If the world is an illusion, why does it matter what I do?

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That is a very good question, though all questions are very good questions. It sounds as if it might be a question from the ego to try to trip me up, but it isn’t really. It is a very profound, important, and deep question. We have been talking about this world being an illusion; that nothing here is real; that nothing is really happening. If that is the case then why should it make any difference at all what somebody does? What difference does it make if you help or hurt others, if you love them or kill them? None of it is real, so there is no consequence for any action because nothing happened. Why not just do whatever brings you the most pleasure in each moment, no matter what the illusionary effect upon another?

Since this is the world of duality there are two answers to this question. The first one is that you are absolutely right. It makes no difference at all what you do. It doesn’t matter what happens here. It is inconsequential if you appear to make situations better or worse. You’re right. It is not real. Nothing is really happening. The part of you that believes that it does make a difference is trying to do one of two things. First, you may be trying to create a heaven on earth. If that is true with you, I will just say “Good luck with that, love”, and suggest you read this previous message. Secondly, the whole idea of thinking that anything you do here makes a difference is motivated by an attempt to win the approval and forgiveness of God. The thought is that if you can do the right thing, if you can guess what God wants you to do – which is the entire basis for how the Bible is interpreted – you can get back in God’s good graces. Of course the Old Testament shows that if you fail to do this all hell will break loose. You will be punished and probably killed, or worse, if you don’t do God’s will. This is your ego’s teaching about why what you do in a body matters. On that level, on the level of God caring, it doesn’t matter. God is not going to love you more or less based on what you do or don’t do here. God has no idea that you are even here. This is purely your dream. It is your belief that you have separated from God. He does not have a horse in this race. God loves you unconditionally. You are his beloved only Child and there is nothing you could possibly do to make Him love you more or make Him love you less. That is the end of it. Again, on that level it makes absolutely no difference what you do here.

Now for the long awaited and eagerly anticipated dualistic answer, the other side of the coin. Yes there is a difference here. Here’s what the difference is. You don’t always want to face it and it doesn’t always feel this way, but you are in hell. What you do or don’t do here makes no difference to the illusion. It does make a difference to your experience of the illusion. If you treat yourself in a loving way, if you notice where you feel guilt or pain or where you are suffering, and you bring all of that to Spirit, what happens is not that you create heaven on earth, but you create a space of experiencing less and less pain. It’s only about you. That might sound selfish to you, but it is only about you. Everything else is your creation, your reflection, your mirror. You think there is a world out there to fix, but it is your mind that is creating that world. The only fixing that can be done is in your mind. That adapting means aligning with Spirit instead of with ego. Back to the original question that sounded like an ego trap, well, it can be. The ego may be yelling in your ear that since this is all an illusion and nothing really matters that you have permission to do anything to anybody without consequences. You can do anything and get away with it. That’s one way the ego can talk to you. This is a ruse; it’s a trick; it’s a magic show. Whatever you do to someone else you do to yourself. If you hurt them, you hurt yourself. If you steal from them, you steal from yourself. The only reason to take from another comes from the belief that you don’t have enough. If that is your belief, no amount of taking from others will change this conviction. Your lack is in your mind and not in the world. Now, in addition to still not having enough, you are building up more guilt. The part of you that believes you are being judged by God fears that your hand is getting worse and worse. When the game is over you will be slaughtered by God. Remember, this is not about God; it is about you and your experience.

