I was thinking for a while that maybe certain people were inept. Maybe it was certain groups of people. Maybe it was medical people. And maybe it was the body. Maybe it was just some portion of things. But the more I look at it the more I realize that the ENTIRE WORLD, the whole SYSTEM of thought of this lower-order reality of spacetime, is fundamentally broken. It is an impossible system, based on laws of failure and lack and insufficiency.
The whole thing functions in a ridiculously faulty way. Every motion, every action, every doing, every impulse, causes a disruption and changes and side effects. You cannot do anything physical without it potentially leading to more problems. Everything you do to fix something gives rise to new problems. Every use of materials degrades the material. Every aspect of this entire cosmos is fundamentally stupid as fuck and ridiculously backwards.
The whole thing simultaneously gives one thing and takes away another, in a two-faced self-contradicting self-denying expression of incapability and limitation. Nothing in the world has any ability ever to truly do anything unconditionally or perfectly. There is no unlimited giving, no flawless correction, no ultimate solution, no perfect response, no clear answer, and no magical salvation.
There is literally no salvation in the world which produces a state of utter hopelessness. This is the stupidity of the world at large, and the whole thing is one big giant fuckup. There is no escape from it. The only way out of this hell is through transcendence and forgiveness, recognizing it is NOT REAL, and therefore thankfully there ARE no unsolvable problems. Such is the miracle's ability to reverse everything the world says can never be undone.
The world is an ILLUSION. An illusion that presents itself as being one thing when in fact it is its opposite. Everything it tries to do it does the opposite. Every way it helps it hurts. Every pleasure leads to pain. Every solution becomes broken. It cannot go towards God because everything if offers ALWAYS points towards death and destruction. Even its so-called "life" has death in it.
Contemplating this fact of the world's bullshittery made me laugh so much.
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."
"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."
"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."
What's stopping you from performing miracles?
It's because in some ways, you don't believe you are worthy of receiving them yourself.
If you believe you are sinful and therefore guilty, because of something you think you did, you're going to be certain that you should NOT receive love. And because of that belief, you will be just as certain that other people should not receive love through you either.
You can walk this Earth for years under the oppression of that belief in sin, all the while blocking the expression of love, and therefore inhibiting God's miracles. Not only are you preventing yourself from being healed, but you're also keeping your brother in darkness and suffering.
This is not a guilt trip, by the way. I'm not trying to say, you darned idiot what do you think you're doing. I'm saying, God is OVERFLOWING with abundance of love for you and everyone, and WANTS to heal you and forgive you. But you're not letting Him.
If there's some big sin in you that you are quite sure can never be healed or undone or reversed or forgiven, it's so bad that nobody would love you because of it, then you're not going to allow or accept being unconditionally loved. And so if you don't believe you can be loved, forgiven and healed, you also aren't going to be WILLING to heal others.
When I accepted the atonement regarding what I thought was a real sin, discovering it was NOT real, and that therefore I was still innocent, I was overjoyed. I actually felt joy. Such a tremendous relief. And Jesus said to me "because you have received this for yourself, this will enable you to perform miracles".
The same is true for anyone. You have to be willing to dig out your sins and guilts and offer them up in the atonement, through forgiveness, to realize that you ARE forgiven because you DID NOT SIN. "And in that view, all your sins are forgiven." This will set you free!
You will then ALLOW, DESIRE, and WILL for yourself to receive love, because you will recognize that you are now WORTHY of love. This sense of worthiness comes because you can clearly see, in the atonement's truth that you did not really do what you thought you did, that this MEANS you are still innocent. That therefore means that you are still lovable. And therefore, you ARE worthy of love!
If you are worthy of love, then you will also be WILLING for love to be expressed to and through you, and therefore you will not only be WILLING to perform miracles for others, you will become ABLE to perform miracles for others, because you will have plugged yourself back into God's power strip and will no longer be obstructing the flow of power with your belief in sin.
If you have shame, unworthiness, loneliness, a sense of guilt or fear, any kind of regret, if you're sick, suffering, anything less than love, you KNOW there is some belief that you have that you're sinful. That because of something you REALLY DID and therefore REALLY ARE, you are no longer eligible for love. Well let me tell you this. You are fucking eligible for love right now and always because God Himself does love you with an unconditional, unlimited, non-expiring and absolutely perfect love which HAS NO LIMITS and cannot see you as sinful, no matter WHAT you think is true of you!
It's not a matter of whether God finds you worthy, or whether you can be loved, it's a matter of YOU not agreeing with it!
From "Sickness is a defense against the truth", Lesson 136:
"No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."
...
Here Jesus tells us simply that if we can clearly recognize a sickness for what it IS - an illusion, it will disappear automatically.
When we look at sickness we think it has a variety of causes. None of them are true. We also think it has a valuable purpose. The purpose is supposedly to defend our ego identity against truth. That's because we're mistaken about the truth and think that it will destroy us, so we "naturally" defend against it. Defense (denial) manifests reasons to believe that illusions are more real than God.
It is because we have a multitude of beliefs that tell us that sickness is real, that we have the sickness at all. It is sustained by those beliefs and created by them. It seems the sickness has no purpose and is a victimization, but really it does have a secret purpose. Its purpose was to block reality by demonstrating that illusions are real. Therefore we 'manifest' illusions that seem real, to try to prove that this is true. Manifesting illusions and making them real invents sickness.
We need to become willing to see instead that the purpose of sickness was to block the truth, not to make something true. It's purpose wasn't to affirm reality, it was to lend reality to something that is unreal. It's purpose wasn't to confirm how real the body is, but to deny how real the truth is. And finally we need to become able and willing to RECOGNIZE that sickness is an illusion, NOT a reality.
This is the defining principle. Sickness is the illusion that illusions are real. It is a denial of the truth - an attempt to hide the truth from awareness. This denial of truth causes sickness because it is your attempt to make God sick and dead. Your attempt to destroy God destroys you. Your belief that God (reality) is sick, produces sickness in your reality.
Your challenge in undoing sickness is to shift your sense of reality away from the sickness and place it on the real truth - God. If the sickness is true and real, God cannot be. And because your sickness is a choice to believe illusions are more real than reality, they are choices to believe that God is not real. They therefore block God, which is the giver of Life, and blocking life manifests as sickness (and death).
To undo sickness you must be willing to admit and recognize that sickness is not REAL, it is an illusion. It can't be real because of the ways in which God is real. God has to be more real than the sickness otherwise you will keep the sickness and continue to believe in its reality. Your belief in its reality is what puts it into your experience, because you are mis-creating.
You need to un-believe that the sickness is real in all its respects, in every way. There is nothing about sickness that can be "true" for you. Otherwise you will value it and keep it. When you can see that it LITERALLY is NOTHING, i.e. its an illusion that isn't real at all, you will cause it to disappear, because you will cease to GIVE it reality.
That's a miracle, an acknowledgement of God's truth and its equal meaningfulness to everyone.
But often you feel vulnerable.
Vulnerability is an experience of feeling exposed, accessible, hurt-able, noticeable, visible, targeted and attacked. When you are vulnerable you perceive that the whole world is out to get you.
Experiencing vulnerability is a familiar state that you normally refer to as "afraid". It's another word for it. You can't help but experience what you call 'fear' when you are seeing yourself as being attackable.
However, this sense of being vulnerable has only come about because you have created an enemy within your own mind. You've projected this enemy onto other people or situations, thinking they now are the cause of the threat, but the enemy is still in your own mind. And since you created it, you can undo it.
It is therefore possible to stop feeling vulnerable, and to re-access a state of INVULNERABILITY.
Any form of resistance will create a division in your mind, a separation, and will make your mind be "split". Literally, your mind seems to take on two identities, one which experiences itself as being victimized, and the other which experiences itself as being a victimizer.
Usually the part that is a victim uses denial and disassociation to block awareness that the victimizer part is also a part of the same mind. It is the victim's resistance to the victimizer that makes it a victim in the first place, and denies and therefore projects the victimizer into being. The victim then does not perceive that they themselves are the cause of their own victimization, that they are literally doing it to themselves within their own mind, that their mind is in a state of self-attack, and that they therefore could do something to stop it.
A sense of vulnerability must occur as soon as you have made yourself unwhole. This can happen in many forms including self-abandonment, self-attack, self-rejection, denial, believing in enemies, resistance to the truth, trying to block awareness, blame, scapegoating, trying to stop things from happening, being controlling, not accepting everything as it is, etc. These are all forms of separating and putting up walls. And putting up walls, experientially, actually takes down walls in your mind, producing an experiencing of having become exposed to something that you were previously safe from.
You can't feel safe while you are attacking yourself.
What you can realize though, is that it is YOU that is attacking yourself, and it has nothing to do with anyone else. Immediately you will feel significant reduction in the experience of exposure and vulnerability, if you can remind yourself that you are not being affected by other people or situations. They are NOT the cause. That alone will relieve much of your anxiety. This also deflates some of your belief in separation and your resistance to yourself. But you need to take it further and undo as much as you can of the split that's happened inside your own self.
Quite literally, you can become completely invulnerable. Or rather, recognize that your invulnerability is still completely intact and was simply blocked from your awareness when you thought you were vulnerable. You can become whole, free of the split mind of the ego, and experiencing your SELF as free of attack. In such a state, there is nothing outside of you which can bring about an internal experience of attack, and therefore you are invulnerable to everything. Nobody can give it to you or take it away. If you do not choose to believe in attack, you will have no enemies. And then you will enjoy peace of mind.
The ego is extremely sneaky and insistent that things are true which are not true.
Here you are, created by God to be absolutely immortal and innocent and invulnerable forever, and yet in spite of this, there's the ego saying "oh, that's not true, you're actually mortal and you need to be concerned that something's gone wrong".
Even though this is IMPOSSIBLE. Even though it can't be true.
So to the ego it's not really that it comes up with stuff because it has a basis in reality, but that it comes up with stuff to try to deliberately defy the truth and insist on its falseness. Even in the face of truth and obvious evidence the ego will refuse to believe it's true.
The ego just wants to believe stuff is happening that isn't happening, that things have gone wrong in ways that they haven't, that there are reasons to be afraid which are completely unfounded, etc. It's basically having a nightmare and trying to prove that it's real when it isn't.
It doesn't matter how many times you tell the ego that it is mistaken, it does not want to believe it.
It could actually be possible right now that you are absolutely 100% safe and everything is absolutely fine in every way. And yet at the same time, the ego will try to insist that there are all kinds of problems and issues and reasons to be afraid.
You could even be standing right in front of a brilliant white light which is showering you with unconditional love, and the ego would be saying "what light, there is no light, I don't deserve love". Even if it's right in front of its face!
The ego HAS to insist that its lies are the truth otherwise it could not exist. And the ego NEVER will have a different story. It will always be trying to insist things have gone wrong. It will always be trying to claim you should be afraid and guilty. Regardless. It isn't based on whether it's true or not, the ego has a one-track mind with a one-track story. It isn't objective, it doesn't make rational decisions, and it isn't in any way interested in ever turning around and telling you "you know what, I was mistaken, there actually is a God of love and you actually are unconditionally loved and perfectly innocent and safe and holy forever." It will NEVER say this.
So why listen to a totally biased, one-track pony, which pretends to be objective, and which pretends to have considered all the possibilities and come up with some 'rational' truth, when in fact it NEVER comes up with truth. It cannot. It cannot see the truth. It does not want to see the truth. It is an attack on truth. And it will ONLY tell you the same answer over and over and over again. It's "yes or no" switch has gotten stuck in the "no" position and it literally is incapable of telling you that God is real or that you are loved and safe or that nothing has gone wrong.
Why listen to a broken record? How many times will you listen to the same old same old same old story of disaster and tragedy, once you know that the storyteller (the ego) has nothing new to say? It is not on your side. It is not telling you objective, rational, truth-based conclusions. It can only lie and it can only make you afraid.
Turn to the Holy Spirit for the only source of real rational truth and real sanity and real objectivity. In His light you can see that, in fact, there is another answer and another way, a better way, because the Holy Spirit is OPEN MINDED enough to be able to DISCERN what is true and what is false. The ego cannot do this.
Just because you forget the light from time to time doesn't mean it goes away. It is permanent. It waits for you to return to it. And even after your next round of madness it is still there waiting for your return. It's never possible to remove it and it doesn't go away.
The ego's voice will come up with countless ways to persuade you that there is no light left anymore. All doom and gloom and darkness and death. It'll tell you there is no light and you might as well give up. This is not actually true. The light is always there, inviting you to join it.
To join the light you have to step out of the darkness, which means no longer dwelling in the ego's viewpoint and shifting your perspective to the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the light of truth.
Taking things lightly or lightening up doesn't have to mean you've got to fake being happy or not care about anything. It means you get to genuinely be happy and carefree because the light sets you free. The "light side" is a way of looking, a way of perceiving, and a way of experiencing. It arises from sanity and truth and certainty.
The Holy Spirit's offering is one of peace and calm and illumination and clarity. He is available to show you a view of the world which can't be taken seriously, which shows you how trivial everything is here, and recognizes that all this ego stuff really is literally nothing.
What were you so worried about? It was nothing. What was so alarming and shocking? It's nothing. The Holy Spirit looks upon the illusion of "the dark side" and recognizes it is false. It has no truth to it. It has no credibility. It isn't to be listened to and has no argument that can convince the Holy Spirit it has a solid foundation. The Holy Spirit merely looks upon it, recognizes it is completely false, and that therefore there really IS no ego. It IS nothing.
If you are caught up in the story of life or the suffering agenda of the ego or the seeming bleakness of the ego's lies, then you need some light. You can't just `lighten up` by denying, however. Sometimes you have to work through your clouds and process your feelings and coming to a point where you're ready to look at things in a different way.
But at some point you DO need to open up to the Holy Spirit. You can't get to the light by ignoring him or not including Him. Similarly Jesus is with you in the light and you can't be in the light without Him being with you.
There is hope, because darkness is never permanent or true and the light is forever and always truthful. There is hope because the Holy Spirit is with you now and always will be and WILL NOT FAIL to lead you home to the light. We but need to be willing to stop listening to our own ego voice and turn within to listen to His voice of sanity and calm and reassurance.
Everything IS alright. Nothing has gone wrong. We are already saved.
Let's also remember that God Himself has appointed the Holy Spirit as his ANSWER to all of our suffering and darkness. God has GIVEN His support. He is in us, eager to help us in any way possible if we would allow it. His Help has no limits other than our resistance to accept it. It isn't bits of truth or quotes or thoughts or certain feelings or justifications or explanations that will save you, it is the LIGHT OF GOD - as the Holy Spirit - in your mind. This is what you need to connect with. He is your APPOINTED TEACHER, comforter, and friend. He is there for a reason. Use him.
When you're upset, you're having an experience. It seems very real to you. It's frightening. It seems that something has happened or something is true, and because it seems true it's scaring you.
But what you need to realize is that "you are not upset for the reason you think."
You think you're upset because of what a person did, or didn't do, or what happened, or what you saw. You think something other than yourself caused it, or that something's happening beyond your control. But this isn't really why you are upset.
You're having an experience right now of upset and fear and guilt and anger and shame, and that is inside of you. Its yours. But the main problem is you've placed the cause of this experience into something separate from you. You think it's that person who put these feelings there. You think it was that thing happening that caused this upset. And you see yourself as having been unfairly victimized by them. And now you're suffering and you can't get out of it.
Well all of this experiencing is inside you because it's yours, and it was already inside you BEFORE this person or event came along. You had it stored away in the back of your mind, unhealed. You are already full of all the upset and fear that you could possibly need to account for all of your upsetting experiences in every lifetime. You don't even need to find extra causes for adding "new stuff".
This upset that's in you wasn't put there by anyone else. It wasn't just created in you by some event that just happened. Nobody made you feel this way. Nobody is doing anything to you.
This is old stuff. It's always old stuff. Its the sense of sin and guilt from separating from God that you buried in your mind long ago, coming up inside of you to remind you of how you feel. And yes, it was maybe "triggered by" someone or something happening, or what they did, and because it was triggered by them you mistook this to mean it was caused by them. But all they did was mirror to you how you already felt, deep down, and so it popped into your awareness. And you asked them to do this for you.
Its not their fault.
This is about you. Its your stuff. Your feelings. Your experience. Your attitude. Your beliefs. Your way of looking at yourself. This is about your sense of separation from yourself and God and how you haven't forgiven yourself for what you think you did. That's what needs to be forgiven. You CAN'T forgive anyone else because nobody else is capable of doing anything to you!
You need self forgiveness. And that entails admitting that all of this stuff is self-inflicted and self-chosen and it's all your own stuff. It's not anyone else's fault. Nobody has made you feel this way. You agree that you should feel this way.
And so then, why do you feel this way? What is it you believe about yourself, in relationship to God, that has brought about this nightmarish experience? This fear, and guilt, and sin? Is it really true of you? Is God really against you or upset with you? Is he really abandoning you? Do you really need to be afraid of his revenge? Are you really a sinner?
Will you forgive yourself and recognize that you have NOT done what you thought you did, that it has had no effect on God whatsoever, that you are still innocent and loved? How about some relief, in knowing that nothing's gone wrong and you're still worthwhile? Or that God still unconditionally loves you right now and always will? That you haven't made Him go away and He isn't bearing any grudge or anger toward you? All you really want is to love and go Home.
Our only real need is for the love of God. All other needs are ones we've invented.
We invent a need when we first find ourselves lacking something. It is generally the apparent absence of God that we think we lack, that gives rise to all other needs.
So really, when we think that our one need - the love of God - is not fulfilled, it produces a sense of lack or emptiness, which does not feel good, and which then compels us to search for its fulfillment somewhere.
Typically then, because we see the need as having been lost within ourselves - as if, love is not in us, we then look elsewhere for it. Anywhere else but within. And that ultimately means, we look for this fulfillment anywhere other than where the love actually IS, ie within, and so we do not find it.
So then we're in a state of neediness and yearning and deprivation and lack, thirsting and hungry, and we then think that we need to 'get' from somewhere outside of ourselves. And we will actually attempt this getting. But even if we get ie take ie steal from others, we will not be able to actually accept it.
Accepting that our artificial needs are met, entails accepting that the lack of love within us has been restored. But we can't accept that because we believe, more deeply, that love is absent, ie God is absent.
So it's like... God has to fill our bucket, but then we're going around saying we only believe in empty buckets, and then we take our empty bucket to everyone else trying to get them to fill it with their piece of God, but as soon as they try to put their God into the bucket we refuse to let it be filled up because we're adamant that our bucket must be empty. We want to keep our bucket empty, even though we're desperately trying to fill us from any source other than where it can really be filled from. And every time we believe our own bucket is empty, we will see everyone else's buckets as empty also, and so there's no sign of the love you need.
Seek and do not find.
The ONLY solution is the reversal and undoing of the belief that your bucket is empty in the first place, which is an ILLUSION and a deception within yourself, covering up a tremendous FLOOD of love that resides in you as God, already. We have this entire lake of love flowing through us, an ocean of it, but we've simply blocked it out and made it seem to us like it's not there. It IS there. We have to uncover it, rediscover it, find out that it was NEVER LOST, and accept that it is present. That's all. This one need is then met and all other false needs disappear because they're absolutely unneeded.
When you have false needs you have a lot of questions because you have a lot of doubt about love's presence in you, and so you have a lot of fear about how you're going to manage without the strength of this love. So then you've got all this questioning and confusion. What happens to all that when you GO TO GOD? All of this doubt and questioning is based on the absence of God, staying away from God, so when you go to God, the entire foundation of all this questioning is completely mute. It's irrelevant. All of the questions are about how to meet a need that is FAKE - a need that you don't really have. When the true need is met, all else is taken care of.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God and your way will be made straight.
All you need is love.
Sickness in all its forms includes not just physical sickness but mental, emotional, financial, perceptual, sickness in relationships, vocational, etc.
Sickness in all its forms is an attempt to PROVE that God does not love you.
You're holding the sickness out there as evidence and saying, see, THIS proves that I am unworthy and unloved. Hah. Let's see what you've got to say about THAT!
The thing is.... You cannot prove that God doesn't love you, because it isn't true. You can only truly PROVE something that is true. If it's not true, you're not going to be able to prove it at all no matter how hard you attempt to do so.
So really your sickness is an ATTEMPT to TRY to prove it, even though it is not provable. And the ego in you is insane for even trying to prove it, because this is in DENIAL of the fact that it can't be proven. You WILL NOT and CANNOT change God. Your sickness is an attempt to change God, by attempting to change what God created - which is you.
It won't work. And you'll spend a lifetime trying to make it work AND FAIL. Thank God. Because you will never ever prove you are unworthy of love.
So it's really fruitless and pointless to spend all the effort attempting to prove the unprovable, or to make possible the impossible. You CAN'T be unloved by God.
So then you'll have to eventually ADMIT to this fact. And when you do you'll set yourself free of the game that you're playing with yourself. You have to admit that you chose this sickness and have put it in place and are attempting to make it the truth, when it isn't. And it requires an awful lot of upkeep to try to make it convincing.
A sickness therefore is a DEMAND that you insist God does not love you because of 'this' - whatever this is - whatever the sickness is, and you show it in order to block love.
You're like, well, God doesn't love me, see? I've got this to prove it? What about this (as you hold up your disease or your sense of poverty or your broken life). Basically you're holding this thing up to God and saying, see, there's no way you can love me because of THIS. How could anyone love THIS? Or, how could anyone love me when I've done THIS to God's son?
So your question is, how can I be loved? How can love be possible? Because by believing that UNLOVE is possible, or that you can prove your unworthiness, you also believe that worthiness is impossible. But your worthiness is not only possible but permanent.
And God responds. .... Through Holy Spirit ...... Even 'this' sickness you made does not show me that you aren't good enough. It doesn't make you less than you are and fails to convince me that I shouldn't love you anyway. Sorry but I will always love you and there's nothing you can do to change my attitude. Even this is not enough and never will be to make me hate you for sin you think you perceive. You've done nothing of any consequence and this can be undone. It isn't worthy of my condemnation or judgement and I will never find you guilty. There isn't anything you can do to upset me or make me not love you because you are my child, and my love for you is unconditional and everlasting. Let go of this supposed cardboard sickness you think proves you're not innocent, and allow me to love you for you so that you can return to peace and happiness. Put down your arms and surrender your weapons used against yourself. Put aside your grievance against yourself and let yourself recognize you ARE love. I love you just the same.
When I used to be sick or suffering, the only options at my disposal was to take a medication, or "wait it out" or "let it run its course" or go through the suffering until I had "fully suffered". Like waiting for the body to heal itself.
Like there was some kind of requirement or this was the only way to "get past it". There was no quick fix. And so I was simply used to this way of existing where problems could not be easily resolved. This seemed "normal."
But then Holy Spirit started to do his thing. And all of a sudden this assumption that suffering and healing take a lot of time, came into question.
All of a sudden it started to seem possible that, "maybe I don't have to suffer"... or "maybe I don't have to tolerate this" ... or "why should I have to wait for this to run its course"... or "what if I can choose not to just let this snowball into weeks of turmoil?"
And as I began to receive Holy Spirit's help and healing, I started to discover that if I was willing, I could start to challenge whether or not I HAD to suffer... I could start learning a little at a time to question this.... maybe I don't HAVE to go through this, or let it just have power over me to dictate how long I have to put up with this. What if there is a better way?
And so I stated to peel back my alignment with the ego and my belief that I should just "go along with" the suffering, as if I had no other option. I started to get used to this idea of stopping myself and not just blindly going along with the program, and realizing that maybe I don't HAVE to. And as there started to BE another option - that I could get healed by Holy Spirit, that really started to bring into question whether suffering had to be TOLERATED or put up with.
What also has increased is a kind of REFUSAL and strength to say NO to the prescribed suffering, to rebuke it, to realize that I DO have a choice, and that in actual fact there IS a POWER in decision. That I can decide NOT to suffer. That I do not have to accept or tolerate it. If I am willing, there is another way. I can instead refuse to just lay down and accept this and instead forgive and get into willingness and choice and get out of victimhood and learn to let go, to let myself receive help and get some healing.
This has really undermined the sense of having to just let shit happen. Holy Spirit is adamant that you DO NOT HAVE TO SUFFER. There is no merit in it. You don't have to be guilty for a month and suffer with a sickness. All He wants is for you to return to happiness - it's God's will. So as you start to practice this and open up to it and receive help, you also start to erode the belief in "required suffering", which is a belief in sin and guilt.
This is also part of why sickness and death are NOT GOD'S WILL, and being sick or dead is AGAINST God's will. God wills instead that you be FULLY HEALED, that you do not have to merely tolerate or put up with suffering or being sick or hurt or damaged in any way. He wants to release you from this torture and help you to realize that you deserve and CAN ACCESS permanent healing and health and happiness. That death and sickness are not supposed to be part of your experience AT ALL.