Being Who We Really Are

“You need do nothing to be yourself.  This situation is as paradoxical as if the flower had to learn how to be a good flower, as if she had to make lists of steps on the way of becoming a flower.  A flower can be nothing but a flower.  You cannot be anything but yourself who is pure light and love.  All you have to do is wake up and take off unnecessary clothes to make your light dress shine.

“No one can tell you what the self is like that you are, since words cannot encompass reality. Nor can anyone other than  you know how this self is expressed in you and by you.  Only you can know.  When you see yourself shining in a garment of light, it will be an expression in itself.  You do not have to control your actions because the love that lives in you controls you.”  Dewdrops of Wisdom, Chapter 17.  Message from Mary.

So many of us don’t accept ourselves.  We think we have to strain and work hard to be better people, to be good, to walk farther along the pathway back to God.

This somewhat misstates the case.  There are a few guideposts to finding our way back to God, changes we need to make in  ourselves–like more forgiveness, less fear, less judgments of ourselves and others.  But has it occurred to us that when we criticize ourselves for not being “better,” we are in fact judging ourselves,and that this is just as much a problem as judging others?

Being who we really are is a acceptance of ourselves, letting God make changes, if God wants to make changes in us.  We rest in the bosom of the Lord, and sooner rather than later, we are nestled there consistently.  Just all the time.

When we cuddle up to God, we have short glimpses of Awakening, then longer glimpses, and then one glorious day we find ourselves sustaining Awakening.  Fully Awakening is often a long, slow process, but in our patience we possess our souls.  And we can fall back asleep, sometimes after many years of being awake.  This is not the norm, though.

Be contented in who we are.

God will do the rest.

Living in Love Is Living in the Truth of Who We Are

“To heal is to gather in love.  What else can keep consciousness healthy, and with it the soul, if not the truth?  You may not believe that living in love and truth is the source of healing and the sustenance of a healthy state, but if you look around the world a bit, you can observe that this is so, even in the realm of delusion.

“Living in love is living in the truth of who you are; it keeps you within the embrace of holiness.  Those who remain there receive the light of life in their minds, hearts, and consciousness–in all their humanity, allowing divine energy to flood every aspect of them and for them to remain ‘safe and sound.’”  The Age of the Heart, Chapter 22.  Message from Jesus.

To my mind/heart, the salient fragment of a sentence is “Living in love is living in the truth of who you are.”

So many of us are dissatisfied with the person that we are; we seek to “improve” relentlessly.  And a frequent component of this improvement campaign is making comparisons with our friends.

This will never do.  It is hard for us to believe, but when we relax in God’s arms, we are relaxing into the person who we really are.  And concomitantly, we are living in love because God metaphorically whispers in our ear the next right thing to think, say, and do.

We will be healed when we relax in God’s arms.  Then we are truly the children created in the beginning, and we are home again–awake for a moment, and maybe for much longer.  We don’t have to struggle to be awake; it is the gift of God.

Living in the Sweetness of Love

“Pure souls, you who receive these words, there are countless spiritual paths, but the one for you is that of the sweetness of Mary.  She will be the one who floods your heart, your mind, and all of your humanity with perfect love and eternal wisdom.  As you give yourself increasingly to her, the softness of her love will create great wonders in your soul.  Her love carries the power of divinized motherhood.  Consequently, she will make you a new being in every moment.  She will also renew the face of the Earth.”  The Age of the Heart, Chapter 24.  Message from Jesus.

This passage needs some explanation.  The new era is said in previous works to be the place in which we express “being” more than “doing,” and Mary’s way was that of being.  We are being told that the Age of the Heart, which we are now occupying, will be an age of Mother Mary.  The feminine will come into its own.

Mary echoes the feminine aspect of God, for God has no gender, but to make it easier for ourselves, we think of both a male and female part of the Godhead.  Mother Mary is recognized in these writings as the twin soul of Jesus, though these exact words are not used.  

Often we need to feel the nurturing aspect to cocoon and comfort our body, mind, spirit, soul.  This we now have, in the person of Mother Mary, human and divine Mother Mary.  We are told that the sweetness of Mary is our pathway back to union with God.  This is a compassionate sweetness, not a “cloying” one.  But sweetness it is, and we are wise to seek to move into ascendancy our goodwill for our companions, our brothers and sisters on Earth.

Let anger and attack fall away, as A Course in Miracles encourages us.  Be kind.  Be loving.  Be compassionate.  Be sweet.

Path of Being

“[U]ntil now few have traveled the path of being, which the tenderness of beautiful love calls you to travel.  I assure you that this path takes the soul directly to Heaven in such a serene, happy, easy, and effective way as no other can, for where the sweetness of love dwells, there is Christ in glory, and Christ is Heaven.”  The Age of the Heart, Chapter 24.  Message from Jesus.

The path of being is said in an earlier channeled work, A Course of Love, to be “being” as opposed to “doing.”  The path of being is said to be Mother Mary’s way.  When we travel with Mary, we don’t put so much emphasis on our “to do” lists, though we do still get things done.  It is more with a serene trust in God that we act in any “doing” way.  Mostly we revel in our union with God, sensing perhaps that He is in charge, and we are walking serenely along the pathways in this world.

We seem more in Heaven than on Earth.

The sweetness of love is not a cloying sweetness, but a compassionate sweetness.  Mary also exemplifies the sweetness of love when love is meant as compassion.

Note the words above, “serene, happy, easy, and effective way,” to find our place in Heaven.

We have struggled too much on our pathways in this world.  Now is the time to reach Heaven in a direct route that takes us there calmly and peacefully.

Unity with God

“When you get up in the morning, enter this unity and set out into the world in a way that you are aware of +yourself.  In the evenig, before you fall asleep, do it again.  Do not let all this remain just a sweet thought.  Dive deep until you feel love in your body and soul.  Go through these steps and do not jump over them, thinking you are already there.  That would prevent you from diving deep into unity.  During the day, you may not have the time and opportunity for this depth, but try to enter into self – awareness as often as you can.”  Dewdrops of Wisdom, Chapter 7.  Message from Mary.

We are seeking to move into Awakening, one step at a time.  It is true that some of us experience Awakening as a single, momentous moment, forever remembered.  But the more usual journey is a step – by – step process of entering into unity and staying in that unity as long as we can on any given day.  When we speak of unity, we are thinking of a direct relationship with God, with our Creator.  Previously the ego has muddied the waters of that unity, but as we relinquish the ego and remain sovereign, then our guidance increases from God.  God has no gender, but He/She speaks to us through our thoughts, our feelings, our intuitions, and we even hear silent words that are called “locutions.”  Not a sign of mental illness, these words infiltrate our minds and hearts with peace and serenity.  And we are moving ever closer to a constant self-awareness of our unity with our Maker.

Dewdrops of Wisdom seeks to provide guideposts of many kinds to move us ever more into God’s embrace.  God has not abandoned us, but we have, in a manner of speaking, sought to live without all of the bulk of our humanity and divinity.  Now we know better.  The only way to live well in the cosmos, and that includes our Earth, is to cement our relationship with the Divine.  We were never meant to attempt to go it alone, something that we have come to understand as our spiritual pathway unfolds.

God’s will is really our true will, something we have been taking to heart since many of us read A Course in Miracles.  Now we assimilate this truth in the center of our being, our heart.  

Now we are ready for the unity of the divine and the human.  Awakening or Christ-consciousness will open to us, to sustain in us, when we have made that unity constant.  This is what Mary is trying to tell us in the passage quoted.

Gather Creation within Our Hearts in Divine Union

“You, as conscious beings endowed with a human nature, are the ones who have the power, in union with me, to gather creation within your hearts in divine union.  You are, so to speak, the collectors of creation.  God in you is linked to the truth to a much greater degree than you can imagine.”  The Age of the Heart, 21:I.  Message from Jesus.

I had a dream just before awakening this morning that emphasized the truth of this passage.  It was on my mind because I had read and heard about it from others just last night.

My dream seemed to outline a happening in a future life, in which I was charged with “saving” someone.  This “saving” to salvation seems to be a constant need in our world.  And here, as “collectors of creation,” we are seen as bringing every entity into union with God.  This even seems to be angels, though I cannot say for sure.

We are the hands and feet of God on this Earth.  This idea has been around a long time.  Let us ask, today and every day, what we might do to unite all with God, a union that will bless all creation.

And let us be open to doing it, perhaps just by being who we really are–not a real “doing” at all.

Awakening

“Every human being is here on this Earth for a purpose.  The ultimate goal is to find the happiness that comes true when one finds one’s true self, that is love.  But do not see this as a turning point after which everything changes.  From an earthly perspective awakening is a very long process.  This process also includes the state of sleeping, as everything starts from that.  It forms a unit.  The different phases of sleep and awakening all represent unity and cannot be so sharply separated from each other.”  Dewdrops of Wisdom:  Practical Guidance from Mother Mary, Chapter 38.

I heartily recommend this new work published by Take Heart Publications, received by Marietta Beregi.  Each chapter is given over to a new idea that will help us along the path toward Awakening or Christ-consciousness.  As we would expect from Mary, she is gentle counsel throughout, always understanding of our human frailties, but always ready to help just by a single call to her.  She, like Jesus, is divine with the gifts of divinity as a twined soul to Jesus.  She assures us that when we call to her, she will hear.

This particular quotation explains the difference between walking the whole pathway and remaining in unity with God.  We are all in unity with God, though we may each experience this truth differently.  And our pathway toward Awakening is part sleep, part Awakening–maybe for a very long time.  This Mary makes evident in this passage.

We may have read accounts of apparently sudden Awakening that is arresting in the extreme.  And we may have assumed that these lightning bolts from Heaven are what we experience, or else we are somehow lacking, not in unity with God, not in Awakening either.  But Mary here is more practical.  She asserts, as we have been suggesting, that the pathway is punctuated by moments of awareness or Awakening, and then a falling back into unconsciousness, or sleep.

We need not get impatient.  We will all get back Home, and elsewhere Jesus and Mary have both assured us that the more of us make the transition, the easier it is for the rest.

Walk gently along the path.  Relinquish attack.  Be kind.  We are all composed of only Love, though we don’t often realize this.  God lives through us, and as the maternal God in Mary, She will see us through.

Comfort from Mary

“I am Mary, Mother of God, of Jesus, and your Mother.  I am the Mother of creation.  I am the joy of God and of the saints, as are you.

“Just as it has been said that sweetness seems to be in great absence from the world, so is its eternal companion, joy.  This is due to painful memories, remnants of times of struggle–times in which the identification with the ego-body caused you to live submerged in an unbridled race for survival, forgetful of the providential power of God’s love.

“The ego is lack of love so it cannot digest joy.  Living with a frown is the signature of the ego:  looking serious, worried, and talking about painful or ‘important’ things.  The experience of pain indeed exists in the dimension of time and space, and often pain angers those who do not yet understand who they are in the light of holiness.  However, it is also true that the world is neutral.  It has no real power over my children.

“Those who live in God have nothing to fear.  They can afford to be happy and live happily in love because they know they have a loving mother who watches over them as no other mother can or ever will.  They know the power of love.  They accept it and rejoice in it.”  Choose Only Love, bk.V, 4:I.  Message from Mary.

We first discovered in A Course of Love that Mary would become ever more important on our “journey without distance” in the new era.  Her way of “being” was said to be the wave of the future, rather than the “doing” that was a part of Jesus’ message.  He too enthusiastically welcomes being as a part of our selfhood.

Mary and Jesus are better known as “twined souls,” and this helps to explain a lot.  She is the feminine aspect, and he, the masculine.  They work together in our world; where she is, he is; where he is, she is.

As always with Mary, her comfort of us is paramount.  She, like Jesus, is fully divine, and we can talk to her just as we have been encouraged to do with Jesus.  We are not talking to ourselves.  Our self will receive guidance, because the Godhead is what we are approaching.  God lives in us as well, lives through us.  This is not sacrilege, according to the new revelations comprising Choose Only Love.

Speak to those who will help us.  We will be heard.  Guidance comes by way of our thoughts, our feelings, our intuitions–even we can call it being psychic, if something more secular is called for as we approach awakening to God.

Worry and anxieties are fast becoming a thing of the past.  When we follow the pathway back to God, we have already relinquished the ego, that insane aspect of our experience that caused such suffering because it wasn’t “real,” wasn’t ordained by God.

Now we know better.  Mother Mary is an important part of the new era, part of the rising consciousness of the place that the feminine holds in true reality.

Receiving Knowledge as a Result of Experiencing Peace

“Well – loved soul, reality is the only source of beautiful knowledge because it is the eternal extension of Mother – Father God, the Source and purpose of knowledge.  It [Celia’s note, i.e., knowledge] can only be accessed when the mind and heart, united in truth, are at peace.  Serenity of spirit is necessary to allow the benevolence of truth to be present because love only makes an appearance where peace abides.  And since truth is the voice and power of love, only when it enters the human mind and heart can humanty receive revelation.”  The Age of the Heart, 2:I.  Message from Jesus.

When peace is a constant with us, we are at the portal of Christ-consciousness, and, with it, comes revelation.  The Age of the Heart is a time of great peace, at least when we have fully entered this new era.

We can’t get accurate knowledge, as guidance from God, when we are agitated.  This may be a problem, because our human lives still find us in a fretful state from time to time.  When we settle down–and this may come from prayer and/or meditation–then guidance, true knowledge from God, comes readily.

We always want revelation to smooth our pathway.  It too comes in peace and serenity, no other way.  We can mislead ourselves when we think we are following God’s way, and yet we are angry or otherwise perplexed.  Wait for moments of calm, and then the peace that is beyond comprehension will descend upon us.

Worldview of God’s Love

“It is one thing to have a worldview in which you conceive of yourself as a body, adrift in a fearful and dangerous world, and an altogether different one to know yourself as the well-loved daughter or son of a Mother-Father God of infinite love and limitless power whose only will is that you be eternally happy.  For this, God has made you heir to His honor and glory.  From one view emerges a world of struggle, competition, and survival, a world without mercy; from the other, a world in which God is praised in the eternal reality of love, not as a belief, but as a living expression of what is dictated by the heart united in holiness with the mind.”  The Age of the Heart, 2:II Message from Jesus.

When we were trapped by the ego, we lived in a competitive environment, feared often that we would be displaced from our illusory pedestal, and lived constantly in worry.  

Now, we can believe, based on The Age of the Heart, that our consciousness has moved beyond such trivialities.  We are living with a higher consciousness, one that can conceive of a God united with ourselves, and a God with whom we are invited to live in direct relationship.

With this change, everything changes.  We realize that we were leading ourselves wrong in believing that we had to achieve constantly, that God loves us, wants the best for us, and all in all just wants us to be happy–living in the love that is so freely bestowed on us.

This is a change in worldview, and a very welcome change indeed.  Bask in it, take it unto ourselves, and offer the love we have received to our brothers and sister and to God.  

Love is our very essence, not solely a feeling at all, and with knowing what this essence means to us, we are cocooned in everlasting love without demands being placed on us.  

We will want to do something for God, but what we do will come effortlessly and peacefully.  God dwells both within and without, in everything that exists.  And with this knowledge, if it is indeed new to us, we can rest secure, enjoying our very being as a child of God.  This knowledge is what leads to happiness.

Peace

“I can never emphasize enough the importance of staying in peace.  When you create an inner space to welcome peace, you are expanding universal conscioiusness.  This enlargement allows creation to reach a greater knowledge of the love of God, and with it, to live in the truth.

“Can you now realize the importance of peace?  Through it, not only do you feel better about yourself, but you renew the Earth and allow the love of Christ to flow from divine being into creation.  I ask you with humility and gentleness to make peace your only treasure.  Give it your hearts.”  The Age of the Heart, 6:IV.  Message from Jesus.

We are actually, by our devotion, making a difference in how fast holiness envelops everything, all creation.  This quotation makes this an assertion, though of course it may seem magical to us.  There are many things that our limited minds/bodies cannot fully experience on this Earth.  It takes our hearts to see a glimmering of the truth.

Jesus remains concerned about us.  Note that he says, in this request, that we will “feel better” about ourselves when we stay in peace.  Peace and love go hand in hand, and when we settle down and allow God to talk to us, in direct relationship, when we make a place in our psyche for our God, we are taken to a new height in our spiritual path.

Make peace a priority–that is what Jesus is saying.  And with peace will come a greater willingness and even ability to love.  When we are agitated, we are much too self-centered.  When we know peace, God comes very close, emanates from our depths.

Life after Death

“Feel how much peace and joy it gives you to know for sure that your loved ones who have already completed the path of Earth and have taken a tiny step towards the holy abode, are much closer to you than ever, more active in love, and more alive than you can imagine.  They are part of your lives as much as they were when you could see them with your eyes.” The Age of the Heart, 20:II.  Message from Jesus.

This is a major assertion from Jesus, who asked us to believe from our earliest religious training that he did indeed resurrect, so death is meaningless.  Now he tells us that the ones we have loved and seemingly lost have not forgotten us, that they look in on us and undoubtedly send their most loving thoughts and feelings.

We might have believed in Jesus’ resurrection, as there are eyewitness accounts in our beloved Bible, but we probably did not know for sure that those on the Other Side are still present with us.  So this is cause for rejoicing.  They are not “dead,” but living another life, one that may be fuller and closer to God than what we know.

When I was in high school, I attended a conference for my denomination’s youth fellowship at a university.  There, a professor in the divinity school lectured one evening to a packed house on life after death.  He professed surprise that people of our age would be so interested.  Of course, as we have grown older and lost friends and family, we have become even more interested.  So Jesus speaks to us with comfort and concern in the quoted passage above.

If we can believe, we can surely know that death is a non-issue.

Walking in the Garden

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Scripture Surplice:

Walking in the garden

in the cool of evening

observing and enjoying all

God was pleased and

once again uttered

his ultimate critique

good

and sitting on a bench

began to wonder if

his just-made children

would walk the paths

in search of him with whom

twilight conversation

would bring congenial

ending to the day.

So waited he a while

until desire could not contain

the waiting any longer

and walked he then

in search of his beloved.

When all the paths walked fruitlessly

he called to roust the nappers

to the beauty of the sunset sky.

The wakeful ones

o’ercame timidity enough

to lead him to their hiding place.

With amateur leaf covering

reminiscent of a game of make believe

they showed themselves

admitting to their willful

rearranging of the

job description

given them to understand.

And looking long

and sitting down again

he wept.

“For us I made this Garden

for us to walk together

at such a time as this.

This was to be our Paradise.

I needed you.

Do you not want to be

my consort gardeners?”

“Thoughts We Did Not Think” Guide Us

“Once the path has been completed that leads he human soul to detach from everything that prevented it from love and letting itself be perfectly loved without limitation, then it has completed what you call the ‘path of life’–an expression which is inadequate if it refers only to the material human experience.  The path of life is eternal because it is love.

. . .

“My daughters and sons, once the path outlined in the human experience of time has been completed, one passes to a conscious state in which the fullness of holy love is the only reality.  The transition to the glory of God has been made in which all knowledge is given constantly, effortlessly, to the mind.

. . .

“Note that I said ‘once the path outlined in the human experience of time has been completed.’  This is because the state of union with truth, in which one lives in perfect love, can be realized on the earthly path.  The bodily experience need not limit love.  Therefore, it is not necessary to wait, although normally souls take their time to get there.”  

All quotations above from The Age of the Heart, 20:2 – 3.  Message from Jesus.

Here we have union with God, and, perhaps (if we live without fear), Christ-consciousness as well.  We have been on a path for eons, for the removal of the illusory separation from God takes time.  We have moved far into insanity, and I think it not easy for the cosmos to restructure itself for all of us to live totally submerged in love.

A major change happens to the mind/heart as this process is effected.  We come to recognize that we are getting the guidance we have long sought as thoughts we did not think.  We are no longer insane; God is speaking to us in direct relationship.  Of course, we will not trust this new way of living in the beginning.  More than likely, we will realize that a change in the way in which intuition is being received has happened.  We are not used to trusting our thoughts, especially when we suspect that these thoughts, this guidance, is coming as “thoughts we did not think,” coming from God.

A Course of Love talks about “thoughts we did not think” in the context of channeling.  But here I am referring to something more immediate to our daily lives, a thought that seems to be the next right step.

Obviously, we have to live with this new way for a while before we feel certain about it.  But in these passages, we find the elixir we have been waiting for:  “. . .all knowledge is given constantly, effortlessly, to the mind.”  

And these are the new thoughts we are finding that lead us now.

Newly Released Book by Celia

I am happy to announce today the publication of a new book. It is entitled, Words to God from the Heart of a Believer: Prayers & Poems and is available from Amazon for $3.95 print, or $2.99 ebook. 113 pages.

—

This is the description for a column in Miracles magazine (Jon Mundy, publisher; Glenn Hovemann, editor):

Celia Hales has just published Words to God from the Heart of a Believer: Prayers & Poems.   Seven categories of prayers range from “cocooned” (by God and love), to overcoming stress, praying about others, and guidance (receiving the help we so often need).   Fifty sonnets range from “In Plea to God” (a request that God shape us gently but without softness), to “Does God Hide?,” and “Trust & Love” (twin pillars of our new era).  Available from Amazon in both print ($3.93) and e-book ($2.99), 113 pages.

—

This is the description from the Amazon web page:

Celia Hales composes prayers on the page, mostly first thing in the morning, imploring God’s help as the day unfolds. She exhibits an uplifting encouragement that the reader move ever more closely toward loving God, our God who loves us first but who always encourages our response.

Celia’s religious (“divine”) sonnets never see God as external to the self, but always as a comforting inner guide for anyone seeking to live in the shadow of the divine. She uses 17th century nomenclature, drawing on the sonnet styls of both William Shakespeare (for the stanza) and John Donne (for the spiritual themes).

These prayers and poems exhibit Celia’s profound intimacy with spirituality as the reader is invited to commune with God in both prayer, and the rhyme and rhythm of poetry.

–Thanks very much, Celia Hales

PONDERINGS

published in Miracles magazine:

with Celia Hales

LIVING IN THE PRESENT

“Allow my divinity to do and undo in your life.  It is not your role to be worried or agitated by what has happened or might happen.”  The Age of the Heart, 11:I

“Thus your ability to maintain and then sustain your access to union and thus your certainty, goes hand-in-hand with your ability to live in the present.”  A Course of Love, D:Day7:20

“That spiritual siege–the compulsion to make time by focusing the mind on thoughts of the past or the future–is something like a demon that suffocates the soul until you definitively tell it to leave and never come back.”  Choose Only Love, bk. VI, 3:III

Turning to Jesus means living in the present, for he does not dwell in the past and the future–keeping his eye always on the Now.  Jesus wants us to have union with God, which is another way of saying that he wants us to receive Christ-consciousness.  To live effectively in unity with God, we need to stay in the present, in the eternal Now.  Then and only then is everything well.

How do we live in the present as much of the time as possible?  This has long been a sticking point for us, for many sources over the years–secular as well as spiritual–have given “living in the present” as a message to us.

I think something called “thought stoppage” is important.  Just as soon as we realize we are projecting in to the future or ruminating about the past, repeat a word that is meaningful to us.  “Cancel” is my word.  “Stop” would also work.  As soon as we do this, we have returned to being aware, and therefore we are living in the present.  If we are persistent, the hard work pays off.  We live in the present, turning aside from worry and anguish about a past that has already been lived, and a future that is not here yet.

Living in the present is where we are meant to reside.  And I believe that living well requires living in the present, with Jesus as our leader and guide.

—

Celia encourages you to contact the editor of Miracles magazine, Glenn Hovemann, about zoom sessions on The Age of the Heart, the latest publication to come from the channeled writing of Sebastian Blaksley.  The zoom is free; donations are accepted. Contact him through Take Heart Publications. The sessions are life-transforming and well-attended.

“Whenever you suffer, you suffer because somehow you are not being fully you”

“All pain comes from not being fully yourself.  Whenever you suffer, you suffer because somehow you are not being fully you.  Whenever you are afraid, it is because somehow you perceive that a situation, or a person, or a thing, or a something or someone can make you not be you.  Whenever you stop being you, you suffer.  Whenever you are fully you, you are fully happy.

“If the world scared you, it’s because you felt that it did not allow you to be yourself.  If you do not want to join the world, it is because you somehow believe that it has the power to make you not be you.  That is what you think every time you are not doing what you really want to do.  You know who you are.  You know you very well, because you were created in the certainty of your self, which is all you can be certain of.”  Choose Only Love, bk.3, 4.II.  Message from Jesus.

I was quite “scared” in college.  I went to a challenging school, and I felt very alone except for the closest friends in my dorm.  Jesus would say that I was afraid that the people I met, strangers all, did not seem, to me, to accept me as who I was.  I felt that I could not be fully myself.

And this is a problem.

If we start living a persona, we live awry.  When we are not doing what we really want, we become unhappy.  And the difficult assignments in college were sometimes a chore.  Not that I didn’t enjoy class–because I did–but unrelenting work dampens the spirit.  And we need to do things that make us happy.

Later on in this series, I will develop the ideas that Jesus is giving us, that God wants us to be happy.  I used to think that my main goal in life was to make a contribution, but perhaps this contribution comes about best as a by-product of our happiness.

I find this idea something worth thinking about some more.  Letting the heart inform my thinking.

I hope you will, too.

Love Is What We Are

“Children of all times, places and beliefs:  Listen to the voice of love.  Listen to her because love is wisdom and in her is where you will find certainty.  In the wisdom of love is where you will receive what you are waiting for, receive the certainty that you are seeking, the peace you are longing for, the embrace that your hearts need.  It is in love where all that is needed is given.

“I have not come to tell you that you only need love to calm you with an abstract or metaphysical idea that is disconnected from your human reality of life in time and space.  No, if that were the case, it would be little different from the ego’s idea of separation.  Love is not an idea.  Love is not an abstraction.  Love is you.  Love is what you are.”  Choose Only Love, bk.3, 4:II.  Message from Jesus.

This assertion from Jesus may not be understandable to us, because historically, in this world, we have seen love as a feeling or an emotion.  Of course, we have been taught in church that God is love, and it is from this teaching that we can proceed.

Now we know that God shares divinity with us, and so it is not so confusing to see ourselves as love as well.  If we want to live well, we need to take this truth to its rightful conclusion.  We cannot live well, the way God intended, if we don’t hug love to ourselves.  God loves with a generous love, and we must appropriate this thought to ourselves as well.

We miss a lot when we don’t love unconditionally.  Ask to be shown today what part love really plays in our identity.

We will be shown.

Reasonable Service

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Scripture Surplice:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Romans 12:1  New King James Version

‘Reasonable’ it says

‘reasonable service’

so is reason to be used?

that function of the brain

where processed thoughts

inform decisions

monitored by will?

Is reason now

the alpha and omega

of a hungry lone soul’s search

for bread crumbs on the forest floor?

or the parsing of a nursery rhyme

to solve the riddle and in time

make light of pumpkins into carriages

transformed at beckoning of a magic wand?

What haughty mind devised a plan

whereby creation’s crown

becomes a mental maggot

in the garbage heap of words

and chooses

paragraphs of similes

and conscious-streaming narrative

when what is wanted

by the one who craves our homage

is the poet through whom

magic might appear?

Jesus: “Dishonesty, concealment, and everything insincere is the cause of all the evils in the world, including physical and psychological challenges, as well as any type of illness.”

“Daughters and sons of my being, graceful souls, today I come to reveal through this dialogue the benevolence and beauty of truth, as well as its holy function within the plan to return to the consciousness of love, the journey that creation is making towards the Father’s house.

“Dishonesty, concealment, and everything insincere is the cause of all the evils in the world, including physical and psychological challenges, as well as any type of illness.  In a world that lives in truth, there can be nothing but harmony, peace, and joy.  The opposite happens in the realm of its absence.  If you look carefully at what causes pain in humanity, you will see that it is always something that comes from deception, that which denies the truth.

“Denying the truth is thes same as denying realit and this can only bring suffering.  Do you know why this is so, my love?  Yes, you know, because you are a child of light.  You do not live in darkness since you remain united to me, and I am the light of true light.  Whoever lives consciously in unity with my divine heart lives in the certainty of truth and in the greatness of holiness.  In other words, light is made of my being.  That is why it is the light of the world.

“It has been said that the Age of Reason as well as times previous to it brought much pain to the human family because it lived separated from love.  Remember, intelligence without love is cruel. How could it be otherwise, if to deny love is to deny the truth?

“A mind disconnected from love plunges into a world of illusions, for only love is real.  Here we take a further step towards a greater knowledge of this truth.

“Love is the only reality becausw reality proceeds from, extends, and is, love.  There is no reality outside of love because God is the only possible, probable, achievable, and realized reality.  There is no more than love and no less.  God–the name we give to life and infinite creation–is the only thing in the universe, because His divine reality encompasses everything.  God is the All of all.  This is the same as saying that love is everything.”  The Age of the Heart, 17:I.  Message from Jesus.

Can this really be the answer to the dilemma of suffering, what we are doing that is taking us down?  This quotation specifically addresses pain and suffering in a way I have found anywhere else.  And its source is impeccable, for I do believe that channeling is happening in our world today.

None of us has avoided dissembling from the truth, past and often present as well.  If we can trace this very real evidence of lack of loving thoughts to the cause of our pain and suffering, then we are given here something very profound.  We know that bearing false witness is forbidden, but how seriously do we take this warning from the Bible?

We are encouraged to understand that only love and truth are important in our world, that they are the only reality, that everything else is illusionary.  This falls in line with our much – loved A Course in Miracles, for the world we were living in when we first encountered ACIM was the height of illusion.  If we can believe these channelings from Jesus, our world has made progress recently, though we ourselves may find this difficult to see and/or to believe.

Reality partakes of love only, and with this revealing quotation, we know that that love is a product of living in truth.  Let us stop the habit of lies and walk into the sunlight with Jesus.

Trust — and Be Alert for Love

”Concerns are a thought program.  I ask you now to observe that mechanism, recognize it for what it is, and accept the fat that is comes from fear.  It is fear of uncertainty, of not knowing what the future will bring.  This fear of uncertainty generates a state of anguish that must first be accepted, and then released.

. . .

“Living a carefree life is something that the ego cannot afford because the ego believes that being constantly preoccupied is being alert.  Being on the alert because of fear is egoic.  You are asked. . .to be alert for love.  I asked my beloved apostles the same thing when I was praying, and they fell asleep.  I ask the same of all those who have made the choice for love.  Watch.  Be alert for love.  You will see that love always comes as a lover, always seeking the beloved.

“Being alert in favor of love means trusting fully in love–God’s love. This is no idle clarification about trusting in the active love of God.  Trusting others to solve what you think of as your problems constantly leads to disillusionment.  Two similar beings cannot have in each other what the other lacks to solve their apparent problems.  If this were true, one would have to be incomplete and another not, which would annul the equality of the children of God.  Such mental patterns that create useless worries remain installed in the mind.  Let them go.”  Choose Only Love, bk.3, 3:I-II.

The only way to live serenely, peacefully, and in good humor is to trust in life to wherewithal can’t do it.  God alone is sufficient. Jesus and Mary, if we can believe Choose Only Love, are merged with God in divinity.  Jesus says elsewhere in Choose Only Love, “I provide.”  And he asks, also elsewhere, “Who is your true savior?”

It is true that bad things happen to good people.  The problem of suffering will not be understood in this life.  But when we trust in Higher Power, we are sustained.  We may not get everything we think we want, not everything we think we need even, but we will be sustained, for love does this for those who adhere to it.

We all know enough to live well.  When we submerge ourselves in God’s love, we soon realize that this genderless Being is enough.  Our feeblest attempt to reach Him/Her is met abundantly and quickly, for God likes speed, and as soon as we are ready to receive an answered prayer, that answered prayer is already speeding on its way to us.

Understanding Mother Mary

From Mary:  “In my Divine Heart are delights by which th soul seeks to enjoy eternal happiness.  Come to me every day.  This is how you will serenely, joyfully, and peacefully go through this time of Great Transformation.  There is no reason to not remain in me, just as there is no reason for me not to be one with you.  We are unity.

“The Mother is calling you.  Her voice is heard in all corners of the universe.  I have told you that every day I will manifest myself more clearly.  I am doing so.  I am perfect fidelity; I do not abandon my creations.  And you, my love, are one of them–very loved, as is all humanity.

“As the Mother of everyone and everything, I know well what distresses your heart.  For this reason, the movement of beautiful love has been created, whose source is my Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  From him flow torrents of grace and blessing as never before in history.

“My love is provident.  I am ready to give you everything you need, material and immaterial, so that you may walk your paths in peace.”  The Age of the Heart, 32:I.  Message from Mary.

The Age of the Heart presents a picture of Mary which is much expanded from some Protestant views of her.  She is seen in all her divinity, as (I believe) the twined soul of Jesus.  Like Jesus in this book, she is seen as our Creator.  Seeing Jesus as our Creator is a concept expanded upon in an earlier channeled work, The Urantia Book.

Mary is quite conscious that we have not yet lost our distress, even though we have moved beyond the ego.  Patterns of the ego linger, but that is not quite what is being said here.  We are seeing a transformation in our world, a transformation that will first be evidenced by times of great turmoil.  The end of dualism is here, but the turmoil from that end is not yet in evidence.  We will come out on the other side in a few years.  Jesus assures us of this, elsewhere in The Age of the Heart.

Take Mary’s solace to heart.  She is speaking out of her divinity, a divinity that we share also.

When we trust in love, we are doing the one thing that is necessary to assuage our distress.  And the only way we can know this is by practicing this trust in love.

“You Have Tried Many Things. . .But You Have Almost Never Tried Pure Love”

“You have tried many things as an individual and as a species.  But you have almost never tried pure love.  Not that you have not loved; you have certainly shared the love that comes from God and that lives in you.  The beaut of who you are has extended beyond limited consciousness or individual self.  What I am speaking of is trusting love completely.  When it comes to making decisions, if you think about trust and associate it with love, and make this your only thought until it has become a habit, you will see that each day you will express more and more tenderness.  You will be more and more subtle.

“Trusting in love is essential when it comes to attaining and preserving inner peace.  Trust and love go hand-in-hand.  This you know but rarely remember:  trusting in love is trusting in yourself, since you are love and nothing but love.

“Now we are ready to comprehend:  total trust in love eliminates fear.  By trusting like this, you claim for yourself the power of Heaven and Earth, which belongs to you by birthright.  Once you have restored the awareness of love, and with it the power of God din yourself, then tenderness becomes the only possible expression because love and sweetness are one and the same.

“Forget all the ways you have lived and express yourself from pure love only starting now.  Thus far you have more or less been fluctuating within the continuum of love and fear.  Today I ask you to stop fluctuating.  You can do it.  Fluctuation between fear and love is commonplace during part of the spiritual journey.  You have vacillated between almost total fear, to a little bit of fear, to a little bit of love, to much love, and back to little fear.  Now you are being called to make a conscious decision.  It will be easy for you because of your longing for peace.  But you must decide every day to live solely and exclusively in pure love.”  Choose Only Love, bk.V, 3:III.  Message from Jesus.

This will work!  We may have to start the day over many times, on many different days, but when we persevere, pure love will work!  It will work to smooth our interactions, it will work to smooth our own conflicted minds and hearts, and it will work to heal our memory of those things that trouble us.

Many times we have heard that love is the panacea, and many times we have thought that we have heard this before, but how to implement it?  It is very simple, when we realize that our confusion is a smokescreen to hide those very thoughts and feelings we want to discard:  our unloving thoughts and feelings.  

When we turn within, we know what in our minds and hearts are unloving thoughts and feelings.  We can be alert to these, for we do not have to seek for what is true, but we do have to seek for what is untrue.  Talk to God in any way that is comfortable, throughout the day.  Talk to Jesus, for he says in Choose Only Love that he hears us.  His divinity allows this seeming miracle.  I do not mean “out loud” talk, but talk from the center of our self, our heart.  Pour out the frustrations, pour out the longings, and be aware that peace will follow.

Pure love will transform us and everything in our little world.  Our projections will turn easy, and those fears that still linger will reduce and then dissipate.

We have this promise from Heaven.

Love to Satisfy Longing

“I know that many expect to find wisdom in these writings because they have become accustomed to reading in order to learn.  Some measure the validity of these writings by finding in them new information.  This is due to the security you felt in the past when learning certain things which you think helped you to develop.  We want you to leave aside that mechanism forever.  The secret of this work lies not in what can be learned, but that love, and only love, is what it evokes.

“This work is a love letter. . . .In these dialogues of love, We need not always speak of human wisdom which, although it calms the mind’s desire for knowledge, is not the only thing for which the self longs.  The mind longs to know, but the heart longs for love.  In both yearnings, united, resides the longing to be, which is not other than yearning for God.”  Choose Only Love, bk.3, 7:I.  Message from Jesus.

We long for wisdom, to satisfy our restless minds.  But our hearts want something more, and that more is nothing other than the long-sought love that we have often seen denied in this world.

This world can be a lonely place, especially when it seems that we don’t have enough love in our lives.  But the Divine can satisfy that craving when human loves turn cold, and we feel all alone.  When we go within, we reach deep inside to the core of God’s presence.  And He, and also She (for God has no gender), will satisfy our cravings.  If we need more human love, He will see that humanity responds.  We may have to change ourselves to welcome that love, though love is all around us.  We may have been so used to thinking ourselves autonomous that we are blind to the feelings of other people.  We don’t see love when it is right before us.

According to A Course in Miracles, our way back to God is through the holy relationships we develop with our brother (and sister).  We have depended on special relationships, and we may still, which is a primary reason that we think we don’t have enough love in our lives.  Special loves constantly disappoint, for they are a product of the ego that looks to the exterior of people to choose from whom to try to receive love.

Let these special loves turn holy, and then all of us will know that God has answered our prayer for greater love.

From Mary: “Everything You Should Know, You Will Know at the Right Time”

“Immerse yourself in the silence of your heart.  Worry not.  Let go of all thought of what makes you suffer, as well as all thought of the future. . . .Listen to Heaven calling you from all eternity to live in the peace of God.  Listen to wisdom speak to you, literally, telling you what you should know now–never telling you beforehand nor after the need has passed.  Everything you should know, you will know at the right time, and what is not necessary to know you will never know.  There is nothing that is too much for you in life.  God does not exceed what should be.

“Be silent and begin to let the feeling of reverence for life flow.  That reverence is wisdom itself.”  Choose Only Love, bk.2, 20.IV.  Message from Mary.

I have long been assailed first thing in the morning, still in bed, with worry thoughts about my future.  There is so much that happens when life has been going for a while, and we are faced with the possibility of illness, debilitation, and/or death.  Once I get up, my mind/heart turns to the day, and my guidance kicks in, and worry dissipates.

Now I read in this incomparable Choose Only Love that I can be assured that I will know what to do when the future gets here.  I will know then, immediately, not a moment too soon, and not a moment too late.  Reassuring in the extreme.

I have been following guidance for a long time now, and as time passes, I am certain that if I stay close to God, He will continue to clue me in on the next steps.  So I do have this assurance also from personal experience.

It was a bright and happy day when I absorbed Mother Mary’s words of wisdom.  I do believe that channeling happens, and I do believe that we can accept the words of saints such as she.

Living in love takes away the fears and anxieties of the future and any other time as well.  We can count on God’s love to be the healing Force that allows us to live in the very best way possible.

Three Days

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Scripture Surplice:

Three days in the fishwomb

three days in the rock tomb

there lies a corollary

in the Jonah-Jesus tales

or else a part of me

insists there must be likenesses

since after all

both tell the tale of one

who railed against the unrepentant

sorely soiled by selfish centeredness

who would not go where reconciliation

might make converts to compassion

who waited 40 days

in restless confrontation

with what might sway

the chosen way

who let the lots be cast

with truthfully said, ‘I am he’

who

spat out of the belly of the hell death

repeated

‘I am she’

‘I am she.’

To Integrate & Heal Self, Love Everything that Arises in Self & Embrace It

“Let today be the day in which you love everything you feel, experience, and think, both in yourself and in others.  This is possible because everything that now comes into your life is holy; its purpose is to reintegrate everything that was dispersed in you.  If anger was what you rejected, now it will come to you, not to frighten you as it did in the past, but as a holy messenger to tell you:  ‘Brother, embrace me in love.  I am only a feeling and therefore I am pure because I come from you.’  If feelings of vulnerability were what you hid so carefully, now they will come to you because you are prepared.  As with anger, it will say to you:  ‘My sister, do not reject me, I am part of you, I am pure, I am holy as are you, so let me be.’  And accept it you will, allowing yourself to feel vulnerable without fighting it.  The same will happen with depression, if this is what you denied, as well as with joy, tenderness, and compassion, for how many times have you drowned your laughter, and hid your smile?  How many times have you refrained from expressing the tenderness of your heart?

“The circumstances–which are relationships–that appear in your life from now on will help you to reintegrate your being, or make yourself aware that you are already an integral being.  With this, perfect healing takes place.  Nothing will be left unseen.  Everything will come to light.  Rejoice because you are ready to see everything in yourself through the eyes of Christ, through the eyes of love.”  Choose Only Love, Bk. 2, 9:IV.  Message from Archangel Raphael.

We have often rejected ourselves by rejecting those things about us that we didn’t like, or that were hurting, or that seemed less than the ideal self we were trying to project.  Now we are told that this is going about our union with God in the wrong way.

Instead, we need to carry whatever cross appears in our lives, embracing even those feelings that disturb us.  When we embrace the right way, we are loving those feelings–and we ought to love those feelings even when we don’t fully understand or want to accept what they are telling us.

Thoughts and feelings will arise from the subconscious now, perhaps more than usual, for there is purpose behind this happening.  These thoughts and feelings are asking for our acceptance, and then our relinquishment, a transmutation of the unfortunate parts of our fallen humanity that Jesus will help us with.

Jesus transmutes the suffering and pain that we may experience as we relive from our minds and hearts the things that have hurt.  When he acts, we are then free of these things, and our union with God is assured.

Ask Jesus to act in our lives today.  He hears, knows, and will soothe the hurt and banish it from our lives.  His divinity and his love assure it.

Healing Fears

“This feeling of lack of fullness is an unequivocal symptom that you have denied an aspect of your being.  In other words, fear comes to dwell in you even when you deny a single feeling, thought, or perception.

. . .

“Rather than trying to eliminate fear, focus instead on not leaving anything out of your consciousness.  As you do this, fear will disappear without the slightest effort, and love will be the only thing you experience.  Let the heralds of your being enter without restriction into the palace where the love of God resides.  When you have opened the floodgates of your consciousness, allowing everything you experience, whatever it may be, to be embraced, then you will live as what you are:  the holy abode of Christ.”  Choose Only Love, Bk. 2, 19:II.  Message from Jesus.

It is not easy to turn loose of fears.  Choose Only Love has ample passages that address, in different ways, the way to reduce and then eliminate fear.  Studying these passages is possible, for some techniques will help more than others.  And then there will come the day when a particular statement hits home, and we finally and irrevocably know how to address fear, how to live serenely in peace that is undisturbed.

I am still getting there.  Some days are better than others, for this is the human condition. The path back to God is not linear, a straight line.  There are detours along the way. I know unity with God now, but my mind plays tricks on me and disturbs my peace when I am uncertain about life. Patience is an understated need always, in our journey in salvation.

But I am convinced that when we open ourselves to healing, we will be healed–for asking for mental healing is the will of God, and granting mental healing is His pleasure.

Reasonable Service

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Scripture Surplice:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Romans 12:1  New King James Version

‘Reasonable’ it says

‘reasonable service’

so is reason to be used?

that function of the brain

where processed thoughts

inform decisions

monitored by will?

Is reason now

the alpha and omega

of a hungry lone soul’s search

for bread crumbs on the forest floor?

or the parsing of a nursery rhyme

to solve the riddle and in time

make light of pumpkins into carriages

transformed at beckoning of a magic wand?

What haughty mind devised a plan

whereby creation’s crown

becomes a mental maggot

in the garbage heap of words

and chooses

paragraphs of similes

and conscious-streaming narrative

when what is wanted

by the one who craves our homage

is the poet through whom

magic might appear?

A Happy Child

“See how I return again and again to the matter of loving yourself with holy love?  This is because the lack of love for yourself is the basis upon which the structure of fear has been built.  All fear finds its source and its nest there.  Recognize this.  You must accept the fact that you have loved yourself very little.  I say this not to cause distress, but so that you begin to look toward that deep interior of your soul where the beautiful child that you are awaits your embrace and with great fervor yearns to hear your gentle voice.  See how this beautiful infant–your being–wishes not to continue hearing a voice other than yours, for only your voice can bring peace, security, and love.  Talk to her.  Sing to him.  When you dance with the wind sway with her.  Rock him as a mother rocks her baby’s cradle.

“Remember that children like to play.  And they also enjoy being spontaneous.  They would rather sing than speak, dance than walk.  They are the joy of the world.

“To unite with your inner child is to unite with your being because you, like all created souls, are a child – soul.  Remember, the Kingdom of Heaven is for those who are as children.  Do not get lost in the appearances of bodies that no longer look like children, for your heart is eternally a child in love, full of desire to dance to the rhythm of the music of the heart.”  Choose Only Love, Bk. 7, 9:III.  Message from Jesus.

The idea of the “inner child” has entered mainstream psychology since the idea showed up first in the last century.  Here Jesus is using what is familiar to us to put a new spin on it.  He talks about the beauty of our inner child, and he asks us to play with our inner self, because we are all children at heart.

We need to be lighthearted, more lighthearted than we have been, for the ego was ponderous and kept us chained to fear.  We thought we could not afford to be lighthearted in such an inner environment.

But the ego should be long gone now.  Being our real self is being a self that has one foot in Heaven.  We can afford to be lighthearted with such a guide as our beloved Jesus.  He, in a sense, walks ahead of us and makes the rough places smooth.  Elsewhere in Choose Only Love he promises to solve our problems, and we will be happy.

With help such as this, how can we miss?

Jesus as a Companion & Friend in Times of Trouble

“When you feel your heart flutter and your mind entertain thoughts of anguish and fear, acknowledge them.  This means that you recognize that you are experiencing fear, lack of peace, anguish, and worry.  Once recognized, share with me how you feel, without self-editing, without attempting to disguise anything, with the assurance that we are in this together as we are perpetually united in love.  When you have poured out your heart to me, leave everything in my divine hands.  I myself will take care of everything based on my infinite wisdom and my unconditional love for you and all creation.”  The Age of the Heart,11:I.  Message from Jesus.

Jesus has as much ability to reach out and help us as God Himself.  He is, indeed, merged with God, as all of us will be one day.  Here he offers consolation in the wake of days and times when we are in pain, when our thoughts and feelings give us a sense of suffering about life’s back times.

We don’t have to keep it all in.  We are talk to Jesus as a companion and friend, silently or aloud.  We can write out a message to him.  He knows that however we communicate will bless us.  We know that we have someone on our side; as he says, “we are in this together.”

Meditation on the Cross

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Scripture Surplice:

What might be a proper meditation on the cross?

To gaze upon the face

of one attempting breath

without the strength to lift his lungs?

To give attention to the holes

created by the nails?

Or watch the fluid exit?

Or look at body strain

as weight pulls gashes deep?

Does this image enable us to passion with

the misery in our neighborhood

and grieve with those in distant lands

whose suffering seems to know no end

or flee the pain around us

solely through a pious liturgy?

And of my own distress?

Am I to be fixated on the crucified

in order that I not give heed

to that which cries out from within

for comfort and for healing?

Surely God says “NO!”

God Is with Us

“If I have created you with the possibility of choice, it is because I also created everything necessary for you to live in love and receive all you need, in all times, places, and circumstances.

. . .

“Everything your heart longed for is here in our divine relationship.  In it you will find the strength to live, the wisdom to discern, and the joy to play the game of life without worry, tension, or tiredness.

“I give you our direct relationship.

. . .

“You will not feel alone any more, or helpless, or at the mercy of a world that plucks you from here to there like a blowing autumn leaf.

. . .

“A new idea has been planted:  the idea of a direct relationship with God as a feeling, guiding relationship of your day.”  Choose Only Love, bk.VI, 21.

These selected passages from Book VI of Choose Only Love are a the best descriptions that I have found regarding our relationship to God.  Book VI is entitled, The Divine Relationship.  

We sometimes feel so alone in this world, but this aloneness is dissipated when we realize that God is a loving God who meets us where we are.  He reaches out to us, and it is up to us if we will return His love.  We are always free, created totally free in making a decision to love or not.

It is the right decision to choose love.  The world, we are told in Choose Only Love, would eventually just disappear if there were no love in it.  People who don’t choose love as their daily companion or tossed about by their frail ego.  Highs and lows abound.  Nothing works without love, at least not for very long.  God does not abandon His creations, us, but He lets us decide when and if we will reach back to His proffered hand, when or if we will return His constant love.

Let’s return His love today.  This is the way to have a good day, every day.

Journeying

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Scripture Surplice:

Journeying to Jerusalem

solitary every one

amidst the bustle of the crowds

through congratulatory cheers

that we have chosen

to accept the invitation

to travel to the temple

as one whose goal

toward a meager crowded inn

ignores the tiresomeness

of sandaled steps

and dusty faces

without basin-washed relief.

What prompted me

to trek the roads on

this bright night?

To watch the moon

and listen for a voice

goading to Gethsemane

coercing to Calvary

that challenges the free will

I’m convinced is mine?

Have I such need of resurrection

that I will all these summons hail?

Lasting, Eternal Happiness

“The goal we promulgate here is to be happy.  There is not, nor can there be, another purpose for the spiritual path if it brings you to the being that you truly are.  You were created to be happy.  Happiness is not simply a wish, it is the reality of your being.  So to create a new Heaven and a new Earth, or to bring Heaven to Earth, is to constantly reflect happiness.  Of course, this happiness, and as we have said, has nothing to do with the limited idea of worldly happiness, which is always elusive and passing.

“Lasting, eternal happiness is what is spoken of here.  You must now extend the bliss of being who you are.  You know what I am referring to because the wisdom of your being knows happiness.  In fact, regardless of whether you sought happiness in illusions or in the truth, if you have been able to conceive of the idea of happiness it is only because you know it exists.

“What does not bring lasting happiness has no place in your mind or your heart.  Observance is still necessary; be alert to anything that happens inside you that denotes unhappiness.  Of course, no one consciously wishes to be unhappy.  This is a universal understanding.  Unhappiness is unconsciousness.  The pursuit of happiness is the search for being, which in turn is the search for love.  With this truth shining in your holy mind, you will recognize that happiness is inherent in the  being that God created you to be as always conceived.

“Being truly yourself and being happy are the same.  You are not only love, you are truth and happiness.  It follows that radiating joy, telling happy stories, having loving thoughts, and not harboring or spreading what hurts the heart, is the path of correct discernment in the light of truth.  Those who choose love above all else are the realized ones.  They may or may not satisfy their material or psychological needs.  They do not consider doing so essential.  Those who live in love can say authentically with Mary:  ‘All generations will call me happy.’”  Choose Only Love, Bk.VI, 20:III.

I used to think that doing God’s work had to include making a contribution in life, doing something for Him that would further His kingdom.  And this still may be true, but as everyone knows who has lived a while in this world, if one is not happy, a contribution is not going to be performed well.  We are not talking fleeting, egoic happiness here, but the eternal type of happiness that allows us to be genuinely who we are really are, to see ourselves as children of God, living in love for not only ourselves but also our brothers and sisters, and, of course, loving God.

I would call our attention to what might be a troubling admission in this passage, and it comes near the end of what is quoted.  The “realized ones” may or may not “satisfy their material or psychological needs,” but they do not consider this essential.  This one sentence tells me that we will still have problems in this life, but as A Course in Miracles says, there is no challenge to the advanced teacher of God, because they choose for all humankind, based on guidance from the Holy Spirit (this is paraphrase).   We simply will not worry about material or psychological needs, as our loving happiness is so all-encompassing that we will fill our minds and hearts with something much better.

We will know, as Jesus has told us elsewhere in Choose Only Love, “I provide.”  Living close to our Maker will solve many of the issues with which we have previously found disturbing.

Eternal happiness will evolve from our continuing along the pathway back to God.  When we are in unity with Him, and we know ourselves to be in unity with Him, we will know that our goal of Christ-consciousness has been reached.  And, with Mary, we will know a profound happiness.

Release Fear Forever by Letting Yourself Be Loved

“Every experience in the world is neutral.  It has not, cannot, do anything to your being.  You have never ceased to be, could not cease to be, the perfect, holy creation that God created eternally.  Because you have never ceased to be the God in you, you need not possess.  You need not search.  There is no need.

“Sisters and brothers in Christ, love what you are in every moment and in every place.  Love everything that arises in you, and you will no longer feel deprivation of any kind.  As a being without lack, you need not dedicate yourself to the exhausting activity of survival, from which comes the compulsion to accumulate.  You need not desire anything.  Those living in love need nothing.

“Perhaps you wonder how to release fear forever, and with it the desire to possess, so that now and forever you can live in the state of giving–that is, a life completely devoid of need.  The answer is now obvious.  When every lack is but an echo of a perceived lack of love, then the way to freedom from lack is but to let yourself be loved.

“Pure soul!  Let the love of God and creation fill the coffers of your being.  Let yourself be overwhelmed by love.  Let yourself be enthralled by the tenderness of God.  Allow the universe to show you, along with your sisters and brothers, its benevolence and you will return to the truth of who you really are.  You will return to your home in God.  Let yourself be loved.  In other words, join the living Christ who lives in you to live as who you really are.

“Thus will you find your being.  Thus will you find the love that lives within.  And when you find it–or rather, when  you are willing to recognize it–your heart will dance with joy and sing a perfect eternal song:  ‘They who have Christ in their hearts have everything.’  And in the fullness of truth your mind will join that song and jubilantly proclaim:  ‘God alone is sufficient!’”  Choose Only Love, book 2, 1:VII.  Message from Archangel Raphael.

Survival needs are high on our list things we think we need to acquire.  Here the Archangel Raphael tells us that we have been thinking awry.

When we think we lack something, what we are really feeling a lack of is simply and totally love.  And so, he says, the Answer is obvious:  Let yourself be loved.  When we sense God’s love, our hearts will dance with joy.

Perhaps this thinking seems unrealistic when we are living in a world that is physical.  But if we have never let God overshadow us with His love, we have missed the great blessing.  Elsewhere in Choose Only Love, Jesus says simply, “I provide.”

Our biggest need is an attitude of trust in the cosmos to lead us to the satisfaction of all our needs.  

And there we will find that, in the best sense, when living in love, our needs dissolve, for our needs are answered by the universe.

Trust

“Beloved sons and daughters of mine, today I speak of trust.  Observe how the thought patterns of worries and concerns of all kinds seem to assault you again and again.  These concerns come, in fact, from beliefs contrary to trust.  You think that through a preoccupation with your concerns you can change what is and what will be, instead of allowing your problems to be resolved in another way, to give space to the new.

“My child, trust in me.  I know all about your worries.  I know all that anguishes you so.  Do not forget that I am a man, and as a man I know all your needs.  I know that bills must be paid.  I know your need to eat.  I provide.

“I ask you to observe the pattern of concern, the recurring pattern of worry.  Always it takes concrete form:  maybe money, a business, health, the safety of the children.  Everyone has an area in which they feel insecure.  Maybe there are several areas, but they are always few and very specific.  We now work with these areas to experience those patterns of thought and emotional responses, and to transmute them.

“When you feel worried, sit down, relax, take a deep breath, connect with the desire, and wait for the answer.  The answer to desire will be given in due time and in perfect form.  Someone will knock on the door and bring you the solution, or a situation will be unlocked, or a successful idea will come, or simply the problem will otherwise be resolved.

“Observe how the thought pattern of worry block access to peace, and therefore to your true self.  Once the thought pattern of concern arises you make that concern real, which then encompasses the entire space of your mind and heart, and thereby you lose peace.  The days go by and it may seem that the problem has not been resolved, but then you realize that what you saw as a problem was a blessing, a blessing that you did not understand at the beginning.”  Choose Only Love, book III: 3:I.  Message from Jesus.

Here Jesus is asking us to trust him, that he will provide the answers to our problems.  Here he is speaking as merged with God, a Creator Son (as revealed in the Urantia Book), and he speaks also as someone who loves us dearly.  Not only does he say these things that comfort us so, but he gives us a method to combat our anguish.  

He suggests we sit down, take a deep breath, relax, connect with whatever desire we are missing, and just wait.  An Answer will come, although what he says later in this quotation lets us realize that we may not get an immediate answer.  If the answer is immediate, we have our solution.  If the answer requires our waiting, then we will eventually realize that the waiting is a blessing.  Either way we win.

We have in these words from Jesus a way that will work to combat worry.

We want peace, and we cannot actually be merged with our soul if we don’t acquire peace by these means.  Our Christ-consciousness will not be evident to us; our unity with God will take a breather.  But we have in our leader Jesus a solution that works.

I can attest to that in my own experience.

Don’t!

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Scripture Surplice:

Don’t be thinking about

laying down your life for me!

Don’t come jumping in the undertow

without some orange life jacket!

Don’t run into some flaming building

if there’s any chance that you could die!

I don’t want my life saved

if that means another’s lost!

If my life is threatened

and I cannot save myself

let me die!

I want no obligatory gratitude

or survivor guilt heaped on me!

I’ll not willingly die for you

so don’t be thinking about

dying for me.

What’s so bad about dying?

And what’s so good about

thwarting the inevitable?

Don’t be thinking about

taking my casket

when it’s really my turn!

Letting the Pain Body Go

“The mechanism by which the mind creates pain and activates the energy of fear is a disturbance that can be healed once you accept your fears and recognize that none of them will hurt you because they were only in your imagination.  The love of truth will set you free.

“When you feel the pain body being activated, the important thing is to learn to observe it with loving patience, without judgment.  Silence, watching, and waiting is still the way of the Holy Spirit.

. . .

“Pain is feeling discouraged.  Thus if you suffer, you have somehow disconnected yourself from your being.  When we speak of the ‘connection with your being,’ I am speaking of the unitive relationship with God.  It is in that relationship where the soul lives in peace and harmony, submerged in an ecstasy of loving contemplation.  It is by staying in that relationship with your true self that the being feels protected.”  Choose Only Love, Bk. V, 14:V.  Message from Jesus.

We want to feel protected.  We don’t want to dwell on “what if’s,” ruminating about a future that is not here now and may never come (and probably won’t).  When we open to God’s presence, we will relaxed and comforted.  We have at that point relinquished the pain body, and all is well again.

Eckhart Tolle used the term “pain body” in his acclaimed bestseller entitled The Power of Now, and here we find Jesus using the same term.  It has validity, because we are our own worst enemy when it comes to our fears.  And fears make for pain.

When we surrender to God, and let the Holy Spirit who dwells within encompass us, we are assured that our present will smooth out.  But, as Jesus says, it takes patience with ourselves.  The pain body was not activated all at once, and we must let it pass in its own time.  But the Holy Spirit helps.

Fears are not meant to last.  They are in our imagination, for the present, if lived solely in the Now, is always peaceful.  Even if the heart is pounding, we are adding past and future to the present, which causes our problems.

Ask God to gather us up in cosmic arms.  Surrender entirely to our Deity.  When we live united to God, as best we can be, we are on the pathway to Christ-consciousness–or we have reached Christ-consciousness already.

Promises that Offer Peace

“Do you think you need your daily bread?  Are you worried that you won’t have enough?  Unload that worry on me; give me your fear.  Do you think you need a brother or sister to come back to you in relationship, or to separate from you?  Unload on me; give me the thoughts that so worry you.  Do you feel uncertainty about life, or fear for your sins?  Unload on me; give me your feeling.  Do you think something is wrong with you but you don’t know what?  Can you not understand your humanness or put into words what you are experiencing when you feel peace and harmony  lacking?  Unload on me; just give me the anguish that you sometimes feel without trying to name or understand it.

“When you give me what your soul feels, thinks, and experiences, whatever it may be, allow yourself the joy of peace that comes from knowing that everything, absolutely all of your humanness is in my hands, and that I am continuously acting in your life.  The thinking mind may not fully understand the ways of love, but in due time it will.  When it does, it will join with the rest of what we are–the peace that has no opposite.  It will rest in the arms of truth, in the calmness of love.”  The Age of the Heart, 11:II.  Message from Jesus.

This new book received from Jesus through the pencil of Sebastian Blaksley breaks new ground in telling  us of the central place that Jesus wants to occupy in our lives.

Jesus speculates in the first paragraph above about all kinds of problems that may assail us, and many of us will find us in that paragraph.  It so happens that none of my issues are listed there by Jesus, but nevertheless I get his message.

He is promising us that he will step in and heal our lives.  He will resolve our problems, something he also says in Choose Only Love, book III.  Jesus wants a close relationship with us, and to me that sounds a lot like traditional Christianity, which in some denominations encouraged us to accept him as our personal Saviour.

Jesus is eminently reassuring in The Age of the Heart.  While life in this world may bring on more difficulties in the short run, this is evidence that a breakthrough is underway.  Down the road we can expect peace.  The peace that passeth understanding.

And Jesus offers us this peace in our personal surroundings right now.  He is always on call.

Wrestling

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Scripture Surplice:

Wrestling

with neither sword nor spear

nor weapon save bare hands

and body mass to push against

the energy that pushes back

Movement as a dance

spontaneous  yet measured

in its rhythmed step

unlike his birth where

out of sync in parturition

clutched first born foot

in fetal frenzy

foreshadowing the later

predetermined positing

that primogeniture belonged

to him whose willfulness

outwitted him whose undisputed

ownership

became a means to barter

for a mythic bowl of porridge.

Does such angel-wounding

make the mark indelibly

in lameness so that progeny

and we may not forget forgiveness

for the Israel of God?

Jesus’ Words Affirm the Law of Attraction

“Therefore, indeed, beloved friends, if you are to complete this study of The Way of Knowing, then know this–as you thinks, so shall you be.  How you think, how you choose to perceive and believe will determine what you see in the world.  And what you believe you see will determine how you act.  It will determine the friends you keep, the kin of career you create, where you live, and how you feel.

“In other words, if you hold the thought that you cannot trust the universe to support you, you will look out and see a world that seems, self-evidently, to reveal to you that such a thought is true.  You will then create behaviors to insulate yourself and never let the world know what you want.  And then, of course, you will wonder why life seems to go on as it always has.

“Learn always to inquire, not out into the world, but into yourself:

“If I am having this experience, what must I have believed to be true about myself and about the world?

“The truth will come through prayer and through honesty.  When you discover it, you will know it.  Then use the sovereign power of free choice given unto you, which is the Truth of the Kingdom to choose otherwise.”  The Way of Mastery, book 3, lesson 35.

Here we see a spiritual agreement with what has been largely a secular law, the law of attraction.  Jesus is saying that how we think, how we ponder, makes a big difference in what we project as our world.

It is not easy to change our worldview and our worldview slant to more positive thinking.  But spirituality can do it in a flash.  Lean on a Higher Power, and see what transpires.

I predict that we will all be pleasantly surprised.

Freedom Arrives!

“Freedom can only come to the mind that truly assumes complete responsibility for the creation of its experience.  So that in any moment, it recognizes that the thoughts, the perceptions, and the feelings coursing through the emotional body are arising within the sovereign domain of that soul’s being.  They are uncaused save, again, for the seed thoughts or perceptions that that mind, or that soul, has chosen to value for itself.

“Life, then, offers you your way out.  When things don’t seem to be working and your peace is missing, this is actually a sign to you that there must be some belief or perception that you are clinging to which does not work.  You are free, then, to seek it out, to inquire, and then to change it.

“I have often recommended to you that you cannot transcend what you first fail to embrace.  Therefore, look well upon your creations, and bless them.”  The Way of Mastery, book 3, lesson 35.

We are embarking on a new phase of our journey.  If we want freedom, and all of us do, for God wills it, then we need to realize that the way in which guidance comes to us may vary as we progress on the path back to God.  The path to union with God.

Guidance came to us originally from the Holy Spirit, but a Spirit not who is somehow apart from us, but innate in our very souls.  Our knowledge will save us now, a knowledge that is just a knowing without “feelings” that we ought to say or do something.  

Knowledge is very quiet.  Just as we must trust Jesus to take care of us, we must trust ourselves not to need to hallucinate from a sense of separation from the Godhead.

This quotation explains more what I mean:

“Sisters and brothers, the time of fullness has begun!

“This new era of the fullness of time is signaled by the breaking down of structures.  Both the individual mind and the collective mind–which are one–go through a transition from old structures to a new concept of the universe.  This new worldview, or consciousness, is nothing other than the crumbling of the old and the emergency of the new.  This process will trigger a sense of disorientation and fear among those who do not understand or cannot accept the signs of the times.”  Choose Only Love, book II, 13:II.  Message from angels.

We need not fear the changes in how God communicates with us.  These changes are all part of the plan, a time for rejoicing that He and we are evermore becoming One.

We will live in an increasing freedom, but not the pseudo-freedom of the ego.  We will live in freedom with a healed mind/heart as a co-creator with God.

Trust in Life’s Unfolding

“Fear produces what it fears.  Therefore, when one begins to distrust life, when one begins to create within oneself mechanisms of distrust, then facts arise that confirm that it is justified to distrust.  In reality, trust in such cases is lodged in what is unreliable.

“If you trust that money will give you security, sooner or later you will experience that money is not enough.  New expenses appear and you will say, ‘It is nevver enough.’ If you put your trust in the body, one day a disease appears and you will say, ‘Here is proof that I can not trust anything or anyone.’  When you place your trust in a relationship with a father, children, a colleague, a partner, a friend, or a neighbor, and make that relationship your savior, it will not be long before you realize that your savior will fail you.  And when your savior fails you, you will despair.

“The question I have come to ask you today is:  Who is your true savior?

“I have come to the world to save you.  I speak directly to your heart.  I speak to you, and I remind you of what you know but still find difficult to recognize; that in this time, . . .you can accept your absolute and total dependence on love, that is, on Me.”  Choose Only Love, bk. 3, 3:III.  Message from Jesus.

Here we find in current writing, a traditional Answer from traditional Christianity.  We are encouraged to trust solely in the beneficial aspects of love, and that love is exemplified in Jesus.  

If we find traditional Christianity comforting, then we are going to find that putting our trust in Jesus as a personal savior is a good place to continue our spiritual path.  If we find that the props of everyday life fail us (as Jesus says here), then we will feel lost until we turn to a higher “something,” and here Jesus offers his love as the panacea to a life that has come to be increasingly less than satisfying.

When we turn to Jesus, we find a support that is unfailing.  We experience a major transformation.  In union with him, we live triumphantly and happily.

A good way to begin a new year.

Note

I’m going to take a break for the holidays, will return in the new year.

Thank you for your views.

Love, Celia

Where Is My Coin?

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Scripture Surplice:

Where is my coin?

Or is there more than one?

More than some?

A treasure trove of

shiny bright round copper things

perhaps now dulled by dark and damp

and ages as they lie resting in some

undiscovered destined hiding place

playing such a game with me

that I am always ‘it,’ the one

who spends his days in search

not knowing if the finding

will bring joy or just relief

that searching time is ended

and the game begin again

with an object of a different sort?

What of this losing and this finding?

Are all lost things intended to be found?

Or in the unsuccessful search for fancy coins

might we be intended

to quite by happenstance

discover something

more important still?

End of the World

“Children of the truth, there are many who ask about the end of the world.  You are restless when you think of it.  Hundreds and hundreds of centuries of experience in your minds have told you that the end will be painful and destructive.  These images were elaborated in your cultures, while your minds had no relationship with the truth of love.  The wisdom that lives in true reason would tell you that an eternal Creator of pure love cannot condemn you to a fearful and painful fate.

“Beloved of all times! The world will not perish.  God’s creation cannot be uncreated.  The Earth will not disappear.  Love Her for what She is, your temporary home while you walk back to the holy abode of eternity.”  Choose Only Love, bk.4, 12:I.  From angels.

Many of us will doubt these assertions in Choose Only Love, book 4, the Wisdom book.  We have been steeped in fears, sometimes because of the Book of Revelation in the Bible.

In the era that Revelation was scribed, love was not understood by the peoples of the world.  Jesus had come to preach the Gospel of love, but who believed him?

It is only when consciousness of human beings has evolved enough that we can accept Jesus’ Gospel of love that a scribe can write down what is the truth, and be believed.  And everything in Choose Only Love reverberates to that song of love.

A Course in Miracles seems to imply that God did not create our world, but the truth is slippery, and here we get a broader understanding.  We merge with God in unity when our consciousness has evolved enough.  Whether or not “we” created the world is a moot point, especially since we are One with God.  Here, this is the Christ – consciousness that we have all come to expect.

Christ – consciousness is here now for many.  This would not have been possible unless we lived in love, letting ourselves be loved by God and other beings, and knowing that all truly is One in its Essence.

Weeping Over Jerusalem

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Scripture Surplice:

But you would not

you would not.

I clucked over you

as a hen with her chicks

protection her primary aim

but you would not.

I opened the words you knew

and filled them with wisdom

but you would not.

I told you stories about yourselves

using simple illustrations

but you would not.

I sat your children on my lap

embracing them in tenderness

but you would not.

I laid my healing hands upon you

and reminded that forgiveness is free gift

but you would not.

I prayed for you.  You saw me kneel

and beg your oneness with the Holy One

but you would not.

You would not open your heart’s

eye and ear and see and hear

the message for your soul.

You would not let the

healing, caring touch

penetrate your spirit’s slumber

and waken you to know your needs.

You would not let yourselves

experience ineffable estrangement

and the yearning to be known.

So I must  report

to Him who sent me

a mission unfulfilled and

sit and weep beside the One

whose grief no floods can assuage.

An Invitation to Be the Living Christ

“When you are asked to accept your power to perform miracles and bring Heaven to Earth, you are being asked to accept unconditionally that you can live in truth, that you can live without fear.  In other words, accept that you can be the living Christ here, now, and always.”  Choose Only Love bk.4, 4:IV

We will move into a direct relationship with God as we follow along the journey without distance.  Elsewhere Choose Only Love says that when we pray, we are really communing with the divine aspect of our nature, and we are certainly not praying to an external God.  We live in and through God, and that is our divinity in league with our humanity.

I believe there is a Godhead as well, for our limited being does not ever presume to know enough to get an Answer to our prayers if we do not make contact with the Divine as a whole.  We see in part, though sometimes God speaks to us so that we are aware that separation is healed and we are truly One with Him.  Unless we talk to the Godhead in prayer, though, I think we are missing something.  This Godhead is not external to ourselves, but just veiled in our limited humanity.  Or so it seems to me.

When we commune with God, however we view God, we are avoiding fears in our daily life.  The Deity wishes us well; the ego never did.  Our own insanity of the ego prevented God from expressing very well in us.

But we are finished with that limit now.  We can do much in our Christ being, and working miracles is one such new creation of ours.  And Heaven on Earth is not beyond us.

Our blessings are truly great.

Forgiveness

“Now you know what it means to forgive:  Forgiveness consists simply in letting go of everything that is not true.  That is how, for everything that comes from the state of amnesia—whether in yourself or in your sisters and brothers—let it come and go like the leaf litter that the wind brings and then carries away.”  Choose Only Love bk.4, 4:I.  Message from angels.

We know how important forgiveness is.  It is one of the early harbingers of a return to our real mind/heart, a harbinger of the looming Christ-consciousness.

We have been in amnesia, or madness, engulfed by our ego–never a true state of mind as God intended it.  And the things that we have thought without absolving through forgiveness have not been true.  Our brothers and sisters are innocent, doing the best they can, given the understanding that they have at the present time.  They are innocent because we and they have been living in illusion.

Let’s turn the page on a new horizon.  When we forgive, and forgiveness is possible over time, then we are ready for more blessings from God.  If we don’t forgive, our own lack of forgiveness turns back on ourselves, and we remain lost in madness.

If at first one does not forgive, pray out the unforgiveness in many prayers over a period of time.  Even Norman Vincent Peale, the speaker/pastor/writer, says that repeated prayers to forgive may be necessary.  But the new day will dawn when our heart is in earnest.

We will come to see the truth about our brothers and sisters.  We will come to see that they acted out of ignorance, out of being threatened, thinking awry.

We know better how to forgive now.  Let us put it into practice.