The difference it does make is that if you act from the guidance of ego, your experience in a body is going to be painful. If on the other hand you act on the guidance of Spirit, your experience of being in a body, of being in the illusion, is going to become increasingly pleasant and enjoyable. This is not because the world is likely to change around you, but your way of seeing it will change. It matters to you what you do in the world. If you want to experience the peace and the love that are your birthright, then what you do is to listen to Spirit one hundred percent of the time. You listen to ego zero percent of the time. Now you are laughing! Of course you’re at times going to listen to your ego, but hold the intention to always listen to Spirit. When you notice yourself acting from ego – stop! Bring it to Spirit. Beyond that, become proactive. Don’t wait until the shit hits the fan before you ask Spirit what to do. It’s very hard to hear Spirit when you are in chaos….and you’ve got shit all over your face. It’s very difficult to be aware of Spirit at that time. Get in the habit of talking to Spirit before you get into the deep doo doo. When you wake up in the morning, ask Spirit what He would have you do today. Get into the habit of asking Spirit “What would you have me do?” Listen for the response and then do it. If you can remember that one time a day it is enormous. And then it will be twice a day, three times a day; it will become more and more a constant way of being. As you develop this habit of asking Spirit for guidance and following it, Spirit will communicate to you more and more clearly. Your ability to hear will sharpen. You will develop the capacity to anticipate those moments that would have previously been quite troublesome for you, so that you can ask for help before the flame is ignited. Remember that what you are always asking for is to change your way of thinking and your way of seeing. You want to see everything through Spirit’s eyes; you are not asking Spirit to intervene and change the world. Spirit sees the whole picture and is bringing you exactly the world experience you can use in order to awaken. Asking Spirit to interfere implies that you know better how things should be. It goes back to believing your actions make a difference.

So, to return to the question, does it make any difference in this world of illusion what you do? To God, no; to you, yes. Allow yourself to be freed by the first answer we gave. Remind yourself whenever you are feeling guilty about anything you have done or not done, “sins” of commission or “sins” of omission, that it doesn’t matter. Your job is not to change your behavior but to change your mind. Ask Spirit to remind you that you are innocent, that there is nothing you need to do or anything you could do that would be wrong. You don’t even need to ask Spirit for help. God will not judge you, period. What makes a difference is choosing an action that is aligned with Spirit, not because it is the right thing to do but simply because it is aligned with truth and love and helps bring you the experience of peace. Such alignment can take hours, days, weeks, months, and maybe years off this period of being in hell that you have been experiencing. Both the time and intensity can be reduced. You can feel yourself to be moving off of death row. Ultimately time is an illusion, but while you feel yourself to be here it can feel infinite. It feels like it goes on and on and on, like the only end to it is a graceful death. But even death brings no conclusion, because it, too, is not real. You cannot be killed. You go on. Awake or asleep, you go on. In agony or in peace, you go on. All that is certain is that your pain will not go on forever because forever is eternity and in eternity you are One with God. The illusion has a beginning and an ending. Both have already happened; in fact they never happened at all. All that seems to keep your separate life alive is your belief that it is real. By asking for Spirit’s guidance in every moment that you remember to do so, you come closer and closer to realizing a freedom from the prison you have created. The ego mind that created this illusory jail cannot end it. That is why you must ask and listen for Spirit’s help.

It is very simple. It is easy. You have the choice to listen to and follow the guidance of Spirit. There is no duality in that there is only one thing to do, one choice to make. The more you do it, the better you get at is; the easier it becomes. The better you get at it, the more you will do it. Everything becomes lighter and easier. The truth is always simple – and beautiful. We are always here at every moment, whispering in your ear. “Come this way. Come this way.” All you have to do is to allow yourself to become quiet enough to hear. If there is too much ego chatter and noise, give that to Spirit, and ask again to hear with Spirit’s ears and to see through Spirit’s eyes. Nothing else. Act from that place with trust and love. And peace.

Good Now

Sanhia

If the world is an illusion, why does it feel so real?

