Is there a difference between awakening and ascension?

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This question has come up recently. We have been using the term awakening quite a bit lately. People are wondering if that word means the same thing as ascension. Are the terms interchangeable? I can understand the confusion, and it is time to clear things up. Not only will we clarify the information, but we will give you some valuable insights that I have not previously presented. Now it is time for you to receive them. We dealt with this question some years ago using still different terminology and I highly recommend that you click here to read that message as it provides good information on this subject without specifically focusing on most of what I have to say now. So, with no further ado, let’s speak of awakening and ascension. In that previous message we used the term enlightenment.  We’ll deal with that word right now so that our focus can be limited to the two terms in the title. Enlightenment and awakening are synonyms. They have the same general meaning as I use them. You are welcome to substitute the word enlightenment any time I say awakening, but I will only use the latter term for the rest of this message.

Now, let’s go back to the beginning. In this process of dealing with the subject of pure non-duality – the realization that any time we are dealing with opposites we are dealing with illusion, with things that are not real in that they do not pass the test of foreverness – we are dealing with questions of truth or untruth. In truth there is Oneness. Of course it goes without saying – though I am saying it anyway and have said it before – we are using words here and words never express the truth. They are by nature dualistic because your reasoning mind can only work in the realm of separation. When we speak of Spirit and ego, we are speaking dualistically as if these are two different things that truly exist, when in truth only Spirit exists. Spirit is connected to the Divine and ego is not. This process that we are talking about in using the terms awakening and ascension has two steps. This is the new information for you, or at least for most of you. The first step is what we have often been dealing with in these messages. That is the letting go of the ego. This process is what we have been calling awakening. When you are awakened you are in an ego-free state. This means that you have no attachments; you no longer hold people or things as special; you have no personal goals; you have no horse in the race – whatever happens is perfect. What you do is to simply listen to your inner guidance, to Spirit, and follow it in absolute trust and love without a need for understanding. When the ego is dropped there is no judgment, no competition, and no right and wrong; there is only love.

Let’s go deeper into what this ego-free state is like. I won’t cover all of the many questions you might have about it, so feel free to send any that linger with you to Michael and we will visit them in future messages. When you are in this awakened state there is nothing that limits you. This physical illusion is now your playground instead of your classroom. You know that whatever happens is perfect, so the thought of anything possibly being upsetting to you is insanity. It does not compute. It will not happen. You know that everything that does happen is on purpose and as it should be. Your part is to play your role, following your guidance, doing something that will be a joy for you. You know what to do because you feel guided. You are being told what to do, but there is no separation between you and the guiding Spirit. Your wills are one. That is non-dualistic. There is no limit to the possibilities of what different services you may be asked to perform. You might be teaching others through your words, written or spoken. You might be led to artistic expressions. You might be building things or growing things. Again, there are no limits to what you may be inspired to, other than you will be filled with love and joy in the doing. Results will not matter; only the doing itself has value for you.

You may be wondering how long this ego-free state goes on for. The answer to that is up to the Divine. We will say that as you are performing the services that Spirit is asking of you, which you are doing with love and joy, you are still aware of yourself. You notice the world. You have consciousness, even though the ego has disappeared. There is the observer and the observed. You are in an in-between state. Perhaps we could say that you are not ruled by dualism, yet you do not have the full experience of Oneness. It is not possible to have a self and to be One at the same time, so your non-dualism cannot be pure. You are still experiencing separation from God. The longer you are in this state of egoless self, the more you will feel the separation blurring. As you do all of these Spirit inspired things you will gradually realize there is less that you are motivated to do in the illusion. Ultimately, you come to the second step which is the letting go of the self. When this occurs you no longer have an identity; you no longer have consciousness. There is no you remaining that can observe. You are One with all, One with God.  There is no longer a physical experience, a body.

There is an important understanding that accompanies the two step ascension process of first dropping the ego, and second dropping the self. Some of you have been afraid to drop the ego because you thought that ascension was in one step. You feared that dropping the ego meant you would immediately – poof! – leave your body, the world, everything! But that is not the case. When you awaken, everything is still there, except the ego. You are now experiencing the illusion without an ego. That’s it! Then you will have a long run – or a short run, depending on what Spirit has in mind for you – of playing with the illusion from an egoless perspective until you are complete with that. You cannot be forced into letting go of the self, nor can you force it to happen. You will stay and play in the illusion until you have had your fill. What we call ascension is the point where you willingly and through the grace of God let go of the self. Then the illusion absolutely disappears. There is no separate consciousness, and you are One with God. Of course the truth is that you are already One with God, even as you are experiencing the illusion of a separate self and an ego, but that hasn’t been a part of your conscious awareness.

