Is the illusion a mistake?

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This time there is no easy quick answer to this question that wouldn’t require a lot of explanation. We need to take a good look at where this question comes from. We have talked a long time over many messages about how what is in the physical world, in the sensed universe, is an illusion. It is not real; nothing is truly happening. As long as you consider the physical to be real, you invest it with a power and feel yourself to be controlled and victim to this universe, but that has things reversed. The physical universe as it appears to exist is created from your inside, though you may not be in conscious awareness or control of this. Your ignorance does not change the fact, any more than the truth is not altered by your belief or disbelief in it.

Let’s take a step back also for those of you who have been students of A Course in Miracles, which is a wonderful teaching, chock full of valuable thoughts. Like all teachings in the physical world, it is not the truth; it simply points. When people read ACIM, it can easily be used to justify their own confusion and project that into the Course and say, “But the Course says this…” One of the things that many people do in looking at the Course, including some of its teachers, is to hold onto a belief something like the following: “We allowed a single mad belief to enter our minds that we could create something separate from God and so we dreamed up the universe. It is not real; it just exists in our minds. God knows nothing about this imagined separation. It was a mistake.” Let’s start by looking at those two thoughts. If the universe was created by a mad crazy idea, this might suggest that it was all a mistake. My question is, “Really?” This proposes that God, Who is all loving, all knowing, all powerful, could somehow have something going on behind his back that he is oblivious of. Is that a little bit crazy? Does that sound like Oneness? God is everything and all is God except for…well, this universe. He is then unaware that His Divine Son is living in self-created hell? This sounds like a limited God. God can do anything except create a physical universe. There is a little confusion going on here. This leads to the thought that God has nothing to do with this universe, that it is your job to recognize your mistake and to leave this evil place and return to God. How alone, how separate that feels.

We also have the voice that asks why, if there is a God, He allows such evil to exist on the earth. This other “Course” voice responds that God doesn’t permit evil; he knows nothing about it. Now it appears we are stuck having either a malevolent God or an incompetent God. Let’s continue. This is getting more confusing all of the time. If God is aware of all that transpires in the illusion, how can a loving God allow all the atrocities that appear to transpire here in the universe? Why is there dishonesty, hatefulness, jealousy, anger, cruelty, violence, disease, and death? Why hangnails, God? Why? Why? If the universe is just a mistake then everything in it would also logically be a mistake. Did God make an enormous mistake here, whether it was a sin of commission or a sin of omission? Let us, for the moment, take the point of view that by definition God is Oneness, excluding nothing, therefore including the illusion. Remember that we are just playing with words here. We are not trying to prove anything because nothing can be proved. The truth simply is. We are just playing with these different thoughts that might be going through the mind. We play with the thought that our definition of God would make it impossible for Him to be unaware of the world. If God is intentional with the world and God is infallible, then God could not have created the world as a mistake. If it is all One how can anything be wrong? Everything simply is. There is, therefore, an absolute purpose in you being in physicality.

The question then becomes that if it is a given that God created the world and it is also a given that God cannot make a mistake, why did God create this thing? This is a place where I am not going to pretend to give an answer. Go inside and see what your guidance tells you. Nonetheless, I will say some things. For some reason, humans find themselves believing that they are in this illusion and that it is real and their bodies are real. As long as those beliefs are held they will experience pain and suffering. Whatever goals they set, whatever they try to achieve in order to break out of this – they fail at. The peace and happiness they desire is elusive, it is not realized. Nothing in the physical world can fulfill that hope. Only awakening can lead toward such a fulfillment. Nothing but the realization that everything is an  illusion can bring about peace.

As demonstrated by Jesus, and recently celebrated in the Christian churches, all will eventually ascend, will return to the Oneness. However, that doesn’t answer the question of why you are experiencing being here. Why are you going through all of this? I’m going to go back a little on my word, because I get to do that since they never communicate the truth. I’m not going to explain why God allowed this to happen, but I’m going to give some possibilities to play with, while not promising that they have any truth to them. In the Oneness of God, of Divinity, there is simply the Oneness. There is no place to express the Oneness, no place to express the Love. In order for the Love to be expressed, there must be a game played where duality appears to happen. There must be an other to love and feel loved by. So, you exist within that dream of duality as what feels like a separated being. Now the potential exists for God to express love to God and God to receive love from God. Without time, without physicalness there is no experience. Nothing happens. So, God wakes up one day, and of course there is no day because there is no time and there is no waking up because there is no sleeping, and says I want to experience myself today.