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The ego is many things, but one thing that it is not is dumb. Your ego is very clever and incredibly fast. It has convinced you that it is something separate from you, as it has convinced you that you are separate from God. It seems as if what the ego shows you and tells you is not coming from within yourself but is simply obvious truth that the outer world is presenting. The ego convinces you of your victimhood, pain, and suffering, while hiding the truth that everything springs from your own mind. We are not going to go back over the creation story now, though you can click here if you wish to revisit it. The bottom line of this creation story is that somewhere along the line the ego voice wanted to create a place for you to hide. It had to be a place that was so well hidden that you could not only hide from God, but also from the truth of yourself. Your ego needed to create such a compelling, convincing scene that you could totally believe in it. I am saying that the ego created this, but of course the ego is a part of you. The human mind assumes that only God could have created such an enormous and complicated universe, but it was you, the Divine Son of God, created in God’s image, who accomplished this. So through your ego you created this world with its laws that appear to have a consistency about them – although physicists for years have realized that this “consistency” does not hold up when they look at macro and, particularly micro structures. Neither time nor matter are what they appear to be. So ego-you created, or miscreated, this physical earth and placed your Divinity into a fragile, limited body, convincing you that this is the real you. Seemingly unable to hear the still, quiet voice of Spirit within, you live as if this is the truth. And when one suggests to you that the world and your body are not real you pound the tabletop and yell, “That sure feels real! The cold air feels real, and so does water and my thirst, and what about the animals and plants? These rocks and erosion, and our history and evolution, and the love/hate I feel for others – all of this feels so real. How can it not be real?” I can remind you that the last dream you had might have seemed very real as you slept. Now that you are awake do you for a moment seriously believe that your dream actually happened? Perhaps some of you do, but most probably do not. You will have a similar experience as you awaken from this dream of your body in the physical universe.

Let’s come back to story of everything seeming so real. The ego did a brilliant job. There is enough beauty here that you can say, “Oh, this is God’s creation:” It also has enough destructive qualities, pain, and confusion that you might say, “If this is God’s creation, He certainly doesn’t seem to like us very much does he?” This generates a great discussion. Is there a God or not? If there is a God, why would he create or allow such pain and suffering? Why would he create war or children starving to death? There must not be a God. Or, perhaps God does exist and He created those things because we are bad and have to learn how to be better. Whether you decide on no God or angry God, you are led into a place of helplessness and hopelessness. Either we are guilty and deserve to be punished or there is no God, no meaning to anything. We live, we die – end of story.

The second part to this is that your ego created your physical body, making it seem so real. You can feel the heart beat and panic when you can’t breathe. It seems as if this body is who you are. You are surrounded by other physical bodies and they are they and you are you, and you can’t be one with them. It can’t happen no matter how much you might try to merge with another. You can have communication and relationship, but you remain separate, unable to bridge the physical chasm between you. Fortunately, you have evolved in your civilization to a point where you have the technology to create scenes on video that also seem so real. When you watch these shows you really believe that these things are happening before your eyes. Even your thinking mind knows that nothing is really happening – that it is all a play; it’s all staged. Much of what you see was actually put in to the background by technicians after the scene was shot. It’s all fantasy. Yet you still react as if it is actually happening. Your bodies and this world were created in the same way, to appear to be very real. What are you to do with that? Having the awareness that the world is not real, you can bring your experiences to Spirit. You can ask for help in seeing the world through Spirit’s eyes rather than the ego’s eyes. Gradually this will happen.

In the meantime, the larger part of you believes in the illusion, is convinced of the reality of your body and the physical world. This is the classroom you are to learn in. If you pretend that the illusion is not there, while actually believing the world is real, you are going to have some problems. If you cross the street telling yourself that the cars are just illusions so you don’t have to look both ways… there may be a BAM moment! You are not there yet. There is no expectation that you should be there yet. So, you can do several things. First, you accept whatever lesson is being presented to you in this so real-feeling illusion. Remind yourself that it was chosen by Spirit to help you wake up. Your classroom, which might feel more like a battlefield, is there to help you move past the idea of the illusion to the full realization of it being illusion. We do not encourage you to pretend that you understand, that you do have an experience of the unreality of your body and the physical before that actually occurs. If there is pain in your suffering, you are being asked to look at something that is uncomfortable. Don’t pretend it isn’t there. Look at it. Ask Spirit to look at it with you. This discomfort is your belief in your separation from God. It is your guilt. Bring this to Spirit and ask to be able to see the situation through Its divine eyes. Then let it go.

