel it. Of course most of what ego says is false, what it tells you to fear is actually powerless. Yet, a small or big part of you buys the ego story and is convinced that it is up to you to take the bull by the horns and change yourself and/or the world so that the worst doesn’t happen. It’s just like in the movies; you can’t have an exciting show without a good bad guy or bad girl or both. You can’t have a hero without a villain. Jesus had to have the devil tempting him.

You can’t wake up without ego. Your job is not to make an enemy of ego, to try to blame or get rid of it in order to live in an egoless state. Welcome it. Listen to what ego has to say. These are the untruths you believe that are standing in your way. To banish the voice of ego is to shoot the messenger. It doesn’t change the message. Instead of asking for Spirit’s support in offing the messenger, listen to what ego is telling you. If what it tells you fills you with fear or other strong emotions, go right into them. Face them. If you suspect there might be truth in what it is saying, then look at it. Investigate the thoughts. Are they really true? I can tell you until I am blue in the face, though I have neither a face nor a color, that everything ego tells you is a lie and everything you are afraid of isn’t real. However that will do you no good at all. It is not for you to put your trust in me, but to do the work yourself. Ego has brought you your assignments, now it is time for you to get down to work. As you are facing fears and looking to see what is really true, ego is going to do everything possible to stay in the picture. When you have found that there is nothing to fear and you are certain that ego thoughts are untrue, there is little space for ego to come in. Even then you can welcome in whatever openings ego finds because they represent places that distract you from being fully present.

Love the ego. Welcome it into your life and allow it to do its special job. This does not mean that you allow your mind to go crazy following the path ego has laid out for you. Hear what ego is saying without following, without choosing to act as it would have you do. A politician was once quoted as saying, “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.” Of course ego is not your enemy, it is your teacher. We are now complete with this message. If the ego is in your now, welcome that perfection and listen. See what you fear may be true so that you can let go of those false truths. If you aren’t aware of their presence, you cannot let them go. This is the invaluable service of ego. We may know how this will all play out, but you don’t and cannot. It is much more fun to be in the movie when you don’t know, and are simply experiencing the excitement of life in the now.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Why do you tell stories?

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Now it is my turn to ask the question. Why do you tell stories? As you cannot hear the tone in my voice, please understand that this is not asked in a judgmental tone. The question isn’t one of should or shouldn’t you tell stories or are stories good or bad. This is an investigation that we can conduct together into what the story is behind your stories. There are some tales that you might just tell one time. Say for example that an interesting thing happens to you while you are out shopping. You come home and share it with your partner. You laugh or cry or scratch your heads about it together and it never comes up again. You have lots of stories like that. Something makes an impact upon you and you choose to share it with someone else. These are not the types of narrations that we are going to zero in on, though the same thought processes could be used with any tale. What we are concerned with today are the stories that you carry around with you like gems in a sack; you take one out and polish it and share it over and over with different people or perhaps just mull it over for your own entertainment. Some of them you have shared dozens of times and maybe more than once with a given individual. It may be difficult to remember who you have shared it with or how times the tale has been told. Some of these stories are about successes you have had, something you achieved, or somebody you helped. Sharing such tales may make you feel better for a while. Some of your sagas might be about victimhood, what someone did to you or some unfortunate occurrence. Perhaps they relate what a tough year you have had or even about something that you have never been able to recover from.

The first thing I would like to investigate with you is to look at the reasons why you share these stories. The purpose in this line of inquiry is to support you in being in the now, to encourage the awareness of your awakened self. So we come back to your sagas and view them from that standpoint. What is your motivation, your reason for telling your tale? I wish to begin by suggesting that you become aware of the thoughts you have around any story, as I have encouraged you to do with each thought that enters your mind – a story being just a drawn out thought. It’s a picture you have from the past that you are sharing in the now. First of all, the narration has nothing to do with the now other than the fact that you are presently thinking about it or relating it. I think we can agree that the tale is about the past, not about what is now happening. As we know, there is no such thing as the past. You cannot find a place called the past. There is only the present moment. So the story is something your mind brings forth in the present that relates to an imagined past. I say imagined, because it isn’t really there. What you are describing is not going on. When you are telling the saga about this imagined happening, you can’t even have certainty that your story matches what supposedly happened if, indeed, anything did really occur. You have your perception of this past occurrence, peppered with your projections. If another who was involved in this story was to be the teller, the “facts” would likely be quite different. This would certainly be true if the other was the so-called victimizer in your story. So, we are not talking about “truth” when we refer to these narrations. If you say to your children that you are going to tell them a story, they won’t be expecting the evening news. They expect the tale to be made up. Are any of your stories really any different from that?

