Does love require me to sacrifice?

/in , , , , , , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

How do I discern Spirit from ego?

/in , , , , , , ,

We have been encouraging you to choose love over fear, Spirit over the ego. Some of you have asked how to tell the difference. Right now, any decision you make is likely to be fear-based, whether you choose to listen to the ego or to Spirit. If you opt for the ego, you do it out of fear of what might happen to you if you don’t follow its direction. When you decide on Spirit, you have the fear ”What if this is the wrong thing to do?” The ego is very good at playing that kind of game with you. ”Don’t you think somebody would have been doing it like that a long time ago if that was the way to do it?” ”What if everyone acted that way?” The main message from the ego is that if you don’t do as it suggests, something bad will happen to you. You feel that the only safe thing is to do what you don’t want to do. When you are listening to Spirit you think, ”That is what I really want to do, but I’m afraid to”. The fear is that you will get hurt by doing what you want to do. Deep inside you can hear what you really want, but you are afraid to act on it. The voice of Spirit is saying ”Go for it”. To sum it up, the easiest way to discern the two voices if you are doubtful is this: If you follow out of fear, the voice is likely the ego; if you are afraid to follow, the voice is likely Spirit.

Spirit will remind you that if you listen to the voice of the ego only one thing is certain. You will die. Everyone who has done things the ego’s way has died. You may be wondering where you find those who have listened to the voice of Spirit. The ego is correct when it tells you that there aren’t many. They are called ascended masters. The one you probably know best is Jesus. When you read his channeled message in A Course in Miracles, you are getting a training in how to listen to Spirit and leave the voice of the ego behind. The same thing happens when you study these messages. When there are few accompanying you on your voyage, the odds are greater that you might be listening to Spirit.

Mass consciousness is one of the voices of the ego. It takes great courage to choose Spirit over ego. Each of you have come back countless times hoping that you have set things up in such a way that this time you will pick Spirit. From where I sit, it’s a done deal. It doesn’t matter if you ascend in this body or twenty bodies from now. Nothing will stop you from realizing the truth eventually. You will get there. I have no fear for you. It doesn’t matter whether you listen to Spirit now, or not. And so it is with God, who sees only your perfection, only the truth of you. Even now in the midst of your fear, you are absolutely one with God, totally connected. Everything around you is illusory. None of it exists. You can ask God to stop all of this madness, to come down to earth into your hell. God won’t hear you. As we mentioned in the last message, while you are in illusion the best you can do is to talk to Spirit. Even when you begin to consistently put your faith in God, in Spirit, and in your divinity, there is still a step between believing and knowing. When you know, you will feel no need to talk to God because you are one. When you ask,”Can I talk to God?”, you are really saying you want to ask God for help. This is what you do when you pray. You may think your prayer is going to God, but it isn’t. It is heard by Spirit. Spirit sends you support to help you to choose the voice of truth.

Let’s return to the original question of how to discern the voice of Spirit from that of the ego. Begin, as always, with the intention. Ask Spirit to support you in this goal. Ask for the faith to follow your heart, even when you are experiencing fear and doubt. If the ego wins the battle, let it go. Forgive yourself and try again. The ego might win many battles, but it cannot win the war. Remember how the voice of Spirit feels. When you fully want something to happen from your heart, that is its voice. Remember that the guidance is always for you. Spirit won’t tell you how another should act toward you. It is all about you. This illusion is your creation. You can ask Spirit to bring you moral support, but any attempts to make specific people play certain roles for you is always the work of the ego. It begins, always, as a choice to listen to Spirit over the ego. You do it because you believe it is the truest thing to do. Eventually there will be no choice. The only voice you will hear is that of Spirit. I call that ascension.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

How do I move from a lack of faith to trust?

/in , , , , , , , ,

Trust is having faith that whatever is happening now is perfect. It allows you to be fully present in the now. The ego is not capable of doing this. It either dwells in the past in guilt and blame about what could or should have been, as well as mourning for ”the good old days”, or it imagines a future – worrying about what might or might not happen, or fantasizing about some dream that it doesn’t really expect will manifest. Trust is centered right here, right now. It is aligned with Spirit and, therefore, with God. Trust and faith are interchangeable terms. When you trust absolutely you experience only love; fear is dissolved. When you have faith, you listen to the voice of Spirit within you and follow it without question.