Constantly have the awareness that what you are seeing or experiencing may not be real. Give up your attachment to how things are working in the world; stop pretending you know how things should or shouldn’t be. It is the ego voice that thinks you know. Your ego has an investment in keeping you tied into the illusion. So you are both in the world and not in the world at the same time. You face and fully accept the lessons that are presented to you. You then turn and give whatever pain, guilt, and confusion there is to Spirit, asking for help in seeing it for what it really is. You ask to be able to forgive, which is only possible with the acceptance that there is nothing to forgive. Bit by bit you become aware of the illusion. There is no rush. It is not your job to see through the illusion, to have the realization that the world does not truly exist. Spirit will do that work for you. Your only job is to be aware that any pain or discomfort you feel is always sensed through your ego’s eyes. With that awareness, you then bring it to Spirit. Looking through Spirit’s eyes, nothing in the world could cause you any distress. You would be filled with love and peace.

As you feel love and peace in your day…..wonderful! If other feelings arise, it is not your job to pretend that all is perfect, that you are more advanced in your process than you are. Notice that you are being presented with a challenge in your classroom. Your guilt is manifesting in form, but you have an opportunity to notice and give it to Spirit rather than crumbling into self-flagellation or finger pointing. This challenge is a great gift of Spirit to assist in your eventual awakening. You are taking seriously something that is actually kind of funny….Divinity pretending to be hapless. Your only job is to notice and then to ask Spirit to help you with seeing the truth, with forgiveness. Either Spirit or ego is active. Which one is it? Notice. If there is anything other than love and peace, it is not your responsibility to see it differently, only to ask for help. Spirit in its own way and in its own timing will bring the awakening to you. Gradually, you will find the pain, the fear, and the discomfort melting away, no matter what transpires in the world about you. It is never your job to change what is happening in your classroom. This is not about behaving in a different manner. It is only about noticing and being willing to have Spirit work through you. Everything is happening exactly as it should. No change is needed except the changing of your mind. Change your mind.

Good Now

Sanhia

Are love and hate opposites?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

Do I have to surrender my personal identity in order to ascend?

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In the past few messages we have talked a little about the subject of one’s personal identity, the sense of self. The questions come flying in, “Sanhia, do you mean that I have to give up my identity, my individuality, my self if I want to wake up and to ascend?” First, take a deep breath…..relax….. We will start by taking the “have to” out of the equation. There is no force here, no coercion. You are free to hold on to anything you wish to hold on to. This is not to say that there are not consequences with your choices. Remember that this is an illusion. This world and the identity that you hold are absolutely your creation. Within your dream you are free to create any way that you want. For each and every one of you the day will come when you choose freely to let go of your personal identity, as each of you will wake up to the truth of your innocence and divinity. Because time is a part of this illusion, how long this will take is just a part of the dream. Time doesn’t exist. In awakening, all of this disappears. None of it ever happened. It isn’t happening now. This is but a dream and the truth of you is home with God.

Let’s return to the beginning, to the crazy, mad idea that you entertained for a moment, but forgot to laugh at. You played with the idea that you could have an identity separate from God, that you could be the creator of yourself. You thought you could choose whatever you wanted, creating your own separate existence. That was the idea, the plan. It was a mad idea, not mad as in angry, but mad as in absolute loony bin crazy. It is simply not possible for you to create yourself. All is created by God in the image of God. There could be nothing existing outside of God. That would be inconceivable, impossible. The only way that you could create this self, this individuality – which eventually became a physical universe and bodies – was in your mind, in your dreams. It could exist only as a thought, not as a reality. That is how it stands right now. Your body and this world are just a dream in your mind. You want to project, to pretend that something outside of you has created your self and this universe. Then you want to blame God for everything. Why did you create this horrible universe with all of its pain and suffering, and this body which just gets sick and dies? Why, why, why did you do that God? God didn’t do that. You did that. Of course, since nothing here is real, you didn’t do anything. Perhaps you don’t want to face up to blaming God. In that case you merely project all of the problems onto whatever scapegoats you can find: parents, exes, bosses, politicians, the wealthy, the poor, and so on. As long as you live in the world of projection, victimhood, and denial, you will suffer, experiencing pain and discomfort. Finally your physical body dies. You find yourself with another body and another body and….seem to be trapped endlessly in the illusion of time. The only way to wake up from this cycle is to take responsibility, to realize that you are the cause. You are the god of your nightmare. The good news is that it is nothing more than that. It is just a bad dream and you will wake up. And that nightmare will just be gone.