Let’s say that you want to tell a story about something you think happened to you that you wish had not occurred. We’ll say that it was painful, whether physically, emotionally, psychologically, financially, or some combination. You still feel that you suffer some from what happened. What now is the motivation for sharing this tale? This is what I want to encourage you to look at. I can’t tell you what your motivation might be for sharing any particular story, but if you are unconscious of your purpose, you are unaware of what you are actually doing and what effects it may have on your present moment. As we mentioned in the last message, your actions are very important. Through the action of retelling this story you are expressing your belief in its verity. Do you want your listener to think “Oh, poor you” and give you at least a spiritual hug to ease your pain? If that is the case, you are asking for validation of your painful saga, for support for your victimhood. You are asking them for agreement that this event should not have happened. Not only are you carrying around an old story that keeps you from noticing what is in the now, but your old story is based on not accepting what happened. Instead of experiencing what is present in the now, are you choosing to fill your life with sadness and anger from a thought memory in your head?

You may not choose to have a memory come to mind, but you do choose to hold onto it and to feed it through retelling. Is there a benefit from this choice? Does the sharing of your narrative allow you to release it forever? Likely there is a tradeoff where you receive a short term relief from the listener in exchange for a longer term continuance of the pain and suffering. If you continue to tell the story it is like another drink for the alcoholic. The attention helps for a while, but the benefit wears off and you feel compelled to tell the tale again. Of course you are not limited to one story; you likely have a collection of them in your arsenal. Look at the different elements in your narration and ask yourself if you are sure that each one is true. Be honest with yourself. You have nothing to gain from trying to pull your own leg. What happens if you accept the absolute perfection of that event having occurred? If this presents a big challenge you can ask Spirit to help you accept the perfection of the now. This story is coming into your now, but why? Is this tale to be told, or is it to be released so that it no longer blocks you from being present? It is not being suggested that you pretend as if this event never happened to you, to go into denial, but what happens when you choose not to be weighed down by something that is nowhere in sight in the present moment?

Perhaps an old story that you tell repeatedly is one that was highly traumatic for you, such as experiencing violence, molestation or rape, or the death of a loved one. Part of the belief that your mind carries and society reinforces is that you not only are saddled with this event for the rest of your life, but that it is your duty to never forget. A judgment, a condemnation of the act must be expressed. Such actions are not acceptable. It is your job to ensure that the deed is never forgotten, to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The perpetrator deserves condemnation and punishment. This is what mass consciousness teaches. Now, accepting the perfection of the now isn’t a justification for an action. It is not saying that it is okay to intentionally harm another. But the truth is that it happened. Right or wrong it happened.  The truth is that whatever is in the now is happening. There is nothing you can do to change any of that. Asking Spirit to help you accept the perfection of what is happening or has happened does not mean you want to be shown that it was okay for somebody to do what they did. This is about you. It is about realizing that anything that is in your now has already been accepted into existence. Not accepting it is a denial that it has already happened. It is not changeable. Any attempt to accomplish that is a fool’s task, one at which you cannot succeed. Notice your pain; notice your emotions; return to the present and see what is there now. Pain and suffering are not constants. Everything moves and changes. Let it; watch it. The past is unchangeable. The future does not exist. There is just now. Do your best to focus here. This requires enormous will, but no understanding. It asks only that you persist in staying present, while noticing when you aren’t able to. Your job is not to understand. That is a gift that may or may not be brought into your now, but it is never the goal. There is no goal, only focus. Free will is not a matter of being able to choose what will happen; it is the ability to choose your reaction. Fighting what is or what has happened will lead to a life of pain and suffering, to war within you and with the world.

