How do I deal with my fear of death?

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There is a popular saying that goes, “There is nothing certain but death and taxes”. Within the illusion we would agree that death is certain. Taxes….well….perhaps they are also, unless you can figure out how to avoid them. Just kidding…it is not possible to avoid them all without marooning yourself on a deserted island. We are going to look at death a little differently today. Most of you have a fear of death. I want to question the way that you look upon death and ask you to entertain the possibility that you truly hold more of an attraction toward death than a terror of it. You might be racking your brain right now and come up with the thought that at least those who commit suicide must feel some attraction to death, since they have made that choice. Perhaps you are questioning where the attraction is for those who seem to die from accidents, disease, old age, violence, war, and so on. I want to remind you that all death is suicide. It is all chosen. There are never victims.

So why – let us say you are willing to give me a little rope here to hang myself – would people want to kill themselves? Now we are starting to get somewhere. We will return, as we have done several times over recent messages, to what could be called the “origin story”. This is where you had the crazy, mad idea that it would be fun to create an identity, an individuality that was separate from God. This of course was not possible, it was just an idea – it never really happened; it is just a dream you find yourself in the midst of, believing it is real. You have no conscious memory of this creation, but what you thought at the time was that you killed God and took His place. Instead of God being your creator, you held yourself as your own creator of the new individual you, and as the creator of your experience. Now this means that you came into this illusory experience with blood on your hands. You believed that you had killed God. Spirit has a good laugh at this idea; it is a funny concept. However, God is all there is. God is the Creator and Isness of all and could not be destroyed, nor could anything be created outside of Him. But, you convinced yourself that you had actually carried out this violent revolution. You then created these bodies and this physical universe to disappear into. You covered your trail with a figurative branch of leaves to hide your tracks, not just from God, but from yourself. So now you fully believe that you are just these bodies, that you actually are these humans, and that this dream is real. In addition, you covered your tracks so well that you are in denial that you think you killed God. That guilt is just too scary, so you either project it on others (Jesus killers!) or naively go on killing Him (there is no God).

At the same time, deep inside you in your mind that is one with the Mind of God, you know that this murder did not happen. Your true mind knows that you are One with God and that you are Divine; that part of your mind – which we will call Spirit – does guide you and will eventually lead you back home out of the dream. However, the louder part of your mind – which initially came up with this crazy, mad idea and which we call the ego – encourages you to hold guilty over this patricide. “You only exist,” says the ego mind, “because you successfully killed God.” Your true mind knows that this murder was simply not possible. The ego mind provides the additional fear that you only tried to kill God, but he is still ALIVE! And he is coming after you!! Out of this guilt and fear you have created a body that is not really such a hot item. You may complain about companies that sell products with planned obsolescence, things designed to fail or become outdated, so that you have to buy a replacement product. That is just the kind of body you designed. It is designed to break down and die. Bodies are programmed to get sick, broken, old, and finally stop working altogether. Not to speak of the world you set it up to “live” in, which is certainly less than ideal much of the time. The bad news from this ego point of view is that death is certain. But the ego mind has also convinced you that death is necessary in order that you could possibly be forgiven by God. Maybe by losing this “life” you stole from God, He will forgive you. In a more perverse turn, your “death” proves that you are “alive” and have a separate existence. To the ego mind, without death you have no individual life. At any rate the deep fear is that God will get his revenge because He is more powerful than you. And so the insane lead the insane. God has already and has always forgiven you. There was never any judgment to begin with, nothing to forgive. You could not possibly have killed God. He has no part in this nightmare of yours and only sees your Divine presence. The part of you that is in the dream really wants to wake up.

The attraction to death is one part a hope for God’s forgiveness and one part a hope for help in waking up. But these are mostly not conscious thoughts. It’s also one part desire to get out of the hellhole you have created. Death can appear to be an escape from your pain and suffering. The truth is that the body is not real. There is no such thing as death. Life and death are not opposites. Death does not exist; it is just a part of the illusion. Only life exists. Anything that can die or end or change is not real. It has no life. Again, the body is not real, so it has no life. This event that you call death is something that has never happened and could not ever happen. Only form changes and form is not real. All form is illusory. That’s why we call the body and death illusions. You have set up this illusion so that it is necessary to die. In the illusion it may appear that you get another body and play this game again, and again, and again. Meanwhile the truth of you simply is. The human you has two choices. You can listen to Spirit about death or you can listen to ego about death. Ego tells you that death is either something to fear or to welcome, that it is necessary and inevitable. Accompanying the ego picture is the terror of absolute nonexistence, the fear that there is no continuation of you after the body dies. For many humans, that is the belief. That’s all folks. Poof! It’s over. Finito. End of story. Ego tells you that who you are is your body. From that point of view you begin at birth (or in utero) and then you are busy dying. You are on a trajectory, and the bull’s eye is death. This is what happens in the illusion of believing that you have a separate identity. A separate identity means you are separate from God. God is Life, which leaves you with what? Sooner or later the separate identity has to die. The whole idea of having a body is centered on death. Death gives the body meaning. That is why you have an attraction to death. Without death, the body has no meaning. You may have heard people say, or perhaps thought yourself that death is what makes life worth living.

Spirit, on the other hand, reminds you that you are not your body and beyond that, you are not a separate identity. You are One with God. You are One with each other. You are One with Spirit. All that can die is the separate identity, the dream. You cannot die because you are alive. You are created by God in the image of God. You simply are. There is no time; there is no space; there is no physicality. You simply are. Your only job while having the experience of being in a separate body is to wake up to the truth of Who you are. When you fully awaken there is no longer any function in having the illusion of a body. It might look to the world as if you have died, but for your consciousness it is awakening; it is ascension. It is leaving behind the illusion and personal identity, and consciously accepting your true place as the Son – One with God. Each one of you will do this.

Part of the good news is that it makes absolutely no difference if you die, because death is not real, your body is not real. The truth of you always exists. Perhaps part of the illusion seems to be the creation of another body, but that will not be any more real than the one you let go of. The only thing that is certain is that at some point in the illusion your eyes will pop open and you will go, “Holy shit! None of this is real.” And you will absolutely know it. You will absolutely know Who you are, that you are innocent and forgiven and unconditionally loved. There is no fear; there is no pain. There is no death. Death is just a part of the classroom that you are in. When you come to an absolute peace with death, neither feeling fear nor attraction, you are free. It doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t matter what happens to you or to anyone else. In the meantime, as you are working with your “death” energy, look around. Notice where you see victimhood connected with death: victims of Corona, victims of pollution, victims of substance abuse, victims of physical violence and war, victims of cancer. Wherever you see this victimhood, recognize it for what it is, that in each case the individual has chosen death – they have an attraction to the death process. If any of this is troubling to you, then you too have a similar attraction. Knowing that, you bring your victimhood and your fear/attraction of/to death to Spirit. You keep bringing it back every time it pops up. You ask to see death and victimhood through Spirit’s eyes rather than those of the ego. For those who in the illusion of your life have died…let them go. The truth of them was never who you held them as being, whether it was mother/father, son/daughter, brother/sister, spouse, or friend. That was not who they were; it was a part of the false personal identity of separation. Holding them in that earthly role is holding you in your role as a human, dealing with death, and in pain and suffering with just enough pleasure to keep you hooked into the cycle. On the other hand, as you are able to let go of this fear/attraction relationship with death you will find your time in a body to be increasingly peaceful, loving, and safe. If the meaning of life for humans is eventual death and you have no fear of death, then “life” as you have known it has no meaning. If staying alive no longer matters, how can anything else be of true value? What a step into awakening is provided by the realization that the only reason for anything in your so-called life is to help you wake up.

