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

What is the difference between judgment and discernment?

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I have been asked the question of what the difference is between judgment and discernment. What a question! I’m kind of looking forward to hearing the answer to this one. I think you are all pretty clear about judgment, although you may still continue to practice it. Judgment no longer gets many positive reviews in the spiritual press. Jesus said, “Judge not lest ye be judged” and “First take the beam out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye”. Judgment, in truth, is merely projection. You judge in others what you judge in yourself, but don’t want to face. Sometimes you do go directly to the source and judge yourself. All judgment comes from guilt and fear. It comes from the insane belief buried deep in your mind – which you don’t want to look at or acknowledge – where you believe that you separated from God, deciding that you could do a better job than God. You then created this universe and these bodies to disappear into, to hide from God – to then live with your judgment, self-judgment, and fear of retribution. These are not new subjects; we have talked about this before. It is crucially important to notice where you are holding judgment, whether of another or yourself, and to bring that to Spirit, asking to be able to let it go. It is always helpful to remember that whatever we judge is not real and never happened. This is a dream. You did not separate from God. God loves you unconditionally. You and everyone else are totally innocent. Ask Spirit to remind you of this and to help lift the load off of you.

But we didn’t come here today only to talk about judgment. We have another key term here, and that is discernment. Let us see if we can discern the difference between the two words. One who was arguing in favor of the importance of discernment might say that it is valuable to be able to look at a situation without judgment, simply noticing what is going on. Perhaps what is noticed is that somebody is doing something that is likely to bring them pain and suffering. Your discerning perception shows that they are choosing this rather than the joy and peace of God. You don’t say that the person is bad or wrong for doing as they are doing, for that would be judgment. You simply notice. What might be the value of that? You could support them to make a different choice, helping them to avoid pain and suffering, perhaps, instead finding the forgiveness of God. Well, that sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Let’s think about this a little bit. If you are discerning that another is not making the best choice in a situation, it would imply that you know what the best choice would be. Hmmm….. That kind of makes you like God, doesn’t it? As the man used to say, “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” Isn’t trying to replace God what got you into this mess to begin with? If you know everything about what’s good for everyone else, does that mean you have absolutely no inner suffering or fear of your own, that you are absolutely at peace and at one with God at every moment? Hmmmm….. If you are still in a body, probably not.

It’s a slippery slope. It’s one of the ego’s favorite games. “I’m not judging you; I’m just noticing what you are doing. I’m very sensitive, you know. I just pick things up.” One of the first lessons in A Course in Miracles says there is no order of difficulty in miracles. Nothing is harder than anything else. There is no order of difference in judgments. No matter how the ego tries to sugarcoat it, each and every discernment is a mild judgment. To think that another is not acting or speaking in the manner that best supports them is a judgment. It’s hidden in what feels like love and caring and concern, but it is no less a judgment, still a projection, in truth an act of hate and fear. It is not your job to save anyone else. Your job is to save yourself and even that you cannot do alone. You must humble yourself before Spirit and ask that your guilt be removed and that you see through the all-loving eyes of God. The Will of God may be for you to say something to another person. This comes from your surrender to following your inner guidance, to your commitment to hear and follow the voice of Spirit. It has nothing to do with your discernment.  It is a matter of obedience, not of wisdom. If you feel doubt about whether the voice you hear is Spirit or ego, then hold back. That is called discretion. The first and loudest voice is usually ego. Listen deeply. Breathe. See what is there. Err on the side of discretion. When it becomes clear, when there is no question, when you feel the peace of God – go ahead and act. If you are truly speaking from Spirit you will have no attachment to how your words are received, or to what the listener might think of you. If one of those qualifiers is missing, it is probably still time for discretion. Discernment is the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Let’s take this a step further. You all have opinions. You have ideas about how things should be in the world. Perhaps you have political opinions. You think certain types of laws or leaders are better for people and for the world. You have ideas about how people should treat each other. You have thoughts about what is the best food or diet, what music is better, how one should dance. You have thousands of opinions about how things should be, about what is good and beautiful. Those are all judgments, each and every one of them. If you truly want to wake up, you will give away all of your opinions which are expressed in terms of what is good or what is right. In truth those are insane ideas. It is not of value toward your awakening to evaluate what you see (project) in the world. The important question is whether you are viewing what you see through ego’s eyes or Spirit’s eyes. Any attempt to try to make the world a better place through your opinions and actions serves to demonstrate your belief in the reality of the world and temporarily cements your place here. This, again, is your ego inspired try to replace God through this attempt to create heaven on earth. And, as my favorite question goes, how’s that working for you so far? Every opinion you have is a burden. It weighs you down and keeps you from being free.  You have no need for opinions, discernments, or judgments. They don’t serve you in any way. Let them go.

I am not suggesting that you never make a decision. I am not saying that you should not have a preference for one food over another when you are hungry. When you are hungry, eat. If you want to hear a certain kind of music, listen to it. This is not a suggestion to not follow your desires while you are in a body. Just don’t get hung up in the rightness or wrongness of your desire. And certainly, don’t think that because something feels good for you that it should be good for everybody. There is no right diet, right way to breathe, or right sleep cycle. Eating, sleeping, and breathing are neither good nor bad. They are simply necessary while you are in a body, so just do it and get on with what you are here for, which is forgiveness and waking up. I don’t want to be accused of beating a dead horse, but right/wrong is duality which is of the ego and the world. The Oneness of God is loving acceptance. The ego’s opinions can feel so good in the moment, but beneath that is the need for defense, for separation, for making yourself seem righteous in God’s eyes – wanting to throw others to the wolves so that you can be saved. “God take the meat-eaters. Spare me. I don’t even eat eggs.” Opinions are about separation. They are from the ego. They are what keep you from realizing your Divine innocence, perfection, and Oneness with God. Be a happy idiot.  When you think you know something, it is time to give that thought to Spirit. Let go of believing that you know and allow Spirit to show you the way home. You have tried to do this on your own for countless lifetimes. You have had seemingly endless opportunities in this incarnation. It is never too late. Now is the time. Let go and let Spirit guide you.

One last thought, and this may go without saying but I will say it nonetheless. Judgments, discernments, and opinions take you out of the now. There can be no judgment without duality. There have to be things to choose between; there have to be past experiences; there needs to be future opportunities. Without duality and time there can be no judgment. There are no two ways about it. When you are in the Divine now, in the holy moment, there can be no discernment, no choice. You look at your brother and see the Son of God. You see your mirror there with absolute love and acceptance. You see only Divinity. If any judgment is there you are not in the now, you are off somewhere else, somewhere unreal. Instead you are comparing, analyzing, and thinking. Your Divine mind does not think, it knows. In knowing there are no alternatives; there is simply truth; there is isness. If you can think about something, it is an indication that you don’t know. Thinking will never bring you to knowingness. You’ll never figure it out. In the holy moment at One with Spirit the truth lies. It is revealed: there is no effort on your part. This is a zone without judgment, without guilt. You are simply an innocent, free, and unconditionally loved Child of God with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Good Now

Sanhia

What is the nature of power?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

Is the ego part of me or is it separate?

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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 can I become One with God?

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A common statement or intention expressed through many spiritual disciplines is that of becoming one with God. People ask me,”What in the hell does that mean, Sanhia? And even if I think I have some idea of what it means, how could I possibly achieve that?” There are so many fun ways we could answer this question, so let’s see how many roads we can go down (How many roads can a man go down before they call him God?). “How do I become one with God?” is one of those nonsense questions. To be horribly trite, it is like asking a fish how to become one with water. You are now one with God. You have always been one with God. There is no time, no past, no present. You simply are one with God. You could not be anything else. That’s just how it is. Well, that was a short message! ….. Okay, we’ll go on to the next part. Being one with God without being aware of being one with God is not so desirable. When you have a fight with your partner it does not feel like you are one with God. When you are stuck in traffic it does not feel like being one with God. When you listen to or read the news it certainly doesn’t feel like you are one with God. So, I ‘m guessing you want to know a little more about the realizing side of this reality.

We have told this old story before, so I’m not going to go into great detail about it, but let me give you just the outline. The story goes like this: God created you in His own image…..which makes you an angry old man. Wait, that’s not the right story…..that is the one about you creating God in your own image. This means that you have no physicalness; the truth of you is absolutely one and in unity with God. At the same time you are not God, but are the Son. You did not create yourself. Like God you have no beginning or end, because there is no time. You simply are. In your infinite creativity you had a thought, a crazy, mad thought. “What if I could create something separate from God, something apart from God, something God didn’t know about?” That thought took off like a runaway train. Part of you disappeared into that idea. That part decided to create an identity, uniqueness, specialness. That all seemed like a great deal of fun; it seemed absolutely fantastic. The truth, however, was that no, you couldn’t do that. You are one with God, You are absolutely connected. There is no part of you that isn’t a part of God. God is everything; nothing could be created separate from that. So that mad idea couldn’t create anything real. It remained an idea. The universe it spawned was not real, only an idea. As you birthed this idea, you, the One Son, splintered into millions, billions of pieces – each one with an identity separate from the others. This allowed you to create this imaginary universe of specialness. Well, we all know how that worked out. It’s so funny; you have to join me in laughing at all of this. You created your specialness, your individuality, your separation from God and you discovered it was a terrifying place to be. Alone! In pain! Having to defend yourself constantly! That’s how it feels for the human believing he is separate from God. So the question is not one of how you become one with God, it is one of how to remember who you really are – that you are one with God. You cannot create what already is; you can only deny it. You have spent eons in that denial out of the fear of God’s anger. You project that He wants to get revenge for your abandonment of Him. Some of you take this denial into a place where you convince yourself there is no God, therefore nobody to punish you. This only frees you to stay here perpetually in the hell of your creation with no way out. This is the planet of free suffering. I hope you are still laughing with me here.

Now we come to the really meaty part of this message. You know about this work. You have an understanding about the importance of forgiveness, stopping the blind adherence to ego, listening to that soft, gentle, humorous, loving voice of Spirit, and letting that voice guide you home. To some degree or other, with whatever amount of dissociation (remember last month’s message) that is involved in your process, you are slowly waking up to the awareness of this truth of yourself as one with God. I want to tell you about the biggest crevice you have to leap over, the largest challenge you face. Some of you have felt this already. For some it is so scary I almost hate to tell you about it. You might not sleep well tonight. But, then you probably aren’t sleeping well anyway. If you look this fear straight in the face, you might begin to sleep better. Well, here it goes. You came into this illusion, into this dream or this nightmare, with your own personal identity. The only way out of this dream or nightmare is to leave your personal identity at the door as you exit. You can’t take it with you. Your personal identity is your separation from God, not to speak of the rest of the Son-ship. To realize your oneness with God you have to abandon this illusion of having a separate identity. Otherwise you keep cycling around in this place that feels so distant from heaven, so far away from home. You remain with the pain, the suffering, and the guilt that we have talked about so many times, that you are so familiar with. But! And here is the crux of the matter. Giving up your personal identity feels like a permanent death, not death as in death and rebirth, or reincarnation. This is the black hole death, the void. This is the nothingness, the terror that the ego feeds in you. Actually it is the ego that will die, because it exists only in separation. This fear tells you that you have no existence outside of your personal identity. The truth is just the opposite; you have no real existence in your personal identity. You want to feel nothing but love, but that is not possible here. You want to feel unconditional acceptance, to experience that you are absolutely guilt free. That cannot be accomplished without releasing the separation of your personal identity. Each one of you will do that eventually.

You have had other lifetimes where you had different names and different bodies, perhaps a different gender, race, or religion. None of those things are you. You are not this name that calls you to dinner. It has nothing to do with you. It is like you have come to a strange planet knowing nothing about it and you pick up a foreign object wondering what it is and you make up a name for it. Let’s say you call it glook. So, to you it is a glook, but it is not. That is simply a name you have given to something that doesn’t really exist. You are not your name.  You are not your body. You can keep trading these bodies in. There is only one thing you truly carry with you from lifetime to lifetime; that is your guilt. You can be certain that as long as you hold on to your identity, your guilt will be waiting for you in the next infant version of your separation that comes flying down the tube, or more likely is reluctantly pulled from the womb, from not your true mother into not your true home. The guilt and the fear will be right there with you. That’s all that you carry with you. This identity that you hold as so valuable is your pain and suffering.