I want to remind you that every person out there, no matter how hurtful their actions might appear to be, is a Child of God, trying the best they can to find love, to find their way home, to find God. Like you they may not always be making the best choices in order to accomplish that, but they will always have the option to learn from the choices they make. Nobody will ever find the love that is the truth within them if their mind is consumed with victimhood.

The idea may be formulating now in your mind that telling stories might not be a wise course to choose to follow. However, it is always a good idea to look at why a story wants to be told. Perhaps you are listening to another tell their sad or angry story. That brings to your memory a similar type of story that you might have once told, but now you accept the perfection of what occurred and may feel a deep sense of gratitude for what happened. You are aware of how that event helped you to let go of a whole layer of victimhood and you feel freed by that acceptance. You might feel guided to share your story and what you have done with it. Rather than suggesting to them what they could do with their story or lecturing them on how it hurts them – usually not the best choice in any situation – you just talk about you. Maybe you tell your story in such a humorous manner that people laugh at it and that brings you enjoyment, because you have not elicited pity but have brought lightness to the whole situation. You may need to be able to laugh at yourself. Laughter helps to center people in the now. Stories can provide an absolutely  beautiful, divine service. Jesus conducted much of his teaching through stories or parables. They can bypass the ego defense structures people have in place to fend off challenging ideas. Sometimes I “out” Michael by sharing some of his personal stories when I am talking with groups. He is hesitant to do this himself, not wishing to appear arrogant or superior. He gets to observe – whether it is a story about a time he fell flat on his face but learned much, or a situation when he acted in the way I was suggesting he go, despite great fear – that others can benefit and gain courage and inspiration from hearing them. Stories can help move people off the pedestal where you may have placed them. Such tales remind you of what you hold in common with them. They can show possibility.

Again, ask yourself why you want to tell a story. It might prove helpful to go on a story diet, severely limiting the number you share. Instead, spend that energy investigating the stories, checking to see if holding on to them is keeping you out of experiencing the now, looking to see what untruths may be promulgated through them. Always look at the motive behind your wish to share a tale. As a story comes to mind, remember to notice if you have told it before. Be brutally honest with yourself about why the story bears repeat telling. The ego can be very convincing in encouraging you to share a story because it would be “good” for someone else to hear it, when the actual purpose is to get stroked for how evolved you are. There is nothing wrong with wanting a little attention, but it is helpful if you are upfront with yourself about your motives. When in doubt, you might wait until the story seems to be dragged out of you. Do you find yourself being in a competitive situation with others, wanting to get your story in? Try being a good listener, perhaps asking them questions. Is there something there for you in another’s story? Do you find yourself in judgment of what you are hearing? What are you projecting onto the other person? Realizing that will likely benefit you more than having your fifteen seconds of glory from telling your own tale. If you truly listen and find common ground with another, there may open up a space for you to offer true support. Be compassionate with others with their stories as you are hopefully gentle with yourself and your old sagas. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Why should how I act make any difference if nothing matters?

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Whoa! That was a somewhat long question, so I may give you a somewhat long answer. We’ll see how it comes out. I’m just in the now. I am here at the beginning of this message and so are you. So, let’s walk together through it. The supposition in this question that nothing matters is absolutely correct. Because this world is an illusion and is not real, what you do here, what anyone does here does not matter. Within this illusion, in a hundred years none of you will be here. Nobody will remember most or perhaps all that you have and will have done in your life. It will be nearly impossible to measure any effect, positive or negative, you have had upon the planet. Add another thousand years and you totally disappear. Any descendants are too far removed to have heard of you. Perhaps you left some work of art or book that can be traced to you, but those chances are slim. All vestiges of you being here physically will fade away. Nobody will know or care. It will be as if you never existed. You didn’t. Whatever you choose to do or choose to not do will make the world neither more real nor less real.

There is only one reason, as far as you are concerned, for your presence here – seeming to occupy a body – and that is to wake up to the truth. This body is not you. This planet is not real. It is a place where the truth of you is playing. It feels very real; it seems authentic. But your job is to wake to the truth of yourself, to find yourself in the eternal now, freed from the fantasies of past and future. When you think about what you should do and how it might make a difference, you are talking about past and future. You are talking of a past that has filled you with ideas about what one should do, or perhaps more specifically what the one called you should do, informed by parents, teachers, friends, religion, morals, and mass media. Often the question arises as to what a “good” person would do. You often act in a way that you believe can affect the future, to change it in a way that you deem to be better for others, for yourself, or perhaps for both.

