How To Hold a Dream

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

Mary

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

Little Seed

Anna and I shared a beautiful conversation on Tuesday. Between her planting and me processing we happened upon a magic window in which we talked about letting go of being the ‘good girl that everyone approves of’, our fears of feeling alone, and how much we love God. I received this message from her today and I thought it too beautiful not to pass on.
**********************
Hi Mary,
I had a nice time talking to you yesterday.  I know you’re probably really busy, but I wanted to share this with you, as it’s kind of an extension to what we were talking about.
Last night after I got home, I sat in the shed (all alone!) with the candles on, listening to Amy Grant.  And I prayed to God from the real place in my heart.  Prayed to Help me to want my self, my true self, despite the conflict this brings up inside of me.  Teach me to be brave, and return to my childhood vulnerability and humility.  To remain true to myself and to my relationship with you, no matter what anyone in the outside world thinks or feels or does. 
I cried as I connected back to the glory that I have come to know as God. 
But it’s not easy for me at the moment.  I have just begun to notice that most of the thoughts in my head are me looking at myself as I think another person see’s me.  I’m not connected to how I feel, I’m connected to what other people see and feel about me – really, how my parents felt and saw.  I’m constantly having to stop myself and try to block, then dig beneath these thoughts, to find my own humility. 
This morning I realised that the same addiction that is driving these thoughts (wanting people to see me as great, so then they will envy, or love me) is in play in my relationship with God.  For, in trying to present myself as more ‘loveable’ than I am, or feel, has meant that I cannot connect with neither myself or God, because I’m not really me. 
This brings me to my analogy about the seed that my spirit friends helped me to see this morning. 
I’m a seed.  A little seed.  Full of potential, but to say I am a tree yet, would be untruthful.  To see myself as me is vital, because I can’t grow if I’m trying hard to not be the little seed I am.  Rather than denying I’m a little seed, and proclaiming, “I’m a plant!  Can I’ve some Love now everyone!?”, it’s going “Hey God, I’m a little seed, and I want to grow, can you please help me grow?”
To grow, I must;
  1. Sit in the truth of who I am.
  1. Desire Love from this place (including learning to love myself, as a little seed)
  1. Release the false belief that to be loved I have to be a tall, impressive plant.
Just wanted to share that with you Mary.  I feel it’s going to be really important for my growth from here.
Hope you, and AJ are feeling good today. : )
Lots of Love,
Anna

Just Be True, The Third Sphere & I Heart God

A new day was just beginning and I, sitting on the floor of our ecotent, looking out on all the freshness, was reading the Padgett messages….

“Be true to yourself and you will soon be in God’s love and favour…”[1]

The message continued but I found myself drawn to these words. I scribbled them in my journal and kept reading.

Again I paused; I looked back to my journal and circled the first four words in the sentence. These are well worn words in our world, bandied about in all kinds of situations. But now here they were at the beginning of a sentence that Helen had impressed upon her beloved mate. There was something big there that I was missing. I could feel it. It was niggling at the edge of my understanding.

“Be true to yourself…” – no don’t brush these words aside as obvious for their true meaning is huge.

“Be true…” to what you feel right now, surrender to your emotion, embody it, allow it. Don’t act it out, or avoid, don’t analyze or understand it. Just be true.

It hits me, a dawning no less significant than the one unfolding around me.
To know God’s Love I must go to Him in Truth. Go to Him in the truth of what I feel, just be true…

Yes I know you’ve heard all this before. But have you really? I hadn’t understood it – in my marrow. I didn’t feel what it meant deep within me.

Lots of us have heard that we must be in truth to receive the Love but do we go to Him in our messiness and sorrow. How can He connect to us if we do not share ourselves with Him, and how can we relate to Him if we avoid the state of complete humility and honesty about our own selves?

In all of my talking, journaling, channelling, processing and yes, even blogging I’ve been missing the point. I’ve been seeking to figure out my feelings instead of just embodying them while I cry out to God for Love and Grace. This revelation of my own smug self reliance stings me. The sin as old as mankind itself, has kept me in its grips. In all of my struggles to free myself of emotional error I have overlooked the arrogance in the way I am approaching the entire process.

I’ve been trying to sort myself and my feelings out so that then God can Love me, (now this sounds ridiculous but only if I remember that God is a Loving Parent who accepts me just as I am, and I forget that most of the other people in my childhood wanted me to hold it together and sort things out, and they found me far more ‘loveable’ and adorable then).

I haven’t been asking God for Grace or for Love, for I haven’t believed myself worthy of such things. I’ve been asking for Him to help to me feel – pleading and needy sometimes. And yet I’ve been afraid of His Love and of truly opening my heart to share my feelings with Him.