Perhaps as you are reading this it is, as Michael and Ulla are now experiencing, a beautiful warm, sunny spring day, perhaps with a cat sitting nearby looking out at all of it. The new growth smells of spring are present along with the explosion of colors from the newly risen flowers, and a greening that seems to appear everywhere. In the Oneness none of this exists. For God to experience these sensations as well as to have feelings, there must be the illusion of separation. There must be an observer as well as an observed. Duality serves this purpose admirably. Now God can have good sex. I’m just joking with you…a little bit. We are just having fun with this now. We can say with absolute certainty, this illusion is no mistake. There is clear purpose in everything, even though you might leave this body and never have an inkling of what it might be. However, as you surrender your ego to Spirit and you hear the Divine guidance within you, it will direct you as to how to spend the physical time. To the degree that you can give up your thoughts that you know better than Spirit or God about what will bring you happiness, about how to spend your time and energy, you will find yourself doing exactly as you want; you will find that your desires are absolutely aligned with God.

Let’s play this game in another way. What is more beautiful to the ear, the sound of a wonderful singing voice or that same voice with another in harmony with it? And maybe there is a third in harmony to them and a fourth in counterpoint coming in against the flow? Feel all the energy moving around that. How can there be harmony created without separation, without the physicality of sound waves and ears? What if God simply wanted to have television and you are the programming? God is just sitting there with his clicker enjoying the show. How about a comedy now? How about a drama? Click. Click. With your imagination you can create endless possibilities, knowing you are likely nowhere near the truth of it. But it can be fun, and doesn’t God like to have fun?

Did God put everyone to sleep in order that they could wake up? Is it like a game, like hide-and-go-seek? Everyone go hide and one by one We will find all of you. How much fun that was for you as a child! Is God playing that game? Again, I don’t know. God requires no justification or explanation. We know that whatever might appear to be imperfect in the illusion is indeed perfect. Whatever looks like a mistake is precisely how it should be. Whatever thoughts you have that things are not right keep you trapped in hell. When you are able to accept the perfection of everything happening in this illusion, you can experience heaven on earth. It is heaven because you are One with God, not because you have remade the earth according to your separated belief of how it should be. Again, we lovingly remind you that you haven’t got a clue. What would the purpose be in there being no value in something you are experiencing with your physical senses? Why would God co-create something with you that served no purpose? Believing this is possible can lead one into places of helplessness and despair. The value may not be the value you would attach to it. I can point out to you that some of the things that you have felt to have been the worst happenings that could befall you have turned out to be among the most valuable gifts you have ever received. They have helped you release untruth, fear, and confusion. Those events that don’t feel that way to you are simply gifts you have received that remain unopened. To complete that awakening journey (which requires you to go nowhere) nothing can remain in your thoughts as being a mistake. Instead you trust absolutely; you listen to that inner voice, whether you call it Spirit, God, the Divine Presence, Allah, Jehovah, Jesus, or Sanhia; you surrender absolutely to it and trust that it always has the perfect guidance for you. When you ask for support, it is brought to you in the most powerful and direct way possible.

In conclusion, there is a short answer. The answer is no. The illusion is not a mistake. There are no mistakes. It is all perfection. It is as it is preordained to be. You can choose to live in the loving trust of that perfection, or not. Even if you listen to your ego instead of to Spirit, it is not a mistake. You will realize the perfection at some point, no matter what you choose. You can choose it now. Finally, we offer this prayer: “Spirit, help me accept the perfection of the now”.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Did Jesus die for our sins?

/in , , , , , , , ,

The holiday of Easter has just passed; perhaps some of you celebrated it. In the last message, we talked of love and sacrifice. In the world of Christianity, the great story is of the martyrdom of Jesus. That legend has been passed down for 2000 years. As it is told, Jesus, the only Son of God, came down from heaven out of his Father’s love for us. God sacrificed his only Son. He did this because we humans are bad. We are sinners; we are evil. The only plan God could come up with to allow us to return to him in heaven to be saved, was through offering the crucifixion of his Son. That is the story, a very sad tale. It is filled with graphic descriptions of suffering, torture, and betrayal. However, this is nothing more than a fairy tale. It is not true. This is not what happened. The true story is that Jesus was not the only Son of God. We are all the Sons of God. He did not come to atone for our sins, because God does not recognize our sins. Only we see our nature as sinful. We see this because we believe that we chose to separate from God. We are terrified of God and fear his vengeance for what we think we did. This is all part of the myth. Jesus came to tell us that it’s not true, that God loves us. Absolutely and always. There is nothing we have to do to earn it. It is just for us to realize that we are divine, that we are one with God.

Jesus came to earth of his own choice to save himself. He wanted to become aware of his divinity while in a body. Easter is the celebration of his self-realization. That is what the resurrection was. It does not represent dying and coming back to life again. Death is an illusion. The resurrection represents the ”death” of death, the realization that there is only life. There is only life and always life, in divinity. That is the true nature of every soul. Easter is a time to remember this truth and to let go of death, suffering, fear, and the belief that you are an evil sinner.

You may want to ask me why this made-up story has been passed down and believed by so many. There seem to have been eye witnesses. People recorded these happenings. Why would it have been passed on like this? Don’t tell us it’s a lie Sanhia! Well…this story is like all stories. They are imaginary. No story has happened. Nothing that you attribute to an action by those in human bodies, no, none of those stories are real. Nothing has happened in the truth of God. You have manifested this illusion that you have an earth. You create all of the stories that take place on it. You stay in an endless loop with those stories, a seeming infinity of bodies and lifetimes. This goes on until one day you wake up and realize that there is only now, only this moment. There is only the truth, only love. Everything else you have been making up. Meanwhile, because you think you are a sinner, you created a savior, since your story says that you can’t save yourself. You believe that somebody has to pay for the sins you imagine you have committed, so why not have Jesus do it? He’s got big shoulders. He is the Son of God. Let him do it. The problem is that you are still stuck with the guilt. Not only are you a sinner but you let Jesus take the rap for you, leaving you even further away from God (This perhaps is a good thing. Have you noticed how he treats his Son!).

What if we look at the life of Jesus from his perspective? He came in with a high level of knowledge of truth, brought forth from previous lifetimes where he did much work. He created a wonderful support system in his pre-planning. On both sides of his family there were great spiritual workers who came in with him to support his process. His father Joseph ascended before him, showing him the way. When it came time for his full realization, which required an absolute surrender to Spirit, he was told that his path was to go through this “Passion Play” of crucifixion. In this way, the story would be recorded and passed down for the ages. Even though the facts would be grossly incorrect, the seeds of the truth would be there for those who have ears to hear with. It seemed that a trusted associate turned on him. In truth, Jesus asked his good friend Judas to play a role. Judas did not want to carry out that assignment, but Jesus convinced him it was part of Spirit’s plan. This was an act of love, not betrayal. Though what people saw at that time did look like punishment and torture, Jesus experienced no pain on the cross. Rather, he was in ecstasy. He knew that he was not his body. As for the witnesses, however, they could only project their own fear upon what they saw. The story was written down and passed on. Had there been no crucifixion, nobody would know of Jesus today. Adding to the drama, his body disappears. Now, you have an unjustifiable execution, but there were many of those with the Romans. How to make this one stand out? Let’s disappear the body, right under the nose of the Roman sentries. To cap things off, let’s have the body reappear later. This is the stuff that sells newspapers, not to speak of Bibles. Jesus simply, out of love and trust, followed the plan that came from Spirit. He did this, not to pay for your sins, but to teach you how to listen to Spirit, how to trust, and as an act of faith. Some of you have the terror that if you listen to Spirit you’ll end up nailed to a cross, too. You may have something to move through around this. It is the ego that leads you to pain and suffering, not Spirit.

How would your life change if you trusted in the true story of Jesus? When you think of Easter, the message is of love and eternal life. The focus is on the resurrection. If your thoughts go to crucifixion and suffering, ask Spirit to lift those thoughts from you. It is time on a symbolic level to burn all of your crosses. As long as you hold onto the cross as the symbol of Christianity and Jesus, your life will be one of sacrifice and suffering. Burn the cross. Burn them all. Let that blaze be the fire of the love of the eternal flame of God.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

Does love require me to sacrifice?

/in , , , , , , , ,

There is a great confusion that intertwines love and sacrifice. It is this belief that if you love someone or something, you must make sacrifices for them or for it. This belief causes many problems. It is a confusion because love is of Spirit and sacrifice is of the ego. The ego believes that the only way to get something that you want is to give up something that you also want. We can call that a “win-lose” situation.

I want to begin with a short history of this perplexity. Most of you are familiar with the Judeo-Christian story, expressed both in the Old and the New Testaments. Let’s start with the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament. It is filled with sacrifice. God, or Yahweh, is constantly demanding something from the “chosen people”. Many are animal offerings, but in one particular story we have Abraham, the father of Judaism, being asked to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac, who had come to him late in life as a reward for his devotion to the one god. Abraham was told to take Isaac up the mountain for this surrender. Reluctantly he agreed. Sacrifice for the love of god. God lets him off the hook at the last moment. The message, however, is that the proof of love is a willingness to make sacrifice. This is found carried forward into Christian belief. There the doctrine is that Jesus gave himself, that god sacrificed his only son, to free us from our sins. Love and sacrifice. I want to remind you that no such thing actually happened with Jesus. There was no sacrifice involved. This was a gift of love freely given from Jesus’s heart, following the loving voice of Spirit. If you want to hear the truest expression of Jesus’s teachings, I recommend A Course in Miracles. If you read the New Testament, I suggest that you limit yourself to the words attributed to Jesus, and still use your discernment (see last month’s message).

I want you to know that the god of the Old Testament, who for many is also the god of the New Testament, is really the ego. It is not God. God never asks for sacrifice. How could an all-powerful, all-creative, all-loving God ever have a need that could only be filled by human sacrifice? It makes no sense whatsoever. It is a crazy thought. Sacrifice is an attack, not an expression of love. When you sacrifice for another, what you are communicating is that that person is not divine. You are affirming their helplessness. Only by the sacrifice of your blood can they survive, be happy, and prosper. What a story! This is an attack. An attack on another is really an attack on yourself. How can someone else not be divine unless you also are not divine? Every sacrifice you make is an attack upon yourself.

You don’t usually offer blood sacrifices anymore, although patriotism may ask that you give your life for your country. While some believe in giving their life for their country, others believe that they must be willing to surrender all to help the oppressed of the world. This is not to suggest that to aid another is an attack. Only when the action is offered in the spirit of sacrifice is it an attack. When you do for another out of the love in your heart, out of divine inspiration, it is not an attack. This is something you truly desire to do. It doesn’t matter to you how it is received, whether there is gratitude. It is done out of your joy and freely given.

Look at your relationships, especially your committed relationships. In what ways do you feel that you have to deny yourself in order to maintain a relationship? Or even to have it to begin with? How many women deny their independence, career aspirations, or freedom in order to have a relationship? How many men feel tied down, denying themselves, not allowed to be “real men” anymore because of a relationship? When children come along the feeling of the necessity for sacrifice increases.

The place to begin is by recognizing that sacrifice is not an expression of love but is an attack. It is a byproduct of guilt. Your ego will tell you that you will lose everything if you do this. This voice will tell you that others are dependent upon your self-denial. Have the intention to stop making sacrifices. Ask Spirit to support you in strengthening your will to give up sacrificing and to always come from love. When the fear comes up – and it will – use the five-step process to help you transform it into love. When you are in a state of unconditional love you can clearly hear Spirit’s guidance.

When your ego is telling you that there are others out there depending upon your support, I want to remind you that it is all you. Everything that you see is you. If you perceive neediness that seems to require your sacrifice, that is your neediness. If someone tells you that if you really loved them, you would give them what they demand from you, it is your own ego that is speaking. How long will you believe that you have to thrash your own back in order to become pure enough for God? Sacrifice is self-flagellation. It is an attack upon yourself. This is why some people are terrified by love. The fear is that loving another will call you to a deep painful sacrifice. The only way to be free, in that case, is not to love. What a tangled web the ego weaves. Avoiding love will not bring an awareness of your divinity. If you stop sacrificing, instead committing to love and to transmuting fear into love, you will be able to hear Spirit directing you. This guidance will always lead you into love and out of sacrifice.

This is a great challenge. It is a fearful thing to give up sacrifice. The mass consciousness says that sacrifice might buy you redemption, might bring you forgiveness from God. But it doesn’t work that way. Sacrifice only keeps you separate from God, who requires nothing from you and offers you everything. God only asks you to be your true self. Set yourself free.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

Why do I feel abandoned by God?

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Some of you have expressed anger to me – perhaps not directed at me, though you may have wanted to shoot the messenger – because of things I have said about God. You feel that God doesn’t pay any attention to you, that He is not aware of your struggles and your pain. You feel abandoned because none of this exists for God. I can understand, on one hand, why you might draw that conclusion. I have explained to you that this earthly experience is all an illusion. Nothing in your physical world is real. The only things that truly exist are absolute love and divinity. This illusion you have created in the physical realm of bodies and fear does not exist in the mind of God. He does not see your experience. God sees only the truth in you. He does not see your fantasies of separation, judgment, and pain. He sees your divinity, your holiness. Hearing that causes some of you to feel that God doesn’t really care about you. He is just going to let you hang out here in your pain and suffering. All your prayers and cries for help are ignored. To your great surprise, I have a number of things to say about this “abandonment”.

If God could see your illusions, it would make them real. Think what that would mean. If your body truly exists; if this earth and universe are existent; if your pain, suffering, and fear are real; they will go on forever. When you die, and leave all of this ”reality” behind you, you will realize that none of it was actually taking place. This you realized after your last incarnation, as well as following the multitude of others you have experienced. When you no longer have a body, you still are, just a whole lot lighter without the excess baggage you carry with you now. All of the things that felt so necessary, vital, and important in your physical experience are gone. They are simply gone. If they were real, they would still be there. When you ask God to give them reality, be aware of what you are asking for. You are asking for your hell to be permanent. It is to your saving grace that God does not see your illusion, seeing only the truth of you so that you have the potential of also holding the truth.

Rather than abandoning you, God has sent the Holy Spirit. This is a difficult concept to fully understand. In Christianity, they talk about the trinity of God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit. Usually, even though the concept is alright, the execution of it is woefully inadequate. The Father is often pictured as judgmental and punishing; the Son is limited to Jesus, excluding all of the rest of the Sonship (which includes you and me); and the Holy Spirit is often simply not understood at all. The Father is the originator God – all loving, all powerful, all creative. The Son is you: whoever is reading this; whoever isn’t reading this; and whoever has, is, or will be in a body. The Son is created in the image of the Father: divine, all loving, all knowing, all powerful. But, a part of the Sonship has chosen to believe in a separation from the Father and fears retribution for that action. That is the case for all who have chosen human form. God recognizes that you believe yourself to be lost, but does not experience the trauma you have created. You are like a sleeping child experiencing a nightmare. The loving parent recognizes that the child is having a bad dream and knows that it is terrified, but cannot penetrate into the illusion. The parent knows that what is being experienced isn’t real and that sooner or later the child will wake up. The parent tries to lovingly awaken the child and to assure it that it is safe. It is the Holy Spirit that carries out this function.

The Holy Spirit is the intermediary between the Father and the sleeping Son. Spirit is designed in such a way that you can ask for Its support, supplicating to be brought into conscious alignment with the Father. I want to remind you that you are not being helped to establish alignment. You are already aligned with the Father. You are one with God. You are one with each other. What is lacking is the awareness of that oneness. This does not take away the truth of who you are, but it does keep you from having the experience of your divinity. Rather than living in the divine love of your birthright, you live in fear. By asking Spirit for support, you can realize your alignment with the Father. The role of the Father is to hold the course, to hold it steady, to hold the truth, to never waiver, and to never give any reality to the hell that you have created. The Father always sees your perfection. It is your role, as the Son, to give up the ego, to stop choosing to listen to it, and to choose divinity. To facilitate your process, God has created the Holy Spirit to help those of you who have chosen ascension, and want to give up fear and illusion. The Holy Spirit is there to give you a helping hand. He is aware of your illusions, but does not take them seriously. Your task is to believe Spirit, rather than the ego. Spirit is there to support you in constantly choosing love over fear.

You can ask God to come down to earth and enter your hell. God won’t hear you. Spirit will hear you, however. Even as your faith in trusting Spirit’s voice over the ego becomes stronger and stronger, there is still a step between believing and knowing. When you cross that line into knowingness, you no longer feel a need to talk with God, because you are fully aware of your oneness. In the meantime, rest easily in the knowledge that God’s love for you is eternal and that dissolution of your hell is a certainty. The consistent message from Spirit is ”lighten up, everything is moving forward perfectly”.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

How can I deal with my karma?

/in , , , , , , , ,

I don’t believe that we have discussed karma in depth in these messages before, though there has been a reference or two. There is a great deal of confusion around karma. In western religions, it is not even talked about, because karma implies past lives. These faiths acknowledge only the existence of the lifetime you are now experiencing. They believe in only one illusion, not in many. It is from Hinduism and Buddhism that we get the belief in reincarnation and the concept of karma. According to these religions you can have both good and bad karma. What you do in this life will affect your next life. If you do something harmful to another, you will suffer for it in your next incarnation. Conversely, if you do good deeds, your reward will come in your next lifetime. A similar belief is held in Christianity, except the reward or punishment is in the afterlife, and it is permanent. The concept of karma is based on judgment of good and bad, followed by the appropriate reward or punishment. For most people, however, the focus with karma is on the negative. You believe that you are suffering now for something you did in a previous embodiment. On top of that, if you do something you judge as bad in this lifetime, you are condemning yourself to being born again, because fresh karma is believed to only affect future lifetimes. Reading between the lines, if you don’t lead a perfect life – if you make one mistake – it’s all over. You are going to have to come back and try it again, and suffer for it.

We want to look at karma from several different perspectives. The first thing is that karma implies judgment. It suggests there are good and bad actions. Those of you who are on a conscious spiritual path – wishing to experience your ascension – become focused on living a perfect life. ”How do I eat right? How do I meditate and pray correctly? Am I doing the right work? How do I take each step flawlessly, so I don’t even step on an ant? How do I breathe so consciously I don’t even inhale a gnat?” There is an unceasing focus on doing right. All this comes from the ego. The entire interpretation of karma that we have been dealing with up to this point comes from the ego. It is fear-based. It is this idea that God is going to punish you for what you have done. God is judging everything that you do, so you take over that job.

Let’s look at what karma truly is. It has nothing to do with divine judgment. What karma represents is that in a previous life you judged yourself for an action and never fully forgave yourself. It is you who pulled that forward to this lifetime. You are still carrying that judgment with you. When you were doing your pre-life planning, you looked at these accumulated judgments – or karma – which you were holding and asked yourself how you could best set up your new incarnation to support you in forgiving and letting them go. You planned to draw various experiences into your life to trigger those old guilts. Hopefully, they would be brought to your attention and forgiven this time. Karma is simply the measure of what you have not forgiven. It has nothing to do with payback or retribution. It is not a punishment. The reason it feels like punishment is that you have a tendency, as we have previously mentioned, to punish yourself before God does. This is the insanity of the ego, because God loves you unconditionally and has no judgment, no matter what you do.