Again we say that your action makes no difference for the world or for reaching your goals. When you follow your thoughts, which come from a past that doesn’t exist, to try to change a future which doesn’t exist – you are really spinning your wheels. The only certainty is that you will not fully realize the goals you have set and that you will likely not be content with whatever gains you may feel you have made. There will be a lingering sensation of failure and the thought that there is more out there for you to achieve. You might even feel that you are a total failure, and sink into hopelessness.

It may sound like I’m coming down heavily on the side of agreeing that it doesn’t make any difference what you do, but I’m not saying that at all. You are the one who is experiencing the pain and suffering that result from following the dictates of your thoughts. What you do does make a difference for you. When you fail to achieve a goal, you experience pain. If you choose not to have goals, so that failure is impossible, you likely feel guilty for wasting your life. A possible decision in either case is to hide in one or more addictions. So it appears that I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth. First I say that it does not matter what you do, but now I seem to be suggesting that your actions might cause you pain. It seems that no matter what you do you may suffer. Your choices and your goals will not make a difference in the world. That is because you are choosing from ideas and thoughts that come from the past, that are grounded in ignorance, brain washing, guilt, and fear, wishing to change something that you have no hope of changing. This is a textbook example of insanity. You are trying to change what cannot be changed, and then you will likely find a target to blame for your failure, but, remembering about projection, it will come down to blaming yourself.

We have been over this the past few messages. Your job is not to change the future; it is to accept the now. For most of you, your now is filled with fears. How many of you worry about financial support? Do you go off to a job each day that you wouldn’t leave home for if the carrot of a paycheck were not dangled in front of you? Some of you may wake up and go to that job because there is no greater joy in the world for you today? Perhaps some of you do have that satisfaction, so, let’s plow ahead and spread the net a little wider. How many of you experience the fear that you will not have enough money, that someday you might be homeless, unable to feed yourself or your family, or at least not be able to afford the things you would like to have? If you have those fears and allow yourself to dwell upon them, then you live your life with some foreboding about the future and allow those possibilities to have an entrance. I have suggested to you that should such fears emerge you do one of two things. Most importantly, don’t invest time and energy on the thoughts. Let them go and let the next one come. If the worries seem to be repeat visitors, or being felt so intensely, are hard to let go of, then look directly at the beliefs or thoughts and ask yourself if you are sure they are true. These actions support you in being in the now and in hearing your inner guidance. .

Dwelling on thoughts of lack and scarcity keeps you imprisoned in fear. If you look at the examples of Jesus talking about money that made it into the New Testament, you will notice that he never suggested one should worry about it. There were no recommendations to plan for your future. He said that you would be provided for; you would be taken care of. He said to leave everything and to follow him. This is the voice of Spirit. Leave your thoughts and fears and follow that inner voice. That quiet, Divine voice will always lead you to the perfect place. Everything is happening as it should. Your efforts to resist or change what is can only muck up your experience of the now.

Let’s bring this back around to action, to what you do. Perhaps you are ignoring the thoughts of lack and scarcity and are letting them go as has been suggested, but finding yourself confronted with a choice of actions, you may realize that your fears of lack are continuing to run the show. You don’t feel like going to work today, but your fears about money, supporting your family, and losing your job send you off on your way. Your actions speak louder than your words. This is where how you act becomes important. This doesn’t matter to the universe, to God, to Spirit, or to Me. It matters to you. How you act expresses what you believe to be true. Notice when you are acting out of fear and scarcity. This is driven by false beliefs that you hold as true.