In conclusion, your job is to heal your issues with death. Deal with the guilt you feel for believing you killed God in order to have life, and come to terms with having hidden that belief. Your job is to remember that life and death are not opposites; they are mutually exclusive. You cannot have them both together. Life is eternal and true. Death is an illusion, having no reality. You do not lose your life when you die because your body is not alive. Your eventual awakening may not mean that you will immediately leave your body to die in the eyes of the world and abandon your separate identity. You may stay in a body for an indefinite period, with the awareness that none of it is real, as Spirit uses you as a pawn in Its plan for waking all of the Sonship. This never means that you ask Spirit for support in guiding another. Such a request can only come from the ego. Healing others is not yours to do. Recognize that your desire to help another is always your call for help and take your cry for help to Spirit. In an awakened state, Spirit will simply use you. This does not come from a place of a separate you knowing what should be said or done. You surrender fully to Spirit and are guided. It’s none of your business. Whether you stay in the illusion upon awakening or leave it is also not your call. Your only part as a seemingly separate individual is to wake up. Awake, you can have no thought separate from Spirit. I’ll set the alarm for you.

Good Now

Sanhia

What is the difference between judgment and discernment?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

Is compassion an important tool for awakening?

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Many people would say that on their list of the qualities of a spiritual person, compassion would be near the top. If I were making the list, there would be no top….or bottom. Actually, there would be no list. To describe a spiritual person would be to describe somebody who does not exist, so the only item on my imaginary list of the qualities of a spiritual person would be non-existence, an awareness that they don’t exist as a separate person. But, let us go ahead and look at this term compassion. A common usage of this word is that one feels another’s pain, that there is a loving concern for and/or action in support of those who are suffering. This is usually considered to be an admirable thing. I want to remind you that in duality every action engenders its opposite. Compassionate acts are balanced by “inhumane” acts. This is not mentioned to discourage compassion, only as a reminder that the real changes happen on the inside, not in the world.

There is a great confusion around compassion. If you were to say to another that you are sorry for what they have experienced, that it must be painful and difficult for them – the result can be a reinforcing of the “reality” of the pain and suffering for both of you. Instead of focusing on the mind, driven by fear and guilt, as the true creator of the physical illusion, the resulting manifestation in the world is perceived as the cause of the pain. Everything is reversed. The inmates are running the asylum. If compassion is defined as doing the highest thing to support others in being free of pain, we would be helping them to wake up and realize their Divine nature. We would be supporting them in letting go of the illusion, the ego, and the world. The last thing we would want to do would be to agree that they are poor victims and to make the world real for them. The question then becomes one of wondering what the highest action is that you could take in that moment. The first answer to this, if you are human, is you don’t have a clue. You observe only with your senses. You see with eyes that tell you that objects are really there. Your other four senses also reinforce the “reality” of the physical. The only way to come to any knowing is to admit that you don’t know anything. You give it to Spirit. Let Spirit guide you.

To begin with, if you are seeing somebody as a victim….stop! That is never compassionate; it is an attack. They are saying they deserve punishment and you are in agreement. The last thing you want is for them to hold on to their victimhood, pain and suffering. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you point out how self-destructive they are being. That often won’t help them wake up, but may help drive them deeper into helplessness and stimulate them to take a poke at you. No, your first job is to not see them as a victim. If you are perceiving them as such, bring that to Spirit for forgiveness (remember nothing has really happened here, so there is nothing to forgive). Notice that this is the classroom they have been presented with. This is part of their wake up call. Nobody wakes up without facing their fears, without going through painful experiences. If you try to diffuse their painful experience and deny them an opportunity to face their false fear and wake up, how compassionate is that? Not only are you willing for them to stay in hell, but you are offering to accompany them. It is not a choice between reinforcing their suffering or educating them that there is nothing to worry about. The realization for you to have, as a human, is that none of it is your business. It is not for you to figure out how to be compassionate; it is only about how you can wake up. Whose eyes are you looking at all of this through? This is not about their situation; this is all about you. This is your projection. What ego part of you is seeing your projection as real? Are you feeling sorry for the other, and therefore for yourself? Or are you looking through the eyes of Spirit and seeing that none of this is real; it is not really happening. Nothing needs to be changed or fixed or healed. The only job is to stay there with Spirit looking at everything from above the battleground. What you end up doing is of little importance. How you hold what you do is paramount. Let Spirit guide you. Have no attachment to results. Remember, it is none of your business. You are at best an ignorant messenger.

