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

How can I learn to love myself?

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We have a question that came in response to the previous message on co-dependency. It is paraphrased here.

Many of our problems seem to come from not being loved as a child, and then we feel we have a black hole inside that needs to be filled. All spiritual answers I have heard are saying the same thing, that you must love yourself. But how to love yourself if we don’t know how to do it or even know what love is? How do we get to know if no one shows us? I’m sure the answer is true, but I feel a big blaming towards the one who doesn’t have love. My feeling is that the ones who have love in their life should show the others love. I have read “You shall love others as yourself” from Jesus. He didn’t say, “You have to love yourself first,” as I often hear from spiritual books and teachers. That has always made me wonder, feel, or sense that this interpretation can make people more egocentric.

Thank you for that wonderful question. Hopefully we will deal with all aspects of it. I wish to begin by saying that not many, but all your problems come from wanting your personal will to have precedence over the Will of God. They germinate from your wish for what is to be different than it is. What is is the will of God. It is God’s gift to you in this moment, the perfect thing for you. It is given with love because God is Love and could give nothing else. It can feel painful to you because your personal will wants something else, contrary to what God is providing. If you maintain that separation, you will suffer and feel unloved. This has nothing to do with how you were raised. Your perceptions about your upbringing have everything to do with your beliefs and projections, in your separation from the Divine Love of God. I will tell you the absolute truth about your parents. They, Divine Children of God, were doing the best that they could. Mostly they were choosing personal will over Divine Will as all humans do most of the time. If you want to know how to love, begin by thanking your parents for not only doing their best, but for playing the role that needed to be enacted in your life to best support your awakening process. Your work now is to go inside and see where you hold your parents in judgment; that place where you do not love them is where you also do not love yourself. Ask Spirit or God to assist you in receiving the gift that your parents were and are for you. Wherever you feel less than full acceptance, that is the work for you to do. To be a victim is to say to God that “You are wrong”. It is to choose your personal will over that of God. It is to state that you think you know better. It is to condemn yourself to misery and separation from feeling the Love of God. While believing that God didn’t give you what you wanted, it was you who resisted and didn’t want what God gave you. Give up your separation. Give up your personal will. Stop fighting what is, while wanting things to be different. This is what being in the now is. Have the intention to accept God’s Will for you. Trust what is here now, knowing that it is the highest and the best thing.

The question about loving yourself, the spiritual teaching…I can understand your confusion. How does one go about loving oneself? How do we define love? What is it? Other good questions. It is said that the truth that can be written or stated is not the whole truth. Words cannot explain what love is. We encourage you to approach these questions using the process of elimination. What is not love? We have already provided one enormous hint. Choosing personal will over Divine Will is not love. If God is Love, then not choosing God’s Will is not choosing love. This likely means that everything you have ever learned about love is probably untrue. If it is about getting your personal desires met, it is not about love. Look at all the goals you have for your personal self. Wanting to feel loved is a goal for your personal self. Stop striving for those things. Instead focus on receiving the love that God is giving you each moment of every day. See what that is. Reread the last message and see all the aspects of co-dependency that are mistaken for love. Anything you wish to receive from anybody else is not an expression of love. Those are expressions of lack, of neediness. God provides everything you need in the now. Looking elsewhere is a refusal to accept the Will of God.

You are not a hole that needs to be filled. You are a Divine Child of God, perfect as you are. The human condition is belief in separation from God. That is the biblical fall. It encompasses not feeling loved or loveable, of feeling guilty. This has nothing to do with your parents. It has to do with you. This is not blame. This is the human condition. You share it with everyone on the planet. Everyone’s job is to let go of their personal will and to follow the Will of God, to accept the perfection that God is presenting in the ever changing and morphing present. Whatever you are experiencing now that is not acceptable to you is your creation. That is not blame; it is how it is. If you pretend this is not your creation, you give away all your power. When you choose to want your will to rule, you create these painful experiences to appear to be real. Use your power by surrendering it to God instead of pretending to be a victim. To say that others who have love should share it with you is an expression of victimhood, of co-dependency. You are saying that you need somebody else to do this work for you, but they cannot do that. You are in charge of your experience, not them. If they could control your life by determining whether to give you love, you certainly would be a helpless victim. Fortunately, this is not the case.

Nobody can show you love because others act as your mirror. If you are not loving yourself, if you are not accepting yourself as you are right now, then you will not find that love reflected at you from others. Oh, you might bask in it for a while, but the feeling of being loved won’t stick. To ask for others to show you love is not a realistic request. If another is living in love, they can only spread that love to everyone else on the planet. This is not even a choice. If others are not in such a space, they have nothing to give. In either case, the effect on the one who feels unloved will be nil. So, to ask for others to share love with you is a futile gesture. That can only start with you. Then you can begin to receive what has always been there for you. The irony, of course, is that when you are capable of receiving love you have no need to do so. Again, give up your personal will’s need to be shown love, and surrender to the Will of God who will always rain love down upon you. Again, in the final analysis, only you can do this work. Nobody can do it for you. That may sound frightening; it may leave you feeling helpless, but ultimately it is the most empowering thing that you could hear. To feel love, you do not need anybody else to do anything or to act in any certain way toward the world. You have the absolute power here. You are not and cannot be a victim because it is all in your hands.

Let’s go back to the statement about spiritual teachers saying that the first thing is to love yourself and your fear that this might lead people to becoming more egocentric, just thinking about themselves. If one’s interpretation of loving yourself amounts to looking at what you want to have in your life and feeling that you deserve to have these desires met, then that is an endorsement for following personal will. That is not surrendering to the Will and Love of God. It could be said that it is an act of thinking you know better than God what is best for you. It is an act of resistance to God’s Love. It does not demonstrate trust; it is not an acceptance of the now. If that is how “loving oneself first” is interpreted, you have a good point. Now, looking at the biblical statement from Jesus which is often interpreted as, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” there arises a curious question. If you are not loving yourself, does that mean not to love others either? Perhaps this is not a statement of putting yourself or others in the supreme position, but one of expressing the Oneness between you. You are encouraged to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, not so that you have a technique for getting what you want, but as a statement of fact. As you do to others, you at the same time do to yourself. It can be no other way. There is no separation.

Your job, as was mentioned in the last message, is to take care of yourself. As you do that, there is no problem with having the intention to give loving service to all others around you, not because it is the right thing to do, but because it requires you to be in the now and to pay attention to loving energy. As you do this you become aware of every place where you hold a judgment about another. You own that judgment, realizing it is one you hold toward yourself. You work with that in yourself until you look out and see nothing but loving acceptance of the other. Truly loving others is quite an accomplishment that should keep you busy for a while. If you hold the thought that your feelings of love are other people’s responsibility, that you don’t know how to love yourself so they have to do it for you, to teach you how, then I am sorry to inform you that you will remain unhappy and feel unloved and separate from God for as long as you hold onto that belief. This is not blame. This is how it is. Fortunately, you have absolute choice here. You can choose to follow the Will of God instead of your personal will. You can choose to accept and face the now to see what that is. Ultimately, we are not talking about a question of love, particularly in terms of what most human’s understanding for that term is.  We are talking about will. Is it your will or is it God’s Will?

Let me bring this to a conclusion by reminding you about how you might go about surrendering to the Will of God while releasing your personal will. This is not a formula. This is not telling you the way to do this. This is not written in stone. These are simply pointers. Ultimately, your inner Divine Knowing will guide you. To begin with, you can notice two things. First observe your thoughts. Be aware of when the thoughts indicate that you don’t want things to be as they are or where you want the future to be different from the present. Notice when the thoughts are about being a victim of your past. As you are aware of these thoughts, do your best not to act on them. Just be conscious they are there in your present. Don’t allow your mind to follow long trains of thought along those tracks. These are thoughts from your personal will. Notice they are there and give them to God, to Spirit, to Me, to Someone Else. Holding on to the now as being unsatisfactory creates the illusion of separation from God, and therefore, from the Will of God. How it is right now is God’s gift to you; whether you understand it or not doesn’t matter. Your only task is to look at it as you release your judgmental thoughts. Try to really see what is here. Focus on that rather than on what is not here. As you become practiced in this you will notice that what is here is in constant motion, changing, morphing, reforming. Replace your thoughts about how it should be or about what is missing with your awareness of what it is.

I said there would be two things and that was the first. Secondly, notice that you might be having emotional reactions to what is in your now, both connected to the noticing of what is happening and to your thoughts. These feelings are your reactions to your beliefs in separation. You are reacting to what isn’t rather than to what is. Notice those feelings and stay as present as you can with them. If your mind wants to rationalize the feelings as being caused by this or that or feeling victim to whatever this or that is, notice and let the thoughts go. Whatever your mind is focusing on as a cause is not here now. If a cause should be here in your now, then action might be appropriate, but usually it isn’t present. A car headed directly at you is in your now. Your parents are not likely here now, nor are world events you have read or heard about. What is here right now? Your feelings are here, so accept them. There is no need to act on them, just let them be present and release any need to change them or to judge yourself for having them. Simply experience them until they are no longer in your now. Wherever your feelings or your thoughts try to lead you, do your best not to follow. Stay with what is happening. It is that simple, though not necessarily easy. Your habit is to follow the ego driven personal will, but God is in the now.

God’s Love is in the now. God is within you. You are Divine. You will never experience that just because I am telling you who you are or should other people share that with you. If you are feeling separate from God and lack trust in the perfection of what is being brought to you, you will not likely experience your Divine Nature. When you don’t accept the now, you are expressing distrust in God and choosing your personal will over God’s. If you want to follow God’s will, stop! Stop following your own will. You do this through practice, by welcoming and saying thank you to whatever is there, and by fully accepting your feelings without trying to change them. You can do this. You are Love. You are Divine. As your Creator is, so are you. One and the same. Could not be different. The awareness of this arrives as you stop resisting God’s gifts, as you let go of efforts to try to change things or to make yourself better. That’s part of the reason that We say:

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Can you explain to us about co-dependency?

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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 can I see ego as perfect?

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In duality there is Spirit and there is ego. Most spiritual seekers label Spirit as good and ego as bad. In oneness there is no judgment; there is no comparison; there is no separation. We have spoken many times about accepting the perfection of the now. If your ego is speaking in the now and you wish to shut it up, to be rid of it, to be beyond it – are you accepting the now? Everything comes from the Divine. Notice that “everything” is in bold, italicized, and underlined. Everything comes from the Divine. Ego comes from the Divine. Spirit comes from the Divine. Everything is in perfection. Everything happens exactly as it should.  Everything is already written out, has already happened. You, the reader, believe that it is happening now and that any possible outcome could result from this present moment that is being experienced. You believe that what you choose to do or not do will make a difference in that outcome. You think that the moment is not perfect enough so you have to roll up your sleeves and get to work to make it more perfect. The mind says that ego is not part of the perfection and needs to go, that ego tells untruths and fills you with fear. Since everything comes from God, He apparently made a mistake here and it is your job to correct it. As I love to say, “Good luck with that”. Only ego could suggest that you can do God’s job better. Only ego can suggest that you should try to get rid of ego. What you resist persists. The ego may be many things, but it is no dummy; it is not self-destructive.

So, let’s turn it around and accept the perfection of ego’s presence in the now, that its pronouncements are exactly what you should be hearing. I could just leave things at that; leave you to meditate on it, and call it a day. The last few messages have been rather long and we each deserve a break. But….I’m going to play with this a little longer. The only reason that you are able to hear the voice of ego is that part of you believes it is speaking the truth. You suspect there are some things you need to fear and that you have to protect yourself, defend yourself, attack, blame. Again, ego can only speak these things in your ear if a part of you believes they are true. One of the great ironies – and I love irony, which is perhaps all there is in duality where opposites exist at the same time – is that in duality you can’t have Spirit without ego. Spirit indicates where home is and ego reminds you of why you are both terrified of and ill-equipped for going there. If you listen carefully to Spirit you will hear that there is nowhere to go; you are home now. Ego screams out, “The hell with that! This doesn’t feel like home.” It then proceeds to reel off a litany of all the characteristics that your true home should have; it should be a heavenly place where there are none of the negatives, only the positives. The ego promises that one day if you work hard enough, you will get there. Other days in despair it cries out that you will never make it; it’s hopeless.

Your mind might ask why God would create such a thing as ego which fills you with such confusion, untruth, and suffering. Why does God want you to experience doubt and fear? One of the ironies is that at the same time that God has arranged everything and it is all fixed in the illusion of time, you are the God that has done this. It reminds me of the old questions, “If God is all powerful can He create a rock so heavy that even He can’t pick it up?” So here you sit, the Child of God, not knowing who you are. You are here for no other purpose than remembering that you are the Child of God, but you have absolutely forgotten it. If someone were to suggest that truth to you, you would not believe them and would probably shove them away, at least figuratively. You believe that you are something small and inferior and sinful and deserving of punishment. Sometimes you try to convince yourself that you are more than that. This whole argument is ego arguing with ego. But this is the thing…without the ego you will never find your way home. Ego is there as a nearly constant reminder of what separates you from the truth. Ego isn’t responsible for that; you are doing it. The truth of you is pretending to be the untruth of you. Ego has this wonderful job of reminding you of what you are doing to yourself, so that you can see it and feel it. Of course most of what ego says is false, what it tells you to fear is actually powerless. Yet, a small or big part of you buys the ego story and is convinced that it is up to you to take the bull by the horns and change yourself and/or the world so that the worst doesn’t happen. It’s just like in the movies; you can’t have an exciting show without a good bad guy or bad girl or both. You can’t have a hero without a villain. Jesus had to have the devil tempting him.

You can’t wake up without ego. Your job is not to make an enemy of ego, to try to blame or get rid of it in order to live in an egoless state. Welcome it. Listen to what ego has to say. These are the untruths you believe that are standing in your way. To banish the voice of ego is to shoot the messenger. It doesn’t change the message. Instead of asking for Spirit’s support in offing the messenger, listen to what ego is telling you. If what it tells you fills you with fear or other strong emotions, go right into them. Face them. If you suspect there might be truth in what it is saying, then look at it. Investigate the thoughts. Are they really true? I can tell you until I am blue in the face, though I have neither a face nor a color, that everything ego tells you is a lie and everything you are afraid of isn’t real. However that will do you no good at all. It is not for you to put your trust in me, but to do the work yourself. Ego has brought you your assignments, now it is time for you to get down to work. As you are facing fears and looking to see what is really true, ego is going to do everything possible to stay in the picture. When you have found that there is nothing to fear and you are certain that ego thoughts are untrue, there is little space for ego to come in. Even then you can welcome in whatever openings ego finds because they represent places that distract you from being fully present.

Love the ego. Welcome it into your life and allow it to do its special job. This does not mean that you allow your mind to go crazy following the path ego has laid out for you. Hear what ego is saying without following, without choosing to act as it would have you do. A politician was once quoted as saying, “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.” Of course ego is not your enemy, it is your teacher. We are now complete with this message. If the ego is in your now, welcome that perfection and listen. See what you fear may be true so that you can let go of those false truths. If you aren’t aware of their presence, you cannot let them go. This is the invaluable service of ego. We may know how this will all play out, but you don’t and cannot. It is much more fun to be in the movie when you don’t know, and are simply experiencing the excitement of life in the now.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

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

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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

Is the illusion a mistake?

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This time there is no easy quick answer to this question that wouldn’t require a lot of explanation. We need to take a good look at where this question comes from. We have talked a long time over many messages about how what is in the physical world, in the sensed universe, is an illusion. It is not real; nothing is truly happening. As long as you consider the physical to be real, you invest it with a power and feel yourself to be controlled and victim to this universe, but that has things reversed. The physical universe as it appears to exist is created from your inside, though you may not be in conscious awareness or control of this. Your ignorance does not change the fact, any more than the truth is not altered by your belief or disbelief in it.

Let’s take a step back also for those of you who have been students of A Course in Miracles, which is a wonderful teaching, chock full of valuable thoughts. Like all teachings in the physical world, it is not the truth; it simply points. When people read ACIM, it can easily be used to justify their own confusion and project that into the Course and say, “But the Course says this…” One of the things that many people do in looking at the Course, including some of its teachers, is to hold onto a belief something like the following: “We allowed a single mad belief to enter our minds that we could create something separate from God and so we dreamed up the universe. It is not real; it just exists in our minds. God knows nothing about this imagined separation. It was a mistake.” Let’s start by looking at those two thoughts. If the universe was created by a mad crazy idea, this might suggest that it was all a mistake. My question is, “Really?” This proposes that God, Who is all loving, all knowing, all powerful, could somehow have something going on behind his back that he is oblivious of. Is that a little bit crazy? Does that sound like Oneness? God is everything and all is God except for…well, this universe. He is then unaware that His Divine Son is living in self-created hell? This sounds like a limited God. God can do anything except create a physical universe. There is a little confusion going on here. This leads to the thought that God has nothing to do with this universe, that it is your job to recognize your mistake and to leave this evil place and return to God. How alone, how separate that feels.

We also have the voice that asks why, if there is a God, He allows such evil to exist on the earth. This other “Course” voice responds that God doesn’t permit evil; he knows nothing about it. Now it appears we are stuck having either a malevolent God or an incompetent God. Let’s continue. This is getting more confusing all of the time. If God is aware of all that transpires in the illusion, how can a loving God allow all the atrocities that appear to transpire here in the universe? Why is there dishonesty, hatefulness, jealousy, anger, cruelty, violence, disease, and death? Why hangnails, God? Why? Why? If the universe is just a mistake then everything in it would also logically be a mistake. Did God make an enormous mistake here, whether it was a sin of commission or a sin of omission? Let us, for the moment, take the point of view that by definition God is Oneness, excluding nothing, therefore including the illusion. Remember that we are just playing with words here. We are not trying to prove anything because nothing can be proved. The truth simply is. We are just playing with these different thoughts that might be going through the mind. We play with the thought that our definition of God would make it impossible for Him to be unaware of the world. If God is intentional with the world and God is infallible, then God could not have created the world as a mistake. If it is all One how can anything be wrong? Everything simply is. There is, therefore, an absolute purpose in you being in physicality.

The question then becomes that if it is a given that God created the world and it is also a given that God cannot make a mistake, why did God create this thing? This is a place where I am not going to pretend to give an answer. Go inside and see what your guidance tells you. Nonetheless, I will say some things. For some reason, humans find themselves believing that they are in this illusion and that it is real and their bodies are real. As long as those beliefs are held they will experience pain and suffering. Whatever goals they set, whatever they try to achieve in order to break out of this – they fail at. The peace and happiness they desire is elusive, it is not realized. Nothing in the physical world can fulfill that hope. Only awakening can lead toward such a fulfillment. Nothing but the realization that everything is an  illusion can bring about peace.

As demonstrated by Jesus, and recently celebrated in the Christian churches, all will eventually ascend, will return to the Oneness. However, that doesn’t answer the question of why you are experiencing being here. Why are you going through all of this? I’m going to go back a little on my word, because I get to do that since they never communicate the truth. I’m not going to explain why God allowed this to happen, but I’m going to give some possibilities to play with, while not promising that they have any truth to them. In the Oneness of God, of Divinity, there is simply the Oneness. There is no place to express the Oneness, no place to express the Love. In order for the Love to be expressed, there must be a game played where duality appears to happen. There must be an other to love and feel loved by. So, you exist within that dream of duality as what feels like a separated being. Now the potential exists for God to express love to God and God to receive love from God. Without time, without physicalness there is no experience. Nothing happens. So, God wakes up one day, and of course there is no day because there is no time and there is no waking up because there is no sleeping, and says I want to experience myself today.

Perhaps as you are reading this it is, as Michael and Ulla are now experiencing, a beautiful warm, sunny spring day, perhaps with a cat sitting nearby looking out at all of it. The new growth smells of spring are present along with the explosion of colors from the newly risen flowers, and a greening that seems to appear everywhere. In the Oneness none of this exists. For God to experience these sensations as well as to have feelings, there must be the illusion of separation. There must be an observer as well as an observed. Duality serves this purpose admirably. Now God can have good sex. I’m just joking with you…a little bit. We are just having fun with this now. We can say with absolute certainty, this illusion is no mistake. There is clear purpose in everything, even though you might leave this body and never have an inkling of what it might be. However, as you surrender your ego to Spirit and you hear the Divine guidance within you, it will direct you as to how to spend the physical time. To the degree that you can give up your thoughts that you know better than Spirit or God about what will bring you happiness, about how to spend your time and energy, you will find yourself doing exactly as you want; you will find that your desires are absolutely aligned with God.

Let’s play this game in another way. What is more beautiful to the ear, the sound of a wonderful singing voice or that same voice with another in harmony with it? And maybe there is a third in harmony to them and a fourth in counterpoint coming in against the flow? Feel all the energy moving around that. How can there be harmony created without separation, without the physicality of sound waves and ears? What if God simply wanted to have television and you are the programming? God is just sitting there with his clicker enjoying the show. How about a comedy now? How about a drama? Click. Click. With your imagination you can create endless possibilities, knowing you are likely nowhere near the truth of it. But it can be fun, and doesn’t God like to have fun?

Did God put everyone to sleep in order that they could wake up? Is it like a game, like hide-and-go-seek? Everyone go hide and one by one We will find all of you. How much fun that was for you as a child! Is God playing that game? Again, I don’t know. God requires no justification or explanation. We know that whatever might appear to be imperfect in the illusion is indeed perfect. Whatever looks like a mistake is precisely how it should be. Whatever thoughts you have that things are not right keep you trapped in hell. When you are able to accept the perfection of everything happening in this illusion, you can experience heaven on earth. It is heaven because you are One with God, not because you have remade the earth according to your separated belief of how it should be. Again, we lovingly remind you that you haven’t got a clue. What would the purpose be in there being no value in something you are experiencing with your physical senses? Why would God co-create something with you that served no purpose? Believing this is possible can lead one into places of helplessness and despair. The value may not be the value you would attach to it. I can point out to you that some of the things that you have felt to have been the worst happenings that could befall you have turned out to be among the most valuable gifts you have ever received. They have helped you release untruth, fear, and confusion. Those events that don’t feel that way to you are simply gifts you have received that remain unopened. To complete that awakening journey (which requires you to go nowhere) nothing can remain in your thoughts as being a mistake. Instead you trust absolutely; you listen to that inner voice, whether you call it Spirit, God, the Divine Presence, Allah, Jehovah, Jesus, or Sanhia; you surrender absolutely to it and trust that it always has the perfect guidance for you. When you ask for support, it is brought to you in the most powerful and direct way possible.

In conclusion, there is a short answer. The answer is no. The illusion is not a mistake. There are no mistakes. It is all perfection. It is as it is preordained to be. You can choose to live in the loving trust of that perfection, or not. Even if you listen to your ego instead of to Spirit, it is not a mistake. You will realize the perfection at some point, no matter what you choose. You can choose it now. Finally, we offer this prayer: “Spirit, help me accept the perfection of the now”.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

How will I be able to tell that I am awake?

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It is fun to be back to a question this month. The short answer to this query is that you won’t be able to. You won’t be able to tell if you are awake. Now, perhaps you have at least figuratively thrown your arms in the air and are screaming, “What now? If I can never know…..what meaning is left?” To further muddy the water We will add a corollary. If someone comes up to you, or you are reading what they have written, and they tell you they are awake, or enlightened, or ascended – walk, don’t run, quietly but quickly in the opposite direction. Why do We say this? To say that “I am awake” is a statement of separation. Who is this I? If one were awake, there would be no more identity for them as “I”. Though they might use the name they have been known by, it would mean nothing to them.

One who is awake would see that awakeness or Divinity in everyone, regardless of whether the “others” could see it themselves. In that sense to say “I am awake” is perhaps to really express “I am awake and you’re not. Nanny, nanny, boo-boo.” It is creating a separation, which is not the expression of awakeness. This smells just a little bit like having an ego attachment, superiority. Perhaps they want to keep you as a student so they can hold an identity as a teacher. If somebody claims to be a teacher who can teach you and bring you to enlightenment, turn around and quietly, but quickly, walk in the opposite direction. This is not your teacher. This is not to say that you cannot have a teacher. I speak to you not as a teacher; I speak directly to the awakened you who knows who you are. That true you recognizes truth. It is not by following me or anyone else who is providing information or pointers that you experience your awakening. That you will experience yourself in your own way. You will experience through focusing inwardly, not on outer examples, however helpful these might be. If in this process you think that you are now awake, keep going. You are not there yet. If you are still experiencing an I, a you, and a them, there is still separation.

You might think that I am now saying that there is more work for you to do. You don’t work your way to awakening. It might be more accurate to say that you unwork your way. Awakening is noticed after you have let go of every false belief you have. As long as you hold on to having to work at that, you are holding on to a belief. If this sounds like a Catch-22, that’s because it is. Remember that the truth that can be explained is not the whole truth. So you work at not working. You believe in letting go of beliefs. You stop searching for what you most want to find. You will know that you are there when you realize there is no you there. If you are thinking in terms of having an “I”, notice that and go on to your next thought. You are still holding on to a separate identity. When you try to do something, you are reinforcing a you who is trying to change your experience in the illusion. Every thought in duality has its opposite. “I am awake” is opposed by “I am still asleep”.

There is no place to start other than with intention. Eventually the intention gets lost. I cannot tell you how this process will work for you. You will find direction as you seek different guidance, different pointers from different places, and play with them. If your life is consumed with this process of letting go of process, then perhaps you will get lucky one day. I can offer a few pointers. There have been a number of them in the last few messages. Notice what is coming in to your mind. While being aware of your thoughts, notice that you have very little control here. Most of your thoughts appear, unchosen. Suddenly they are there. Where did that thought come from? The illusion is that you are the creator of your thoughts, which would make your thoughts a product of separation. But if you are the generator of your thoughts, you should have absolute power over determining the next one. Play with that and find out how helpless you are to control your next thought. As your body is being breathed, your mind is being thought. You don’t know where they are emanating from. You think you are thinking thoughts, but the thoughts are thinking you. Life is living you. Rather than taking ownership of these thoughts and taking on the fool’s task of trying to herd them, just notice them fly by. Notice the thought that is now in your mind and then say, “Next, please”. Let it come. Look at it and say, “Next, please”. And so on. Give the thoughts no particular value; don’t judge or evaluate them; just watch them pass by like clouds on a windy day. The true you is the noticer of the thoughts, not the thinker of the thoughts.

The you that believes it has a separate identity – that exists, that has a name and a body separate from other bodies – is living in an illusion, in a fairyland. That you thinks it has to do something, go somewhere, or know something to become awakened. It believes it is separate from its awakened self. And of course you will be right, because that will be your experience. That’s why following any particular practice, discipline, or teaching will help you to stay asleep. Your awakened self is not somewhere else. Your awakened experience is not something else. It is right here, right now. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Nothing to believe. No one to show you the way. It all comes back to the noticer and the noticing. See what is here. Accept whatever thoughts come. Nothing to change. Nothing to improve on. Nothing to figure out.

Meanwhile, here is a game you can play. It is not the game. It is not the path to awakening. It is not a must or a should. It can simply help you to notice the separate self you think you are, that is…..to separate you from your separate self. The irony of words is just too much. You can play this game for any period of time. You can try it for a minute, for five minutes, for a day, for a week, for ever. It doesn’t matter. Just have fun with it, or struggle. It doesn’t matter. Here is the game. You eliminate in your thinking and conversation all first person pronouns. There is to be no I, me, my, mine, myself, Instead refer to self in the third person. Use he/she, her/him, his/hers, or herself/himself. You can also identify self with a name. Instead of saying “I am happy”, say “Emma (supply your first name) is happy”. Little kids often do that: “Johnny thirsty”. Practice being in the third person. This helps to take away the direct identity and ownership of this personality. It helps one to be the observer rather than the observed. It is as if you are talking about someone else, a place where you already have separation. Now you can begin to feel a separation from your ego identity. It can help you to loosen those chains. No guarantees here. It’s just a game. If it does cause you to awaken, write and let us know. Of course we’ll know you are not telling the truth. If you wonder how we will know that, please return to the first few sentences above. The game might best be played when you are alone with your thoughts, but if you have others who are willing to play along – go for it. Embark on a third person diet, abstaining from the first person.

There is no randomness to the thoughts that come to you, no randomness to anything that appears to you in the illusion. Everything is scripted and planned out. Everything is in perfection. Everything is there to support the awakening process, or more precisely, the awareness of the awakened state. Where do the thoughts come from? They come from Spirit, from Divinity, from the Awakened Self. Whatever you choose to do with the thoughts is also scripted. Sometimes you have to go down a road and beat your head against the wall for a while before you can realize that is not the way. You are guided to take these steps, though your separated mind likely believes the guidance had a different purpose and may be disappointed by the destination you find yourself arriving at. Your goals are not realized. The Divine purpose is realized. There is always method in the madness. What you might hold as a failure is actually a success at eliminating another untruth from your mind. The experience was necessary to the letting go process. As you become more aware of the workings of Divinity, you will find it easier to accept the perfection of what is here and to give up the false beliefs – remember, all beliefs are false.

We have been filling Michael’s head with thoughts since he was young. Some he resisted, some he pondered over, and some he acted on. None of those choices is the correct one. Whatever you do is the perfect response. It was what We knew you would do. Most of these thoughts are not designed to trigger an immediate awakening to the total knowing that it is all an illusion and the separate you doesn’t exist, though one of them will do that. The thought you are having now will probably just lead you to the next step. The number of steps is finite. So, pay attention to your thought, and then say, “Next, please”. At some point it may be obvious that there is nobody there thinking those thoughts. You will be awake, but there will be nobody there to notice. There is just life living life – the eternal joy of the moment, no matter what it is filled with. There might be pain or a flash of anger. Like everything, this will be present and then leave. That is the nature of the illusion. Nothing lasts, unless you make up a story about it and hold on to that. The awakened you won’t do that. There is nobody there to hold on. There is just the observer, experiencing what is there. Immediately that is replaced by something else. Zero attention span. “Next, please”.

So, We have a bonus for you this time with two games you can play. First is the third person diet and second is the “Next, please” game. Enjoy! Then let go. Perhaps in mid-game you notice nobody there playing the game and just laugh. Nothing left to do. Nowhere to go. No responsibility. No weight on no shoulders. No job. No purpose. As the man sang…there is “nothing to do but today”.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

What if there is no question?

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If there was an order of difficulty in the illusion, which of course there isn’t, this would be a slam dunk set-up.  This absolutely is the easiest question to answer. If there is no question, there is no answer. So, we will have an answerless message. All questions come from the ego mind, from separation. They come from the mind that is trying to figure out what to do in order to awaken. It wonders what practice it should be following. It wonders how to handle certain situations. It wonders what stands in the way of being fully awake. Questions are the realm of the seeker. A self-identified seeker will always be a seeker. To say that you are seeking is to say that you are not awake. That can never change as long as you remain identified as such. In the awakened state there are no questions, except perhaps, “What’s for lunch?” Obviously, therefore, there are no answers.

Sanhia, you might be thinking, are you saying that we should stop asking questions? No, I won’t ever tell you what to do or what not to do. Try to stop asking questions. See what success you can have there. My guess is that you will find it difficult to accomplish. You might sustain a question-less state for a short period of time. But after, say, thirty seconds – a little humor here – you will likely find questions popping back into your mind. The mind that can ask these questions, wonder about them, and then search for answers is the mind that believes in the reality of the separation. It thinks that it has to figure out how to cross this chasm that separates it from its awakened self. How does one get back home? The answer is that you can’t get back home because you never left. Just click your heels together three times, Dorothy. [1]

You notice yourself having questions. The mind wants to believe there is information that will free it. Information only imprisons the mind. The less you know the closer to truth you are. If you reach the point of knowing nothing, you may be in touch with absolute truth, though you would be at an absolute loss as to how you might explain it. Meanwhile, you are probably not going to stop having questions. Notice that you are entertaining a question, but don’t make a conscious choice to look for an answer. Just notice that the questions are there and then ignore them. Were you ever told when you were a child that if you just ignore the kids who are teasing you, they will stop?  Try that with the questions. They may eventually disappear.

So, you may be thinking – if you are already home, though it doesn’t feel like you are and if asking questions or accumulating knowledge will never get you to the point of that awareness – what the hell are you supposed to do? Far be it from me to state the obvious, but you just asked a question. Any answer I might give you to this question could not be the truth. There can be “pointers”, thoughts that can point toward the truth, but nothing that explains to you what you want to hear. Give no energy to your questions. Give no energy to possible answers that might come to you, other than a quick listen and then letting go – a catch and release routine with your insights. Instead, notice what is here now.

You wake up in the morning – some of you that is, certainly not you rock stars – and everything around you is new; it has never happened before. Everything! This is the only day like this that you will ever experience. Notice with your senses all that surrounds you. Experience it. Enjoy it. Don’t think about it. That last one is a toughie. Don’t think about a monkey sitting in a red upholstered chair eating a banana split with a cherry on top. It’s hard not to think about an idea that has come into your head, particularly when it is dangled in front of you. Every thought that you have about everything you experience around you, as you are waking up in the morning, is not about what’s there; it’s about a memory you have around your experience. Notice that; let it go; and be in the now with what is present. What you are now sensing, you have never sensed before. The memory may bear similarities, but it stands in the way of noticing the uniqueness of now. Even these recollections are not really from the past; they are happening now. You are not traveling back in time; you are having a present time thought. Whatever memories or sensations that you experience are not right or wrong; they are not good or bad. They simply are, and they are happening now. If you start thinking about them, you are no longer aware of what is happening now. You will be missing the brand-newness of this moment. Everything is unique. Nothing repeats. I will repeat that. Nothing repeats. Words are so much fun to play with, especially when you are aware that they truly don’t mean anything. When you laugh, an invaluable and absolutely unexplainable event is taking place. We are putting this message into written words, which you are reading now. If you come back to this message tomorrow, you will not have the same experience of it. You will encounter different thoughts, feelings, and reactions. It may seem like it is the first time you have read it. If you give yourself additional time, a month or more, it seems that you have never read this message before. You may find sentences you don’t remember seeing and have difficulty finding the one that most stood out to you. What is really true?

If you want a game to play while “waiting for Godot” – waiting to realize that you have always been awake – pay attention to everything around you. If you notice your mind bringing in past or future concerns, notice that is part of your now and refocus on what is here now. Your job is not to change how you are doing today; it’s to notice how you are doing it.

Now, let’s approach things from another direction. As you are observing everything, notice how miraculous it all is! There is this whole apparent world surrounding you, just as you were engulfed in another world in your dreams last night. The mind wants to say that that was a dream and this is real. Are you sure about that? Real or not it is a miracle. There is a bird chirping outside your window! What a miracle! Did you make that bird? It’s just there. It’s a gift from life for you. Do you need to understand what kind of bird it is or how it evolved, how it came into being in order to enjoy its presence? And how about you? This thing you think is you. We have often talked about how the body is not the truth of you, but without it how can you experience this illusion? Did you make this body? Do you know for certain how it came into existence?  You may have an idea, but are you sure that is the truth? Yet here are all these systems in operation. The heart keeps beating. Are you responsible for maintaining that? It just operates on its own. What a miracle! What a gift from life! Your breaths just keep happening without any need for you thinking of it. Imagine if forgetting to breathe would lead to death. What a pressure that would put on you! But, no, life takes care of all of that. It goes on and on. The body tells you when to eat. The earth provides food. The body transforms it into fuel and distributes that energy throughout the system. All you have to do is to avoid foods that might kill the body and garner satisfaction from those that are tasty. Life maintains the life-force so that you can be a player in the drama without any knowledge on your part of how all this is done. These miracles continue through every moment. No matter how learned a scientist you might be, you don’t have a clue how these miracles came to be, nor why. Where did this spark of life come from? Who is running the show here? Does it matter? Do you have to understand? Would that increase your ability to experience life in any way? Would it help you to be here now?

Instead of enjoying this absolute miracle of being here, your mind wants to be somewhere else, so that you can wake up (or be a rock star, etc.). It’s a little humorous. As life presents life, it also presents experience. Your mind thinks it has to figure out how to handle life, how to organize and direct it. The thought is that if you don’t stay on top of things, life is going to run you over like a truck crushing a squirrel in the road. Just as you haven’t a clue as to how to direct the body, you haven’t the slightest idea of how to direct the outer world. As it has with the body, life has it all taken care of. Life presents you with whatever is perfect for this moment. There is no need to figure anything out. All that is called for is paying attention. Notice what is happening right before your eyes. Be aware of what life is bringing to you. Notice it; play with it. If a response or a decision seems to be called for, look inside and see what life suggests to you. It’s not rocket science. There are no traps or trick questions. There are no wrong choices. Questioning is looking outside of yourself for the answers. There is no need. Everything that the situation could possibly require is provided. Life is an IKEA project with all the parts included, just lacking written instructions. They are hard-wired within you.

The awakened person is an idiot with no idea of how to take care of the self. This one has no idea what is supposed to be done or who the self is. In the natural conscious awakened state, that self just lets life do what it is going to do. Life knows. Life does it whether you choose to flow with it or put up a fight. You are just along for the ride. Sit back and enjoy the show that life has prepared for you. Forget about the questions. Forget about where you are headed or about where you have been. Those thoughts have no importance for you. Everything necessary for your adventure is right here, right now. Notice what life is presenting. Do more than notice; play with it. Enjoy it. Be a child.

If you find yourself having no questions, embrace that empty space. How wonderful! It might mean that you are here now. If you do have a question, We have an answer for you. The answer is, “It doesn’t matter.” It’s a wonderful answer because it fits every question. One size fits all. That’s all folks. That’s the end and the beginning and the totality of the story. You are here. It’s a miracle. Enjoy your miracle.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

[1] For those who are unfamiliar with it, that reference comes from the film The Wizard of Oz.

How can I see the world through Spirit’s eyes?

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Often in the past, which of course does not exist, We have talked about the difference between how your ego perceives the world and how it is seen through the eyes of Spirit. You have been encouraged to learn how to do the latter. It is time to discuss this in a little different way. You are. You have no memory of not being nor can you conceive of a time in the future of not being. That is because you are. That is the truth of you. Anything you might add to that description is not the truth. You are not male/female, mother/father, worker/retiree, scholar/athlete, musician/artist, happy/sad, smart/stupid, brave/timid, or any other descriptor you might come up with. You simply are. Everything else is not the truth. When you look at the world and see yourself or others in specific roles, and evaluate, judge, set goals, or attempt to change what you perceive, that is all done through the eyes of your ego. Today let’s talk about looking through the eyes of Spirit.

The part of you that is notices what is there in front of you, whether that be the seeing of physical objects or people, or things perceived through the other senses of touch, smell, hearing, or taste. Using your senses, you notice everything around you. Nothing that crosses your awareness has any particular value of being better or worse than anything else, nor of having good or bad qualities. Whatever you perceive simply is a part of the world you are noticing. We will identify you as the noticer and whatever is perceived as the noticed. If you desire to see always through the eyes of Spirit, be the noticer. Simply notice what is in front of you. As soon as you label anything, whether it is through naming (for example calling something a chair), or qualifying (what a nice day), you have left behind noticing and are now evaluating, classifying, or separating. You are back to seeing through the eyes of your ego. You are now noticing the noticed instead of the noticer. Go back and notice the noticer. Be the noticer. Who is noticing?

That may feel like a very difficult thing to do because it is not your accustomed behavior. You haven’t been trained in this manner. Your education has always been to analyze and evaluate. When you begin those mental activities, you stop noticing. You make decisions as to the specific qualities the noticed appears to have. You decide that you know everything about that. Say you are sitting outside and watch a bird land on your lawn. Your ego mind wants to identify the species of bird, know what its habits are, be able to recognize its call, and find out about its diet, mating practices, and migration patterns. You may feel concerned that your cat will snare it or worry that it might have a hard time surviving winter, and think perhaps you should put out a feeder. The noticer, however, uses no names, does no thinking, and simply watches. This noticer has no thoughts that what is seen should be different in any way.

You may be thinking that this sounds like a pretty difficult thing to do. How can you possibly shut down this process that is always on, always busily at work judging, wanting to understand, and looking out for personal advantage?  Besides just being the noticer may sound boring. What kind of fun can you have just doing that, you might wonder, if you are not reacting to the world? Let me start with some motivation. If you think that you can ever truly understand anything, you are sadly confused. If you think you know something, you are wrong. If you think science has answers, science knows nothing. The individual you might consider to be the most brilliant person on the planet is an idiot. I am not picking on anybody here. Only the ego mind can “know”, and it is a mental cripple. Any truth that can be known by the noticer could never be explained in words. To know is to separate, divide, and label. As soon as you begin doing that you are seeing untruth, because the truth is all One, indivisible [under God for you Americans :)].

You say that you want to awaken. This can only be accomplished while looking through the eyes of the noticer. You notice through those eyes what is there. You can notice when you have stopped noticing the noticer and are now noticing the noticed. Notice that the ego has taken over again. The noticer has no horse in the race. It has no desire to change or reject any part of the illusion. It simply notices. Your ego thinks you have to accomplish something, go somewhere, or do something in order to awaken. You don’t awaken by doing something, but by stopping doing things. You stop paying attention to the noticed instead of the noticer. You stop placing attention and importance on the effect rather than the cause. Your job is to notice.  You are doing this all of the time. There is never a time when you are not noticing, but in the midst of your awareness you try to jump in and interact with and modify the noticed. You do this for whatever reason: to make it better, to protect yourself, to protect someone else, to deliver justice, to get revenge.  You stop noticing that you are noticing. Your job is now to notice what is transpiring, to notice that you are now identifying with the ego, with the noticed. Who is noticing that? Bring your focus back to the noticer. The ego mind wants to punish you for the transgression, to try to change and do better in the future. Notice that and go back to the noticer. You don’t need to change, Nothing is wrong. Just go back to noticing.

The noticer has no stories. They belong to the ego’s realm. The noticer is only aware of the now. You cannot see the past. Only the ego mind can hold stories from the past. In front of you is only the now. There is no future to be seen either. It is not in sight. Any projections of hopes or fears are only in the ego mind. The noticer is absolutely unaware of them. Neither past nor future can exist in the now.

How does one go about only noticing the noticer? The easiest way to explain this is to describe what is not part of the noticer; things that belong to the ego mind. The noticer does not have words: names, labels, thoughts or ideas. If you picture an infant looking at the world, lacking language, you can have some concept of what that might be like. You are simply observing what is there. There is no name for cat. There is no memory bank. There is no experience based expectation of how a “cat” might behave. You observe “black” but have no word for it. Those labels belong with the ego. The ego mind creates terms in order to separate. The ego may prefer black cats or, on the contrary, believe them to be bad luck. The noticer just sees what is there, thoughtlessly. Your ego mind will come in and attempt to interpret what is observed. No problem. Notice that. Notice that you are noticing the noticed instead of the noticer. If you judge yourself for analyzing, notice that that is also the ego. Notice that. If you are trying to understand, again the ego is taking over. Notice that. Think of a movie camera. All it does is record what is noticed. The download of what has been recorded includes no explanations, judgments, evaluations, or opinions. You only see and hear what the camera sees and hears. Your inner camera adds the other three senses, but smelling, tasting, and feeling also add no interpretive qualities. The sounds, sensations and tastes are not evaluated, simply noticed.

I encourage you to play with this. Take some time and notice the noticer noticing. Be very kind to yourself, recalling that the noticer never judges. Replace the self judgment with noticing. You will likely continue to notice your ego self analyzing, categorizing, comparing, classifying, dividing, or judging – that is fine. You noticed the activity. Now return to pure noticing. These things that you wish to achieve for yourself: spiritual awakening, peace, unconditional love, and being in the now – you may begin to experience when you are only noticing from the noticer and the ego is inactive.  There will be no past or future, just the glorious infinite now. There is nowhere to go to awaken; you notice that you are awake. There is no time. There is no illusion. You have always been and always will be awake. You have simply been pretending not to be. You have pretended to be your ego, separate from others, knowing something, having wisdom or knowledge, needing to defend and protect yourself, striving to fill your needs. This is what Jesus meant when he said that to realize the kingdom of heaven you must become as a little child; just observing, just noticing the now.

You may find some parallels with what I have been talking about and meditation, though in the latter you are often trained to close your eyes and shut out the world. You might have an intention in meditation: to calm yourself down, lower your blood pressure, find peace, become enlightened, draw things to you, or leave your body. Any of these things might occur as a result of observing, but only when that is not the intent. If there is intent, the ego is right there in the middle of it all. Again, the observer doesn’t have a horse in the race. There is no focus on changing anything. There is only noticing. Your ego mind screams out against this. It goes against everything you have been trained to do. It tells you that you should be active, doing, working, and focused. It asks what can be accomplished if all you do is just notice without any interaction whatsoever.

Obviously, it is not possible to stay in that absolute observing mode indefinitely and stay in a body. At some point you must eat, drink, move, and do something. There is also a reason why you appear to have a physical body. There is some action to be taken with that body. However, you don’t have a clue why you are here or what the purpose of your body is. You also don’t have the ability to figure that out. When you practice noticing the observer and let go of holding importance for the observed, you will be guided into action in the illusion. It may be in order to take care of your body. Your first job, however, is to notice the noticer, to let go of placing importance on the noticed, on your body, and the world around it. When you realize that, you are awake. There is nothing very special about it. It is the natural state. As you are focused on the observer you accept whatever is shown to you. There is no resistance. It simply is what is. You will feel a natural knowing as to what to do with each thing that comes into your awareness. You won’t know where it will lead or why you should do it, but life simply becomes an experience of playing with each gift that comes in that moment.

If your ego mind is telling you that you came here to make a difference, it knows neither what that difference is nor how to affect it. The observer flows gracefully with what is, doing exactly what is called for in that moment. We can say that in the endpoint of this dance, everyone realizes their observer. This Oneness cannot happen without you, nor can you stop it. Your part is to notice. In that noticing comes the end of suffering, not because you are noticing with that goal in mind – we have already pointed out the impossibility of doing that – but as the natural byproduct of being present. Notice that you are here.

Good Now

Sanhia/Spirit

Do I create my reality or does Spirit?

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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