If you want to accelerate this process of awakening, to shorten the time of experiencing the illusion of your separation from your Divinity, then it is time to fully face your fear. It is time for you to act in accordance with your joy and your inspiration, rather than from terror. Your finances are being taken care of. You need to let that happen or those fears of lack will be your constant companions. I hear some heavy breathing out there. Some of you are considering forwarding to the next email and ignoring this one. That’s fine. Your fears will be with you until you realize they no longer serve you. My only job is to shake you. It is your job to allow yourself to be shaken out of your false beliefs. You don’t have to wait to do this, but you are certainly welcome to hit the snooze button as many times as you wish. Either way, you are taken care of, but only one of those choices allows you to experience that safety. You can look into every area, every thought that comes into your mind where you notice you react out of fear. The fear may be that you are not responsible, not loveable, or not a good person. Perhaps you withhold your truth from others out of fear of their reaction, of being attacked, of not being loved, or of being abandoned.  I’m not suggesting that you charge ahead saying every thought that comes to mind, as you quit your job and leave your partner. I’m not saying not to do these things either. The “counting to ten” rule might be helpful, that is waiting ten seconds before saying something to see if you are still guided to say it. Look to see why you want to say something. Do you feel hurt and wish to strike back? The end result of your speaking then will be that you are still in pain; you are yet driven by fear. Face this in yourself rather than projecting it on another. However, if you feel guided by your inner voice, go ahead and speak. Know that the other may not be ready to hear what you are offering. That doesn’t matter. Let your words go without expectation of any certain response.  Perhaps it will take some time for your words to be heard. Maybe the ideas will have to come another time from another source. That is not your concern. Act fearlessly in the now and remain fearlessly in the now after acting. When you withhold your words out of fear, you are not trusting. Your inaction maintains a state of fear in your life. When you believe and prejudge that a certain type of behavior is necessary for you to exhibit in order to be a good person, you are living in the prison of the past. It makes it impossible to be present.

There are no good or bad people. There are just people. Some of those people suffer greatly and some don’t. Those who live from the untruths of their thoughts suffer greatly. The more certain they are in the dictates of their minds, the more they suffer. There is no way out for them.  When cracks of doubt begin to emerge in the beliefs a person has been taught, then suffering can begin to lessen; then there may be a way out. Those who begin to suspect that everything they thought they knew may be untrue have a great potential for finding the inner voice, for living in the now. These possibilities expand exponentially when you “put your money where your mouth is”, when you act despite fear and uncertainty. You have been acting from things you thought were true; now you are acting in accordance with the release of those untruths. It requires courage and determination to follow such a path. The world will continue to spin around as the same insane asylum no matter how you act. All that will change will be your perceived place in it. Such action can bring you into awareness of the now that has always existed. The past can fall away and the future does not exist. What is present is love and peace, no matter what the outer experience might be. In the now there is no scarcity of money, food, shelter, clothing, love, friendship, or meaningfulness. You will simply notice the glories that surround you while listening to your Divine guidance, absolutely disconnected from the illusions of a past or concerns about a non-existent future. You will just be in this very moment, playing the game to its fullest, unconcerned by results. The absolute awareness of and perfection of action in the now only becomes manifest when the mind has no thoughts from the past. You flow with, rather than resisting everything that comes your way. Your words and actions are directed only by that quiet but sure inner voice.

Now we return to the original question. We could say that, yes, action is everything. You can lie and deceive yourself with words, but not with actions. You can be terrified by scarcity – that you won’t be taken care of – and that if you follow your inner voice your future will be endangered. You can have that fear but if you act as if you have faith you will find that you survive. You can realize that it is not only possible to live from the joy of your inner inspirations, but that you will thrive there. On the other hand, if you allow your terror to run your life, to limit your choices, it will always be there. Fear will rule your now in such a way that you will find it nearly impossible to truly feel life, to feel the now. If you act as if you trust God and Spirit, even though you aren’t sure that you do, and you persevere with such actions, no matter how many rocky moments you go through, you will reach a point of certainty that everything is being taken care of. You will realize that your little self does not have anything to worry about. That moment will never arrive as long as you try to take care of yourself, of course failing to do that adequately. For some of you it has taken, or will take, so much of being bumped around so hard and so many times by your failed attempts at control, that you are willing to let go of the reins and turn them over to Spirit.