You will each slowly grow tired of the pain and suffering of being human, of having a personal identity. You will grow tired of it. You will ask to be shown something else. You know there must be another way. That opens the door to Spirit to guide you home. Spirit will remind you that you are not a victim to anything, that it is all your creation and you can stop this miscreation anytime you choose to. But, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t say that you want to let go of the illusion, but still hold on to being you. You can’t let go of the illusion and experience your Oneness with God and at the same time hold on to your personal identity which keeps you feeling separate from God. If you hold on to your individuality you have to keep the whole shooting match along with it. Letting go of the illusion will require relinquishing your individual self, because it is part of the illusion. It is not you. It is not the truth of who you are. Part of the good news is that the truth of you is so far above and beyond the limits and poverty inherent in your personal identity, that you would have to be crazy to hold on to your individual self when you could be experiencing your Divine nature. That statement is redundant, because holding on to your separated self is an act of craziness. It is that mad idea that you could create separately from God that made possible your illusion of an individual self.

Let’s come back to this idea that you have guilt because you believe that you “killed” God and now He is seeking revenge as we discussed in the previous message. That is the deepest, though usually unconscious, fear that you have, one that perhaps you have done some work with during the last month. If not, eventually you will face this fear and guilt. Almost as deep and all encompassing, but more conscious for most of you, is the fear that without your personal identity you would not exist. You would simply disappear. You are like the river becoming one with the ocean or the drop of water becoming one with the stream. Does that drop of water cease to exist? It has become part of the oneness of the ocean, no longer having a separate existence. The fear that you hold as an individual is that you don’t exist separate from your identity. It is connected to the belief that you are your body, so that when your body dies, that’s it. You are gone. But, it is even bigger than that. You might have a trust and faith that when this body dies, you will come back in another body. Perhaps you are able to move into altered states and remember some of these different dreams in different bodies. Your ego may have pride in some of them and there might be speculations about those still to come. All of these thoughts about reincarnation still hold on to the idea of a continuity of the individual self. The idea of absolutely surrendering your separate identity is terrifying. That’s why it is never forced on anyone. It is not Spirit’s job to terrify people. You have enough fear on your plate already. We don’t need to add to it. It’s fine. Hold on to your personal self as long you wish to. Squeeze as much joy and pleasure as you can out of it, midst the tears and fears. It will be fully your choice when the price is no longer worth it for the pleasure that can be obtained. Sooner or later you will make that choice, but it will be your choice.

For those of you who are ready to begin moving in that direction – and I say “begin” because you can’t make that jump all at once; it is like leaping over the Grand Canyon; it’s too big, too enormous – you will do it step by step. Each time you notice yourself with judgment, anger, victimhood, or guilt – bring that to Spirit. Ask for help recognizing that what you are experiencing is an illusion, that there is nothing to fear, that you are not a victim of anything, that you are the innocent Divine Child of God. Ask for help in remembering all of that and each time you do that you chisel off a little piece of your separate identity. The more you chisel off, the less identity remains, the easier it is to let go of still more, the easier it is to recognize the ego’s separation choice and the pain it brings. The more you become aware of the pain of separation as you experience it and the unnecessariness of having that pain – that you are not being forced to suffer, that it always comes from your guilt, from your choice – the easier and easier it becomes to bring each of those moments to Spirit and to release them. That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to figure out how to let go of your identity. All that is needed is for you to bring each illusion to Spirit as you are aware of it. Spirit will take care of the rest.