I haven’t understood that I must use my will to feel and He will use His Will to ease my burden.

I realise now that in order to truly heal I must take my whole self to Him and say ‘Here I am, teach me to love myself just as I am. In this precious, imperfect moment of my existence show me I am worthy. Let me feel your Love.’

My fear and desperate desire for control has made me, in my heart (the place where true longing begins) resist His Love because of what it may dislodge in me. I have been guarding my worthlessness from Him.

**********

It occurs to me that this is the true transition to the third sphere, or some big step in love, where I stop trying to ‘figure out’ my emotion, and instead am just willing to surrender to it, whatever it is, and to trust God to heal me of it – through His process, not mine. It is the place in which I am willing to be, just be, in the truth of my emotions[2] (not my addictions) and to experience them, at all times.

It is vulnerability – the lesson of my year – that is required. It is saying to God  “I’m terribly afraid that you may reject me but I can’t do this without you. But in order to do it with you I’m going to have to share myself. I’m going to have to ask, really ask for your Love.”

“Man has a will to either accept or reject the Love of God, and until he exercises his will in a way to show that he wants that love, it will not be given him.”[3]

God, I haven’t wanted your Love. I’ve asked for guidance and for courage but I haven’t wanted Love.

I have paid lip service to your Love and haven’t yet yearned for it, in the way of a winsome, lovesick teenager, of a mother for her lost child, of a son for his absent father.. his Father.

I haven’t unlocked the desire that consumes a soul, that is in the heart beat behind every action, present with every word and flavours every minute.

I quake at the thought of unleashing my sheer, unadulterated longing, that my heart may run free and ‘into Your Arms of Love’.

Could I give you my heart God? All the lost and fragile pieces of me, could I offer them up to you? Could I want Your Love so much that I would face all fear and give up all my feeble attempts, these shameful human encounters where I try to earn approval and appreciation, all in an effort to find a substitute for the Love that would fulfill me complete.

In the early dawn, in my dawning, I realize that I have focused on the eradication of sin and error and neglected (because of unworthiness and fear of grief) the inflowing of God’s Love. And now I see that the fastest way to eradicate sin and error is to focus on the Love. The process of emotional, causal release will be the same but it will happen as a natural part of my relationship with God. It is sharing with God in complete humility that changes our soul. When we truly open ourselves God’s Love gives us courage to step into the depths of pain and She takes the cause from us. The gentle surgeon removes the barbs. It is a process with my Maker – not a trial I must endure before I can relate to Her.

It seems to me in our initial unraveling we do and perhaps we must, engage our intellect. God does seem to many of us a far off figure, shrouded in misconception borne of our upbringing and background. We cannot neglect the important work of unhooking from our re-framing and rethinking, and the breaking down of the addictions that have run our lives. This next step though is the substance of the teachings. All of the thrashing around beforehand is just us lost in the bush, trying to orientate ourselves. This realization is suddenly stepping into the clearing and seeing the luminous Path stretch out in front of us. We must each have our awakening of what is truly within us.. just be true.. and be willing to share this self with God.

‘…for until such an awakening comes to (the soul) there is no possibility of it receiving the Love of God into to it..’[4]

***********

“When we pray to the Father for an increase in faith, it is a prayer for the increase in Love”[5]

If  I block the Love, how can my faith grow?

It ALL depends on the Father’s Love.

I AM NOTHING WITHOUT HIS LOVE.

As I read my notes to Yeshua, he hastens to correct my last statement. It is not true that I am nothing without God’s Love. I can become God’s creation, perfected in natural love. I explain to him that when I wrote the statement I was feeling so acutely how limited I am without this relationship, how insignificant I now am compared to what I once was when His Love made me His child ‘in substance and not in image only’ In my moments of explaining its hard to contemplate how I could even grow in natural love without the Love of God.

And yet in the next breath, I feel the errors of the first human couple still alive within me – this searing, desperate attempt to prove that I am something and someone, on my own, of my own creation. The utter limitation of this state, of trying to have my ego prove its worth, overwhelms me. I’m locked in a futile struggle to prove my value, that blocks the most significant relationship of my life.

Even now, the idea that me, alone;

without doing good works,

without saying smart things,

without knowing,

without showing that I am worthy,

the idea that I am loved and am beautiful without any of these things is so alien. I feel I must make good before He (and he) can love me, before I show myself to Him.

And yet His Love will prove His Love for me.

But I must have humility and openness to receive it.

If I am needy or demanding I won’t receive it. My neediness is a plea that he make it easier so that I may avoid my darkest sorrow. My demand is anger and expectation that I should be able to avoid vulnerability and openness with Him. Instead I must ask ‘with sincere longings and earnest aspiration’, I must truly desire it and be willing to bare my whole self to Him, in recognition that:

“Man is a mere creature and cannot create anything higher than himself; so man cannot rise to the nature of the divine, unless the divine first comes into that man and makes him a part of its own divinity.”[6]

It’s not about saying “God help me feel….”

It is saying “God I feel….”

“God please be with me while I feel.”

“Could you show me your love so that I may have faith enough to step into the darkness?”

It is stopping trying and simply desiring – desiring God, desiring Love, desiring Truth, desiring emotion.

***********

So why am so I afraid to ignite my yearning for God and for Soulmate? So afraid that I hold myself back in the second sphere (and sometimes lets face it, right down in the lower first) – figuring out, analyzing, resisting surrender to the truth of what I feel….

The answer, the reason for my headstrong self-reliance, is that I don’t want to soften into the feelings that for nigh on 2000 years I have relied on a Father of Love. He has guided me. And the love of my mate has nourished me.

I can’t take the next steps until I acknowledge this – that my Mother God sustains me and that my mate, Yeshua, completes me.

I feel so nothing without them. And it feels that I must pass through this abyss of knowing that, feeling that nothing, in order to have them with me again.

I have missed them so much that it terrifies me to crack open the cache of my longing, and have all of my loneliness tumble out with it.

Oh God give me strength…

    dare I ask….   show me Love?

This is the narrow way.

It must be through a relationship with God. Until we have this we are not truly on the Path. We are bumbling along, preparing, removing our blocks, until we reach the point where we are ready to open ourselves to the greatest, most life-givng Love there is – until we are ready to enter a love relationship with our Creator.

I am humbled to admit to you this morning that I have been dallying all this time, on the Natural Love Path. Yes, I have felt and released some emotions and I have come to know the Father a little. But I am hit like a freight train by the understanding that my growth has been seriously stunted by my unwillingness to ‘ask in a way that shows I want His Love’.

My friends, we must learn what it means to ask Him.

To ask with our hearts,

our whole hearts,

our broken hearts,

our shameful hearts,

the parts of us that don’t feel whole because in Truth they lack

His Love.

We must unearth the parts of us left in the shadows and corners and forgotten caverns in our souls so that She may shine the light of Love and Truth upon them.

I saw a book advertised the other day. It is called ‘Made to Crave’ by Lysa Terkeurst. I haven’t read the book but the short blurb I read about it came back to me as I finished writing this post. I think I’ve gleaned her basic premise (apologies to Lysa If I’m wrong) It is this: We are all made to crave God and all of our other addictions with food, (and I would add with television, in relationships, in our work etc, etc), are just distractions and a poor substitute for the Love we crave the most.

If we want to know God, to receive Her Love, we must open up to our craving and know it for what it is. When we do this our addictions will become unsatisfying and meager in comparison to what awaits us. And this craving and desire will inspire us to face our fears, to face our true selves and expose them to the One who Loves the most. When we do, God in all Her Grace, will clean us and teach us Love.

[1] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Helen Padgett, November 30th, 1914

[2] I want to make a clear distinction here between living in or allowing our emotions and living in addictive emotions. The first is healing, the second is damaging and even more damaging when we tell ourselves and others we are doing the first when we are in fact doing the second. I see many living in addictive emotions and crying non-causal feelings. While we live in addiction we cannot connect to our true emotional state.
[3] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Ann Rollins, December 12th, 1914
[4] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Jesus, October 10th, 1915
[5] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Jesus, March 2nd, 1916

[6] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Jesus, January 24th, 1915

A Poem to God

Could you love me God? Little me?
Could you love me THAT much?
Could I really become clean?
Help me find my true self, my desires,
Help me find the pathway through the dark,
Help me LOVE.
I want to love.
I want others to want your Love,
and to know its power ,
through seeing me change.
I am just a little girl, a little lost,
Bewildered by this BIG world I find myself in.
Help me touch my sorrow.
There is so much sadness
It feels knit into the fibres of my being.
Help me love the colour of my soul,
Just as it is,
Right now.
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you,
There are no words for you.
I am just a little girl
with words, far too few
Help me find the words, the will,
to share your Glory.
How can I know you well?
I am humbled by You
Your presence makes me want to bow down for you,
How can I face you?
You know me so well and I feel shame,
How could you love me after knowing me?
I am so broken
and oh so little.
Help me have faith that I may heal.
Help me have courage
to stand on your doorstep
and knock on your door
Let me feel worthy enough
to ask….
to ask for your Love and your Wisdom.
I do not feel deserving of such things
I am little
and a lot broken.

Hey everyone, this is my first ‘Poem to God’

Last year when I ran the workshops one of the activities was for you all to write a Poem to God and it was always, inevitably my favourite part in every weekend. I loved watching you all shine as you shared your poems with each other. After the workshops some of you sent me your poems and I have them stored in a folder on my computer. Can I say I love them all. I cried as I read every single one of them. Each is as unique as the soul who created them. I find it one of the most precious things in the world to hear a heart call out to God, to want to talk to God.

It was a seed of a dream that one day someone, maybe Joseph (I have asked him yet!), may want to include some of your poetry in a publication. Who knows maybe someday we can do this…

A Fork in the Road & The Wounded Dog

A Fork in the Road

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

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

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

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

Gratitude & Growth

For the past few months I’ve been living in the mantra:
“God’s got me in a process – whatever comes, whatever happens all I need to do is stay humble and keep feeling, and praying, and I’ll grow”
And I’ve felt myself growing and learning and changing. I prayed and cried and journalled and just been heaps more honest with myself and it has all helped.
I’ve learnt to trust God more. I’ve begun to want Him and I’ve felt the tides of grief have been worth it. I’ve felt that they’ve left me cleaner and clearer.
But on Thursday, as the dust settled behind the rental car carrying the two men who had come to make the documentary about us, I didn’t want to be in the process anymore.
I wanted to find a dark, cosy hole of denial I could crawl into and forget about how exposed I felt, how awkward and inarticulate. I felt like I had failed to express how precious this Path is to me, how much it means to me, and I didn’t want to face certain exposure and ridicule.
AJ, Yeshua, my mate and the kindest soul I ever knew, kept reminding me that I’m just a work in progress but wow I felt so inadequate and imperfect. I felt like my mantra was smug and that I wasn’t ready for any of it, I just wanted a normal life again. I got into dangerous projection and denial territory.
I’m still coming out of it and I’m dismayed at how readily I slipped back into fear. I’m so fortunate to be surrounded by many who love me and I feel upset when I let my connection with them sever because I fear the reactions of people I have never met.
The luminous lesson I revisited today was that of gratitude. I have so much to be thankful for.
I have a man who loves me so completely that I can’t even comprehend it.
I have God in my life. This is such a magnificent and humbling gift. I have starved for Him for most of my life.
I live a life that I am passionate about, that upholds ideals that I believe in. I am supported in this by so many, many of whom (many of you) I have never even met. I never believed that I would find a way and a place to live that fulfilled me and answered all of my questions. I found it and I am grateful.
I eat good, nutritious food. I am clothed. I have shelter.
Yes, I still need to process my fears, and the road ahead may have some tough emotions and situations to face but my life holds so much richness and beauty and possibility.
Some years ago I spent two years living in a refugee camp in southern Beirut, Lebanon. My brothers and sisters in that camp taught me much about dignity and suffering, about war and traffic. They extended to me deep hospitality and warmth. I feel privileged that they opened their homes and hearts to me. I felt my offerings in their community were so feeble in comparison. I still think of them often. I hope one day that I can do something to change the way their lives are lived. At present they live with scarcity of opportunity, education, clean air and nutrition.
Many of my old friends feel I have sold out on my humanitarian ideals. In fact I feel I have embraced them more strongly. It was too easy for me to avoid my disillusionment and cynicism through actions; actions that I knew were futile to make lasting changes in people’s lives. It’s hard, in times when I feel hopeless about my own progress towards God, to not be tempted to go back and make a splint for a Haji in Bourj el Barajneh, Beirut. 
Instead I remember the ones who live there. It makes me more grateful for the gifts I have been given and it spurs me on to make changes in this one soul. Changes that I hope, will ripple more positively and in much wider concentric circles than the ones I have created in the past.

Sharing All The Pieces

“It is wonderful what God can do with a broken heart, if He gets all the pieces.”
Samuel Chadwick
I love these words. My challenge is to dig deep inside to find all of those hurt and broken pieces and then be brave enough to hold them, to be with them long enough to share them with God so that healing can begin.
Wishing you (and me) the courage to share the tenderest parts of your heart with God, He so loves us,
Mary

P.S. God whispered something to me recently, right after I had been brave enough to share a part of my brokenness with Him. He told me simply (in feeling not in words)
“You are worthy of love”
The beauty of that feeling is still reverberating around my soul. It hasn’t settled as a truth inside of me yet. But I wanted you to know because He’s been trying to tell you the same thing.
M xo

A Grey Week and a New Space of Vulnerability

 I’ve had a difficult couple of weeks. I have found new depths in this experience – facing difficult truths and emotions that I have avoided for a long time. I’ve felt afraid, sad, desperate and hopeless. Mostly these feelings alternated but sometimes they hit me all at once. I’m learning that part of the mastery of this path is to be with these spaces, without avoidance or a desire for them to be over before their completion. When I can soften into deep sorrow my being is glad to finally stop resisting what already lies within and to let the sharp edges of grief and loss diminish through their expression.
I haven’t posted mainly because I have been busy feeling and exploring these new (old) spaces but also because it’s harder to post when I feel fragile. It feels like a different quality to vulnerable to share when I am still in the sad space and when I know there are now people who read who are critical of me. But I remind myself that the reason I began to blog was to share my story. For the past couple of weeks I have been rediscovering parts of myself and my story that are both painful and poignant.
I have a half a dozen posts half written, about green tree frogs, a woman named Freda and finding the strength and joy in striving, but these will remain incomplete for today. I thought instead I would simply share some broad strokes and snippets from my journal and hopefully they can tell the story for me.
I’m struggling with two major sets of emotions at the moment. There are each overwhelming and intertwined. I’m grappling with the emotional acceptance of my identity. The mental and emotional pain of truly accepting that I am Mary Magdalene feels quite honestly in most moments more than I can bear. I tussle with just sitting with the reality of what I feel to be true and the implications of that for any length of time.
I’ve also been braving the experience of emotions of Soulmate loss. These were triggered sharply when I first met AJ and I felt him as Yeshua and me as Miriam. The feelings of grief were so intense and, at the time so confusing, that I suppressed them furiously. In the intervening years I have indeed been furious with AJ, blaming him for this grief and resolutely refusing to venture into truly experiencing it.
I’ve made some forays into these emotions in the past month but honestly I still struggle with this. There are parts of me that want him to pay for my pain. I want him to prove to me over and over again that he loves me so that I can avoid the crippling feeling that somehow his death was a rejection of me and something I deserved. These feelings are tangible. There is an anatomy to my pain that defies explanation unless I accept that we are indeed these ones who shared a life and great loss in another time. To submit to such emotions of course only triggers more issues about my identity. Sometimes I have the feeling that in order to stay sane I must allow these emotions that are undeniably a part of me but that in doing so I become to the vast majority of the world someone who is not sane.
2/2/2011
I resist connection with my mate, I have us on this desperate merry-go-round of repetition.
I fear so much the level of grief, the past loss of our connection. Now I feel if I connect with him he can be taken from me. I don’t want to connect. I never want to feel that bad again. If I open my heart completely I will give people the power to hurt me so much – they could take him from me.”
Today I have been wracked with the grief of loss.
Memories of the torture and death of my Soulmate.
A feeling that all of the goodness had been stripped from my life and my person.
A tragedy for myself, my unborn child, for the world
My heart hurts so much with the grief of longing and loosing, God help me to stay with this pain.
Later that day I wrote:
To love someone with all of who we are, to desire them completely and with an open heart, to share ourselves without reserve, is one of the most – if not the most – courageous things we can ever do. It is also the most worthwhile.
3/2/2011
Feeling the presence of my spirit guide very strongly during heavy processing, feeling unworthy of her love and attention, feel that I must get through all of the resistance alone.
I received a channeling in answer to my feelings.
4/2/2011
Reading a book on grief, loss of a spouse. The book triggers so much grief surrounding Yeshua’s death that I don’t want to feel (powerful, overwhelming). I want an easier way out than to feel them.
I feel angry with God – why should I have to do this?
5/2/2011
Truths:
 –        In order to connect to God, to receive the Love of God, I must have a relationship with Him based on me being who I am.
–        If I am Mary Magdalene this means I must accept this if I am gong to relate with God and receive His Love.
I feel like I can’t do this. I’m not capable, I’m not suitable for this role. I don’t want it.
God, why did you let me do this?
I’m not strong enough.
I’m sick of trying to be strong. I can’t do it anymore.
How much rejection must I face?
How much uncertainty?
How much loneliness?
How much striving for connection with my mate?
I’m sick of not getting it. I’m sick of the struggle. I’m sick of resisting feeling how hard this is.
This is hard. Its uncomfortable, it hurts. Everyday to stay connected to you God, everyday to stay connected with myself, everyday to stay connected to AJ I must face some terrifying truth about myself, who I am, my family, our life…
I know this is horrible but sometimes I find myself wishing I had other people’s trials and troubles. I love God and I love this path, in fact I want to dedicate my life to it. I just don’t want to do this as Mary Magdalene. This feels so hard and yet I cannot go on avoiding the memories inside of me. I’m exhausted from trying to.
Why does God want the parts of us that are the hardest to face?
Why do I have to face this pain?
Any other pain seems paler in comparison to dealing with this.
Where is my faith God? Where is my commitment to what is true? I want to shy away from it because it hurts me, it confuses me, it unlocks my deepest pains.
AM I WILLING TO FACE MY PAIN IN ORDER TO KNOW GOD?
Note: It’s difficult for me to attempt to have others understand the emotions about identity.
I realise in reading some of what I have written people could be forgiven for asking ‘Why on earth are you bothering if it feel so bad/ hard?’ or that somehow someone else is forcing me to consider this reality.
Believe me no-one could ‘suggest up’ or ‘implant’ the grief that I feel. The truth is that my pain and desperation comes from the knowledge that in order to grow I must face the things already inside of me. And the things inside of me say I am this other person.
The memories that I hold are from a life filled with hardship, followed by a brief, bright period filled for the first time with beauty, love and hope which sharply ceased. It ceased and we endured the time of Great Loss and my life again became one of hardship and sorrow. Facing my identity means accepting these memories and also experiencing the pain of others’ rejection of what I feel.
7/2/2011
I feel I am a horribly flawed person, unable to change, unworthy of love.
I feel psychologically disturbed and in pain to consider emotionally the Truth that I am Mary Magdalene.
9/2/2011
God, please help me with these feelings. I am so stuck – I don’t want to open-heartedly desire my Soulmate. I want instead to blame him for our ostracism. I want to protect my heart from hurting.
I am resisting so much. I am hanging on by my finger nails, white knuckled and stubborn.
I ‘like’ the addiction of him making me feel good about myself and me being passive. I get to have him ‘prove’ over and over that I am important and that he loves me. I risk nothing in this exchange. I don’t have to examine my true feelings about him or about myself.
What are the feelings inside of me?
They feel confusing. I am angry but underneath that is the feeling of being rejected by him at his death and my own feeling that this must mean I am worthless.
When I am brave enough to feel those feelings under them is a longing for him, a fear of loosing him and a fear of expressing this longing (lest I be ‘rejected’ again).
My heart is hard on the surface – angry and resistive,
Underneath I am afraid.
Beneath my fear is an ocean of grief and longing
A soup of loss and desire
I fear that I may drown in
Is my being strong enough to survive the torrent of emotions that threatens to overwhelm it?
God give me faith that I may grow and thrive in such a brine – this mix of sweet and salty water.
I’ve learnt two things in the past few months. They are this:
Firstly that our emotions truly begin to change and shift in the moment we fully surrender to them. I don’t need to make sense of them. If I trust the process and long to God for Truth and Love as I go through them, my emotions guide me to a place of more understanding and freedom.
Second, I have realised that the issues and emotions we resist the longest, that feel the hardest to deal with, what we seem most blocked to, are the ones that have the most negative impact on our lives and conversely when we decide to deal with them, have the most inspiring and relieving results. Also, when we truly decide to face them, then very rapidly a whole truck-load of emotions comes bubbling up. Of course they do! We carry the most pain about these things; it makes sense that when we go looking for them our emotions will arrive easily.
I always thought I was so ‘stuck’ on the big issues – but the truth was that I just feared that I couldn’t handle the pain. When I decided, in my heart not in my head, to face the truth of what I really felt, the emotions were not elusive or difficult to access. They were and still are extremely present and intense and the challenge is allowing that experience.
 
I was thinking this morning of our lives, as if lived at sea. In the storm we cling to our (by now leaking) dingy. Each of us has a dingy, constructed with the weathered timber of our addictions and the things that make us feel safe and in control.
In our panic at the wind and rain, we wish to hold onto our dingy, believing it has brought us through thus far. We dash around plugging up the gaps, exerting ourselves, believing this is our only way to survive.
Meanwhile, the steady steam liner, that effortlessly maintains calm in the turbulent waters, has thrown us a lifeline. All we need do is dive into the powerful sea and reach out to God and we will be carried to peace and calm.
But instead, our fear keeps us believing that the leap is impossible. It tells us that the dingy is the only certainty we know.
Right now we are each of us weathering some kind of storm. Even if we’ve become so adept at plugging up holes and building sails that we believe the sun is shining, somewhere inside there is a tempest of grief unfelt. We all carry pain and I have found the effort to avoid that pain has become exhausting. All that is left is to dive in deep and trust the tides and that life ring to carry me somewhere safe and warm.
My dingy in sinking and I’m starting to trust that a new reality may be possible, certain even. 
With love and in shaky vulnerability,
Mary

On Forming a Cult

We had a cult investigator spend a couple of days with us recently. He sent us a very respectful email and asked to speak with us about our beliefs and so we said yes.  David is a Christian minister with a very firm set of his own beliefs, but he wanted to hear about the Divine Love Path, our identities and we shared some interesting discussions. There was no attack or ridicule directed towards us. I have no idea how he will present us to the world, but I respect that what he chooses to do with our vulnerability is a part of the exercise of his free will.