Let’s tie this up now into a tidy little package that you will hopefully not turn into an idea, rules,  and beliefs you feel you should follow if you want to wake up. Notice when fear comes into your mind, warning that certain actions are required in order to insure your safety. Be absolutely willing to look at that. As you look at these programmed beliefs that pop up, ask yourself if you wish to live for eternity in a world where this is the truth. If the answer is no, then you can trust that the thought is not from Spirit. Spirit’s thought is always to let it go, that We will take care of you. Do you wish to live in a world where you are free of responsibility, a world where you can just let go and know that everything is handled? If that’s not the case for you, I apologize. You have somehow stepped into the wrong room. The classroom you seek is down the hall. Look at your actions. Are they honest, or are you acting in a way that you would prefer not to?  Notice where your fear is running you. Be willing to look directly at the fear. Dive into it. Do the five-step process. Act as if you are fearless. I will give this guarantee. Because you are not yet actually fearless, you will run into some bumps down the road. That’s okay. Letting go of thousands of years of conditioning is not an easy matter. As I mentioned, it takes courage and persistence. When the horse throws you, get back on. Act as if you are fearless, and trust until it is no act. Act as if there is nothing to worry about, because Spirit has it all handled in a better way than you have ever been able to achieve. This is the truth, but you will never experience that simply by hearing these words. It is required that you walk the walk. Welcome to Act I, the only one you can ever be in.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

How should I deal with my strong feelings?

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There is a significant difference between noticing a feeling that comes up in your now and defining yourself by that feeling and accepting it as the truth about you. In the moment you may feel grief. To describe yourself by saying that you are grieving expresses a thought from the past which will carry on indefinitely. This becomes your belief of who you are. The former simply means that you are aware that a feeling is present. You can then pay attention to the next thing that comes to you. Rather than holding on to the feeling, which then becomes an idea and identification, you simply allow yourself to notice and release each feeling or thought as it emerges into your awareness. You can tell when someone has defined themself by an emotion, because they hold on to that same feeling/thought for many years. Holding on to old feelings and judgments keeps you out of the present. You become a prisoner of those emotions, caught in a web of suffering. We would be the last to say to ignore the feelings. Acknowledge them! Then let them go and let the next feeling or thought enter. Be aware of where there might be roles you think you should play to accompany the feelings that come. Are you supposed to act sad, angry, or as a victim? Recognize when you are playing a role and then move on. It is also not for you to analyze, justify, or rationalize what appears. What stories have you been telling yourself? Are you certain they are true?

I want to suggest that whoever in your life, past or present, you feel you really know…you are fooling yourself about that. You have no idea who they are. You see your projection upon them, not them themselves. In a similar manner you are aware that nobody around you fully and completely sees you. Part of that comes from your hiding in the belief that invisibility provides you with safety; that if people really knew who you were it would be all over. They would reject you, wouldn’t love you, would see you for the idiot you are afraid you are, and would ostracize you – throw you into the wilderness to the wolves. If people knew you “warts and all” they would not want to be around you. Instead you want to present the image that you believe is loveable. This is not honest. It is not the truth of who you are in the now, and you become hostage to upholding that disguise. These false fronts might include that you are a good mother, considerate, spiritual, honest, intelligent, successful, and on and on. These are ideas, images. What is a spiritual person like? They never lose their temper, judge others, feel guilt, or suffer pain? If inappropriate feelings or thoughts arise, you then want to deny them. If they are too strong, you may succumb to them, go into despair and self-blame, and define yourself as an unspiritual failure. Meanwhile, you are free to be who you are in this moment, which might be angry, grieving, sad, happy, jealous, or guilty. Feel that fully without defense or thinking you should be different. Experience the full spectrum of emotions, and then let them go to feel the next item on your palette.

If it is not okay to feel those things, you either cover them up or succumb to them and they will run your life. None of these feelings or ideas about yourself has anything to do with the truth of who you are. They are experiences to be had and then released. If you try to understand or explain the truth, you will fail. These beliefs become a place to hide, but provide no real peace. As we said before, you can never truly know another or yourself or be known because there are no such separate identities. All those defining thoughts about self and others are just that, thoughts. They come from the past and have nothing to do with the now, the only place you will ever be. In the now you will have many experiences, but none of them have anything to say about who you are, only about what is happening. So buckle up and enjoy the ride. The only thing you can be sure of is that the now always changes. If you hold on to it you leave little room for the new that is constantly appearing. Pain can dissipate quite quickly, but suffering happens when you hold on to your pain. Notice your emotion; take a breath; let it go; see what comes next. Receive each moment fully, without resistance. Let the perfection of the now wash over you. Hold on to none of it, whether it feels good or bad.

