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

Why is it so difficult to let go of the illusion of the world?

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Most people have this experience – we could call it schizophrenia – where on the one hand they understand the spiritual truth of pure non-dualism on a mental level; they read these messages and have read and studied A Course in Miracles, perhaps multiple times. That side of them believes in the truth of oneness with Spirit and with God and correspondingly disbelieves in the ego and the reality of the physical world. Yet when it comes to the push and shove of daily life, they seem to live in another world.  There appears to be such a split. They ask, “Why, Sanhia, is it so hard for me to live the truth? Why do I know that it is all a dream, and yet take the dream so seriously and get upset and angry, am filled with judgment, pain hurt, fear, and feelings of victimhood. I know it’s not real, but I am still overwhelmed by all of these feelings! Why Sanhia? Why? Can you help me?” I can’t help you because there is no problem here. I hope you are laughing with me now. You are just being human and cannot be expected to be behaving any differently.

There is a term that psychologists use that goes back to Freud called dissociation. Freud also talked about projection, where people assign their own self judgments to others so that they can live with themselves (though probably not so happily). Jesus also told us all about this phenomenon. Dissociation can be described or explained in the following way: you want to change your life, to change your experience of things, to give up all of the pain and suffering and to implement a new plan; but a part of you disconnects from that new plan and does the same old thing. You sabotage your own strongly desired program. The old story simply continues to run your life with all of the old pain and suffering included. Even though you consciously say that you don’t want this, you keep doing it. That is dissociation; that is schizophrenia. In therapy, you have decided on a course of treatment, but you don’t seem to be able to carry it out. In spiritual healing, you decide to listen to Spirit instead of the ego, but the ego keeps running things.

Why would anybody do that? Why would they act against their own self interest? The short answer is, “because the ego made me do it”. A slightly longer version is that it is more comfortable to keep choosing the ego. It could be said that the known devil is preferable to the unknown devil. So far you have all survived while listening to the ego. It may have been painful, but it is familiar. It is comfortable like your old clothes. A big part of you doesn’t want to let go of that. And…what is this unknown? What would you be letting go of the ego for?

Before answering that question, let’s take a giant step backwards. As a child you often felt pretty helpless in a hostile world. Your protection was to build a wall and hide behind it. You didn’t let anybody penetrate that wall. In your private world you were an innocent victim of your parents, teachers, siblings, neighborhood bullies, and whoever else seemed to be more powerful than you. You blamed them for your troubles, and forgiveness was out of the question. The truth behind your wall and behind everybody’s walls was that you were terrified of God. This fear felt too dangerous to face, so you hid it, even from yourself. In this way you could pretend that God would take pity on you and punish those who were so harsh to you. The only problem was that none of that was true. You now have the spiritual awareness of why it wasn’t true and why it ultimately wouldn’t work for you then, or now. But, you also have this habit, and it seems to have kept you alive.

So, you are not just letting go of the ego; you have to tear down this entire wall that has seemed to protect you, though at an increasingly high cost.  And what are you getting in exchange?  You are willing to give up the pain, the fear, the suffering, the anger, the judgment, and the victimhood. You will also be giving up your personal identity, which is absolutely tied up in all of this. For you to fully release the illusion, you will have to fully release your attachment to your separate identity. This is fertile ground for the ego to grab hold of. Are you sure you are ready to do that? To become One with God and Spirit it is necessary to lose your uniqueness, to lose your sense of self, this sense of you. That is what letting go of the ego entails. What you do then, unconsciously of course, is to keep a foot in each camp. On the one hand you keep your spiritual disciple going through reading, studying, affirming, and asking Spirit for support. On the other hand you keep the other foot firmly planted in the ego’s camp, holding on to your specialness and that of others. So you have your support group of people you judge as specially good and the opposition group which is specially bad. You have special love and special hate. You hold that for yourself as well. You tell yourself all of the things that make you a special person: you are on a spiritual path, you recycle and care for the environment, you are against war, and you try to help the disadvantaged, and so on. You pat yourself on the back for being good. Then your special hate for yourself surfaces and you judge yourself for failing to be perfect with your spiritual practice, for not eating well enough, for losing your temper, for catching yourself judging, and so on. So you bounce back and forth between being so enlightened and being such an asshole who will never get it.

Boy does ego like all of this back and forth crap. If you choose Spirit you have to let go of it all, the special hate and the special love. This is enormous. It is bigger than your separated mind can even hold on to. That’s how big it is. The fear is gargantuan. There is no way that you can survive it. Sanhia! What are you saying?  I mean that you as a separated, individual self cannot survive. If you let go of the ego comfort zone and pull that foot out of the game you will leave your personal identity and fall back into the Oneness of God. Sooner or later you will have to do this, but right now you are driving with a heavy foot on the brakes. The only choice you have is for how long and how slowly you want to rip that bandage off. The fear is usually way too big to rip it all off at once. For one thing you have no idea how long the bandage is, nor how many hairs will have to be ripped out. Beyond that, you have no idea what replaces the bandage and the accompanying pain. You know what a separate self feels like, but Oneness can feel like it might be an endless void. You have no conception of what the experience of “no you” is like.

Spirit demands nothing. You will never be forced to come home. Spirit knows that of course you dissociate. Of course you try to maintain your separate self. That’s what humans do. No problem. There is nothing you have to do about it. You are not wrong to continue, nor are you right to stop. But since you do want to listen, Spirit whispers to you to notice that you dissociate. Then Spirit suggests that you have a willingness to look right at the areas where you have a special hate toward yourself or others. If you say to me that you don’t have any hate for anybody, I suggest you are dissociating. It is fear provoking to admit your hate and judgment. Everybody in a body carries hate. It goes with the territory. You hate yourself for separating from God or you project that hate onto God for abandoning you. The fear is that if the hate is exposed, God will punish you. That is an insane thought, expecting something God is not capable of. But, if you pretend it is not there, you can’t deal with it. It remains hidden behind your wall and you stay in the hell of separation. Part of dissociation is pretending you are healed when you are not, pretending that you don’t have a problem. The ego here might suggest to you that since the problem isn’t real, there is no reason to look at it. But, you believe it is real. So, look right at it.

You look at it, not because you have a work that you have to do to transform this fear, but simply in recognition that you have a judgment. Notice that you have this judgment, this anger, this hate; become aware that you feel you are a victim, that you blame this person, that you blame yourself, and on and on. Just be conscious that you are doing that. Bring that to me. Bring that to Spirit. We’ll look at it together. That’s all you have to do. When you look at what is not real side-by-side with what is real, only the truth will eventually remain. The fear will disappear, will evaporate, will be burned away. This is like the second step in the five-step process. Love and fear cannot long occupy the same space. Do this throughout the day. Whenever you notice yourself experiencing any of the aforementioned manifestations of fear and separation, don’t try to hide or ignore what you are feeling or believing. On the other hand, don’t accept it in helpless self hatred. Look right at it and invite me, invite Spirit in at that moment. Ask us to look at it with you. Let go of the judgment and just look with us. This can be called “looking down upon the battlefield”. We will see you acting from this dispassionate viewpoint. We will remind you of your innocence and that you are unconditionally loved. As we watch together, you will become aware that you are the only one judging, and will realize there is no benefit to you from continuing, but plenty to gain from loving yourself. The fear is too great to face alone. Fortunately, you are never alone. You are always welcome to come join with us. Welcome us in. Invite us to gently shake you and to point out when you are dissociating. Allow us to remind you that it is safe to bring those judgments out into the open with us.

Good Now

Sanhia

How do I give it to Spirit?

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We have been talking for years about giving it to Spirit. People have been asking me lately just what that means and how to actually go about giving something to Spirit. To begin with, I wish to remind you – and I can never say this too many times – whatever it is that you want to give to Spirit, doesn’t really exist. The problem isn’t really there. It is a figment of your imagination. That does not mean that it doesn’t feel absolutely real to you. It doesn’t mean that strong emotions are not triggered; appearing to cause you discomfort and pain. I am well aware of all of that. I have walked in your moccasins. I bring the illusion up as a starting point because you will find it easier to give something to Spirit if you can remind yourself beforehand that it is not a big deal, that it ultimately doesn’t really matter. If you believe that something is crucially important, it is harder to trust it to Spirit. When you give it to Spirit, you do let go of it. If you don’t fully let go, you haven’t given it to Spirit and you are left holding the bag. That is the acid test. If you find yourself still holding on, try again. Give it again, as many times as necessary, until you have fully let go.

I am going to share some ideas to ease your process of letting go. For some of you it may be hard to visualize what Spirit is. What is this entity you are trusting? It might be easier to substitute Jesus for Spirit. For others it might be easier to give it to Buddha, or to the Divine or the Divine Presence. You can give it to Sanhia. It makes no difference as long as you are giving it to an energy of pure non-dualism. I don’t recommend that you give it to a spiritual leader who is in a body, because they, like you, are still in dualism. No matter how learned and advanced a human teacher may be, he or she is still in the illusion of duality. They are a projection for you rather than Divinity or Spirit.

When you give whatever it is to Spirit, you absolutely release it. There are no strings attached. That is why you never ask Spirit to solve a problem for you. Have no attachment to what Spirit does with your request. You don’t ask Spirit to fix your financial problems. Don’t ask Spirit to bring you your perfect relationship. Don’t ask for a specific outcome or a solution. When you direct Spirit to a specific action you are making the illusion real. You are saying that if this problem can be solved, you can have a little bit of heaven on earth. This keeps you stuck in the cycle of duality. Asking for a solution is confusing cause and effect. You are not unhappy because of what is going on in your life. You are not a victim of that; you are the creator of that. In your mind you hold a belief that you are separate from God and deserve punishment. The challenge you are experiencing comes from that wrong-thinking mind. This is not an easy concept to wrap your head around when you are in a body. Your ego has done a very effective job of convincing you that the world is doing you in. Then, you want Spirit to come in and save you. I want to impress upon you that you don’t want us to do that because as long as you remain the victim you will stay in hell indefinitely. If we were to solve this problem, you would just create a new one, because your belief in victimhood and helplessness would continue unabated.

So, your request to Spirit is never one of asking for a solution to a problem. There is only one prayer for you to make to Spirit. Ask Spirit to wake you up, to help you realize that this is your creation. Ask for help in realizing that all of this comes from your belief in separation, from your fear of God, from your belief that you deserve punishment, from your belief that this world is real and that you are a victim of it. You want Spirit to take all of that from you and wake you up. You want to be reminded that you are, always have been, and always will be the unconditionally loved Son of God, that you are welcome to come home. That is the only thing to ask Spirit to do. When you call on Spirit, you give Him this burden, this tangled muddy mess of victimhood and confusion. You ask Spirit just to take it from you, that you no longer want to be immersed in fear and limitation. You ask not for solutions, only for freedom from the worry and the weight. You are free now, say, of your financial worries because they are not real so there is nothing to worry about, not because Spirit is going to pay your bills. Your belief that your problems were real is gone because you have given it to Spirit. Your beliefs will be cleansed by Spirit. Spirit is your cosmic laundry service. Your only job is to let go.

If you should notice that you are still holding the fear, it only means that you didn’t fully let go. Perhaps you let go of one level of your fear. No big deal. Give it to Spirit again. This is like the last step of the five-step process. It may come back. That is fine. When you successfully give it to Spirit and let go, you are living in the holy moment. This is that time where there is no time. You have let go of the past and your guilt. You have let go of the future and your fear. All of that has been given to Spirit. All that is left is the holy moment.

Another issue that may come up for some of you, perhaps for everyone, is the issue of trust. You wonder if you are just fooling yourself. Is there really a Spirit out there that you can give this too? Is it really true that you are the Divine Son of God, that this is just a dream that you can let go of? Is all of this really true and the entire world around you an illusion? Of course, I can assure you that Spirit is the only thing you can trust in, but that won’t necessarily alleviate your doubt. For most of you your choice really comes down to a combination of two things. First, you have tried it every other way and nothing has worked for you, so what do you have left to lose? You have tried and tried to create heaven on earth, to solve all of these problems and you have failed, so why not leave it to Spirit? The second thing is that you have been working with what I am talking about. This is not new. There have been times when you were able to let something go. You experienced a healing around a fear, even if it didn’t last. The more you practice giving it to Spirit, the more you will notice these kinds of results. This is not the outcome of seeing your problems solved, but the fruition of seeing your fear dissolve, of feeling at peace. Maybe your finances don’t look any different, but you don’t worry about them much now.

This is why you, not God but the Divine You, created Spirit being here. You wanted a constant and clear voice reminding you of the truth, because you also created the ego, a constant and clear voice reminding you of what is not true. Both of those voices are always there for you. You have been learning how to discern which voice you are hearing and to choose the voice of Spirit. As you continue to work in this way, your trust and faith will strengthen. It is a matter of persistence, of self-discipline. Your fear will decrease, but while you are in a body it never fully disappears. This is perfect. Whatever stands in your way from leaving the physical and returning home is there for you to see and to give to Spirit. It is so simple. You have only one job. Give everything to Spirit. There is nothing you have to decide or to solve. Everything is off of your shoulders. Spirit is your absolute guide in each moment. Returning for a moment to the five-step process, the second step is truly giving it to Spirit. You can choose to incorporate this into your internal directions to yourself. Surrender fully to the energy you are feeling in your body and at the same time hand it over to Spirit. You are already doing that when you stare into the face of your fear. It disappears because it is not real. When the discomfort of the fear transforms to that warm feeling of love, you have made your surrender to Spirit. As you look into the face of your fear, Spirit is there with you. The ego mind tells you to look away, warning you that it is not safe to face your fear. As you are facing the fear you can verbally add that you are giving this fear to Spirit. Again, you are not pushing the fear away, only offering it to Spirit. Perhaps in your practice of giving things to Spirit that we talked about earlier, failure comes about because you are pushing your fear away rather than simply surrendering it. So, if you are having trouble giving something to Spirit, we recommend doing the five-step process.

Finally, giving it to Spirit is a lightening of your load. It is not a foisting off onto Spirit to handle your problem. You give to Spirit in a spirit of love and gratitude, in the awareness that your fear is not real. It is a request for support in fully awakening. This request is always heard and always answered.

Good Now

Sanhia

Do I have to be perfect to ascend?

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We have been covering a lot of territory in the past few messages, talking about pure non-duality, confusing cause and effect, accepting everything that comes to you, and the impossibility of creating heaven on earth. Sometimes, and it is perfectly understandable, you might have the reaction that this is all too much. On a conceptual level you might believe in what I have shared; that you are creating it all, that none of it is real, to forgive yourself for everything that has happened and to not judge anyone, and, and, and…… You might be thinking “But Sanhia, it feels enormous. It feels so big. I don’t think I’m up to it. I don’t think I can do all of this. How could anyone accomplish such a feat? You would have to be perfect.” Wow! That was quite a rant. Is there anything more? Don’t hold back. Excuse me while I chuckle just a bit, not at you but with you. You are absolutely right. It is too much. It is too big. Fortunately, you are not expected to be perfect. In the illusion in duality, it is an absolute impossibility. You cannot go through your day and not have a negative emotional response, not get angry, not blame someone, or feel like a victim. It’s going to happen. It is the human condition. If it did not happen, you would not be here in a body; you would be finished with all of this.

Maybe, you notice that these reactions are not happening as often as they once did. Think about how it was before you begin working with non-dualistic thinking. Over time, this change in how you react to the world will increase in its occurrence. But, you will never realize a time where the ego’s thoughts don’t grab a hold of you. If you have it in your mind that your ascension can only come about through perfection, that day is never going to come. There will never be a time where your ego is absolutely unable to get a foot in the door, or even a toe. Hearing this may bring on a wave of sadness or hopelessness for you. You may feel that you can never make it. That is not the case; it is but an opening for the ego’s voice.  In fact, the opposite is true. You are going to make it; you have no choice. We are in charge of that, not you. You can slow the process down by digging in your heals and refusing to listen to Spirit, by insisting on being a victim and projecting your guilt on others. You can do that and slow things down, but you can’t stop it. So, if you can do your worst and are still guaranteed your place in heaven with God, where in fact you truly are right now though lacking the awareness of being there, how much more quickly are you going to realize your Oneness with God if you are trying to work with the process instead of against it?

The secret is not in being perfect in every moment. The secret is in becoming aware after you have let the ego run rampant, that you have done so. With this awareness there are two steps to take. First, give whatever it is to Spirit. Don’t tell Spirit what to do; this is not yours to handle. Just let it go and let Spirit handle it. The second step is equally important. Be kind to yourself. Let it be okay that you did what you did, or that you didn’t do what you didn’t do. Let that be okay. It is not the expectation that you will never stumble. There is no thought about that. There is no judgment. Remember that nothing here is real. Nothing you do is wrong. Nobody is hurt, not even yourself. It is all an illusion. That is the forgiveness process, so be kind to yourself and forgive yourself. It is perfectly okay that you listened to the ego. The important thing is that you noticed and have chosen to try not to do that next time. You might still do it again. No biggie. What is important is that you notice, even if it takes days to do so. It makes no difference how long it takes you to notice. Time doesn’t matter, except when you are in pain. Holding on to your blame and victimhood is always painful…well, after the initial rush that comes from feeling yourself to be a righteous martyr. As soon as you realize that you have projected, that you have confused the cause and the effect, the pain eases. This is an enormous accomplishment, the noticing that you have been listening to ego and now want to give it to Spirit. Nobody is counting how many times you trip, except yourself. So stop counting; be kind to yourself.

Let go of seeking perfection. You are already perfect. You are perfection pretending to not be perfect. As long as you are in a body, that dance will go on…..it will for all humanity. You cannot be perfect in duality, because in duality there are always opposites. You cannot help listening to ego in some moments, and you are not judged for that or for anything else. So give it to Spirit and be kind to yourself. I want to remind you that as you are looking for perfection, you can be looking in all the wrong places. Perfection is not found in the world, which will never mirror heaven, which will never replicate the infinite love of God. You created the world, thinking you could do better than God. That was a mad idea. The world is not the place to look for perfection. However, there is a perfect plan for you and the Sonship to awaken. When something occurs in your life and you react in such a way as to be a victim, this is a perfect part of Spirit’s plan. If you were to spend your life in the belief that you are doing everything perfectly, you would be in denial. Your head would be deeply buried in the sand as you repeat to yourself “Everything is fine”. You would ignore your pain until it kills you. Then you would come back and try it again. It is through feeling the pain that you experience when you listen to the ego that you realize you need to choose differently. Without this suffering you would not choose to listen to Spirit. Each time you go through the cycle of listening to ego, feeling pain, giving it to Spirit, forgiving, and being kind to yourself – you are one step closer to letting go of the illusion. This is only possible if all of the steps are followed. You cannot learn without first making a mistake. So, the more mistakes you make the faster you learn, as long as you realize your missteps. There is perfection in your errors. You each have your vulnerable spots – your hot buttons – the places where you are most likely to go into victimhood, projection, and blame. Those hotspots are a gift that Spirit will use to help you learn to let go of the ego. Choosing wrongly is the necessary first step.

If you are in a body, you believe that you are separate from God and you fear God and his wrath. That is painful. It is not your job to hide from the pain. Spirit makes that easy for you. Spirit presents choices that make it likely that you came into contact with your pain. Spirit does not cause the pain. It is your belief in your separation and your need for punishment that cause the pain. If you are not conscious that you carry this guilt energy with you, how can you let it go? There is perfection in everything that is presented to you. There is not perfection in your ability to choose Spirit in each moment. That you will never have. You will simply, eventually reach the point that you give your pain so quickly, so automatically to Spirit that Spirit will say, “Come with me now”, and it will be the end of your earthly experience. This happens not from your perfection of action, but from your surrender of your little self to the Oneness of God. You cannot choose this moment. You can only remember that choosing to listen to the ego for an instant does not further separate you from God. It is a window of opportunity that is there to lead you home. You may have many rungs to climb up out of the hell of physicality. You will not likely be taking the express elevator out, though the ego will whisper in your ear that if you were really so Divine you would take that express ride right out of here, so you must really be a fuck up. Smile, and give all of that to Spirit. Let go of the need for perfection. Each rung will bring a lightening of the load you carry. You don’t need to demonstrate perfection; you are perfection…no matter what the ego might be saying to you. You are innocent. You are perfection.

Good Now

Sanhia

What is meant by pure non-duality?

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We have been talking about the illusion. The last message dealt with acceptance and analysis while the preceding one considered cause and effect. All of this is connected to what we call pure non-duality. I am going to take a moment to define this term. Duality has to do with opposites. The physical experience is a creation of duality. Without it, there can be no physicality. Whether the split is male/female, hot/cold, light/dark, right/wrong, heaven/hell or ego/Spirit – everything in this world is based in duality. Non-duality implies oneness. Non-duality is God, is divinity, and is your true nature. When you think you are human and in a body in the physical world, you are in duality. Ascension requires the release of duality. If you want to get off the wheel, to stop experiencing heaven and hell, reincarnation, suffering, and pain – so that you can go home and experience only divinity with God – the route to follow is pure non-dualism, absolute and complete. Anything, any belief system or teaching that finds an ultimate value or purpose in the physical, such as those who wish to create heaven on earth, is not teaching pure non-duality. This is fine. It is not our job to criticize or to tell you what to believe, but we want to let you know that there are consequences to every choice that you make. The truth of you will never be hurt or damaged no matter how long you chase after illusions. One day you will wake up. It makes no difference how attached you are to the duality. Eventually you will choose to let it go. The focus here is not to try to talk you into non-dualism. If you have an attachment to the physical and want to stay, then this message will probably not have much attraction for you. For those of you who wish to go home now, who are ready to release the physical and let go of duality, you will wish to read on. That being said, it is one thing to intend to focus on pure non-dualism, but another to fully realize it. The mass consciousness does not support such thinking in any way whatsoever. Even religions that began out of the seed of pure non-dualism have been altered, so you are unlikely to find support in any church or temple. Even many of those who purport to teach from non-dualistic sources, such as A Course in Miracles, often misinterpret and dilute the message.

Here comes a primer in pure non-dualism. Everything in your physical experience is an illusion: nothing physical is real. It is not the truth. All that you perceive in the physical world comes from your mind. You are the creator of this physical “dream”, not God. It is in this dream of physicality that you think you can hide from God. As long as you “live” in this dream you experience duality. There is a balance in the physical where every “positive” is balanced by a “negative”. Duality is based upon judgment, upon what is thought to be good or bad. The ultimate judgment is that you are guilty, that you have sinned against God and He will punish you. So, you have to be good, or at least punish yourself first, to get back in God’s good graces. That is the insanity of duality. You are welcome to try and improve the duality; you have been attempting this for eons. Beat your head against the wall as long as you want, but the only way out of the quagmire is to give up duality and practice pure non-dualism. This recognizes that God does not and could not judge you, that you are innocent and loved unconditionally. You cannot earn God’s forgiveness because it is always freely granted. Pure non-dualism means letting go of your belief in your separation from God’s love and choosing to wake up from this dream and be home with God. When you make this choice, we are here at your service. The practice of pure non-dualism is not complicated; it is very simple. It does require a great deal of effort and trust because you will be asked to go against everything that the ego is screaming into your ear, ideas that seem to be logical. Ego’s voice will come from within your own mind, from others, from the mass media, and from other spiritual paths. You will find yourself surrounded by this cacophony. No matter how daunting the odds may seem, you have no choice but to eventually succeed. We are here to expedite your journey.

There are just three steps in moving from dualism to pure non-dualism. The first one is perhaps the most challenging. This step is for you to simply accept that there are two voices you can hear in any situation. You can hear the voice of the ego, which confuses you through duality, or you hear the voice of Spirit, which reinforces pure non-dualism. This step asks you to train yourself into an awareness at each moment of your life – with each thought, with each action, with each feeling, with everything that is transpiring – that you are being presented with a choice of listening to ego or to Spirit. This may sound like a small step, but how easy it is to unconsciously accept ego as the only voice, as, for the most part, you have always done. Examples of listening to the ego include entertaining thoughts of victimhood, of judgment of self and others, of comparing yourself favorably or not to another. You may contemplate why things are happening, may feel fear, may feel unloved. There are many levels and ways that the ego carries on this onslaught. Training yourself in each moment to be aware that you are listening to either ego or Spirit is an enormous accomplishment. We are not even yet talking about the discernment of which voice you are hearing – though it is likely that of the ego at this stage – only the awareness that you have a choice of two voices in this very moment, that nothing is set in stone. In step one it is just for you to be aware that you are listening to a voice. Until you become aware that you are listening to a voice, you will unconsciously be listening to ego and will stay rooted in duality. Remember that there is no judgment about this choice. God loves you no matter who you listen to. The only punishment will be self-imposed under the direction of the ego. The ego plays “good cop, bad cop”. Ego will tell you how wonderful you are in comparison to another, which may feel good. Then it will tell you how bad you are in comparison to another individual, which may not feel so good. Ego constantly plays these games with you. Be aware of that. Until you develop the awareness that you are listening to a voice, you can go no further. Ego will run your life. If you notice once a month that you are listening to a voice, you will experience slow progress. As the awareness becomes weekly, or daily, or multiple times a day – you will truly begin to move your consciousness. Ultimately, your awareness will be constant. That is the state of the master. As long as you are still in a body, ego will do its best to keep you listening, to keep you rooted in the physical. Your goal can be to have constant vigilance about noticing that you are listening to a voice.

The second step is a small but significant one. The question is, “What voice are you listening to?” Is this ego or Spirit? As you are starting down this road it won’t always be easy to discern. In general the voice of fear comes from ego and Spirit is the voice of love. But sometimes fear can feel like love – and vice versa. When ego whispers in your ear how you are better than others, it can feel like love, though it is truly separation. We want to give you some more tips on how to recognize the voice of Spirit. Spirit never compares or judges. As we pointed out last time, Spirit accepts, ego analyzes. Thinking about things opens the door to ego. Accepting whatever appears opens you to Spirit. Spirit always reminds you of your innocence, of your pureness, of your divinity. There is never blame or judgment of yourself or anybody else. You can know that it is ego if blame or judgment is heard. Spirit never compares, that also is the realm of ego. When Spirit speaks, it is always a win-win situation. There are no losers. With ego there is always some sort of competition. With Spirit there are no “shoulds”. This word implies a rightness or wrongness in a choice. It suggests that to be “good” you will make a certain choice. If you follow a voice out of the fear of what will happen if you don’t, you are following ego. If you don’t follow that voice there may be fear of repercussions. Attachment to a certain result is also from ego. Acceptance of any outcome is the voice of Spirit. Whatever happens is perfect. If there is any guilt involved, that is the voice of ego. Spirit always communicates unconditional love and acceptance. As you practice identifying the source of the voice you are hearing, you will get better. It doesn’t matter how many times you are fooled. Your only jobs are to be vigilant (step one) and to make a decision (step two). Your accuracy will improve. Just keep getting back on that horse. You are still in duality. Otherwise there would not be the illusion of having two voices to listen to. Only the truth of Spirit could be heard. Ego lies. It is trying to maintain its existence by deceiving you. Spirit is patient. Time is on its side. Ultimately the truth will out and will stand alone.

Step three is perhaps the easiest, or maybe the hardest. This step is for you to take action. It does little good to identify the speaker as Spirit if you don’t follow what He says to do. This is where you put your money where your mouth is. You act in alliance with the voice of Spirit that you have identified. There is integrity, because when you are true with Spirit you are true with yourself. Here are some suggestions to ease the creation of this alignment. Begin each day by talking with Spirit. Ask Spirit to be with you all day and to help you notice when you have a choice of voices, to identify His voice, and finally to follow it. Ask Spirit for His guidance for the day. If you wake up with something from your sleep or dreams, or from the previous day that cause you confusion, ask Spirit for direction and support. You can complete your day by having a similar communication with Spirit before going to sleep. Let go of everything that feels incomplete, unsuccessful, unfulfilling, or simply stressful. Give it all to Spirit to handle while you enjoy revitalizing sleep. Wake up freed of this heavy load and filled with love. That is the whole purpose of that third of your life; it is a time to plug into Spirit and recharge. Ask to be told what to do. There is a subtle but powerful difference here between this guidance and the voice of ego. Ego tells you what you should do; Spirit tells you what to do. There is no right or wrong about it. It is now time to trust, to fully let go of ego and only listen to Spirit. You do this in order to let go of the world and fully realize your divinity. You trust Spirit as the only voice to get you there. You realize that you have no separate voice of your own. That separate voice was always the ego. It kept you apart from God. Spirit is now telling you the most direct way home. Spirit is not the best voice to listen to, it is the only voice. It comes from within you and from nowhere else. Nobody else can tell you what you should do. Spirit speaks only to you and loves you beyond measure. This is the only way for you. That is a terrifying thought to the ego. It is probably screaming in your ear right now telling you not to give up your autonomy.  Of course the joke is that you have been doing just that for lifetimes – giving your autonomy to ego. Now, you are giving it to the divine truth within you. If you are tired of living in the duality, your job is to do your best in every moment to turn your life over to Spirit, to truly practice pure non-dualism. This is a tall order, but you will do it. You will all do this eventually. In reality it is already done and you are home with God in divine love. The play has already been written and acted out. Within the dream it feels like the illusion is still going on; it may feel like it is taking endless time. To reduce the time, follow step three in every moment possible. This, of course, requires first following step one and step two, but the goal is for those steps to become such habits that all of your focus can be on listening to and following Spirit.

Another support for step three is to be proactive by filling your mind through readings that support pure non-dualism. The world is filled with dualistic energy. You are bombarded by it daily from all sides. Taking some time to read and meditate on pure information can be a great support, not only in resisting the world but also in noticing where you still tend to make it real. Here is a short list of places to start:

  1. A Course in Miracles
  2. Gary Renard’s books (starting with The Disappearance of the Universe)
  3. The One With God series (by Marjorie Tyler, Jo Sjolander, Margaret Bollonoff)
  4. Anything by Ken Wapnick
  5. Channelings from Sanhia (either from the website or the book God Blesses You)

Start reading where you are guided. Find time wherever you can. Love yourself whether you read or not, but have the intention. You can also have the intention of finding allies, that is, others who have made the choice to experience pure non-dualism. Having even one friend with which to share mutual support can make your voyage faster. Perhaps there is a group out there for you. You do not need to be in a state of feeling alone with your path. As you progress, you will find yourself drawing like-minded energy. Give that to Spirit, asking to be supported in the highest way. If you find yourself alone though, know that that is the perfect way for you now.

While following these steps provides an enormous challenge, you also have an enormous resource to support you. The loving energy of Spirit (or Jesus, or Buddha, or Sanhia, or whatever expression of divine oneness you feel most connected with) is so far above and beyond the ego’s obstacle of fear that I hesitate to mention them in the same breath. As you choose and act from Spirit’s guidance, you fill yourself with more and more love. The accumulation of this love makes it increasingly easy to follow these three steps. This love builds on itself, spiraling higher and higher. It all starts with step one. Ask Spirit for support. Remember that all is perfect and is proceeding as it should. Accept Spirit’s gifts each day. Don’t fight, don’t resist. Trust. Listen. Then your load truly lightens. No matter what happens…….

God Blesses You

Sanhia

Do you confuse cause and effect? 

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One of the biggest confusions that the ego throws into every situation is its determination of what the “cause” is and what the “effect” is. We are all familiar with the terms, “cause” is what makes something happen and “effect” is what happens. There seems to be no control over the effect. It appears to automatically follow the cause. According to the ego’s picture of the world, you also have no control over the cause. Therefore, you have no control whatsoever. To the ego mind, the cause is always out there in the world.  Perhaps because some person did something, it causes you to have something happen in your life. Maybe it is because the government infringes on your rights, because the doctor messes up, because the weather ruins your plans, and on and on, that negative effects come into your life. In that view of reality the cause is always out there in the world and you are a helpless victim with no control whatsoever over what happens. Shit happens. The universe is random or there is a spiteful god. Anything could happen to you at any time. You feel nothing but terror when you consider the future, not to speak of the immediate present. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it all. It is simply a chaotic universe. If that is the case you truly better live for today, for there is no guarantee for anything but the moment, and it may not last long. Anything might just fall out of the sky, ending life as you know it.

We are just having fun with you here. I want to remind you that the cause is never out there. It is always in here, in your mind. Please don’t take this scrap of information and rush off and blame yourself for everything in the world. That is another trick of the ego. It wants to know why, if you are the creator of all of this, you are doing such a lousy job. It does you no good whatsoever if you replace responsibility with blame. Responsibility is the acknowledgement that it could be no other way. The world is your creation, not God’s. You did this by making the choice to separate from God, create this universe, and disappear into it. However, you are unconscious of the part of you that made these choices – as you are unconscious of your Divinity. You are absolutely unaware that you are in heaven with God right now and this world is just a dream. If you were conscious of all of this you would wake up and leave the dream. This taking of responsibility is the third step of the five-step process.

Perhaps it is best now to turn to the five-step process, because it clearly shows the relationship of cause and effect. An event (or multiple events) is going on in your world. You react to it with fear and helplessness, believing it is something outside of yourself and that you are victim to it. Perhaps your brain-mind, your conscious thinking mind, assigns blame. Maybe you are not aware of what is causing your fear, but you clearly feel the discomfort in your body. It might register as a pain, a discomfort or an illness. This is the first step of the process, identifying the problem (effect). In the second step, you face the fear or the discomfort. You go right into it. Eventually the fear will transform. Because it is not real, your steady focus upon the fear allows it to transform to love. Then you are ready and able to move to the third step, as previously mentioned, and claim your Divinity by taking responsibility. You acknowledge that you, not the world, are the cause, and that it could be no other way because of your Divine nature. You could never be the victim. Remember there is no blame here. What transpires in the world is not real. None of it ever happened. There can be no fault, only confusion in your perception. The third step is to help clarify your perception. As A Course in Miracles (ACIM) teaches, “There is no order of difficulty in miracles”. No step in this process is any more important than any other. They all need to take place. In the fourth step, in the state of peace that you have found, you go inside and listen to the guidance. You go to true cause.

While you are in the illusion, while seeming to be in a physical body, you are always in duality. Even when you have moved into the third and fourth steps of the process and are experiencing peace, you are still in duality. If the experience remains of being in the world, of being in a body, you are in duality. Even though you may have the awareness that none of it is real, you are still fully in the experience of the illusion. If I were to say to you at that juncture to let go of the body and the world, you might ask, “But how?”  You feel yourself stuck in duality. What the fourth step is really about is turning your life over to the only force that can lead you home, and that is Spirit. Listen to and follow what Spirit has to say. No matter how supportive anything in the world may be for you – whether it be ACIM, these messages from me, other pure non-dualistic texts, guidance from any spiritual teachers or leaders, support from spiritual practices such as meditation or yoga – it has the sole purpose to train you to listen to and follow Spirit instead of the ego. The only thing that will take you home is a total surrender to the voice of Spirit within you. Everything else is still a part of the illusion because it recognizes the duality of Spirit and the ego. The ego will continue to throw its tantrums, but your job is to return over and over to the voice of Spirit until that is all that remains.

Once you have realized that everything is created in your mind, there is always a choice of what you instruct your mind to listen to. Ever since you have been in a body – lifetime after lifetime – you have chosen to listen to ego. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. You would be aware only of your Divine home. There would be no choice of voices to listen to. There would be only one, only Spirit, only God, only Divinity. In duality this will always appear as a choice, do you choose Spirit or do you choose ego? There are steps that you can take toward realizing your Divinity. The first step is to realize that you do have a choice. You can choose between listening to Spirit and listening to ego. The second step is to be aware of which voice you are listening to. Ego will always tell you that the cause is in the world. There are no limits to where the ego will assert itself. It will tell you that you are hungry because you haven’t eaten for four hours, that you are tired because you didn’t sleep well last night. The cause will always be out there in the world according to the ego. It never is. This is not to say you should pretend that the world doesn’t exist. While you are in a body you will have to have food and sleep. Otherwise you will die and come back to try it in another way. What is not true is that your discomfort comes from not eating or sleeping. The cause of discomfort comes from your mind, from your fear and separation from God, from your guilt. So, you create pain in your life. If you are hungry, eat. If you are tired, sleep. Don’t pretend that that has solved the situation. It won’t be long before hunger and sleepiness return. So it is with every other “problem” in your life. The situation is never healed. Eat and sleep, but remember that the truth lies within you. Remind yourself that the only end to hunger and tiredness comes through listening to Spirit. Eat and sleep, but give your discomfort to Spirit.

We have been down this road together several times. I wish to remind you that Spirit is always bringing to you exactly the perfect thing in each moment to guide you home. I want to remind you that, as ego is your creation and as the world is your creation, so is the existence of Spirit being there to guide you home also your creation. In your oneness with God, you have co-created your way to wake up. However, you are the sole creator of the dream. This is not God’s dream. Nobody else can wake you up, but yourself. Nobody else is dreaming this but you. Spirit can grab you by the shoulder and gently shake you and whisper to wake up, but you can pull the cover over your face and continue to sleep for as long as you want. Or…you can choose to wake up. For most people, if it comfortable enough to stay in the dream, they will stay. It is familiar; it is known; it feels relatively safe. Waking up is an absolute unknown to the unconscious mind. Letting go of the world is terrifying. As we mentioned in the last message, trying to create heaven on earth seems like a safer bet. You, however, have made the choice to try to listen to Spirit rather than the ego. Spirit is going to bring situations to you that feel uncomfortable in order to help you wake up. If you see these events as the cause of your suffering, you will stay asleep. As you accept them as the gifts that they are from your own true mind, you begin to awaken.

Spirit will never give you more than you have asked for. Spirit will help you see where you have given power to the illusion, where you have become a victim to fear. This requires that you face these fears head on. It is not easy, but it is doable. Eventually, you will do it. The world is never the cause. When you fully realize this, the world can cause you no pain or suffering. There will be nothing to fear. You will know that the cause is in you and you will choose to go home. That is what Spirit is teaching you. When things come into your lives that feel painful, this is not a failing on your part. It is not a weakness. If anything, it is a strength. It is a sign of spiritual maturity, a sign that you are now ready for this test. You are ready to give this to Spirit, to take responsibility, to let go of having the earth be your cause. If the earth were at cause there would be only despair. Knowing you are at cause, that it is all from Spirit, from Divinity – there is nothing to despair of. Everything is perfect; all is aligned.

The thought for today is that the cause is always within you. Everything in the world is the effect from your mind’s cause, and you have caused it for only one reason. You have done this to help yourself wake up. If it is your deep desire to awaken, feel nothing but gratitude for whatever the world seems to bring to you. So simple. So pure. So beautiful. Just accept it with thankfulness.

Good Now

Sanhia

Can we create heaven on earth?

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Can we create heaven on earth? This is an exceedingly popular question, one that many spiritual practices and teachers give much energy to. Most people have little hope that there could be heaven on earth. They tend to possess a helpless victim-like approach to their existence here, though there is usually some hopefulness that something might improve. On the whole though, they expect there will always be problems. Governments will misuse their power. Businesses will always care more for their profits than for the environment or the well being of their customers. Health will be a concern; we are victims to disease and accidents. We will never have enough money and our bosses don’t really care about us. Relationships and friendships are not fully satisfying. Those that start out ecstatically devolve into, at best, a ho-hum day-to-day survival. However, many of those who are on a spiritual path as well as a lot of spiritual teachers have decided that all of this can be overcome, that we can have heaven on earth. Working with an understanding that we are the power in our lives and that what we focus on and believe in will happen gives us the power to determine our futures on the planet. There is an underlying truth in this belief, but when we look at the wholeness of what is suggested here, the insanity of trying to create heaven on earth may become clear to you. This idea has its birth in the ego; it does not come from Spirit.

When we look at creating heaven on earth, there are several things to be aware of. First of all, this physical illusion of the earth and the universe is based on duality; it is based on opposites. In divinity there is no polarity: no good and bad, no male and female, no hot and cold, no opposites. There is simply is-ness. The whole appearance of physicalness is based on the illusion of duality that does not exist in Divinity. One thing this means is that when you try to create “good” in the universe, an equal amount of “bad” must also be created. Opposites always balance out each other. “Good” cannot exist without “bad”. There simply cannot be heaven on earth without hell on earth. In duality, you cannot create one thing without creating its opposite. So, if you succeed in creating a “good” in this illusion, somebody has to create a balancing “bad”. To further confuse the issue, your “good” may be another’s “bad” and vice-versa. Everyone is trying to create heaven on earth according to their own personal model of what that is, and how to achieve it.  If this sounds insane, please understand that insanity is the basis of duality. If you wish to follow this reasoning as far as you can, then if you wish to create “good” coming out of others, you should create as much “bad” as possible yourself, so that the balancing energy could be released. If this is an absolutely insane proposition, welcome to planet earth. It is just a dance where every action brings an equal and opposite reaction.

Creating heaven on earth is an impossibility. Heaven is your true home. It is where you are right now, though you are having a dream/nightmare that you are in a physical body on earth. There is no real earth. Your true self is in heaven as you are reading this. So, here you are trying to reinvent the wheel, trying to create something that already is. In this case, rather than having God’s absolute perfection, we have humans who don’t believe in their Divinity and are therefore capable of using only a small fraction of their infinite creative power trying to compete with God in creating heaven in the midst of duality. It is not too hard to see the futility in this. But, it could be no other way, because this earthly physical illusion only came about as the result of a crazy idea. You thought that maybe you could create something better than God was capable of doing. That was an insane idea. Then you compounded this by going into terror and fear and disappearing into your creation to hide. All humans hold guilt about this choice to separate from God. Fortunately, you didn’t succeed. It was not possible to separate from God, any more than it is possible for God to judge you, withdraw His love, or punish you. It is possible to be in a dream, to be in an illusion where you forget who you are. You cannot change who you are, but you can experience amnesia in your dream.  Your job is not the impossible; it is not to attempt to compete with God, by trying – and failing – to create heaven on earth. Your job is much easier than that. Forgive yourself. Be aware that God has no anger or judgment about what you have done. In fact, nothing has really happened. Realize that the easy thing to do is to allow yourself to be in heaven, not to try to create the impossible on earth. It is not only easier, it is also inevitable.

You will all wake up from this dream and realize your true home. You have no choice about this. All you can do is drag your feet and slow your progress down on your trip back home. You can extend time, but time is just one of the illusions of duality. Only what is real can last forever. These bodies, this earth are finite. You are real; your body and the hell around in the dream are not. Even now, as you dream of being here on earth in a body, the truth of you is in heaven. Rather than focus energy on bringing heaven here, wake up! The heaven you will find yourself in will far surpass anything you could even dream of in this illusion. Instead of doing the impossible, do the inevitable. Rather than dragging your feet, lift them up. Let Spirit carry you home. By choosing to hear that voice each day you can shrink time. You can cut off years or lifetimes. In the long run, it makes no difference. Once you awaken, this will all seem as if it never happened. In the meantime, you experience some amount of pain and suffering. Why prolong it?

If you try to create heaven on earth, you will fail. This will bring about some amount of pain and suffering. The part of you that feels helpless at not being able to create heaven on earth, but feels equally helpless in figuring out how to wake up, can feel doomed to suffer until ascension finally happens. There is a fear of seeing the earth being slowly destroyed, of wars, of corruption, and of friends, loved ones and eventually yourself succumbing to disease and then death. Does one just have to put up with all of this, to stand helplessly by? That is one choice, but it is not the only one. You can focus your energy and intention on seeing that none of this is real, just like the show you watched on television the other day. Not real. Made up. Imaginary. As you get that, you can find that watching it becomes less and less painful. In fact, it may become quite entertaining. When you know it is not real, it is not so hard to experience anything. The closest you can get to creating heaven on earth is by realizing that everything that is happening is being scripted by Spirit for one purpose only, and that is to guide you to your awakening…to your ascension. It is there to help you become aware that none of it is real and that you are and always have been in heaven. This means that whatever is happening is perfect. Realizing that it is perfect, accepting rather than judging and trying to change the gift of Spirit, allows you to begin to experience heaven. Perfection is not something that you create; it is what already exists. Your job is not to make the world perfect; it is to recognize the perfection that is already in place. When you think that something has to change, you are not accepting the perfection.

This bears repeating. You do not need to change anything to bring heaven on earth. Spirit is taking care of that. All that you need to do is to relax and accept the perfection of Spirit’s gifts, to feel gratitude. Your only response is to Spirit, as you learn to ignore the insane ranting of your ego. You don’t ask for any part of the world to be fixed. The only thing you pray for help with is your willingness and ability to hear and receive Spirit.

Help me to trust the perfection that surrounds me. Help me to know that this is not real, that no child of God can ever be truly hurt, that death is an illusion. Help me to choose your voice instead of the voice of ego, to choose love over fear. Help me to choose to believe in my innocence rather than in my guilt. Help me to reclaim my true home in heaven.

Good Now

Sanhia

Do we have free will?

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The question of whether or not humans have free will has always been a hot topic. The answer is yes…..and no. In the duality there is always duality. There is no simple answer. The truth of you, the Divine you, has absolute free will to create anything it desires. Absolute. There is no limit. In the illusion, your ego thinks it has absolute free will. And it does. It has absolute free will to keep you stuck here. That is the job of your ego, to keep you in the illusion. Otherwise it disappears. Your ego has a vested interest in your free will, both in your believing that you have a choice and that there is a right choice. In truth, in the illusion you have no choice. You have no free will whatsoever. It has already been decided that the illusion will end. The script has been written, in fact, the play is already over. The illusion ends; it disappears. You realize the truth of who you are and always have been. This is the truth of who you are at this very moment – even though you think you are this body and that the physical world is real.

Because the physical is not real, it cannot be sustained indefinitely. Things that are real last forever; things that are not real begin and end. Knowing this makes understanding easier. Just look around and see what lasts forever. Probably there is nothing like that that you can see. Your human eyes and senses are unable to detect anything that will not change and ultimately end. So, we come back to the question of free will. Your only “true” free will is whether you listen to Spirit or to your ego. As you choose to listen to Spirit, the voice of your ego grows weaker and weaker. Eventually you won’t hear it at all. Then the physical begins to drop away and you will fully realize your Divinity. You realize your ascension.

What you are referring to when you say you have free will is really the voice of your ego. It says, “I want to choose what I want”. Even choosing ascension is a choice of your ego. Your Divinity cannot choose to ascend because it is already in that state. You are not trying to achieve something here, only to wake up. To choose something is to believe yourself to be separate from it. Every choice you can make is an affirmation of separation. Whatever your ego tells you is the way to realize Divinity, comes from fear and separation.

The goals you have in this world come from fear and separation. If you say that you want to get your finances in line so you don’t worry about money anymore, if you are seeking a nurturing supportive relationship, if you are seeking to find your right livelihood – the work you came here to do – none of that will lead you to realize your Divinity. I am not suggesting that you never have earthly desires, but, even should they be fulfilled, you will be left with the need to replace them with other earthly goals. Behind it all will lurk a feeling of lack, a desire for what you don’t have. Your ego’s eyes are infinitely large, always wanting more, never fulfilled. There seems to be a gap where you feel separated from God. No matter how hard you try to fill it, the task is impossible. How can you fill an imaginary hole with imaginary achievements? Eventually, whether in this body or another, you will decide to give your life to Spirit. There is no free will about this. It will be the only choice remaining for you. You will ask Spirit to tell you what to do. You will tell Spirit you are here to serve and that your wills are One. Everyone will make this surrender eventually. You will give your free will to Spirit. Until that time you will continue to have pain, fear, and suffering on the physical plane. No matter what goals you may set for yourself, there will be no heaven on earth.

Ego does not run the show here. Everything is directed by Spirit. Ego has absolutely no power; it all belongs to Spirit. Whether or not you pay it any attention, Spirit runs your life. The only thing you truly want is to wake up to your Divinity. Everything else is just your ego pulling your leg. Spirit brings to you in each moment exactly what you require to realize your ascension. Your only job is to accept what is presented. Welcome it. When you resist and think that what has happened is not what you want, you are trying to give control to your ego. Change your mind about that. Surrender your earthly will to the Divine will. You are simply agreeing to a done deal. Like it or not, Spirit is running your life. Let go of thinking that you know where your happiness and, eventually, your salvation lie. If you knew how to get yourself out of this illusion and into your Divinity, you would have done it long ago. Your life has already been scripted by Spirit. The end of the story is that you are back home. Your choices cannot affect this plan, though your cooperation may speed it along.

Your divine self played with the idea that it could create something separate from God. A “part” of you went off into that idea, into that dream. It was a dream because nothing real could be separate from God. We could identify the part of you that thought this separation could happen as your ego. It is the part that is in guilt and terror. The moment you created that dream, or that nightmare, God recognized it and created Holy Spirit to follow you into the illusion in order to wake you up and show that it wasn’t real. So, within this insanity of the physical world there is a voice of sanity. The truth of Spirit, of Divinity, never waivers. The duality jumps back and forth. On the one hand your ego says you can create anything you want here. You are God; you can create heaven on earth. On the other hand your ego says you are a worthless piece of shit who has failed at everything you have tried, deserving of punishment for your sins and ineptitude. Your ego is always in duality. There is constant conflict. In the truth of Spirit, you simply are. You are Divine. There is no good or bad, no judgment, only Oneness.

If you think of the most joy you have had in this body, it is a small taste of the infinite joy that is a part of your true nature. Some of you have had moments where you felt yourself stepping out of the duality into a place of peace and love. This, also, was but a taste of your true nature. Unlike this temporary appearance, your true self is eternally experiencing this joy. There is no other possibility.

In conclusion, you have the free will to surrender your free will. There is no choice to make. Choices only exist in duality. While you are experiencing this duality, it is the only place you can operate from. So, exercise your apparent free will by choosing Spirit over your ego. Establish a dialogue with Spirit. Your will and Spirit’s will are the same. Spirit will tell you what to do. Surrender to that guidance. Absolutely. All of your fear will come up because you are afraid of God. Ego tells you that only your free will can save you. Spirit reminds you that nothing can save you because you already are saved. So listen, surrender, wake up, and go home. Spirit tells you exactly what to let go of to give up the belief in separation. Your only job is to say “Thank you” and “What is your instruction today?” If you don’t hear a clear message, open your eyes and look around. Whatever you see is what Spirit has brought you today. You can do this. You will do this. Ultimately, you have no choice.  That is your terror and your salvation. Don’t forget the five-step process. It can help you move through the terror more quickly. Your free will is a prison. Give it up, and let the gates be opened. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do. There is only God, only Spirit, only love.

Good Now

Sanhia

What do you mean when you call the world an illusion?

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We have talked many times about the illusion, but there has never been a single message fully describing what is meant by this term. Now the time has come. I am going to start with the ending and then go back and fill in the spaces. This is the ending: Everything, without exception, that you experience in this physical world is an illusion. Everything. None of it is real. No exceptions.

Now we will take a giant step backward. In the illusion, you can do that. In reality, there is no place to take a step and no time in which it can be accomplished. What is reality? Let me tell this as a story. In the first part of the story there is God. God is unconditional love, unlimited creativity, unlimited power, and unlimited joy. There is no duality, only the is-ness of these qualities. These descriptors are human terms and unable to do justice to what Jesus called “the Kingdom of God”. The only thing that is absolutely true and real is this kingdom. In the second part of the story, God chose to create beings or entities in the image of Himself. Remember, as always, that the language is limited. There are no serviceable gender free terms, but be clear that divinity, that God, does not have gender. There is no duality in divinity. As a default, we will refer to God as “Him”. To continue, these entities were created in the image of God, beings of unconditional love, creativity and so on, and, of course, gender free. These could be called the Children of God.

In the third part of the story, a group or a portion of the Children of God, who A Course in Miracles calls the Son of God, in their infinite creativity, decided it would be fun to construct something that would be secret and separate from God. To begin with, this was an impossible task. There can be nothing separate from God. I will now use the term “We”, because you and I are a part of this group. We are One with God and God cannot be separate from Himself. We allowed ourselves the thought that we could create separately from God and then went into that creation. We then experienced the illusion of separation. This experience was not real because we could not actually create something separate from God. We could say that this creation was like a dream. We went into this collective dream. God could not see this dream any more than a mother can see her child’s dream. In the dream we felt separate from God and had our first experience with fear. We were afraid that we could never find our way back to God and that He would be angry with us for creating behind His back. These fears were false. It is not possible for God to be angry or judgmental. However, in this nightmare we had created, all of this seemed possible. The ego is what we call that part of us that feared God and believed in the illusion.

In this way we created the physical universe. It is a part of this dream, of this illusion. We have been hiding here in the physical from God. The truth of us is still One with God. This is just a bad dream. As soon as God recognized what we had done, he created the solution. He imagined the means by which the part of our Divine selves stuck in the nightmare could reconnect with the Oneness. Because there is no time in Divinity, the solution was instantaneous. The problem was immediately solved. You could say that it was over before it began. Boom, boom. However in the illusion there is time. There is duality. So, it seems that we have been trapped in this dream for thousands upon thousands of years, for lifetime after seemingly endless lifetime. Trapped. The idea we have of hell is right here. This earth is it, but it is not real. The idea of heaven is our true home, the Kingdom of God, the place of unconditional love and unlimited joy. The challenge for us through these eons of time in the illusion has been to simply wake up to our Divinity, realizing that we are and always have been the Children of God. I have called this waking up our Ascension. These physical bodies are not who we are.

This entire physical world, every aspect of it, is an illusion. We created it, not God. This is our nightmare. As long as we hold onto it and defend its reality, it will seem real. The ego’s job is to convince us in whatever ways possible that the illusion is real and that we have no choice but to stay here. The solution that God created is called Spirit, or Holy Spirit. Spirit is the intermediary between God and the illusion. God doesn’t directly experience our dream because it isn’t real. If He were able to observe it, it would make it real. That’s the last road we would want to go down. Then our illusion would be true and we might really be stuck here. Fortunately, this isn’t the case, and God cannot get directly involved with things that don’t exist. Spirit, however, is the link between God and our ego illusion. We can listen to the voice of Spirit and be led home, or we can listen to the voice of the ego and continue spinning through lifetimes of pain, fear, and suffering. Sounds like a slam dunk choice here. However, the ego is whispering in your other ear telling you not to trust Spirit, asking you how these things that you can feel can be less real than some ideas that probably aren’t even true. Ego tells you that your divine nature is the illusion and that God is out to get you. You will have to pay for what you have done. You are guilty, guilty, guilty. Why would you want to go home to a God who is just going to punish you? Instead, you play all kinds of games trying to win God’s favor and His forgiveness. You project blame onto others, hoping God, and yourself, will be fooled and will go after them instead. All of this is impossible because there is no judgment or favor to be won. How can God love you more than unconditionally? It can’t be done. The only thing standing between you and realizing your Divinity is you. It is your choice to listen to the ego and to believe its claims that this illusion that keeps you trapped here is real.

Your job is to remind yourself every day that everything except your divinity is illusion. NOTHING that you see in this world is real. No exceptions. Scream it from the rooftops. The bodies are not real. The objects are not real. The stories are not real. The weather is not real. Your problems are not real. Money is not real; well, you probably knew that. None of it is real. The only thing that is real is your Divinity and unconditional love. Whenever you make something else more important than your Divinity, you stay trapped in the cycle of pain, suffering, and illusion. That’s all there is to it. It is very simple. When you feel trapped, give it to Spirit. Spirit is the link between the illusion and Divinity, so that you can ask for support and guidance as you deal with your fears and difficulties in the illusion. Spirit is, always has been, and always will be involved in every moment of your life. Spirit directs your story, presenting you with exactly what you need in this moment to find your way back home. Meanwhile, the ego is telling you to fear the gift of Spirit, so you push away in terror what Spirit brings to you. Maybe Spirit brings a death into your life. When you resist what Spirit brings, you are saying that you want to stay here in illusion rather than go home. Spirit is bringing death into your life to show that death is not real. It is bringing a material loss into your life to show you that things don’t matter. Spirit brings failure into your life to show you that your earthly goals are not important.

The question again is a very simple one. Do you want to listen to the ego, which will have goals for you in the physical, or do you want to listen to Spirit, realize your Divinity, and go home? The more successful you are in reaching goals in the illusion, the more attached you will be to staying there. This is why Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. You can’t take it with you, not one part is real. It is all part of your dream. That is what I mean by illusion. I am not using a metaphor. I am trying to express as clearly, directly, and honestly as I can. There is nothing in this physical world that is real. You are to give up all attachment to everything physical and to trust that Spirit is always there bringing you exactly what you need to find your way home. Trust everything that comes into your life. Give up the fight and the struggle. If that is hard, give it to Spirit. If it is still hard, do the five-step process in addition. That is also a gift from Spirit to you.

Everything that happens in your life is guidance and a gift from Spirit to lead you home. Nothing here can ever be lost because nothing here is real. It is all illusion. Spirit will play with your attachments until you come into that full realization. The illusion and duality dissolve as you listen to and trust only Spirit, letting the ego go. Then you have no need for the illusion. You have no reason to create heaven on earth because your true heaven is right before you and infinitely more fantastic than anything you could dream up here. Welcome home.

Good Now

Sanhia

If the body is an illusion, why do I have one?

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I have mentioned many times that the body, along with all physical manifestation, is an illusion. It is not real. It is not the truth of who you are. Sometimes people ask me, “Why do we even have a body? What is it all about? The body certainly seems real. If you pinch me it hurts. It seems like I have a body. If I run up against the wall, it feels solid. It’s there. If I go under water, I can only stay so long. What do you mean this is an illusion?” These are all very good points. The ego does an excellent job in asking good questions.

What is there to do is to find the source. When you have conflict in the world, one person making a response to another’s action, it is in reaction. This can go back and forth endlessly. Where is the source of all of that contention? Where does it begin? It is one of those chicken and egg questions. When you speak of reincarnation, you may say that you have something happening now because of something you did in a previous life. Why did you do it then? Well, you had a life previous to that, and so back it goes. Where is the source? If we go far enough back, you arrive at the first man and the first woman. Is that the source? The Bible will tell you its creation story. There were Adam and Eve. They were in paradise and everything was perfect. Then she tempted him. Actually, she was first tempted herself by the serpent. Who was this snake? The serpent encourages her to just eat of this apple. God said not to eat of the apple or there will be severe consequences. That’s the Bible story.

What is the real story? The serpent is the ego. The fruit was of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Upon eating the apple, good and bad appeared. That was the original illusion. They are not real, as the ego is not real. The god that kicks you out of heaven is not the real God. It is your guilt. All of that is part of the illusion that began then. You allowed this voice that was separate from God to have power over you. You decided that maybe truth was being spoken. The ego said to believe in good and bad. Spirit said this will separate you from God; more correctly, create the illusion of separation. Spirit didn’t threaten punishment, It warned of the illusion you would thereby be creating. This was what Christianity calls “original sin”. The sin is the belief in good and evil. It separates you from God. Out of this whole separation story, you, who were in truth One with God, created this illusion of physicalness, created a world that seemed real, but is fueled by the opposing energies of good and evil, or duality. You manifested bodies and disappeared into them to hide from God, forgetting your Divinity, believing that your body was the truth of who you were. You believed that this body that feels pain when you pinch it, and this wall that you can’t walk through, and this water which seems impossible to breathe in are very real.

Before we talk about what to do with these bodies on this earth, in this physicalness, the first thing to understand is that they absolutely are illusions. They are not real. You are real, but your body is not. God is real. The physical universe is not. If something does not last forever, it is not real. If it has a birth and a death; it is an illusion. All that is real is eternal. It is good news is that the world is an illusion. I say good news because most of you aren’t having such a great time in it. The news of its unreality should be welcome to you. Time is not real either. God is timeless. You don’t have to worry about how long this hell is going to go on because time doesn’t exist.

We come back to the original question. Why even have these bodies? The answer is that in order to fully realize your Divine nature and Oneness with God, you need to do it in a body in the physical world. In a sense, you have locked yourself into this world and only you can let yourself out. When you use up one body, because they are quite expendable, you eventually choose to create another. If you don’t realize the truth in that body, you create another, and another. You have already created countless ones.

The body is not something to be honored or revered. Though it is not Divine or real, it is a tool, a vehicle. You respect and take care of it because it is a required part of realizing your Divinity. You do it in a body. If you deny the body or fight the bodily desires, through severe fasting, defying sexual desire, eliminating music and dance, or even gouging out your eyes so as not to be distracted by physical beauty, you are giving power to the physical. You are saying that it has such control over you that you have to go to war with it in order to ascend. It would be more aligned with truth to hold the physical as neutral. It has no meaning one way or the other. But now you are in a body believing it is real, which all of you do even though you might have some awareness through reading things here or from other studies, such as A Course in Miracles. You haven’t had the full experience of your Divinity. If you had, you would no longer be with your body. While you still believe your body is real you can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist. That won’t work for you, so you take care of it. Otherwise, you will just have to trade it in for another. The body is a tool, and you take care of your tools or they are of less use. You created your illusion of separation by creating the illusion that you were a body, so you create the end of the illusion through a body. It is that simple.

In the eyes of God, none of this ever happened. Or, we could say it happened in the wink of an eye. The ego says there have been billions of years of evolution, so many lifetimes, and so much trouble and pain. But, it is just a blink of the eye of God. As you created the illusion, God created the solution. He made the Holy Spirit. As the ego dispenses confusion and falseness in one ear, Spirit whispers truth in the other. At some point, you will choose to begin shutting out the ego and listening to Spirit. At some point this transition will become complete, and you give your life fully to Spirit. You let go of judgment, separation, and fear. You fully realize the truth. Then time begins to disappear along with the universe. We call that ascension. You do it while you are in a body. That is the only reason you have a body. There is no necessity for you to suffer in the body while you are completing this process. Suffering only comes from listening to the ego. God would have you enjoy every moment. As you are transforming fear into love you will experience less and less pain on all planes.

Begin by acknowledging the body is not you, is not real. Do this even if you don’t fully understand or believe it. Accept that everything the ego tells you is a lie (Book I: Message 77: How do I discern Spirit from ego?). Give intention to turn your mind over to Spirit. Ask It to keep you focused on the truth until that is all that is there for you. The ego will always give value to things in the physical world and have goals. You will have goals. Don’t put any value in them beyond holding them as tools for your ascension. Nothing of the world has any other value. Any additional importance you place on the physical will bring you pain and separation from God. Spirit will provide you with all your physical needs as you are realizing your divinity. It is that easy.

Good Now

Sanhia