Category Archives: Groups

Removing People from our Audiences:

Further Letters

The following letters are a continuation of my exchange with G. (previous letters in this conversation can be viewed here).

Photo by Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins

G’s Second Response to Mary :

Hi Mary,

The underlying reason is to my comment in the first place was very simple. I feel have read way too much into it. You have described it as an “attack”. This is completely wrong.
I don’t have emotions that want to attack you or anyone. You have met me several times but I would not say that you know me very well at all. Your last email illustrates this to me.
I challenge people’s actions as being fruitful for what they are trying to achieve. I do this because of empathy towards the person being the subject of the action. Nothing more. Yes, I questioned your judgement. So what! It’s not a big deal. I will do it again if I don’t agree with what you are doing. As with my own judgement, I do not regard your judgement as infallible. We all make mistakes.

You seem very put out about me questioning it. If I think any of my friends have made an error in judgement I suggest it to them.
Why? Because they are my friends and friends can have robust arguments and disagreements without any ill feeling.

After your first email I was satisfied that although I could not see how these people could be as you described them they must have deserved this treatment. Now after reading your subsequent emails to me and your overreaction to a challenge of your authority I am not so sure.

You talk about my treatment towards you.
What treatment? I disagreed with you Mary. If you have misconceived my treatment and thoughts towards you then you have possibly done the same with others.

You do not know me well enough to judge my “desire to love” or my current soul condition. That is why I just ignored those comments of yours.  When you do this with people it is a judgement whether you see it as one or not. Saying whether something is hot or cold is a judgement. If your device for measuring is inaccurate then you have now made a very big mistake. You say that you are telling people the truth about themselves and if they don’t accept it because they are resistive. They can’t handle the truth.

What if it’s not the truth and your perception is wrong?
I say you are being judgemental and unhelpful when you do this.
I have seen more negative consequences than positive.
They feel judged and are hurt if they trust you more than themselves.
Of course they do.

We disagree strongly here and I am not “attacking you”. I am disagreeing with you, questioning the benefits of your actions even though I believe your motives and intentions are good.
Am I not allowed to do this?

Although I would never try to asses someone’s soul condition I do have a pretty good idea on who has a good heart.
Do you honestly think for one minute I think that you and AJ do not have good hearts and every bodies welfare in mind.
You spend your entire life giving to people. On what grounds would I have to be unloving towards you? You are wonderful people. You know that I know you spend every minute of your day giving to others.

On what grounds would I possibly have to attack you or not love you?
Question you sometimes on your judgement? Yes.
Have I committed a crime against you? No
Do I love or respect you any less? No
Am I open to be convinced otherwise? Yes.

Love,
G____

Photo by Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins

Mary’s Third Response to G:

Hi G____,

There are just so many errors in logic in your email and also a wealth of innuendo and implications. I can’t respond to all of it because it would just take too much time.

You also demonstrate that you don’t understand what Jesus and I are trying to achieve in sharing Divine Truth. e.g. you say “I have seen more negative consequences than positive” demonstrating that you see some things as negative that we don’t see as negative.

You imply that your initial email was a question (not true) and that you emailed in response to your empathy for the people removed. This isn’t logical. Empathy for a person’s emotions alone doesn’t cause you to speak in defense of them or to attack of those who challenge their actions (which is what you have done). It is possible to have empathy and compassion but still stand firm for truth (which is what Jesus and I have done).

I started to respond to everything you have just raised with me and it is becoming an essay and to be honest given how you responded here I don’t think that my explanations will necessarily be read by you anyway. Contrary to what you think I’m not concerned about your disagreement with me. I’m OK to let you remain in disagreement with me and to misunderstand and misrepresent my motivations.

I do love robust discussion of any issues of love and truth which is why I engaged the email exchange with you in the first place. But since you are showing that you can’t actually respond to the points of logic in my email, continuing discussion with you seems pointless.

Robust disagreements and deep discussions about matters of Truth and about God’s Love and Laws are things that make me come alive. This are the kind of conversations I am on earth to have. A sign of healthy and secure people are those who can disagree and have discussions that seek for truth and don’t take personal offense. This is how I engaged with you.

However you didn’t start our discussion with this attitude. You displayed that you had taken personal offense and that you had made a judgement of us before any discussion of truth.

You send me an email that clearly imputed that Jesus and I were not “Supportive, encouraging, kind, sensitive, helpful, friendly, warm and open” and that my behavior made you sick. You didn’t seek clarification of the issue before you made these statements. I then responded in a clearly reasoned explanation of what we did, why we did it and included logical explanation of why your immediate response to defend the unloving person in the situation is problematic for your spiritual growth and the world at large. You now tell me that by doing this I am reading too much into things, “over reacting” and that I’ve responded out of some kind of defense of my “authority”. This is a way of trying to shut me down and ignore what I have said. You even said blatantly that you ignored some of my comments to you. On one hand you say that I should be able to have robust discussion and handle strong disagreement but then when I engage in that maturely with you, you dismiss what I say in the ways that I just listed.

I just want to remind you that it was you that contacted me about this matter and accused me of conduct that made you sick. And also to state that I am allowed to respond to your email to me in my own voice and with my own thoughts and that in doing that, without taking personal offense, I am being a grown up. As someone who listens to Divine Truth a lot I thought that you may be open to a logical discussion about matters of truth but I haven’t found that in this exchange. I know that you listen to Divine Truth material almost daily and I didn’t think that my focus on the bigger picture of your soul condition would be so challenging to you. Often our smallest, routine actions (that we don’t think are problematic) demonstrate a lot about our sin and are the ones that cause us the most problems in our progression on earth and after we pass.

Photos courtesy of Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins

Finally, I have to genuinely laugh about even the idea that Jesus or I are in some attached to authority. Not because I am laughing at you but because the idea that I (or Jesus) have any attachment to authority or power over anyone is just so far from what is real. If anything, we both have issues with accepting the “role responsibility” that God desires for us (which is not about authority over others but leadership and responsibility).

We never “lord it over” people or demand their agreement, nor do we become offended or enraged when people disagree with us or ignore us. If we did these things or had the demand that people accept our so-called “authority” we would be vastly unhappy in our current lifestyle since 99.9999% of people in the world either think we are nuts, a joke, deluded, or evil. Even the people who attend our groups routinely resort to treating us with condescension, dismissal or simply voice disagreement with us (just as you have done). So we are pretty used to people not listening to us and voicing their attack and judgement of us. It doesn’t make their attack or judgement right but we have grown enough that it doesn’t cause us problems. And we certainly don’t feel that people must agree with us.

We really love and respect God’s Authority in all things.

The only authority I had in this situation is authority over the Assistance Group. And that is because, given the group was our creation, the atmosphere that facilitates learning, love and truth is our responsibility during the time that we run the groups. With that responsibility comes the “authority” to ask people to leave.

When you disagree with me, I am not leaping to defend myself or taking offense. I responded to you at length primarily because you first initiated contact with me and because the principles involved are important to what we teach. You are allowed to disagree with me and I am allowed to respond to you with my own explanation. I do use a lot of words to explain and I am direct in my language. These things are not a sign of my defensiveness but rather that I desire what I mean to be plain and understandable. I want to reduce the possibility for misunderstanding on your part. I am also passionate about the principles involved here.

I don’t seek out people who attack or disagree with me in private to try and correct them or explain myself. But when a person contacts me, in the guise of giving me “feedback” which is actually attack (as you did) I find it natural that I may choose to respond.

Absolutely everyone who I was close to before I met Jesus disagrees with me in one way or another and I have never felt that they must agree with me. I don’t seek them out to make them “see my point” or respect my “authority” (again – what authority?).

But this interaction is entirely different. You contacted me and I responded, not offended, but in clear language with reasoned explanation of the principles involved including why both Jesus and I took the actions we did and why we believe that those actions are an important part of upholding love and truth.

Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, you have personally attacked me (and Jesus) e.g. calling me an ‘over reactor’ and someone with ‘authority issues’, someone who ‘made you sick’ and you did so without having any clear evidence for those statements or logic in your arguments. Something in our asking people to leave the last groups brought up emotions for you which you didn’t take responsibility to feel for yourself and instead you chose to dump them on us.  You may wish to call what you feel for the people involved “empathy” or say that you are logically questioning our actions but you haven’t done that in the way that you are communicating with me. Empathy for one group of people doesn’t cause a loving person to attack another group of people.

I notice a lot of people do this, they want to avoid logical discussion of principles and facts that may cause them to change or to see things about themselves and instead respond in knee-jerk comments, poorly reasoned arguments and unloving behaviour. This is what happens when we don’t feel emotions for ourselves, we loose sight of logic and blame others. For example, in your emails to me you question my judgement in assessing who is behaving unlovingly in our groups, imply that we are “destroying” people by asking them to not be there and tell me we are hurting and judging people but then you state that we have good hearts. These sentiments contradict each other.

I understand that you feel that you are being a reasonable, nice guy but your statements and behaviour don’t support that belief or demonstrate that to me. There is clearly a dissonance between your various statements and what you say you feel.

Anyway G____, I feel that the way that you have responded to me in this last email (with further attack, dismissal and ignoring of the principles involved) demonstrates to me that any more correspondence with you on the matter wouldn’t be good use of my time. The only way discussion is fruitful is if we can engage with it logically and without dismissal or condescension towards the other. I have not dismissed any of your comments to me, and I have demonstrated that I have a clear and reasoned understanding of the issues involved. If you were to treat me as I treat you and to actually discuss the principles and ideas involved without imputing things about my motivations or character then I would enjoy the discussion but I don’t see any evidence of you wanting to do that so I’ll finish here.

Bye for now,

Mary

Photo by Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins

All photo in this post by Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins – Thank you

Removing People from our Audiences:

A letter exchange

G’s Letter to Mary & Jesus:

Hi AJ and Mary,

Supportive, encouraging, kind, sensitive, helpful, friendly, warm and open.
These are not words that spring to mind when watching the last set of divine truth videos.
I know you have your reasons for telling all those people to leave but I am struggling with it being loving. I thought they there for assistance not “You haven’t changed, we’re giving up on you now. Please leave!”

To see Mary start a 4 minute video laughing and joking about pulling faces and then in the next breath telling L___ to leave and no longer volunteer after countless years of volunteer work and supposed friendship made me feel a little sick. Another one bites the dust. How many is this now?

“You will recognise them by their fruits.”
I am so confused. You have both taught me so much for which I am grateful but I just don’t get what you are doing in these last assistance groups. Hard love I think is fine except where it is so harsh that every recipient just leaves and wants nothing to do with divine truth ever again.

This makes little sense to me and I feel compelled to comment.
Regards,
G_____

Photos courtesy of Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins

Photos courtesy of Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins

My Response to G.:

Good morning G____,

I have to say that you aren’t being logical or informed in the writing of this email.

The truth is that both Jesus and I have been extremely kind, supportive and generous with our time with everyone that we asked to leave the assistance group – as each one of those people individually knows. But each person we asked to leave has not been any of those things towards us or towards the other people who attend our groups. Since we offer our time and teaching for free there does come a time when it is important for us to uphold a space that promotes learning for our participants and is comfortable for us to teach in.

The people that were asked to leave had been given many chances to change, ignored all of them and continued to treat us and others very badly. Many of these people have been angry, vengeful or extremely demanding, critical and condescending towards us and other participants during our presentations and towards us outside of presentations. How would we be ethical to the other people in attendance if we left such people in our audiences? It would be like saying “we are here to teach you about being loving and truthful in your lives but at the same time we are allowing people to freely come and be unloving and untruthful towards you and us while you try to learn it”.

If people don’t stand up when others are being unloving then they aren’t neutral, they support the unloving position. This is why we decided to remove those people from the groups.

Regarding the morning I removed L___, I was feeling extremely nervous about doing it as L___ has a long history of becoming enraged with me after me sharing anything that challenges her. In one instance she did not speak to me for 6 months after I made a couple of comments to her about a single addiction she was acting in at the time. While you say that we have had countless years of friendship, I think that you are confusing our kind treatment of L___ and friendship towards her with her being a friend to us.

L___ has always had an extremely high level of demand towards Jesus and reverted to attack or extreme negativity and criticism of him when challenged on these issues. She has also been simultaneously demanding, condescending and critical of me for many years. L___ has many qualities that we enjoy but she has certainly not ever been a friend or loving towards us.

Before removing L__ I was very conscious of not wanting to transfer my nerves to the group we were teaching and I tried to keep things light leading into the morning. (This was actually futile as everyone picked up on my fear anyway). However when it came to addressing L___ it was quite obvious that I was very nervous. I feel though that I was clear with her about the issues (as both Jesus and I have been for nearly 6 years), I wasn’t nasty or unkind and I tried to explain the problems she has to the best that my current condition allows in such a situation. My one regret in sitting down afterwards was that I didn’t publicly thank her for work volunteering towards creating Divine Truth materials for others however both Jesus and I have made this thanks many times publicly and privately in the past. We are grateful, however ‘works’ based on addiction (which is what L__ has been doing) do not excuse poor treatment of others or ourselves.

I understand that you may now feel that we (or I) have become unkind in the way that we approach our public teaching but we certainly don’t have the attitude that you state “You haven’t changed so you have to leave” towards people. We are simply becoming more firm about people who have unloving behaviour towards others during our groups because to do otherwise, to allow these people to stay or to not address these people, is providing a space for that kind of behaviour to continue unchecked. We do not want to support people at our groups to abuse ourselves or others. Many people, like L___, have listened for years thinking they are applying what we teach while at the same time being abusive to ourselves and others.

I don’t believe that you are analysing our removal of people at our last group very fairly or with much logic. You are basically saying that it is OK for people to abuse us, to be angry and condescending towards us for years and years and we should continue giving them as a gift our time and energy and effort. We don’t agree with that. We would prefer to give our time and energy and effort to people who have demonstrated that they are sincere and have a willingness to apply what they are being taught. To share our time with any other kind of person would be an extreme unloving act towards ourselves. You are also not considering how much time we have personally given L___ (which we do not begrudge at all) and not considering that the time that L___ ‘gave’ was not to us but rather so that others could hear Divine Truth.

So G____, we understand that you don’t yet understand love of self, or really understand love of others and while both Jesus and I are very fond of you, I understand that you may no longer feel that way towards us.

I know a lot of other people feel the same way as you do about our recent actions because these actions confront many personal addictions people have and their expectations of what “love” would do. But that is only the world’s definition of “love”. If you believe that “love” is silent and inactive when unloving and untruthful things go on or that a “loving” person must continue for years to put up with abuse and attack of themselves or others without taking any peaceful and truthful action to confront that attack then obviously your own definition of love is flawed and certainly not God’s.

I also think that God’s Truth will necessarily challenge people on many levels (since the world currently lives in so much opposition to it) and so while you are concerned that “another one bites the dust”, we aren’t. We have given L___ yet another opportunity to address her many unloving addictions and attitudes but this time we are limiting her ability to continue her unloving behaviour towards ourselves and others.  She is faced with a choice and if she has a true desire to love she will examine it sincerely and address the issue. And if that happens, I am sure we will see her again.

I ran this email by Jesus and his final comment to me was that he finds it interesting that you continue to have very little trust of his decisions and actions even after years of knowing him.

Love

Mary

Photo by Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins

G’s Response to Mary:

Ha Mary,

Thank you for your response. It makes perfect sense considering what you have now explained. I guess not knowing the background of these people and their relationship towards you caused me to make an uninformed judgement. It just seemed a bit odd to watch all these people get turfed out of a place they had come to for help.

Sorry for jumping down your throat and questioning your judgement. I guess I just really felt sorry for them as they seemed to me to be vulnerable and destroyed by your decision. If they have treated you as you say then I agree your actions are quite justified and I would probably do the same.

Kindest regards,
G____

Photo by Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins

My Second Response to G.:

Hi G____,

Since our exchange I’ve been thinking about publishing the emails on my blog or our website. I don’t want to expose L___ anymore than she already must feel, but I do think that many other people probably haven’t considered why we made the choices we did at the Assistance Group or know the full back story.

You mentioned people coming to our groups for “help”.

Jesus and I are teachers. What we teach is the way to establish a relationship with God. So the only way in which we “help” is to teach these principles and to be honest with people as we do so. We don’t present ourselves as gurus or counselors, and in fact, we do a lot to attempt to correct people when they have this perception of us or try to place us in that role. We never want people to be dependent upon us. In fact a key part of forming a relationship with God is become self responsible and to receive “help” directly from God. We talk about this often. And we certainly never view the people who come to our talks in such a condescending manner as to assume that they can’t become self responsible people who can grow towards God. We have confidence that each person can do so.

So the only “help” we offer is to teach what is involved in forming a personal relationship with God (with no need for an intermediary) and we attempt to share what we have learned and the benefits we have gained from developing such a relationship so that people might see the personal benefits of connecting to God.

Often I really question if people come to our talks to receive help in forming this relationship with God. Certainly, for many, I think they come because they like hearing all of the positive, wonderful provisions that God has made for us and the Love that He has for us. I notice that people want to feel “good” and become happier but they don’t like being challenged on what they are doing right now that is unloving or hurtful towards others or even themselves. That is, they don’t seem to want to know about what are the causes of their current unhappiness or to take action to remedy those causes within themselves.

So I can’t really call that “coming to groups to be assisted”. In those cases it looks a lot more like they come to  inspired briefly, to avoid personal sadness and in many cases to be told what to do (which we never do) or to seek to blame others rather than to change personally themselves (something that we never endorse or encourage).

As we teach, one of the essential first steps required in order to establish a relationship with God is to have the desire to see our current condition. In other words, it is impossible to establish and maintain a relationship with God without the desire to accept how we are right now and the desire to bring that condition more in harmony with God’s Love and Truth. When people, such as those we asked to leave our latest Assistance Group, lack the desire to see how their current condition is harmful and justify holding onto that state to the detriment to others around them, then they are not sincere in their desire to be assisted and they are negatively impacting upon those around them who may be more sincere in their desire.

So when people look “gutted” at our removal or firmness with them, in those moments I don’t know how many are truly examining the poor treatment they have been dishing out towards others or towards us for many years; they are often just feeling upset that we are no longer meeting their addiction to making them “feel good” about themselves and their current condition while they continue to treat other people badly without any self reflection about the problem.

I certainly can’t see that our clear and kind interactions with the people we asked to leave have the power to “destroy” them. Every person who we removed from our groups actually forced us to make a decision which would have been unnecessary had they chosen differently.  They had already received a lot of clear and kind feedback on the negative and unloving way they were treating others and they chose not to acknowledge the problem.

Telling the truth is not a destructive act.

This is particularly so when it is done with the kindness with which we did it in the group. And this was after years of patience and explanation of the causes of the problems for each individual involved (many of which were actually recorded and can be viewed in our videos).

Because Jesus and I don’t project hurt or fear onto audiences in response to their harsh treatment towards us, very few people seem to consider whether or not what they are doing or demanding during our presentations is in or out of harmony with love – even if we speak very directly and in no uncertain terms to them about how it is unloving. This is why we decided it was important to take action. We have done a lot of talking to each individual we removed but it had made no impact. We find that acting has far more impact on people than talking and also it alleviates the poor treatment of the rest of the audience.

One larger lesson in all this, which we all much consider for ourselves, is – if a person doesn’t complain, or get angry in response to our unloving behaviour, it doesn’t lessen the compensatory pain we create for ourselves by treating them badly.

Many people choose to believe that if people or the environment around them don’t protest or try to punish them for their behaviour then it must mean that they don’t have a problem in the way that I are or what they are doing to others. But in truth, when a person doesn’t respond in rage or retribution when they are being harmed it only says good things about their condition in love. The person doing the harm may choose to see the lack of protest as confirmation of their righteousness or goodness but in truth they are creating a lot of pain for themselves and perpetuating a lot of unhappiness in the universe.

True humility involves the desire to examine oneself, to reflect and to evaluate our own condition. This means having the desire to become sensitive to the compensatory pain that God’s Laws generate for us automatically while we hold onto error and injured perceptions of love within ourselves. This is the gift of ‘a conscience that bothers us’ which God has so lovingly created. He has done this so that we can independently evaluate our own actions and bring our soul into more harmony with Love.

I notice that very few people have made this step towards humility and therefore don’t examine their own selves or behaviour very much unless people in their environment mount violent opposition or an extremely painful event occurs in their lives.

I think true self responsibility is rarely seen on earth but it a very worthy thing to aspire to. And certainly it is essential if one is to become truly happy or to establish a strong and lasting relationship with God.

On a note for you personally, your response to Jesus and my decision to remove people from our groups demonstrates a lot about how you view Jesus and I, how you view truth, and what you consider to be acceptable treatment of people who give gifts and teach for free.

You clearly view being truthful with others as hurtful – or as you put it “destructive”.

You were willing to judge and criticise Jesus and I without determination of any facts, even after years of knowing us. In those years we have had a number of personal interactions with you, including you visiting our home more than once, and we have never treated you or anyone in our company at those times harshly or with judgement. I feel that our actions should have proven our loving behaviour to you many times over the past 5 years. Your quickness to “question our judgement” demonstrates your own lack of trust of us and your action to “jump down our throat” (as you called it) demonstrates a lack in your desire to love.

You were quick to defend L___ who has been very demanding and unloving towards Jesus, myself and many others who attend our groups And I clearly stated my reasons for removing L___ during the video. So, in your defense of a person who has been abusive you were willing to be attacking of a person who has not been abusive.

Despite Jesus’ clear explanation at the start of the group as to why we were taking the actions we took, you still viewed our removing people as unloving, unkind and uncaring. This indicates that you feel that we should have continued to receive unloving treatment and to allow that treatment towards others while at a free event in which upholding the atmosphere of love and truth is our responsibility. This is saying that more loving and more responsible people should make allowances, “put up with” and never challenge those who are unloving, attacking or arrogant.

This very attitude, that exists all over the earth, is the reason so much injustice and abuse is allowed to continue unchecked. Your willingness to attack us for putting a stop to unloving behaviour in our seminars in a kind and loving way, indicates your alliance with this kind of attitude that perpetuates suffering on the planet.

Lastly, it struck me that out of over 60 hours of free material which we have just posted online all about God and God’s Loving Laws, material which I feel has the potential to be life changing for anyone who engages with it, your only response to us was to be critical and attacking of 4 minutes in which I challenged a woman on her unloving treatment of ourselves.

With my best wishes,

Mary

Photo by Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins

Developing My Loving Self Assistance Group Now on YouTube

‘Developing My Loving Self’ 2.1 & 2.2, both sessions of our second group in the ‘Education in Love’ Assistance Group series, are now available for viewing on YouTube.

If you are watching these for the first time, or if you are reviewing them after your own attendance at one of the groups, my tip for gaining a well-rounded take on the concepts involved is to view the individual presentations from group 1 & 2 together.

That is, after watching the first talk in group 2.1, proceed to watching the first talk (of the same name) in 2.2.  Then move onto the second talk in 2.1. When you watch the second talk in 2.1, you can follow that with the second talk in 2.2, and so on for the entire programme.

Each group’s questions and interactions with Jesus really bring out different elements in the theme of each presentation. This allows the viewer to more fully grasp the foundation material before hearing about its application in other areas.

Here are links to the group playlists:

Education In Love Group 2.1 – Developing My Loving Self Playlist

 

And if you are needing inspiration to launch into watching this material, here is an individual presentation from group 2.1 that is powerful on its own.

April, May & June: Love from Mary & Jesus

Our Thanks

Jesus and I would like to thank all of you who take the time to donate to us. We know that what you give offers us the opportunity to live in a unique way that we truly believe in. We have an incredible life that we don’t take that for granted. Both Jesus and I are very grateful.

Your donations offer us the freedom to create material that we believe has the potential, if enough people embrace it, to fundamentally change the way that the world operates, to end suffering and to bring beauty and restoration to people and the planet. With your donations we do a lot to ensure that as many people as possible can hear this message now and for a long time in the future, regardless of what may happen to us.

Your donations give us the chance to help people (both here on earth and in the spirit world) free of charge. We see each of you as a part of offering that gift to others, since without your assistance we couldn’t do what we do to the amount and degree that we currently are able.

We extend special thanks this update to those of you who have donated to us personally these past three months. A number of people also made additional donations to cover our unexpected expenses from the first Assistance Group and we really appreciate that.

welcome

What We’ve Been Up To

Since our last update we’ve held both sessions of our “Developing My Loving Self” Assistance Group. This group is the second in our eight part series “An Education in Love”.

I’ll share more about that specific group and about some changes for the Assistance Group series scheduling below. Jesus’ time in this first half of the year has been almost entirely dominated by preparation, presentation and editing for the first two groups in our series. As I write he is working still working on essential tasks for the editing of the “Developing My Loving Self” videos, outlines and transcripts.

After he has finished the edits for group two, he will commence preparation of material for our third group in the series “Understanding God’s Loving Laws”.

This year Jesus has also been mentoring a small group of people interested in starting Learning Centres, schools, and other projects demonstrating God’s Way of Love, along with a number of others who are beginning to present Divine Truth material in various independent formats themselves. These meetings are excellent and I think that everyone involved finds the assistance he provides very beneficial.

Before and during last group some of our video cameras failed, and due to the number of problems we now had with cameras this meant that on returning home Jesus had to spent a fair amount of time researching what replacement alternatives we have that meet our needs for the next 5 years and fall within our price range. Since it has been some years since we purchased our current cameras certain camera models and their specifications have changed meaning that we are not able to replace single cameras to solve the problem.

We like our entire set up of 6 cameras to be interchangeable so that if something goes wrong with one during a presentation we can quickly change it for another less used camera. Having standard equipment also means that people trained in operating the cameras can more easily switch positions within the room, and it simplifies colour and white balance matching in the final video product. So, all this means that we have had to purchase 6 new cameras and we will donate our old ones to various people to document their own projects related to God’s Way. Jesus has spent a lot of time in the past few weeks researching, trouble shooting and purchasing our new alternatives. We also had to update some recording equipment with the cameras. Altogether we spent $16,000 on cameras and ancillary hardware .

All of this activity in the first half of the year and the ongoing maintenance and replacement of technical products that the Assistance Groups have necessitated has meant that Jesus has had almost no quality time to focus on his personal progression for at least 6 months. We are really hoping to remedy that in the latter half of this year and during next year as well.

In contrast I have spent most of this year focusing on my progress which has been an immense gift. A number of people have asked me about what I am going through at this time but I don’t feel that it is time to share about it yet. That time will come but for now I want to focus on making changes (not talking about them).

I did help out with presentation of our second “Developing My Loving Self” group. This was mainly because Jesus felt he could do with a hand since some emotions had come up for him during his short break between groups that he hadn’t had time to deal with. As a result he needed to look after himself even more in terms of getting a little more rest and quiet time, so I presented the ‘Summary’ and ‘Homework’ sessions throughout the nine days.

While both Jesus and I don’t feel that it is right for me to teach material I haven’t properly dealt with myself yet (this is the reason I haven’t been presenting at the groups so far) having the opportunity to present these summary and homework sessions was an incredible opportunity. I honestly felt like doing those presentations allowed God to take out a bright yellow highlighter pen and underline to me so much truth about myself, about my attractions and about God’s Way.

I am still working through all of the amazing things that were exposed to me in a heightened way during the group. Of course God has always been attempting to ‘highlight’ these things to me, it was only that I wanted to notice these things on a more emotional level this time that I found the experience to be so beneficial.

Thank you to those of you who have sent me kind emails and questions over the past few months. Because of my focus on my own emotional work I have only been checking my emails periodically and I haven’t had the time to respond to personal emails at all. I do hope that over the coming months I may find a little more time for this and to share a few responses to your emails as blog posts as well. This all depends on how I am progressing myself. I don’t want sacrifice important time for personal work for other things at the moment.

maryelo

Assistance Groups

Developing My Loving Self

“Developing My Loving Self” was attended by 119 people collectively in two groups.

Jesus enjoyed presenting the new material for both of these groups. I loved the opportunity to be there and to summarize and reflect with the audience via the homework and revision.

Jesus and the recording/editing team put a lot of effort into improving the quality of the production at each group that we hold. I think that those viewing this group and each subsequent group will notice how the aesthetic elements improve. Jesus also does a lot to ensure the material he covers in every group is succinct, relevant and useful to others.

During “Developing My Loving Self” we implemented some changes regarding participant questions that are aiming to improve production quality, make it easier and less time-consuming for our technical team, ensure the time during the groups is used to cover relevant material, and to assist participants to become more responsible for their emotions and learning. We will uphold these changes in our subsequent groups. They included; asking participants to stand while asking questions, asking participants to prepare questions based on their reading of outlines prior to the Q&A sessions, challenging participants on addictive motivations within their questions and asking participants to ask simple questions rather than relaying long personal stories and opinions in the guise of questions.

Some participants really did a wonderful job at observing our new changes and this not only benefited them but will benefit many people who watch the material in the future. Thank you to those participants who made good use of the outlines to reflect on questions and those whose questions were thoughtful and sincere.

There were also some great personal and group feedback sessions during “Developing My Loving Self” that I know will benefit many people for a long time to come. So thank you to those who were brave and genuine in their questions and participation in personal feedback.

kel&lena

Our Helpers & Plans for Training New Team Members

We also want to thank our dedicated helpers who performed some essential jobs throughout the groups.

Lena & Igor – who are present for the preparation and packing of equipment, the venue set-up, filming and tagging during pre.sentations, coping data throughout the group and and working with Jesus in post group video and sound editing and chapter creation.

Cornelius – for being our lead audience camera operator and for training two new camera operators this past group.

Eloisa – for being in charge of name tags and guest lists in my absence, Eloisa also drew the ‘My Unloving Self” diagram up on our whiteboard and she trained to be a back-up camera operator.

Bruce & Kelly – for helping out with transporting extra equipment and gear. This group Kelly also trained to be a back-up camera operator.

We have plans to expand the knowledge base in our team of helpers and so during our next group and in the coming year we will be training a number of people in camera operation, video editing and other technical tasks essential to the creation of Divine Truth material.

If you have an interest in assisting us as a volunteer in this way there are a number of prerequisites you would need to meet:

  • You live nearby to us or desire to spend an extended period with us in training.
  • After training are able to be present at seminars, groups or in our studio when technical tasks are essential.
  • You are happy and willing to spend an extended period in independent learning about the specific programs and equipment we use to create Divine Truth material.
  • You desire to serve and are willing to receive personal feedback about any way that you are not serving, are in addiction, or are unloving towards yourself or other team members

IMG_2379

Important Changes to Assistance Group Scheduling

By now, if you have attended both of the first two groups in this series, you will have begun to notice that each group we present will be jam packed with very valuable learning material. Hopefully you can see the opportunities this presents for you to engage and experiment with these truths and lessons. But to do this will take a determined desire and time on your part.

Because we want to give everyone the opportunity to do some personal work on the content of the first three groups before presenting more material we have made some changes to how we will proceed with presenting the full series of groups.

We have now spread the entire programme out over 6 years. After each year that we hold groups we will have a year without public groups and instead spend that time recording question & answer sessions relating to the content covered in the previous year in our home studio. So for example in 2017 we will no longer be holding the groups previously scheduled but will create a number of question & answer clips that cover questions arising from groups one, two and three held in 2016.

This will mean that the entire “Education in Love” group series will span 6 years but hopefully will allow sincere people maximum potential for learning and practically engaging the material. You will find that without engaging and experimenting with the material in the previous groups your understanding and engagement with further groups will become more and more limited, and your understanding of what Jesus hopes to present in the future will also be severely limited.

An overview of the new programme is as follows:

2016 – Presentation of Groups 1, 2 & 3 in the “Education in Love Series”.

2017 – Jesus and I record material in home studio including Q&A sessions on all of the material  presented in Groups 1, 2 & 3 along with other projects that we feel are important to undertake.

2018 – Presentation of Groups 4 & 5 in the “Education in Love Series”.

2019 – Jesus and I record material in home studio including Q&A sessions on all of the material presented in Groups 4 & 5 along with other projects that we feel are important to undertake.

2020 – Presentation of Groups 6, 7 & 8 in the “Education in Love Series”.

2021 – Jesus and I record material in home studio including Q&A sessions on all of the material presented in Groups 6, 7 & 8 along with other projects that we feel are important to undertake.

Of course, this is the plan at the moment and, given the time frame involved, these arrangements may change.

You will now find that the Eventbrite pages for each of the groups reflect the new exact dates for each group. Jesus will be updating the website with the changes over the coming month.

If you have previously booked into any of the future groups your booking remains. If you find that the new dates don’t suit you then you can easily cancel your booking by signing into Eventbrite using the same email address you used to make your booking. Once you do this you will find a list of current tickets you have booked. Simply click on any of the bookings you don’t wish to keep and you will be given the option of cancelling them.

IMG_2662

Sending Us Your Questions

As you watch the groups in the “Education In Love” series, and begin to experiment with the material presented, you may find that you have questions. If you do you can send them to us we will try to answer as many as possible in the specific Q&A sessions we will record.

Here are the guidelines for sending us your questions:

  • Please send your questions to faq@divinetruth.com
  • Tell us the name of the group and the name of the individual presentation that your questions pertains to. e.g. Developing My Loving Self – The Creation Of My Pain.
  • Include your name. e.g. First name & Last name.
  • Then write your question as succinctly as possible.

It is really important that you label your questions and let us know that they relate to the Assistance Group material. Otherwise your question will be filed into the very large general lists of FAQ questions we have on file.

filming

Our Next Few Months

Video Editing & Production for Assistance Groups

Jesus, Lena and Igor will continue to work on editing and production of group two for YouTube and our website for the next month. They hope to have the completed videos, sound files, modified outlines, and the website updates uploaded by the end of July 2016.

Preparations for the Next Assistance Groups

Jesus and I have already started the development of material for “Understanding God’s Loving Laws”. Jesus generally creates the framework and understands the most important content to cover for each group. He works on compiling this and then we get together and work through how it is best presented. I ask and ponder and reflect back what I’m really getting from the material and this usually helps Jesus to make the programme more logical and free flowing.

I absolutely love creating with Jesus. It is fun time for me. I love the challenges all the truth presents in me, I love thinking about how to best share the awesomeness of God’s Creation and I really love watching my brilliant man at work.

Mentoring and Various Side Projects

Jesus will continue meeting with the small mentoring group once a month.

We may welcome some overseas visitors later in the year and so Jesus and others are working on preparing for their arrival.

Continued Focus on our own Progression

Aside from the Assistance Group work, and the various side projects we have on the go, both Jesus and I both want to place our biggest emphasis on our own progression. How much we can share and teach is directly proportional to how much we grow. So our growth in relationship with God really is our ‘core business’.

Unfortunately, for Jesus, other projects have needed his attention lately but getting back to his own personal work is really a priority for him in the latter half of this year, and after he has completed the group outlines for the next groups, he does not expect to produce more material until he presents the “Understanding God’s Loving Laws” material.

For myself, for a long time I lived in the false belief that I could share and be a part of this life while still ignoring some really important issues in my soul. I no longer see that as an option and so I’m valuing the time I have to confront those issues and to make better choices.

Previously on.. An Education in Love

Recapping the ‘Developing My Will to Love’ Group

“I like Homeland, but I don’t think it’s as good as that other show, Previously on Homeland. That thing is action-packed.”—Amy Poehler at the 2013 Golden Globe Awards

Watching Group One

I had so much fun binge watching the recordings of our first Assistance Group – Developing My Will to Love.

Just like when I’ve seriously watched TV programmes in the past (BSG – I mean you) I went through the full gamut of emotions while watching these groups – anticipation, sorrow, laughter, cringes and so on.

I called Jesus on numerous occasions to tell how amazing he was. I wrote down certain things he said verbatim because I want to print them on t-shirts (or maybe tattoo them on my forearm for life-long handy reference).

At various times I talked out loud to the TV screen.

And even though there were no cliff hangers as such, I found there was a definite ‘tension’ between each presentation and its corresponding Q& A session. I had to see what would happen next. (smile)

Not actually being at the groups was so strange for me and it was completely novel to watch each recording just like so many of you overseas must do all the time. I really savoured the experience to sit and see things from a different perspective.

Even though I had been involved in preparing all of the material for these groups, while watching I really focused on receiving the gifts of Jesus’ presentation and everyone’s participation.

Because I approached things this way, I feel I personally gained so much for my own progression while watching.

It’s been a few weeks since I finished all of the videos and the other day I found myself doing a bit of a personal ‘recap’ of the most significant things that have stuck with me. Without referring to any previous notes or watching any video I sat down with my journal and wrote down the lessons from “Developing My Will to Love” that really impacted upon me.

Today I thought I’d write up a list of the questions I found myself naturally answering in case it assists any of you to do your own personal ‘recap’. I believe that it is so worthwhile to reflect on and experiment with some of the truths from our first group before we launch into the next.

If you would like to do some personal reflection on “Developing My Will to Love” here are some questions that may assist you:

What are some of the key points from the group that have stuck with me?

What were the injuries within me that I discovered that are impacting on my personal relationship with God, myself and others?

What lessons, truths and/or moments had the most impact on me emotionally?
(These emotionally charged moments are a clue to truths, lessons or emotions that have can have immediate positive impact on my progression if I continue to focus on them).

What did I learn?

What didn’t I understand? What frustrated me? When did I feel most resistive?
(These are also important clues to areas that are holding me back from more rapid progress).

What experiments am I engaging in relation to the material presented?

Has anything changed (have I taken any different action, do I respond differently to anything in my life) since I watched/ attended the group? If not, why not?

Some additional questions that can be useful to help in working through resistance to specific issues are:

What is my investment in not accepting this statement/opinion as truthful?

What fear would it challenge if I did?

What grief would it expose if I did?

In what way would accepting this truth cause me to act differently?
What emotion don’t I want to feel in relation to that action?
E.g. Fear of disapproval, fear of exposure

How would living as if this is the truth make me feel separate from key people in my life?
Why? What is my investment in feeling the same or accepted?

Is my judgement of this information as untruthful based on any evidence?
If so, from where did I get that ‘evidence’? Is it from personal experience?
Is it based on other people’s opinions?
If it’s from personal ‘experience’, how connected & present was I at the time?
Is my recall of what happened based on actual events?
Or is it blurred by suppressed fear and grief or anger?

Is there a way I can safely experiment to test for myself if it is true or not?

If you attended the group, or watched it on YouTube, I highly recommend doing your own personal ‘recap’, answering some of the questions I placed above. Not only is this exercise helpful in getting the most out of the last group, but if you plan to attend the next group (or watch it), it will help you to engage constructively the new material as well.

I haven’t shared my recap notes because obviously everyone’s reflections are personal and specific to their own progression and soul work. However, I couldn’t resist compiling just some of my favourite truths or perspectives I gained from viewing and I’ve pasted them at the bottom of this post. And my previous ‘Jesus Quote’ post on the blog comes directly from one of the presentations as well.

I’m pretty excited about our next group. Jesus has some excellent material to share with those who are attending. I hope you all love it as much as I loved helping him prepare it.

If you haven’t booked a place in Group 2 but would still like to attend there are some places available in Group 2.1 starting May 20th.

If, like me, you are planning to watch the “Developing My Loving Self” groups on video once they are available here is a funny video on the dangers of binge watching:

 

An Education in Love – Developing My Will to Love – Mary’s Highlights

These are just some personal notes and aren’t intended as a proper ‘recap’ of the content of the group.

Contrary to Amy Pohler’s preference for the recap of Homeland over the actual programme, I highly recommend watching both groups in full (smile). My, or anyone else’s recap, can’t hope to do it justice.

The World’s Definition of Love

The world’s definition of love is basically a bunch of fear based beliefs that foster addiction and co-dependence.

God’s definition of Love will be free of any fear or fear based reasoning.

God’s definition is mostly in opposition to the world’s definition.

Unless I give up my addiction to gaining approval from the world, I will not act or experience enough to gain God’s definition of Love.

Any fears of confrontation, rejection and ostracism I retain will negatively impact upon my progress in gaining an education in love. Any fears I hold onto will ultimately prevent my connection with God.

Most of the worldly education I have received has reinforced false beliefs within me, so part of using my will to love will be challenging those fears and releasing my worldly (family) education.

In order to gain God’s definition of love, I must be willing to disagree with most of the world, most of the time.

The Four Tools for Progression

Before, during and since the groups I have engaged some personal experiments with the four tools for progression that Jesus talked about. (Faith, Truth, Action and Emotion).

I’ve found that experimenting with any single one gives me insight into my resistance towards all the others. Perhaps at a future group I’ll be able to talk about that some more. But I highly recommend purposeful experiments with any one (or all) of the four tools for progression.

I’ve enjoyed finding out how closely related all four of these tools are and how we do end up working on all four in tandem.

Faith

Development of my faith is completely under my control.

If I don’t have any faith it’s because I am actively resisting developing it.

Part of developing my will to love is taking responsibility for my lack of faith. I actively maintain a lack of faith by:

  • resisting taking loving actions
  • resisting releasing painful past experiences

Faith in badness, sin and error damages me and others.

I have an investment in maintaining a lack of faith because it provides me with justification to not act, to not feel, and to not experiment with God’s Way.

In other words – even though I want to tell myself that my lack of faith is painful – I actually prefer to have a lack of faith because I can use it as an excuse to avoid many of my fears.

My faith in God, God’s Goodness and Love is something I can develop. Developing faith is NOT a passive process. It involves being humble to my pain and fear and taking positive action. This is a loving use of my will.

Action

Unless I act, I cannot grow faith.

Unless I act differently I cannot challenge false beliefs (fears).

Feeling all the emotion in my soul is meaningless if I am unwilling to act in harmony with love.

Unless I act in accordance with the truth I have already learned and discovered I will degrade in my condition.

Taking action is powerful. Action is vital to all progress.

The areas in my life where I have the most fear are significant. Acting and changing in these areas will bring about rapid and substantial improvements in my day-to-day happiness.

I loved the discussion in one Q&A about the long-term effect (distress) that comes from not resolving issues and remaining inactive in regards to awareness of problems. Jesus talked about how when we become aware of a personal issue and resolve it rapidly we can attain a state of happiness until the next problem or personal issue becomes apparent.

On the other hand, if we gain awareness of problem after problem and take no action to resolve it, life becomes more and more miserable and we enter higher and higher states of distress. There was also a graph involved in this explanation (I love graphs and diagrams!). I recommend checking that discussion out if you haven’t already.

Humility & Emotion

I found it very moving when in one Q&A discussion Jesus spoke about his choice to actively ‘be humble’ even when situations are very challenging and he is being attacked.

This brief discussion caused me to feel that even though developing humility often feels like something that becomes more and more natural and easy over time, in the end it is a choice. Being humble is an act of will.

It is not something that magically occurs suddenly nor is it a quality that is impossibly unattainable. We can and will choose humility time and again if we want a relationship with God.

Part of one of our outlines for the next group speaks about what that choice actually means:

What I Will Do When I am Humble

  • desire to feel suppressed pain caused by myself or others
  • desire to feel current pain caused by my choices or others
  • desire to feel future possible pain caused by my choice or others
  • release emotions that negatively control beliefs, thoughts, and actions
  • awaken to sin, and repent for past sin
  • ask for God’s Love & Forgiveness
  • listen to, absorb, & accept loving thoughts, beliefs & ideas
  • develop, respond to, and act upon, loving longings & desires
  • develop, respond to, and act upon,loving aspirations & intentions
  • develop, respond to, and act upon, loving emotions & feelings
  • plan, decide, and engage loving actions
  • allow externally generated sources to encourage me to do all the above

As a side note, I really noticed how much resistance (fear) both audiences had in any presentation about emotion. There was a lot of personal questioning, resistance to taking on general principles about emotion, an all round wish to deny the reality of the need to feel emotions independently for oneself and attempts to steer Jesus away from addressing crucial points. This indicates how many are still struggling with fear of emotion and have the desire to remain dependent on others when it comes to emotions (rather than take personal responsibility for feeling them).

Aspiration vs Inspiration

It is so important to get real about the difference between when I’m relying on inspiration versus when I experiencing, growing and developing my personal aspiration to change and grow.

How much do I aspire to change? vs. How much do I love feeling reassured, supported and encouraged through receiving inspiration by listening to truth?

There are positive ways I can engage with inspiration and negative ones.

If I use inspiration addictively then my condition degrades. Examples of how I use inspiration addictively:

  • to avoid faith (I ‘rest’ on another person’s faith and rely on them to provide truth, rather than engaging my own experiments)
  • to avoid taking personal action (relying on the person ahead of me to take the action instead, trying to ‘tag on’ to their creations rather than experiencing my feeling of risk and fear by taking initiative with creation)
  • to avoid emotion (I can use inspiration to reassure me that everything will be ‘alright’ in the end – avoidance of fear, I can use it to avoid feeling ‘all alone’ in my life.
  • to avoid confrontation of personal truth (focus on external and universal truth and avoid seeing my life as it really is right now and the effects of how I am currently using my will)

This addictive process is the OPPOSITE of developing my will to love!

To positively engage with inspiration I will use it to assist me in:

  • confronting my resistance
  • engaging my own experiments
  • taking personal responsibility for my life as it is right now (which is the result of my own actions)

In other words, if I positively engage with inspiration it will assist me in growing my personal aspiration.

My personal aspiration is not dependent on external circumstances, relationships etc. My personal aspiration comes from within and is an aspect of me embracing the use of my will actively and it will continue to motivate me towards change (without me having to rely on others for things).

Engaging with sources of inspiration is only beneficial if it spurs me towards challenging addiction, facade and false beliefs. When I do challenge these things I begin to develop my will to love.

I absolutely loved the discussion in the group about aspiration and inspiration.

Jesus & Mary : February & March

It’s been a big couple of months for this couple.

Our First Assistance Group

As many of you likely know we held both sessions of the first group in our Education in Love assistance group series.

In total 118 people attended “Using My Will to Love” and we received great feedback from many of those people about the format and content of the group.

Jesus single-handedly presented these two groups. It was a mammoth effort on his part.

He always gives a lot in terms of wisdom, love and energy in every presentation. And while he displays far more stamina than I (and many others) have, in the end presenting for 64 hours in the space of 3 weeks was a lot of giving out. So I want to acknowledge him for the incredible gift of his time and love.

The Format & Venue

Each of the assistance groups in this series has two rest days built-in to the programme. The other days are made up of 4 or 5 presentations, 30-60 minutes in length, each focussing on specific topics relating to the overall theme. Attendees said that this format is easy to manage and because the information in each session is succinct many people feel that they have gained more clarity on key issues. The groups provided quite practical suggestions and information for people to use in day-to-day life and so we are hopeful that many people will take the opportunity to grow God’s Way as a result of attending or viewing what was created.

Our New Venue

Our New Venue

nametags

The new venue has been excellent. The seminar room is very comfortable and easily accommodated all attendees plus our considerable amount of recording equipment. Fab and Kate provided some musical entertainment on rest and reflection days in the programme and many attendees found that having the beach only 5 minutes away has also been a lovely addition.

Kate Sings

Kate Sings

Our Thanks

We also had very dedicated helpers who performed some essential jobs throughout the groups.

We send our thank you to the following people:

Thanks to Lena & Igor for the work that they do in preparation, set-up, filming, pack-up and editing. If you want to catch up on more from Lena and Igor they have a new blog: https://legorblog.wordpress.com. I’ve encouraged them to share on the blog all of their enthusiasm and inspiration about Divine Truth that I hear from them in private discussions. Hopefully they will sometime soon.

Thanks to Cornelius for being a dedicated audience videographer with an eye for detail and finding the best shots.

Thanks to Eloisa Lytton-Hitchins & Joy Harris for being in charge of name tags and guest lists in my absence.

Thanks to Bruce & Kelly Carrigan for helping out with transporting of equipment and gear.

Also special thanks go to those people who donated towards the expenses of the groups even though they personally could not attend.

The Lovely Lena with the switching and sound set up

The Lovely Lena with the switching and sound set up

Being A Participant

I’d also like to thank those people who made their presence at the group as one of ‘participant’ and not just ‘attendee’. Those of you who come and listen with an open heart and engage without resistance not only make these groups more enjoyable to present, but also add to the valuable content in the videos of the event which are a resource for many future people to come.

Unfortunately there were still a lot of people present at these two groups who sat in the audience as ‘attendees’ only. Sitting back in fear and silence means you aren’t engaging your own learning. Equally when you engage in addiction and demand you take energy and focus away from truth and miss the opportunity to learn. This was a large problem in the first two groups, and Jesus will be taking steps to address it, since he found the resistance and addictions in both groups quite oppressive, and he could not present all that he wanted as a result.

Those who open their hearts to the material, own their emotional responses and resistance and engage learning are the ‘participants’ and there is so much pleasure in sharing truth with such people. For those of you who were ‘attendees’ only last time, I encourage you to be brave, challenge your fear or your addiction and become a participant. It will help you progress so much.

 

There is such a difference between wanting to learn about principles of God’s Truth that can be applied to all aspects of growth and demanding ‘answers’ to individual problems (which is often just the desire for reassurance in response to emotional panic that arises when truth is presented). The former type of engagement enables you to learn truths and tools that can be applied to everything you encounter, it creates independence and maturity in our development and growth. The latter is actually a childlike response, a desire to be comforted away from pain, and to be ‘parented’ by someone other than God.

Jesus and I want to help you ‘grow up’ and become independent in your progression which is why we have made a firm choice to help people with principles and not continually focussing on personal individual issues. In addition, Jesus will be much more firm in the future about not answering questions which have been asked to support your personal addictions unless he feels something can be taught from the interaction.

Of course, at times it is helpful to have an example to illustrate principles in action but giving simple answers to specific issues (without the context of the underlying principles) isn’t the best way to assist anyone to grow their relationship with God.

I’m hopeful that this first group will be of long-term benefit for those who attended and I know that Jesus’ presentations will be a valuable resource for online viewers for many years to come. As always he provides the opportunity for growth but the truths can only have an effect on your lives if you choose to experiment with them.

 

Post Assistance Group Work

Video Editing & Production

Since returning home Jesus has worked 7 days a week, and Lena and Igor have been working 5 days a week, to finish the edit for the first group so that it was available for viewing on YouTube as soon as possible.

I’m pleased to tell you that they have finished the edit of the first group and on 5th April 2016 it was loaded onto YouTube and the Divine Truth synchronization server. They expect to complete the second group by 24th April 2016.

I’m so proud of these three and the effort that they put in. It’s difficult to describe in a blog post all the time, care and attention to detail that they put in at every step of production to make sure that the end product is valuable, usable and accessible to as many people as possible for many years to come.

Unexpected Expenses

During the group Jesus puts a lot of focus not only recording the material but ensures that we also have reliable back ups if anything goes wrong. We generate a lot of data at each group. Each day what is created is backed up three times via automated scripts that Jesus creates, and two of these backups are stored and kept for the long-term.

Immediately before our first group, it became plain that our Apple Mac hardware will not consistently mount our current USB3 backup storage devices. This meant that Jesus had to quickly create a temporary method for backup while at the group, and for future groups had to buy two thunderbolt backup stores (without drives) which cost $1600.

In addition our first group revealed some issues with the discs we were using for back up. 8TB archive and enterprise drives have only just been released by Seagate. It was our intention to use the same archive drives for editing as we use for backup since they are much cheaper than enterprise drives. The 8TB archive drives cost $400 each when we purchased them and we use 6 per group to store all the data at a cost of around $2400. But when we began editing our processes exposed problems with using these drives for editing in a shared environment. As a result of these two problems, Jesus had to purchase an additional 10 x 8TB enterprise drives which cost $7500 which will be installed in RAID SAN configuration for the purpose of shared editing.

In our original expenses calculations we did not account for the archive drives for each group, for the additional backup storage devices we would need to backup the material during the group, or for the enterprise drives needed to edit the material for all groups. In addition, Jesus, Lena and Igor also needed a well deserved rest before packing up and returning home to begin the additional exhausting process of editing 5-7 days per week and this decision added expenses in accommodation.

These extra expenses resulted in Jesus spending all of the donated funds we received personally during the groups on these extra expenses, and so we have not covered our general operating costs or living expenses for that period. These additional expenses have now been included in the calculations for each group, a summary of which can be downloaded from our website. The basic result of these changes is that the expenses of each 8 day group are now around $330 per participant rather than the $200 originally calculated (assuming 70 people attend), which is still very reasonable.

Please remember that this is just an indicative cost only. All of our events are free and we shall continue to hold them as long as we can cover our expenses. We have already paid for these expenses since we have taken funds from a personal gift we received from a generous family. We are just informing you of the changes of expenses for the groups and the reasons for those changes.

 

Preparations for the Next Assistance Groups

Jesus has been so incredibly busy and it will be great for him to have time and space to focus on his own progress before the next group. However before then there is still a lot to do in terms of preparation.

After finalising edits for the second session of group one, and loading everything on YouTube, which will be completed over the next two weeks, Jesus will start preparation of outlines for the “Developing My Loving Self” groups.

Very little material has already been prepared for these groups, and each outline takes him around 2-4 hours to complete. There are 32 outlines in total to prepare for each group. So this will take him anywhere from 65 to 130 hours to prepare. He doesn’t actually need these outlines for himself. He can present each subject thoroughly without an outline. But he creates these documents to make it easier for each of you to prepare for the group, and to have a summary of the information he intends to present while at the group.

Jesus is constantly assessing and reassessing where participants are ‘at’ and how to simply present the most important principles that will be of most benefit to people at this stage in their growth. My man is incredibly thoughtful and caring like that.

I’ll be helping out where I can (more about my personal progress below). I absolutely am passionate about the material for these groups. I want to be involved because I love to talk and hear about the concepts and truths essential to gaining an education in love. But I’ve come to feel that all the words in the world don’t have meaning unless we are willing to bravely and humbly experiment with them for ourselves. That is why we made the gift of will the focus for our first group. The choice to change, experiment and receive truth into the soul (true learning) is entirely an act of will and no one else can do it for us.

So, I’ll be working on my own change and experiments and I encourage you all to do the same. There is still a window before the next group to ‘get your teeth into’ some experiments relating to the material about developing our will to love. I know that what is presented in the second will be all the more meaningful to you if you choose to do that.

If you would like to attend the second group “Developing My Loving Self” there are now 12 spaces available in the first session and two spaces left in the second. Full information about the programme and how to register to attend can be found on the Assistance Group page of our website.

"Developing My Will to Love" Group 2

“Developing My Will to Love” Group 2

 

My Personal Progression

The past two months I’ve focused almost completely on my personal progression. Jesus shared a little about this in the Introduction talk of the “Using My Will to Love” group. Aside from what he shared there isn’t much more I would like to add.

There might be a time in the future when I share more openly about what I am working through but then again I might not (smile).

It is personal and important and I’m treasuring this time that feels very special.

There are experiences in the growth of every soul that are milestones. When a person really ‘gets’ that free will is a gift, or receives a truth from God, or has the courage to feel the full truth of something that happened in their past, these things are special and unique. It is similar to when a child takes their first steps. Most people can walk and anyone can describe walking but when that child takes its first step, there is no describing how wonderful the synergy of desire, experimentation and lived experience of those first steps feel for that child. It doesn’t matter how ‘normal’ walking might be for others, for that child and its parent those moments are momentous.

That is how I feel about my growth at the moment. Sometimes sharing the things I’m feeling and working through feels like cheapening them, or reducing something powerful and beautiful to mere words or descriptions that cannot possibly convey how important and special they feel for me with God.

I’m also feeling more natural with being myself and knowing that part of loving myself is making wise choices about with who and how much I choose to share myself. I wrote about this back in our July update last year and I’ve recently worked through some emotions which makes me feel more relaxed about this stuff.

This is what I said about that back in July 15:

“Jesus once talked to me about some of the states we can live in when it comes to expression of self.

One is that we ‘give ourselves away’. When we give ourselves away, we relinquish our personal desires and aspirations in favour of what other people want, we alter our personality to suit our environment and we are compliant to the whims and wishes of others.

Another state is that we ‘be ourselves’. In this state we are real and open about who we are, what we want and what we feel. We don’t force ourselves, or our beliefs upon others but we don’t hide these things either. Being ourselves means giving up our façade and simply expressing our nature through our actions and in our interactions. To be ourselves at all times, with everyone, is loving.

A third state is ‘sharing ourselves’. When we share ourselves we go beyond just ‘being ourself’. Sharing ourselves means desiring and allowing ourselves to be known, sharing what we deeply feel and desire. We can share ourselves in loving, though different ways, through soulmate relationships and friendships.

We are always going to end up in pain if we choose to share, or try to share, ourselves with people who don’t want to know us and who do not love or desire to love us. In other words attempting to share ourselves with someone who can’t be trusted to love us is not taking good care of ourselves. Equally attempting to share ourselves with someone who clearly doesn’t want to know us is only going to lead to disappointment and this kind of desire is usually led by addiction. However, choosing to share ourselves with people who do love us and care about our welfare is very rewarding and encourages growth.

While being ourselves all the time is loving, to be selective and discerning about who we choose to share ourselves with is also a sign of love and development.”

At this stage I’m not likely to be presenting at our second group since I want to continue doing what I need to do for my progress.

 

Thank you

Thank you very much to those of you who have donated to us personally these past two months. We have a number of expenses that keep the delivery of Divine Truth running that don’t change while we are away. Among other things, your contributions help us to keep our overseas servers running, in the maintenance of equipment and bills relating to the studio.

In addition, staying away from home to run the groups creates another set of expenses and we thank those of you who have donated at each of the groups.

As always, we are incredibly grateful for those of you who choose to support the sharing of Divine Truth. Your gifts make so many things we do possible and we know you aren’t obligated to give anything, so we really appreciate that you do.

We wish you a wonderful April and May, hoping that you enjoy the material from the assistance groups. To those who will be attending the “Developing My Loving Self” assistance group we shall see you in May or June.

With love,

Mary & Jesus

The “We’ve Been So Busy We Hardly Have Time For An Update” Update

Hello everyone!

Thanks to all of you who have made donations to us over the past three months. We appreciate your support and we are using the funds to get busy on our new projects and to live while we maintain the website and YouTube channels.

We haven’t updated you each month because we have been so busy getting new things organised, including recording, developing the new Assistance Group programme and setting up structures for Learning Centres.

So we will update you now about each thing.

Studio

During August the finishing touches were made on the studio. It is so wonderful to have completion on this project.

It took a solid year, a lot of time, careful planning, and attention to detail to build. Jesus oversaw every aspect and decision in the process. I had my input but as I was in a lot of resistance over this period most of the weight of this project rested on his shoulders. He did an amazing job – I am so grateful and proud of him – and the end result is a studio that we really love.

In September we returned to making regular videos to share and we are both happy to be back creating what we really love.

Some of those new videos will go live on our YouTube channels this week and some of the audio recordings are already available via our website.

You may notice over the coming years that, along with sharing general principles and lessons of Divine Truth, we will also be attempting to assist people to have insight into their spiritual condition by providing direct personal feedback to individuals. Helping an individual to see exactly how the principles we teach apply to their personal situation is of huge benefit to them and to others. It is a way to assist people to understanding the practical application of Divine Truth principles and to work through the specific issues that cause stagnation in their relationship with God.

So, we will also now be regularly recording personal feedback sessions for individuals in response to their letters, emails, forum posts, or via in person interviews.

As I mentioned many people find these sessions beneficial and we see these as a valuable new part of our regular output.

We will continue to record regular FAQ sessions, interviews, book group and Padgett message discussions.

I also hope at some stage to film a brief ‘studio tour’ video so that you can see just how wonderful our new digs are.

P1080526

Website

Jesus has been working on new upgrades to our website.

You may have noticed a few new sections including;

Future Events – lists our planned and proposed future events for the coming years. You can find up to date information about the Assistance Group series here.

How To? – describes how to access services and gifts, attend events, arrange interviews, and download information from our website, Divine Truth Server, and YouTube accounts.

Questions – A new way of collating all FAQ questions, along with questions answered in the Divine Truth Clips YouTube Channel, and by letters and email.

Jesus has also created a brand new ‘Introduction’ section that includes summaries of basic truths about God, God’s Laws, and Discovery of Divine Truth, among others. This section will expand over time so that we have a succinct summary of the basic Divine Truth teachings displayed in one place on the website. I believe that this section has huge potential for new comers to Divine Truth and also for those people who have heard a lot of Divine Truth but may want to summarize some of the basic Truths of the Universe when sharing with others.

Along with these new sections you will soon see a new display format for all downloads, which give more complete information pertaining to each event.

He has reorganized the audio files in the mediumship section. There are some great old ones in there, this one and this one for example.

He has also redesigned the site so that those accessing it from their hard disk drive have the same interface as if they were viewing the page on line. This means that the entire website appears exactly the same if using it on or offline and is fully functional if a person is using the site offline from their hard disk drive only, and the links all connect to files stored on the drive.

Anyone who has taken the time to have a good browse of the Divine Truth website will know that there is a huge amount of information in various formats contained there. Most people have not seen or read most of it. This is partly because at times it has been difficult to organize in a way that makes everything easy to find, and partly because there is just so much of it, it would take anyone a good number of years to read or view it all.

As time goes on, we fully intend to keep producing more and more information, so the website is in increasing need of a back end database and search engine. This would make searches on particular topics possible and easier to find specific resources. Jesus is still working on the best way to do this and still retain hard disk drive offsite copies of the website.

As you likely know, there is already so much material that Jesus has created and we are only just getting started. So, we are constantly looking at ways to make old and new material organized and accessible, while also helping new comers to find the basic ‘What is it all about?’ principles readily and easily.

P1080504

Learning Centres

As I mentioned back in our June update there are a number of people who have expressed a renewed interest in setting up a local fully functioning Learning Centre. Over the past few months Jesus and I have continued to meet with these people and discuss plans.

We both would like to avoid the issues of the past where projects were halted and resources wasted or abandoned due to a change in desire, or lack of personal humility to work though the issues that arose, in the people in charge of those centres or projects.

Because of this Jesus and I will likely have more of a direct involvement in the operation of any new centres.

We cannot give more detail at this stage because there are a lot of things in the pipeline that have not yet been finalised. We’ll keep you posted.

P1080580

Assistance Groups

Hopefully by now you have heard about our new “Education in Love” Assistance Group series.

Due to donations received thus far, we can confirm that the initial outlay for the following groups has been covered and will now go ahead:

Developing My Will to Love 19-28 Feb, 2016

Developing My Will to Love 04-13 Mar, 2016

The venue for the groups is called Ivory Palms Resort. You can find detailed information about accommodation options and booking procedure in the Group 1 – Accommodation Bookings document.

Spaces in each of the Assistance Groups in this series are filling up, so if you wish to participate in one of the groups I encourage you to register via the Eventbrite pages. Individual Eventbrite links are all found on the Future Events page of the website.

Remember that we will only confirm that each group is going ahead once we have enough donations to cover the initial outlays involved in running that group at Ivory Palms.

So, make sure you don’t book accommodation at the venue for a group that we have not yet advised will definitely be going ahead. If you have registered for any of the groups via Eventbrite you will receive a personal confirmation email to advise you when it is safe to book accommodation for that group.

At present only the first two groups, Developing My Will To Love 1 & 2, are confirmed.

As I mentioned in our introductory post, Jesus and I are passionate about the purpose of these groups and we are really enjoying preparing the outlines for each of them. It is taking us a fair bit of time but we really want to make these groups comprehensive and effective for people wishing to grow in their relationship with God and others.

I hope we have the opportunity to see you there!

Personal Progression

Jesus and I continue to focus a lot of time on our personal progress towards God and on our soul mate relationship.

The past few months I have had periods of feeling totally renewed and inspired. It is an excellent feeling that I attribute to a growing soul based restoration of my faith in God’s Way. The path ahead seems hopeful and full of awesome possibilities.

And now, even when some new resistance is exposed within me, I still feel far more positive about dealing with my issues. I don’t resort to self punishment and succumb to spirit attack in the way that I used to. This is not to say that I don’t feel extremely challenged or frightened at times about what emotion or emotions I discover within myself!

Jesus has encouraged me to write down some of the emotions I am currently dealing with as there are many women in the world with similar issues.

For such a long time I used writing as a way to connect to what I was feeling. And while I think I will always love to write, and that my writing is a way for me to reflect deeply, there have definitely been times when I shared my written feelings or ‘realisations’ addictively rather than just experiencing them.

Over the past year, working through issues of façade and addiction, I found myself almost at a loss for words to write. I became quite paralysed by the thought of expressing myself without façade, straight from the heart, from my genuine experience and in my real voice.

So, I’m looking forward to the challenge of doing some writing that is more about teaching. I have shared a few things recently on the Divine Truth Forum which has been fun. It’s lovely to see some good discussions starting to go on over there.

Jesus is still working on issues relating to worth and love of self. He has had some break throughs recently which is great.

It is a joy for me as we begin to be more aligned on issues from a soul perspective. Creating the Assistance Group material together is so much fun.

As I’ve been working more diligently on releasing my façade and have begun to feel my hurt, I have naturally started to connect to some of my real nature again. In some ways it has taken me by surprise as I’ve found that certain parts of myself, that for a long time I judged and suppressed, are actually qualities that I like and want to develop more within myself.

I have begun to appreciate just how much, when we are both free of injury, Jesus and I will share the exact same passions and desires, and I feel how our personality really is the same.

I believe that this is how we truly ‘find’ our soulmate and know for certain who they are.

By allowing and embracing our true nature (which takes some sincere work on releasing sin and injury) it becomes impossible not to recognise the one other person in all of God’s Universe who shares our personality and has identical passions.

Our personal soul mate relationship is still very much a work in progress. I am aware that the hurt emotions I have with men and my unreleased fears of attack and ridicule still interfere with me fully opening my heart.

I do now however feel renewed passion and motivation to work through these injuries. I feel very excited about what new adventures and feelings of togetherness must lie ahead for both of us once I let these issues go.

I have such love, admiration, compassion and respect for Jesus. With the singular, unselfish desire to assisting others and to ease their suffering, he accomplishes and teaches so much. But perhaps even more special to me is that aside from that massive effort he puts in, he is someone who, under extreme pressure and attack, has never made an excuse for selfishness or badness. Instead he has engaged his will to become a truly kind and lovely person. That is a rare accomplishment. Most people, no matter what their God created personality is, end up succumbing to extreme negative pressure and choose to deny their ability to engage a will to love no matter what the circumstances.

I am very aware of how poorly people on earth understand Jesus’ true character and motivations at this time. And I do understand why that is. Until I myself developed some humility and began to feel what were the true motivations driving my actions and interactions (which were often quite opposite to what I, in my façade, was telling myself and the world around me they were) I was really clueless as to what motivated other people. As I have become more open emotionally to myself I find I am far more sensitive to what motivates other people. And it is only when I choose to avoid feeling my fears, anger or grief that I find I lack awareness of others once again.

Also, it has only been since I began to feel my own injuries and sincerely desire to release those sins because I could feel that holding on to them was harming others and myself, that I have come to have feelings of love, and therefore begin to understand what love ‘in action’ really looks and feels like.

Because most people are stuck in intellectual dominance and view everything that Jesus (and I) do and say through a purely intellectual analysis, it is very difficult for them to feel what motivates one action or another that we take and it is impossible for them to understand from a soul perspective what loving behaviour actually is.

I view a large part of my spiritual progression as me developing a soul based awareness of, and desire for, love and being loving. It is certainly something that I know still requires a lot of development (smile). In fact, I know that this awareness will continue to develop until at-onement with God and beyond that point.  But starting to gain some soul feelings about love again is just a great feeling.

I really hope that the Assistance Groups that we are developing, along with our recording of more personal feedback sessions, will help others to begin their own process of emotional awakening so that many of you can start to feel love and to know what love does.

That’s all from us for now.

Thank you again for your donations and the enthusiasm many of you have expressed towards our new projects.

Mary & Jesus

P1080583

Assistance Groups FAQ

Reminder: The main source of the most up to date information regarding the Education in Love Assistance Groups can be found on the Future Assistance Group page of our website.

This post answers some of the questions we have been receiving.

I will regularly update and maintain this post to include answers to frequently asked questions about the “Education in Love” group series. If you have a question about the groups and your attendance please check to see if your question has already been answered here before emailing us.

Most recent update: 8th Nov, 15

Registration & Donations

Q: I would like to register for all 8 groups but the Eventbrite links only worked for the first four.

Links for two sessions of all 8 groups are created now. You can register for whichever groups you plan to attend.

Q: I am would like to register for one (or more) of the assistance groups, however it will be a few weeks until I will be able to make a donation. Is it OK to register on EventBrite now? Or is it best to wait a few weeks and register when I can donate?

There is no problem at all to register now on Eventbrite for any groups that you definitely plan to attend.

If you do make a donation later, if possible please label the donation AssGrp.

Also, as per the original instructions, please send an email with all the required data once you have made a donation. That that will help me to track the funds.

Q: Would it be best we wait until this first group is completed before registering and donating in to any further groups?

There is no problem with registering for as many groups as you like now.

Donations towards groups 1,2, & 3 are now being accepted. These donations are essential to cover our expenses and to confirm these groups will be held on the Sunshine Coast.

Please refrain from donating towards Groups 4-8 until the start of the new financial year (July 1st, 2016). This will assist us with our accounting. Otherwise we have to pay a large amount of tax on the donations received in one financial year that won’t be used until the next year.

This excludes donations towards overseas Assistance Groups. We will need to receive any donations towards such groups 6 months BEFORE the group is scheduled to occur.This is so that we have enough time to plan such groups.

A few people have registered and donated towards all 8 groups already. There is no problem with donations already received from these people.

Q: I would like to register for the possible North American event, but could not find the link on the Notes Along the Way post. Please let me know if there is an option to register for it.

We haven’t yet opened registrations for the potential events in North America or Europe as we can’t start proper planning for these groups until we receive enough donations.

All of the venues we have approached overseas require payment of funds and guarantees from us well before such events occur. They also are only interested in serving us if we can guarantee the event will occur. We cannot plan events that we do not have the funds to pay for. We will let everyone know if, and when, we get close to receiving enough donations to hold an overseas group. Registrations for those groups will open at that time.

Our very tight schedule allows us to only run groups at an overseas venue in October of each year, as long as we have enough time to organise the event, and receive enough donations to cover our expenses for the event. These groups would be in addition to the events we hold in Australia. If the conditions for overseas events are not met, we will use the shortfall donations for the proposed overseas events towards booking venues in Australia.

Something for people in Europe or other locations (apart from the USA) to consider is that given your very favourable exchange rate when coming to Australia and that expenses for food and accommodation tend to be less expensive than in the USA, you may find that even though a flight to the USA may cost slightly less than one to Australia, your expenses during the group may be much less if you attended in Australia.

Attendance

Q: I’d like to attend for the weekend/ for the two day programme.

All participants are required to attend the full 6 day programme. If you don’t wish to attend the full programme please do not register.

All groups in this series run for 6 days, over an 8 day period (2 rest days). The material is sequential in presentation, where each day requires knowledge of the previous days material. It is not possible for us to give places to people who are not present for the entire period for many loving reasons.

Please do not take the very unloving action of booking a place with the intention to only come for a few days of the event. This takes valuable time and limited spaces from people who have a sincere desire to attend and engage the group for the full programme.

Q: I live on the Sunshine coast. Am I required to stay at the venue or can I visit the venue each day?

You don’t need to stay at the venue if you have other accommodation options. This includes if you live nearby.

Q: I’ve been previously asked to not attend Divine Truth events. Can I attend these groups?

Those who have been previously asked to not attend our groups due to their unloving behaviour towards ourselves or others, are invited to attend these groups.

However we will continue to have the policy that people who are unloving in our events to ourselves or others will be removed after receiving a warning about their unloving behaviour.

This policy applies to everyone in attendance at the groups regardless of the distance a person may have traveled to attend the event.

Q: Is there any way I could be removed or asked not to attend the sessions in the group?

People who are unloving in our events to ourselves or others will be removed after receiving a warning about their unloving behaviour.

This policy applies to everyone in attendance at the groups regardless of the distance a person may have traveled to attend the event.

We do this because we believe if you are truly serious about becoming a loving person, you will make a supreme effort to remain loving at the event that is attempting to teach you about love. It is particularly unloving if you attempt to argue with, be angry with, or condescending towards the presenters who are giving you their time for free to help you.

Those who have been previously asked to not attend our groups due to their unloving behaviour towards ourselves or others, are invited to attend these groups under the same policy provisions as everyone else.

Q. How can I know I am ‘ready’ to attend an Assistance Group?

You are welcome at these groups if you have a sincere desire to grow in love and desire a relationship with God.

Really in order to be “ready” all that is required is humility to face where you are ‘at’ the given moment and a desire to work though the blocks to progression.

This includes a willingness to take responsibility for your life and your own emotions. Jesus and I are not responsible for people’s individual progress and we cannot force you into feeling and ensure that you will grow simply by coming to a group. These things are dependent on your individual exercise of will and we won’t accept people attempting to make us responsible for their feelings or motivation to change.

What we do want to provide is an opportunity for sincere people to learn about what is involved for them to develop their relationship with God and offer many truths and tools in order to assist peole who want to try the experiment for themselves.

Q: I remember Jesus saying it’s a bit better to go with partner or family (either?) as the dynamics of relationships can be exposed more, etc or something like that. Is that right?

No, the choice to attend with or without a partner or family member is completely a personal decision. There can be benefits and advantages in either direction depending on your own personal situation, your intentions, and desires for the group.

We have opened registrations for two sessions of each group and if we receive enough registrations and donations for both we will run each group twice.

If this happens people will have the flexibility to attend one of two sessions for each group and thus have flexibility to attend as they desire with or without a specific family member.

Q: I would really love to attend as many of these workshops as I am able, and I currently live in overseas. Are there any locations in Australia where a learning center is yet set up,where perhaps I could contribute to helping at the center and have a place to live & grow towards God over the upcoming workshops?

While we would love to offer this as an option, it is not yet possible.

We have many plans and desires for Learning Centres in Australia and overseas. However the creation of such centres depends upon the desires of others matching our own. We always want to work with the sincere desires in others and never force what we see as great possibilities onto others.

We are currently working with some individuals who are interested in creating Learning Centres and we are hopeful that this may happen over the coming years. But nothing yet is certain.

Venue

Q: Has a venue been decided on yet in Noosaville?

Yes, it is called Ivory Palms resort.

Q: Would you please tell me the costs involved in the venue if you know yet?

These are outlined in the Booking Instructions document.

Q. I would like to arrange to share accommodation at Ivory Palms. Is there a way that I can get in contact with others who wish to do the same?

Yes, Rui from overseas has very kindly created a web platform to facilitate such arrangements. Please be sure to read his terms of use before you proceed with this service.

The web address for this service is: http://web.ist.utl.pt/rmch/ivoryshare

Content

Q: I hope these presentations will be on Youtube as I live overseas and won’t be able to attend in person?

We are certainly going to do everything we can to have these groups videoed for Youtube. However due to some technical and team constraints the speed with which they appear on our channel is not yet guaranteed.

At the very least, we will endeavour to have timely audio recordings for each one appear on our website.

It will be a prerequisite for all participants to have listened to prior groups in the series before attending the latter ones.

Announcing “An Education in Love” Group Series

Our Desire to Help You Love

There is one thing that governs the Universe that we live in, the workings of our soul, spirit body and physical body. It is the basis of all Law that God has created.

The absence or presence of this one thing within our soul either limits or expands or our ability to learn and understand ALL subjects; to change; to heal; and to become compassionate and creative humans.

This one thing forms the basis of any real relationship and yet it is the very thing that – really – we know almost nothing about.

That ‘one thing’ is Love.

We receive no formal education in what love is or how truly to love ourselves or others. And the environment which we live and grow up in is just as un-educated about love as the adults we have become.

If we were to quantify and analyse the products of our lives we would see that the majority of us have pursued and even succeeded in a wealth of activities.

Yet when we measure the intentions behind our activities and the harvest they yield it is clear that we have spent very little time seeking to understand love.

Our lack of attention towards love makes no sense since the very key to our eternal happiness, creativity and growth lies in our ability to recognise love, to give love and to receive it. When we know love, give love and welcome it into our lives then all of our other pursuits are enriched in terms of pleasure, success and quality.

Because we’re pretty clueless about love, most of us have no idea what a loving relationship with God entails. Instead we project our demands and expectations of what we think love ‘should be’ onto God and when God doesn’t respond in the way that we want Her to, we feel that God doesn’t care about us, or we decide that He doesn’t exist at all. We end up further and further away from the One Being – God – who can teach us infinitely and rapidly about love.

Unless we begin to develop a humble attitude towards learning about ourselves and to change our understanding of love then we will never connect to God.

We all badly need an education in love.

Jesus and I know this and we want to change it!

We have been busy working on a project that I am so excited to share with you all. We have created a new series of Assistance Groups entitled “An Education in Love”.

If you felt completely overwhelmed by the scope of everything that we offered in a single week at the 2014 groups, I think that you will find the format for the new series really beneficial.

This series of 8 individual groups is designed to give participants the chance to study in more detail the basic issues that block their understanding of, and desire to love. They provide practical teaching about how to work through these issues and begin to receive Love from God.

The basic idea of these groups is to take the topics we introduced in the 2014 Assistance Group, and spend an entire 6 days focusing on deepening your understanding and education in love on these subjects.

I believe that the biggest service that Jesus and I can offer at this time is to not only assist people to grow their soul based understanding of what is required in order to establish a true and lasting relationship with God, but also to assist people to understand their soul condition as it is right now.

Understanding one’s own soul condition enables a person to quickly and practically work upon their impediments to growth. I can’t overstate how important and valuable receiving direct, loving personal feedback has been for my growth in love.

While all 8 of these unique groups in this series will be recorded for listening or viewing after the fact, attending a group in person will give you the unique opportunity to receive direct feedback that will assist you in your relationship with God. So my feeling is, if you can manage to attend at least one group in person it will be a milestone in your progress towards God.

Introducing the Series

The series of Assistance Groups is called “An Education in Love”. It will run over two years.

Each group will focus on a particular theme and is designed to assist participants to obtain a soul based understanding of the basic principles of developing their soul in love.

You could think of this series like ‘Learning Love 101’. Or perhaps we could have called it ‘Love for Dummies’. (smile)

Each group will give participants the opportunity to:

– Attend presentations of new material relating to the theme of the group

– Complete reflection activities and ask questions relating to presentations

– Receive personal feedback to better understand their current soul condition

The material in each group will build upon the material that was presented in the 2014 Assistance Groups. Each subsequent group in this series will also build upon material presented in the earlier groups in the same series, and so, each prior group is intended to be fully engaged before your attendance to the next group.

Pre requisites for participants will be to have watched or attended at least one of the 2014 Assistance Groups, along with all of the groups in the ‘Education in Love’ series prior to the one they are attending.

Those who have been previously asked to not attend our groups due to their unloving behaviour towards ourselves or others, are invited to attend these groups but we will continue to have the policy that people who are unloving in our events to ourselves or others will be removed after receiving a warning about their unloving behaviour.

Logistical Issues

In order to be able to offer these groups we need to be able to cover our expenses involved in running them. For any groups held here in Queensland, Australia the costs are reasonable.

The details for how much funds we need to cover our running costs at the venue we have selected can be found in an Assistance Group Expenses document that Jesus has created for you.

With the exception of the first group, which we have already borrowed funds for and booked, we cannot proceed with formal venue booking until we receive enough donations to cover the basic expenses and outlays involved in any of the other groups.

If we find that we don’t have enough funds to run a group we will cancel that group and cover the material in our home studio.

Overview of the Group Series

 
 
Date
Group
Details
19-28 Feb, 2016
04-13 Mar, 2016
Developing My Will to Love
20-29 May, 2016
03-12 Jun, 2016
Developing My Loving Self
04-13 Nov, 2016
*18-27 Nov, 2016
Understanding God’s Laws of Love
Summary
Timetable
Registration 1
Registration 2
17-26 Feb, 2017
*03-12 Mar, 2017
Understanding Sin & Its Causes
Summary
Timetable
Registration 1
Registration 2
19-28 May, 2017
*02-11 Jun, 2017
Removing the Causes of Sin
Summary
Timetable
Registration 1
Registration 2
10-19 Nov, 2017
*24 Nov-03 Dec, 2017
Engaging God’s Laws of Love
Summary
Timetable
Registration 1
Registration 2
16-25 Feb, 2018
*02-11 Mar, 2018
Receiving God’s Love
Summary
Timetable
Registration 1
Registration 2
18-27 May, 2018
*01-10 Jun, 2018
Loving God
Summary
Timetable
Registration 1
Registration 2
 
 
 

*The additional dates listed for each group are potential second groups that we may hold after the first if we receive enough registrations and donations to support a second group.

Formal programme for each group will begin on a Friday evening and finish on the last Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning will be for farewell, check out and travel home.

What To Do Now

 
 
Procedure
Details
1. Register

Register for the event you wish to attend using EventBrite by clicking on the above Registration link for each group. You must register in order for us to count you as attending.

If you have registered, but are now not attending, please IMMEDIATELY cancel your registration so that another person can take your place. If you do not do this, we will not allow you to a future registered event. It is very unloving to take the place of someone else and then not attend.

2. Donate

Donate using any method you wish from our “Donate” page on the http://www.divinetruth.com website.

If possible please label your donation AssGrp. This assists us to sort out donations.

After you have donated using any method listed on the donate page of the website, make sure you send an email to donation@divinetruth.com with the following details:

  • Amount of the donation in your currency
  • Date/time you made the donation
  • The method you used for donation e.g. Paypal, Transferwise, Direct Bank transfer etc.
  • The date and name of the Assistance Group you wish to donate towards e.g. Removing the Causes of Sin 17-26 Feb, 2017

For the first group, Jesus and I have already paid for our expenses from funds we have borrowed. However, to continue offering subsequent groups, we need to be able to raise around $8,200 to repay the loan, and do so before venue hiring date cutoff periods offered by the venue. Our first hiring cutoff date is 15th November 2015. So, we need to know before this date how many people are attending the first group, and the potential 2nd group on the same subject.

For these reasons please consider how much you wish to donate towards us repaying our loan or towards our expenses generally for these groups. Our costs for each group in Australia average out to a contribution of less than $200 per person in attendance. For overseas groups, our costs are much higher (see the section below about overseas groups).

3. Wait

Once you have registered, and we have received enough bookings and donations to proceed with the group, this allows us to complete a firm booking with the venue. Once we have a firm booking with the venue, we will confirm your place in the group, and give you details about how to book your accommodation with the venue if you wish to do so.

4. Book

Once we have confirmed the venue, and your own place in the group has been confirmed, then you can safely proceed with your booking of accommodation and travel.

If you book with the venue where we are holding the event, you will loose a maximum of $100 if you cancel any time up to 7 days before the event. If you book elsewhere, you will need to make your own arrangements.

 
 

Venue & Accommodation

We have found a great venue for the groups in Noosaville, Queensland.

Food and accommodation arrangements and costs for each group will be the responsibility of each participant. It is not necessary to stay at the venue where the group is being held (although participants may find this most convenient). There are many accommodation options in the area that suit a range of budget constraints.

The Queensland venue does offer accommodation in various configurations including studio apartments with limited kitchen, two and three bedroom apartments and villas with full kitchen. All apartments have a single car park. We have stayed there previously and found it to be clean and comfortable. There are three pools, and other facilities.

Participants will receive a discount rate of 15% if they quote ‘Divine Truth’ when making a booking with the Queensland venue. Participants will be required to pay a $100.00 deposit. If for some reason participants do need to cancel the venue will not charge a fee if the cancellation period is outside 14 days prior to arrival. If it is within 14 days the cancellation fee would be the $100.00 deposit or no charge if participants reschedule the dates of stay. These are very generous terms.

Once the first group is confirmed with the venue on 15th November 2015 we will release the name and booking details for this venue so that participants can make accommodation arrangements. You can then also go ahead with any travel arrangements.

A Possible Overseas Assistance Group

Jesus and I would really love to be able to offer the gift of one of these groups in an overseas location. In recent months, while planning these groups, we have done extensive investigation into various overseas venues.

In the Assistance Group Expenses document you will see that we have itemized the costs involved running the event, including for the travel and accommodation for us and two support people (who handle filming for the groups) to the various locations in North America and Europe.

Aside from Australia, you can see from the comparisons in the Assistance Group Expenses document that the cheapest overseas venue that everyone can get to reasonably (usually via a single international flight + some ground travel) is in the USA. However this cost is still four times the amount needed to run the same event in Australia.

Considering the exchange rate and cost requirements for us to get to another country, it is much more economical for us to hold events in Australia.

It may also be more economical for people who live in Europe to attend the Australian venue for the same reasons. Costs of travel, food, and accommodation are much cheaper in Australia than other western countries.

However we want to offer the opportunity for one overseas event to happen if enough people desire for that to occur. So, we have decided to hold an Assistance Group in North America and/or Europe if we receive the amount of donations required to cover the costs of such events (these are outlined in the cost comparison document). But we must receive these donations BEFORE April 2016 because we need at least 6 months organisation time for these events.

If these conditions for an overseas event are not met, we will still hold the third Assistance Group here in Australia with the same arrangements as outlined above for the other groups in the series, and we will use the donations for the proposed overseas events towards bookings in Australia.

Please note that we have not yet opened registrations for an overseas event via eventbrite as we cannot commence planning until we receive enough funds to cover our expenses.

Book Group Announcement – ‘Across The Mists’ Part 3

Yep, you read right.
In our next book group we’ll meet up for part three of the discussion of Chapter 12 – ‘Across The Mists’.

Turns out the shortest chapter in the book has many lessons for us all to learn.

So, if you are a part of book group here is some extra homework to prepare for Wednesday (chuckle, I know, I know. Shortest chapter = Most amount of homework ever):
1. In last week’s discussion we talked about how sympathetic attraction between people on earth and in spirit, often leads to codependent relationships (and how – lets face it- co dependence is never really a good thing). So how does this knowledge relate to Cushna’s statement:

Yes! Love conquers death, and that one great law which governs and controls everything with us, is also the means by which we may reach and save mankind. Sympathy, whether pure or impure, base or noble, holy or unholy, has a natural attraction for that which is like itself, and its power is not destroyed by the grave, as you have seen in the cause of our present mission.

If all laws are governed by the one great law (of Love) as Cushna states – how are sympathetic attractions be loving?

2. As Fred and Cushna discuss the darkness of the earth plane, Cushna states:

The amount and quality of light radiating from a man, declares his real condition. We do not need to be told, it is impossible to deceive us, because it is impossible to tamper with the witness.

Fred asks:

What does the cold, keen air indicate?

 And Cushna responds:

The degree of charity registered by the spiritual thermometer.

(or in other words the degree of the lack of charity – my words added here)

Consider the questions:
In what ways do I reflect charity in my day to day life?
In what ways is charity extended to me in my day to day life?

3. Listen to the channelling of a local woman who attends book group, and a group of Christian women who also attend.

You can find the downloads by going to this page.

Or you can right-click the following links and save the file:

Mary 20121020 Jesus Talks To Karen (A Christian Spirit Woman Who Attends Book Group).mp3
Mary 20121020 Jesus Talks To Mandy (A Local Spirit Woman Who Attends Book Group).mp3

****************
There will also be a special guest joining us for the meeting.
Following the group there will be a presentation by Jesus. Topic of the discussion is ‘How to Create Loving Eco Systems’ and much of these lessons will guide our activities at this year’s Summerfest. Anyone interested is welcome to attend and there will be time for questions during the presentation. Full details in the Divine Truth Events tab.
Book groupers, perhaps you would be kind enough to pass on this information to other members who may not have regular internet access?
With love and thanks,

M