Why are we saying these things to you? We are not telling what the truth is or what your spiritual practice should be like. Such things cannot be done. Whatever is suggested here can be considered as “pointers”, pointing toward the truth but never defining it. That work is yours. Reading these words is of little value if they are just taken as ideas, and is of no value if they are taken as the truth. If you are at peace with all that is present in your life, continue as you are. If you are not at peace but fear rocking the boat, look at that and let it go. The longtime habit is to be run by the past and fearful of the future. The only “truth” I would attempt to offer is that anything you think is true is not and that holding on to any belief will only bring you more pain and suffering. Truth is being brought to you each moment for that moment. Receive it and let it go. See where that leads you.  It is one thing to experience a feeling of guilt. It is a whole different matter to hold on to the thought that you are guilty. I suspect that if all you focus on is the now you will eventually experience unconditional love. However, if you deny any present feeling that doesn’t look like it is unconditional loving, you will hold on to pain and suffering. The universe presents you with a feeling of guilt. Do you hold on to that guilt as the truth of you? Do you deny that you are guilty? Admit you have the feeling and let it go without analysis. If it sticks around you could ask yourself if you are absolutely certain of its truth. Do you have a thought or a belief that seems to justify the emotion? Do you feel guilty because you think you have done something wrong? There is an enormous gulf between emotion and thought. The thought likely triggers the emotion. Is that thought actually true? Do your words and actions determine what happens to everyone else on the planet? Are you that powerful? Are others helpless in the face of your will? Perhaps you believe that your thoughts, words, and actions affect only a few and not all. In that case, who is running the switchboard? Who determines which people are affected by you and how? Are these other people helpless in the face of your power? So, you are feeling guilty but can you say for sure that you actually are guilty? Do you see the difference between a feeling in the now and truth?

Question every thought that enters your mind. You don’t ignore the feelings, but you don’t give them a special value either. Notice them. Be aware of the thoughts. It is all just what is there right now in this moment. It is not right or wrong, justifiable or unjustifiable. What is the gift behind it? If your feeling of guilt actually stimulates you to investigate the truth behind your emotion, what a service it has provided for you. If you were to deny your feelings, those investigations would not take place. They also would not happen if you wallow in the guilt, holding on to it in your certainty that you are at fault. The negative emotion is a signal to you that you believe something that isn’t true but is running your life. With physical pain it is much easier to see what is to be done. If you touch a hot stove, you quickly pull your hand away. With psychological pain the lines aren’t as clear. You may actually believe that the thought that is triggering the pain is a good thought; one you should hold onto. Old thoughts are useless in dealing with psychological pain. When you listen to them, your mind is too busy to let true wisdom come in. If the past truly helped you to decide what to do now, we should have ended war long ago. Culturally, we would take nothing personally. We would not be in competition with others, fighting over the scraps that we believe are never enough. The old ways have never worked. Your spiritual practice and beliefs have also failed you. They don’t help you when you most feel the need of being saved. Thoughts can only come from the past, but you live in the now. When the point comes where you are only accepting what comes to you in the quiet space of the now, not listening to old thoughts from the past, then you will act with the same certainty and decisiveness that you employ instantly when confronted with physical danger or pain. Awareness of what appears to you in the now is similar to what happens when you do the five-step process. It might support you to check that process out.

We call it the perfection of the now and a gift because you have asked Spirit to support you in awakening. Therefore, everything that comes into your now is there to support waking up. If you are listening to your old thoughts, you cannot open the gift. There needs to be a quiet that comes from letting go of the old thoughts and the accompanying feelings. In that calm space you can hear the guidance for the moment. Nothing is your responsibility. You are carrying a weight you don’t need to bear. Let go of past thoughts. Give up worries about the future. Everything is happening in perfection. All you need to do is to let it happen. Your feelings are there to let you know when you aren’t doing that. Pay attention and then let go and notice the next thing that comes. It is recommended that you reread this message several times. Your ego mind wants to accept the validity of your feelings and to hold on to them. It wants to convert them into ideas of yourself that you can believe in and use to justify your pain and suffering.

Enjoy it all…or don’t. It doesn’t matter.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

How do I deal with distraction?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit