Can you explain more about personal will and God’s Will?

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

The following was taken from a recent group session.

Participant One: I have a question about the Will of God. Is it our awakened will? Why would such a will need to exist? Does it lead to something good in the end? What is this God?

Sanhia: The real questions are, “Why is what is happening?” Is there purpose or meaning in it? Is there any connection or Oneness in it or is it just random? If you resist or fight whatever is happening, you will experience pain and suffering, and it will still be here. You may decide to stop resisting because you can’t do anything about it. This level of acceptance might be to say that you won’t try to change things, but you’re still pissed about it. Your will is that it be different. The only way to find out if what I am saying has any substance to it is to try it. So, we can replace the expression “the Will of God” with “what is”. Instead of “personal will” we can use, “I don’t want what is” or “how I want to change what is”. Be aware where personal will exists and experiment with not empowering it, not following it. See what happens when you welcome or practice expressing gratitude for what is. What have you got to lose when you have realized you are powerless to change what is. Goal setting and positive thinking just don’t work. It’s not about understanding. That need to know will just lead you down the same rabbit hole. Your only job is to recognize when your personal will is active. Notice that you cannot simply decide to not have a personal will anymore, because it is expressing in your present. That would be a resistance to what is. Notice but don’t follow. It may seem that you can’t decide anything. That can be a healthy realization.

So, for you it seems that your right now is that your husband feels stressed around his work. Your personal will wants to do something about it. Why fight what is? So, you notice and then see what comes into the new now. Is it true that your husband should not be experiencing what is happening? Is it true that you should do something about it? Are you certain you have a better idea about what should be? If you are not sure, why do you choose to fight? What if you could rise high above all that is, see through all illusions of time and space, see that your husband is experiencing exactly the perfect thing to support his awakening?  Here you are resisting what God is bringing. Are you doing this for yourself also? All you need to know is that this is what is.

Participant One: Does this mean that I should never take any action? What if God wants me to respond here in a certain way?

Sanhia: If that is what is wanted in the situation you won’t be able to stop yourself from doing it. Choice is not involved. When you spontaneously react, all you can do is notice what happened. When you act from your inner guidance there is no question of whether you did the right thing or not. There is no expectation of any specific result or reaction from your husband. If a similar situation were to occur tomorrow, you might find yourself guided to act in a totally different way. It is never about right or wrong. This gives you enormous freedom to just be in the present, responding to what is.

Participant One: It seems that it just becomes witnessing, witnessing, witnessing. Do I have any importance?

Sanhia. Let’s just play around here. We will use words because that is all we have. God created you in Its own image. For fun. God desired to have someone to play with. But if they only do what God wants them to do, then they are not in Its image because God does as It wishes in every moment. How does God create a game where It can play with the creations without controlling them, having the potential for meeting as the equals they are? The only difference between you and God is that God is the creator while you are the created. You did not create yourself, but otherwise were created in God’s image. Your relationship with Jesus, for example, is as an absolute equal, both created by God. So, we are playing this game and when you realize that We are One in Divinity, how could We have different Wills? It isn’t that the human bows down to the Will of God, it is that there is absolutely no difference between them. When you believe there is a difference and that God is up there and you are down here, there is fear. You feel a need to choose independently of God out of fear. Fear generates more fear. But you are not separate. God is just here and trying to play. You are the aspect of God that seems to have a body and senses and can play in the physical illusion.

Participant Two: Is blame part of the game?

Sanhia: Blame is only apart of the game in terms of fear and resistance to the game. In the now there is no blame; there is just the reacting to the moment, the playing of the game. Everything and its opposite are true at the same time. This drives the mind crazy until it drops out of the competition and plays with what is instead of what isn’t. I have been telling you that you have no free will, but without free will, you could not choose the Will of God over your personal will. Without free will, you cannot surrender your free will. Had you been created without free will, you would just do what God wanted.

Participant Two: That might be better.

Sanhia: But what fun would that be for God? How can you truly have fun with others if you believe there is a level difference? In that case one of you feels responsible for the other. It’s ball-and-chain time again. Your belief is that you must have your personal will to be free, but that is actually the ball-and-chain. A rebel has no freedom because he is limited to acting in opposition. If you really look at what is, rather than what you think it should be, you will have the realization that no improvement could be made. Just hearing that is meaningless. It is something you must investigate for yourself. When you ask the question, “What is God?” You are God, but not the part of God that created you. It is all One. Personal will is based on the untruth that you are separate from God. There is no trust in the separation. It believes that if you don’t take care of you, nobody will. The insane thought is that you can do things better than God can. Part of that confusion comes from your belief that what you see in the world is God’s creation rather than your projection.

Participant One: Is our personal will really our will or is it our rebellion?

Sanhia: You have freedom only if you take it. Most people do not exercise that freedom. They listen to the dictates of their minds, which were trained by the mass consciousness, and then carry out the will of other humans rather than listening within to their own Divine Will and following that. In this way they keep themselves in bondage going to jobs they don’t love, sacrificing the now for illusory futures, remaining in unsatisfying relationships, watching their dreams and their bodies slowly deteriorate.  Out of a world of infinite choice where they can follow their passions and truly live for the moment, they keep themselves chained to unsatisfactory pasts and unknown futures. Personal will becomes an exercise in how they can best keep themselves safe. But they can’t. There is no certainty other than death and taxes. You are created in the image of God. You can play creatively in the universe with God. You can be “buds”, hang out.

Participant One: But you are saying that I cannot change what God has done, that I only have the power to accept what is.

Sanhia: That thinking comes from the belief of being separate from God. When you surrender to God’s Will you are surrendering to your own true will. Your personal will is a lie. It’s not the truth. It is not what you truly want.

Participant One: One could say that this personal will is connected to my separation story, that I am guilty, and God is out to get me.

Sanhia: If you were God and were creating a world it would be one where people never had to worry about food or shelter or any of those types of things. Each time you set goals to handle such matters you are expressing the belief that they are not already being taken care of. You are refusing to accept God’s gifts and feeling you must take that role upon yourself. Rather than trusting and living in the now, you are trying to control and live in a future that doesn’t exist. You are using your Divine power to be powerless. Therefore, I am saying that your personal will never serves your true interests.

Participant One: So, I have been using my personal will to try to create something that is already here right now.

Sanhia: Yes, and most likely in a superior form from what your personal will had in mind.

Participant One: Thank you! That is enough!

Sanhia: If the mind goes “How?”, the response is to open your eyes and look around. It’s here right now. It has always been here right now. You are always provided for. There have been no times when you starved to death, when you could not breathe, when you had no awareness, when you weren’t in the now – even if your thoughts were elsewhere. Do you remember the times that were the most glorious, the times when you truly felt alive? All times are like that when you let go of the mind thoughts about how things should be and face what is. How it is is exactly what you want it to be. Nothing has to change. Now you can play with God. Accepting what is does not mean rolling over and playing dead. It does not mean inactivity. It means that you listen to the Divine Guidance within you and react to what is. You are fully engaged in this dance with God. This awareness and co-creation will not burst into being and stay forever. It will come in bits and pieces. Two steps forward, one step back. This is perfect. No faster than you can assimilate. There may be old fears and beliefs still to become aware of and let go of, more personal will to become aware of and released. The Will of God is always there, always carrying you, always deeply desired.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Can you explain to us about co-dependency?

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

This question surfaced in a group several months ago, but now the time has come to respond to it. We will begin by talking about what is referred to as the special relationship in A Course in Miracles. The special relationship is a co-dependent relationship. Since most human relationships are special, they are in most cases co-dependent. If your mind wants to limit the term co-dependency to extreme or diagnosable relationships, it is aiming a bit high. But first, let Us step back and define the special relationship. It has been some time since we have mentioned this, and likely before many of you began reading the messages. In the special relationship one person wants the other to act in a specific way, to play a certain role. For example, you meet someone and they make you feel special; they make you feel loveable. Whatever it is that they do that makes you feel good or special, you want them to continue. This is co-dependency. You have a need for them to keep on doing those things that make you feel so wonderful. Normally in the special relationship this neediness goes both ways, but let’s just stay with you for now. There is a flip side to the co-dependent relationship. This is where the words or actions of someone you spend a bit of time with seem to cause you upset, pain, or negative emotions. You blame them for your negative reactions. You point the finger; You think you are going through what you are feeling because of them. This is a co-dependent relationship. Special relationships usually have a mix of both the positive and the negative triggers. As we have talked about recently, these liaisons involve projection. We have focused more on the negative aspect there, where you don’t wish to see yourself as having a certain quality so you can then convince yourself that it is the other and not you who is that way. This is co-dependency.

The projecting goes both ways, though. If you are unable to see yourself as loveable, you let another do that for you. The biggest problem here is that, as with all projections, deep inside you believe it isn’t true. You don’t love yourself or believe that you are deserving of love. Sooner or later your denial surfaces and you prove your partner to be wrong. You will not be able to continue performing for them and they will not be able to always act as you wish them to. It feels so good to have someone tell you that you are loveable, but you don’t really trust that. You begin to resent having to perform for them. You become upset if they change in any way or show you anything but unconditional acceptance. The honeymoon is over. The flame of your relationship was based on the other causing you to feel in a certain way, but now that has blown out. The things that used to turn you on begin to turn you off. This is the normal trajectory of the co-dependent relationship. If you doggedly hold on to the need for them to complete you, the battle will rage on and on. The negative aspects of projection may grow to exceed the positive ones. At this point you may decide to pull the plug. Since the problem is with the other, you have obviously picked wrongly. You seek another relationship. Until you give up co-dependency, reclaim your projections, and take responsibility for everything in your life as your creation, the new relationship will go through the same cycle. In despair somewhere along the way, you may decide to stay with the relationship you have, withdrawing from your partner and settling for feeling separate and unloved, deciding on some level that is all you are worth. Even then, there is still the possibility that you can stop looking to your partner for the love you want. The only solution, whether choosing fight or flight, is to come to the point of recognition that this isn’t working and it is time to try something else.

Sometimes in this special relationship you feel that you must take responsibility for the other. This often happens for parents, but it can just as well be a part of a committed relationship. Now you are doubly trapped because the bond is not only unfulfilling, but you have too much guilt to be able to leave. The other person needs you, or so you believe.

So, what is there beyond co-dependency? The relationship that is not marked by specialness can be called a holy relationship. In this association you have no desire for the other to be or do anything different from what they are now expressing. You accept them as they are. You love them without conditions. It is not possible to express unconditional love for another unless you are already doing that for yourself. When you are fully accepting yourself, you notice where you have guilt, where you are judging, where you are unkind to yourself, where you are experiencing strong emotions, and you commit to loving, accepting, and forgiving all of that. You take full responsibility for what you are thinking and feeling about yourself. You own your projections mirrored in those who trigger you. You do not allow these projections to go unchallenged. Remind yourself that this is you. This is what you are not wanting to face in yourself. Notice what you are holding to be true about yourself from both your own thoughts and from your projections and ask if those thoughts are really true. Work with all of that. Own it all. Take responsibility and sort through it. Look nowhere but within for the love you seek. Where you find this challenging, give it to Spirit, give it to God.

Let go of those thoughts. Don’t hold on to them or follow them. Don’t act from them. Notice them and move on. If the thoughts return, be willing to stare them in the face. Look deeply to see if there is indeed truth there. I know they are not true, but you must stay with them until you too know it. You are the Divine Child of God, made in the image of your Creator, an entity of love. That’s all you can be. Anything else you are holding on to is not the truth. It stems from the belief that you have separated from God. That is not possible. That is an illusion. That is the illusion. The holy relationship is your relationship with the Divine; it is only about unconditional love. The only function of the special relationship is to show you where you are co-dependent and not giving everything to God. It is an opportunity to recognize where you hold untruths about yourself so that you can realize your Oneness with God. Your relationships with others don’t exist in order for you to get something from them, but as places for you to give love. You have no need to be completed. You are whole. It is never about changing another or yourself. It is all about accepting the Divinity which is the truth of all.

I want to remind you that co-dependency is not limited to the perceived negative aspects, to the places where you judge or feel yourself to be victim to another. It is just as significant with the things you perceive coming from others that you consider to be positive. When you know that you are love, created in the image of God, how can you have any need to hear that from another. The latter expression can only feel good to you, feel special, if you have doubts as to its veracity. Whether the reinforcement from others feels to be negative or positive, it is just a pointer to where you are holding yourself separate from God. Give silent thanks for the reminder, take it to heart, and go to work.

Over time you will find yourself unable to hold on to the praise of others. You will perhaps begin to doubt their sincerity. You decide they are just being nice or that they have ulterior motives, they want something from you. They’re buttering you up, “kissing your ass”. The bottom line is that you cannot receive from them something you don’t know to be true. If you know its truth, the praise is redundant. Otherwise, it may feel good for a moment but, like with any drug, the effect begins to wear off and you desire another hit. You start to do things to win other’s approval. Perhaps you do things to prove they are wrong in their praise. The bottom line is that you cannot receive from them something you don’t know to be true.

If you know you are love, you will have nothing but love for others, no matter what they might say or do. As you are practicing loving yourself unconditionally, letting go of all guilt, judgment, self-hatred – think about loving others unconditionally. Have the intention to give love to everyone you meet, rather than looking for what you can get. See their Divinity. Look through their pretence at being human and unlovable. Observe the truth of them. Know they are doing the best they can and offer whatever you can to lighten their load. Have a holy relationship with everybody. Above all, have that with yourself, particularly when you are aware of its absence. Be kind, loving, and gentle to yourself and ask for Spirit to come help you release your personal will and surrender to the Will of God, Who only loves you.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

How should I deal with my strong feelings?

/in , , , , , , , , ,

There is a significant difference between noticing a feeling that comes up in your now and defining yourself by that feeling and accepting it as the truth about you. In the moment you may feel grief. To describe yourself by saying that you are grieving expresses a thought from the past which will carry on indefinitely. This becomes your belief of who you are. The former simply means that you are aware that a feeling is present. You can then pay attention to the next thing that comes to you. Rather than holding on to the feeling, which then becomes an idea and identification, you simply allow yourself to notice and release each feeling or thought as it emerges into your awareness. You can tell when someone has defined themself by an emotion, because they hold on to that same feeling/thought for many years. Holding on to old feelings and judgments keeps you out of the present. You become a prisoner of those emotions, caught in a web of suffering. We would be the last to say to ignore the feelings. Acknowledge them! Then let them go and let the next feeling or thought enter. Be aware of where there might be roles you think you should play to accompany the feelings that come. Are you supposed to act sad, angry, or as a victim? Recognize when you are playing a role and then move on. It is also not for you to analyze, justify, or rationalize what appears. What stories have you been telling yourself? Are you certain they are true?

I want to suggest that whoever in your life, past or present, you feel you really know…you are fooling yourself about that. You have no idea who they are. You see your projection upon them, not them themselves. In a similar manner you are aware that nobody around you fully and completely sees you. Part of that comes from your hiding in the belief that invisibility provides you with safety; that if people really knew who you were it would be all over. They would reject you, wouldn’t love you, would see you for the idiot you are afraid you are, and would ostracize you – throw you into the wilderness to the wolves. If people knew you “warts and all” they would not want to be around you. Instead you want to present the image that you believe is loveable. This is not honest. It is not the truth of who you are in the now, and you become hostage to upholding that disguise. These false fronts might include that you are a good mother, considerate, spiritual, honest, intelligent, successful, and on and on. These are ideas, images. What is a spiritual person like? They never lose their temper, judge others, feel guilt, or suffer pain? If inappropriate feelings or thoughts arise, you then want to deny them. If they are too strong, you may succumb to them, go into despair and self-blame, and define yourself as an unspiritual failure. Meanwhile, you are free to be who you are in this moment, which might be angry, grieving, sad, happy, jealous, or guilty. Feel that fully without defense or thinking you should be different. Experience the full spectrum of emotions, and then let them go to feel the next item on your palette.

If it is not okay to feel those things, you either cover them up or succumb to them and they will run your life. None of these feelings or ideas about yourself has anything to do with the truth of who you are. They are experiences to be had and then released. If you try to understand or explain the truth, you will fail. These beliefs become a place to hide, but provide no real peace. As we said before, you can never truly know another or yourself or be known because there are no such separate identities. All those defining thoughts about self and others are just that, thoughts. They come from the past and have nothing to do with the now, the only place you will ever be. In the now you will have many experiences, but none of them have anything to say about who you are, only about what is happening. So buckle up and enjoy the ride. The only thing you can be sure of is that the now always changes. If you hold on to it you leave little room for the new that is constantly appearing. Pain can dissipate quite quickly, but suffering happens when you hold on to your pain. Notice your emotion; take a breath; let it go; see what comes next. Receive each moment fully, without resistance. Let the perfection of the now wash over you. Hold on to none of it, whether it feels good or bad.

Why are we saying these things to you? We are not telling what the truth is or what your spiritual practice should be like. Such things cannot be done. Whatever is suggested here can be considered as “pointers”, pointing toward the truth but never defining it. That work is yours. Reading these words is of little value if they are just taken as ideas, and is of no value if they are taken as the truth. If you are at peace with all that is present in your life, continue as you are. If you are not at peace but fear rocking the boat, look at that and let it go. The longtime habit is to be run by the past and fearful of the future. The only “truth” I would attempt to offer is that anything you think is true is not and that holding on to any belief will only bring you more pain and suffering. Truth is being brought to you each moment for that moment. Receive it and let it go. See where that leads you.  It is one thing to experience a feeling of guilt. It is a whole different matter to hold on to the thought that you are guilty. I suspect that if all you focus on is the now you will eventually experience unconditional love. However, if you deny any present feeling that doesn’t look like it is unconditional loving, you will hold on to pain and suffering. The universe presents you with a feeling of guilt. Do you hold on to that guilt as the truth of you? Do you deny that you are guilty? Admit you have the feeling and let it go without analysis. If it sticks around you could ask yourself if you are absolutely certain of its truth. Do you have a thought or a belief that seems to justify the emotion? Do you feel guilty because you think you have done something wrong? There is an enormous gulf between emotion and thought. The thought likely triggers the emotion. Is that thought actually true? Do your words and actions determine what happens to everyone else on the planet? Are you that powerful? Are others helpless in the face of your will? Perhaps you believe that your thoughts, words, and actions affect only a few and not all. In that case, who is running the switchboard? Who determines which people are affected by you and how? Are these other people helpless in the face of your power? So, you are feeling guilty but can you say for sure that you actually are guilty? Do you see the difference between a feeling in the now and truth?

Question every thought that enters your mind. You don’t ignore the feelings, but you don’t give them a special value either. Notice them. Be aware of the thoughts. It is all just what is there right now in this moment. It is not right or wrong, justifiable or unjustifiable. What is the gift behind it? If your feeling of guilt actually stimulates you to investigate the truth behind your emotion, what a service it has provided for you. If you were to deny your feelings, those investigations would not take place. They also would not happen if you wallow in the guilt, holding on to it in your certainty that you are at fault. The negative emotion is a signal to you that you believe something that isn’t true but is running your life. With physical pain it is much easier to see what is to be done. If you touch a hot stove, you quickly pull your hand away. With psychological pain the lines aren’t as clear. You may actually believe that the thought that is triggering the pain is a good thought; one you should hold onto. Old thoughts are useless in dealing with psychological pain. When you listen to them, your mind is too busy to let true wisdom come in. If the past truly helped you to decide what to do now, we should have ended war long ago. Culturally, we would take nothing personally. We would not be in competition with others, fighting over the scraps that we believe are never enough. The old ways have never worked. Your spiritual practice and beliefs have also failed you. They don’t help you when you most feel the need of being saved. Thoughts can only come from the past, but you live in the now. When the point comes where you are only accepting what comes to you in the quiet space of the now, not listening to old thoughts from the past, then you will act with the same certainty and decisiveness that you employ instantly when confronted with physical danger or pain. Awareness of what appears to you in the now is similar to what happens when you do the five-step process. It might support you to check that process out.

We call it the perfection of the now and a gift because you have asked Spirit to support you in awakening. Therefore, everything that comes into your now is there to support waking up. If you are listening to your old thoughts, you cannot open the gift. There needs to be a quiet that comes from letting go of the old thoughts and the accompanying feelings. In that calm space you can hear the guidance for the moment. Nothing is your responsibility. You are carrying a weight you don’t need to bear. Let go of past thoughts. Give up worries about the future. Everything is happening in perfection. All you need to do is to let it happen. Your feelings are there to let you know when you aren’t doing that. Pay attention and then let go and notice the next thing that comes. It is recommended that you reread this message several times. Your ego mind wants to accept the validity of your feelings and to hold on to them. It wants to convert them into ideas of yourself that you can believe in and use to justify your pain and suffering.

Enjoy it all…or don’t. It doesn’t matter.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Why is it so hard for me to find my perfect relationship?

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

It is so hard for you to find your perfect relationship because you are looking, as the song goes, in all the wrong places. You are searching outside of yourself to find that relationship with another person, but your perfect relationship can only be with yourself. Let’s start at the beginning. When you are looking for your ideal or perfect relationship you are seeking completion, to be made whole. Perhaps, on another level, if someone else loves you, you just might feel loveable. All of this stems from the belief that you do not deserve love, that you are not a good person, and that you are not loveable. The grounds for your desire for a perfect relationship are in your belief in your separation from God and in scarcity, that there is not enough for you. This sense of lack rules every aspect of your life and the whole world around you. You think that you are incomplete, separate from each other, from Divinity, and from Spirit – that there is no Oneness. However, nobody can make you feel whole because you are already whole. No matter what relationship you might attract to yourself, your beliefs will remain unchanged. Though the relationship may seem to begin in the blissful fantasy of having found eternal love, as time passes the realization painfully descends upon you that, no, you haven’t. Difficulties and challenges emerge in the relationship. You were expecting that other person to come in and fix everything for you. That’s far beyond their pay grade. Nobody can fix anyone else. Whatever lacks, deficiencies, or problems you feel you have are your creation and not theirs.

This relationship you are looking for is the one you have with yourself. Whatever your mind tells you that you wish to receive from another – notice that. This is where you believe in a lack in yourself. Fortunately, the truth is that you lack nothing and that you are fully lovable. You are a Divine Child of God, created in the image of Divinity. You could no more be lacking in anything than could God be deficient in any way. The idea is pure insanity, but it is that craziness that got you stuck in this illusion to begin with. Nobody forced you into this illusion. You are here by choice – whether you remember the choosing or not – along with your beliefs of lack, guilt, and not being deserving of love. Your job is to notice that. Be aware when limiting thoughts arise. Notice when you have the thought that another person can be your savior, can make you feel whole and complete. It would not be an easy job to change those thoughts you now have; most likely that task is impossible. It is sufficient for you to notice that you have them, without trying either to deny the thoughts or to run away from them. Accept those thoughts. Own them. “I am unlovable. I am guilt. I am jealousy. I am lack.” Don’t divert your awareness from these thoughts. Notice them. Be with them. If you find you are blaming or judging yourself for these thoughts, then pay attention to that. Your job is to simply be alert as to what flows through your mind, if possible without any attempt to change what is there, but certainly noticing such thoughts if they arise. It is not for you to try to change your outer world, nor your inner world. All you have to do is notice and keep noticing. Accept what is there.

Remember always that your partner, as well as all other people, is your mirror. You project on them what you believe to be true for yourself. Often you do not wish to face these self judgments, so it feels safer to project them on another while denying that it is about you. This is usually done unconsciously. That is why it is so important to look at every thought that enters your mind. If the thought comes that your partner can be so selfish, look at that. “I am selfishness” is your belief. Don’t fight it. Don’t try to change your behavior. Simply observe and accept. Do not let a single projection live on without this kind of examination. As long as you deny this part of yourself and see it only in others, it will continue to be a painful and hopeless problem in your life. Your perfect love is you. As you truly realize that through accepting the perfection of you as you are, you will feel yourself engulfed in love with everyone you meet and every situation you encounter. Perhaps you may find yourself sharing your living space and/or your life with another, but this won’t be because they are your perfect partner or because you feel a need for their presence to feel loved and completed. They will simply reflect or mirror the love you have for yourself.

Let’s look at this from the perspective of how the mass consciousness has formed and fed you. You are not a victim to this, but have likely been an unconscious participant. Now it is time for full awareness. One of the ways mass consciousness works is to tell you that you should have a partner and also, most likely, children. It may say that your relationship is to be forever, that separation or divorce is wrong. To change partners can bring a sense of failure and guilt. Having more than one relationship at a time is also usually frowned on by that societal teaching, leading to further guilt. There is no right or wrong in any of your actions, but, again, notice your thoughts around these things. There may be contradictory messages that come to you from the “spiritual” realms. This guidance from teachers or teachings might tell you that you should not have a partner, that you should be celibate. You should not even entertain sexual thoughts. This is just as confusing as the judgment that you should have a relationship. Some of you are dealing simultaneously with both teachings. Letting beliefs dictate your actions in the hope that your separation from God will end or that you will awaken is not going to happen. Whatever you resist will persist. Your job is not to try to control or change your behavior, but to just notice what is there. Otherwise you are putting things outside of yourself, therefore not accepting what is. Any fight or struggle to oppose what is will leave you in the perpetual state of conflict. The peace of God is not there.

To be One with God, be One with Yourself. Perhaps you notice no desire for a relationship or you may notice an intense desire for a partner or simply for sex. It doesn’t matter what the thoughts and desires tell you. Just notice and accept the perfection of what you are feeling or experiencing. In your perfect relationship with yourself there is no judgment or need to change. You accept yourself exactly as you are. Will this acceptance be followed by a difference in the kind of thoughts that enter your mind? It is likely, but not if your “acceptance” is rooted in the hope for such change. Notice such thoughts and stay with whatever is present for you. You are becoming your perfect relationship. Lovely!

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

What part do my old relationships play in my awakening process?

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

More likely than not, all your relationships could be called “old” relationships. You have a story about each one of them, from those recently formed to the ones you have had since childhood. More accurately, particularly with those bonds that are long standing, you have a multitude of stories. Within these narratives you define who that other person is to you: what they are like, what they provide for you, what you like and dislike about them, and the particular role or roles that you play in the relationship. You might be aware that you don’t seem to be the same person in each relationship. Perhaps you like the role you play with some acquaintances better than the person you find yourself to be with others, and so are more likely to seek them out so you can like yourself better.

Why do I call all relationships “old” and what does all of this have to do with awakening? Your natural state is to be awakened or absolutely in the now, taking nothing seriously as you are fully engaged with what is in front of you. In the now there are no old relationships. There is no history. If you are with another or even thinking about them, and you have any expectations based on stories or histories, you can know absolutely that you are not in the now. That means that you are asleep. You are not seeing the truth as it is. Your mind is creating scenarios about the other person and about yourself that have nothing to do with the truth of this moment. That’s what the ego mind does; it likes to create little dramas. What might it look like to be in the now with a relationship? We have talked recently about observing the observer. You have an observer who is looking at this relationship, at the other person, and at yourself, whoever this self is. It simply observes. Meanwhile your ego mind is making judgments based on what is observed. The truth of you, however, is the observer – not the analyzing mind.

It is not a question of needing to let go of old relationships that keep you stuck. Stuckness will then be created with any new relationship you attract, no matter how “spiritual” it might appear to be. It is also not a question of becoming a recluse and having no relationships, so there is nobody to create stories with. The ego mind will always find a substitute; you will find some place to project. Rather it is a question of stepping back to the observer, focusing on the noticing rather than your analysis of the noticed. As you are able to do this, you will see that every story you have about other people is false. If you are purely observing another from your true self, rather than from your analyzing mind, you will simply see their Divinity, and be absolutely in love with it.

This is a process that We invite you to play with in each and every relationship. It doesn’t matter if it is a relative or family member, a childhood friend, a longstanding friendship, an enemy, an old or present lover, a co-worker, a clerk in a store, a stranger you pass on the street, a celebrity you have never met, or a character from a movie, show, or book. This observing can be applied in the same way to every scenario. If you are in the physical presence of another person, recognize when you are doing more than just noticing. Pay attention to where there are any thoughts, expectations, judgments, likes or dislikes related to what is being observed with the other person. Just notice it. Be aware if a part of you wants the other to change in any way. Discern if you want to receive something out of the meeting. Notice that. In this awareness, the job is not to change yourself; it is not for you to stop having these thoughts. Just notice. If you have thoughts about changing your behavior, acknowledge that. Who is noticing? Your mind will likely keep active; your only job is to try to remember to recognize what you are doing.

By doing this you will, one by one, destroy every old relationship. These associations are based on stories. With them you tie yourself and the other up into specific positions and roles. The absolute freedom of the now is denied. Your behaviors and your perceptions are limited by these beliefs. In addition, your happiness likely is dependent on the other acting as you wish them to, leaving you upset much more often than you might wish. In the now there are no old fossilized relationships. Each moment is brand new. It has no history and is connected to no future. For some reason that is beyond the understanding of the mind, another person is brought into your presence. What a curiosity that is! Why? What is this all about? The only way to find out is to watch and see what happens. Whatever it is has never happened before and will never happen again. It is absolutely fresh. It is now! It matters not if this is a person you have never encountered before or a partner you have spent decades with. Let everything else go and allow yourself to experience this now.

A Course in Miracles reminds us that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. To the ego mind it feels more difficult to deal with the older relationships in the now, to hold them in a different way – particularly those with family. How do you view your parents, or your children? Most of you no longer live with your parents. One or both of them may no longer be living. With or without their physical presence, you still have a relationship with each of them. All you need do is to pull up the memory of an old story. You find yourself having a physical reaction, perhaps your heart beats faster or you are flooded with emotion, and all this with no physical presence. A parent may have done something that felt hurtful to you when you were seven years old. Now you are fifty and you pull the story up and feel hurt all over again. This certainly is not your first bout with this memory and will likely not be the last. Can you join me in appreciating the humor in the situation? Any outside witness could testify that your parent is not at the present moment doing anything to you. It’s just you doing it to you, while projecting blame on your possibly senile or dead mother. This is not living in the now. In the now you have no relationship with anybody who is not in your physical presence. But, since you already have the story pulled up, why not take a step back and watch it from your observer self. Look at it. Again, if there is any judgment or emotional response, that is not the watcher. Notice that. Who is noticing that? Keep stepping back to the watcher who sees the story, sees the child and the parent, and sees the adult replaying the whole scenario. The observer doesn’t take any of it seriously. This watcher doesn’t believe it is real or unreal. It doesn’t blame or take pity. It just notices.

For those of you who have such stories with your own children, let’s look at this from the viewpoint of your “home movies”. As they are growing up, your mind perceives all their vulnerable, fragile places. You feel a need to help them survive in the world with these deficiencies. Perhaps they are now adults, living on their own. These old stories keep being projected in your mind and you worry about them. Based on a story that was never true, but just a projection, you carry with you a constant pain. Then, just to add even more humor to the situation, your children probably react negatively toward this interference in their lives. They don’t want your story running their life. They may hide much of their life from you. The story keeps you from a now relationship with them, with another adult. As with the stories with your parents, notice all of this from the observer. A few laughs can usually be helpful in this process. Be aware of the fear, judgment, and guilt. Step back and watch from your observer self. You may be experiencing your noticer if you find yourself having feelings of absolute love for your family members. This love doesn’t worry about them and has no concern over whether you have done enough or done the wrong things. All that is experienced is a loving acceptance of what is.

This applies to every relationship. What stories are you still holding about any romantic relationship that broke off? Look at any specific groups of people. What stories do you hold about the other gender, about certain generations, about specific educational or intellectual levels, about financial status, about race or nationality, about religion or the lack thereof? The stories are endless that the mind creates. Each one locks you into a place where you are not free in the moment to truly be with others, whether in your thoughts or in their physical presence.

Having read all of this, you may still feel helpless in your ability to get to your observer self. How do you stop looking from the ego mind? You start by paying attention. If you simply stand still and accept all your mind stories, you will remain in the same cycle. Begin with a willingness to observe from your watcher self. It might sound trite, but where there is a will, there is a way.

There is a conundrum here. We are talking about a difference between Oneness and duality. You cannot hold the two simultaneously. The ego mind can only operate from duality. The truth of you can see only Oneness. How do you leap this chasm from duality to Oneness? The answer is that you can’t. The only thing you can do is to be aware when the ego mind is operating. You can notice that you are creating and operating from a story. Who is doing the noticing? That’s a good question to keep asking. You have no ability to control and change the mind that is creating stories, judging, and being overcome with emotions. Rather than futilely trying to become the noticer, you might ask yourself what qualities the noticer wouldn’t have. As you notice your mind or emotions acting in certain ways, ask if those are traits of your noticer. Ask if what you perceive is actually true. If you keep looking at these activities and are brutally honest with yourself the answer will eventually be no, these are not qualities of the observer. It is not possible for the noticer to change the noticed, nor would the noticer have any desire to do so. All that you can do is to slowly increase the frequency with which you are able to notice. At some point there may be a synaptic leap from duality to Oneness. You can’t make it happen any more than you can make a seed grow into a plant. You can nurture it through cultivation, but you can’t force it. At some point you may suddenly be fully aware of the absolute insanity and humor of the ego mind and stop using it.

Meanwhile, you have one simple job. Notice. You don’t have to change yourself, anybody around you, or the world. Just notice. There is no better place to focus this awareness than with your relationships, so that they can all become new relationships. Each meeting with another becomes like good improv theater, flowing with what presents itself, enjoying the spontaneity of the interchange, and allowing your guidance to carry you. There is no question of where it’s going, only an enjoyment of where it is.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Do I create my reality or does Spirit?

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

It seems that this month’s question is one of those chicken or egg quandaries. Let’s begin in this manner. When you say “I”, that means the question is emanating from your ego. The ego “I” is the only one you can relate to because there is no true “I”. Only your ego can be asking this question. Then we have the dilemma of deciding what the hell is meant by “reality”. If reality is defined as how you perceive the world, then of course you are the creator. Everything you see in the illusion is your projection, is your creation. Your body, the people around you, the physical world, the weather, the drama, the governments, sports…..it’s all your creation in terms of what you perceive. The important question now is do we want to label your perceptions as reality. I have told you many times, including earlier in this paragraph, that all this is an illusion. Yes, your ego self creates these illusions. I can hear the wheels spinning inside your mind and you’re thinking “Sanhia, you are really not answering this question for me in a satisfactory way.” “Do my thoughts affect this “reality” I’m in, or is Spirit running everything?”

That’s a very good question, but I want to return to what I have already stated. If you are speaking in terms of this illusion being “reality”, you are absolutely in charge because you choose your reaction to each moment. You choose how you perceive; you choose to judge; you choose your emotional response. If you are asking if you have the power to absolutely control this illusion, to make it exactly what you want it to be, the answer is yes, to some degree, but no, not really. If you have a child whom you perceive as lazy, never helping around the house, leaving messes all about, and so on, do you have the power to change this behavior in your “reality”. Those of you who have been in these shoes are laughing and thinking, “Not a chance”. What you do have the power to affect is in how you choose to react. Here the only limits are the belief structures you restrict yourself with. You might tell yourself that any rational person would react in a negative way to this behavior and try to change it. If you are cut off in traffic by another driver, the “natural” response is to honk your horn and display your middle finger. Otherwise, they will never learn proper driving etiquette. I ask again, how successful do you think your expressions of anger are in changing the other driver’s habits? So, if “reality” is what is happening in the outer world, you probably have little power to affect change. You do have the power to stop thinking you should be changing this “reality”, you can give up the thought that it should be different. It is insanity to believe that if you honk your horn loudly enough and thrust your finger far enough out your window, suddenly the highway will be a peaceful place filled with courteous drivers. Maybe the thousandth time of asking your child to clean up after themselves will magically work. Maybe this is why the illusion is referred to as a dream. You have the power to accept how it is. You have the power not to be upset by what is.

The question now comes back that if you are actually not creating this “reality”, who is? Is it just random? Does Spirit create everything that seems to be happening? My answer is “absolutely”. Then you ask me if Spirit has a screw loose? Why would Spirit create this mess? You cannot even begin to grasp the answer to this question without accepting that nothing going on in the world matters at all. I am not saying this metaphorically; this is as close as we can get to expressing the truth in words. Nothing in this world has any value or importance. The only purpose for anything in this dreamscape is in assisting you in waking up. You have no other function or purpose other than awakening. This is not to say that Spirit won’t use you in the master plan of awakening everyone, but while you are asleep you can have no awareness of how Spirit might be using you. When awakened, you are aware that your only function is to do as Spirit asks. Again, this function is not one of saving the world; the universe is going to disappear. It is only in supporting others in awakening and you will not have the responsibility of figuring out how to do that. Spirit will guide your every moment. Everything that happens is guided by Spirit. Everything is planned. Not only is everything planned, but Spirit knows exactly how you are going to respond. Therefore, it is impossible for you to make the wrong choice. Self judgment and guilt are absolute wastes of time. Spirit/God can hardly hold you responsible for doing as you are expected to do. Spirit creates the situation and you respond. If you are in resistance to what is presented and think it should be in some other way, the lessons continue to be presented until you realize that all is as it should be. Maybe that happens in this body and maybe in another. None of that matters because none of this, including time, is real. Eventually within the dream you will have that moment when you realize you have been rearranging the deck furniture on the Titanic, trying to empty the ocean with a spoon. You will laugh at your own insanity, let go, and accept the glorious perfection of everything you are and have been experiencing.

You, and here I am speaking to your ego self, fortunately cannot control this illusion that you have been projecting outside of yourself, this dream world. If you could, you would choose from your ego and remain forever asleep. But that’s not in the cards; you won’t be able to accomplish that. On a good day you may fool yourself into believing that you do have that power and want it to continue indefinitely. Ultimately, the weather will change. That’s the nature of duality, of this illusion. Every up is followed by a down, and vice versa. They may not seem to be in balance but neither of them can fully disappear. In Spirit, in Divinity, everything is perfect. There is nothing you would consider changing. The stubbing of your toe, the kiss of the sun, the sting of a bee, and the laugh of a child are all part of the perfection of the now.

I want to repeat that as you are dealing with your life each day, you cannot do it in a wrong way. You are just following the plan. The end of the plan is the awakening and the awareness that it has always been a dream. There is no way you can make that happen today, nor is there a way to stop it from happening now. It’s simply not in your control. The plan is all there. The perfection of it is beyond ego comprehension. The enormity of the seemingly infinite interconnections of Spirit’s plan should be humbling to your ego thought system. If you are reading this message, if you are taking it in, if you have been choosing to listen to Spirit and to let go of your ego mind, all of this has been planned. None of it happens by accident. If you seem to be either ahead of or behind another in your awakening process, take no credit and leave no blame. All is going according to plan (not to speak of the fact that your placement of your “growth” in relationship to others is likely to be faulty). Your reaction to what you are reading here is also planned. You cannot make a mistake.

Those of you who feel all alone, who think nobody understands you, feel that God has abandoned you, or believe that you can’t hear Spirit – know that Spirit is with you at every moment. Your consciousness of this has nothing to do with it. Spirit is always whispering in your ear, whether you are listening or not. There is never a time when you are alone. You are truly One with Spirit and with each other. Absolutely One. Ego believes in your separateness. Again that is why there is a call for gratitude for your inability to be able to control the dreamscape “reality”. The ego can only use its power to maintain the sense of separation. Otherwise your ego disappears. For the ego to make such a choice is not in the cards. Ego dies from a lack of attention.

In truth, this is not a chicken or egg question. There is only one answer and that is that Spirit creates the “reality” of your dream world. Spirit controls every aspect. Spirit does this through a loving, connected “spirit” of Oneness, leading you step-by-step to stop listening to your ego and to hold Spirit’s hand and experience the Love and Oneness. Your ego wants you to believe that you can and should take control and make the world the way you want it to be. It’s never going to happen. When you experience being One with Spirit, you will find that you do “create” your own reality, but this is a co-creation with Spirit; Spirit speaks and you act. There is an absolute alignment. You would never want it any differently. There is nothing you would rather do.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Can you give us some inspiration?

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

It is always fun to take different approaches, to look at things in different ways. Sometime during the past year we looked at the question of whether forgiveness is still important and we have also spent some time in the past talking about old stories. I want to revisit those themes today, but I wish to throw into the mix a couple of examples of individuals who have given absolute and full commitment to their awakening processes through addressing these two techniques.

Let’s start by taking a look again at stories. Everyone has their stories. It might be one about your upbringing and how it has affected you. It could be a tale of your unfair treatment at the hands of a friend or an employer. Maybe it is a story about who you think you are (or are not), about your strengths, or weaknesses. Your saga likely contains descriptors concerning your gender, nationality, race, age, religion, or political party or beliefs. These all might be a part of your story or, better stated, your stories. The only thing you can be absolutely certain about with your history is that it is not true. It does not represent either the truth of you or the truth of the world. These memories are all fantasies, illusions. It is not my purpose today to go into more detail about why these are illusions. If you would like to explore more about stories and dealing with them you might want to read this message.

Stories are absolutely connected with forgiveness. In your story, particularly if it is not an absolutely happy one, there are some “bad guys” and a “victim”; the latter is likely you. If you believe the story to be true, forgiveness becomes nearly impossible. You are trying to forgive something that never happened, to undo a wrong that was never committed. The forgiveness process is then primarily a task of recognizing that you are holding an untruth and letting it go. Whatever it is you incorrectly perceived as happening to you was a projection of your own guilt. The “other” has nothing to do with it. The forgiveness process has only to do with yourself, and you are innocent; there is nothing to forgive. As long as you hold on to the untruth that you did something that requires forgiveness, or had something done to you, that requires forgiveness, you will never get there. You have simply judged yourself for no reason, thinking a story was true.

What I want to do now is to provide you with a little inspiration in the form of two very different models coming from different paths who likely awakened through the process of releasing stories and through forgiveness. The first one may be familiar to some of you. His name is, or was, Bill Thetford. In his story, he was a highly educated and successful clinical psychologist and the head administrator of the hospital connected with Columbia University in New York. The reason you might be familiar with him is that he, along with his employee Helen Shucman, was responsible for the scribing of A Course in Miracles. For seven years they worked in secret with this project. The information came as an absolute surprise to them though they had asked for another way to live with the chaos of their professional world. Though the pair was fully committed to completing the transmission of the material, they were otherwise usually at each other’s throats. Bill and Helen completed the process and then drew to them those who would help edit and then release the book to the world. At this point Bill chose to retire, to leave the intellectual confines of New York where he had lived for 25 years, and to move to a more relaxed scene in California.

Bill had chosen to become a full time student of the Course, perhaps its first. At the same time, Helen said that she could not do that. Bill moved alone to Tiburon, north of San Francisco, finding himself mostly surrounded by Course students. He began to work with the forgiveness process. Bill had a lot of work to do. His life had never been spiritually focused and he had innumerable stories to clean up. After five years of fairly intensive focus, he chose to move to an even more relaxed and supportive community near San Diego. Now, nothing else mattered but letting go of all judgments, all blame. He focused on everybody from his former life. Bill was relentless in clearing the slate with all, with taking full responsibility, with forgiving himself. He made contact with some people from his past stories and apologized for his former behavior. Those who knew him during this period reported that he became more playful, happy, fun-loving and egoless. Bill completed that process and then in one moment on one day he left his body. The world perceived a physical death, but the doctors reported it as being painless and instantaneous. Bill spent ten years with this process. He pretty much started from scratch. Though he had spent ten years helping to bring the Course to the world, his work did not really start until he retired.

The second example is quite different, though he did share with Bill similar professional work being a doctor of psychiatry. Hew Len was a Hawaiian and a practitioner of an ancient island spiritual tradition called Ho’oponopono which teaches, among other things, taking personal responsibility for everything in one’s environment. Dr. Len began a job as the psychiatrist in a hospital for the criminally insane. Most of the inmates were locked up all day because of their violent tendencies. These were men who were not deemed to be sane enough to stand trial for their crimes. The staff he inherited had low morale, with many sick days being taken. On his first day Dr. Len greeted his staff, entered his office, closed his door, and did not emerge until the end of the day. He repeated this behavior daily while the staff grumbled about their lazy and incompetent new boss. But here is what went on behind closed doors. Hew’s office had a filing cabinet containing records on all the inmates. He began by pulling out the first file and reading everything concerning the man’s biography, diagnosis, and offenses. When he had a reaction to any information in a file, he took responsibility for it, realizing he could only see things that were his projection. Hew’s job was to work with his own personal forgiveness on the issue until no judgment remained for the inmate. He would proceed in this manner until he finished the file. Then he would go on to the next file and the one after that, eventually going through the entire filing cabinet. He did no one-to-one counseling. The staff meanwhile was going nuts, but here is what began to slowly transpire in the hospital. One-by-one, patients began to become less violent. Not as much medication was required. The inmates were able to spend more time out of their cells, being allowed into the common rooms. Staff morale began to rise. Workers reported greater job satisfaction. The patients began to be released, deemed to no longer be insane nor threats to society. After a couple of years the hospital was closed; there were not enough patients remaining to justify its continuance.

You may be sitting there saying to yourself, “Sure. How could that possibly happen?” This is the power of absolute forgiveness. This could come about only because in his heart of hearts, Dr. Len knew that only agape love is real and all else is illusion. He refused to entertain the falseness of his projections, choosing instead to be fully responsible for them, shedding the untruths for the underlying Divine love. His unconditional self love spread to all those in the institution, patients and staff alike. They did not even need to be in direct contact with Hew to feel his energy. It was not his job to heal his patients, but to heal himself. The most selfless thing you can do is to take care of your own process. In doing so you cannot help but to touch everyone around you.

So these are two stories. As you are choosing whether or not to make this kind of forgiveness the centerpiece of your life, I want to remind you that no story is in the now. They are all from the past, and the past isn’t real. When you hold on to a story, however that might manifest – non-forgiveness, blame, victimhood – you are living an illusion. You are not experiencing the now. Whatever happened in that story is not happening now, unless you bring it into your now. What these two individuals did was to notice when they were tracking mud on their carpet, to be aware when they were bringing in old stories and acting as if these were actually part of their now. Your job in the forgiveness process is to be absolutely present. In the now there is nothing to forgive. Even if somebody were to walk up to you and hit you in the eye – though you might have an immediate response of pain, anger, judgment, or desire for revenge – it is now, now. That event took place in the past. It has become a story. Actually it always was a story. It is all your creation. As you are able to release the story, everything surrounding it dissipates: the pain, the anger, the judgment, and the desire for revenge. It will be as if it never happened. And it never did. Don’t take my word for this. Try it out for yourself. How valuable would one punch in the eye be if it led to your awakening, if it supported you in always being in the now, in living fearlessly? What if it taught you to always take responsibility and to know that everything that happens is perfect?

All that you need to do is to start with one person and one story. Stay with that story until you have fully assumed responsibility and forgiven yourself. Stay with that person until no stories are left, until you have released them from all blame and judgment, until all projection has ended, until you accept the untruth of the story and have only gratitude for its part in your awakening. You will probably be ready to move on to another person to continue the process. Enjoy!