One thing that helps hold you in your personal identity is having a sense of importance, believing that you have a significant role to play. It may seem that you are here to help to create heaven on earth in some way – to make the world a better place – or that you are here as a savior to help others; perhaps it is that you have a special gift to share. This is a way your ego tricks you into valuing your personal identity. If you, in separation from God, think that you can help others, you are absolutely hearing the voice of your ego. In separation from God all you can help others to do is to maintain their belief in their own separation from God. You are helping them to hold on to their pain and suffering. If you think you are doing God’s work here, the kindest thing I can think to say is that you don’t have a clue. God does not need you; you need God. Save yourself. That is all you can do. If you want to help others, then do whatever you can do to extricate yourself from this hellhole of a nightmare. Wake up! If you are staying here to help others, what you are teaching is martyrdom. If there is any part for you to play in the awakening of your fellow dreamers, it will not happen out of you consciously knowing and choosing the right thing to do or to say to another. It will come through your absolute surrender to Spirit. That means that you give up your personal will, recognizing that your will and God’s will are one. You allow God’s will to work through you, hearing His guidance. That can be tricky. Your ego can easily convince you that it is God speaking, that you are God’s favorite, the chosen one who is to act for him. If you have a plan, it is yours: it is of the ego. Spirit will speak through you in the moment. Spirit’s use of you will feel spontaneous. You won’t think about what you are going to say. It will simply come through. If it is truly of Spirit and not from your separate self, you will have no attachment to how it will be received or to what the larger plan is. Your job will be simply to deliver the mail, not to decide on the importance of the contents or how the receiver should act upon opening (or not opening) it. You are just the middle man, a delivery vehicle where you set aside your separate self and allow the Oneness of God to speak through you. If you are in doubt about the purity of your transmission, then the ego is likely involved, either in the transmission itself or in casting doubt about your ability to surrender and trust. Let it go and bring your doubt and fear to Spirit and receive whatever comes from that.

I will guarantee you one thing. Letting go of your personal identity and taking on your true identity as the innocent, unconditionally loved Son of God is such a trade up in experience that the difference is immeasurable. It is in the scope of the infinite. Those of you who are in the process of letting go of your ego and of victimhood, of letting go of pain and suffering and guilt are beginning to feel what I am talking about. But you are getting just a taste, just enough that you could never choose to reverse course and go back to just listening to your ego. There are always those days when you feel that you have moved absolutely in retrograde, rather than inching slowly forward. That’s okay. When you have clutched onto your personal identity for so long and valued it so highly, it will usually only leave accompanied by much screaming and kicking. This transformation will not take just a few days or even, probably, just a few years. That’s okay. It is not your job to be perfect. Remember that nothing that happens here will be remembered. It is not that important. Your only job is to take the next little step. Spirit will take care of the rest.

Good Now

Sanhia

How do I deal with my fear of death?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

How can I deal with my feelings of hopelessness?

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Everyone while on their spiritual path experiences moments of hopelessness. It can feel like a terrible thing, something that can never be overcome. It’s just too big, too much; it’s not possible to ever deal with it. “What do you mean that this world isn’t real? It feels so real to me. I don’t know how I can ever not take it seriously.” We have talked about bringing it to Spirit, and, of course, we always encourage you to do that. But I want to give a little different perspective on hopelessness today. By the time I finish, perhaps you will be viewing hopelessness as a wonderful thing rather than as a curse. Hopelessness is such a gift from Spirit! Thank you Spirit for making me so hopeless!