As long as you think it is about them and not about you, you will not hear Spirit. Ego will be your guide. If you think you are doing the compassionate thing, that is just ego telling you how you are special – which keeps you separate from the unconditional love of God which knows no specialness, makes no judgments, sees no differences or separations. An alternative definition of compassion might be to feel Oneness with another. This can only be achieved by eliminating all separation. If you feel that they have a problem but you don’t, that is separation, not Oneness. Oneness would recognize that what you perceive in another is what is truly in you. If you see another being in pain, it is you who are truly in pain. That is Oneness. If you can take it to the next level and realize that we are all One with God, then none of this pain or separation is real. You can recognize the Oneness you share of being Divine beings who are asleep and believing in the illusion, that you are both in the process of awakening. The true use of compassion would be that realization, the knowing that their pain and your pain are not real, despite the “reality” your physical senses report. So let go of trying to be compassionate and instead try to see the truth. Try to see through Spirit’s eyes.

The most important point for you in this discussion is the encouragement to give up the ideal of compassionate behavior, of either being or having a savior. You cannot wake anybody else up. Only Spirit can awaken you. It is hard work letting go of the ego. Nobody can do it for you, nor can you do it for anybody else. Heroics are an ego game. You have but one job and that is to wake up. As an awakened being you fully know that none of this is real, that there is nothing anybody needs to be saved from. Short of that awareness it is a case of the blind leading the blind. Don’t be looking for a compassionate savior. You don’t need saving. You need to face the truth. If somebody rubs your face in that need, try to be grateful. It was a conscious or, more likely, unconscious act of compassion. It is your classroom.

If you were fully awakened, you would not likely be in a body, nor would you be reading this. Most likely you are looking through ego’s eyes. Not to worry. You have noticed what you are doing. Bring it to Spirit to help you forgive and let it go. Let Spirit guide your next step. Maybe Spirit guides you to an act or to words that don’t feel compassionate to you. Not feeling compassionate is of the ego. Worrying about how others may perceive and judge you is of the ego. Let it go. The most compassionate action in any moment is the one that most encourages awakening. Remember, you don’t have a clue what that action might be. The ego is not to be trusted, but it is the first voice you will likely hear. So, bring it to Spirit. Ask for help in releasing your judgments and in forgiving. Deal within yourself with all of these thoughts of victimhood and victimizers, pain and suffering. That is all yours. It is a heavy load to carry. Spirit will take it off your shoulders. If you succeed in giving it all to Spirit you will look at another and see only a Divine Child of God in the process of awakening. You would see yourself without judgment or guilt. You would surrender to that Oneness and allow yourself to be used without thought of what that should look like. No attachment to the action/inaction, the reception of the action/inaction, or the end result would register. If that isn’t happening just bring everything back to Spirit – over and over. You are already home with God. Your full realization of that is inevitable.

Good Now

Sanhia

What is the nature of power?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

How long will the Coronavirus last?

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Interestingly, in the past five years there were two messages that drew the greatest attention. First was the perspective on the election of Donald Trump and in a close runner up position (and the polls are still open) was the previous message on the Coronavirus.  It seems that what draws our attention is the biggest fear, which is not in the least surprising. Fear is mother’s milk for the awakening process. I now hear the question voiced as to how long the Coronavirus will continue to be appearing to run the show on the planet. Is it ever going to fully go away? Will it fade away only to return? Is it just the first in a wave of epidemics still to come? Is this to become a permanent part of life on earth now, like airport security and terrorism? I love these questions. First of all, it is not my job to make predictions about the future. I only predict certainties such as that you, the reader, will wake up. When that will happen is a prediction and that is none of my business. My only job is to tell what there is for you to hear in this moment about the truth of yourself and the events going on around you. The choices that you make with that information are your business and not mine. I know that you are coming home, the timing is not important – unless you are experiencing severe pain or fear. Then it may be time to take a bigger step. Thank you, Coronavirus.

We have recently talked about the psychological subjects of projection and dissociation. Projection, again, is where you pretend that what is actually going on with you is being expressed by another. Dissociation is where you have spiritual intention but conveniently live your life as if it weren’t there. You have awareness of the truth, but continue to make the old, comfortable choices that fly in the face of what you want to achieve. Everyone does both of these things; it is human nature. Fortunately, you are not human, but Divine, and are thus fully capable of overcoming both of these habits. There is an aphorism which states that there are no atheists in a foxhole. A foxhole is a trench a soldier digs to hide in and shoot out from at the enemy. We don’t wish to argue for the veracity of that statement, but rather to notice its suggestion that when the bullets are flying and death feels near, people tend to look at the subject of God and prayer in a different light, often making profound changes in their lives. So let’s replace foxhole with pandemic. The greatest gift that is coming now is that this virus is forcing each and every one of you to face your fears. Ultimately behind all fear is the fear of God, but that is not necessarily the one you are directly confronting. More likely you may be facing the fear of death, but it also might be felt as fears about financial support, scarcity of food, bad health, or separation from loved ones and on. The greatest gift that you can ever receive is the one that triggers the most fear. Maybe you don’t want to hear that. The part of you that dissociates wants to believe that this world is real and that it can be made livable if not heavenly. You want to believe that what happens here really does matter. The Coronavirus and the election of four years ago are here to remind you that things here don’t matter. If they did, it would all be too hopeless. So, maybe if the scariest thing happens and all of your buttons are pushed, you will wake up and realize that none of this matters, except as stimuli for awakening.

If you are asking the question, “How long is this virus going to last?” you are asking the wrong question. What then is the question? Perhaps the question is, “Why do I fear it lasting?” This is the gift. This is why Corona went viral! Come on, laugh with me here. What most scares you? You can choose to disassociate and listen to the ego. You can try to fight and hide and resist the fear or to pray that God/Spirit will come in and rescue you. Or, you can look at your fear with Spirit, asking for help in staring right at it. Ask Spirit to help you welcome the fear in. Look at all the extra time you are being given to do this. Thank you, thank you Coronavirus for all this time. You just never stop giving gifts. All the things that you thought had to happen every day turn out to not be essential, whether it is your work, entertainment, sports, or whatever else has been disrupted. Yet here you are – alive and still breathing – dealing with your fear. And the illusion of the world goes on. And you go on. Eventually the world will no longer go on, but you will always go on. Even that is a little misleading because going on suggests the passage of time, so it is more accurate to say that you always are. You will always be. Your fear will disappear, but it will persist as long as you resist. It will not leave by pretending it is not there. Face your fear. Go right into the heart of it. Do the five-step process. Embrace your fear. It will dissolve. There is nothing there; there is only love. You won’t know that until you are courageous, until you stand up to it and look it right in the eye. The Coronavirus is here to encourage you to do just that.

Though you share many of the Corona gifts with others, some are special for just some of you. Perhaps you have been working too hard at your job. You have been too busy, too stressed. You haven’t allowed yourself to have the space to be alone, to be silent, and to listen to your heart. There has been no peace and little time to be at home. Now you have this gift. Perhaps this space is terrifying. If so, face it. This is an enormous gift for you. On the other side of the fear are countless treasures. Nobody will go back to business as usual if and when the virus winds down. All has changed. Those of you who have reveled in this free extra time will not relinquish it easily. You may choose to hold on to the more relaxed and free pace, to the peace. Some of you have found value in places where you did not hold it before. All of you have experienced some changes in your values. You may have found that you can live without and even thrive without things you thought were necessary. Spirit is here to remind you that there isn’t anything you can’t live without. You are dependent on nothing. I encourage you to take some moments today to think about the gifts the Coronavirus has brought to you, and to feel and express gratitude for those things. Take some time also to acknowledge the fears that remain. Give thanks for being made aware of those fears – they have nothing to do with the virus, you have simply projected your own fears there – and face them. What an invaluable gift the Coronavirus will have been if you wake up on the other side fearless; if you wake up trusting Spirit and willing to listen and follow. What a gift if it helps you give up your addiction to the ego.

Countries have had varied responses to the pandemic. You may have found yourself upset with the way that your country has responded. Perhaps you have judgment with the hoarders, whether it is of toilet paper or other products, or with those who are trying to cash in on the virus. I encourage you to let go of that victim thinking. See the perfection of what Spirit is bringing. These actions you judge are expressions of fear. Your judgment makes them real. Have compassion. On one hand trust Spirit to provide you with what you need when you need it. More importantly, remember those whom you judge are your mirrors, your projections. You have taken the last bit for yourself in the past, even if it was just the last piece of pie. You have done something that went against your heart to make money. That is you. Do you want to keep yourself in hell? Ask Spirit to help you forgive yourself, to realize your innocence, and to feel the absolute love in which God holds you. The love is real; the toilet paper is not. Which do you want more? Is it really more important to win a tug of war over toilet paper than to release your guilt, pain, and separation? Wake up. Forgive. Bring everything to Spirit. Give thanks to the virus for encouraging all of this movement.

Some of you are feeling bored with being home, feeling confined and restless like a prisoner. Remember that there are no accidents and there is no such thing as punishment. You can look at this experience from the perspective of Spirit. What does Spirit want to communicate to you? Deep down inside, what do you want to be doing? Now you have the space to find this and to act upon it. What is it that you have denied yourself that wants to emerge? For some this awareness is clouded over by the guilt over not being productive as the ego dictates that you should be. But now you have this gift of time and space. Nothing is expected of you. You are free. You don’t have to prove your worth. You don’t have to earn your way. Be a child again. Before you can unwrap this gift of time you may first need to face this fear, this guilt over being “inactive”.  This is also a wonderful place to use the five-step process. Let your fear and guilt dissolve so that you can hear Spirit’s loving, guiding voice. Imagine the joy in feeling free of the burden of guilt, of feeling your true innocence, of the ecstasy of following your inner voice. That is where you are headed. The Coronavirus is giving you this glorious opportunity to choose Spirit, love, joy, and freedom over the ego, fear, guilt, and imprisonment. The ego is not evil; it is not something to fight. It is simply something to not give energy to because it does not lead you to love, joy, and freedom. There is no better time to fully commit to this choice in each moment of your quarantine. Stay home forever in the heart of God.

Good Now

Sanhia

What is the meaning of the Coronavirus?

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With the Coronavirus everybody is on the same page. You can search through your memory banks and be unable to find another time when the whole world was on the same page. Americans of a certain age remember the time when all of that country was on the same page following the Kennedy assassination or 9-11. Swedes had a similar unity around the assassination of Olof Palme. However, outside of your respective countries the effect was not so big and it became still smaller when extended to other continents. But here, now, everyone in the world is touched by the Coronavirus, no matter what continent, race, religion, or age. This is, indeed, a very interesting time. Look at what has been manifested here. Everyone has, seemingly, no choice but to focus on this phenomenon. It is affecting every aspect of your life.

As always, there are two voices that you can listen to, the voice of love or the voice of fear – the voice of Spirit or the voice of ego. You are surrounded by the voices of fear. There is no need for me to repeat the fear scenarios that are present. You can turn on the television, go online, or pick up a newspaper and be inundated with fearful stories and fingers pointed at those who can be blamed for causing, spreading, or failing to slow or halt the virus. My job today is to speak to you from Spirit, to remind you that there are no accidents and that everything is in perfection. You have a heightened opportunity now to choose love over fear. We have spoken often of the advice, and you have heard it many other places (thank you Ram Dass), to be here now, to be present, and to be in the Now. When you are absolutely present, you are with Spirit. When you are not present, you are with ego. All that truly exists is this moment. It exists forever. In this moment you are One with God; you are One with Spirit; you are One with me; you are One with each other. All there is is love.

The Coronavirus has been given to you by Spirit as an enormous gift to help you let go of the ego and be here now. Many of the normal distractions of your earthly experience are denied to you in this moment. You don’t feel the freedom to go where you want; you can’t watch the game on television or even read about it. You are likely at home most of the time, some of you not able to go to work. Your opportunities to socialize are minimized. What you do have is this enormous gift to help you let go. You can choose to be with ego, to be lamenting and sorrowful about what you are asked to give up, fearful or terrified about what the future might bring – or – you can receive this gift. You can revel in the stillness. You can take this as an opportunity to communicate with Spirit, to give all your fears, all of your judgments, all of your anger, everything that takes away from the peace that is your birthright – and give all of that to Spirit.

Now is the time to let death die. In the eternal now there is no death. Death is of the ego. It is not real. Yes of course, bodies die. You are not your body. You do not die. You cannot die. Jesus demonstrated that for us. This is a time given to you by Spirit to release and let go of all your fear of death. Give your death to Spirit. Know that if Spirit has use for you in your body to help all to awaken, you will stay in your body. If Spirit says that you have done what you came here to do and now it is time to come home into the Oneness, then you will let go of your body in love and joy, not in fear. That is not a death, but a full awakening. Invite Spirit into your heart today. Use your quarantine to be with Spirit. It is just the two of you; your challenge is to make it the One of you by surrendering your fearful, ego-based will. Ask, “What is it that you wish me to do with this space you have provided for me through the gift of the Coronavirus?” You now have this opportunity that you would not normally have. You would be so busy with your daily life and with what the ego says is important to do. Now this intervention precludes business as usual. Not only is there the space to listen to Spirit, but also the motivation to deal with those fears the Coronavirus has triggered in you. Besides the fear of death, you may be experiencing financial worries, loss of opportunities, fears about losing loved ones, uncertainties about the future, anger, or blame. This just might be the perfect storm that gives you the gentle shove that encourages you to let go of your attachment to the drama and finally surrender to Spirit. What an opportunity for healing! Now is the time to give all that fear, judgment, and projection to Spirit and listen to the message and guidance that are there for you.

While everything that has been said here goes to the core of what this event is truly about, we don’t suggest that you ignore the recommendations of health officials. Unless you are personally guided in a different direction, quarantine yourself, use proper cleaning techniques, pay attention to your own health signs, and strengthen your immune system. If you fear you may have may draw something your way, be conscious in protecting yourself. On the other hand, whatever happens is perfect and is in Spirit’s hand. Trust in God and tether your camel.

I want to encourage you to feel an enormous gratitude for this gift of the Coronavirus and for Spirit bringing this potentiality for awakening into your now. Take this opportunity to hold each of your mirrors, every other human, in a place of loving acceptance and kindness. Part of the magic of this gift is that you are all in it together. When you find yourself talking with another about this situation, ask Spirit why He has brought this person to you. Are you to receive something from them or is there something that you are asked to give. Allow whatever it is to happen. If you meet your neighbor and they are in pain or fear, remember he is your mirror. He is reflecting that part of you which may be hard for you to see. Give silent thanks for that gift and take your pain and fear to Spirit. Perhaps you have a gift to share with your neighbor about the perfection of what is unfolding, about his Divinity, about his safety – but first take your concerns to Spirit and see what you are guided to say to the other. It is not your job to heal them. That is Spirit’s work. If you are to be a tool for Spirit, He will let you know. It is your job to bring all the fears that are triggered by the Coronavirus and others’ responses to it to Spirit to be lifted to love. Always thank Spirit for this opportunity to awaken.

Good Now

Sanhia

How can I become One with God?

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Blesses You

Sanhia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

How do I give it to Spirit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

Do you confuse cause and effect? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia