Category Archives: Facebook

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

An End to Lollypop Love and the Launch of ‘Live from the Heart’ postings!

Just a quick note to those of you who wrote to me and said that you would like me to stop blogging:
I make no apology. I know that you aren’t into our teachings at all, but something we do talk about a lot (and I believe it’s a fairly highly valued feature of most people’s lives) is free will. Apparently some of you don’t recognise how this applies here, so I’ll try to break it down for you. Basically, you have and I have, this free will, which means – I am free to write what I want and you don’t actually have to read what is written here. I’m not spamming you with it; I’m not forcing it on you in any way.
Perhaps some of you are a little lost for other things to look at on the internet so maybe I can help you out.  I’ve posted some links that may be fun (don’t worry they don’t mention God, or the Divine Love Path… although I guess some of you just want to find more stuff about us so that you can rubbish us some more… and that, according to the free will concept, is totally up to you.. I must admit it seems like a bizarre kind of sport or masochistic pass time to find something you hate, but that doesn’t actually invade on your life in any way, and to then spend your days immersed in it, attacking the thing or person.. when you could just go do something else..?? logic anyone??  )
Hope you all can appreciate I’m feeling a bit light-hearted about this issue today – and my comments are made in such a spirit!
Mary
FB & Me
My short disclaimer to precede this post is that what I am about to share is simply my feelings about my injured relationship with the social networking phenomena called Facebook, often affectionately referred to as FB. It is not meant to be a damning commentary on its existence or a blanket generalization about how everyone uses it!
A few weeks ago I deleted my Facebook  account. Facebook seemed very concerned to let me know that I could simply deactivate my account and not delete it – and was I sure I wanted to delete my account? I gladly checked the little box ‘yes’.
When Facebook fever first seemingly struck the world I was living in Scotland and I remember saying ‘My gosh, I couldn’t have a page devoted to my ‘face’!’ But one thing led to another. I sold it to myself as a way to stay in touch with the faces that I had known in far-flung places and to those that I was once near to.
As time went by I began to love seeing everyone’s photos and days so easily. In general I’m so interested in people – I love hearing what makes them tick, what they care about and how they change – and Facebook helped me know more of those things (or so I thought). I liked seeing infants grow into toddlers, and I could wallow in nostalgia as I clicked through shots of old lives and escapades.
Since then however lots of things have changed.
I’ve learned a lot about nostalgia[1]. I’ve moved the landscape of my life to a remarkably different vista. I’m changing and what I want is changing.
Lately I began to think about fairly floss[2] when I visited Facebook. Each visit was full of lightness and colour and news that used to give me a little sugary rush like I was ‘in touch’ with others and their lives. But there was a crash following the sweet high. There was nothing in my belly, or heart, only my head was buzzing with text and image. Instead of feeling like I was adding to my life by visiting my account, I felt was loosing life, loosing energy, loosing time.
I was ‘keeping up’ with the lives of people I cared about but it sure didn’t feel like being in a real relationship with them anymore. I began to ask questions like: I know the details about the lives of people I haven’t spoken to in over a decade, but does that mean I know them? Why do I spend ten minutes looking at someone’s wedding photos without communicating with them? More than that, why did I spend ten minutes on this and not on responding to an email or not digging in my garden?
Having all these Facebook friends was a lazy way for me to be a voyeur. I could visit photos or status, I could see what my ‘friends’ had done on the weekend, just through the click of a button but where was my heart connection to these people? Did we still even want to know each other?
And if I really did love these people, why wasn’t I calling them or emailing or visiting? It began to feel very fake and superficial.
How much of me wanting to ‘know’ as these people and see their lives on a screen headed with blue was actually me wanting to avoid my own loneliness?

When we eat a lot of refined sugar, our systems become exhausted because sugar actually depletes the energy of our system. In that process our bodies often crave more and more sugar. We crave the sweetness with increasing veracity to help us avoid the crash that inevitably comes to signal the effect we have just created in our body. We are actually starving for real nourishment. Our body is trying to tell us something but if we aren’t careful we end up feeding it with more and more junk and avoiding our own sustenance[3].
My relationship with Facebook came to resemble this effect. It was the way for me to avoid my emptiness and longing for real relationship.
I believe that we live in a world so depleted by a lack of true connection with each other, that hitting the ‘refresh’ button can feel like asking for another ‘hit’ of sugar to avoid the starvation signal our soul is emitting. At least that’s what it began to feel like for me.
I look around me and I see that much of society seems embroiled in a fast paced life where we are all so crazed to avoid the ‘crash’. It’s gotten so bad that we now require a constant news feed, like super sweet candy, a string of endless updates on what Danni is eating for breakfast, what Mike is wearing and where Anna is at, all so that we can feel like we are in touch, involved and yes even that we are loveable. Somewhere in the generation of cell phones and tabloid media and oh so much immediate gratification we have lost what we are truly here for – that is, to connect to true ourselves, to live from our hearts, to dream big, to create, (and to use the gifts of technology and progress to serve us in these pursuits).
On Facebook it’s easy to put our ‘best face’ forward. It’s easy to look great and have it all together. But my life often looks messy. I realised that my heart felt tired from my attempts to look all witty and wise. I was still trying to be hip and cool in a status update. This wasn’t helping me to be true, to be real, or to connect to my heartfelt dreams.

The internet has long been a place where I ‘numb’ out and avoid the hunger pains in my everyday life.  I’ve had the opportunity to spend quite a lot of time alone lately, in a place without phone or internet connection. This has helped me tune into my soul starving for true connection.
 
I am famished for connection with God and my soulmate. But often the loss of these things as I remember them, in their pure state, feels too painful to face. So I’d surf the net or Facebook as a way to avoid the emptiness. It was all a poor substitute for the kind of nourishing, sustaining connection I truly desire for my life.
I want to know God and my mate. I want my feet grounded in the earth, I want to feel the salt of sweat and tears on my skin and taste them in my mouth. I want to be present in this body and feel my own heart. I want to feel the spirit and soul of the people in my life. Most often I want to look into your eyes when I share with you.
In my alone time much is happening. I feel there is an integration occurring, of all that has happened in my past three years, and I am opening up to what is to come. I am becoming more and more sensitive to where my life feels empty and what my soul truly desires. The beauty of having more tolerance and openness to my empty feelings, my aches and lows, is that I want less and less to fill them up with false connections and fairy floss. Instead of ‘lollypop love’ I want to love in a way that is grounded in a joy, which comes from embracing my passions here and now. I want a love that lives when I look others straight in the eye, being and accepting exactly who I am in that moment and encouraging them to do the same.
So in tribute to grounded joy and nourishing our souls I plan to start weekly ‘Live from the Heart’ posts – sharing things I see that inspire me to live from the heart, to dream big and be creative. There are so many people who do this bravely out there in the world, but there are also those who do it in the quiet of their own lives. I want to share some of that good stuff here!
To start us off (in a small way):
This post from Emily which reminds me that, no matter what your day job – when you live from your heart you make art.
This song that I often sing goofily to my man…

And this note written by Sienna, aged 6. Sienna’s mum came home from work one night to find it on her bed.

[1] Nostalgia no longer feels comforting or comfortable to me. When I really sat with my nostalgia I learned a lot about what it meant. Now my nostalgia says to me ‘I want to go back to a time that I thought was better or when I felt better or safer’. My next questions then involve ‘Why did I feel they were better?’ ‘What don’t I like about myself or what’s happening in my life now?’
If I live in nostalgia, I live in a place where I’m not loving or living fully in my present. When I go deep into what my nostalgia is about and resolve these things then I can look back easily and with fondness but I no longer have this burning sort of longing for times better or brighter. In the past nostalgia has helped me to avoid unresolved grief, conflict not dealt with in my present and fear of embracing my life in the present.
[2] We called it Fairy Floss when I was a kid so I’m keeping with my cultural idiom in the text! But for those overseas its also known as cotton candy or candy floss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_candy
[3] I make no claims as a nutritionist here only as a reforming sugar addict… so I hope I’m ‘nutritionally correct’! …maybe one of you raw foodies reading can help me out on accuracy??