and there come the times when it hits me the pain of the lived experience the pressure of the beliefs forced into me as a kid the crazy catch 22s that I’ve lived by that cause more hurt and frustration year after year
and tears fall and that is good I want the all the pain to wash out
there is no more trying to fix it there is no more trying to make it better there is just the pain of it the simple pain. the hurt that exists. and I want to feel it because it matters.
the pain is something true about me I’ve have lived with it for so long without ever feeling it like a silent flatmate who I never got to know and eventually one night we both stay up talking until dawn and the conversation is so meaningful I wonder why we never did it before
the pain was always telling my story, to me. but I never felt it so, in a weird way, it is familiar I know it well but also, it is a stranger
the pain of all that makes everything fall into place I understand myself it connects me to me
and I can finally love myself because I know now how it all happened it finally makes sense and even if I can’t change any of it – the things that went on and the way that I feel – I finally get. it. and I know my life and I know myself
all that life I lived is clear in a moment and I know what is real
most of all,I am real my pain makes me a real-live-person not the fiction character from a worn out novel that someone else was narrating
I am full of me in a way that is good not selfish, or self involved like when I was the made-up-character avoiding her pain
no, now I am full of my own understanding now I can create, and discern, and move on now I am free
Our friend Lena passed into the spirit world on Friday morning, 19th March 2021.
Lena worked with us in Divine Truth for around 8 years. During that time she helped with video recording, video editing, office inquiries, studio cleaning and maintenance, volunteer training and equipment care and storage.
Lena is a hard worker and we are grateful for her contributions towards helping us gift Divine Truth to others. She wants others to have the opportunity to hear God’s Truth.
While Lena often finds it difficult to trust others and feel the love others have for her, over the years I came to know her and I appreciate many things about her nature and character. Some of our favourite times with Lena include when she allows her unique way of seeing the world and God’s Truth to shine through. We have often enjoyed her analogies and hearing about the particular elements of a teaching or channelling that strike a cord or create a ‘light bulb moment’ for her.
Lena is always practical, good with manual tasks, and willing to give anything new a try even if she is afraid. She has a great deal of courage about new experiences. She takes personal responsibility very seriously and is neat, tidy, and very thorough, and this continues to show through in most aspects of her life.
Jesus and I encourage Lena to express herself freely when in our company, and we really enjoy her unique personality and humour that shows through during those moments.
She has an artistic nature which was often expressed when she was editing our videos. We also see her bring her sense of style and art to almost every area of her life, including her personal artwork, her fashion, her flair for food preparation and presentation, and the way she uses decor in her home. Lena has an eye for detail and aesthetics and would often notice a problem with a camera shot or fix our hair (we don’t really notice those things). She would remember where an item of equipment was kept and she was a thoughtful gift giver, often noticing something about me and giving accordingly.
Lena’s childhood experiences growing up in Russia were difficult and triggered her courage and desire to leave Russia on her own as a teenager and experience life in other places of the world. She lived for a time in America before settling in Australia where she met and married Igor.
Lena often commented about her early experience of Russian society and the way that women are sexualized by men in their families and in general society and how women, including mothers, train their daughters to meet the sexual expectations of men. This treatment had a large impact on Lena and the development of her illness, cervical cancer.
Like all of us, before we become at-one with God, Lena has unhealed emotions and addictions. It is her avoidance of some of these addictions and emotions that created her illness. From the time we met Lena and Igor in 2010 we were always talking with them about these relationship issues and the impact not dealing with them would have on their future lives.
In 2014 Lena told us that precancerous cells had been found. Since then we have had many discussions with her and Igor about the emotional causes of cervical cancer. We talked about her suppressed anger about having to please men sexually and the childhood events that led to her belief that she had to do that. In 2017 we asked Igor to no longer work with us because we were concerned about his attitude and behaviour towards Lena and women generally. We felt he needed time away from us to decide whether he wanted to deal with those problems. At the same time we spoke with Lena about her eagerness to comply with a man’s demands and refusal to confront the man’s treatment of her even when she felt it was unloving.
In late 2018, Jesus and I asked Lena to stop working with us so that she could focus entirely on releasing these addictions and her hurt emotions. Since Igor was no longer living with her, she was attempting to enter the same addictions with other men, including Jesus, and using her work with Divine Truth to avoid the realities of her illness. We told her we were very concerned about her desire to deny and ignore emotions that continued to harm her and that were developing into major physical problems. We told her that without dealing with them properly she would die from cancer. Although reluctant, Lena saw the points that we were raising with her and made some decisions to change her life and deal more directly with her illness.
In the intervening years we have kept in touch, visited Lena and Igor at home and in hospital, and discussed the same spiritual and emotional issues with them when invited to. On Sunday 14th March 2021, 5 days prior to her passing, Lena invited us to visit again and told us that she had made the decision to pass. Her physical pain had been increasing for a long time and for many reasons she was finding it difficult to release the emotional pain that caused her physical illness.
Some of Lena’s difficulties included; blaming herself for the way others treated her, being judgemental towards herself and others, being angry about having to be truthful about others’ unloving treatment and taking action to correct it and love herself in the situation, not wanting to feel her own loneliness, not wanting to feel about how unloved she had been in her childhood, not wanting to feel her anger about men’s sexual projections and sexual demands, and using addictions and pleasing others as methods of avoiding those emotions. She was often angry at those who love her and pandering towards those who didn’t. Although none of these difficulties are any part of Lena’s nature or personality, Lena has anger, fear, and sadness relating to the issues we discussed with her, and wants to avoid experiencing and releasing these painful emotions.
Lena could see that these problems were still difficult for her to address and experience and we discussed that she would have opportunities to work through these emotions and make new choices in the spirit world. We discussed her fears and having faith about passing, having faith about God, God’s Love for her, and God’s Truth about the power of releasing painful emotion. We told her about the great deal of love available to her in the spirit world if she chooses it. We talked about the prayers of friends and efforts of spirits that can assist her now that she is there.
As Aphraar states in ‘Through the Mists’:
If some strong hand could, but for an instant, tear the veil aside, and bid the multitudes of earth behold the future as it really is, what a revelation it would be! How it would change their sighs to songs, remove all doubts of God’s eternal love, and proclaim a gospel for which all hearts are crying. It would be to earth what it is to me; I who more than once, or twice, or thrice had been cautioned that the life I led could only meet with condemnation at the bar of God; and yet I found the first words addressed to me were words of hope and encouragement – ‘I need not fear’
and in ‘The Life Elysian’:
The new life is so crowded with overwhelming surprises, so fruitful of charming distractions, so beautifully bewildering with unimagined pleasures, so tender in its diverting sympathies, that even earth’s purest conceptions are certain to be shattered and carried away, and the perfect God-design leads us gently forward into the fullness of our unanticipated joy.
Jesus feels that Lena was far too absorbed in fixing her physical symptoms rather than experiencing and taking action on her spiritual and emotional that cause her illness. I made a comment to Lena on one of our visits about how in the past I would become obsessed with a physical diet or ‘fix’ to avoid the emotional turmoil I was in at the time. She commented that she had also done this with some of the ‘therapies’ she tried in order to cure cancer. That is a good lesson which Lena was already ahead of the game in learning.
Lena came to see and continues to see lessons and truths that most people who listen to Divine Truth on Earth are still in denial of. Although Lena passed due to her physical illness, unlike many millions of humans who pass every year, she is aware of the spiritual and emotional causes of her passing and therefore we expect that in her spiritual life she will not encounter many of the difficulties that most people who pass from Earth experience.
Lena is resting quietly at the moment as her final two years of life on Earth were very exhausting and painful for her. Once she recovers some of her strength, we have made an arrangement with her to come and speak with us. We expect to continue to regularly talk to her as we do with many people who now live in the spirit world.
We love Lena and look forward to our ongoing and deepening friendship with her.
The Life Elysian
There breaks the soul from every weight away And for itself beholds and understands! In that clear dawn of life’s true morning light It turns, reviews, and then must needs accept Whate’er results from yesternight’s wild rush And feverish greed, within the robing-room of earth.
‘Tis then it learns how cherished ignorance False guide has been, and led the soul astray, Appraising tinsel at the price of gold, And teaching how base metal and true wealth were one, That, also, all the wild array of masquerade, Which fools had brought together for their revels, Were robes, insignia, orders and rewards Provided by the King, that all His sons Might dress and grace the marriage feast!
There comes the Truth, and all the false array In which we strutted forth, lordly and envied, Must then be thrown aside and left behind, As worse than useless – we have to pay their cost Ere we can forward pass. Each soul with painful rue There doffs its mantle of hypocrisy, to find Its royal lustre and its richness vanished with the night, Leaving but sign of poverty behind.
Then sighs the soul to learn its bankrupt state, For till that moment none can ever know The price it pays for such a treacherous robe, And false deceitful outfit; – We don it in expediency and haste, We doff it in the searching light of God.
Where is laid bare all bruises, scars and wounds We felt not when received in maddened rush To save the object of our choice from other hands. But in our passage to the feast we have to pause, Consider, and discharge th’ account for what we thought Was free to those who could secure and keep! And this is painful reckoning.
When this is o’er, then breaks the soul away And learns it has another role than masquerade To play on life’s eternal stage. It throws aside All relics of the brute, the savage and barbaric tastes, And making restoration with a pure repentance Steps to life’s mark clad but in freedom’s garb, With naught to weight, to hinder or retard Its course, and as a man starts on the race Which has its goal and destiny in God. ‘Tis of this race I sing, and now I bid you come And see how it is run on God’s own course – The Life Elysian!
What if we all took up telling the truth as a hobby?
What if, whether awkward and red faced or free, unabashed, we spoke in unadorned words, straight from the heart?
What if truth-telling became a skill to refine as we got deeper, more honest with self?
What if we dared be transparent and frank about all that we think, believe, and wonder and – crucially – said what we want
On Monday afternoons, at bedtime, in meetings, on dates, with the post office lady, at late summer picnics, and on the commute
What if we all made truth a pastime? More than a lofty ideal or noble pursuit what if truth became habit, so standard and common it was never in doubt?
Would this chasten the boredom, the middle age spread? Wouldn’t it heighten the crisis but also its end?
If, instead of football, or hockey, croquet or golf, in lieu of baking and YouTube and scrolling the phone, we practiced and laughed, as we built up the muscle, increasing endurance until truth was routine?
What if truth and its telling is the answer, to ending the quest for fulfillment, to “finding one’s passion” and living our best.
As I explained in my last update, in 2020 we experienced a number of technical roadblocks to completing the editing of our last event, the “Understanding Sin & It’s Causes” Assistance Group. We still have a long way to go to finish the project. So, because our life was effectively being chewed up on this one big task and the complications to completing it, this year we decided to be firmer about having more of a balanced and enjoyable life. We also want to be able to continue to share new material to hopefully encourage people who are attempting to put the principles of Divine Truth into action. This means that we will be splitting our time and focus to include not only editing and technical tasks but some new projects (see below) and much more time for our personal growth.
Purchase of new hardware
In December I mentioned that our old iMac computers, which we use for video and audio editing, were beginning to have problems. After Jesus replaced the hard drives in both machines we found that we were still encountering failures and unreliability. (Including that after completing repairs on my Mac one afternoon – which involved removing and then firmly reattaching and re-gluing the screen – Jesus returned the next morning to find the screen which had been left tilting backwards in the closed, empty studio had somehow defied the laws of gravity and lay smashed forward on my desk). Repairs and maintenance on these computers was now dominating most of Jesus’ time, meaning that not only were we not editing but we also weren’t working on other important projects. So, we decided it was time to simply purchase new computers with the intent of completing this enormous editing project as quickly and easily as possible (no matter what we do, it still won’t be quick or easy but delaying the purchase was only making the process slower and more difficult).
Our long term goal is to move away from Apple products altogether and so we had been hoping to be able to use our existing iMacs to finish the “Understanding Sin & Its Causes” edit and then make the shift to new computers and new editing software. We changed this plan when we decided the headaches and loss of work we were encountering trying to make do on the old machines weren’t worth it.
Unfortunately we are still having connectivity issues between our servers (where the raw data is stored) and the Mac computers. So, Jesus spent a lot of time over the past few months trying to repair the old iMacs, then setting up the new iMacs with the necessary software and attempting to solve the networking issue between the iMacs and servers.
The situation brought editing tasks to a complete halt once again in January and February. However this gave us some time to work on another project which we have wanted to get started for a while.
Livestreaming
Over the past month we have been working on establishing our capacity to host regular livestream events in which we can interact with listeners in real time.
This is a multi-step process which has included:
Finding a suitable streaming platform
Setting up a new YouTube account specifically to stream and store video of live events
Configuration of a new technical set up which allows us to: – stream good quality video (that is, video is captured by our stuido cameras and sent in place of usual webcam video) – stream good quality audio (use of personal microphones rather than relying on the audio captured by a PC) – capture and record a local copy of video and audio recordings during the events which can later be edited and used on our other main and clip channels
Finding a physical location with low latency internet connection, high upload speeds and sufficient bandwidth to allow for seamless transmission and interactions during regular livestreams
In January we took a trip to the Sunshine Coast for Jesus to complete a podcast interview via livestream. This gave us the impetus to start to work through the four steps I listed above. Designing and setting up a new recording system for both video and audio and gaining adequate internet connection speeds took about a week. And while we had various problems to solve in this process, the interview went ahead and we now have a skeleton plan and set up to start to host our own livestream events.
Experimenting with the new set up
This issue of an adequate internet connection from the Divine Truth studio remains an issue.
Our current home and studio set up relies on a satellite internet connection. Satellite transmissions always introduce problematic delays (due to higher latency times). This is because any feed must be transmitted from the creation point, to the satellite in space, and then back to the viewer in another location on Earth.
Those of you who made international phone calls in years gone by may remember the lag between you speaking and your speech being heard by the other person. This is the kind of delay experienced on our satellite internet connection when attempting to make video calls and which would be present if we were to use our current internet service for livestreams from home. Delays are off putting and definitely disruptive to spontaneous and free flowing dialogue.
Using mobile phone networks to access the internet provides much quicker speeds. However, as we live in a rural area with poor mobile phone coverage, we have never been able to utilize this option. However, at the moment, we are investigating improving our mobile phone coverage by installing antenna on our or a neighbouring property. If we are able to achieve this we could livestream from our home studio – which would be perfect.
In the meantime, as we work on the home internet issue, we have decided to introduce some travel so that we can start livestreaming using better internet connections in other locations.
Once there is a date for the first livestream, an announcement will be made via YouTube to subscribers on our Divine Truth Main YouTube channel.
The first event will likely be a casual update on Divine Truth with Jesus. You will be able to participate in real time by typing questions to him.
In future we would like to have themed discussions and feedback sessions in which listeners can participate and ask questions.
Despite no longer editing, Jesus has achieved a great deal these past two months. He researched and experimented with the equipment required for the new livestreaming project and worked on organising and packing cases that enabled us to transport the equipment safely. As I mentioned he set up the new iMac computers, installing necessary software etc.
He also built and is now able to run Virtual Machines on our smaller servers which weren’t being used. This enables us to use the servers for storage of recorded data while we are traveling (e.g. video and audio captured during livestream events). They can also be used as personal computers in place of the laptops we usually travel with.
Two of the servers on which he had installed virtual machines were given away. One to Eloisa and the other to Cornelius, so that they now have the ability to start creating video and audio content to share on their personal channels. (I’m excited to see how their creations go, I have an inside scoop on some of the projects in the works and I think that they will be interesting and inspiring to others).
Jesus trains Corny in his new virtual machine
Clearing the Studio
At the moment, as with a lot of things in our life, we have the opportunity to overhaul, review and redesign. This goes for the equipment, systems and practices that we have been using for years in relation to data storage, computer software, AV equipment, and recording procedures.
At the moment the floor of our main studio room looks like this:
The renovation to create a server room and Jesus’ storinator server building projects in 2020 meant that everything in the studio has been moved around and mixed up. Some of the equipment we were using has been repurposed and some is now redundant.
As we have decided to no longer switch video live during events equipment from that old set up that can now be gifted or sold. Along with that, in the studio, a lot of newly configured gear must be rehoused and various cables, screws and parts labelled and organised. In January, under Jesus’ direction, I spend time on this project but as you can see there is a lot more to do and, as we make new decisions and set up the livestreaming project, more things are added to the pile in this room.
I’ll continue to work on this project over the coming months but I do rely on Jesus precision knowledge of each piece of cable, every part, all of the equipment and the systems they fall into to guide my work. The benefit of all of the upheaval in our operations since 2019 is that I am learning a lot more about the nuts and bolts of what we use and how to use it all.
Obviously for us to start to record any content from home (livestream or otherwise) this floor needs to be cleared and our recording set up reinstated.
Before then we have so many screws to sort (see below)…
God’s Way Ltd
We continue to meet regularly with God’s Way members and various projects including terrace seeding and Caretakers’ Residence renovation construction are ongoing. If Jesus and I can find a way to have livestream events from home, we are excited that God’s Way Ltd may also be able to host seminars and Q&As via livestream as well.
Eco Tent Renovation
As I mentioned in December, we are building small cabins (designed by Jesus) to replace our worn out eco tents. We are paying Cornelius and Jadda to work on the job.
Things are taking shape!
Tristan Farewell
Tristan has set off to start his teaching degree and we held a lunch in February to wish him well on this next adventure.
It was great to hang out and play some music together.
Who knows the cord?Archie, Tris & Jesus – three of the loveliest guys
Other stuff
Jesus made time to clean out and restore one of our worm farms.
He also visited the terrace project which is looking great after some (limited) rain in January.
And he checked in on the plumbing project for the God’s Way Ltd Caretakers’ Residence renovation which he is directing (for more information about God’s Way projects check the God’s Way Ltd blog).
As for me, when not helping out in the studio, I have been spending a lot of time on my own working on some emotions which I will update about soon.
Thank you
Thank you for your donations in January and February.
I’ve been struck lately by the modern world and how there are so many intrusions and distractions competing for people’s attention. Media, social media and mobile phones seem to dominate most people’s attention a lot of the time. Divine Truth is so different from the things being ‘served up’ via these other sources. You could say that Divine Truth is ‘anti-addiction’, while those other things, for the main part, feed on and encourage people’s addictions.
Divine Truth is for truth, which most people have become completely alienated from in themselves, in their relationships, and in the world around them. Divine Truth is all about a very definite, immovable Love that most people don’t recognize as love at all. And to top that off, it is led by a couple of seemingly ordinary people (or odd, depending on who you consult), who claim to be Jesus and Mary Magdalene (identities shrouded in preconceptions, misconceptions, and myth) and who often stir up emotion and anger in others.
So, at times, I am surprised that anyone listens to Divine Truth at all, let alone donates money to have it continue to be shared on Earth. Of course, I also know that truth is ultimately appealing to every human heart and that love is attractive. But still, I thank those of you who choose to give in any way to have us continue what we do. It is a privilege and we try to spend and use what we receive wisely and well.
Notes Along The Way 