Lately Holy Spirit has been starting to push me to do things I don't think I can do by myself, or that I don't believe would be a good decision.
I was not going to eat pizza, claiming that it would congest my sinuses too much. He said, eat the pizza. I ate the pizza. It wasn't a problem.
I was not going to buy a dairy ice-cream for similar reasons, and he suggested it was okay, so I did it, and I had no symptoms.
Today, I was tired and emotionally wrought after some release and healing, and I didn't want to go to the store, but needed some stuff. Holy Spirit said, "go!". So I went. And I didn't go based on my own belief that I would be able to rely on myself, but based on the belief that because He supports it, I WILL be able to go. I had FAITH!
And as I went, I exclaimed that I will go and I will shop and I will be fine because I will be infused and sustained by the power of God, I will be filled with his strength, and I will have no problems. And as I got to the store, I could FEEL the presence of a strong, light, joyous energy in me, and not only did I have no problems with tiredness etc I even felt open with other customers, seemed to attract people who were laughing and happy, and generally felt supported. I even believe there was an angel there who showed up as a man... sometimes I can tell, and that man spoke to me about bananas, and it was funny and it was all good.
So this is what I am finding now. There are certain things that I believe are true of the "natural world" based on the ego's natural laws. But then, there is God's will, God's power, and His SUPERNATURAL strength. And as you step out to do things which push you beyond your natural boundaries, and which go out on a limb, and which you could only do IF you had God's strength to support you, then knowing that you do and inviting it to do so, God DOES come to support you in supernatural ways! That means you are walking with God.
And so I am learning, more can be done through me and by me IF I have God with me. There is a power that can work through me. There are goals that I can achieve which I could not achieve alone but which are achievable because God rushes in to make them so! Ahhhhhhhhh.
"I am sustained by the love of God" - ACIM
"God goes with me all through the day" - ACIM
This doesn't just mean I have a buddy to talk to, it means if I will step out and take a risk and go beyond the ego's laws, God's Will be done!!!
Can I get an amen?!
You really have only this choice.
A) Love
B) Hate
Just as Jesus says that what is not love is murder, and that even the slightest grievance is murderous, so too it is true that if you are not being FULLY loving you are not really being loving (at all) and therefore are in a state of HATE.
Now, it does not seem to most people that they are being hateful when they are not Loving. This is because so much of the hate has been made unconscious.
Sin has been denied with guilt, guilt has been denied with fear, and a veneer of fake innocence has been drawn over the mind. This innocence, seemingly all that is left in conscious awareness, creates the ILLUSION of unawareness that you are "being hateful" at all.
The result is that you feel relatively neutral, seemingly not enraged, seemingly quite calm most of the time, and seeming not to be actively hating. But this is because you are lost inside of layers of denial and unconsciousness. It renders your current perspective as though you are not intending to sin at all, and are relatively mild and weak.
But we have to at some point more honest about this. Jesus says love cannot be fully understood until the love is WHOLE, and without that wholeness it is not really love. It seems we can have degrees of love but that also means degrees of hate. He says we simply do not RECOGNIZE just how much we hate our brothers. Similarly, when we’re just casually coasting through life on unconscious autopilot, we do not recognize that we’re spending almost all our time in some form of hate. If it’s not total love, it is hate.
This is quite sobering and if we can own up to this without guilt, we’ll be able to use this information to recognize that whenever we are not being totally loving, we MUST be hating. We are not merely in some neutralized state. It is love or hate, those are the only choices. There is no escaping this. So that means, if I am not fully loving right now, I must be in SOME way hating.
Equipped with that information it now becomes easier to RECOGNIZE that, if I’m not being loving, I’m hating in some way, and so this helps me to be motivated or attentive to the "need" to return to being more loving. It identifies that what I thought was neutral or ok is in fact negative and hurtful in some fashion.
We’ve become far too used to letting moderate hatred slide by without correction. Or as Jesus says, too tolerant of mind wandering (away from our love self). Recognizing that I am actively "hating" and realizing that I’m really not being fully loving towards people, brings AWARENESS, and that’s a good starting point for wanting to change my mind.
ACIM reiterates many times that WE ALONE ARE THE CAUSE of our own suffering. We are not ever at the effect of the world. We are the cause of the world, the dream, and everything we feel and think and experience. Nothing happens without our consent, and we cannot even be hurt unless we ourselves hurt ourselves.
When you take this to the extreme, it means that YOU ALONE are responsible for EVERYTHING you experience, and NO ONE ELSE has anything to do with it whatsoever. There are no causes in the world, your brothers NEVER cause you (God is the cause of you), and you cannot suffer unless you choose to.
You can't even die unless you choose to. NOTHING can happen without your decision. And Jesus is completely literal about this. If you do not CHOOSE to suffer, suffering CANNOT happen to you. Sickness cannot happen, nor can death. You have automatic innate power over death and suffering at all times, and ONLY YOU can bring them upon yourself.
"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it."
This puts 100% of the responsibility on your shoulders. Which means that if you are ever tempted to believe that something is happening for a reason OTHER than your own contribution, you are in a state of being mistaken, and now you need correction. Because it is ONLY your contribution that is causing everything.
This sounds easy enough. You just need to realize and recognize that every time you are unhappy, upset, suffering, in pain, sick, angry etc, it is because you are making it happen. If you would just stop hurting yourself you'd be totally invulnerable and healthy and happy all the time. No joke.