It’s easy to discern between the voice of Spirit and the voice of the ego. The voice of the ego always possesses doubt. It fosters worry about what the future will bring based on your current choices and actions. When you have faith, you know that your current action is perfect and whatever you have drawn into your life is exactly what is required. It is not necessary for you to understand why it is perfect. That information will come when the time is right. Faith is never dependent on proof, which is a demand from the ego. Proof is really saying, ”I cannot trust Spirit until you can absolutely show me that Spirit is trustworthy”. This is a demand that can never be satisfied. Trust cannot be earned. When you do not trust Spirit, you are merely projecting your lack of faith in yourself. You don’t trust your intuitive process. You feel separate from God and do not believe a direct contact is possible. Perhaps, you want a ”burning bush” experience, or something like what Gary Renard manifested with Pursah and Arten, as he related in The Disappearance of the Universe. You want Spirit to create something that appears to be outside of you, to speak to you. You want a miracle. If you were to manifest such a miraculous event, over time you would likely come to doubt your experience and go back to your old ways. Trust is to be found within you.

How do you move from a lack of faith to trust? The first step always is intention. You decide that you want faith, that you wish to trust in Spirit. You ask for faith before you have certainty that there is something to believe in. Your ego will resist your attempts at faith at every turn. A strong declaration of your intention to have faith helps you bypass the ego. Maybe your lack of faith hasn’t created enough discomfort for you yet. Perhaps things have to get a little worse. Possibly you may have to bottom out so that you have nothing left to lose. Or, you can shorten the time of pain and suffering by asking to trust now. As soon as you make the request, Spirit will begin sending faith to you. The only reason that you don’t fully trust now is because the ego has set up blocks to keep that from happening. It believes that God cannot be depended upon. The ego thinks that God is out to get you, and therefore it needs to protect you from Him. But, when you don’t trust God, you don’t trust yourself – you and God are one. This becomes a dead end, where your life is filled with mistrust.

After giving your intention, the second step is to listen. When you find yourself at a point where you are worried and fearful about what will happen, and don’t know what to do – ask Spirit for direction. And listen. Trust what you hear. The ego will want to doubt and question, perhaps even to deny that there was a response. But Spirit always answers. Trust the first thing that comes. Act on it. As you respond to the guidance you receive, future directives become stronger and clearer. Your action is a demonstration of faith. Trust is beginning to grow within you. This faith will continue to expand as you feed it. You feed it by going inside and asking Spirit for support, whether you call that meditation, reflection, or prayer. You listen, receive a message, give thanks, and act. And your faith increases. You can also develop your faith by expressing gratitude toward everything that you have in your life, seeing it all as a gift from Spirit. If you are struggling to see something as being a gift, ask Spirit to help guide you to acceptance. The truth is that it can only be a gift; you are always connected to God, and God only sends you his loving grace. Because you are reading this, I know that you have already decided to welcome Spirit into your life. You have already chosen to become aware of your divinity. Even if the commitment is not yet strong, it is there and it is increasing.

What you feed in your life grows. If you trust Spirit, it will flourish in you. If you feed the ego by giving power to its doubts and fears, it will swell. And let’s face it. The ego doesn’t need any more help. It has been running this show for lifetimes. It’s time to give trust a chance. When you have faith, you are in the realm of peace and love. That state continues to strengthen until nothing can shake it. All you are asked to sacrifice is your doubt and your fear. Doubt and fear can only manifest more doubt and fear. This will be your fate forever until you choose to trust, which will happen sooner or later. It doesn’t matter if you wait. The illusion will wait with you. It’s not real. It’s not going to do you any true harm. I have faith that you will eventually choose to trust Spirit. Why not do that now? I know that the choice of trust leaves you absolutely safe. In fact, you are always safe. But if you listen to the ego, you will never experience a feeling of safety. Whatever you choose.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

Why doesn’t money feel spiritual to me?

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

Michael just pointed out to me that we have never directly addressed money in these messages. Ulla says that money seems to be a problem for everybody. It is funny that even though you have largely done away with physical money in your modern economic system, it remains just as big a problem. When we talk about illusion, what better place is there to look than at money? What value does that piece of paper have? You can’t eat it or drink it. You can’t build a house or take a trip with it. All you can do with it is give it away, or stow it away. Money is an absolute illusion; it has no value in and of itself. Even the coins that once were precious are now made mostly of low cost metals. You often replace money with a little worthless plastic card or even digital numbers in cyberspace. The thing to understand about money in all of its manifestations is that its primary purpose, as is true with absolutely everything else in your life, is to support you in realizing your divinity. You are immortal, divine beings. That is what you came here to realize.

Money is a tool to help you do just that. You may believe that the purpose of money is to help you survive, but your survival is guaranteed. Your ego may scream out that you don’t just want to survive, you want to survive and stay in your body. If you think that money is what allows you to stay in the body, and the ego uses the body to stay separate from God and in pain and suffering, then money must be the thing that keeps you trapped in your earthly hell. If we do away with money, can we eliminate pain and suffering? It is not quite that easy. Ask those who have tried to live outside the financial system.