Let’s start by looking at what hope is. Hope is a dream, a wish, an expectation, a desire that somehow the future will be better than the present. We could say that hope is directly connected to the idea of heaven on earth. “Oh! I hope I pass this test. Oh! I hope the weather will be good for our picnic. Oh! I hope I find my perfect partner. Oh! I hope that someday I will wake up.” Hope is never about the now. It implies separation by its very nature. It is going into the future which is not real. How can you let go of the illusion if you attach yourself to the future? As long as you have hope, you have one foot firmly planted in the future, which is part of the illusion that is not real, that keeps you separated from the experience of your Divinity. As long as you have hope you will find it impossible to let go of the illusion – which ironically leaves you feeling hopeless. As long as you have hope, you want a change in the illusion so that it works better for you. You are taking the world seriously. Even hoping to wake up someday is a separation. The only way to awaken is to be absolutely in the now, but the hope to awaken takes you somewhere else. You are not here, now. If you can only awaken in the future and there is no future, how can you ever wake up? That is hope. Hope is an anchor that keeps you rooted in the physical illusion, rooted in duality, rooted in the ups and downs and uncertainties of an ever changing movie that may sometimes feel somewhat heavenly and other times certainly feels hellish. Those are the fruits of hope.

Part of letting go of the ego, part of letting go of the illusion, is to let go of hope. By the way, who do you think is whispering these hopeful thoughts into your ear? Of course! This is the voice of ego which wants to keep you here in the illusion and not in the truth of your mind that knows you are a Divine, innocent Child of God. Ego can even safely have you hope to wake up, because it knows that that hope will keep you asleep. What a wonderful win/win for ego! It gets to pretend it is Spirit while, at the same time, protect its turf. Now you may be starting to see that hopelessness is not something to despair of, but rather something to welcome, to be grateful for. To be hopeless is to let go of any possibility of the illusion ever satisfying you. You can never make the physical be what you want it to be. It’s hopeless. “Yeah, can I get an Amen?” whispers Spirit. How wonderful to realize that. So what do you have left when you give up all hope? All that remains is the truth. You are left with just Spirit, with unconditional love, with complete innocence. You are in the eternal now.

If you are walking outside on a beautiful sunny day, the sun’s rays shining down on you, feeling warm and comforted and loved – you don’t have the thought of hoping the sun will shine today. That would be crazy. The sun is shining. It is equally crazy to say that you hope that God forgives you or you hope that you are innocent. Why would you hope for something that already is? Everything that is true is, not because you hope it will be true, but simply because it is true. Hoping can never change the truth. God loves you. You are innocent. You are One with each other. There is nothing to hope for. Everything is already yours that is worth having. This process of waking up is one of giving up hope and accepting what is already here now. Hope is that carrot that is strung out ahead of the donkey. The donkey keeps going for the carrot, but can never reach it. When you give up hope you have nothing left to lose. Instead of hoping for something else, your focus is on fully accepting what Spirit has brought to you in this moment. See the world that Spirit is showing you rather than looking through the eyes of the ego.

As you communicate to Spirit your strong desire to listen to Its voice and to close your ears to the ego’s temptations, Spirit will support you in becoming hopeless. The part of you that thinks it still has something to lose, that there is some salvation in the world, will suffer fear, terror, and hopelessness. You must go through this. There is no other way. You only get to determine the speed. Hold on to your hope and the pain will be dragged out and your hands will be bloody. Let go and the suffering is minimized. Be absolutely honest with yourself and look at every aspect of the illusion and ask what you are still afraid to give up or to lose. What is it? Whatever it is, you face that fear and give it to Spirit. The state through which you realize your Divinity is the state where you have nothing to lose. You will try to hold on to any dreams or images, no matter how meager, that you still have any attachment to. It is not unlike staying with an abusive partner – at least things are familiar and maybe someday they will improve. Hope is an abusive partner. The world is an abusive partner. If you are still afraid to lose the little that you have left, you will hold on to it and continue to suffer in the illusion. You will keep yourself separate from true peace, love, and joy…..and God and Spirit. Are you ready to be hopeless? Welcome your hopelessness. Take this as your challenge for this month. Be willing to lose everything in order to realize Everything.

Good Now

Sanhia

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

Is compassion an important tool for awakening?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

Is the ego part of me or is it separate?

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

How long will the Coronavirus last?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia