Arriving at work I encountered my first truck load of live pigs on their way to the sausage factory across the street. It was a double-decker piggy wagon complete with air holes and little pink piggy bits poking out and wiggling around. As I realized what it was, and that it was about to pull into the bacon death machine, I had a reaction.

The reaction felt like sadness coupled with anger. The anger felt like wanting to go stop it, and the sadness felt like the pigs didn't know what was about to happen to them - that they were going to be victimized. Regardless of what was happening, I was having a reaction so now I have to do a fricking forgiveness.

Ok.

So obviously my perception is mistaken, otherwise I wouldn't be upset. It's impossible to be upset about the truth. My perception was showing me that the pigs were helpless victims with no power and seemingly innocent. A voice in my mind, perhaps Jesus, said

"they know what's going to happen". But this didn't necessarily stop me reacting. Truth is though, on some higher level they do know because nothing happens but by choice, and it was really me that was having a dark experience.

So... by seeing the pigs as `innocent victims` with `nasty ego power` being wielded over them against their will, it was a strong contrast showing me where I believe certain things. And it's not about the piggies, because both the pigs and the sausage makers are part of the same ego thought system. The pigs only appear to be victims because I don't see that they chose this, and the sausage folk only seem like victimizers because I think they do something to the pigs they didn't ask for.

And what's this got to do with me? Always it's something to do with me and nothing really to do with them. I'm not upset because of the pigs. I'm not upset because of the bacon fest. I'm upset because it's showing me that I already have something in me, in my mind, which believes in something incorrect, and it's triggering it off. It's not about them, it's about me. I have to withdraw all blame from the pig mongers and also withdraw all projection of victimhood from the piggies.

The piggies are not victims. The farmers are not victimizers. The greasy sausage folk are innocent. They don't even really exist. They're not really out there. It's a dream. I'm dreaming it. So....

That means I made up this whole scenario. I made pigs. I made sausages. I made bacon factories. So secretly this reminds me that I actually made up this whole thing myself which would mean I am guilty. So the guilt I see in them is my own guilt. Hmm.

Hmm. Ok. I am flashed a memory of a time in childhood when I used to hunt butterflies, ... and kill them. I used to swat them with a tennis racket, or capture them and keep them a while but then they died because I didn't feed them etc. Or even perhaps would stick a pin in them. Vicious! ooo.. juicy pool of guilt there. I didn't know what I was doing, so it's forgivable.

So even though I made that mistake and I secretly covet bacon and sausages and want to stick a pin in the pigs, its only because I have lost touch with the truth of who I am. I forgot I am love. I forgot I am holy and innocent and have no needs. I forgot God loves me. So.. .I'm just mistaken about being guilty. Even if I did nasty things to innocent creatures, I'm still innocent because I am not in my right mind. So I'm making mistakes and not realizing it. I'm not to blame. The butterflies forgive me. I forgive me. I am forgiven not for what I have done but because... I have not really done it.

This is a dream, it hasn't happened. I'm with God. I am guiltless and sinless. I haven't done anything to anyone. God is not harmed. Real immortal life has not been changed. I have not stopped being perfect love. I am absolutely forgivable and innocent and free. God loves me 100% because he knows that pigs and butterflies are just parts of a dream that has no meaning and I gave it all the meaning it had. I used the pigs and pig farmers as skapegoats to project my own guilt so that I would have a reason to justify being guilty, which would help me to stay away from God. I wanted to be away from God so I could keep my ego and not be loved.

So... do I want to keep suffering? Am I willing to let this go? Can I let go and surrender this need to prove I am guilty? Yes.. I willingly surrender this guilt and recognize I am forgiven, I claim and own up to being innocent because none of this really happened. God loves me. Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing has died. Death isn't real. Everyone is equally innocent and holy. Only love is real.

Holy Spirit, please heal my mind and correct my thinking and remove all of this guilt and help me to remember my true innocent and that of all concerned. I let it go. I accept your truth.

Amen.

It may be the most counter-intuitive, impossible thing you can imagine, but if you are feeling like shit, the best thing you can do is to send love to someone.

That sounds like a tall order, in fact maybe seemingly the hardest thing you could do at the time. Because it you feel shit then you really don't want to love, don't have love, don't seem to be able to give anything, and are in no position to help anyone. You feel separate and cut off and probably angry at someone.

But that's just the thing. It's the lack of love in you that is really the problem, and when you SEND it to someone, you RECEIVE it. Giving and receiving are one.

As you effort to transmit love, even if it takes a while to rev up the engines, even if you don't feel loving at all to begin with, it lifts YOU up. You become healed along with them, it brightens you, it opens you and heals you.

The thing is, even if it seems like you have no love to give, if you TRY anyway, you'll find that you in fact have the ability to "get the flow moving". If you PUSH, express, send, flow, love like an energy, it actually gets the juices flowing.

You're able to move yourself from unlove to love, even if love seems absent, and even if it seems like you have no love to give.

The key that unlocks the infinite reservoir of love, even from "standing still" and being very unloving, is your little willingness. Your will has the power to direct the flow. Your will has the power to express and to cause the love to express.

So even if you are stuck, even if you feel very upset, you have the freedom of will that allows you to unstick yourself.

If at first you can't possibly feel any love, you just start to say some loving things. Even if you don't feel them. Express how thankful you are to God for creating someone's perfection and describe their perfect nature. Put into words what is true of them and you. It will lift you up.

Before long, you'll get the stuck-ness moving, and you'll start to tune into the love, and you'll start to feel it in your heart. Especially as you open up to sending/relaying God's love as an extender of love.

Love heals you when you share it. You are included in the healing. So you are giving it to yourself. That may sound weird that you can transmit love to yourself, but you can, provided it includes another.

Ideas are increased by being given away. To have love, give love. Giving it, you must have it, and so it increases in you and the other. You have the ability to express love at any time, and it has the power to melt all walls and blockages.

We're all holding hands. You either lift others up or you drag them down. And always you are included in which direction you aim. Be the light of the world.

"Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver."

I want to tell you about a way in which I used my persona to destroy myself, and how I am learning to overcome it. This was actually a very very painful long-term lesson, so it is hard to write about.

I grew up as a highly sensitive person, who experienced everything in an intense, overwhelming, overpowering way. In order to try to cope with this, I developed the use of my persona. The persona is the side of the ego split-mind that focuses on specialness, goodness, success, social acceptability, favoritism, pleasantness, etc. So I went very strongly into 'people pleasing'.

What I'd do, quite automatically/unconsciously, was I'd put on this facade, literally a 'false face', where I'd smile a lot, become very quiet, try to appear pleasant, try not to upset anyone, look unthreatening and harmless, as though 'showing this' to people would deflect them and therefore protect me. It was my attempt to be invisible. This included a really intense repression of myself. Basically I was using this to hide my Self.

In any public situation I would put on this persona mask and make it appear that nothing was wrong, that everything was good and normal, nothing to see here, being nice to everyone and don't say a single word, and not get hurt. But there were many times this blew up in my face.

Once I was on a bus heading into town and it stopped at the hospital. A man got on the bus and sat nearby. He said that he had just gotten out of the hospital from his 3rd heart attack. This alone was enough to trigger me to hide myself even more than I already was. So I smiled a lot. He, having just gone through life-changing events, started up a conversation with me, which was horrifying. He saw I was smiling and thought that it meant I was happy, and therefore wanted to know what my 'secret to a happy life' was. This put tremendous extra pressure on me (as I saw it) and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. To do this, I intensified even more this persona of hiding myself, which was an attempt to reject him, smiling even more, being very tight-lipped, and just wanting the ordeal to end. I just became more and more quiet. For some reason I seemed to just do this as an automatic defense that I'd learned.

Once I got off the bus, I was just about ready to hurl. I put so much effort into psychologically rejecting the man, and hiding myself, that I felt literally sick. I reached/retched uncontrollably for several minutes before I could calm down. This put a huge damper on my day and was somewhat traumatic. But this wasn't the only effect of this.

See, when I used my persona to hide my real Self, this wouldn't just mean rejecting the other person, it would mean rejecting me. The more I tried to shut them out, the more I shut myself out. I had no idea I was doing this. But what I did know was how it felt. Absolutely horrible. I would come away from bad experiences like this, which occurred many many times in all kinds of public scenarios, with a feeling of tremendous tension in my head from intense embarrassment/shame/humiliation. I'd get a horrible headache, but even worse, I would feel deeply, deeply, deeply hurt. This hurt was more intense and horrible than ANY other emotion I have ever felt for any reason. Psychologically it was like I had experienced every single form of rejection, abandonment, hurt and pain all at once. The absolute only way to move past this was to have a huge cry.

So, as a result of putting on a persona and pretending to be someone I was not, regardless of whether that fake self seemed to be 'nice' or 'kind' or anything anyone values, the only way I could appear to be literally 'someone else' was to horrendously suppress, deny, reject and abandon myself. I thought I was using separation 'against' other people to separate myself from them in order to protect myself, but this separation did nothing but hurt me.

I also had a huge fear of other people judging me, and a fear of rejection. What I didn't realize was that each time that I tried to put on a persona mask of nice, likable, happy-smiley, quiet or whatever, I was buying into an ego thought system. And by doing that, I was taking a gamble. Either I would 'get' the result I wanted which was that people would be deflected and ignore me and I would pass by 'safely', OR other people would attack me or pressure me in some way and I'd end up suffering. By believing in the potential of being seen to be accepted or liked or pleasing to others, I was also simultaneously believing in the 'potential' that others would judge me. I wanted them to judge me favorably, which would feed my 'goodie goodie' persona, which meant I had to believe in judgement. And because I believed in judgement, I lived in fear of it.

So I thought I had an issue of being afraid of judgement from others. A fear of rejection. And this fear of rejection cycled around in a vicious cycle, compelling me to want to NOT be rejected, and therefore to put on a smiley persona face in order to get other people to not reject or hurt me. But of course that merely put me closer in touch with rejection and judgement, if not by others then much moreso by myself. The amount of rejection I experienced from myself TO myself as a result of self-suppression, was far worse than anything anyone else did. So this strategy really didn't actually work, even though I kept trying to use it, and each time it got worse. Over time I just became more and more uptight and quiet and withdrawn from society, eventually jobless and depressed and deeply unhappy and unable to see a way to be different.

Over time, through various avenues of healing, not least of which was the support by my wife who showed up right when I was at my worst, I gradually have learned about the dynamics of what I do to myself versus what I thought other people were going to do to me. I learned painfully and slowly to see that I only saw other people as 'attacking judging strangers' because *I* had already attacked them first. Through the years of working with A Course in Miracles and various other things I've come to very gradually realize exactly why my use of the persona is completely self-defeating and does not help at all. All the persona does is section off everything I think is wrong with me into a tidy little box and shove it away into the dark recesses of my mind, later to surface as pain and suffering.

Yet, over time I've still held onto a belief that I am mainly afraid of rejection or judgement, rather than realizing that my attempt to use the persona is what actually causes the problem. Every time I try to do what other people would want, or make myself like able, or appease others, or focus on what other people like or would buy, or whether I'd get approval, or showing only the parts of myself that I think are acceptable to others, this AUTOMATICALLY creates a fear of rejection and judgement. Because really, by using the persona (i.e. wanting to feed it by creating a self-image/persona of being pleasing) I am actually already rejecting myself and judging myself. Why would I want to put a facade on myself to cover up my True Self? Why would I want to soften the blow of someone else's attitude by abandoning myself first, so that I then need a defense?

The truth that is starting to reveal itself to me now, is that if I actually just be true to myself, and completely drop all need to use the persona to be 'likable' or 'acceptable to others' or 'what they want' etc, I actually stay in a STRENGTH and a authenticity that empowers me and completely overrides the apparent need, either for a fake persona self, or for a defense against rejection. And so this reveals what really is underneath all this.

If I reject myself FIRST, I will then believe I have to use a false self-image-persona to show other people a version of me that they will like, so that they won't point out how shitty I am. Once i'm in persona mode, I cannot escape the fear of rejection because I've already rejected myself and more will be forthcoming through the projection of it.

So the task in front of me now is, to learn to accept myself fully, to be true to the truth in me, to open up to reveal and expose who I really am, to 'let loose' without any shame or censorship, to stop trying to hide myself for any reason, and to basically 'be myself'. But it also HAS to mean, a willingness to stop putting on a show, to stop presenting myself in a fake way, to stop trying to 'appear' likable, to stop people-pleasing, to stop trying to feed my persona image, to stop trying to get everyone to approve of me, and to just drop that whole pile of horseshit. I only enter into a perception that I need 'protection' when I have already judged myself and have seen myself as vulnerable. I am not vulnerable if I am truth-filled. And I don't need to please anyone.

So the key to FREEDOM in all this, is awakening into Holy Spirit's view of me, in acceptance of the truth of me, and in completely surrendering BOTH the fear of rejection AND the attempt to 'win approval' through the persona. By stopping using a persona this solves every problem that ever arose out of its use. What I thought was helping me was hurting me deeply. And stopping the use of the persona stops the creation of the shadow (pain) as well.

Standing firmly in who I AM, brings all of the certainty, strength, assertiveness, disregard for other's opinions, invulnerability, and empowerment, that seemed to be MISSING when I chose to use the ego. And which could never be fulfilled by using the ego. Because once again, it's a case of seek and do not find. "I don't have to worry about what to say or what to do knowing He goes there with me" - ACIM, i.e. I am in my true self and my true self is completely uninterested in pretense or rejection.

Who knew - trying to please people makes you rejected!!!

Learning to love myself more. Learning to drop the ego more. Learning to be what I am, instead of trying to be something I'm not. And in that, there is no fear.

Everything in the Course makes so much more sense to me now that I see there are MANY INDIVIDUALS in God's creation.

1) Recognizing that you and your BROTHER each have your own mind and your own free will

2) Recognizing that bodies were made to ISOLATE you from your brother

3) Recognizing that healing and miracles take place when you JOIN with your brother

4) Recognizing that what you thought applied only to yourself applies to BOTH of you (golden rule)

5) Recognizing that atonement is chosen be EACH brother individually and you therefore become PART OF the atonement plan to help OTHER brothers

6) Recognizing that miracles are a maximal service you can render A BROTHER, because there are others

7) Recognizing that there is not just one dreamer of the dream and therefore you can wake up while others sleep.

8) Recognizing that you have a self - a soul, which DOES exist, and you DO have a self, and your self IS NOT the ego.

9) Recognizing Holy Relationships - you have to HAVE a brother to have a relationship WITH.

10) Recognizing that YOU have a choice for which you are 100% responsible and to whom nothing happens without your choosing.

So many of the course's teachings RELY on the recognition or multiple brothers. It's got NOTHING to do with the illusion of multiplicity of egos or the separation of bodies. Every teaching becomes FAR clearer and makes much more sense when it very naturally acknowledges that OTHER PEOPLE have their own soul, mind, will, freedom, choice, path, awakening, atonement, lessons, etc.

How we ever could have taken on board the idea of us all being just one big blob with multiple personality disorder is quite bizarre really, and we did it in the name of thinking this was more spiritual.

The way you are meant to function correctly, as a child of God, is to be joined to God, plugged into His mind, hooked up to His Divine Health and absolute abundance, and sharing in all of His Power.

You are meant to be able to use His Power, according to His laws, to create just like Him, which has absolutely no limitations of any kind. It means you can create, and manifest in form, anything whatsoever that you desire to. And it also means, eternal life.

But when you are cut off from God and going it alone, you are literally disconnected from power, from healing, from love, from joy, from trust, from abundance, from Life, from everything that God wants to share with you right now.

So what kind of a life do you expect to find yourself living, when you're living a lie? What kind of life will you experience when you refuse to allow it to be a life joined to and being lived WITH God?

It's going to pale in comparison, and it's going to be a life of weakness and suffering and death and fear and loss and disaster. You can try going it alone and doing it all yourself and keep shutting God out, but God is very patient and constantly offers His Gifts to you without conditions.

So this is kind of your choice. You either can keep living 'with' the ego which means being separate and having to manage your own life all alone and to experience unhappiness, suffering, and eventually death, OR you can choose to receive, accept, and share in God's mighty abundance, to illuminate your life from the inside out and to set you in a position of exquisite joy, peace and power.

The two lives really are nothing alike. And there's really nothing the ego can offer you that is ANYWHERE near what God can offer you. Okay so I sound a bit religious or recruiting here... but ok. You think the ego has given you amazing things in the world and you cherish and find important? Wait till you get in on the action with God!

You might not be used to telling illusions what to do. You are more likely conditioned and used to a certain degree of victimhood, or powerlessness, which means that you allow stuff outside of you to seem to have power, or to have a say in what happens against your will.

Or to put it another way, you are used to listening to the ego. You're used to believing appearances. You're used to letting the world tell you what is happening. You're used to believing that these illusions are real and that they dictate what you are going to experience.

With divine healing, your attitude has to be different. It has to not listen to the ego. It has to not pay attention to appearance. It has to cut through all of the incoming signals from the ego illusion, ignore them completely, and demand and command the illusion to do what you want it to do.

So because of your mental conditioning in which you are very used to being quite wishy-washy about situations, where you sit on fences and maybe 'ask' life to change, you have to get out of that PASSIVE mentality. You have to stop paying so much attention to what your senses tell you and stop acting like a weak victim.

So this can actually take some practice to overcome and push past that conditioning, that way of using your mind that you've been so used to. It takes practice to learn whether you are actually fully COMMANDING that something change or be healed, versus whether there are elements of .. indecision, doubt, fear, uncertainty, paying attention to how things look, being caught up in the seeming reality of it, having reactions based on how the situation appears, etc... you have to weed all of that stuff out.

You need to become a finely tuned, PURIFIED, focused, clear, direct, certain, creative and firmly expressive miracle worker. You need to have authority. You must not lay down and just let the illusion, sickness, or whatever walk all over you with how much power it seems to have.

There is no order of difficulty in miracles, which means one miracle is not more difficult than another. But it ALSO means, MIRACLES ARE NOT DIFFICULT! Miracles are meant to be EFFORTLESS! In fact one of the miracle principles speaks of how miracles shouldn't be under conscious control, which speaks to how we need to be a conduit or bridge for the miracle to flow across without interference. But if our bridge is only half-built and stops short of fully extending into the illusion, to fully DELIVER God's promise of divine healing, then the effects will also fall short.

So experiment. Take time to speak TO the problem and tell it what you want it to do, explicitly and directly, not taking no for an answer. You have to be firm, and you have to be very clear. This takes some refinement. I've found that I tended at first to 'ask' problems to go. This does not work. I found that I would describe the problem. That doesn't work. I found that I would talk about the problem, to myself or others or to God. That doesn't work. I found that I would then talk about what I wanted to happen in a kind of future tense, but that also did not work. You have to tell the problem directly, NOW, in first-person immediate language, in a commanding way, "sickness, leave right now. Go! Get out!". You have to CONFRONT IT, which takes some balls especially if you are a people pleaser ;-)

I've found that it took several attempts and various failures to learn how to be commanding. It was not natural to me at first. I was too passive and uncertain and afraid. I would buy into doubts too much, like wondering if it would work or what would happen. We cannot be like that. We are representatives of God. We are like his policemen, enforcing his law. We have to be AUTHORITATIVE. And illusions MUST obey. But if you are not authoritative, illusions and sickness and all other forms of suffering will STAY because you are failing to give it a direct order to leave. If you don't use very direct commanding language, which is vague and wishy-washy, you will see 'reflected back' in the dream mirror vague results or half-hearted responses.

Illusions must respond to the commanding confidence of Christ.

In all cases, when Jesus healed the sick and so on, he always gave a very direct command. "Get up and walk". "Lazarus, get up and a live". etc... these are not requests. They are powerful commands. And that is how power flows across them. Words are a transit system for the communication and flow of God's power. You have to speak to the problem and tell it what to do.

"For truly I say to you, whoever SAYS to this mountain (notice the SPOKEN command), 'Be removed and be thrown into the sea!' and does not doubt in his heart (no fear, no uncertainty, completely belief and confidence), but BELIEVES that what he says will come to pass (believing it is a very important part of conviction), he will have whatever he says" (Bible, Mark 11:23).

"Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share my inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and must join the Great Crusade to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and Do."

This means Listen to My Voice, Learn to undo the error, and do something to correct it.

The first two are not enough. The real members of my party are active workers. (Urtext version of T-1.III.1:5-6)"

Are you willing to be an active worker in Jesus's plan of atonement, working miracles for others and lifting your brother into awakening? Or are you only interested in undoing the error for yourself?

This is perhaps a major distinction in the course community. Those who listen to the Voice for God and undo error, versus those who did this but also then 'take it to the people' with expressions of love and miracles. Jesus says he wants us to be miracle workers for others and not just for ourselves.

"Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share my inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST JOIN THE GREAT CRUSADE TO CORRECT IT."

Does this not mean, that you must now actively help others to awaken? That you would naturally want to do this because you love your brother so much? That you would ACT upon this love and express and extend it to others, even intervening for them with miracles (miracles intervene for their holiness). If you truly are in a place of love, then you will become part of the atoning principle, the atoning 'plan' for salvation, of which Jesus is in charge, and then you will be a part of helping to awaken your brother. It's not a crusade like a conquest or war to 'attack' the ego, but rather to heal and help others to be restored to their natural condition (divine health, perfect mind) and to demonstrate and be an example of the truth, sharing it with everyone. It is a calling, to be a representative of God here, while the illusion persists.

I had a pretty intense talk with God last night.

I began to commune with God and called to Him.

He said, "My Son".

I asked first, "Am I going to have to experience death of a loved one in this lifetime and be alone?"

He said simply, "How can you? Death isn't real."

I opened up to Him and I said, "Father, please forgive me for I have sinned".

He said, "I already have."

and "I never condemned you."

I asked, "You never ever condemned me? I've never done anything wrong ever? You're not going to punish me?"

He said, "How could I? It's not in my nature. I can only love."

I responded, "You're not going to send me to hell?"

He said, "It doesn't exist. You made it up."

I asked, "Then, why is it that I don't see to be experiencing that?"

He said, "You just haven't accepted it yet."

I wondered, "why is it that I don't accept it? does that mean I don't want it?"

I looked within and saw a rather uncomfortable fact that some part of me must not WANT to accept the truth. That some part of me doesn't believe in it, rejects it, has chosen against it and seems to want something else.

It was not pleasant to see that the full responsibility for this "non-acceptance" was in myself.

I told God that "I am afraid to accept it, but it feels good to connect with you, how can I accept this more?

He said simply, "Remove blocks to awareness."

I was feeling very open and awake. I then felt a very strong sense of attraction throughout my whole person. A strong pull that felt like it was pulling me toward God, like a magnet or a vacuum as though something was so extremely appealing and attractive that my whole being wanted to rush to it.

I had tears and then I had laughter. And then I felt joy. Holy Spirit then said "sleep". And so I slept.

It's quite sobering to realize that God is not in any way a punisher or judger or condemner, does not send anyone to hell, and lovingly accepts us fully. And that it is entirely OUR belief to the contrary that we need to correct - our own unwillingness to accept His benevolent nature.

What do you want more, this world, or God?

What do you want more, to be in a real body, or unlimited in God?

What do you want more, to trust that the real world of suffering and sickness and death is what God intended, or an awareness that none of this is God's will and therefore it is not reality?

What do you want more, for sin and guilt to be the real truth about you, or to be free of sin and guilt because they are not real?

Do you want this world to be truth, or God?

Do you want this world to be your home, or the perfect Home of Heavenly Love with God?

Do you want to spiritualize everythiing in this world to make it special and seem worth keeping, or do you want the GIFTS and DELIGHTS which God has prepared for and given you?

Do you want death, or do you want miracles?

Do you want more suffering, or eternal life?

"I and my Father are One." "I am as God Created me" "Let me remember I am one with God." "Let me remember God created me."

Last night I had an interesting experience. I was focusing on love and God and feeling His presence. I somehow managed to become "high" enough with love, that I formed some kind of connection with God. Like a bridge. And in this connection it suddenly occurred to me that I am LIKE God, in that I was filled with love and God is also filled with love.

In seeing this it become very joyfully obvious that I am just LIKE my father. We have the same NATURE. And because of this likeness, I felt a very real sense of BEING HIS SON, due to the fact that I am "just like Him". It implied instantly that I must have come from Him, because both of us were exactly alike. It was so obvious. It was the first time that I ever felt this dynamic of recognition that I MUST be His Son because I am the same as His nature. Almost as if to say I look like Him, if He had an image.

I also realized that this only was possible because of the presence of love in me, at a significant enough level, to be able to equate with God like this. And I could also see that previously the lack or absence of love had been too strong to be able to see this. It is no wonder that I feared God or thought God was not like me or was not love, because I was too distanced from His nature to really recognize that we have something in common.

This also made me realize how much I do not really know who or what I am, because only when I identify as love am I really being what I really am. At other times when the love is not in my awareness I literally have lost touch with who I am and who God is and seem separate from and unlike Him.

I enjoyed the experience of "being just like God" for a while, even if it was only a slight hint of what's to come. It was enough to be able to sense that, because I am so alike God, I MUST BE HIS.