Let us start with looking at the connection of fear with money, the anxiety that there isn’t enough. Money is the best way that you know to attract what you desire into your life. Whether you are looking at the basics of food, water, shelter, and clothing, or the extras that seem to make life worth living, there does not appear to be enough money. You may decide to sell yourself out. You may take a job that you probably wouldn’t do if fear were not raging in your mind. Some of you have mastered this denial process by finding work that provides some enjoyment and/or pays relatively well, but if you won the lottery, would you wish to continue with your job as it is? For many of you, your story is that your job takes too much time and energy, has too many distasteful qualities, and leaves you with too little money. The choice seems to be between either working harder or being poorer. There may be fear around deservedness, and poverty can be seen as the only route to heaven. Jesus warned us about the spiritual dangers of the love of money. When you place financial success as your most important goal in life, you have chosen a goal that has no value. If you believe that money will bring you happiness, you are deceiving yourself. No matter how much you create, it will not be enough. Which billionaires have said that they have enough and have stopped accumulating wealth (the answer may be those who are beginning to look at their own mortality)? But the deception is equal if you believe that poverty will bring you happiness. Remember that money is pure illusion. What do you value? If your priority in life is to experience your divinity, the purpose of money is to support that happening. Perhaps you wish to attend trainings or workshops, go to retreats, or receive sessions for your spiritual and physical healing. You don’t feel that you can afford them, so your spiritual growth feels blocked off. You can’t afford to ascend. That is quite a story.

We begin the healing of your relationship with money by reminding you that the dollar, kronor, or other currency is the illusion of all illusions. It is not real, but exists simply as a temporary convenience. It is a bridge. When you can fly, you don’t need bridges. Money provides an easy way to exchange. It releases you of the need for barter, where you must find the person who has what you want and also wants what you have. Money provides a basis for trust where you give service one place and receive service in another. Eventually there will be no need for it. Fear of lack requires you to keep score. As you realize that the supply is infinite, the need to keep track disappears. You don’t have to wait for the world to get there. You can go there at any time. You can go there now. You cannot experience your divinity while you are carrying fear about money. Is it possible for God to be unable to generate enough? Is there a limit to the creative power of God? If you believe that you cannot generate enough, you have separated yourself from God. You must not be divine. Part of my job is to shake you gently and remind you that you are divine. Listening to your ego is the only thing standing in the way of manifesting whatever you desire in the moment. You choose to pay attention to your ego instead of to Spirit. Your ego says you are undeserving and that there isn’t enough to go around. It tells you that wanting more is selfish and takes away from what others can have. It warns you about what God does to selfish people. The way to ascension, according to the ego, is to do without, to be an ascetic. On the flip side, the ego tells you that those who have abundance have sold their soul to the devil, and they will burn in hell forever. You will be rewarded for your suffering.

What a story! When you decide to stop listening to the ego, your experience will change. It probably won’t transform all at once, because it is difficult to stop listening to that lie instantly in its entirety. Ask Spirit to come in and guide you to the truth about money and manifestation. The function of money is as a medium of exchange so that you are supported in the moment as you are following your path or doing the service you came here to do. Money is not a diversion for you. You can be fully focused on love and supporting others to realize their divinity, as you realize your own. Do the work of listening to Spirit and letting go of the ego. Keep your eye on the prize. Whatever is essential for today will be there. There is no need to worry about tomorrow, because it never comes. You are always in the now. You are always supported by Spirit. When your fear about money surfaces, use the five-step process. Go right into the face of your fear. You will never be able to accumulate enough money to lose the fear. If you are working a job or staying in a relationship because of fear of money, fly into the face of that fear. Staying is a slow death that will not allow you the true happiness of realizing your divinity. If you want to do something that supports your purpose, but worry about not having enough – spend the money. Trust. Do the process. Remember that it is all illusion. It is just a movie. Play the role your heart is set on. God is on your side.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

How can I deal with my karma?

/in , , , , , , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

What do birthdays and deathdays have in common?

/in , , , , , , , , ,

Everyone in your culture consciously embraces the anniversary of the birth, of the entrance into the illusion of physical reality. Your birthday is a big day, one for joyful celebration. It is an event where everyone honors you, perhaps with a party so that people can express their love and appreciation. The deathday is also a date to celebrate. It is an occasion where you focus on the transition of your loved one. It is a time to consider the spiritual gift that arrived for you that day. Whatever is not healed in you about death will come up for you to look upon. It is a moment to ask Spirit to support you in fully opening up to what you are still holding around death: whatever is feeling unhealed, wherever there is still fear or anger, grief or sadness. Feel where that energy is being held in your body and to call on Spirit to help bring about a transformation. You may want to revisit where we talked about death.