In the awakened level of letting go of the ego, you know that it is all an illusion so you are able to play in it without attachment to anything. In the second level, or ascension, there is no more you. You have let go of the self, of consciousness of any separate awareness. Both of these ascension steps happen with the grace of God. Your ego will not choose to let itself go, so you ask Spirit to do that for you. You, therefore, cannot control the timing, though you can maintain a clear focus and continually face the untruths you are holding. Your awakened self also cannot decide to let go of itself because that would be an act of consciousness. Only Divine energy can dissolve that illusion of separation to allow the self to be submerged into the Oneness. It is analogous to falling asleep. You cannot will yourself into sleep. The more you try to sleep, the more you will remain awake.  Sleep comes when you let go, which allows it to happen. When you have left the ego, your awakened self may still have a lot to do. Let it run its course. Your ascension occurs when the self has nothing left to do and can let go, simultaneously free of any need to stay or to leave. When this happens, we call it “by the grace of God”. This was demonstrated by Jesus. This was not demonstrated by the Buddha, though he did demonstrate awakening.

We have today, and in all of the messages talked about the egoless experience, how to achieve it and what it is like. To talk about the self-less experience is not possible. There is nothing I could say that would give you the remotest feeling for what the Divine experience is, not even a sniff. I have given the following analogy before. It has been said that the human mind only uses five per cent of its potential. What would the experience of using the full potential be? The awakened egoless self has a similar relationship with the experience of the Divine. Notice we’re not even bringing the ego consciousness level into this equation. And in saying that the awakened self experiences only 5 percent of the ecstasy of Divinity, we are being very generous. When the self has a “divine” experience, this a projection of the self, not a true experience of the Divine. The most glorious earthly experience with perfect weather, fantastic nature, smells, sights, sounds, loving people, and the feeling of a divine connection with God would, from the Divine perspective, be a descent into hell. The highest dualistic heaven would be experienced as hell by the Divine. So much for your ego attempts to create heaven on earth.

For most of you reading this, the information about leaving the self is academic. Your work is in leaving the ego. If there is anyone in the audience who is egoless, your job is to enjoy creating in that place as long as you are so inspired.  Leaving the self is not a focus of any importance. Back to the rest of you, there will likely be a gradual transition where you are less and less influenced by your ego and more and more listening to the guidance of Spirit. If you still can get upset, there is work remaining. Again the final letting go of ego is through grace, not your efforts. It is not earned, but there is clear intention. For all there is never a rush. Everything happens in Divine time and order. Go set your alarms for awakening, but without selecting a time.

Good Now

Sanhia

Why not now?

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Usually with these messages I’m answering a question that someone has asked, or I’m dealing with something that came up in a discussion or conversation with an individual or a group. But, this time I take full credit for the question. It is my question to you. Why not now? Do you look at your awakening process, your ascension, or your spiritual path and think that someday you hope to wake up? Do you assume that, sooner or later, you will drop your ego? If those are your thoughts I guarantee you that you are right. Someday it will happen, but it will not be today. And guess what kids, today is the only day you have. No matter how much you might wish it to be tomorrow, or even yesterday, it is always today. To say “someday” is to say “never”. It will never be someday. It will only be the eternal now. Why not now? The choice is now or never (fortunately in the eternal now you can always re-choose). Those are the choices you have. There is no tomorrow. There is no next year or next lifetime. There is only the eternal now. Everything else belongs to the ego. If you wish to release the ego, the only thing you can do is to be 100% in this moment.

There is a wonderful English term called procrastination, which means “putting things off”. This is not considered to be an admirable quality by the mass consciousness. The popular saying is, “never put off until tomorrow what you can do today”. My suggestion to people has always been the reverse, “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow”. Today is for what is really important. If there isn’t a significant reason for action, such as inner guidance or a strong desire, why give it time in your present? Put it on the back burner until it is time for action, if ever. Is waking up really important? If it isn’t important enough to give your full focus to it today, admit that and stop playing games with yourself. Acknowledge if it is not so important to you to ascend, even though it might be a fun game to play around with. Be honest with yourself and say that you are not choosing to awaken at this time. On the other hand, you may realize that you really do want to drop your ego, but you don’t know how to do it, so you wonder how it could be today. If the latter represents your thinking, you are at the right place at the right time. The purpose of this message is to explain to you what the eternal now means and how to always be here.

The eternal now means “this very moment”. Nothing else matters. If you can successfully stay in the eternal now, you will awaken. So, you commit yourself to waking up, to remaining in the eternal now. Nothing is of greater importance. With everything else you can procrastinate, except this – if you want to awaken. There is no “should” about this. It cannot come from guilt; it must come from a deep desire or even from total desperation. This is not a comfortable process to go through. It is easy for the ego to find a way for you to skip out on it. If, however, you are aware of the pain and suffering that the ego always brings and you wish to drop it forever; if you want to let go of the specialness, the victimhood, the neediness, the emotional swings, the grief, and of feeling unloved and unlovable, and you realize there is no other way, then go for it. You do that by being vigilant with every thought and feeling you experience. If you sense or recognize that the thought or feeling is ego driven, ask the hard questions. Is this really true? If it isn’t really true, what changes does that bring to what you do and feel?

Being committed to the eternal now and to awakening means that you embrace and welcome absolutely everything that comes into your life. You don’t reject anything; you don’t push anything away. You don’t say to yourself that this isn’t what you want. You don’t judge anything that happens as wrong or bad. You stop pretending that you are in control and that you know how your life should be. You realize that if you knew how to awaken, you would be awake. How silly would it be to know and yet to stay asleep. Obviously, you don’t have a clue what is good for you. Admit it. You have expressed to Spirit your wish to awaken, your wish to understand and live the truth, your wish to leave your ego. Therefore Spirit brings to you that opportunity in every moment. Are you embracing these gifts? If not, why not? Those are the questions to ask yourself. Is this the place where you think you know better than God, that you realize what would wake you up?

To awaken is to be enormously humble, the humility that comes from realizing that you don’t know anything. You don’t even comprehend what is good for you. In that humility, a place of trust is allowed. Everything that happens is for your greater good, no exceptions. Is it required that you understand the meaning of your gift? If it is for your good, would understanding really matter? It is acceptance, not understanding, that you seek. If it is for your greater good to understand, then explanations will be provided. It is that simple. If acceptance is hard, you have directions for your task for today. You believe something to be true that is not true. What is it? This moment is the time to do this work, not tomorrow, next week, or….. The alternative is to face the fact that you don’t really want to wake up that much; you only want a fun game. You will be able to enjoy the ego illusion more if you don’t pretend that you want to leave it behind. In that case, you will have a constant, lingering sense of failure, of not being good enough. You will have another reason to beat yourself up. That is the ego’s game. If you are honest about it being a game, you can possibly have fun, win or lose (but of course you will lose). In Spirit’s game, Spirit takes your hand and asks: “Why not now?” Tell me one good, true reason why you cannot awaken right now, one excuse for why you have to stay attached to the ego illusion and to take it seriously. Give me one proof why things have to be a certain way in order for you to be okay. Why not now?

An important awareness to have is whether or not you are presently in the eternal now. If you are thinking about something that happened in the past, no matter how recent or far back, you are not in the eternal now. Your job is to notice that your mind is traveling in the past and be aware of how that affects you at this moment. Are you angry? Do you feel victimized? Are you guilty, blaming yourself for past choices or actions? There is no way to be living in the past and also to be in the eternal now, awake, and free of the ego. One choice is to ask Spirit to help you let go of the past and to bring your focus back to the present. Maybe there is something you are holding on to that you believe about the past that it is time to release, to change that belief. For example, you might think that because your father treated you in a certain way you are left emotionally vulnerable. Is your father there in the room with you in this moment? Probably not. Maybe he is not even in a body anymore. Yet, are you inviting him into your present to control your life? Why do you choose to do that? In truth, what power can a memory of another person have on you in the present moment? The answer is none. You are doing this to yourself. How crazy is that? An idea has been planted in your mind about yourself that is not true and you are still repeating it to yourself. Look at this thought, this untruth. Whatever it is, it isn’t true. Look at it until you understand that and then choose your thoughts. If you are in the eternal now, nothing matters except what is in this moment. Your job is to do whatever it takes to release the past. Change your mind. When you realize, accept, and trust that everything that happens to you is perfect, that includes the past. It was absolutely perfect that you had the father you had. Spirit could not have done better. It was precisely what you needed for your spiritual growth. Your job is to feel gratitude for that, to feel love for all that your father did for you. Your vision widens when you see through Spirit’s eyes. Ego looks at the past and sees self as a victim. Spirit points out where your eyes were closed and helps you to open them to see the truth of what really happened. It doesn’t matter whether you opened them then or you do it today. Time isn’t real. The eternal now is real. What you see in this moment is true for all time. You can choose to carry your pain with you through all time or release it. The past is an enormous venue of not being here now. You can’t be two places at once.

Then, of course, there is the future. What if this happens? Am I prepared for that? All the fear that you feel over what you should be doing to create your best possible future takes you out of the eternal now. And what about all of the things you believe you have no control over: accidents, disease, death, world events? This is all ego insanity. There is no future; there is just the eternal now. If you are taking care of the present, you are taking care of the only place you will ever be. All happens in the eternal now. Anything that comes into your experience is perfect. Remind yourself that you have no conscious awareness of what that perfect is. All you can do is receive what comes with humility and gratitude. When you notice you have a fear about the future, your only job is to look at the truth of that belief. It is never your job to change the world. Your only task is to change your mind, to release untruths. If you are fully in the eternal now you will have no time for tomorrow. This moment will keep your hands and mind full. One of these days you will notice that all of those old fears about the future are gone. That day will be the one where you finally find yourself firmly rooted in the eternal now.

It is an enormous habit to be in the past or the future, rather than to be in the eternal now. It requires willingness, an intention, and finally a discipline to be here. Ask Spirit for support. Ask to be gently reminded when you are drifting. There may be work for you to do concerning your beliefs about the past and the future. The work you do with them is in this moment. If you are in the past or the future, you can be sure that you are not dealing with truth. Leave your little confused ego mind and go sit with us above the battlefield. Look down at your silly little you with loving acceptance. Enjoy the humor of your running around with your head cut off. Each moment you are a little more in the eternal now. You are willing to be shown the next step. That step is being shown to you at this very moment. In the scope of time, this challenge seems enormous. In the eternal now it is just one step. To return to the beginning, your only job is to be present. If you are not there, do whatever it takes to release time. Thoughts of hopelessness or helplessness are not in the eternal now. Neither of them is true. If the thought comes that someday, probably, everybody, including yourself, will wake up, my question is “Why not now?” Why do you want to put it off? You feel incapable of doing it right now. Why? Why stop yourself with an ego lie? Don’t give up on yourself. Why not now?

Good Now

Sanhia

Should we still be doing the forgiveness process?

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I know how some of you react when you hear fingernails being drawn along a blackboard. The sensation is immediate and leaves you shuddering. If I were capable of having such a reaction, which of course I’m not, it would be triggered every time somebody said the word should. The answer to any question that begins with should is no. There is nothing that anybody should be doing. We would want to rephrase today’s question into something that allows me some scope of answers. You could say, “Sanhia, you haven’t talked about forgiveness for a while. You’ve been speaking of I Am, that we don’t know anything, and searching for untruth. We were just kind of wondering if it is still a valuable thing to be focusing on forgiveness as a healing technique.” That is phrased in such a better way, that is, if I believed in better or worse, that would definitely be better. Underneath it all with this question – and I am not singling out the person asking the question, it is simply a human ego thing – is the desire to check to see if you are doing it right. This is looking outside of yourself for validation. I want you to know that if your intention is to awaken, there is no wrong way to go about it. If your intention is not to awaken, it matters not what spiritual path you follow, you will not get there. The road that you will be traveling is already tough enough. Without intention, you will stop somewhere along the way and call it a day (or a life). Now, coming back to the question, the short answer is “of course”. Forgiveness is always a good idea. Forgiveness is based on the truth that you are not a victim of anyone, including yourself. Since nothing has happened to you from the outside, who do you have to forgive? The only true forgiveness comes from the realization that there is absolutely nothing to forgive. If you think there is something to forgive, it doesn’t matter how hard you work at it, you’ll never reach forgiveness. The thought deep down inside is that they are guilty, guilty, guilty, and in need of punishment. That is your deepest thought about yourself. You are guilty and need to be punished. Yes, forgiveness is always an excellent choice, and would you like fries with that?

Having said this, forgiveness is a very hard thing to do because most of you, no matter how hard you try to convince yourselves otherwise, don’t buy the truth of non-victimhood.  A little inner voice whispers “bullshit” every time you claim you are not a victim. There are few satisfactions within the prison of the illusion that can equal that of seeing the “guilty” punished. It is so nice to see it happen to somebody else instead of to you. That’s a lot to give up. It takes a lot of courage to accept that you can only be doing these things to yourself and that it is all about your imagined separation from Divinity. So again, the shorter answer is of course, keep on keeping on. But there is a longer answer. There might be an easier way to be successful than working directly with forgiveness. I am not saying to forget forgiveness and seek vengeance for all of your “enemies”. I’m not suggesting you start your own little inquisition. It’s not time to reinstitute the rack and the thumbscrews. When you find yourself judging, being a victim, or lacking forgiveness, it is always a good idea to notice that and to choose differently. What I am saying is that if you think that truly forgiving is a hard thing to do, I am here to say that it is even harder than you think it is. Absolute forgiveness is a very advanced thought. You can repeat over and over to yourself that everyone is innocent, but that won’t make you believe it or quiet the little inner “bullshit” voice.

It might be an easier and a more direct route for you to take the happy idiot approach. By that I mean that you acknowledge that you don’t know anything. If your mind is going in a direction of judgment, the questions become: “Is my judgment really true? Am I really a victim of that person? Does that person really have power over me? Where did they get that power? How did that happen? Can I take it back? Did I give it to them? Were they just born holding power over me? Is all of this really true? Is that person as selfish as my mind is saying? What does selfish mean? If I give up everything in the world to pursue truth, is that selfish?” If you follow your lines of thinking, as I am modeling here, when you are in the judgmental process – rather than jumping to the end of the line and pretending that you know there is nothing to judge – you have a chance of changing your mind. Right now you haven’t earned that. You still believe in guilt and punishment, right and wrong.

Rather than sticking your head in the sand and pretending you are judgment free, look hard and deep at your thoughts. Is there anything wrong with affirming innocence and freedom from guilt? Of course there isn’t. But is it really true for you? Spoiler alert: if you are even having these thoughts it is not true for you. Are they absolutely innocent? Are you not a victim? Don’t look away. Keep investigating the truth in these thoughts. How enormous is it to give up victimhood? You will have looked at all the places where you feel yourself to be a victim, whether of another person, of nature, of your own body, of disease, of governments, or of the economy. You will have to follow many of these threads before you can unravel the untruth of victimhood. And this is just one aspect of judgment. Perhaps you are judging yourself and others for one of the “seven deadly sins“. This is an enormous work and it is one you must do if you wish to wake up. Hearing me say it or reading it in A Course in Miracles isn’t enough. You have to do the heavy lifting. You have to analyze every last thought that comes into your mind for its veracity. Let your mind follow these thoughts wherever they might take you. Wherever your mind finally rests, is it resting on the truth or do you need to go deeper? You may be wondering if your mind will ever get to rest. When you reach the truth you will be able to rest in the truth forever. At a certain point of following your thoughts, the remainder may just tumble of their own weight to join the debris of untruth you have realized. As we mentioned in the last message, you arrive at truth by eliminating all of the untruths until only truth remains.

It might not be easy for you to follow your mind, to stay with it, when you have been acting as if and believing that an untruth was true. What you will find if you stay with the process is that you know less and less every day. Getting smarter means unlearning untruths. Knowing more requires knowing less. Piling up more untruths cannot lead to wisdom. It is said that you shouldn’t believe half of what you read or hear. The wise person knows which half is which. The wisest person knows that the true half is infinitely smaller than the untruth portion. When you reach the point of absolutely knowing that a thought of judgment or victimhood is not true, how could you possibly still hold on to that thinking? So maybe the quickest and most direct way to release judgments is to go directly into the untrue beliefs you are holding. Then the judgment will fall away of its own weight. Without untruths there is nothing left to support judgment. The lack of forgiveness has been propped up by false beliefs.

A “should” question will never lead you to truth. Chase it down and find what isn’t true about it. As you are following the strands you may realize that you don’t do some things because you should, but because you want to. There is no “should” about breathing, you desperately want that next breath. Check out your “shoulds” and see if they are actually desires. Forgiveness is a wonderful concept and to whatever degree you are able to embrace it this is a great guide for you. However, if you desire to be fully successful at forgiving, look at the untruths you are holding. This includes any beliefs you have that you do things because you should do them rather than because you want to do them. Untruth realization is the easy way to forgiveness. You have enough of a challenge without making it any harder on yourself.  You have your work cut out for you. If you haven’t arrived at the place where you realize the untruth of any belief or thought, you have another think coming. Have fun with that!

Good Now

Sanhia

Can you give a few more hints on how to go about finding the truth?

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In the last message we talked about what you can trust and about finding the truth. I gave you some hints as to how to go about finding the absolute truth. As I say this, I want to remind you that this is a work you must do yourself. I cannot hold your hand through your internal investigation, nor can anyone else. It is your job to do, or not. But, I have been asked if I can’t, please, give just a few more hints to help guide the way. I’m a nice guy, so I say, “Sure, I can do that.” I want to begin by suggesting that it is not so much a search for the truth as a dedication to realizing untruth. When you finish the job of untruth realization all that can remain, if you have done a good job, is truth. You find truth through the process of elimination, the releasing of untruths. The hints I will give to you are designed to help you do just that.

Probably the biggest thing that gets in the way of releasing untruths is they seem to be connected with things that you want to be present in your life. You have resistance to seeing the untruth because it might require letting go of something you would rather hold on to, something that provides some comfort in the midst of your pain. Your ego is never going to make it easy to wake up. Because you are giving importance to these things, the illusion becomes more important than the truth. The illusion is built upon untruths. Let’s look at what some of these things might be.

We could start by listing three categories of untruth encouragers found in the illusion. The first one we will simply call stuff. Think about how much of your time and energy goes into dealing with your stuff, your material possessions. The time you spend dealing with your stuff is time you are not spending with untruth realization. It’s a diversion. You think about stuff you have right now. You think about stuff you want to have. Maybe you think about stuff you used to have. There are numerous ways that you have to deal with your stuff. Stuff breaks down. Your stuff stops working. Spirit has brought in planned obsolescence so stuff breaks down faster and faster. Now you have to deal with fixing it or having somebody else do that for you. Maybe it’s time to buy newer stuff. In the meantime you have to figure out how to live your life without that particular stuff. Maybe, you decide one day that you need the latest model of your stuff, because yours is outdated and not good enough anymore. When you get new stuff you have to figure out how to operate it. All your stuff requires attention. It may need cleaning, maintenance, and protection against the elements and from theft. You worry about your stuff. You alter your behavior for your stuff. So much of your energy, your time, and your mind are devoted to handling your stuff. If you want to be dedicated to untruth realization, that will require plenty of space in your life. Having less stuff can free up this time. This can be part of your process. When you realize that a piece of your stuff is demanding a lot of time or is adding to the stress in your life, you can look at the truth of your need for the object. Follow that line of thinking all the way to the end. I am not suggesting you live your life as an ascetic monk with no stuff. I am not telling you not to do that either. If you really wish to wake up, to release the untruths that you believe in, you will not be able to avoid looking at the addictions you have to the stuff in your life. You will also find yourself dealing with the fear that you might lose any or all of your stuff.

The second category is people. Do I want you to let go of all the people in your life? I neither suggest adding or subtracting people from your life, but untruth realization will require you to examine the attachments you have to your relationships. Like your stuff, your relationships require maintenance and time. How do you alter your behavior because of the people around you? This is a profound question to pursue. You will find it nearly impossible to realize untruths while hoping to obtain approval or agreement from friends, family, and other cohorts.. How much of what you choose to do, how much of how you spend your time is determined by what the people around you seem to want from you (realizing that this is often your projection)? The implication may be that if you are really my friend or if you really loved me…..you would do what I ask of you. Do you fill your life with people so you don’t have to look at your mind? Is it a way of keeping busy? Is it your fear of being alone? This aloneness is exactly what is required of you to have the space for untruth realization. If you really wish to let go of untruths, it can only be accomplished by going deep within your own mind. Talking to or being with others will not help; that can only stand in your way. Part of your process will be dealing with the fear that you might lose any or all relationships.

If you truly focus on truth/untruth it will come ahead of the people, the friends, the family, the stuff, the money…..everything. This is some serious shit we’re talking about. Again, it’s fine if you admit to yourself that you are not ready for that kind of commitment. It’s okay to just play around with these ideas without jumping off the cliff. But, I am talking to those of you who do want to get that serious. Let’s talk about the third category…..goals. What goals do you have for your life? What do you hope to achieve? What do you want to have success with? What do you wish to accomplish? What do you want to be known for? What experiences do you wish to have? What do you hope to realize? All of these goals stand in the way of your untruth realization…..unless your goal is untruth realization. There is a saying attributed to Jesus that I’m almost embarrassed to repeat here because it is often used. However, it is used so often because it resounds of truth. Here we go, “You can only serve one master”. You can serve the illusion or you can serve the truth. The illusion is not true. Yes, you seem to be living with it and need to deal with and find your peace with it, but it is not true. If you want to know the truth, the focus cannot be on the illusion. You can only serve one of these. They are mutually exclusive. Pick one or the other. If you choose truth, then stuff, people, and goals go out the window, down the toilet, or wherever you get rid of things. Am I suggesting you have to get rid of absolutely everything? Take one thing at a time and look at it. Find the truth or untruth about it. You cannot be in a body without stuff, people, and goals. The question is one of function. Are they there to serve your awakening, or are they there to try to make the illusion more fun and to shield you from the harsh glow of truth?

What happens as you release the excess stuff, people, and goals from your life is you clear the decks so that you deal with what really matters, untruth realization. The process is very simple. Whatever thought or feeling comes to you, ask yourself if it is really true. Follow your thoughts about this down the rat hole and through the maze until you find its untruth.  If you haven’t found the untruth, you haven’t followed far enough. Perhaps it’s time to make a minor revision in the saying, “Find the truth and it will set you free” to “Find the untruth and it will set you free”. These thoughts and feelings that arise are likely to be connected to the stuff, people, and goals that you are in the process of relinquishing. Let’s say thoughts arise about your car. It is not the car that is the issue; it is the thoughts and feelings you have about the vehicle. What is the purpose of your car? Let’s play with this a little. Does your car make you feel better about yourself? Will others think better about you because of the car you have (or worse)? Is that really true? Does it really matter? Does the possession of an object change who you are? If you didn’t have that car, would you be someone else? Who are you? Is who you are affected by how others think about you? Do they have the power to affect the truth of you? Who would you be if you didn’t (or did) have a car? Would your experience of the illusion change with a change of vehicles? What is necessary in order for you to maintain your existence in the illusion, for example, getting food, doing the work you are here to do, meeting with the people that it is important to get together with? How would this affect all the different things you do while in a body? How important is each of them? What absolutely needs to be done? If a car is found to be necessary to continue your untruth realization, what kind of car will suit you? These answers are not outside; they are within you. Nobody can tell you what kind of car will satisfy your needs; at best they can project what they believe would suit them. We have just scratched the surface of all the possible roads this car question might lead you down. On the one hand you can look at the amount of your energy that is consumed by your mode of transportation while on the other hand ask why any of that matters. As you investigate fully you will come face to face with looking at the actual importance of everything you have held to be of value. If the bottom line is that only untruth realization is important, how will this piece of stuff help you get there? Where is it in the way and where does it support? You will only know these answers through relentless self examination.

This is only one of a multitude of possessions that you might have. This process of untruth realization will take you quite a while. If you seriously look for your answers, you won’t have so much time to spend with other people and you probably wouldn’t provide the best company. You won’t have time to be dealing with all of your stuff. You won’t be able to accomplish your goats while trying to figure out if they are worth reaching or even having. This is why Jesus is also quoted as saying 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 only serve one master. If riches are important to you, you will hold to them rather than surrender them for the truth within you. You cannot pay attention to your stuff and to the people who look after your stuff and still have enough time to follow your thoughts all of the way to the end. That will be even less likely if you suspect that untruth realization will lead you to give up all attachments to your stuff. There is nothing evil in stuff; it is only the addiction to it that causes a problem. Does more stuff really give you power? Does it free you? Do your relationships support you in untruth realization or do they enable you to hold on to prejudice and victimhood? When you are afraid of the truth, you attract those equally committed to untruth to join together in protecting your right to ignorance, to spiritual childhood. No matter how many goals you reach, you will never feel you are fully a success. What success brings is an emptiness that can only be filled by striving for another goal. Accumulating money or stuff leaves you still wanting more. There is never enough of anything in the illusion to fully satisfy you. No matter how many friends you might feel you have, you know inside that they don’t love the real you. It’s all conditional and you have to maintain a façade just to hold onto what you don’t even really have. Stuff, people, and goals are drugs. They are addictions. A drug can be used in an appropriate way to support you in untruth realization, but addiction never does that. You can serve untruth realization or your addiction, but not both.

This is where the pedal hits the metal. The more dedication you have to untruth realization/truth realization, the more time and energy you will focus there and the less important the addictions will be in your day to day life. Everyone hopes to be able to have their cake and eat it too, but it doesn’t work that way. I’m here to rain on your parade. There isn’t room to hold on to the illusion and grasp for the truth simultaneously. There is a moment where you will have to let go of the illusion but will not have yet fully grasped the truth. The bottom falls out from beneath you. There is nothing left to hold on to. This has been called the dark night of the soul. I wish I could tell you differently, that your transition to truth will be a smooth ride. Everyone fears facing this abyss. Addiction feels like a safer, more comfortable place. This is part of the package. In the illusion you believe you need to fulfill the three categories to be happy, but they will never bring you there. They can’t because they are not built upon truth. Only untruth realization can bring you what you desire to experience. If you maintain your commitment, you will move through the dark night into real freedom. You will know when it is time for you to make the choice for untruth realization. Maybe it’s not meant for this trip. Eventually you will find yourself there. Bon voyage.

Good Now

Sanhia

How can I get control over my ego?

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Wow, what a fun question this is!  There are so many different aspects to it that I hardly know where I want to begin. Let’s start with this. We want to talk about the truth of you, which I will call your I Am consciousness. We mentioned this in the last message. You Are or, as you would say it, I Am. That is the end of the story. I Am. It is not “I am spirit” or “I am ego”. It is I Am. But here you find yourself in this story, this movie, this illusion. You appear to have a body. It looks as if there is a physical planet. You seem to be interacting with other people. There appears to be this ego, this craziness, convincing you that the whole package is true, and, as we talked about last time, you are having a lot of emotional responses to the drama being presented. So, you wonder what you can do to reel in this ego. The shortest, most clear, direct, and honest answer that I can give is that you can do nothing. Trying to do something about the ego is on the same level as trying to create heaven on earth, which is on the same level as rearranging the deck furniture on the Titanic. You are on a fool’s errand in which you cannot possibly have any success. You will be wasting energy and ending in more confusion than you began.

Having said that, let’s come at this from a totally different point of view. Your mind has a habit of holding onto thoughts or beliefs that are not true. You often begin these thoughts or statements with the words “I am”. For example, you might say, “I am depressed”. That cannot be a true statement. There is a difference between your divine I Am that always is and this illusory physical self, that we could call your “me”, which experiences all of this fear, doubt, and guilt in the world. Your me and the events it encounters are all temporary, while the truth is always true. When you find yourself feeling depressed you can say to yourself, “I am noticing that my me is feeling a little depressed right now”. This is a far different statement than saying to yourself “I am depressed” which suggests a permanent and unchangeable truth of who you are. Instead, you acknowledge that this little me is experiencing depression. Interesting! All you do is notice. The process of waking up involves the realization that your me is not real and what it is experiencing is of no lasting importance. Your job is to develop your awareness of what your me is doing.

The process can happen something like this. You have, or more correctly You Are, a Divine I Am. When we have spoken of taking things to Spirit we could also describe it as taking things to your Divine I Am. As a visual, you can picture yourself high above the playing field, the game, the battlefield, the physical plane. You are looking down on your little me. Oh poor little me, depressed, angry, jealous, horny, happy, sad, head-over-heels in love, heartbroken and so on. All that this awareness amounts to is that you are separating your true self from your me. You look down and observe your me, not with the idea of changing its thoughts or actions, simply being aware that this is not the truth of you. Your I Am is just watching and noticing what your me is going through right now. If you try to change your me, that is if you try to control your ego, you will fail. You are then making the experience of your me real. You are giving it an importance and an existence that it doesn’t have. That is a big one to get over, because your me thinks that everything that happens to it is so important. But the experiences have no meaning beyond being the description of your self-created prison. Your job is not to stop feeling whatever your me is going through, but to simply notice what is going on from a detached separate space, from your I Am. You might lovingly notice without judgment or guilt, “Oh isn’t my little me cute”. That is called being aware.

As you are able to simply be aware, the behavior will begin to dissipate. You have likely heard before that what you resist persists. Your attempts to bring about change are only empowering and encouraging the craziness of the ego to continue. When the behavior is given no attention, it has no further reason to hang around. So, it is not about controlling the ego; it is about ignoring it and instead focusing on your I Am, which doesn’t have a horse in the ego game race. Of course, ignoring does not mean sticking your head in the sand, pretending you don’t see what your me is doing. Notice everything, but don’t identify with it. Give it no juice. That little me is not You. Of course, you will forget to step back at times. You will find yourself again caught up in the ego games. This is not because you can’t control the ego; it is because the ego still has control of you. This is not a fight over who has control. The ego will win every fight. All you need to do, as often as you can remember to, is to become aware of the situation. Separate out and rise above to your I Am and watch the spectacle taking place. “There I go again.”

One of the most persistent me fears is around death. It might look like your fear of losing somebody close to you, or the reaction to just that having happened (as we talked about in the last message), but it is always the fear of your own death. Your awareness job is to notice yourself having that fear. The I am does not know death. It is not real. I am is only life, consciousness, and awareness. Death is the perfect vehicle for your me to ride in and for your I Am to look down upon, observing yourself dealing with your fear. When your fear of death dissolves, which it will do if you persist in watching it in awareness without judgment from your I Am, you will for the first time realize life. Your ego mind thinks life is all of the things that are not real, all the dramas and emotions.

Your ego mind looks at the possibility of awakening and asks what is left when all it values disappears. If the drama is gone, what remains? There is no good answer to that question. The I Am is what is left when all that is not real is gone. The best I can do is to tell you what the “I Am” is not. I Am not depression. I Am not sadness. I Am not fear. I Am not hate. I Am not anger. I Am not jealousy. I Am not boredom. I Am not death. We could say that everything that you do not want, everything that causes pain and suffering is a part of what I Am not. I Am also not special love, heaven on earth, or any idea you have ever had. The only way for you to realize who You are is to jettison everything that you are not. I Am is what is left. What I can tell you is that while you are in this awareness process of separating your I Am from your me, watching and slowly allowing those behaviors to dissipate – not by trying to change anything but just by noticing – you will begin to have less of your me operating. You will experience less depression, fear, jealousy, worry, and so on. You will experience yourself as living more and more in the now. In this disappearing act will be the guilt about what you have or have not done and the fear about what might happen. Fewer thoughts will run through your mind about what you should be doing, to be replaced by thoughts of what you could be doing. In the now there exist none of the emotions we have been talking about. In the now there is guidance available from a Divine intelligence that is directing everything, perfectly.

This is what happens when you move to the I Am consciousness and simply observe. Your I Am does not pretend to know everything, or perhaps even anything. It simply is. So, gradually, bit by bit, your little me begins to exist just in the now. The separation between your I Am and your me slowly dissolves. You realize that whatever is supposed to happen in this illusion is exactly what is happening. There will not be a thought that things should be any different than they are.  You will simply know how to react to whatever presents itself. You will be guided. That’s all there is: no drama, no confusion, no fear, no past, no future. So, returning one last time to the opening question, there is nothing to control. It’s about letting go of control and replacing that need with awareness, noticing how your me is acting and reacting. There is no battle. You get to sit back and observe the absolute insanity of the ego world. You will grow to appreciate the humor in this absolute insanity. It is permitted to laugh. Sit back and enjoy the show.

Good Now

Sanhia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

Are love and hate opposites?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

What is the difference between judgment and discernment?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia