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

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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

Did Jesus die for our sins?

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The holiday of Easter has just passed; perhaps some of you celebrated it. In the last message, we talked of love and sacrifice. In the world of Christianity, the great story is of the martyrdom of Jesus. That legend has been passed down for 2000 years. As it is told, Jesus, the only Son of God, came down from heaven out of his Father’s love for us. God sacrificed his only Son. He did this because we humans are bad. We are sinners; we are evil. The only plan God could come up with to allow us to return to him in heaven to be saved, was through offering the crucifixion of his Son. That is the story, a very sad tale. It is filled with graphic descriptions of suffering, torture, and betrayal. However, this is nothing more than a fairy tale. It is not true. This is not what happened. The true story is that Jesus was not the only Son of God. We are all the Sons of God. He did not come to atone for our sins, because God does not recognize our sins. Only we see our nature as sinful. We see this because we believe that we chose to separate from God. We are terrified of God and fear his vengeance for what we think we did. This is all part of the myth. Jesus came to tell us that it’s not true, that God loves us. Absolutely and always. There is nothing we have to do to earn it. It is just for us to realize that we are divine, that we are one with God.

Jesus came to earth of his own choice to save himself. He wanted to become aware of his divinity while in a body. Easter is the celebration of his self-realization. That is what the resurrection was. It does not represent dying and coming back to life again. Death is an illusion. The resurrection represents the ”death” of death, the realization that there is only life. There is only life and always life, in divinity. That is the true nature of every soul. Easter is a time to remember this truth and to let go of death, suffering, fear, and the belief that you are an evil sinner.

You may want to ask me why this made-up story has been passed down and believed by so many. There seem to have been eye witnesses. People recorded these happenings. Why would it have been passed on like this? Don’t tell us it’s a lie Sanhia! Well…this story is like all stories. They are imaginary. No story has happened. Nothing that you attribute to an action by those in human bodies, no, none of those stories are real. Nothing has happened in the truth of God. You have manifested this illusion that you have an earth. You create all of the stories that take place on it. You stay in an endless loop with those stories, a seeming infinity of bodies and lifetimes. This goes on until one day you wake up and realize that there is only now, only this moment. There is only the truth, only love. Everything else you have been making up. Meanwhile, because you think you are a sinner, you created a savior, since your story says that you can’t save yourself. You believe that somebody has to pay for the sins you imagine you have committed, so why not have Jesus do it? He’s got big shoulders. He is the Son of God. Let him do it. The problem is that you are still stuck with the guilt. Not only are you a sinner but you let Jesus take the rap for you, leaving you even further away from God (This perhaps is a good thing. Have you noticed how he treats his Son!).

What if we look at the life of Jesus from his perspective? He came in with a high level of knowledge of truth, brought forth from previous lifetimes where he did much work. He created a wonderful support system in his pre-planning. On both sides of his family there were great spiritual workers who came in with him to support his process. His father Joseph ascended before him, showing him the way. When it came time for his full realization, which required an absolute surrender to Spirit, he was told that his path was to go through this “Passion Play” of crucifixion. In this way, the story would be recorded and passed down for the ages. Even though the facts would be grossly incorrect, the seeds of the truth would be there for those who have ears to hear with. It seemed that a trusted associate turned on him. In truth, Jesus asked his good friend Judas to play a role. Judas did not want to carry out that assignment, but Jesus convinced him it was part of Spirit’s plan. This was an act of love, not betrayal. Though what people saw at that time did look like punishment and torture, Jesus experienced no pain on the cross. Rather, he was in ecstasy. He knew that he was not his body. As for the witnesses, however, they could only project their own fear upon what they saw. The story was written down and passed on. Had there been no crucifixion, nobody would know of Jesus today. Adding to the drama, his body disappears. Now, you have an unjustifiable execution, but there were many of those with the Romans. How to make this one stand out? Let’s disappear the body, right under the nose of the Roman sentries. To cap things off, let’s have the body reappear later. This is the stuff that sells newspapers, not to speak of Bibles. Jesus simply, out of love and trust, followed the plan that came from Spirit. He did this, not to pay for your sins, but to teach you how to listen to Spirit, how to trust, and as an act of faith. Some of you have the terror that if you listen to Spirit you’ll end up nailed to a cross, too. You may have something to move through around this. It is the ego that leads you to pain and suffering, not Spirit.

How would your life change if you trusted in the true story of Jesus? When you think of Easter, the message is of love and eternal life. The focus is on the resurrection. If your thoughts go to crucifixion and suffering, ask Spirit to lift those thoughts from you. It is time on a symbolic level to burn all of your crosses. As long as you hold onto the cross as the symbol of Christianity and Jesus, your life will be one of sacrifice and suffering. Burn the cross. Burn them all. Let that blaze be the fire of the love of the eternal flame of God.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

Does love require me to sacrifice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

How do I discern Spirit from ego?

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

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

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

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

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

Why do I feel abandoned by God?

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Some of you have expressed anger to me – perhaps not directed at me, though you may have wanted to shoot the messenger – because of things I have said about God. You feel that God doesn’t pay any attention to you, that He is not aware of your struggles and your pain. You feel abandoned because none of this exists for God. I can understand, on one hand, why you might draw that conclusion. I have explained to you that this earthly experience is all an illusion. Nothing in your physical world is real. The only things that truly exist are absolute love and divinity. This illusion you have created in the physical realm of bodies and fear does not exist in the mind of God. He does not see your experience. God sees only the truth in you. He does not see your fantasies of separation, judgment, and pain. He sees your divinity, your holiness. Hearing that causes some of you to feel that God doesn’t really care about you. He is just going to let you hang out here in your pain and suffering. All your prayers and cries for help are ignored. To your great surprise, I have a number of things to say about this “abandonment”.

If God could see your illusions, it would make them real. Think what that would mean. If your body truly exists; if this earth and universe are existent; if your pain, suffering, and fear are real; they will go on forever. When you die, and leave all of this ”reality” behind you, you will realize that none of it was actually taking place. This you realized after your last incarnation, as well as following the multitude of others you have experienced. When you no longer have a body, you still are, just a whole lot lighter without the excess baggage you carry with you now. All of the things that felt so necessary, vital, and important in your physical experience are gone. They are simply gone. If they were real, they would still be there. When you ask God to give them reality, be aware of what you are asking for. You are asking for your hell to be permanent. It is to your saving grace that God does not see your illusion, seeing only the truth of you so that you have the potential of also holding the truth.

Rather than abandoning you, God has sent the Holy Spirit. This is a difficult concept to fully understand. In Christianity, they talk about the trinity of God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit. Usually, even though the concept is alright, the execution of it is woefully inadequate. The Father is often pictured as judgmental and punishing; the Son is limited to Jesus, excluding all of the rest of the Sonship (which includes you and me); and the Holy Spirit is often simply not understood at all. The Father is the originator God – all loving, all powerful, all creative. The Son is you: whoever is reading this; whoever isn’t reading this; and whoever has, is, or will be in a body. The Son is created in the image of the Father: divine, all loving, all knowing, all powerful. But, a part of the Sonship has chosen to believe in a separation from the Father and fears retribution for that action. That is the case for all who have chosen human form. God recognizes that you believe yourself to be lost, but does not experience the trauma you have created. You are like a sleeping child experiencing a nightmare. The loving parent recognizes that the child is having a bad dream and knows that it is terrified, but cannot penetrate into the illusion. The parent knows that what is being experienced isn’t real and that sooner or later the child will wake up. The parent tries to lovingly awaken the child and to assure it that it is safe. It is the Holy Spirit that carries out this function.

The Holy Spirit is the intermediary between the Father and the sleeping Son. Spirit is designed in such a way that you can ask for Its support, supplicating to be brought into conscious alignment with the Father. I want to remind you that you are not being helped to establish alignment. You are already aligned with the Father. You are one with God. You are one with each other. What is lacking is the awareness of that oneness. This does not take away the truth of who you are, but it does keep you from having the experience of your divinity. Rather than living in the divine love of your birthright, you live in fear. By asking Spirit for support, you can realize your alignment with the Father. The role of the Father is to hold the course, to hold it steady, to hold the truth, to never waiver, and to never give any reality to the hell that you have created. The Father always sees your perfection. It is your role, as the Son, to give up the ego, to stop choosing to listen to it, and to choose divinity. To facilitate your process, God has created the Holy Spirit to help those of you who have chosen ascension, and want to give up fear and illusion. The Holy Spirit is there to give you a helping hand. He is aware of your illusions, but does not take them seriously. Your task is to believe Spirit, rather than the ego. Spirit is there to support you in constantly choosing love over fear.

You can ask God to come down to earth and enter your hell. God won’t hear you. Spirit will hear you, however. Even as your faith in trusting Spirit’s voice over the ego becomes stronger and stronger, there is still a step between believing and knowing. When you cross that line into knowingness, you no longer feel a need to talk with God, because you are fully aware of your oneness. In the meantime, rest easily in the knowledge that God’s love for you is eternal and that dissolution of your hell is a certainty. The consistent message from Spirit is ”lighten up, everything is moving forward perfectly”.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

How should I celebrate Christmas?

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I would like to talk about Christmas. This is the most important holiday in the western world. That is a confusing thing for some people, perhaps for many. Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus. However, Jesus was a Pisces and was born in March of 4 BC. Yes, that’s right. He was born four years ”Before Christ”. The Christian religion, however, chose December to celebrate Jesus’s birth. We want to state very clearly that Jesus had nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of Christianity. We’ll discuss more about that, later. The reason the holiday is observed in December is that as Christianity was developing and spreading in Europe, one of the most significant existing festivals had to do with the return of the light. This was more important in ancient agrarian times than it is today. Now you can always go to the store or open the refrigerator to find food. In those days there was only what had been saved from the previous harvest, along with any successes from hunting. It would be a long time until things began to grow again in the spring. In December the light was scarce, it was cold, and there was often concern about how long the food would last. The midwinter solstice was the longest night of the year. From then on, the light began to return. This brought about optimism and a revelry. There was fear about the dark and this festival expressed the hope that there would eventually be warmth, then growth and more food. Christianity co-opted this celebration, but chose to keep many of the old elements intact. That is why there are Christmas trees, elfish beings, lights, feasts, and more. That is why we have this holiday.

Let us take a look at Jesus. Certainly, the word Christmas contains” Christ”. Whether or not you consider yourself to be a Christian, and whether or not you believe in Jesus’s existence or divinity, you are well aware that Jesus is the reason for the holiday. As I have said, Jesus did not begin Christianity, and he would not have done so. The religion is not representative of his teachings. There is a small amount of Jesus that can be found there. If you read through the New Testament and look at the words that are attributed to him, perhaps twenty percent of them are in the ballpark of something he might have said. There are an equal number of things that are absolutely opposed to anything Jesus taught. Absolutely opposed. How do you know which is which? If you read those words – in some Bibles the words attributed to Jesus are in red, like someone has highlighted the juicy parts for you – take a deep breath after each statement and ask yourself if this fills you with feelings of unconditional love and lifts you up. Or, does it cause you to feel guilt or fear? If it does the latter, it is probably not an accurate representation of Jesus’s real words. When in doubt, throw it out.

I will tell you what I know about Jesus, both from being his disciple in my lifetime as Thomas and also from what I learned after he was no longer directly in my life (lives). I did write down many of the things that I heard him say. These writings have been referred to as The Gospel of Thomas, which was found in the 1940’s along with other ancient scrolls in the Egyptian desert. But, that version is not mine. That transcript had gone through several re-writings. Perhaps half of what is there was close to what I had written. Again, use your own guidance if you read this text. Coming back to Jesus – there are some things to say about him that are absolutely true, and that he said himself. He taught over and over that the way to find heaven was through unconditional love. It was not about doing ”right” things over ”wrong” things. It was not about judging or being judged. It was about being in a state of love. He also said that he was a child of God, created by God. He said that we were just the same as him, that we are no different. He was to us as an older brother, with more experience and wisdom, who was further along the path. Jesus saw the divinity in each person, whether or not the person was capable of recognizing that divinity. He did not teach that there were rules to be followed. He didn’t speak of the Ten Commandments. He did not make any statements about what people should do. He did not speak about roles that women should take in society, as opposed to men. He did not differentiate between people based on their religion, sexual orientation, state of servitude, or race. His primary tenets were unconditional love, forgiveness, and the honoring of personal divinity.

That is what can be celebrated at Christmas. It is not about the birth of a savior. Jesus would be the first to tell you that birth was not his beginning. He had always been and always would be, as you have always been and will always be. To make Jesus special, to make Jesus different, would go against the heart of his teaching. He said ”this and more you shall do”, that is, that whatever he did, we are capable of doing…and more! Make Jesus divine in your thoughts, but not at the cost of denying divinity to yourself. The observance of his birth is the celebration of his divine eternal spirit, which is also the honoring of your divine eternal spirit. It is at this time in the darkness of the year, in the coldness and the unfruitfulness of the season, that it can be helpful to reaffirm your divinity, to hold that light in the dark.

There is no need in your spiritual process to pay any attention to Christmas, whatsoever. It’s not necessary. Neither God nor Jesus will frown on you for not honoring the birthday. God does not operate in that way. He honors and celebrates whatever you choose to do and loves you without conditions, as does Jesus. It is for you with your inner guidance, to decide what to do with this day, if anything. But if you are thinking about Christmas, you can use the moment to align yourself with your brother, Jesus, remembering that he holds you always as his equal. His coming was not as a sacrifice, but was as an expression of love. Not only did he not die for your sins, he didn’t recognize your sins. Only you hold on to the energy of that. This can be a wonderful time to light a candle and to see the purity and the brilliance of the light that is you. Or find it in the fire you may be sitting before for warmth. For those of you who find yourself in the southern hemisphere, this celebration might feel more appropriate for you in June, in the dark of your year. However, the memorialization can happen at any time, in any month, or not at all. Follow your own heart. You can celebrate your eternal flame at any time.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

How do I deal with the religious conflict in the Middle East?

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We would like to further develop the previous message, What is a spiritual response to a world crisis?, beginning with the history of conflict in the area called the Middle East and how it ties in with religion, particularly the three major monotheistic ones: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The story begins with the oldest of the three, Judaism, and the tale, as told in the Old Testament, of Abraham. He was told to take his people to the land that is now Israel, and to begin a new religion that honored the one God. This land was not empty. From the outset we had somebody guided for religious reasons to take over a land that belonged to someone else. This Jewish god demanded obedience; there were severe consequences for breaking his laws. Years later, the story tells us, the Hebrews left and went to Egypt where they became enslaved, then, following generations of captivity, broke free behind Moses’ leadership. Forty years after this, they returned to the “Promised Land” and, again, other people were living there. In the name of god, they fought for and won this land. Over the next 1200 years there was a nearly constant state of war with other religions, mostly not monotheistic, for control of this land.

At times the Jews lost control and were subjugated. This was the case when Jesus was born, with the Romans controlling this land. Jesus was a Jew, we could say a rabbi, and not a Christian. He did not start a religion. But many who were not Jews began to follow some of his ideas, primarily through the influence of Paul. Thus, began the religion called Christianity, which was only loosely based on the words of Jesus. The half of his sayings that were eliminated were partially replaced by the inclusion of Old Testament, or Jewish beliefs. However, the wisdom of Jesus had little to do with the Ten Commandments or the idea of a “chosen people”. Jesus’s message was simply one of unconditional love and of personal divinity, that held everyone as divine. You love your enemy, because in truth you have no enemy. His teaching was at one with my teaching, as he was my teacher. However, historically, Christianity became the wolf in sheep’s clothing. The unconditional love and acceptance of Jesus transformed into a pattern of war and conquest.

Along came Mohammad and Islam, also tracing their roots to Judaism. Jesus was held as a prophet, but not as the son of God. On the one hand they were right; there is nothing special about Jesus over anyone else. What they missed, as did the Jews and the Christians, is that everyone else is as special as Jesus, that we are all sons and daughters of God. So, you had three different groups claiming to have the true knowledge of God, asserting ownership to the heart of their religion, Jerusalem. Over the years there has been a constant conflict over “the Holy Land”. When we talk about this dispute, we are not talking about all Jews, all Christians, and all Muslims. The clash is between those who could be called the fundamentalists of their respective religions. Fundamentalism results when fear is the basis of religious belief, rather than love. They are afraid of God and prostrate themselves before the divine. They do not respect themselves or see that they can find the truth within. Fundamentalists go to the sacred texts and claim them to be direct revelations of the thoughts of God. They try to find in the text the truth of what God wants them to do. They have the fear that the failure to do God’s bidding will bring His judgment down upon them.

Today, Jewish fundamentalism is responsible for many of the policies of the Israeli government and its refusal to provide a home for Islam in the Holy Land. Islamic fundamentalism is responsible for terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. Christian fundamentalism, which has a particularly strong influence on the government of the United States, accepts neither Judaism nor Islam as true religions. Even in Europe are found judgments about Islam and Judaism, seeing the former as intolerant and terroristic, and the latter as controlling international money. That is the situation as it appears to exist today.

I am speaking to you as neither a Jew, a Muslim, nor a Christian, but as a divine child of God, because that is all there is. If you look at these three religions, you will find that the majority of their followers are not fundamentalists. They are trying to find a place of unconditional love and acceptance through the tenets of their religion. They want people to take care of each other. We have just heard the Pope come to the United States with a message to share the wealth, to work to end the vast differences between the haves and the have-nots. This has always been the message of Muhammad, as it has been a tradition within Judaism.

All of this comes back around to and hinges on the teachings of Jesus. Yes, Jesus said to take care of the poor, but his deepest message is the one that is the key to the whole situation in the Middle East. This was to love your enemy, and in fact to see, in truth, that you have no enemy. He was talking about the concept of the “mirror” as I have shared with you on many occasions. What you judge in another is what you judge in yourself. It can be no other way. To bring peace to the Middle East you first find it in your heart to love every single person there unconditionally. Let go of your judgment. Let go of your belief that any child of God could be a victim – not the refugees, not those who are imprisoned or tortured or murdered, not those soldiers who have been physically or emotionally damaged. There are no victims here. The way you care for people is by seeing the divinity in them. When you see their divinity, you cannot see them as a victim. You don’t have to travel to the Middle East to accomplish this peace. At the same time, as you hold on to your judgments, you are feeding the fire there.

Drop all stereotyping. If you notice that you are having thoughts about a person because of their religion, let them go. Let your thoughts be about the individual, rather than the group they represent. Then, look into that individual’s heart and see who he or she is as a unique child of God. If you find that there is a part that you have difficulty loving unconditionally, that is the part of yourself that you judge. Do the work on yourself, not on them. This is how you bring peace to the world. You don’t have to leave your own living room. It is not about arguing with others or convincing them. If you hear prejudicial statements, notice if they upset you. If they do, the healing is to take place within you, not within the other. Use some process to move the energy. It can be the five-step process, Ho’oponopono, A Course in Miracles, or whatever works for you. There is no one way. The belief that there is one way leads to fundamentalism. If you think that your spiritual techniques are superior, you are feeding the flames in the Middle East. It is okay. All on earth is illusion anyway. However, you  will not experience your own ascension while holding feelings of superiority or inferiority.

Remember that it isn’t real. In the atrocities that you hear or read about, no souls were injured in the production of that movie. These are all divine, immortal, eternal children of God. There is no damage. The part of you that feels that there was damage is the place to begin your healing. It is the place within you that doubts your own divinity and what Jesus taught when he said, “This and more you shall do”. This and more than what Jesus did. Let the peace begin with you. Know that it is all perfect. It is all as it should be, exactly what you need in order to experience your personal divinity.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia 

What can help me to forgive?

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I have referred to mirrors off and on through the years. Those of you who have worked with me directly have heard me talk about them. Now it is time to give the subject some deep reflection (pause for laughter). Jesus spoke of mirrors. He said to remove the log in your own eye before judging another. He also said, ”judge not, lest ye be judged”. He had much more to say on the subject, but the writers of the New Testament didn’t know what to do with the information – they didn’t understand it – so it didn’t make the final cut.

We can begin by saying that everything that is physical is not real. Your ego is telling you that what you see and touch is real, but it is not. That which is real exists forever. Everything that is physical is temporary. Where does the physical come from? It comes from you. You have created it. When I say you, I am talking to you, the individual reading these words. Everything, without limit, that exists in the material realm is your creation. God has nothing directly to do with it. God created you. You created the earth. This is your game. Again, I am talking to you specifically, not people in general. You have the illusion that everybody is experiencing the same physical ”reality”, but if you check out any of your stories with anybody else who was ”there”, the tales don’t completely line up. If your political affiliation differs, they may not line up at all. No two people ever experience the same thing. You each have your own illusions. There are places where there is a great agreement in your stories; we call this mass consciousness. But there are also areas of great disagreement about the illusion. However, the ego believes that it is all reality rather than illusion.

The ego asks what the purpose of all this is if it is not real. It doesn’t want to hear an answer, and there is no answer that would satisfy, because the answer is, ”None”. If your ego were to fully accept the meaninglessness of your physical experience it would have to accept that it, also, has no purpose and it would disappear. All the ego does is to keep you believing in your separation from God and from your divinity. The ego cannot exist in the space of unconditional love. When you are in a permanent state of unconditional love, all you do is channel your divinity. Your ego stays out of the way. It disappears. You continue to operate in the physical realm, but you don’t take it seriously. You recognize that it is not real. What can possibly upset you if nothing is real? Instead the world becomes a place where your divinity plays. Your divinity created this illusion as a tool for your ascension, not for you to be fooled into taking it seriously. When you absolutely realize that it is not real, that everything physical is an illusion – you will have realized your ascension.

But we came here to talk about mirrors. If you wish to go the shortest distance or take the least time to experience your divinity and release your ego, it is quite productive to work with the concept of mirrors. It goes like this. Everything that exists in your physical world, including yourself, is your creation. Your ego thinks everything and everyone else is separate from you. They are not. Their physicality is your creation, as yours is theirs – but that is none of your business. When you observe another’s actions, what you see is you, not them. That’s all you can see. Everything you see around you is you. You are the creator. If you find yourself in judgment of someone’s actions, it is yourself you are judging. I can hear your ego at work already saying, ”What do you mean! I would never kill someone, or start a war, or kick someone when they are down. I would never do that.” Yes, you would. In fact, you have already done it – though perhaps it was in a previous life – and you haven’t forgiven yourself.  You are still judging yourself. In fact, you can’t even look to see it within yourself because you have so much judgment. So, you produce a ”scapegoat”. You create somebody else to commit the action you can’t forgive in yourself. The game the ego plays is to judge others instead of judging yourself. When you understand that, you know there is not even a reason to forgive, let alone to judge anyone else. They are simply doing as you have bid them. In fact, what you can do is to bow down to that person and thank them for showing you what you were unable to see in yourself. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Now you can forgive it in yourself. Whatever you did had no permanent effect. Nothing real was hurt because nothing real can be hurt. There is nothing to forgive.

Once you have taken ownership of the action you have judged in another, do whatever you can to forgive yourself, starting with having the intention to do so. The five-step process is always helpful here. When you realize that nobody has ever done a thing to you, that it has always been your creation and that, beyond that, none of it matters – you are realizing the truth of who you are. None of it matters. All that matters is love. It is that simple. This is what the mirror is about. It doesn’t matter if you see something, hear about it, or read about it. It doesn’t matter if it is ”truth” or fiction, whether you see it on TV or in a movie, or read about it in a novel. It makes no difference. Wherever you find your mirror, your job is to let go of the outwardly directed judgment and to acknowledge that this is where you judge yourself. This is where you have the illusion of guilt and separation from God, even though God never experiences any separation or judgment. Never. It’s not in the job description. God is unconditional love and unlimited creativity. That’s it.

Out of your unlimited creativity you have manifested this physical illusion and placed yourself in it in such a way that you have forgotten who you are. It’s a maze and you have been trying to find your way out of it. The way out is to realize there is no maze. Use your mirrors to get out. See where your illusions lie. Forgive yourself. Find love and laugh a lot. The illusion is pretty funny when you stop thinking about it.

God Blesses You,
 
Sanhia 

Do I have to choose between spirituality and sexuality?

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There are many people who would never put spirituality and sexuality in the same sentence unless they were talking of contrasts or differences, but certainly not when speaking about any commonality of energy. We wish to speak today about the spirituality of sexuality. Before we begin, it would be helpful if you would go back and read Is it helpful to honor the feminine energy?

What we call spiritual energy deals with the communication between the physical world and the divine. We could say that spirituality is an attempt by people to connect with their divine side. From the perspective of your eternal or higher self, which does not deal with the physical realm, there would be no focus on spirituality. It would be like fish talking about water. That is the ”isness” of eternal existence. The divine nature is simply what is. Spirituality as a specific topic is only of interest to those aspects in a physical body. It is only for those who have forgotten their eternal natures. One belief that has evolved over time is that the only way to realize your divinity is to deny your physicality. Many religions have picked up on this and have chosen to forbid certain physical actions. They might say that you can’t eat certain foods, that you shouldn’t enjoy yourself too much, or that you shouldn’t seek after physical pleasure. The ultimate admonitions are strictures against human sexuality.

The belief of those who wish to deny the fleshly pleasures is that the physical is evil and only the spiritual is good. From that point of view there can just be pain and suffering in the physical. The only salvation is in death. This leads to a great confusion. Why even be born? Why come into this evil physical existence? Who has created this wickedness? If it is God who has created the physical, what possible reason could God have for creating evil?  It’s perplexing. From this perspective, the greatest evil of all is sexuality. Without sexuality, no more beings are introduced into this hell. This ultimate spiritual direction was expressed by the Shakers who eliminated sex entirely. Though other religions have not gone that far, most have judgments and restrictions around sexual energy. The more fundamentalist a religion is, that is, the more they believe in a masculine and/or judging God, the more censure and condemnation there is about sexuality. Because it is the women who bring the new beings into the physical world, there is more judgment directed at them.

Let us look at what this sexuality is really about. When we let go of judgment – of thoughts of right and wrong or good and evil – and we accept the perfection and purpose in everything, what is the function of sexuality? The sensual experience has a great potential to open you up to your own divinity. Erotic encounters allow you to absolutely let go of everything that is not present and sense the energy within the physical form of your body. It allows you to feel unconditional love and ecstasy. Sexuality can help you on the way to realizing your ascension, but no amount of sex will guarantee the knowingness of your divinity or your ascension. Of course, also, no amount of judging or harnessing your sexual nature will lead you to the knowing of your true self, either.

What we encourage first of all is that you let go of whatever judgments you may have about your sexuality. Become aware of issues of control, whether it is your domination of others or your fear of being manipulated. Notice the places where you feel yourself to be a victim of sexuality. Feel that energy in your body and use the five-step process to transform it into love. Choose the story you wish to have about your sexual nature in the fourth step. Embrace your sexuality as a full part of your divinity. One of the reasons that you chose to create this physical universe and to come into your body was to deal with sexuality.

Some of you have had incarnations where the main purpose was to experience as much sexual energy as you could. In other lifetimes, you have experimented with having no sexual activity to see what that was like. There is no goodness or badness about this. You are free to choose whatever you want. I am not telling you how much sex you are to have. It is your spiritual heart that will tell you that. It is to that place where you are coming from love rather than fear that you wish to listen. You will know that you are honoring the truth for you when you realize that you are free of any judgment for how others conduct their sexual lives. There is no one way to be around sex. The ”one truth” idea leads to the belief in right and wrong. The one truth is that you are divine, infinitely loving, and creative, and that you are absolutely unique as an immortal divine being. You are to express your divinity and your uniqueness through a physical vehicle by having physical events. To deny your sexuality is to deny your spirituality.

As you give yourself permission to fully explore your sexuality, you may tap into vast reservoirs of fear that have been lodged in your body. That is a wonderful thing to discover. You have been carrying that energy in your body for lifetimes. There is nothing more intertwined with judgment on this planet than sexuality. Therefore, there is nothing with greater potential to set you free than is your healing around sexuality. Confront those fears. Find your divinity. Whatever stories you have in your mind that great spiritual leaders were non-sexual is an illusion. These stories are passed down by those with their own sexual issues. Sexuality was a part of the spiritual process for Jesus, Buddha, and nearly every other ascended being. Please enjoy the rest of your trip.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia

Why is intention necessary?

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Many of you celebrate the birth of Jesus. There is a great deal of confusion about who Jesus was and what his significance is for us today. What Jesus came to show us and to demonstrate is our personal divinity, that we are children of God as he is. That is the message. It is one of resurrection, not of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. However, you hold this belief in suffering in your bodies. The crucifixion story was written down and passed on in its present form because that was the energy that mankind was holding 2000 years ago. Martyrdom could be accepted, but the divinity of people was not part of anybody’s story. It threatened all existing orders.

The picture of God that is held by many people today still has nothing to do with the essence of unconditional love and unlimited potential that is the divine creative force. We were made in the image of this God. What has happened, in the popularly accepted view, is that God has been created in the image of man – man in ignorance of the truth of his divinity. All the negative emotional energies that are held in a fear-based life are projected upon God – an angry, punishing, judging, jealous God.

We want to recall that there is one overriding message that Jesus came to teach, that we are divine. We are the power in our lives. We create everything that happens. How do we do this? Some of the truth was recorded. He said to ask and it will be given. You must ask. It comes from intention. This is what we want to talk about today. You created a planet of free will where you can choose anything that you want. You cannot unchoose the truth of your divinity, because that exists above and beyond this physical earth, without limit. Nothing can destroy you or another human soul. You have choice only over your experience here. Once you leave, the veil lifts and the emotional baggage you were carrying is gone. Here you have a choice. You can opt for fear or love. If your intention is to go with fear, your experience will justify your selection. Everything that happens to you will prove the correctness of your intention.

If you do not intend to claim your divinity, you will continue to deal with pain and suffering. Experiencing your divinity is not likely to happen accidentally. You begin with the intention. You must ask. But, simply asking without taking action can make for a very slow realization of your divinity, one that might not be fulfilled in your present incarnation. You have all of this fear energy in your body. You are carrying it with you from this and former lifetimes. It continues to manifest negative emotional experiences where you have depression, anger, hopelessness, jealousy, or fear of lack. It helps to have your aim be true and consistent.

It is not enough for your brain-mind to think that you are divine. There are many wonderful books out there about the spiritual nature. Reading them will not give you an experience of your oneness with God, nor will reading this message. Your timelessness is experienced as you transform the emotional energy that is held in your body, and your brain-mind is incapable of doing that. You cannot think your way out of this. Affirmations will not bring about the realization of your holy nature. You carry this energy in your body, not in your mind. Your brain-mind reacts to the emotional energy in your body in a slavish manner. It is an endless loop. You create situations out of the beliefs you hold. Then you have a negative emotional reaction to the situation, and your brain-mind jumps right in. It chooses blame and victim thinking. Your brain-mind may try to squelch the negative emotion in the body, but it fights a losing battle. In the end, it is not about changing your mind or thoughts. Intention is about taking action in alignment with Spirit.

You certainly want to act out of love and your true desire. In order to do this, let go of self judgment and move to unconditional acceptance. No matter what. The fear you are holding in your body refuses to allow you to do that. The ego is basically screaming out, ”Without me you are nothing. I am all that is protecting you from oblivion!” It is an impossible task to successfully argue with this fear that doesn’t believe in your divinity. You can only embrace it with love. What is required is an intention to not try to cover up, hide from, or change this energy of fear in your body. Have the intention to love it, to welcome it, and to simply watch it. If you observe it for long enough with acceptance, the fear transforms to love. It is that simple, because it always was love. That is all that is real. The fear is an illusion. We have just described the second step of the five-step process. This is what we call Spiritual Alchemy, the transforming of fear into love.

The commitment is to do the process with the fear-based emotions every time they come up – until they stop surfacing, until all that is left in your reaction to every situation is love. You will continue to create the situations that will trigger your fear until it is dissipated. Then those same situations, if they were to arise, would be answered only with love. At that point when your response to everything is love, the question may arise – ”has the world changed or is it my reaction that has altered?” The truth is that both have transformed. There is no difference. There is no separation.

If you feel that you are responding only with love, but you buy into others’ illusions – you see them as hopeless, sad, or victims – you are projecting your own fears. That energy is still present; the other person is simply holding up a mirror for you. Take the feelings they trigger for you. Silently thank the other for showing you what you are still holding andgo back to work on yourself. You cannot change the experience for anybody else. This is the planet of free choice. Everyone has the right to be a victim and to suffer – as you have the birthright to be fully free and claim your divinity. It is not your job to do this for anybody but you; but it is your job to see them as divine, no matter how they perceive themselves.

Christmas is a wonderful time to celebrate the birth of your awareness of your divinity. In the dark of the year you can shine your spiritual light on your own darkness. Allow it to be there and embrace it with your love. Every candle you light can be a symbolic gesture toward this commitment to loving your emotions. You are divine.

God Blesses You,

Sanhia