Your birthday is for celebrating the moment when you jumped in and declared that you were going for the golden ring again. On that date, you took on a physical form in the hopes that you would remember the truth of who you are this time; that you would realize your divinity and experience the Oneness while in a body. The deathday, which is always someone else’s, is a celebration for one who came in with you to play an important role, joining you in a mutual support to recognize your divinity. Feel gratitude for that, understanding that the death was a part of the gift. The greatest possible benefit that can be garnered from this is the insight that there is no death. Death is an illusion. There is no ”life”. You do not begin with a birth or end with a death. You are. Birth and death are but mirages. Your single purpose in creating this chimera of ”life” is to realize just that; that it is an illusion. This is not real. It is not you. You are divine, eternal, immortal, and limitless. Each death is a gift to help you realize that. The anniversary of the deathday is meant to honor the divinity of that soul. They died so that you could be free of the illusion of death. The ego sees this as ”the supreme sacrifice”, but nothing was lost here. Those who die only leave behind the suffering they experienced while having a body. They are free of all of that now. I have used the term ”illusion” several times. Your ego has a great resistance to accepting life and the physical world as illusions. The term cannot be overused. Repetition can only help you to let go of your ego’s resistance.

When there is still sadness for you around the deathday, the sorrow is a mask for your fear of your own death. If you fully accepted the soul’s immortality and you truly loved the individual who has left the body, you would be so happy for them that they are free of suffering. ”Rest in peace” you say, and you would really feel that joy. This is not a peace of emptiness or nothingness, which is, perhaps, part of your story and your fear. It is the peace of seeing that this was an illusion, the peace of knowing that the pains and sufferings of this ”life” can all be let go. A gift that is there for you in the deathday is you can realize that you don’t have to leave your body to let go of the suffering. That is the last recourse. If you can’t find a way to transmute the pain while alive, you can always leave your body. There is no judgment about this. If you choose to leave, you will sooner or later choose to return. Eventually you will get it; you’ll accept your divinity. But, since you are going to leave behind all of this suffering at some point, there is absolutely no reason to hold on to any of it for another minute. The deathday is there to remind you of that. You can’t take it with you. You can’t take your pain with you when you die. You can choose to release it now.

Celebrate your own and others’ birthdays. Honor your courage in taking on the form of the illusion of physicality. Love your determination to realize your divinity this time, to ascend. Celebrate the deathdays for those that you love. Don’t add the intervening years to their age. Don’t visualize what they might look like now. This is not a day to hold them in their physical form. It is a time to celebrate their divinity. They are no longer your parent, sibling, partner, child, relative, or friend. They have dropped that role. You are still lovingly connected with them, but now it is with the truth of who they are. Let the illusion of their life go, as they have already done. Practice forgiveness. Go into your body and deal with your pain through the five-step process. Ask Spirit for support. Make every day a celebration of eternal life, of the truth of who they are, and of the truth of who you are.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

Can you explain the terms ego and Spirit?

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

In past messages, we have used the terms ”ego” and ”Spirit”. Perhaps this is a good time to define what we mean by them. Those of you who are or have been working with A Course in Miracles may be familiar with how it uses these words. We will treat them in a similar way. We would begin by reminding you of the truth of who you are, of your personal divinity. You are created in the image of God. You are one with God, who loves you unconditionally no matter what you might choose, do, or think. However, the part of you that we call your ego does not believe this or trust it for a minute. Your ego, in fact, is terrified of God and believes that you are separated from Him. It thinks that God is angry with you for this separation and is going to punish you. Your ego’s agenda is all about protecting you from God. One of the ways it does this is by punishing you, before God can do it. Another way of dealing with this fear is by trying to be ”good” in the attempt to win back God’s love. Your ego is absolutely insane. It’s crazy. Your ego believes that you have to try to do everything right. You have to eat right, wear the right clothes, meditate in the right way and with the correct frequency, have right thoughts, treat others right, and so on. This comes from the belief that you are separate from God, which you cannot be, never have been, and never will be. It is an absolute impossibility. The nature of who you are is a child of God. You are created by God in His image, and there is nothing you can do about it. But, your ego doesn’t believe this. Your ego will do anything to protect you from God.

Your ego is the voice of fear, anger, jealousy, hatred, pain, suffering, doubt, and self-flagellation. None of it has anything to do with God’s love. We would put it this way. God simply does not see your illusion of separation that you have created here through your ego. He does not see it.  God doesn’t see this hell that you have created. He does not even see those moments when this world your ego has made feels blissful, even heavenly. Even the ecstasy you might experience on the physical earth pales in the face of the true joy, love, and creativity that you are. It is but a taste of it. You may have heard that the human mind only uses five or ten percent of its full capacity. What if it worked at 100%? When you experience bliss in your body…enjoying the beauty of the earth, dancing, having sex, eating food, sharing love with another, or whatever the connection might be…you are at best only experiencing 5% of the totality of the absolutely unlimited bliss, joy, and love that you are. Happiness is a very relative term. If you are receiving electric shocks and then they stop, you may feel happy. Happiness can only exist if there is also unhappiness. Divinity is infinite rather than relative. It has no opposite; it is the ”is-ness”, the truth of who you are. Your ego, meanwhile, is fighting like hell for that 5%, while denying the existence of the 95%.

What is Spirit? Spirit is a little harder thing to put your finger on. It is not physical, nor of the material world. We could call Spirit an intermediary between you and God. Whereas, God does not see this physical-ness, this illusion – in fact you created it so that you could hide here from God – Spirit is able to see it. Spirit is in between; it is absolutely connected and one with God and at the same time can recognize your confusion. You can have a direct communication with Spirit about your inner turmoil which you are unable to have with God, who doesn’t recognize anything about you but your divinity. Spirit can enter into your dream and help you transform it. When you ask Spirit for help – some people use the term “pray” – it is the same thing as asking Jesus or any other ascended master for help. The ascended master is a soul like you, but has recognized oneness with Spirit and can act in this realm while also being absolutely connected with God.

Your job becomes very simple. You can listen to your ego or you can listen to Spirit. You can be guided by your ego or you can be guided by Spirit. You make the decision. It takes a very conscious intention to choose Spirit because the world around you tends not to. The world around you will probably reflect that you would be insane to choose Spirit, even the mirror that claims to be religious. What do you do in the face of such overwhelming opposition? First comes the recognition, the knowing of which of the two you are listening to, your ego or Spirit. If any of the qualities above, which were listed at the beginning of the second paragraph, are present – you are listening to your ego. If you are listening to Spirit, the following qualities might be present: first of all, trust, and secondly an absolute integrity (being true to yourself). Your ego wants you to act in a way that is not in line with your true self, out of fear of what might happen if you are true to yourself. The trust and the integrity fit hand in hand. Meanwhile, your ego is warning you of all of the consequences of going down that road. When you are listening to Spirit there is never a competition, never an either/or, never winners and losers. Spirit always speaks with unconditional love, free of judgment. Your ego speaks from fear and always has limits, competition, and the need for protection.

The next question might be, ”Okay. I know I am listening to my ego, but how do I stop?” First you set an intention and you invite Spirit in. You ask Spirit to guide your life. After you have done that, there are two main things you can focus on. One is to have a constant awareness of when and how your ego is acting. Ask yourself how Spirit might guide you here. How would Spirit choose? What might Spirit say to you? If an answer doesn’t come quickly, ask Spirit to send you support. The second thing is to practice forgiveness. Your ego operates out of guilt. That is its main fuel. Forgiveness destroys guilt. If you could eliminate guilt from your life, your ego would starve to death. It needs your guilt or the guilt of others, which is easy to find. You simply point your finger and say, ”It is your fault”. But we know that everything you see around you is just your own reflection. It doesn’t matter whether you perceive it in yourself or another. Remind yourself that it is an illusion; that person didn’t do anything to you. You haven’t done anything either. You are all innocent. You forgive both. You constantly search for the guidance of Spirit, and you continuously forgive when you realize your judgment is in the way. A good benchmark for telling whether your judgment is in the way is to see if you have any. If you do, it is in the way. Nothing is too big or too small. Choose Spirit. Ask for support. Forgive. Know that you are always loved at every moment. Know that you do not have to do one thing to deserve that love.

God Blesses You, 

Sanhia 

How do my home and relationships affect my intention to ascend?

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

We talked several years ago about home and having a sense of home. I encourage you to reread that message, but we are going to talk a little differently about home today. We have also talked about relationships before. Again, you may wish to review that subject, but we will go in another direction with the information today. Finally, we previously talked about intention, and of course you are invited to revisit that correspondence – in fact, it would probably be the most supportive of the three in fully receiving today’s communication. We are going to weave these three topics together for you.

Everything always begins with intention. Everything. If you do not express clear intent, you, by default, give your life over to the mass consciousness and to the confusion brought forth from your past lives. When you have the goal to experience ascension, the only thing between you and the full realization of your divinity is the illusion of time. That could involve lifetimes, but it will happen. Much of what we share with you is given with the hope that you might reduce the time it takes you to realize your divinity. Knowing what you want, expressing intention, and making ascension the most important thing in your life – these are the great time reducers. Whatever else you are considering, choices you have before you, confusions you have – ask yourself, “Is this in line with my intention to ascend?”

I want to specifically direct this focus of achieving the realization of your divinity in two ways: first dealing with home, then with relationship. I have mentioned several times about the ”mirroring” effect of others. Whenever you are around others, you see yourself reflected in them. Whatever you notice about them shows how you feel about yourself. Your judgments of them are your judgments of yourself. Your love for them is your love for yourself. If you feel yourself to be a victim to them, it is you who have created the attack because of your belief in a need for punishment. As you are conscious of this, you can use it as a healing tool. Your ego does not want to accept these reflections as you. It wants to project on others and to be a righteous martyr. Take this home with you. Work with this within the safety and security of your home. These are frightful things you are encountering. It is a great challenge. It is not easy to fully confront your illusions and your fear, even using the five-step process. That’s why we encourage you to create a safe home. This is a place where you will have minimal opposition from your mirrors. You will never escape them completely, nor would you want to if your primary intention is to ascend. On the other hand, if you are constantly challenged by your reflections, you go crazy. It’s more than you can handle.  Create a secure place; I call that home. For some of you this home is the place where you live. But for others your residence is not a shelter. For some of you, home might be a group you get together with, a close friend, or a quiet spot in the woods. That is where you feel protected. The first thing we are suggesting around home is that you make sure you have it somewhere. If your residence doesn’t provide such a haven, find someplace else. Look for a space where you feel nurtured and supported in your spiritual process.

If you are in a relationship that doesn’t support your spiritual process in a nurturing manner, I ask you what your first priority is? What is your intention? If it is your chosen purpose to become aware of your divinity, living day-to-day intimately with someone who does not reinforce this path makes that realization much more difficult. If this is the case for you, perhaps you have created a safe pocket within your residence. But, still you must venture out into the rest of the house and interact with your partner. The questions are ” What are you choosing?” and “Why are you choosing that?” Perhaps your response is to say that you know that your partner is your mirror and so you are using your partner to promote your spiritual growth by taking responsibility when you become upset over what is going on between the two of you. I say that is wonderful, but do you need or want your life to be a constant barrage of perceived attack from your mirror? If you are open and willing to see your fears and what your ego is telling you, there will be plenty of opportunities to experience your ego’s voice as you go through your daily life. But, if you are ”sleeping with the enemy”, it can actually be harder to change your story.

Let’s talk further about relationships. Some of you, as you read this, are saying, ”What relationship? I wish I had one.” If this is your situation ask yourself which is more important to you, realizing your ascension or having a relationship. Be honest. If being in a relationship comes first, it is not likely that you will manifest one that supports your spirituality. You will also likely find the relationship to be a co-dependent one, because you may be entering it out of neediness. What other parts of yourself might you be willing to deny to keep your partner from leaving? If you decide to leave, you have to begin the whole process over again. What will make a new relationship any different? I encourage you to be conscious of what you are choosing. Ask yourself what you really want from a relationship. What would leave you unfulfilled if it were not a part of your partnership? If you have expressed your intention to realize your divinity, how can a relationship be fully supportive if it is not based on a mutual desire to experience your divine natures?

If ascension is your highest intention, you might be more strongly supported in it through creating a safe home for yourself, rather than focusing on having a relationship. If this leaves you feeling hopeless, your issue for healing is hopelessness. Create a network of friends or groups that share and support your intention. Choose a home where you can work with your process, deal with your ego, face your fears, and focus on loving yourself and others unconditionally, without having anyone in your face. Also, work with your fear of never finding the right partner. Come up with a new story. What likely happens is that you will create the partner who fully supports you in your ascension process when you don’t need that person, when you are already doing that for yourself. If you are looking for a partner to come in and save you in your spiritual process, you are back to a co-dependent situation. Ask Spirit to bring a supportive partner into your life. This partner can magnify the effort you are already making. Nobody ascends alone. We are all connected. You are never alone. When the person is ready, the partner will appear.

Your ultimate relationship is with yourself and with Spirit. Your process is expedited when you are clear about your intention, create a nurturing home, and are uncompromising when it comes to choosing a partner who supports your intention. I am not necessarily suggesting that if your relationship does not feel supportive, you should move out today or have the locks changed. But, it may be time to initiate a different kind of conversation with your partner. See if that mutuality can be found. If your partner is not able to support you – you have a clear choice to make. Remember that your truest partner is Spirit, and Spirit always loves you unconditionally.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

How does the ego divide and conquer?

/in , , , ,

There is a strategy that has been used throughout history by those who seek to take power from others called ”divide and conquer”. If one can get different groups or individuals to fight among themselves, it becomes easier to take them over. It is when people are united that conquest becomes a larger challenge. The clever conqueror discovers how to sow the seeds of discontent, to get people’s fingers pointing in many different directions. Individuals fail to recognize the real source of their difficulties. They think it lies everywhere else. Many politicians have mastered this ability. Divide and conquer. The ego has always used this technique. Where did these controlling leaders learn how to do this? From the ego. Those who seek to dominate others are the highest expression of the ego on the planet, using force and fear to wrest power from others. Of course, no leader can do this without your consent. This kind of power feeds off of fear. Now we want to look at how the ego accomplishes this.

Some of you, in conjunction with the previous two messages, have been working with your “old stories”. We have heard wonderful reports about the successes you have had in using the five-step process with them. Some of you have realized that you hadn’t previously made the decision to really let go of the “old story”, and decided that it was now time to do so. Now we want to take it to another level. What the ego will often do is let you go off trying to change a story and therefore claim your power and your divinity. But, before you fully achieve success with that issue, the ego taps you on the shoulder and points out another issue which you need to heal. You drop the first issue and go to the second. Then the ego taps you on the other shoulder and points out a third issue, and another, and another, and so on. You are left exhausted and hopeless. There are so many issues to heal. How can you ever get to all of them? Before you can put out the first fire, there is another fire calling for your attention. What to do? You throw up your hands. After a time, you probably find the energy to tackle another “old story”, but the same cycle continues. You melt into a puddle of helplessness. Divide and conquer. The ego wins.

Once you are conscious of your divine nature, the ego has to step up its game. Your full embrace of your divinity is the death knell for the ego. This awareness of your divinity will lead inevitably to full realization and your ascension; however long it might appear to take. Being alert to the ego’s techniques allows you to minimize that expanse of time. Being mindful to how the ego works will lower your susceptibility to the divisions it is provoking. You begin to understand the ego’s game which is intended to keep you in this endless cycle of victimhood and powerlessness.

What we are going to suggest as means for ending this seemingly unending division is that you choose just one “old story”. We don’t suggest that just any story will do, but that you choose the one that appears to you to be the largest, the most insurmountable. Choose your greatest challenge, the one you feel would be the hardest thing for you to achieve. The truth is that there is no order of difficulty, but the ego is telling you that this one challenge is greater than all the others. The ego tells you that this one is too hard and that you should go for something more easily achievable. Even when you make this choice, you can be sure that the ego will remind you of the roads you haven’t chosen. Don’t listen. This choice will be easier, because you know that you have taken on a big challenge. Likely, the other baits the ego tries to tempt you with are nested within this larger challenge. If the ego, in its desperation, should tempt you with an even larger challenge, you might choose to let go of the one you have in favor of the new, seemingly bigger story. If this should be the case, you still are left dealing with only one story, and you can thank the ego for its helpful diligence. The ego will sometimes shoot itself in the foot in order to get what it wants. Ultimately, the biggest “old story” is all inclusive. Don’t worry about finding it; let it find you.

Your job is to choose the major story that you are aware of and willing to release. Use the five-step process or whatever other technique you might have to transform that “old story” into one of divinity, power, and love. Give it attention every day. Do this by focusing on your new story, chosen in the fourth step of the process, holding that in the forefront of your consciousness throughout the day. If you should notice pieces of the “old story” creeping back into your consciousness in the form of little fears or guilts nibbling at the edges of your new story, then redo the five-step process. Do so every day if necessary. When you are working with the second step, and you have felt the energy transform and have moved it to your heart chakra, try doing a full body scan from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet to see if there is any other place where you are feeling discomfort. If you detect any imbalances, work with those spots until you notice no further distress. You might wish to continue doing scans until everything feels clear. Then, it is time to release the energy from your heart chakra.

Feel the simplicity of having just one story to deal with. You may reach a point where you feel that you have fully left the “old story” behind. Congratulations! Now, what is the biggest “old story” you want to transform? Notice that you are not simply jumping from one story to another. It is not an example of divide and conquer. You are simply “trading up”. Eventually the ”new” old story will be the one that is truly all encompassing. You will stay with that story until you realize your ascension. Remember always, that you don’t escape your fear by running away from it or by closing your eyes and making affirmations. You deal with your fear by confronting the terror and diving right into it. The ego may tell you to run away, but turn around and face your darkness. Know that Spirit and love are always with you. You will meet them at the heart of darkness. Have a wonderfully focused time with your new story.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

Why is it hard to let go of victimhood?