What becomes seemingly difficult is the many ways that we might not recognize what we're doing, or that we're even doing anything at all. We can become so used to blame, and reaction, and emotional triggers, and powerlessness, and believing other people actually do stuff, and that it seems impossible we can be responsible for everything.
In fact it runs very deeply. Every single thought you have, every attitude, every belief, are all part of the confusion that "its not me doing it" and "they are doing it to me." In every way, it is really you, who are an immortal being who can never even be changed at all, becoming confused and believing that something outside of you is changing you against your will. This can NEVER be true.
Every time that we lose sight of being THE CAUSE, we fall into temptation. We deny the truth and project causality outside of us. And this is the same as projecting sin. Then we find others or the world to be the cause of us. And this is a defense against the healing God placed in our minds. It's a way to avoid being healed by displacing the problem and its source outside of ourselves.
We talk about teaching others, and helping others, and having relationships, and performing miracles and so on, but the foundation of all this is simply YOU BEING YOU. Are you attacking yourself, or aren't you? If you aren't, you are not under attack. If you are, you are your ONLY worst enemy. This is all due to the suicidal self-destructiveness which comes from believing you are sinful. Are you trying to destroy yourself and others, or are you extending creation?
If you were to temporarily remove the entire planet, and all the people on it, and leave just you floating in space by yourself, whatever is going on in your experience is SOLELY caused by you. There is nothing else to cause it. This really tells you that ALL your forgiveness work is ENTIRELY an inside job. IT has nothing to do with others. It's you versus yourself. Is you trying to master yourself. It's your mind playing tricks on itself. It's you alone affecting yourself insanely.
Weaning off of all the reasons, excuses, explanations, justifications, beliefs, projections, and all other forms of displacement of responsibility, is not easy. We have a lot of habits formed, a lot of assumptions made, and a lot of belief in being vulnerable. We position ourselves as victims on a minute-by-minute basis. We might think it's not even POSSIBLE to question whether these things are happening to us. That things can seem so extreme and lopsided that it seems impossible we can be the one causing it.
But even those things which seem convincing, tempting us, secretly our dissociated choice, we have to dig out ALL of them, to question every single mental activity which is leading you away from your invulnerability. Even the notion that if you are being responsible, other people can still do stuff to you, cannot be true. Even the notion that even if you're doing your best, you will still die, cannot be true. Even death itself CANNOT have power over you if you decide NOT to die. "You are immortal and you cannot die."
The aim here is that you become "strong in the truth". That you stand in your own light. That you know yourself and be true to yourself. That you be so certain of what you ARE, that you don't for a second displace yourself, make a bodily identity, project cause outside of yourself, or believe any temptation that you are threatened by the world. This is how you be the light of the world, by going WITHIN to the light that is in you, so that it can extend.
Ultimately it boils down to one simple thing. You are the one who is making your life hell. It's not anyone else, and its not the world. It's not your neighbors, not your boss, your politicians, your celebrities. It's not certain races or countries or the weather or food or where you live. It's not external activities or events or space or time. It's just YOU. You are the one who is doing it to yourself. Holy fuck!
Salvation has been placed IN YOUR MIND by God because he knows that the PROBLEM is in your mind. And so the solution is in your mind. Your mind is what needs to be corrected, and that is all. This will take care of everything else. You are the one who is against you. You are the one who keeps giving YOUR power away to others. You are the one who keeps losing yourself and confusing yourself with things which are not you. And you are the one who can use the power of your decision to get out of it.
"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do.""It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace in any way.""It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen."
"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way"
"Who could be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself?"
"Nothing can hurt you, unless you give it the power to do so."
"If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt"
"You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness."
"I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."
"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events outside him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident."
"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."
It is not possible for you to suffer unless there is guilt in your own mind. The only way for a mind to have guilt in it, is for that same mind to believe it is guilty, thus identifying itself as guilty. All suffering is self-inflicted.
When it seems that you are upset in relation to someone else, suffering or feeling hurt by them, with them seeming to do something to you, or as though they are the cause of your upset, something has gone wrong with your perception.
You first believe yourself to be sinful and therefore guilty. But then you deny and repress this belief, portraying yourself as an innocent victim in order to pretend you are not guilty.
Then someone comes along and does something. It doesn't matter what they do, it has absolutely nothing to do with you and does not cause anything. It is "neutral". However, it may reflect, correlate to, play upon, emphasize, or put focus on, your own hidden belief in your own guilt.
This will "trigger" your own guilt to rise into your conscious awareness. Having denied that it exists, which places it into unconsciousness, it suddenly appears to come out of nowhere, and you still believe you are not the one who put it there.
It seems then fairly logical, even obvious, that this guilt only showed up when someone did or said something, so what they did must be tied to it or the cause of it somehow. Therefore, you conclude, they are the one who just hurt you and made you feel bad.
This is of course a mis-perception. But it leads you now to launch into a lengthy story, driven by pain, about how this other person must be the one who is mistaken. Whatever or whoever they are, if they caused your guilt and suffering, then there must be something wrong with them.
You then explain that they are the one who must change in order for correction to occur. You will feel justified in attacking them, getting revenge or seeing them as wrong, because you do not see how you have attacked your own self by believing you are guilty.
You can become very lost in this. This story unfolds in your perception about how this person is doing all this hurtful, upsetting stuff to you, causing you to suffer. And while you're in this mode, you will be stuck.
You'll be stuck because they are not the cause of your guilt, so getting them to change, even if you could get them to change, will not get rid of your guilt. The ego will tempt you to try to change another in order to atone and correct the situation, promising that it will "work" and succeed in restoring your illusion of peace. But it won't work, because only you are the cause of your guilt and suffering.
When you have identified your sense of self with sinfulness and guilt, you yourself have come to perceive and believe that you are made from sin and guilt. It redefines your identity. Sin and guilt can be targeted by the ego in others, because these things are inside of the ego thought system.
Anything within the ego thought system is fair game and open to being attacked by any other part of the ego thought system. If your sense of self is "within" this mind, made of or defined by what this mind believes, then this ego mind can attack what you are.
If you have identified yourself as made of sin and guilt, being sinful and guilty, you have identified yourself AS ego. You are now joined with and a part of the ego's belief system. Anything within that belief system can be attacked by that belief system. Then you will seem to experience that what you are can be attacked by other people's egos.
However, if your sense of Self, your identity, is outside of the ego's thought system entirely - if you are unconditional love, one with Holy Spirit, then you are literally out of reach of the ego's thought system. It cannot target you, it cannot attach to you, it cannot see you, it cannot identify you, it cannot interact with you, it cannot touch you, and it cannot hurt you.
The ego is incapable of accessing the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the light of truth and light dispels darkness. Approach the light and the darkness in the mind must be dispelled and disappear. The ego is shown to be nothing, in the Holy Spirit's thought system, so it simply cannot exist where He exists.
You, identified as innocent and holy, are incapable of being affected by the ego, by any kind of attack, by any kind of guilt-inducing behavior, or any judgements or accusations from others. Without guilt in your own mind, and without you being the one to put that guilt there, nobody can put guilt there on your behalf. Nobody can reach outside of the ego and put guilt into the mind of the Son of God.
Therefore, without guilt in the mind, the mind cannot suffer. "A guiltless mind cannot suffer". A mind which does not, itself, believe in its own guilt, cannot suffer. A mind which does believe in its own guilt, must suffer, by its own hand, and it will project the cause of this suffering onto others. Yet nobody else is ever attacking what you are. Only the ego attacks itself, it never attacks love because it can't.
So if you are upset, caught up in a drama about what someone else is doing to you, how they are wrong, how they are causing you to be unhappy and stressed and upset, you are mistaken. It is YOU who believe you are sinful and guilty. It is YOUR sin and guilt that is triggered by them. They have merely come to show you, reflect to you, make you aware of, point out and trigger, the pre-existing belief in sin that you yourself put into your own mind. You cannot blame them for telling you what you believe is true.
Although you will hate for them to point out your own belief in your own faults, you can hardly blame them for what you yourself believe about yourself. You have to learn to admit that it is YOU who believe you are sinful and guilty, and your experience of upset because of this is entirely something you have chosen to experience. You yourself put it in place, and you yourself can undo it.
You are not upset because of someone else, you are upset because you believe you're sinful. You still believe you are guilty. And regardless of the form or specifics of someone else's attempted attack or judgement, it will touch upon and remind you of the guilt that you believe in. Thus you agree with the content of their attack, that it means you are guilty.
You will react and exclaim that no, they are not telling the truth, and that you have been unfairly attacked, but look again. You DO believe in what they say about you. You DO believe you are guilty. You DO believe you should suffer and be hurt. You DO believe in your own guilt. And that is the only reason you are upset.
You need to learn that all attack is really self attack. You need to learn that the secret to salvation is the admittance that you are doing this to yourself. That you chose this sin and guilt, and can change your mind about yourself - forgive yourself. It is YOU who needs forgiveness, not another person.
You cannot forgive another person. It is metaphysically impossible. You can only forgive yourself, because only you have really attacked yourself. It is not real or true that anyone else ever attacks you, so it cannot be something that is open for forgiveness.
Have you really sinned in the way that you believe you have? Was it a real sin? Or are you forgiven because you did not sin in reality? Are you forgiven because you cannot sin and are still innocent? These are the questions you need to be finding answers to, not attempting to figure out why someone else is hating you for you.
You are innocent. You are holy. You have done nothing wrong. Your sin is false. You are not guilty at all. Let yourself be free.
In this world, nothing gets done unless you put in some effort. And that's a chore, meaning that making stuff requires work. This isn't really natural to us - we are creators. We should be able to cause things to happen just by will alone, by mind power.
But we made the world as a result of being unwilling, which means it's not a world of will, it's a world that seems unwilling to do anything. So you have to then force it.
When bits of trash fall on the ground, they will stay there forever, unless someone does something to pick them up. If you want to "create" something here, which really means making something, there is now a craft to it, which requires skill and effort because all the objects are different.
At first, the thing you want to make doesn't exist at all, you have a blank slate, an empty canvas, a nothingness. You have no idea what it will be like, but you have to start somewhere. This is daunting, to take nothingness and make it into something.
The process of making is a process of translating higher-level abstract mind-stuff into form, which is an act of materialising, or at least sculpting and forming and reshaping and assembling and building from parts and pieces and materials.
To make anything, you have to take it from an idea to an implementation. But at first, you will have no idea how to do that. You will have to push, and force, and try to wrangle stuff to get it to become a bit more finite, more concrete, to nail things down, commit to decision, to move things forward and see it "take shape" as it turns into form.
That can be difficult because it means trying to take an empty nothingness and somehow "make" something out of it, which means having to put limits in place, define things, make lots of decisions, design and plan, and gradually refine it.
You start with a basic template perhaps, a vague idea, and you start somewhere and put some pieces roughly in place, but it's not finished and you have a lot to figure out. You don't even as yet know how it's going to end up, because you don't as yet understand how to even move forward with it.
So in order to push it forward you have to do some work on it, because if you don't it will just sit there, lifeless and doing nothing, because you're really make it out of death. And even if you do a bit of the work, it's not finished, it will just stop whenever you stop, because it has no real life of its own. It can't become anything until you force it to.
So then making becomes an act of forcing and applying effort and energy and attacking the thing to overpower it and coerce it into taking on a certain form, as an accumulation of actions. And gradually as you apply this effort you reshape the thing and refine it and it starts to turn into something.
Eventually with enough time and effort you can get through the seeming brick wall of nothingness, through all the uncertainty and difficult lack of definition, and pin things down. It's a process of taking something in the mind and trying to make it physical. You have to physically go through the motions, apply the tools, click the buttons, do all the little annoying steps, in order to get to the end result. Sometimes this can be painstaking.
This is a translation process, and it takes time. And unless you keep hammering away at it, it won't happen. Again and again you have to keep gong back to it to do more to it, to keep building, to keep growing it, to keep moving it forward toward the goal, otherwise it just sits there lifeless and incomplete. And no-one's going to do it for you or come along and rescue you, unless maybe you pay them.
And then once you complete the thing you're making, when you think it's good enough, and done, maybe you're happy with it, and maybe you recognize it's ended up a bit shit anyway. Because the things we make in form and from materials in spacetime are all very limited and strange and not really like the level of mind where anything is possible. Have you seen people's DIY disasters?
You have to make do and tolerate limits and put up with imperfections, to accept choices for one color and not another, to go with some option that partially works and know that the other options had something you're missing. What you end up with is a strange collection of stuff that is very limited and unwhole and imperfect, but it'll have to do, because that's as good as physicality gets. You're forced to have to "conform" to form, which means accepting limits and separations and exclusions.
This is all unnatural for the mind and soul, because it means trying to work within the confines of a very awkward system of limits, in which every little part of the thing you're trying to make has to be undertaken personally and with effort and force, to sculpt it and mold it and make it be something. That takes a lot of time and patience and commitment.
You can easily be put off when the next step is unclear, when you don't have the experience, when you don't know how it's going to look or what's going to work. When you have to figure things out as you go along, and the whole thing seems like you're just winging it, making it up as you go.
And then when you get to the end you don't even know if what you made is really the most ideal or best it could be, because you didn't have the foresight to be able to produce perfection. And what you then made is quirky and odd and maybe partly does the job. They you'll probably have to go back over it and fix stuff and polish it up, to do more work on it based on hindsight.
Making is certainly a strange process. But without making, nothing in this world gets done. The world just stays much the same way as it is. Your "life" stays stagnant, your home remains undecorated, your projects remain unfinished and you end up stuck in a rut. If you want things to be different in form, you have to take action. Physical action and effort. You have to try.
Compare that to heaven where to create you simply will what you want to exist and there it is, perfect and whole and complete, instantly effortless, with no time or space involved, no forcing or constant refinements, just simply direct perfect results every time, and joyfully so. How very different that is to getting anything to happen in spacetime through labor.
This is why life is a bit of a chore, and why sometimes people just can't be bothered to do the work. It's tiresome, unless you can find some way to enjoy the process itself, enjoy the craft, or feel some sense of accomplishment or purpose to why you're doing all that work. Maybe if it's of service to others you can feel better about it. Life here is hard work, in general, because the world is difficult in general. But maybe it can be repurposed and seen in a better way.
"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."
"You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."
Lately I'm noticing more and more often, I just don't want to blame. I'm believing in "real sin" less and less.
I didn't see this coming, and it's not that I've been deliberately working on not being blameful. But I'm starting to see why this makes sense.
When I blame, I am believing that there is some "other" that's not me, that I'm finding responsible for some kind of guilt or sin. This so-called other is actually a part of my own self which I split off in my mind and attack. This attack seems to cause a hallucinated projection onto other people, in which the disassociation from the "conscious" part of my mind makes it seem like it's all to do with someone else.
But the truth is that my attack is actually coming from me, and it is going TO me. And in fact, I am not even really attacking anyone else at all. I think I am, but I'm not.
In the ego's thought system of denial, it really does seem like it is not only possible to find someone else guilty for our own belief in our own sinfulness, but that they can receive ALL of the blame and we receive none of it. We actually think we can scapegoat someone and make them wrong and find them guilty and that this has NO effect on ourselves whatsoever. i.e. Do unto others as you would NOT have them do unto you.
This is of course a complete illusion. While it persists, we go around blaming people because we think that we CAN, as a viable "option" for getting rid of our own sinfulness. Introducing a separation between cause and effect, we think we can be free of the effects and responsibilities of our sin, and someone else can take the hit. And we want to make especially sure that the separation between both is strong so as to be strongly convinced no nasty effects are going to leak back onto ourselves.
But what has to dawn on our mind is not only that we are responsible for 100% of what we are experiencing, but also that everything that has happened we have therefore done to ourselves, and therefore there ARE no causes outside of us, and thus there are no grounds for blame.
This also reveals to the mind that while it thought it was capable of attacking someone "else" with no effects on itself, it actually WAS attacking itself. At first it will think that it was attacking both itself and others, but then it will also dawn that it was in fact ONLY attacking itself. In our egos we live in private worlds of self-attack, at war with ourselves, in our split mind with multiple personalities. It doesn't even really involved anyone else at all, we just pretend it does. When we are willing to become aware that we are ONLY doing it to ourselves, then a whole new kind of experience starts to emerge. This is what's starting to happen to me now.
I am getting this feeling that I just don't WANT to blame people for anything. I haven't deliberately been trying to stop blaming as such, it's just sort of emerging. Some part of me seems to be aware that if I blame, in the act of blame, there is an attack and that *I* actually receive at least some of the effects of that attack. It's not true that the other person is 100% separated from me, and it's not true that they are really guilty. If I am being responsible, it MUST mean that I am doing this to myself and am attacking myself.
So each time I go to scapegoat, i.e. pretend that I even CAN scapegoat, I'm starting to learn or realize that the "blame" is ACTUALLY from myself, to myself, and I WILL experience effects from that. I am becoming aware of those effects, rather than being unconscious of it. And the fact is, outside of denial, this self attack HURTS ME. I do not want to keep hurting myself. It is a natural response, really.
If you could be aware that you can ONLY do anything to yourself, and that if you attack, YOU will be the one who gets ALL of the effects, you would not attack.
It is only because we've been unconscious and split in our mind and believing that there is an "other" that all of the responsibility can be given to (disowning of self), that we even CONCEIVE of the idea of displacing blame onto this "other". Or even that doing so might cause us to NOT be experiencing the effects of the sin. It is only because of DENIAL that it even seems possible that this would be helpful in alleviating guilt.
So while I am in denial and am being dishonest and irresponsible and believing that i am really sinful, I'm going to be really compelled to try to split myself off from that and project it somewhere. But the truth is, I'm not escaping it. Self-attack is self-attack. Nobody else is even being attacked by me at all, so it's not even as though there is this motivation to "be nice to other people". My self-attack has NOTHING to do with anyone else at all, and in truth, NOBODY receives any effects from it. No real effects anyway.
So it's not even as though I'm doing this out of GUILT in relation to trying to be kinder to others. That would actually be a form of self sacrifice which is ego. Instead, it's just the natural dawning of AWARENESS, that because I am responsible, I literally AM doing unto MYSELF as I would have MYSELF do unto me. I am attacking myself, and it is my belief that I am really sinful that is the root of this attack.
So as we have the courage to look at our own belief in our own sinfulness, in the idea of "real sin", and are finding some genuine healing atonement for this, it seems like the truth that we are only attacking ourselves becomes more obvious. I just am becoming aware that if I attack, *I* will feel hurt, and I just don't want to feel that anymore. I don't want to keep finding myself sinful, because now it's not a game of whether or not anyone else is being forgiven (you cannot forgive anyone other than yourself, and there is no need to!), it's a game between me and myself now and how I want to be towards myself.
I don't want to blame others, because I don't want to blame myself, because I don't want to keep finding myself sinful and guilty. I am just losing interest in it. It hurts to hurt myself. I don't want that. This is how my interests become shared interests with others. This is what leads to literally doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, which really means, you are DOING LOVE to others BECAUSE you love yourself. You cannot really do anything to others unless it IS love, because everything else is really self attack.
So it's funny but, in situations where I would've gone right into blame and accusation and scapegoating, I just can't seem to believe my own bullshit anymore. I know its dishonest and irresponsible and denial and not true that it's anyone else's fault. Nobody has done anything to me. No-one is the cause of my upset. I am choosing it. I'm doing this to myself. And I want to stop doing that. I want to recognize my true innocence, and learn to love myself again.
Surrendering to self-love shared with God. I am worthy because in the atonement, it is true that I have not really done anything real, and therefore am still innocent. Accepting that produces a justification to love yourself.
At the moment, I am focusing on receiving healing. Much has happened the past several months and I am still recovering from it.
One valuable tool I've found is to repeat short phrases in quick succession. These include:
I surrender
I surrender to your love
I let go completely
I receive God's healing love
I open to receive
I trust you Holy Spirit
I receive
I let go
I admit I'm mistaken
I let go of controlling
I receive God
While saying these casually to yourself in your mind, you may find that as you say them back-to-back without a pause, you don't allow the ego to sneak in between, and it begins to have a powerful effect to shift you.
e.g
"I surrender, I surrender, I surrender, I surrender, I surrender." etc
You don' have to say it quickly, but it does help to not allow pauses between statements.
These are all to do with the relinquishment of ego, letting go of control, admitting to being mistaken, being WILLING to be corrected.
They all demonstrate "a little willingness", which means in some way, you are WILLING to move away from illusions and in the direction of truth. This also means moving away from imprisonment towards freedom, and as you open up to the freedom of the will, by being willing to be free, and willing to let go of what you are doing that imprisons you, you are INVITING THE HOLY SPIRIT.
"This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. I told you that I could reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you. But I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation."
"You find it difficult to ACCEPT the idea that you need give so LITTLE, to receive so much. And it is very hard for you to realize that it is NOT personally insulting that YOUR contribution and the Holy Spirit's are so EXTREMELY disproportionate."
"He asks but little. It is HE Who adds the greatness and the might. He JOINS with you, to make the holy instant far greater than you can understand.
It is your realization that you NEED do so little, that enables HIM to give so much. Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust IMPLICITLY your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this, and be NOT disturbed that shadows surround it."
This little willingness is a vertical movement. And furthermore, it is a way to develop trust. You are saying, I am willing to let go of being in charge, controlling, managing life, fighting with people, stressing and struggling to do this on my own, I want help and am willing to receive help by ALLOWING the Holy Spirit to heal me for me.
I've found that in particular, "I surrender" and "I receive God's healing love" have been the two most powerful statements to repeat. Especially when coupled with a willingness and intention to open to receive and to let go deeply.
If you are willing, you can open to receive God's love into you. You can feel the sensation in your heart. You can allow love to come TO you, without you having to do anything to effort to put anything out. You don't even have to "give", only to receive.
The more deeply you can receive love, the more it will touch you, heal you, and dig out your unhealed wounds. If you can stand it, sometimes you can take it very far to the point where you are so filled with love, it will likely trigger a large emotional catharsis, and you may need time to recover from that. I have only "gone there" a couple times, approaching a sense of holiness and bowing before God, and it's very powerful.
As you put aside ego control, invite the Holy Spirit into you. Even, go as far as to verbalize it, "I allow you into me Holy Spirit, do whatever you want to do to heal me". It's important to place trust in Him, which includes both suspending the fear that he will do something frightening or harmful in you, and being willing to give him very broad open permission to do ANYTHING. That takes trust to give such sweeping "access", to you, and to your body. And it's that trust that makes it possible for Him to come in and heal you on all levels.
The result for me of doing this deeply, through curious exploration and trust development and willingness (and need), is that He now comes in and heals me physically, emotionally, mentally at any time. We now have a kind of working relationship. I experience dramatic shaking and vibrations and energetic sensations, every single day, usually several times a day. It has become so commonplace and normal, it's probably happened 1000 times already. And every time it leaves me in a more healed condition. This is one of the gifts of God.
Receive healing for yourself. "Those who are healed become instruments of healing." "I will heal as I let Him teach me to heal." You must be willing to work with Him and have a trusting relationship with Him. He is there as your appointed therapist, guide, counsellor, healer, teacher, friend. Use Him. Let Him in. Receive His support, guidance and healing. He is the HELP that God has sent to you. There is nothing His power cannot do. "The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."
"The holy instant does NOT come from your little willingness alone. It is ALWAYS the result of your SMALL willingness COMBINED with the unlimited power of HIS WILL. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare YOURSELF for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and NOT believe that it is up to YOU to establish the conditions for peace. GOD HAS ESTABLISHED THEM. They do NOT wait upon your willingness for what they ARE. Your willingness is needed ONLY to make it possible to TEACH you what they are."
"Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."
--
"Purification is of God alone, and THEREFORE for you. Rather than seek to prepare YOURSELF for Him, try to think thus:
"I, who am host to God, AM worthy of Him.
He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be.
It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I DO NOT INTERFERE with His plan to RESTORE to me my own AWARENESS of my readiness, which is eternal.
I need ADD nothing to His plan.
But to RECEIVE it, I MUST be willing NOT to substitute my own, IN PLACE of it.""
--
"Say to yourselves the following, as sincerely as you can, remembering that ***the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation***:
I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace.
I do NOT feel guilty, because ***the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.***
I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."
--
"Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will accept only whom YOU invite. You are free to determine who shall be your guest, and how long he shall remain with you. But this is not REAL freedom, for it depends on how you see it. For the Holy Spirit is THERE, although He cannot help you without your invitation, and the ego is nothing, whether you invite it or not. Real freedom depends on welcoming REALITY, and of your guests only He IS real. Know, then, Who abides with you, merely by recognizing WHAT IS ALREADY THERE, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you."
Miracles and supernatural interventions occur more readily when there is physical relaxation and a willingness to surrender and receive.
The act of not 'acting', of not transmitting, of not even giving, but simply a willingness to let go and be open and RECEIVE, invites and allows Holy Spirit to access and help you.
I have now over the past few months received healing from the Holy Spirit on an almost daily basis. And I don't just mean he fixes some perceptual issues. I'm talking, supernatural power! Sometimes it will occur spontaneously even if I am in public, or anywhere that I need it, but Holy Spirit can be discreet and is able to tone-down the visual signs of this happening (which usually entails much shaking of body parts), lol.
Most readily I am open to this happening when laying in bed either towards sleeping or in the morning. Typically Holy Spirit begins by simply saying either "relax" or "surrender". This could be in the middle of some rant or some other conversation and is often unexpected and I don't always clue-in at first that this means He is going to do something, but then it begins.
Even if I am laying there relaxing, sometimes He knows that I am not necessarily letting go of a situation in order to let Him help, and so he will say "surrender". This signals me that I need to actively surrender.
To do this, I will repeat in words, "I surrender", several times. At first I seem to say this slowly and with gaps between, because I am not yet very willing to let go. But I notice that the healing really starts to flow when I say it quickly and in quick succession, so that there is no time in-between for my ego to get in there and keep holding on. "I surrender, I surrender, I surrender." After saying this several times, Holy Spirit will likely spontaneously activate and begin healing.
By surrendering, what I mean is, having a willingness to let go and give up and stop fighting. It's actually a 'feeling' I get of like, how you'd feel if you'd tried everything and failed and just threw up your arms and admitted defeat. It's an openness, a giving in, and an admitting. Admitting the truth literally means "allowing the truth to come in". This is why surrender is apparently a VITAL part of the miracle process, because it means you're willing to put aside doing this yourself, and admit that you cannot, and stop trying to be God.
Then God comes.
Sometimes I've heard Holy Spirit say, "come", and I'm not sure if this means for me to come to Him, but I've also had Him basically put words in my mouth as to what He wants me to say to Him to get things flowing, which is cool. So I will say, "come Holy Spirit", "come into me". This is an invitation. Also sometimes I will ask Him to join with me or to help me to join with Him.
In my willingness to surrender, there is much activity which I'll describe in a moment. But I've also found that in addition to surrendering and allowing Him to operate on me, if I am also actively doing some kind of forgiveness during this time, like, really getting down to the truth that stuff isn't real and it hasn't happened and I'm not a victim and so on, this will also activate additional 'phases' of healing. So just when I think it's kind of done, there'll be another whole wave of it.
What almost always happens, I'm finding, is there are about 4 or so different expressions of Holy Spirit healing me. The first one is that my head literally starts to shake from side to side "violently", i.e. very very rapidly, like a vibration, and the speed of this can be so fast that it's like just a really intense vibrating, and I have to trust that this is safe (lol), which it is. This seems to dislodge... I don't know what, from my head area. This can last anywhere from a few seconds to up to 20 seconds or more. Then there will often be a short pause, and then it kicks into phase 2.
In phase 2, all of a sudden whatever energy or whatever was drained from my head area flows down into the belly area. I suddenly start to experience muscle contractions in that area, which can be quite intense. The muscles become so contracting that it forces me to hunch over or partly sit up, and in the really strong cases there is such vibrational tension in the 'floor' of the abdominal area, that it feels like an earthquake vibrating very deeply. This will go on for possibly 15-30 seconds depending. As the energy or whatever clears, and He gets done, I relax back down, and I immediately notice that ... just something has changed in my experience.
Often I immediately notice that I feel expanded, calm, peaceful and relaxed, and soft. It feels really good. It's as though something happened on the inside of me and my whole awareness is different. Sometimes after several rounds of this, per my willingness to invite more and do more healing, I have felt really really peaceful. It also energizes me somewhat but can also make me a little ungrounded for a while.
A third way it manifests is that sometimes the energy or whatever goes out through my arms which will shake, sometimes quite aggressively. Sometimes this is followed by a series of belly contractions as well. A fourth way, which actually I think was the first way that I started to experience this, was that gradually some kind of presence would begin to fill me up from my feet upwards, causing the muscles to all become tensed all the way up my legs to my stomache, and then there would be much shaking and 'draining' where emotions and other energy from the upper torso would just seem to drain out of me quickly.
I have absolutely no idea really what Holy Spirit is doing. No idea. I don't know why His presence causes the body to shake. I have no clue why His healing focuses around the head and later around the belly, other than that these are the two main area of nervous systems and the "two brains".
Similarly, if I ask Jesus to come into my belly area when I am having intense feelings, He will do almost the same thing, resulting in a complete undoing of that feeling, its cause, and a state of happiness and laughter at the end.
Also I forgot there is also another way that this manifests, and it's to do with if I am focussing my attention on another person. If I am doing a forgiveness about someone and I am asking Holy Spirit to heal some part of them, I will start to experiencing shaking and vibrations in that area of MY body, sometimes quite intensely, and sometimes it's so unusual in its focus on that body part that there is just no way I could even conceive of making that body part move that way. Like it could be a healing in the lower back or something and it's shaking all over the place but if I were to think, how could I make the back muscles shake in just that one area like that, it's just totally impossible.
I have been learning to trust that when I do this for some other person, it is helping them, but this is an area of doubt for me, which I am still working on. I have, however, noticed that after some rounds of healing for someone else in this way, they do appear to exhibit signs of SOMETHING having changed in their experience, afterwards, through at least some kind of shift in mood or renewed clarity of awareness or even some physical side effects. This is especially an area that challenges me to trust because I am not the recipient of the benefits and I cannot tell from my own sensations whether it is helping or not.
This has all has come about through SURRENDER. Also through trust. Just opening up to Holy Spirit and inviting Him to come into me and to do whatever he wants to do... that alone is a big trust step at first, because you don't know what might happen. I did that numerous times with 'milder' healings taking place before it ever progressed to the intense shaking. Another way to approach this if you prefer, is to just address God, "God, I receive your healing love".... do that a few times and tell me you don't feel some sense of love come around and into you. This also can be sufficient to signal to Holy Spirit to allow healing love to flow into you, as much as you are willing to receive it. Receiving love from God takes seemingly a bit more willingness than letting Holy Spirit run riot, maybe it's a trust thing.
These are all acts of RECEIVING, and they entail that I relax. If in the middle of the healing I start to tighten up and resist, He reminds me to relax, because it does seem to interfere to some degree, whereby the shaking etc may stop or lessen if I start fighting it. I have had to learn to TRUST it and not be afraid of it and to just let Him do whatever. It is often quite funny when my head is shaking all over the place and my cheeks and mouth are flapping around and I'm actually relaxed, it's sort of fun!
I look forward in particular now to doing a pretty strong session of this for myself on the weekends, either toward sleep or upon waking, but really Holy Spirit I'm finding out doesn't care about schedules and sometimes will start doing the shakes even before I really seem to be ready. It's gotten to where even a slight 'hint' to Him to do it can kick it in, at any time. I believe the same is true of miracle performed for others - which is where this is leading, whereby we are to just spontaneously funnel the power of God without even thinking about it.
I was watching some videos today of a pastor who performs many many many miracles and has risen the dead etc, and one of his teachings is that you need to get the RECIPIENT of healing to surrender and relax a lot, in order to RECEIVE the full transformation and healing. This seems to be key. If the person is interfering and trying to pray and do stuff at the same time, that's actually a block. Receiving and transmitting are two different functions, and the person receiving the healing needs to be ideally in a RECEIVING mindset.
So relax! Surrender a lot. Be willing. Have courage and trust and invite Holy Spirit to come into you. He is willing and ready, He's just waiting on YOU to be RECEPTIVE. This is how you can receive your own healing miracles effortlessly. I think this is actually EASIER than sharing miracles with other people, which is a whole different dynamic. But I think,... Holy Spirit may be about to reveal a new way of looking at that, based on surrender.
Let us know how you get on! Happy shaking. And remember, "He will correct the consequences of my wrong decisions if I will let Him, and I choose to LET HIM"!!
This might sound obvious and a no-brainer, but it can be quite obscure to both realize and believe and accept that God is with you at all times. Like, intimately inside you.
It can feel safer, for example, to relate to the Holy Spirit or Jesus, keep an abstract, nebulous idea of God further afield at a distance. After all, direct full experience of God is typically a revelation experience, seemingly once in a lifetime.
I only occasionally remember to really commune with God and to get an experience of Him being right here with me right now, like, close-up, inside my mind. Experiencable. Then I forget. As my mind then wanders off on tangents of thinking, it's as if I'm so quickly forgetting that God is present each and every time. God is like this ultimate truth and reality which is "blocked" by any kind of block to awareness and so easily out of sight, out of mind.
But I've been dabbling with this moreso recently, of allowing and accepting God to be with me. The other day I had this nice open experience, where the Holy Spirit was revealing his love and helping me to know that God has not only "always been here" but will "always be here".
It's interesting that God is so permanently present. He is always here. He's with you now. He's always been with you. Just saying that fills me with something divine. The question isn't so much whether God connects with you or not but whether you slip off into a snooze and start dreaming of something else, imagining you are exiled away from where God is.
"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of waking to reality."
It seems so basic and primitive, just the notion that God Himself would be close to you, that you would share with Him, directly communicate with Him, allow His Presence to fill you, receive His love, know HIm, on a long-term basis and not as a "hi how are ya" that lasts for 10 seconds. But as we approach God, perhaps this time accepting, allowing, inviting and being with God, in God, extends until it becomes permanent. And then you are always AWARE that you are with God at all times.
As Jesus said, he was always with God and aware of His Presence. It is that kind of openness and clarity and joining and relationship that is a prerequisite for miracle working.
There are two kinds of power, God's power and ego power.
Ego power means that you have to rise up against enemies and fight them strongly. This manifests as intensity, anger, attack. You think that if you can 'over-power' the 'other', then you will gain power and win.
But this demonstration of power is actually not power at all. It is a show of weakness, because you can't believe in separation and have strength. Strength comes from wholeness, not opposition. Strength comes from inclusiveness, not exclusion.
When you are attempting to be powerful over something in this ego way, you're really saying that you believe very strongly that the enemy has some kind of power over you, and therefore you need to muster a huge amount of supposed might against them in order to not be disempowered. But this only means you still continue to believe they have power over you, which is a perspective of weakness. This isn't really power at all.
God's power is wholeness, in that when you are being what you are, you are infinitely powerful. There is no limit to what you can do or what you can choose to create. And nothing can affect you, and you have no enemies.
See, the essential difference is, that in God's power you don't need the power in order to rise up against anyone because the power comes from wholeness and not from separation. It comes because it's natural and shared, and is therefore strong. It automatically protects you from inventing enemies, and therefore there are no enemies that this power needs to 'go up against'. You are powerful SO THAT you have no opposition.
It is actually a choice to have a lack of power, that creates a perception of enemies. It is a choice to see yourself as a victim, that leads to you believing that someone other than you has a power to affect you in ways that you can't prevent. And ultimately if you believe they have tremendous power over you, they will destroy you. But really it is you destroying yourself, because you're the one giving your power away.
So yes, you choose and feed your enemies. You give them their ammunition. You set them against you.
If you want to feel empowered it's not going to come from fighting against things that you think are unacceptable or not right. YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS PUTTING THEM OUT THERE! It's from shifting into an awareness that nothing can harm you because you have no opposition and are not attacking others with a judgement of wrongness. Stop making enemies for yourself.