Sooner or later the weight of that will be so strong, you will be so exhausted by it, that you will be ready to let it go. If that day is approaching for you, I can give you a few hints to make it easier. Whenever you see another and see them as different from you, remind yourself that they are not. Remind yourself that there are only two things that all humans ever express. They either say “I love you” or “Help me”. That’s all they do. That’s all you do. You are all exactly the same. If you meet somebody today and you do not feel “I love you” coming from them, they are crying out for help. If you have a hard time receiving that plea it is because they are your mirror. You are projecting your cry for help onto them. Thank them for being a fellow traveler in pain. It’s not your job to remove their pain; your job is to remove yours. Thank them for the reminder and stop the separation. Give up pointing at them, making them to be the one in pain. Don’t blame them. Don’t make them the asshole. Don’t make them the cause of their problems, or yours. Don’t feed the separation. Don’t allow yourself to feel superior…”well at least I’m not as bad off as they are”. Every time you choose separation, you choose to remain in hell. Every time! Pretty silly isn’t it. As we look at it together, isn’t that a really funny thing? You think it is somebody else when it is really yourself. You could choose to forgive and love, but you have chosen to project and blame. And then it hurts you! And all the time you pretend not to be doing it. You have to see the humor in that, so laugh with me and let it go. Forgive yourself and the other.

You are all in this together. That’s why we suggest that you be as kind as you can with each other. When you are kind to another you are kind to yourself. When you are kind to yourself you may actually reach the point of realizing your innocence, that you don’t deserve punishment. If you look out at one other, just one person, and think he is guilty and should be punished – you can look at the other six billion and see them all as innocent – that one is you. That is you that you want to send to hell. It just takes one, but let’s be honest – there is more than one such person for you. Each one of them you wish to see punished is you. So funny! Laugh again with me. So simple! The ego wants you to stay in separation, in guilt, in pain; Spirit wants to wake you up, bring you home to the love of God. It’s not a hard call to make. Come here with us. We will look at everything with you and help you to laugh. And always, as always……remember…..

God Blesses You

Sanhia

How can we not see children as innocent victims?

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It’s a funny thing, but I have never talked to a human who didn’t have parents. Sometimes, one might not know who his birth mother was; there was an adoption and the mother’s identity is hidden. In this case there are two mothers that you have stories with, one that abandoned you and one that you can have the everyday issues with. Even if there are no identifiable mothers, you will have numerous tales with foster parents, relatives, or orphanages, along with the actual birth mother relationship. There is always a father, also, even if the mother doesn’t know who it is. Present or absent, which is of course its own drama, you have a history with him along with any other men who have played that role for you. Within the illusion, everyone has two parents, and many stories come with those relationships. An interesting thing about the parent-child relationship is that it is a lifelong one. Most relationships are for a short period – perhaps only a one time meeting, or for a length of time – but only a few traverse your whole life. The relationship with a parent is carried deep within you, particularly if you haven’t taken full responsibility for it. This is true even if there has been a separation, whether through death or from personal choice. The relationship is a constant presence. If there were an order of importance of relationships in the illusion, these might be the biggest ones. Many of you, if you are honest with yourselves, blame your parents for one thing or another. You believe you are the way you are because your father was so cruel or because your mother was so judgmental. So, you are a victim all of your life because of whom your parents were. This is not true. That is the ego’s story. It is another way of confusing cause and effect.

The mass consciousness presents the illusion that a pure, innocent, helpless baby is born. The child is a blank screen onto which the parents will begin to write. Such a responsibility! If they do things right, the child will thrive; if they do things wrong, the child will suffer. What a burden! Fortunately it is an illusion. Children hardly come in as blank slates; they arrive fully formed. Of course we are not speaking physically, but as we know the physical you is not the true you. Physically, infants are helpless, but mentally they carry with them all of the ego beliefs of guilt, fear, and victimhood they have burdened themselves with through countless incarnations since their imagined separation from God. What happens is that children create experiences in the world just as you do as an adult. From the first day onward, and even before that in their prenatal experiences, children create in accordance with these beliefs. Like you, they project their guilt onto others and receive punishments they believe they deserve, which will hopefully square them in God’s eye. Now they have others, particularly their parents, who they can blame and point a finger at. You all did this, and you are still doing it.

I want to talk about this from a few different perspectives – firstly from your specific relationship with your parents. As you were growing up it certainly seemed that you had no choice. You couldn’t pick up and leave or select different parents. You couldn’t avoid abusive situations at school, in your neighborhood, or with relatives. You felt yourself to be a victim. You simply had to endure these experiences. But then, as now, you always had the ability to say that the outer world did not affect you. In some places you made this choice and your parents’ words and deeds did not touch you. You knew they were not the truth. You created your own truth in these situations. If you are not an only child, you see how your siblings developed differently – none of you are alike. If you were blank slates written on by the same parents, you should have turned out the same. Yet, you and your siblings are quite different. Why? Because you each created your own experiences and made your own choices in dealing with them. It was not so much a question of what happened to you as how you dealt with it internally. Did you practice forgiveness and seeing the Divinity in your parent, or were those skills yet to be developed? The potential was there to access those truths. This is not to point a finger or to say that it was your fault that you were not more aware, but simply to shine light on the reality of the situation. You came to wake up and Spirit provided you from birth on with the opportunities to do just that. You came in believing in your victimhood and you proved yourself right.

At some point you left home. Now you are on your own. Your parents are no longer in your day-to-day life. Yet, in how many ways are they still running it? What judgments did they make about you that you took on as your own? What fears did they instill in you that follow you around even when your parents’ physical presence doesn’t? Unless you do a forgiveness process, your parents will continue forever to run your life, even though you have been an independent adult for years. If you tell yourself that you are over all of that, that you are an adult and your own person now –wonderful! But take a good look at each of your parents and notice where you have any judgment remaining about them, or about the way they raised you – or about things they are still doing today. Where you find judgments you are discovering the places where they still run your life. This is projection, a confusion of cause and effect. You are always the cause of everything that happens to you. The world is always the effect. This is true now; it was true when you were a child. Your judgments of your parents are a refusal to admit the truth. It is time to grow up. Stop being a helpless child. If you were not really a victim then, you are even less so now. Be an adult and take responsibility. It is yourself you are judging. Handle it. You know how to do that – kindly, gently, lovingly, but firmly. There is no kindness to your parents or to yourself in projection and blame. They are attacks. Blame is a statement that you are a helpless victim. You pretend that you didn’t choose these parents, but you did. You may scream that you didn’t ask to be born, but you did. You created the perfect parents for you, the best classroom for you to learn the lessons you came to master so that you could awaken – leaving the pain, the guilt, the suffering, and the belief in separation from God that are a part of the world of duality – and come home. You chose the perfect parents to support you in doing that. Their job ended years ago. It’s over, complete. Now the only work left to be done is yours.

Until you do this work, you will recreate your parents in all of the authority figures you meet in your life. It might be your boss and it certainly will be your partner. If you have not forgiven your opposite sex parent, you will find yourself married to that parent. It will make no difference what your spouse does; you will perceive them acting as your parent did. Remember that it is all you. There is no other. You are the creator of everyone in your life. You will create your mother and father everywhere you go. Make it simple for yourself. Rather than dealing with challenges with every person you meet every day of your life, just heal with your parents. Give gratitude to Spirit and to them for playing this game with you, for being your teachers. Look where you have judgment. Let Spirit lift that and help you to forgive. Ask for gratitude for having these perfect parents who came into your life to teach you exactly the lessons you came to learn. If you are not certain what the lessons were, request to understand what you came to learn from your parents.

In conclusion, you are all children. When you were a physical child it seemed that your parents were on another level. They certainly had the physical power. In truth, you were all children, asleep and hoping to awaken to your true selves. You and your parents are siblings, as is your brother Jesus. Your only job is to love them and to love yourself, to forgive them and to forgive yourself. To enter the kingdom of God you become like a child: innocent, pure, forgiven – the very idea that the mass consciousness holds of the newborn. Become the child you never got to be in this body. You are the Child of God.

Good Now

Sanhia

Is it part of my purpose to help heal others?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Blesses You

Sanhia