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

In the last message, we talked about recognizing your “old story” and choosing to let it go. But, you really have to want to let it go, and you don’t always want to do that. Sometimes, things have to get so bad that there isn’t anything else to do but to let the “old story” go. I am a believer in the idea that the least pain brings the greatest gain. You don’t have to really suffer to grow spiritually. If you are proactive and get out in front of things, you can choose to have your spiritual progress be as painless as possible. However, the part of you that we call the ego – the division that doesn’t believe in your divinity, thinks you are separate from God, and believes you are going to be punished for this separation – wants you to hold on to the victimization. It seems safer. Remember that the ego isn’t sane; it is absolutely crazy. It believes in insanity. And it draws immense pain and suffering to you.

I want to talk about how this operates for you. The ego says to fear punishment by God for being guilty. There is a hesitation to ever admit guilt. The ego tells you that to admit guilt is to invite the inevitable punishment. What you do then, is to project. Why is your life not working? Why are you upset today? Why are there problems? Because he did this. Because she did that. Because of the government. Because of my boss. Because of my parents. There is always a place to put blame. Unfortunately, blaming never helps. The ego claims it is buying time, that it is protecting you. But blaming never brings joy; it never brings peace or a sense of love. It creates feelings of helplessness. Blame leaves you always victim to the whims and the actions of others. Always. That is an illusion, because victimhood is a lie. It is not the truth. You are the creator. You are the divinity. Whatever exists comes from you, even if you are not aware of your part in the manifestation. As long as you pretend to not be responsible for your creations, they will continue to attack you. You will continue to fight them and to suffer.

I think that most of you can recognize yourself here. But some of you also play the game of ”Woe is me”. You tell yourself that you are so horrible and weak, and you go about accusing yourself instead of blaming others. However, if you look deeply, you will probably find many judgments of others mixed in with the self-blame. The ego thinks that by taking blame it might be able to avoid the wrath of God. But blaming yourself is the same thing as blaming others. It is an illusion; it is a lie. And, it never makes you feel better. It never heals. Remember that in the eyes of God there is no blame, no judgment, and no separation. God sees only your divine nature. For you to experience your divine nature, give up all blame and guilt, take full responsibility for everything in your life, and forgive yourself for every judgment you are holding about yourself and others. When you find the going to be tough, that is the place for the five-step process.

I began by saying that you are to be fully willing to give up your “old story”. There is a very good reason, according to the ego, for holding on to this blame/victim pattern. It manifests in a variety of ways, but they all have something in common. To the ego, it feels like there is a lot to lose by giving up victimhood. There is a comforting security blanket in being the helpless victim. This is something you can share with everyone around you. It is said that misery loves company. You go to your friends and you tell your pitiable story. ”Look what (fill in the name) did to me”. ”Guess what happened to me at (fill in the place)?”. ”You won’t believe what this jerk driver did”. It goes on and on, and your friend hugs you and says, ”Oh, poor you. I know how that feels”. You have this great connection and it feels good in the moment. It is a way to immediately sense love coming from others. They support you. This may be the only way that you know how to feel this love. The glow doesn’t last, however. The pain of being a victim remains. If you do decide to let go of your victimhood, there is a fear that others will abandon you. If you stop joining in the game of enabling victimhood, of supporting it in others and allowing others to support it in you, what is left in your relationships? Maybe others will grow angry and judgmental toward you? How will they react if you stop sharing your blame stories? What if you suggest to them that they give up their victimhood and claim their full power? ”Who the hell do you think you are?” they might say. There is a tremendous fear of taking your power. The ego judges power. It is terrified of it.

There is a similarity here with the experiences of those who choose to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. In that case, you want to give up an addiction to substances, as opposed to an addiction to blame. You may find that you will give up many of your friends and relationships, because they only share and support your addiction. You may choose to replace these people with others who are opting to take their own power. A great change may be required. Parents with younger children might have the fear that if they gave up their attachments, they might not be there for their kids. You might lose your marriage, your parents, or your job, along with your friends. You will become a social pariah. The ego does a wonderful job of spreading this kind of terror.

Ultimately it will come down to one question for you. Are you tired of this shit or not? Do you want to hold onto your victimhood and your unhappiness because you have the solace of fellow sufferers? Is that worth it? If the answer is ”yes”, you will continue with your “old story” until the answer becomes ”no”. If you want, now, to experience your divinity, feel your power, know only love, peace, and joy – you say “no” to the ego. You choose to let go of all judgment and blame, and refuse to have pain, suffering, and failure be part of your life anymore. Now, you are ready to let go of the “old stories”. You are willing to transform the fears you have been holding in your body into love. This will take some time, but the rewards will begin to be felt immediately. You don’t have to wait until life breaks you. You can be proactive. Choose to listen to the voice of love. You can experience the minimal amount of pain by choosing now. The more completely you commit yourself, the less pain you will feel. When you make this choice for yourself, ask for support from Spirit. It is there always. It always has been there. It has only been waiting for you to ask.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia