Category Archives: Change

Living by Law {Jesus Quotes}

“The problem is not that we are afraid
It is that we honour fear above the Law.

If we choose to live in harmony with God’s Loving Laws,
all fear and painful emotion will naturally be released from us

Integrity to God’s Law is the key to complete emotional healing.

Heartfelt desire to live by God’s Laws and to honour them for the loving framework they provide is the only way to a continually growing relationship with God.”

 Jesus, March 2013

Here’s the Truth: while I profess to know a lot about God’s Laws and to love them. Too often when confronted with fear, I choose to disregard the Law and avoid what frightens me.

For a long time fear has tricked me into believing that Safety + Comfort = Love.

And the problem with living by fear’s definitions of ‘safety’ and ‘comfort’ is that over time these states I’ve aimed for don’t feel so safe or comfortable.

So over the past few months, I’ve experimented with simply living by the Law.

Here’s some things I’ve experienced as truth as a result:

-The choice to honour law is an emotional one. Once the emotional choice is made it guides action. This works far more easily than trying to control all actions, it also leads to further emotional release and realisations.

For every negative consequence for breaking one of God’s Laws there is a corresponding gift for living in harmony with it.

This is like the best bonus in the Universe! I feel so incredibly supported when I ‘(wo)man up’ and live by the Law.

– Unless I have integrity  to God’s Laws I’ll never release fear

(i.e. unless I’m firm for love and truth in every situation, when fear is triggered I’ll make an excuse and sacrifice something, so I don’t feel so petrified)

Here’s a practical exercise I completed a few months ago that really helped me evaluate what a pervasive issue the sacrificing of God’s Laws was in my life.

I wrote the following question and headings in my journal:

Q. What would my life look like if I honoured what I already knew or believed about each Law everyday?

Law of Free Will

Law of Desire

Law of Cause & Effect

Without sharing all my answers, basically there were many ways that I could see that I was not living in harmony with these Laws or Principles.

I recommend this kind of exercise to both deepen self-reflection but also to assist with understanding what these Laws and Principles actually entail. Often doing this kind of work helps a person to see how little they really understand about the operation of the Law or how to apply the Principle to their personal situation. This can then trigger further questioning and learning.

Note from Mary: I was cleaning up my blog and found this old post written in 2013 ! I don’t know why I didn’t ever post it but here it is for you today.

For more information about God’s Principles and Laws, Jesus and I have now presented an entire Assistance Group which provides an introduction to the topic.

Videos of these groups found here:

Group 1 “Understanding God’s Loving Laws”

Group 2 “Understanding God’s Loving Laws”

Outlines for each presentation:

Group 1 Documents

Group 2 Documents

(These are great reference and study documents and can be used alone or in conjunction with the videos)

Transcripts appear here:

Group 1 & 2 transcripts listed individually

Jesus Quotes: Humility & God’s Love

“Our Father provides the substance, or mechanism for us to know him, which is Divine Love, but for us to receive that Love we must truly and sincerely have a burning desire to know Him and love Him.

If we truly have this desire, then as a result, we will truly have a desire to take responsibility for and feel and experience all of our personal emotions, desires, aspirations, passions even if we feel bad about them.”

Jesus

Living In Fear & the Freedom to Choose Differently

The sad truth is that the entire world’s population lives in fear in some or all aspects of their lives.

Some of us acknowledge some of our fears some of the time. But seeing our fear doesn’t mean that we deal with it healthily. In fact, most of us feel justified in our fears and demand, be it covertly or overtly, that our environment and the people in our lives make allowances for our fear driven limitations.

Then there are those of us who live in complete denial of large amounts of fear about any number of things at any given time. Denial is a perceived sanctuary and many people reinforce the barricades of the castle and pull up the drawbridge over which truth may have passed. Routines and addictions mask any sensation of fear, numbness becomes the norm, and even though the supposed ‘sanctuary’ can feel cold and damp at times, the real issue of fear is never mentioned and life is branded as normal.

We deny or diminish what scares us because in our souls we are actively resisting and suppressing the sensation of fear. This is how we choose to use our will.

And to aid us in the quest for avoidance we choose and create addictions, and attract relationships to help us navigate our days and unless we are sensitive or aware we rarely notice that the way we are, the way we do, the way we be is less about our real self and more about the escape from fear.

This willingness to live in fear is an affliction that inhibits growth on a global scale. It removes us from our true selves, it creates illness and suffering, it limits joy and discovery. And yet, I notice that most of us, when faced with this simple truth, wish to deny responsibility for our choice in this matter. We might acknowledge the affliction but want no part of the cure.

We resist the truth that living in fear and its multitude of negative consequences has come about through the exercise of our own free will.

What Does It Mean “Living in Fear”?

Living in fear or living by fear is very different to feeling our fears.

living in fear

Living in fear means that we allow the fear within us to guide and dictate our actions, our interests, our relationships, our work, our pleasure, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the programme we watch on TV.

Every action, inaction, decision and indecision is made with the direct purpose of preventing the experience of fear. In other words, we are constantly responding to fear rather than simply allowing ourselves to experience it as a feeling. Fear becomes our evil task master – literally.

It is very difficult to know and discover our true selves when we live in fear since in this state our desires are limited to things that do not trigger fear. What we commonly associate with the sensation of ‘happiness’ is actually a lot more to do with a sense of relief at avoiding fear and having addictions met than any pure experience.

The truth is that as we suppress fear we simultaneously strangle desire and most of us, most of the time, prize the avoidance of fear above the exploration of our wildest dreams and deepest passions. We rarely pause to consider what we would be interested in or inspired by if fear was not a daily part of life.

And while living in fear can come to feel routine and normal it actually requires a great deal of vigilance, effort and control. Whether we realise it or not, when we live in fear all our systems are alert and geared towards its prevention. We walk through life sapped of our vitality and never experience our full potentials for energy and creativity.

Living in fear ages us and limits us. But even more than that, because we honour its prevention above anything else, fear becomes our God, our ruler, the dictator who drives our decisions and assessments. In this state, we are apt to abandon morality and ethics and even rational thought if it means that we can allay fear. In other words, unless we are willing to be humble to the feeling of fear we will become horrible, unloving people when fear is triggered.

Living in fear damages not only ourselves but the world and the people around us. It is the reason we stand idly by when bad things happen. It means we bow to the threats of people who are clearly unloving, thus lowering our own condition and the potentials for love in the immediate environment.

The nursing and retaining of fear is one of the major causes of all evil and unloving behaviour in the world.

Living in fear keeps us silent and inactive when love would compel us to speak and to act.

Living in fear means we begin to prefer error to truth.

While we justify not feeling fear we are automatically going to be unloving and contribute to the evil in the world in our daily activities and through our interactions with others.

There is always a choice between humility to fear and the resistance to and suppression of it. And each time we choose suppression and resistance we employ means, methods and emotions that are out of harmony with love to do it. We purposefully choose to use our will to NOT love, to NOT be ethical, to NOT be truthful, to NOT be moral, and each time we do this we are seeding evil on this planet.

Unfortunately we do this everyday.

And when we commiserate with fear and make allowances for the fear in others we only continue to foster conditions that lead to more evil and suffering.

contributetoevil

Signs We Are Living In Fear

  • We structure our lives to avoid situations that challenge us physically, emotionally or spiritually
  • We avoid situations and people that challenge our belief systems
  • We feel disconnected from our personality
  • We feel tired often
  • We get angry when challenged or things change unexpectedly
  • We are controlling of people or our environment
  • We lament our ‘inability’ to do things, to create, or to feel our feelings
  • We sense fear and get angry or we sense fear and go rigid or freeze
  • We suppress our desires. We might say things like “I don’t know what my passions are”, “I’m not sure what I truly desire or want from life”.
  • We discuss our fears frequently
  • We expect others to make allowances for our fears
  • We justify unloving behaviour due to our ‘special circumstances’ when we become afraid
  • We have difficulty making decisions. We procrastinate. We deny the need for action in our lives, we resist change.
  • We make jokes about our fears or the fears of others. We make fun of people who display fear.
  • We obsess about how others view us or how people feel about us.
  • We judge people or situations often
  • We stay busy – we resist spending time with ourselves doing nothing
  • We can’t be ourselves in front of groups of people – instead we resort to façade or we freeze up
  • We use as many addictive behaviours as possible
  • We live in denial and resort to wishful thinking about our progress and personal development.
  • We seen reassurance often
  • We distract ourselves from our true fears by inventing ‘fears’ we feel we can manage (emotions of self-deception)

Note: There are many more signs that could be added to this list. These are just some examples.

Denial

Most of us are in denial of just how many things frighten and terrify us.

I used to exist largely oblivious of what frightened me. I just didn’t think about it, instead I acted to avoid it and I had addictions that helped me do that.

Coming out of denial can happen as we attract events that make it impossible to deny fear any longer, like say meeting your soulmate who is Jesus (smile).

Or we can take a more pro-active approach by examining our lives truthfully.

We can for example look for three key flags that point to our living in fear:

1. Avoidance

This includes physical avoidance of situations, people and events. It also refers to (perhaps) less obvious avoidances which include every attempt we make to minimise, justify and shift the blame in relation to our fear.

2. Attempts to control & manipulate

This includes control and manipulation of our environment, other people, our children, animals, and spirits. Any time at all that you have the desire to control or influence the will of another away from what they truly desire you are acting in fear rather than feeling it.

3. Anger

This includes any sense of frustration, annoyance or irritability all the way up to outright rage, verbal and physical violence.

Examine the situations, habits, events and relationships which you either avoid, attempt to control or that trigger your anger. In every case you will find that you are living in a fear.

 

signsoflivinginfear

Awareness – It’s Not Enough

We can live in fear and avoid all awareness of our feelings by meeting addictions and controlling our experience and environment. But even after gaining an awareness of our fears, we can continue to live in them if we carry on doing as they command.

We can be aware that we are afraid of certain things but if our physical and emotional choices are still motivated by the desire to prevent the actual confrontation of fear no soul change has occurred. We will continue to live in fear unless we begin to make choices to challenge the messages fear gives us.

I notice many people who say that they have decided to ‘feel their emotions’ are still basing their life choices on fear – which demonstrates that they are not yet challenging their fears. The scope of their lives, limited by fear’s dictate, does not expand and this is proof of living in fear.

Another way I notice many of us not shifting into releasing fear is that we begin to have a sensation of fear or anxiety, but then not let it overwhelm us completely.

Many people live in a constant state they call feeling afraid but are actually just living in fear.

In reality they have slight sense of the feeling, allow it for a little while, feel it’s ‘all too much’ or ‘that’s enough now’ and then do one of two things:

1. Act to suppress it by controlling external circumstances or people
e.g. changing the subject, distracting oneself with a chore or the internet, leaving a situation

2. Shut Down the emotional sensations of fear internally in an attempt to manage or control its expression and prevent overwhelm
e.g. becoming harsh and judgemental of the experience of fear, panicking, intellectually attempting to analyse what the fear is about

While we try to keep the feeling at bay like this we aren’t truly experiencing it and therefore fear won’t dissipate.

While it’s important to recognise the problem of fear and even write a fear list, don’t kid yourself that self-awareness means soul changes. Becoming more aware of our fears and deciding to ‘feel our emotions’ doesn’t mean that we have stopped living in fear.

Really Releasing Fear

First things first, these things are essential:
1. Stop kidding yourself that you are dealing with fears if your life and relationships remain the same
2. Notice how often and in what ways your actions, decisions and opinions are guided by fear

Then in order to change, start to do the opposite of what fear commands, seek ways to challenge fear and, surrender to the experience of the fear that comes as a result.

In order for fear to dissipate it must be experienced emotionally. There are no shortcuts.

Here are some words from my soul mate on this matter:

“I have had to process through a lot of fear myself. My fears were intense, and many times I thought that the effect of it would kill me. But I always felt relief after my experiences. I learnt that we need to do a number of things if we want to get through fear:

1. Always allow the experience of it.

2. Do not go ‘out of body’, do not go away from the experience, do not try to run away. Going ‘out of body’ only allows spirits to take over the body, and running away only increases the fear.

3. Deep breathe all of the time during the experience. Never stop breathing diaphragmatically. This assists you to stay in your body.

4. Have faith in God, and pray for God’s assistance to not only stay in your body, but also to help you go through the experience. Always pray from your heart.

I found that when I did these things, I always got through the fear, even though the pain was very intense, and lasted up to 4 hours at a time, and sometimes longer. Also, once I was through the experience, I allowed myself to sleep, and I looked after myself. Because I allowed the experience, the next experience was always shorter. If your next experience is not shorter, then you are doing one of the above things incorrectly.”runningaway

Understanding the Power of Choice

Fear when left unchallenged pervades our life.

By living in fear we are agreeing to the lie that we really do have things to be afraid of and that love is not the most powerful force in the Universe.

Sadly, the more we tell ourselves these falsehoods and live our lives according to them, the more fear grows.

By avoiding dealing with fear we are avoiding the potentials that love and truth can bring to our lives and to our planet.

Conversely, as soon as we stop living in fear, it will begin to loosen its hold on our lives. We begin to feel more freedom and joy. We make room for Truth.

As we begin to experience fear this liberates our true self and opens up our heart to desire and possibilities previously subdued.

godisreadytohelp

To overcome fear I believe it is necessary for each of us to recognise the individual power for change that God has granted us through the gift of free will. We can harness that gift, and use our will to love.

In fact, it is only through the engagement of our will in opposition to the fear that we currently allow to govern our planet and our lives, that deep, true and lasting fulfilment becomes possible. And through this same use of will we cease supporting the fear in others, which actually assists them towards the possibility of personal fulfilment as well.

Fear fights for itself, it justifies inaction, and it makes us experts at excusing our lack of love. Unless we challenge fear and the hold we’ve given it over our lives, we have no hope of change.

Even the smallest choices made in fear send ripple effects that impact not only ourselves but our environment, our children and those people around us and carry on for longer and in more ways than we can currently conceive of. And each time we make these fear-based choices we reinforce fears commands, we live in the lie and we create more inertia to challenge and confront when we do finally decide to choose love.

We are exercising our will to make choices in relation to fear minute by minute, day by day. The cessation of life lived in fear does not depend on any external circumstance, event or person. It is in our hands alone and depends upon only one thing – the personal choice to cease listening to fear and instead to use our will in the direction of love, truth and ethics. Without making courageous choices that grow integrity to principles such as these, feeling emotions is not only useless but the emotions felt are not those which will heal us.

Yet when we are willing to be steadfast and humble as we challenge fear, emotions will begin to flow from us. Change will happen.

I encourage you to examine your choices- these precious expressions of will. They can be your catalyst for change and growth or simply a manifestation of excuses made to live in fear.

On Fear, Quick-Fixes & Standing by What We Believe

Recently someone forwarded me the following clip:

My first thought was – why send me this?

What is shared in this clip is one very basic truth that is discussed and built upon in far more depth and detail in recordings of events that I was present at and can be viewed here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here… in fact there are over 1200 hours of video on our youtube channel that bring a far broader context and meaning to the importance of emotions and discuss how they relate to the human soul, God, absolute truth, eternal growth, physical healing, and much, much more.

So this video is not news to me. The people involved are discussing something that I discovered a long time ago.

So why send it?

I can actually think of about four reasons why a person who knows me might send me this clip.

Below are two.

These are also reasons why I think this video will likely be forwarded in unsolicited emails and shared on Facebook feeds by many people who I know and who come to our seminars.

1. The Dynamics of Living in Fear

I often hear excitement from people we know when an element of Universal Truth that we teach becomes more widely known and discussed.

I know that many would like to claim that this is an innocent joy that arises because of knowledge and feeling that more truth in the world might mean improvement in the lives of others. But mostly I don’t believe it.

Greater than their love for humanity, people who attend our talks often have a fear of being judged and considered outside of the mainstream.

When some element of what is already shared in depth via Divine Truth becomes more ‘acceptable’ to ‘normal’ society it can help those of us who fear this kind of judgment to feel less afraid. ‘Excitement’ can actually be because fear is momentarily avoided, and the addiction to popular acceptance seems like it might be able to be met while still loving Divine Truth after all.

In the six years since I met AJ again I haven’t met a single person who was drawn to him because of his (our) identity claims. Most people listen in spite of the fact that the guy making so much sense is also saying that he is Jesus.

No one worships him. In fact, the reality of how Jesus is treated is so starkly in contrast to this idea that the thought of people blindly adoring him makes me laugh out loud. Most people want to argue with him, to doubt him and delay engaging their hearts with what he teaches for as long as possible.

Nevertheless they still attend and if you ask them why – and I have asked a great many – resoundingly they all say that it’s because what is spoken is the most meaningful spiritual truth that they have ever encountered. They say it satisfies questions they have asked for a lifetime.

Yet I know for a fact that many, indeed most, of these same people don’t talk about their excitement for what they have heard from us with others. They don’t mention that they know us when others speak of us publicly, and most certainly don’t forward our youtube clips.

In fact, people I have known for years, who have asked us to their homes, shared their deepest fears and sought advice from us, still wish to hide from everyone in their lives that they know us at all.

Jesus and I currently exist outside what the mainstream accepts as normal. While many people like what we have to say they still live in fear of themselves being ostracised by others. This means that they often ostracise us. But even more sadly for me is to know that while in the company of others they often diminish or minimise their passion for God and don’t speak freely about what they believe. Instead they speak in terms that they think will be less contentious to others. They do this rather than sharing the broader context of God’s Love, God’s Laws and the human soul and how that has made so much more sense than examining only the fragments that the world currently presents and accepts.

And when someone more ‘publicly acceptable’ than Jesus or I states even a small element of the extensive truth that we have been teaching for 2000 years then the sudden rush to share their message is not always altruistic or noble. It is often led by the desire to have someone else to pave the way, to ‘take the heat’ and to make things easier to live and believe Divine Truth freely without fear of attack or criticism.

Coming from a state of fear, it’s tempting to search for ways to present Divine Truths in a form that isn’t so challenging to others.

But Divine Truth by its inherent qualities and existence challenges all error. So, in order for lasting change to happen challenges can and must occur both within us and around us. The fears in you, and in me, the false beliefs the whole world over, are all going to need to be exposed and dealt with. There is no quick-fix or magic bullet that will get us over that line.

2. The Quick-Fix Phenomenon

The second reason I believe that, at least in the short term, that the E-motion clip will get more hits than most of those on our youtube channel is that most of western society has a diminishing attention span. We are also becoming increasingly comfortable with, and even demanding for, things that require little effort on our part in order for us to feel better.

In this fast paced, globalised, fast food, iPad, facebook world that we live in – that is all geared towards instant gratification – we love sound bites. We love small morsels that we can digest without much mastication, or thought. We want things that are easy.

We live on a media staple of programmes in which someone has already made up their mind about a topic and simply tells us what to think. Journalism, once a profession filled with idealists engaged in the quest to discover and expose truth, has become increasingly dominated by big industry concerns about profit and driven by the need to please a consumer that no longer desires to be challenged. Journalists I meet seem jaded and cynical about the world around them.

The 10 minute grab used in the E-motion promo uses devices we are all by now comfortable with and welcoming of. I suspect that the longer movie will be in keeping with the format of the clip – present a simple idea, expound a little, move on to the next idea. Colour, movement, nicely packaged portions to digest.

While this format can be a handy way to expose people to new ideas, it lacks capacity to delve deep into topics. And sadly, this is what we all seem to want.

We are so geared towards instant gratification that we feel it’s an imposition to attend for longer than brief periods. We want to be able to know without learning. Our attention span is quickly diminishing through conditioning of a world that’s news cycle is so ever changing that we hardly have time to process one great crisis before another is upon us. We are loosing the will to think deeply, to reflect, to consider and to engage in processes that require reasoning and learning. Ironically we are loosing the desire to do exactly what this video is suggesting we need to do – to feel deeply and to change emotionally.

By and large the trend in the west is that more and more people want change to happen in neatly packaged parcels that they can control and direct. Before we even begin, most of us want to be told what to do, for how long, what to expect and what we get as a result of doing it. Frankly, we are becoming dummies limiting our lives and our experience simply because we want to avoid fear and discomfort. When I think of great explorers and discoverers that have changed the face of how we live and the comforts we enjoy today, I know that they did not approach life in this way.

In fact the greatest person I have ever known – across two centuries and much experience –is one who’s spirit of exploration, dedication, patience, humility and desire has led him to discover the Great Truths of God and how we may each encounter them. He did not achieve this quickly; he did not purchase the pre-packaged all expenses paid deal. He set out on a voyage of discovery, without all the answers, without Google and without a therapist.

By contrast to popular mainstream culture, Divine Truth tells us that we are responsible for who we are what we do; that healing is first and foremost in our hands and we can place it in hands of God but only if we will it. It calls us to search ourselves in honesty and humility and to summon our deepest desires and longings in order to know our Creator. It doesn’t give shortcuts.

It does give solid, practical answers that aren’t always easy to hear or to implement when we live steeped in addiction and the desire for immediate gratification. And I happen to know the guy who teaches it best.

He has dedicated his life to sharing these Truths with anyone who will listen, and often in very harsh conditions. I am proud of him and I want the world to know it.

Watching any two hour presentation on the Divine Truth channel is sure to challenge you on one or more levels. It won’t offer you a two minute technique, a tapping exercise or rote prayer with which to engage your Creator or commence your healing. And really, thank goodness for that. Surely our Loving Parent wants more of us than an intellectual recitation or a 5 minutes practice per day. Surely in Her Infinite Love she would want to know our hearts, what pains us, what we dream of and what makes us come alive? She would want us to engage our desire and longings in our relationship with Her. Anyone on Earth who wants to truly know us wants those things from us.

And surely a Parent who really wants the best for us wouldn’t want us to settle into addictions when we could have real joy. He wouldn’t want us to lack ethics and morality, a state that harms not only us but those around us, all for the sake of short-term comfort. He wouldn’t want us to ignore a challenge and limit our lives just because of something as illusory as fear.

Walking the Way means facing our fears, embracing challenges and giving up our addictions to minimum effort for maximum comfort. While I believe that a growing focus on emotional healing would do much to assist the world, I know that it will take more than that for the world and us as individuals to be authentically and lastingly happy.

What is required is humility to new ideas, a love of truth, and a loyalty to ethics and morality no matter the threat or fear we encounter.

notesalongtheway

Postscript:

In this post I speak to you not as someone who is free of fear or who is without the desire for a quick-fix solution to my problems.

But I am someone whom, from lived experience, understands the temptation to want to have others share the journey with Divine Truth so as to not feel so alone and weird. In fact I really would have preferred the entire world to join me in acceptance of who I am and what I believe before I fully committed my heart and life to it.

I long ago left the world of facebook but freely admit that while still a user myself, I was much more likely to share snippets of what I knew to be truth if they were presented by someone other than Jesus. While I knew that Divine Truth was the answer to ending war, poverty, starvation, illness, abuse and every type of suffering I had ever encountered or heard about, I lived in fear about how other people would judge me if they knew everything that I believed. I also thought that I should be a ‘special case’ as my fears were ‘bigger’ since they involved, not only what I believed, but who I am.

Over the years, many times, I have had to face the decision to stand by what I knew to be true or to run and hide in fear. I didn’t always make the moral choice. But sometimes I have and it’s been very, very good for me (smile).

Know this, the fear of being judged, the fear of negative public opinion won’t be gone from you just because Divine Truth becomes more acceptable. Our fears reside within our souls and their existence is not dependent on what happens around us.

Challenging fears and releasing them is a process under our sole and direct control, and even if external acceptances of Divine Truth change, the fear of being ridiculed will not be gone from us until we engage our will to make it so.

I also think that the dynamic I outlined in the post poses some interesting ethical questions to us all:

When new people in the mainstream begin to present other small elements of Divine Truth in a way that society finds less confronting than a man called Jesus stating it, will we be sharing and forwarding that on in all eagerness?

Or will we state that we’d heard it long before from an unassuming Australian guy who practises what he preaches – Truth, Humility & Love – even in the face of attack and condemnation?

Another thing I know for sure is that no truth is easily accepted by the majority if it’s very existence challenges large fears and addictions within that same group.

The world is pretty messed up right now and in order for it to change someone, or some people, will have to show up and disagree with what everyone accepts as normal.

That is my passion, to surrender to what I believe in so fully that no fear will impede my journey, and no threat will be enough to silence my voice or halt my steps towards living an example that demonstrates the power of God to heal all things.

Love,

Mary

This Is How We Roll

Photo Source

New Years used to be a time when I would review the past year in terms of the lessons learned, the highlights, the low lights and how much I felt I’d grown. Then I’d look forward – what did I want the next year to be about? what did I want to emphasize and focus on? I loved doing this. I kind of made a big deal out of it. I used to say that New Years was my most special annual event and I’d feel all mature and evolved about it.

Now it all feels kind of ‘blah’. It reminds me of the message of Christmas ‘Peace on earth, Goodwill to all men’ that largely gets lost 11 1/2 months of the year and is then revived briefly while everyone trucks off to family and friends, has a BBQ and tries to promote peaceful, loving relationships under a tree with gift wrapping strewn about them.

(I read an article once that stated that one way to tell how much spiritual progress you had made in the past year was to see how you coped at Christmas time when you are thrown back into all of your family dynamics. I thoroughly agree! Its pretty difficult to fake deep spiritual transformation when you are faced with your parents, your in-laws, and elements of your immediate and extended family all in the same vicinity for an extended period).

So, why aren’t we promoting resolving our issues and reviewing our lives more frequently than just one hurried month a year?

That’s the question I’ve asked myself.

As a result I am now far more aware of what I’ve learned and where I want to head on a far more regular  basis.

All that said, it does turn out that a big phase in my learning does seems to be coming to a head at the moment, neatly coinciding with the end of 2012. I’m thinking and feeling a lot about my direction.

At the moment I have more questions than answers about how I plan to continue to pursue my passion for teaching and sharing Divine Truth. But I don’t feel too concerned. Times like these usually signal big changes. And change? Well to me, that’s a good thing.

I already have some concrete ideas about the way I wish to present this blog so look out for some shift in focus here in next couple of months. I am also still working on the ‘Humility in Action’ Study Course but there are already some slight changes to how I will be presenting it.

Today I’d like to tell you about a new tab (see above) ‘Current Projects, Future Dreams’ which will tell you about desires that Jesus and I are working towards. These will likely be ‘Behind The Scenes’ projects that we want to bring into being and are using our time, and resources to support. It is by no means a comprehensive list! There are many, many more dreams and desires that we have but I hope the page will be a small snapshot of our very short range focus at any given time.

I plan to be more transparent about what we do and how we do it. Recently I’ve realized that many people don’t really have an awareness of these things. So I’m happy to share if it helps others to understand our ethos and approach.

We are always living in God Reliance and by what the Law of Attraction is telling us. i.e. we know that if a desire is not coming to fruition seamlessly then there is a lesson of love for us to learn or embody. Honestly, lately, I’m finding this an exhilarating way to live.

It goes something like this:

What do I want to do/ give? 

Will doing it be inline with what I have learned so far about God’s Laws, love and taking personal responsibility? 

Yes? 

OK, lets start. 

If it doesn’t work – why? 

What more do I need to learn about love, God etc? 

How can I address these issues both inside of myself and practically in my life?

Sorted?
Great lets keep going…..

Its how we roll and I feel closer to God every step of the way.

So folks, whatever you choose to get up to this ‘silly season’  – have fun, be real, God Bless.

Mary

Bound

We are planting trees. 
Some have sat in the nursery a long time, waiting for us to prepare good earth. 
My breath catches as I ease this one out of its pot. Its roots are bound. 
I have to break up them up otherwise they’ll stay growing in circles and the tree never grow tall. 
It will live like it’s still got the limits of a 4×6 pot – when in fact all around is fertile soil. 
My hand is tentative as I work the roots. You see, I know what it’s like – this sudden shock. To have every part of where you thought you were going and growing to, suddenly exposed to naked air. Everything you thought to be truth abruptly in question. Sudden blank space where you thought there would be solid ground. 
It stuns you. It winds you. It’s scary and hurts more than a little. 
It can feel lonely and lost. 
It causes you to question: ‘What is right?’ ‘What is good?’ “What do I really want anyway?’ 
Nothing feels certain for a while. 
But in the end, I’ve come to give thanks for this process. In fact, I know that to grow I’m sure to repeat it. 
Just like this tree, we each of us have things in our roots that would keep us bound and small. We don’t always see them, these patterns of growth that keep leading us toward pain and restriction.
Life has led us to view some errors as truth, some truth as error. There is a great challenge in coming to understand that in at times what seems like comfort and goodness, is actually a limit and drain. There are threads of truth amongst the weave of error and humility is the only way I know to grow in discernment between the two, to grow this soul in love.
photo source with thanks
And this is it – I don’t know of a seamless, sedate and calm way to reassess who you are, and to truly make change. 
It takes a shake up to break out of the mould. 
Some roots are bound to error and breaking that away, breathing into new ways feels foreign and flawed sometimes. It takes faith in things higher to shift forward and expand.

At times, it takes bowing in deepest humility to discomfort and uncertainty, before the greatest truth can come.

So I steady my hands and make them firm as I pull away roots from their inward spiraling course. 
I know the joy that comes out of this kind of struggle and shock. 
I make a good bed for this tree to rest in. 
Don’t worry little one, this shock and upheaval will pass. And you will find yourself in a place to be nurtured; a new world of possibilities surrounds you. 
All this shaking loose is just you shaking free.
I smile and sigh. 
Go well little plant, find new earth, become something you cannot even yet dream. 

  We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein

Live From The Heart: Humility In Action

What I love about this speech is that Robert Kennedy is basically saying that each of us have a choice. We can choose to be humble to our pain and loss or to retaliate in hate and revenge, in avoidance of that pain.

I believe that humble hearts are the foundations of true and lasting peace on this planet.

Frankly though a problem I see at times is this:

People hear us say that humility involves an openness to every emotion within them.

People tryto focus on their emotions without a clear desire to change themselves, see their errors or their embrace their lives. This creates self-absorption. This is not humble.

In fact these people are overlooking the fact that humility also involves openness to every situation and person they encounter. Someone who is self- centered, self-absorbed is the opposite of this. They are actually self-interested. They resist life and those around them in favour of focus on their own emotions.

A humble person allows their own emotional experience without resistance, and without valuing it over another person’s experience.

Humility also involves honouring the truth that each of us are of equal value, as brother and sister, all children of God. A person spending all of their time and energy trying to manufacture humility is valuing their own pointless endeavour over the feelings and experiences of others.

The fact that a person must try to embody humility means that they are resistive to simply putting it into action. When we want a thing, we engage it. When we can’t, we find out why and take steps to change these blocks. But we never have to push or force ourselves into it.

Trying, as I have often said before, is lying*.

Sad Fact: By tryingto focus solely on their emotions people often miss the point. They become less humble and more self-involved. 

Often people try to be humble in order to gain approval, to feel they are ‘living the path’ the ‘right’ way. These people miss the point that ‘The Way’ is a journey, undertaken with the Father. He sees us and knows us but even the attempt to manufacture a facade of humility distances His Heart from our own. It is better to be honest about who we are and where we are at, than to push ourselves towards tears or to create ‘paralysis through intellectual analysis’** of our ‘issues’.

Indeed, being real and open about who we are, without expectation or demand for approval or reward, these are the beginnings of walking in humility.

***************

While people focus totally on their own emotions and try to access them (thinking that this is what we mean is the basis of a relationship with God) they miss out on understanding true humility. Ironically, I have seen people living in emotional addiction, avoiding the deepest truths about themselves, and hiding it all behind the banner of ‘humility’.

Such people become isolated and separated. They use a ‘spiritual term’ to justify pushing their emotions onto others. In this, they not only distance themselves from God but they damage others’ understanding of what it means to live humbly.

In contrast, true humility automatically creates connection, not only with self, but with others.  

The qualities of service, leadership, the willingness to confront error and bring about change, all flow from this magic quality humility.

To be humble we must stop trying, and begin allowing what God is truly telling us through our life and our feelings.

Recently I completed a series of interviews (no less than five) with Jesus surrounding the quality of true humility. I am inspired, as always, by the simplicity and power of what he spoke of.

I feel though that we all must be careful that simply hearing these truths does not lead us the arrogance of believing that we live them. That endeavor will take more of our time. The process of truly becoming humble is far more engaging, and beautiful.

Humility is the gift that we would offer our Heavenly Father in order that we would come to know Him and receive His Love and Truth.

It is the vital key to our homecoming.

******************

* This saying was told to me many years ago by a workshop leader. As the years go by, I see again and again, how true this is.

**The saying ‘paralysis from analysis’ comes from one of our dear friends, Susan.

The Gifts of Truth

I’ve been feeling inspired lately, recognising that
Change is possible
There is a quiet joy and celebration in me, as I notice “Wow, I’m different”
These are little changes, but they inspire me forward.
I am steeped in the quiet knowledge that
Courage is required if we are to truly Change
This quiet mantra is with me now. Not as an overbearing demand “You must change! You must grow!”
The cries of “If you don’t grow you aren’t worthy, if you’re not perfect noone will love you!” that have plagued me in the past are gone or fading.
Instead there is desire to change and grow. A deeper knowledge of Grace. And an understanding that
When we live in fear we loose sight of change
When we substitute fear for Truth in our lives, fear becomes our ruler, it restricts us, controls us, and limits our capacity to change. In fact fear screams at us “It’s not possible!” and without Truth we have nothing to combat the command.
I can see that the changes in me are only happening because I am growing a sincere desire to not only receive Truth about all things in my life, but also the willingness to live in Truth and to honour Truth at all times. This is where the courage bit really comes in!
But as always, when we step into more harmony with God, there are gifts.
I am finding, through my living and not just my thinking, that
One of the gifts of Truth is trust.
When a person is loyal to Truth – always and no-matter-what – the people around them can trust their word and their actions. A gift is born – the gift of closer bonds and deeper intimacy.
When I have the courage to live in Truth I literally feel the warms of God’s Love and Laws supporting me. Our relationship – the magic connection between me and my Creator (how humbling it is) – can truly commence. It is enabled by my willingness to acknowledge that it is He, not I, that controls how this Universe and the course of my life runs.
Fear, that harsh tyrant, would have me believe that I must control and protect every aspect of myself and my life, or all will be lost. This position places me, not only in opposition with all of the Loving Laws that God has created to guide me home to Him and who I truly am. But it also, in its arrogance, says that I must be the creator of who I am and what I become.
The Truth is something far more magical.
The Truth is that a Greater Hand than mine created me. He imprinted within me the design for a creature that I, in my current fear bound state, cannot even imagine. I must only surrender to His Love and Laws to enable the more beautiful, creative and loving creature to be born. 
Or it would be truer to say
I allow myself to be born again.
All of this grows, this trust in my Father, the deeper intimacy in my relationships, through my honour of Truth and thus my refusal to accept fear as my ruler.
Trust can only grow as we live in Truth.
In this season when there is such an emphasis on ‘gifts’ my wish for you, dear reader, is that you may begin to receive the gifts that Truth can bring to your life and to know that all things are possible with the One Who Loves the most.

How To Hold a Dream

We live in a culture that regularly scorns innocence, passion and vulnerability. All too often we ‘water down’ our true selves in favour of a version of self that suits the cynical and image-focussed landscape in which we live. We are taught to view the preciousness of our childhood dreams and creativity as childish, as too idealistic and unrealistic. [1]
I was taught early that my extremely emotional and expressive self was befuddling and bemusing to my parents. I learnt to be ashamed of this part of myself.
My huge desire to make the world a better place, to extend love to others and change lives for the better, I relegated to an idealistic pipe dream after spending ten years working in our health system and over two years in the Middle East. I came to believe that to be worldly was to face the harsh facts that the world is irretrievably messed-up, that lasting change and peace is a naïve concept. I learnt to judge and be angry instead of grieve the suffering I saw everywhere I went.
When Yeshua began work on the constitution for God’s Way of Love Organisation and as we began to talk about our future vision I had to face how much disillusionment I still carry about the way our world works and how resolute I feel so many of us still are in our decision to deny God and love, to judge our childlike selves and to stifle our creativity in favour of ‘fitting in’.
It seems that to truly embody this vision of ours I must have the courage to grieve my feelings of hopelessness, my belief that the world can’t change. This conviction of mine comes not only from my experiences in the past 30 years but has its roots in a time when a great dream was lost, when Light living in one man was extinguished through murder and a group of people grieved deeply that the presence of God’s Love on earth was so brief. It lived on only in a few of us, and to a much lesser degree. Our devastation was complete and my loss threatened my will to live, my faith and my hope. It broke my heart in a way that now it seems cleaved in two. The wound is covered over by scar tissue and yet underneath is still raw and weeping and excruciating to touch.
To make way for hope and creativity, I must grieve my loss and I must also cease to regard my childlike self in the way that my parents and environment taught me to. We learn to treat ourselves harshly and with reserve to avoid the pain of our wonder, excitement and imagination being stifled and judged by others. We reject ourselves so that we do not feel the grief of how rejected we were by others in our innocent state.
Our tears will free the sparkling children, full of wonder, big ideas and dreams, who are still waiting there within us. We can all learn to be trusting children again – only this time we can come to rely on a God of Love who accepts us as we are and delights in our childlike inventiveness and wonder.
When I consider God’s Way of Love as a vehicle for me (and all of us) to reconnect to this state; as a place that will welcome our tears at past dreams dashed, and teach us to hope again with vulnerable hearts no longer afraid of loss, I am moved beyond words.
I quietly tremble and let my heart release its fear. I allow the tears of my past Great Loss.
In order to hold our dream in my heart I must repair my faith and trust once again in the power, patience and endurance of Love. I must let my tears flow and allow their tracks to create pathways, passageways that may deepen and lead me back to my excitement, spontaneity and creativity.
May the passage of all our tears teach us the wisdom of letting go of expectations and control. May it rebuild in us strong roads of faith, faith in the unfailing strength our Father and the unending generosity of our Mother.
May God bless the beautiful child within you today,

Mary

[1] Emily writes cool stuff about this here & here

A Fork in the Road & The Wounded Dog

A Fork in the Road

I’m passing through a season on this path where life seems difficult. In the past month I have come to confront some big residual addictions (that I found hidden below the obvious ones J). It’s felt tough and I’m still in it. Lots of my other avoidances – food, alcohol, anger, running away etc – all seemed easy to give up compared to these. I am really attached to the feelings of being ‘Daddy’s little girl’ – it helps me avoid so much shame and worthlessness. It helps me avoid all the loss and longing for my Soulmate that feels so consuming I doubt my capacity to breathe if I submit to it. I really, really want to feel safe and protected – instead of feeling terrified of losing him, of being harmed, of people hating us.
In the past I’ve felt my passion to become more loving and closer to God has pulled me through so much processing. Often, even just realising my addictions, has helped me to begin to break them down. These last few weeks though, I’ve had to get brutally honest with myself. Just because I can see that this set of addictions prevent me from loving more completely and that they block my connection to my Father, doesn’t mean that I want to give them up. Facing my deepest unworthiness, my Soulmate grief and my terror feels like a task I am not up to yet.
The place I’m in feels harrowing. The roads divide before me – one path is the path to God and my dear, sweet mate. The other is a continuation of the well worn road of my life till now. It’s the road where I get to feel warm and fuzzy because people accept me and tell me “wow, you’re a great girl!” It is the road where I accommodate everyone else’s demands and desires because I don’t want to feel alone or rejected. It’s the road that keeps me in addiction to love’s substitutes – approval, reassurance, avoidance and hugs that help me deny my pain.
The former road means facing feeling alone, unsafe, unworthy and ashamed. This road, the one to God, takes a course through the dark emotions. The second takes me around them, on any number of detours, escaping the lows of shame and grief, for ‘higher’ ground. The only problem is that on the second I seem to tire so much and it never, ever, leads me to God. That road only leads me to a cul-de-sac and when I get there at the end of my long and tiring life I know I’m just going to have unpack my backpack and in it I will find the shame, unworthiness and grief I was trying to avoid all along.
On the first road I don’t have to carry a backpack. It will be painful at first but I know as I go the scenery will improve and I may even start humming a tune or two. But there is pain in starting out, and there will be pain in staying the course.
How much do I really want it?
Am I willing to step directly into the things I fear?
The second road still calls me. It tempts me; it masquerades as the easier route. The surface is smoother underfoot… but it’s that darn backpack that weighs me down.

I feel frustrated that I know the best path to take and yet I do not take it. I’m sitting dawdling. My backpack gets heavier by the minute and I have a tendency to whine about it. How uncaring is that? I want to whine about how heavy it is when it is my choice to keep lugging it about. It’s tiring all this lugging. It’s more than tiring it gets painful. Which leads me to the dog..
The Wounded Dog

I wanted to share a story with you about a dog full of barbs. It was told to me by Yeshua and comes from our brother John, who while here on earth the second time, was given this story from his spirit friends.
Imagine a dog who has been shot full of arrows with barbs on their ends. They are stuck in his skin and he yelps as he moves. He is in constant pain.
There is no way to remove the barbs without more pain. Barbs by their nature become lodged and stuck; their prongs embed in the skin at different angles. The most loving thing we can do for the dog is to ask him to lie still and allow us to remove the barbs as gently as possible. We can’t prevent the pain but if he doesn’t thrash and kick he won’t be injured further.
Now imagine yourself as this dog. The process of birth and growth from childhood has left you stuck full of barbs – not barbs from God but from our forefathers’ decisions to neglect God and love, from our own life’s choices which have placed pain within our souls. So we are now full of painful wounds, tender to touch.
God is so tender and loving and He wants so much to see us free of barbs and wounds and all of the sharp things caught in our coat. He will do everything he can to ease them out of us gently. The barb that hurt so much going in is going to sting coming out. There is no avoiding it. But if we lie still, if we surrender and allow God’s Hands to gently work, it will happen quickly and we will feel the sheer relief of it leaving us.
It is when we fight and resist that the process becomes painful, we cause more injury to ourselves and those around us when we thrash and rebel against what is most natural. In trusting and allowing we liberate our pain and in letting go it hardly hurts at all. Like the prick of a splinter exiting our palm, the quick, sharp, pinch is nothing compared to the feeling of relief as it comes out.
And this is the key lesson our spirit friends were tyring to teach us – our pain now is almost entirely due to the fight against feeling what is already within us. We are so terrified of the removal of the barbs. We believe it is the ultimate pain, not realising that it is actually relief.
So instead we fight and struggle or we try to find a comfortable way to numb the pain.(1) But this only augments our suffering. The barbs can start to fester, an infection can spread throughout our entire lives.
The greatest way to relieve our pain is the simplest – to allow and feel what is there while we let God’s Love and Grace remove our error.
“The new birth is the flowing of the holy spirit into the soul of a man and the disappearing of all that tended to keep it in a condition of sin and error. It is the love of God that passes all understanding…
Your will is the thing that determines whether you will become a child of God or not. Unless you are willing to let the Holy Spirit enter into your heart, it will not do so. Only the voluntary submission to, or acceptance, of the Holy Spirit will make the change.”(2)
Submit and allow the barbs to be removed.
At my fork in the road I so desperately want to fight. Indeed I spent some hours yesterday just fighting with God about it all. I feel angry at love. Can you believe that? I want to be angry at AJ for just loving me because it reminds me of how much I hurt, how much I missed him. It’s like, because I don’t want to feel the pain of loss I have deadened a part of my heart. Now that I have AJ in my life everyday it is harder and harder to avoid the pain of this partitioned off part of my soul.
I have screamed and sobbed at God, wanting another way out, any other way but through, any other road but the first. God, in all Her tenderness, just waited, waited for me to stop thrashing while she gently tries to remove the barbs.
It’s hard to trust Her.
She’s still waiting and I resist Her Love.
You know what it’s like when you’re having a bad day at work. You’re OK while everyone is just doing their thing. They may even be terse and bossy with you. You’re fine until that one person just reaches out and says, ‘Hey, you look beat, would you like to talk?’ The sudden kindness is the thing that tips you over the edge and you find yourself crying.
I feel like my whole life has been one long work day, with me beating up on myself for not doing well enough, and others around me demanding I give more. Now when I consider opening up to God, who just wants to hold me and says ‘I love you no matter what’, it feels like I’ll loose it, completely loose it.
So I push Her away.
I push away my Heavenly Mother who Loves me.
I push my mate away.
I resist anyone who is tender and gentle because I can’t bear the contrast between what life has been and what it can be.
There are so many barbs.
I’m praying now for the strength to surrender to myself, to God’s process. The process She designed with infinite care, the road that brings me back to Her.
I’m praying for you to, that you may also find this courage.
Sometimes we get so used to the barbs that we feel they are preferable. Or we decide we don’t mind the heavy backpack, we believe we deserve it.
Sometimes the hardest thing to surrender to is LOVE.
“Surrender dear sister, surrender” I hear my guides whisper “Take the shorter route, though it feels you will plunge directly into darkness, trust the Father, for from that point on your load will be lighter and your steps will be surer.”
“Take the narrow road that leads to God.”

[1] The Pharmaceutical industry is based almost entirely upon this principle; “How can we help you numb your pain?”, rather than release its cause.
[2] Excerpt from a message received from Yeshua, channelled by James E Padgett in 1915. For further information on where to view or purchase the Padgett Messages see here, here and here.