I have many ideas, reflections and fears about this word cult! It seems a convenient way for society’s accepted religious formats (which all began as ‘cults’ themselves) to lump ‘everything different’ into one category. And ‘everything different’ certainly exists across a broad spectrum.

The word itself conjures up fear in many, references to cool aid and mass suicide are implied in its very utterance. Its all very dramatic and I constantly wonder at society’s obvious penchant for sensationalism, doom and gloom. Of course much harm has been done to many in the name of God and religion but we need to attribute the harm to its true cause and not the effect. The inclination to brand and fear groups that are different has its origins in our personal history.

Fear of Cults? or The Cult of Family

I know that there have been very damaging religious movements that have taken away the free will of others. History has documented cult leaders who have encouraged a worship of themselves and discouraged self love in their followers. Of course many other types of leaders, including politicians, economists and celebrities have done the same. I also know that we are not these types of people.

Some of you have heard me joke about ‘the cult of family’. I coined this term because through my experience and observation it is most often families that use guilt and manipulation to control the will of others in their clan. It is most often family members who resist change in the individual as it upsets the status quo of entrenched family relations. I’m not just referring to spiritual change. We know that fathers berated their sons for their long hair in the 60s, that the advent of rock and roll music and free dancing was scandalous for the older generation of the time. Mothers and fathers throughout history have not only sighed and shaken their heads at their off-springs ‘wild’ or ‘immoral’ ways but often they have gone to extreme social measures and emotional pressure in attempts to pressure their son or daughter against change.

I’m not suggesting that we should throw out families or their ‘values’ altogether but I do think we should question the principle that family = sacrifice, or that in order to show that we love we must compromise our own heart’s desires or passions. This seems to be a fairly entrenched belief system in common family life. I also believe that a supposedly ‘loving family’ that uses unloving words, actions or attempts to control their mother, father, brother or sister through manipulation, guilt, or threat of rejection resembles more the harmful and dangerous ‘cults’ they are so quick to imply that I am a part of, rather than anything I am currently involved in.

I believe that the fear engendered by the word cult relates not to these afore mentioned damaging movements that have existed in the past but to individuals’ fears of being controlled and that the most controlling people in our lives have been not religious leaders or school mistress’ but inevitably our families. In my family I felt smothered by the level of expectation placed upon me and I felt I couldn’t take a step without full parental approval. Ultimately I felt controlled and my sense of self did not flourish. (My parents’ current unloving treatment of me and my partner indicates their demands and desire for control over my life were real). Without a solid sense of whom I was independent of my family I struggled to have integrity to any ideal. I became angry at religion or any organisation that I felt was controlling or required conformity. This was because of the anger and pain I had at always feeling that I needed to conform to my parent’s values and desires.

A person with a strong sense of self never fears being controlled and knows that as long as others have a sense of self they cannot be controlled either. Instead of worrying about the alarming instances of ‘cults’, society would do better to focus on parenting and assisting children and young people to acquire and nourish a healthy sense of themselves.

 

I am not a ‘Member’

I am not a ‘member’ of a ‘cult’. I simply desire to grow in love to at-onement with God and my Soulmate and to love every other person, here or in the spirit world, equally and abundantly. I see that one of the deepest injuries that we carry as humans on the planet today, is the deep urge to ‘belong’, to ’fit in’. We categorise ourselves constantly. We want to create ‘belonging’. This wound is reflected everywhere around us, it is in our language, it drives our penchant to have a role or roles.

Our lives are full of ‘fitting in’ statements:

“I am a mother”, “I’m an Australian”, “I’m a member of…..”, “I’m a doctor, a nurse, an accountant”, “I’m a cricketer, a vegan, a Christian, a labour man….”

We ask questions “What do you do?” instead of “Who are you?”

And what we really mean is “Where do you fit?”

And even more urgently we feel “Where do I belong?”

How invested we become in our roles is a measure of how much we seek a sense of ‘belonging’ to avoid the desperate void within.

The compulsion to fit and categorise is only an avoidance of the deep sense that we carry from childhood – that we are unworthy, that we are alone, that we are different and that is bad.

I am reminded of the words of Gary Zukov and Linda Francis:

“So long as we reach outward in any way to soften the pain of feeling unworthy, or the terror of not belonging, we bring violence and destruction into our lives, individually and collectively.”

*Zukov & Francis (2001) The Heart of the Soul, pg. 25

When we create ‘belonging’ for one set of people, we create ‘conditions’ for loving, and in doing so we unavoidably create ‘not belonging’ for those who don’t match those criteria. Neediness to be a member or feel superior to others is driven by injuries rooted in our pasts. If we are to heal we must face our own sense of not belonging caused by the pain, abandonment and poor treatment in our childhoods. We must grow the sense of self that we lack.

When I see those people who desire to live this Path creating a preference for others ‘on the Path’, when I see them (or myself) living in fear of how others will view us, using words or attitudes that create an ‘us and them’ mentality, I begin to fear that a cult (not of our making) will form. This brings me pain. One of the largest issues with our attempts to teach Truth in the first century was that people could not go beyond the injury of competition, power and control (all products of unworthiness or greed). This created the “Christianity” that we have seen warring with and excommunicating people throughout history.

There are no chosen people – God loves us all, equally. I believe there is only one way to at-onement with my Heavenly Parent and that is through living this Path. This does not mean I feel a ‘member’ of an ‘elite’. Quite the contrary – I feel humbled to have learned the Truth of my existence, I feel inspired to share the wonder with others and I feel deeply that I exist amidst millions of brothers and sisters and I desire to love them equally and to share who I am with them, to be open and genuine with every person regardless of what they believe and what they feel about me.

The way to from a cult is to cultivate an emotion of ‘us and them’, to breed haughtiness or condescension towards ‘others’. This is not my desire, nor Yeshua’s. We seek God and we seek to love. I seek to feel the cause of every emotion of unworthiness, rejection or fear within me – not to placate these feelings by surrounding myself with ‘like-minded’ people. I do relish the company of ‘like-hearted’ people – but these like-hearts are those who seek to love God and others and such seeking does not lead to division or separation.

True belonging is a sense we find within ourselves. For myself it is a knowledge, from God, that I am loveable – no matter what. The absence of this sense, the absence of a sense of self, causes us to seek out ‘our people’, ‘our tribe’, or even just ‘my kind of person!’ This division leads us far away from the loving state of viewing everyone as a brother or a sister.

Our fear of ‘cults’ and the label ‘cult’ really translates to a fear of control and powerlessness. When we heal these wounds we will know that with authentic self respect and love we can never be controlled or have our true power taken from us.

Self Punishment and Joy

I was chatting to our friend Joy the other day. We were discussing blocks, the things that prevent us experiencing our emotions and connecting to God.

I mentioned self punishment, the state of berating ourselves for not ‘getting it’, not being ‘good enough’, putting ourselves down and projecting anger at ourselves.

Joy said casually ‘Oh yes, self punishment, I tried that for a day. It was terrible! No wonder people feel like giving up on this path if they self punish.’

I burst into laughter. Self punishment is HUGE for me. I felt so happy for Joy that she could try it on and realise how damaging it was so quickly. If only I had just tried it out for a day, thought ‘this is ridiculous’ and given it up!

But seriously, self punishment is a big block for me for a reason. I wasn’t born with it – I was taught it in my childhood. If I blamed myself for how I was and what I felt, then no-one minded. If I spoke up, just to say what I felt, if I felt something was unfair, if I felt I was unloved, then there was trouble. I was blamed. The resistance in my parents to feeling their own emotions was so big that I got seriously ‘guilted’ and made to feel wrong if I triggered them. So I learned that I must be bad.

Right now, in my day to day life, it takes courage to stop self punishing. Underneath my self loathing and bashing lie the feelings of how much it hurt to be blamed, how unloved and alone I felt and how much I feel like a horrible person, completely unworthy of being loved. These are the feelings I must release.

Dr Susan Forward says “until you honestly assess who owns the responsibility.. (for the pain in your childhood).., you will almost certainly go through life shouldering the blame yourself. As long as you are blaming yourself you’ll suffer shame and self-hatred, and you’ll find ways to punish yourself” *

Shame, self hatred and self punishment have surely been my middle names.

The challenge for all of us, when we are finally brave enough to acknowledge what occurred in our childhood’s, is to grieve this treatment and not to go into blame, hatred and punishment of those who failed to love us. This is just another block and only damages us further.

To heal we must face the truth of what happened in our childhoods and grieve the lack of love. Only through the grieving can God reach us and teach us.

The fallacy that our parents did a good job only keeps us suppressing our pain and primes us to inflict damage on our own children when they arrive.

In my childhood I was ridiculed, treated condescendingly and laughed at for being my expressive, passionate self. My desire to punish myself now is only perpetuating what I was taught. It takes courage to cease punishing myself, to honour my own experience, and to submit to the pain. I am convinced however that this is the pathway to happiness and where I will uncover my joy.

little me!
Wishing you courage on the journey to find your joy,
Mary
* Susan Forward ‘ Toxic Parents’, pg 214