Good Now

Sanhia

What do we do with the war in Ukraine?

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

I have been asked to address the war in Ukraine. The first thing to notice is who is whispering in your ear and triggering fear. The answer without exception is that it is the voice of the ego. If you have been listening to the voice of Spirit you would be filled with acceptance and peace. Looking at this war would be no different for you than watching the sun rising in the morning sky. The ego voice asks, “Sanhia, how can we be in peace in the face of war?” You have the question reversed. It could better be stated, “How can there be peace in the world when there is war within me?” That is where the war exists. The world is never the cause; it can only be the effect. The cause remains within you. If you support one side over the other, you are creating war. You are filled with judgment, separation, and the perception of differences. You are guided by anger and blame. You are seeing a world populated by victims and victimizers. This is all projection. It is your guilt, your helplessness in the world, your fear of God. It is your fear of having no control over what might happen to you, of your own victimhood. It is your fear of death. All of this is ego projection, every bit of it.

The big question is, “What is real?”  What is it that you fear happening? Is it your fear for what might happen to others, or is it really fear for what could happen to you? The ego voice wants to convince you that your concern is for others, for the victims of the bombings, for the refugees, for those who have lost family members or their own lives, for the loss of homes and the destruction from the bombing. There is no way to be gentle about this. The ego is whispering bullshit into your ear. This has absolutely nothing to do with anybody else. It has only to do with you. This is your fear of death, of loss, of victimhood. This is all your projection. Corona did not do a complete and thorough job of relieving you of your fear of death. Of course it couldn’t; that is your job. Spirit can supply you with the classroom and the lessons, but only you can take them to heart and search for the truth. Death as you know it, the death of a human body is not real. It is no more real than the body itself. The body and the death of it are your creations, not God’s. The fear of death is the fear of something unreal happening to something that doesn’t exist. The fear is your creation, so only you can release it. There is no change that can happen in the world to release you of your fear. The movement can only take place in your own mind. Now you have been presented with another opportunity to do that. For those of you who are in Sweden the pot is sweetened as the war is closer and the refugees are at your door. For you in the United States the pot is sweetened by having your old nemesis, Russia, the evil empire that vowed to bury you, once again rearing its “ugly” head. How much fun is this? The illusion of the pandemic has been replaced in one fell swoop by the illusion of war.

As long as you believe that who you are is your body, you will fear death. All around you will appear to be violence or the threat of violence. When you absolutely realize that you are not your body – that you are not a physical being but are Divine and eternal; that you simply are – the death of the body will have no meaning for you. In this awakened state it will not matter; you might even be looking forward to the leaving. There is no in-between place here; either you are a body or you are. If you hold on to the reality of your body, your fears will remain with you until you become so tired of it that you finally choose to focus on Spirit and the truth hard enough to break through the wall of untruth. How do you do that? Stop feeding the illusion. When you realize your fear is being projected, whether it is upon those who seem to be victims or those who appear to be the perpetrators, notice what you are doing. Take responsibility. Your only job is to release untruth until all that remains is the truth. Seek the truth and it shall set you free. The existence of fear indicates you have work to do. Bring that to Spirit. Come sit up here above the battlefield with us and observe your ego self operating in the world. Watch without judgment, simply observing the “human condition”. You are not asked to change how you act in the world, only how you hold those actions, whether they are your own or those of your mirrors.

Let’s look at this from another perspective. You believe that certain individuals or groups are controlling what is going on with this war. Whether you hold Putin, Russia, or hidden forces or conspiracies within other countries as being the responsible party for the hostilities, it is actually Spirit that is bringing everything about. There is only one reason for the existence of these events and that is to help each one of you to wake up. That is the only job for you to take on in the wake of this war. When you feel badly for what is happening to others and wish to change those outcomes, you are expressing an arrogance that is far from the humility that can lead to awakening. This “caring concern” is an expression that you can do Spirit’s work – God’s job – better than They can. You are acting as if you know what’s best for everyone. Yet, you haven’t even figured out what is best for you. Is it good for you to live in fear and guilt? If you were correct that the world should be peaceful, you are stuck in a bit of a quandary. The world has never known peace. If peace is what we should have, why has it never happened? Are you going to spend the rest of your human existence in a futile battle against what is? You think that we should not have war when the earth has always had war. You think that governments should tell the truth and serve their citizens when they have always lied and served themselves. You believe that brute force should never be used by the strong over the weak, but it occurs daily. So, what planet are you living on? If you think you can change “reality”, you are holding on to an enormous illusion. The world is exactly as it is. For any step forward for mankind there will be a step backward. It is not, never has been, nor ever will be the purpose of the world to be perfect, to be heaven. It was created by you as a place to hide from heaven. Your job is to wake up to that and to find the kingdom within, not try to do the impossible. Wherever you try to take on the work of Spirit you have everything turned around. You are clueless about how to wake up, perhaps even unaware that you are asleep in a dream world, yet you think you know what other people should have in their lives?

Now you may find yourself in absolute confusion. You may be wondering if you shouldn’t at least be feeling sorry for the Ukrainian people. These “people” don’t exist outside of being your projections. It is for yourself that you are feeling sorry. It is you who is both the attacker and the victim. It is time for you to stop attacking yourself. It is time to stop blaming God and to start taking responsibility. It is time to stop waiting for a savior and realize that you are the only one who can do that for yourself. Spirit can help you, but only to the degree that you will allow. If you think the problems lie outside of you, Spirit can do nothing other than use your belief as a club to beat you into submission. It is you who have to call off the dogs. So, we return to the vital questions. What do you believe that is not true? Look at where you are in competition with God, thinking you know the best plan for others. Notice where you have refused to take responsibility for your part in the creation of the illusion, pretending you and others are victims to it. Look at how you take the world seriously as if it were real and the truth of you and others were actually these bodies. See how you think that material things actually matter.

The bottom line is that the war is within you, not out there in the world. If you desire to be responsible and caring, bring peace to the war you are waging. Give up all your attacks and blaming of others, which are acts of war. Stop holding others as helpless victims unless that is truly what you wish them to be. See Divine children of God. Hold yourself in that light. It’s a big job, but not so big a work as trying to create heaven on earth or stopping a physical war in the illusion. This challenge is one that you can actually succeed at. Since it is you who have started all war, you can also stop it. Nobody else can control what you do with your next thought but you. Nobody has power over you. What is going on in Ukraine does not matter. What is going on inside of you is everything. Spirit has brought you an enormous gift, right on the shirttails of Corona. You have an opportunity to choose love over fear, to awaken. It is not your last chance, but your life will remain driven by fear and helplessness until you decide to grab on to the horns and wrestle one of those monsters to the ground. Now is as good a time as any.

Good Now

Sanhia

Why not now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia

Should we still be doing the forgiveness process?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Now

Sanhia