In this lifetime, you will experience something as being traumatic. Your brain-mind may identify this as karmic payback time. Perhaps you bow your head and willingly take the punishment, believing that you deserve it. It is a beautiful thing to accept and to let go. However, if you surrender in a spirit of having deserved this, you are not completely through with the energy. A part of you will continue to respond out of fear rather than out of love. On the other hand, a full letting go and forgiveness leaves you at a place where you only choose to follow the guidance from Spirit, rather than your sense of right and wrong. You are able to surrender to trust and love, directed only by the oneness of Spirit.

You are susceptible to choosing as you have chosen before. You are likely to listen to ego instead of to Spirit. Karma is simply self-correction. You draw these karmic experiences to give you the opportunity to choose Spirit this time. The more shaken up you are by the karmic experience, the greater the possibility that you might invite Spirit. If you don’t, it’s all right. Nobody is going to punish you except yourself. You will get chance after chance after chance. When you choose Spirit, karma is dissolved. It is no more, neither past nor present. Whatever ”fresh karma” you have accumulated in this lifetime is also dissolved. There is no further balancing to be done. There is no debt to be paid. It is just a question of when you absolutely forgive yourself, when you fully let go of the ego. Doing the five-step process accelerates the release of your ego. The karma you carry is in your body; it is the energy that you work with in the second step. It makes no difference what lifetime or lifetimes the karma is connected to. Either you have it or you don’t. When it dissolves, it dissolves for all time.

Karma is not punishment; it is a gift you have offered to yourself. We support you in giving up the struggle. Surrender the idea that it has to be hard. Let go of the thought that you deserve punishment and that pain will cleanse you and make you worthy.  You are worthy right now. Ascension is not something you earn. It is simply about loving yourself and everyone else unconditionally. It is about absolutely forgiving yourself and others. In the process of doing that you will come to the realization that there has never been anything to forgive. God does not and never has judged you. He always loves you.  Karma is a gift to remind you of where you are not doing that, where you are choosing ego over Spirit. Welcome and embrace your karma. Use it to practice forgiveness and unconditional love. You are forgiven. Go in peace.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

How should I celebrate Christmas?

/in , , , , ,

I would like to talk about Christmas. This is the most important holiday in the western world. That is a confusing thing for some people, perhaps for many. Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus. However, Jesus was a Pisces and was born in March of 4 BC. Yes, that’s right. He was born four years ”Before Christ”. The Christian religion, however, chose December to celebrate Jesus’s birth. We want to state very clearly that Jesus had nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of Christianity. We’ll discuss more about that, later. The reason the holiday is observed in December is that as Christianity was developing and spreading in Europe, one of the most significant existing festivals had to do with the return of the light. This was more important in ancient agrarian times than it is today. Now you can always go to the store or open the refrigerator to find food. In those days there was only what had been saved from the previous harvest, along with any successes from hunting. It would be a long time until things began to grow again in the spring. In December the light was scarce, it was cold, and there was often concern about how long the food would last. The midwinter solstice was the longest night of the year. From then on, the light began to return. This brought about optimism and a revelry. There was fear about the dark and this festival expressed the hope that there would eventually be warmth, then growth and more food. Christianity co-opted this celebration, but chose to keep many of the old elements intact. That is why there are Christmas trees, elfish beings, lights, feasts, and more. That is why we have this holiday.

Let us take a look at Jesus. Certainly, the word Christmas contains” Christ”. Whether or not you consider yourself to be a Christian, and whether or not you believe in Jesus’s existence or divinity, you are well aware that Jesus is the reason for the holiday. As I have said, Jesus did not begin Christianity, and he would not have done so. The religion is not representative of his teachings. There is a small amount of Jesus that can be found there. If you read through the New Testament and look at the words that are attributed to him, perhaps twenty percent of them are in the ballpark of something he might have said. There are an equal number of things that are absolutely opposed to anything Jesus taught. Absolutely opposed. How do you know which is which? If you read those words – in some Bibles the words attributed to Jesus are in red, like someone has highlighted the juicy parts for you – take a deep breath after each statement and ask yourself if this fills you with feelings of unconditional love and lifts you up. Or, does it cause you to feel guilt or fear? If it does the latter, it is probably not an accurate representation of Jesus’s real words. When in doubt, throw it out.

I will tell you what I know about Jesus, both from being his disciple in my lifetime as Thomas and also from what I learned after he was no longer directly in my life (lives). I did write down many of the things that I heard him say. These writings have been referred to as The Gospel of Thomas, which was found in the 1940’s along with other ancient scrolls in the Egyptian desert. But, that version is not mine. That transcript had gone through several re-writings. Perhaps half of what is there was close to what I had written. Again, use your own guidance if you read this text. Coming back to Jesus – there are some things to say about him that are absolutely true, and that he said himself. He taught over and over that the way to find heaven was through unconditional love. It was not about doing ”right” things over ”wrong” things. It was not about judging or being judged. It was about being in a state of love. He also said that he was a child of God, created by God. He said that we were just the same as him, that we are no different. He was to us as an older brother, with more experience and wisdom, who was further along the path. Jesus saw the divinity in each person, whether or not the person was capable of recognizing that divinity. He did not teach that there were rules to be followed. He didn’t speak of the Ten Commandments. He did not make any statements about what people should do. He did not speak about roles that women should take in society, as opposed to men. He did not differentiate between people based on their religion, sexual orientation, state of servitude, or race. His primary tenets were unconditional love, forgiveness, and the honoring of personal divinity.

That is what can be celebrated at Christmas. It is not about the birth of a savior. Jesus would be the first to tell you that birth was not his beginning. He had always been and always would be, as you have always been and will always be. To make Jesus special, to make Jesus different, would go against the heart of his teaching. He said ”this and more you shall do”, that is, that whatever he did, we are capable of doing…and more! Make Jesus divine in your thoughts, but not at the cost of denying divinity to yourself. The observance of his birth is the celebration of his divine eternal spirit, which is also the honoring of your divine eternal spirit. It is at this time in the darkness of the year, in the coldness and the unfruitfulness of the season, that it can be helpful to reaffirm your divinity, to hold that light in the dark.

There is no need in your spiritual process to pay any attention to Christmas, whatsoever. It’s not necessary. Neither God nor Jesus will frown on you for not honoring the birthday. God does not operate in that way. He honors and celebrates whatever you choose to do and loves you without conditions, as does Jesus. It is for you with your inner guidance, to decide what to do with this day, if anything. But if you are thinking about Christmas, you can use the moment to align yourself with your brother, Jesus, remembering that he holds you always as his equal. His coming was not as a sacrifice, but was as an expression of love. Not only did he not die for your sins, he didn’t recognize your sins. Only you hold on to the energy of that. This can be a wonderful time to light a candle and to see the purity and the brilliance of the light that is you. Or find it in the fire you may be sitting before for warmth. For those of you who find yourself in the southern hemisphere, this celebration might feel more appropriate for you in June, in the dark of your year. However, the memorialization can happen at any time, in any month, or not at all. Follow your own heart. You can celebrate your eternal flame at any time.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

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

/in , , , , , , , , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

Is there really going to be a Last Judgment?

/in , , , , , , ,

Some of you consider yourselves to be Christians and some of you don’t. Some of you have some healing to do with Christianity. I am more concerned about truth than dogma, but all religions have a lot of truth in them if you take the time to dig below the surface.

One of the Christian beliefs is about the Last Judgment. You have probably been listening to me for long enough to know that I don’t talk about a judging God, hell, damnation, and that sort of thing. What is the Last Judgment all about? It’s supposed to come at the end of the world, so when is that? Some would have you believe that it is soon. If we accept that this physical world is an illusion, perhaps the end of the world comes when you drop your illusions about physical reality. This is a bit of a chicken and egg thing, but do you believe in the reality of the physical world because you have judgments, or do you have judgments because you believe in the reality of the physical world?

Does it matter? Chip away at both. Keep reminding yourself that what you are experiencing is not real. Keep reminding yourself that it is all a movie. If nothing is really happening here, nothing is going wrong, and there is no one to blame. Therefore, there is no need for judgment of self or others, who are just reflections of yourself.

Back to the Last Judgment: after you have made your last judgment, after you have absolutely given up judging yourself or others, comes the end of the world. You will no longer find yourself living in the world of illusion. You will totally “get” the unreality of the physical world. The Last Judgment does not belong to God, it belongs to the human.

Meanwhile, as you are releasing judgment from your life, remember to release your judgment on Christianity. If you have no judgment on your brand of Christianity, what about those Christians who don’t believe as you do? If all that is cleaned up, what about Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Pagans, Agnostics, Atheists, and any other spiritual groups I have failed to mention? All judgments released? If there is a hell, it is the one created by judgments and belief in the illusion. Releasing all of that could be a heavenly experience.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

Can you suggest a prayer for ascension?

/in , , , , , , ,

As you are all aware, there is either love or fear in each moment of each life. Love is truth; fear is illusion – it is not real. The deep inner knowledge of love as truth is what is called faith. Those who live in faith, live in joy. The absence of fear is an ecstatic experience. Thomas Merton was a 20th century Trappist Monk who understood, lived, and communicated the truth of love and faith to a very high degree. I want to share with you a meditation or prayer he wrote (channeled) concerning faith.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have the desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.” (from Thoughts in Solitude)

Allow me to interpret this into my terminology.

“Oh, Spirit, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road before me. I cannot for certain know where it will end. I still feel separate from you. I am following the guidance of my passions, but I’m not certain if I am guided by love or fear. I desire to be guided by unconditional love. I want to feel at one with you. I desire to be always aligned with my true passion. I desire to always listen to the voice of love rather than the voice of fear. I know that no matter which I choose you will lead me to the events that will best facilitate my healing, because I have asked for it. I know that everything that happens is perfect, even if I do not yet understand why. I trust that I am safe and protected no matter how great my fear may be. I know that I am never alone, that the truth of me is immortal and cannot be harmed, and that you and my guides are always with me.”

You are always safe. Everything that happens is perfect. Follow your deepest passions. You are greatly and unconditionally loved.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

What is confused in Christianity?

/in , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Many of you are Christian or come from a Christian background. Sometimes this causes confusion as your spiritual path opens and develops. I would like to help you separate the wheat from the chaff. The things that may confuse you about Christianity (if not outright run you off) probably did not come from Jesus. As one of his former right-hand people (there were two dozen of us), I would like to try to set the record straight about ten common confused “Christian” beliefs. There is a lot here. Meditate on any that aren’t clear to you.

  1. If you sin, you will go to hell.
    Hell does not exist except in the mind. God loves unconditionally, does not judge, and of course would never condemn. Hell is a creation of the children of God, is fear-based, and is therefore not real. People who live in fear may be experiencing an illusion of hell, but the only thing that is eternal is love.
  2. Jesus died for our sins.
    Jesus left his body at the conclusion of his personal ascension process. He was able to ascend because he loved everyone unconditionally. If we define sin as the belief that we are separate from and judged by God, Jesus along with us was a sinner. His departure from his physical body marked the total release of his sin, or his belief in his own separation from the divine. Certainly, his ascension supports us in ours.
  3. Jesus is the Son of God.
    Yes, he is, but so are you. We are all one. Jesus never said, “I am the Son of God, but you aren’t”. No, he said, “This and more you shall do.” Jesus is like an older brother who has shown us the ropes. He is not someone who is different from us; he simply matured (ascended) earlier. This is not to downplay the enormity of his gift, only to remind you that you will get there, too.
  4. Jesus suffered for us.
    The vision of extreme pain and suffering, which had dominated the story as told by both Catholic and Protestant churches, is a projection painted from a human, separated position. Jesus did not experience pain on the cross. He felt unconditional love for everyone involved. Pain is fear-based; unconditional love experiences only bliss.
  5. The Bible is to be taken literally.
    Warnings exist in the Bible not to worship graven images. What is the Bible if not a graven (engraved) image? We could nitpick and talk about how the original texts were in Aramaic or Greek and how something is always lost in the translation, or that even the English versions differ. But what is more important is realizing that these stories were written by people; God has no horse in this race. These stories were sometimes inspired by the teller’s higher self/divine guidance. Your job is to follow your own intuition when reading scripture. If it feels inspired by love, trust it. If it feels fear-based, it probably isn’t guidance for you today.
  6. Christianity is the only path to salvation.
    All roads lead to ascension. In the last analysis, ascension is a very personal and private thing. No two people will follow the exact same path. The teachings of those who have come before you are for your enlightenment and support, but the farther you come on your path, the more you are on your own (your connection to infinite love). Any religion is as good an entry place as another.
  7. There is no such thing as reincarnation.
    Yeah, you thought that your last lifetime, too. Seriously, this physical plane and the physical body are illusions. They only thing that is real and eternal about you is your soul, your spirit. You created the earth plane to help you heal your separation from God. There is no final judgment. There is not even a starting line. You create each incarnation with what you can use to reach ascension. Or maybe you just came in this time to serve another. Either way, you have unlimited shots (and don’t forget that time is an illusion, too).
  8. Homosexuality is wrong and sinful.
    Let’s all repeat the following ten times: “God has no judgment”. Good. Forgiveness is the key to ascension. Releasing all judgments is central to your healing process.
  9. Only men can become spiritual leaders.
    As some of you already know there were 24 disciples, not 12. We each had a female counterpart. Jesus, of course, had Mary Magdalene, who also ascended. Male spiritual leaders have been more prominent because this male dominated planet has had less respect for women. Meanwhile, let your inner guidance lead you to the voices that inspire you. Reproductive organs have nothing to do with it. Gender is an illusion, also. Your divine self is neither male nor female.
  10. There is such a thing as a righteous (Christian) war.
    I challenge anybody to find a quote attributed to Jesus that supports war. He talked about love, loving your neighbor, turning the other cheek. There is nary a word even about self-defense. This being said, there is to be no judgment of war, simply the realization that it is fear based, not loved based, and not a part of the ascension path.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia