Tag Archives: humility

Jesus & Mary Update + 2025 Australian & International Events

It’s been a while since my last update. Our life has been increasingly busy over the past few years. And, while that is a challenge in terms of our personal progression, it is wonderful to be back presenting truth publicly again. We also love working together with others to expand the God’s Way organization and develop projects here in the local area.

We plan to travel overseas each year for the next four to five years, or until political events or economic limitations prevent us from doing so. We believe that face to face meetings are the most powerful in assisting people to understand and practically apply God’s Principles. And so, we are doing what we can with the time and resources that we have, to offer that opportunity to as many people as possible. And while we already have regular contact with people here in Queensland, we are also open to interstate travel in Australia over the coming years.

Of course, we are aware that our personal progression remains vital to our personal happiness, our energy levels, and the extent to which we can continue to share God’s Truth. So, we are constantly weighing our need for personal time against our other desires.

We face the juggle between presenting material, the need to focus on our own progression, the work required to edit and share recordings, project work in God’s Way and care of our own home and property here in Wilkesdale.

Our Greetings & Gratitude

Jesus and I returned home from our round the world trip in November. While the trip was very busy for us, it was our great pleasure to meet so many of you. Thank you to those of you who participated in the talks in a spirit of curiosity and openness.

Thank you to those of you who donated to us during the talks and a warm and special thanks to our friends in Portugal, Belgium and North Carolina who gave us their homes to stay in while we were in those locations, and, in Portugal and North Carolina, to people who gifted us a venue to hold talks in.

We also want to acknowledge and thank those people who helped with finding other venues, who loaned us their vehicles, who dropped us off and picked us up at airports, helped with set up and pack up at events and arranging equipment hire. The generosity of each of you not only helped us to make the trip possible but also made the experience all the richer, as we got to spend a little more time with you all.

We would also like to thank those in Australia who donated towards the trip and to everyone who has made donations to us since returning home. In particular, one individual donated significant funds to us which has enabled us to pay for the next overseas trip and to purchase new equipment which will hopefully make it easier to make video recordings at future talks. A special thanks to David!

Finally, thank you to those people who have assisted me over the past few months to find new venues for our 2025 world trip. Over the past few months, a small team of two or three people in England, Portugal, Canada and the US have investigated and visited a great many venues on our behalf. We have now secured a venue in each of these locations and we are extremely grateful for the efforts of our helping teams.

There are quite a few considerations we must take into account when searching for a venue. These include the size and layout of the room, lighting, acoustics, comfort for participants (including the type of chairs and number of rest rooms), proximity to airports, parking and wheelchair access. And of course, venues must be OK with renting to a couple claiming to be Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

On our return I designed a research sheet outlining our venue requirements to assist the people who were helping with the venue search. They then had to spend quite a lot of time firstly finding potentially suitable venues, checking them against our requirements and then visiting ‘finalist’ venues to ensure that they lived up to their advertising.

What We’ve Been Up To Since We Returned Home

Trip Planning & Preparation

As soon as we returned home in November, we started to get organized for our next overseas trip. We wanted to capitalize on the lessons we learned in the prior trip and, as we had decided to visit the northern hemisphere earlier in their summer this year, we needed to act quickly to find venues and accommodation.

We decided that for our overseas travel in 2025, we wanted to have less of a carbon footprint (and less of a sleep deficit). This meant reducing our number of stops to four countries. We decided upon England, Portugal, Canada and the USA.

We’ll hold a three day seminar in each of these countries, with the first being held in England at the end of May. This year, we’ve extended our stay in each country to allow more time for informal catch ups and possible social gatherings in each place. Sometimes the informal discussions we have with sincere people are quite powerful and meaningful for those involved.

This year we also want to be able to share audio recordings of the events more quickly. Having less events will allow time for Jesus to edit the audio recordings as we travel. While we know that a number of people kindly made ‘bootleg’ audio recordings of our last trip so that others could keep up with the presentations as they happened, the quality of these recordings was not as clear or easy to follow as our own. If we can share our high quality recordings more quickly this will be of benefit to everyone.

At this stage, in 2025, we are hoping to expand our recording capabilities to include not just audio but also to make video recordings at the events. However, researching and testing a set up that we can use (and carry) internationally, takes quite a lot of work.

Since our return in November, Jesus has been very busy researching and trialing new video recording potentials. It is quite the task since the gear we carry with us needs fit in two bags, meet the airline weight limit, allow for recording a three day event, be reliable, compact and easy to use. Adding video recording capabilities means not just adding new cameras, but also extra cabling, recording devices, screens to check camera feeds, along with a storage server to copy and back up the recordings.

Jesus has carefully selected items that he thinks will meet our requirements. Each new piece of equipment that is purchased often takes weeks to arrive and once it is here, must be tested on arrival to ensure there are no faults. After that, various other tasks are necessary such as firmware updates, learning how to use the devices and/or software etc. Only after all that has happened, can the items be trialed in the context of a full audio and video recording set up to see if it will offer an effective solution. It is taking a lot of time in an already busy schedule. For this reason, it may be that in 2025 we still do a simplified version of video and audio recording but in future years we hope to have a more complete set up.

After making the video recordings, our additional challenge remains in us finding the time, or willing volunteers, to edit these recordings. There are some new people who have expressed a desire to help with this task and we hope to be able to train them in what is required. Jesus has already spent time with them over the past few months educating them about the job, the necessary computer hardware and software required to complete the edits, and the important spiritual principles (such as thoroughness and attention to detail) that will be required.

With all of that said, I’m pleased to say that we have now have confirmed 2025 overseas events, to be held in the following locations:

Cirencester, England
Vila Real, Portugal
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA

You can now book into these events via the clickable links or by visiting: event.divinetruth.com

Australian Events

In December, we made the decision to cancel the events that we were planning to hold in Melbourne, Sydney & Wangaratta. We were looking forward to visiting those places and seeing the people we know there. However, we felt the interest was quite low, especially amongst people who have never been to an event before and our schedule is already very busy. The time spent to drive to those places (over one week, one way) would have taken us away from other pressing commitments in Queensland.

In the past few months, we have enjoyed spending time with a number of interstate and overseas visitors here in the local area. These people have attending the local God’s Way Humility in Practice day events and the open group discussions in our living room.

We have continued to hold these open group discussion in our living room in Wilkesdale since our return. In the past, these were more ad hoc afternoon events, and those in attendance were simply people who were already on the property having taken part in God’s Way Ltd humility in practice activities in the morning. However, we have now started opening up these events to the general public which requires people booking in via our events page.

We, along with some of the God’s Way Ltd members, have been working over the past few months to clear out and organize the Divine Truth studio so that these discussions can be held there in future.

The studio is a larger and more comfortable space than our home living room. Having talks there will also save us a lot of time. Currently, before and after each event in our living room, Jesus and I must spend a number of hours laying cable, setting up video cameras, a mixing desk, various other devices and then testing.

Over the past four or five years, the Divine Truth studio has been swamped with a number of God’s Way and Divine Truth technical building and upgrade projects. We and our small team of helpers have spent four solid weeks, sorting, organizing, repurposing, and rehousing much of the gear. Jesus has been the director of all of this work, having to make hundreds of decisions in a day about what to do with various equipment, decide if it is still needed or if it can by given away, finding storage solutions that will enable him to access everything (from cables and screws to motherboards and speakers) in future so that he can work smoothly on all of the myriad jobs he is currently responsible for (this includes all of the God’s Way & Divine Truth computer systems and network design, upgrades, repairs and support, along with being the man who plans, understands and directs all of our video and audio recording).

To help with the organization, new shipping containers have been moved onto the property to act as storage units. God’s Way participants have painted, applied a new flooring, and installed shelving in each container.

In January, we held a seminar in Murgon, followed by a three-day Humility in Practice event which was co-hosted with the God’s Way organisation.

It was great to see many new, along with familiar, faces at the seminar.

The humility in practice event, which was held in the week after the seminar, was a great way for people to participate in an environmental recovery project together. The outdoor team worked on removal of the Lantana camara plant which is an invasive species taking over a lot of land in rural Australia.

God’s Way Ltd is working on a number of experimental techniques for manually removing the Lantana plant and have been manufacturing special tools to aid in the process.

Since infestations not only dominate eastern Australia but also large swathes of land in India, God’s Way Ltd aims to perfect and then freely share effective and time efficient methods for Lantana removal.

During the humility in practice event, the lighter duties team began work on a new project which I am excited to share more about soon.

It involves creating a durable but biodegradable ‘wipe’ to assist everyone who has transitioned to a bidet! This product will be available to people worldwide.

In future, people wishing to support the project can make a monetary donation or donate good quality second-hand towel and flannel to be used in the production of the wipes.

More about this project will be shared in future on the God’s Way Ltd website.

In March, we’ll be repeating this sequence by holding a seminar in Murgon on the 7th, 8th & 9th, followed by a humility in practice event in Wilkesdale on the 11th-13th of the month.

You book into these events here: event.divinetruth.com

Creation of New God’s Way Office Facilities

Divine Truth has entered a joint agreement with God’s Way Ltd to make the Divine Truth studio into an office/studio space that will be shared between the two organizations. This will allow God’s Way to have dedicated work space for the first time and to complete their own video recordings in the space as well.

Jesus currently provides all of the digital and systems services to both Divine Truth and God’s Way, including completing back ups of all God’s Way data. At the moment, God’s Way Ltd data is stored on mobile servers which must to be brought to the Divine Truth studio for Jesus to back up onto the servers housed there. Having all of the technical hardware on the one site will help reduce some of Jesus’ workload in this regard.

To support the increased personnel at the studio, God’s Way has been building a large new shed for water collection (funded by Jesus & I) and a new shipping container toilet block which will have a soil producing septic attached.

God’s Way Involvement

On our return there were a lot of jobs to do in order to assist God’s Way directors with the management of the organization.

Before the Annual General Meeting was held in November, Jesus checked the God’s Way Ltd financial records and found a few items to be amended. I completed a full edit and rewrite of the annual report. The report, which includes the company financial statements, can be viewed on the God’s Way website here.

In December, a number of God’s Way regular participants hosted a party for everyone who had been involved in humility in practice days throughout the year.

Jesus continues to lead various construction projects within God’s Way, including the completion of the large water collection shed on our property. We also enjoy mentoring the company directors, helping projects to move forward, and ensuring that the organization meets its legal requirements and is prepared to welcome new participants.

Recent heavy rains in the area highlighted some drainage problem around the new water collection shed.

Jesus and Cornelius came up with a plan to better manage the water.

You can stay up to date with more of God’s Way activities via the God’s Way blog.

Jesus and I believe it is our great privilege to share God’s Truth with others. We thank you for your engagement with the Truth and your support for our continued desire that everyone in the world has the opportunity to learn that God’s Laws exist and that God’s Love is available to every person.

These immeasurable gifts, of Love and Law, bring lasting joy to anyone who willingly engages with them. What a precious thing to know!

Until next time,

Mary & Jesus

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Reflections on Relationships: July Newsletter

Hey everybody,

I was going to start by saying July wasn’t one of our best months. But upon further consideration I think it’s more accurate to say it wasn’t a fun month. It was a month of facing challenges (me), embracing new truth (me), speaking up (both of us), making solid decisions (both of us), and taking positive action in line with the kind of relationships we both desire. So, in reality that is actually very good use of a month of time.

As I wrote this update a definite theme relating to relationships emerged. In fact there are so many lessons and principles illustrated throughout the latter sections on our relationship and family visit that to start with I’m just going to do a quick round-up of general news and offer our thanks to those of you who donated to us in July. Thank you very much; we really appreciate you and your generosity.

Studio

During July most of the finishing touches were added to our new studio. The desks and benches were installed and Lena, Igor and I gave the place a thorough cleaning top to bottom. There are just a few minor jobs sealing up the outside that will be completed this week and then we are ready to move our equipment in.

We will then start the process of testing the sound and may have to create a few sound absorbers to reduce any echo that may be there.

We hope to be operational by the end of August and Jesus and I are really looking forward to creating some regular content for you all. We have SO MANY topics we want to discuss. Even if we talked for 12 hours a day for the next year we still wouldn’t be through all of what we want to catch up on. Needless to say we won’t be talking for 12 hours a day for any period of time so we will just take it slowly and make sure what we do create is of a high quality in terms of content and technical production.

Other Various Updates

Jesus has still not had a chance to do an update to the website but that should occur in August.

We now have 269 clips on our clips channel. These clips are all searchable via the YouTube channel so I hope you find them useful. The tagging on these clips is quite thorough so if you are looking for truth on a certain topic you will find that the search function embedded in the page is very useful. For example, you can simply search words like ‘vegan’, ‘partner relationship’ or ‘return of fourteen’ and you will come up with a variety of clips from different talks where Jesus has discussed these specific topics.

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This nifty screen shot from Lena & Igor shows you where the search function can be found on individual youtube channels. The big purple arrow points to it.

Choosing Our Relationships

As I mentioned in our last newsletter we welcomed many Millers (Jesus’ family) to our home early on in July. They stayed with us for a little under a week and there were some interesting discussions had. It became really clear early on that the other Miller’s desires (apart from those of Tristan) were in line with a lot of small talk and façade and there were definite attempts to control what topics of conversation were allowed. While Jesus and I are happy to chat about what people have been up to, what environmental projects we have going on, and even topics like politics, travel, weather and current events, there are times when we, through the simple expression of being ourselves, bring up issues like emotions, and past family events.

Our guests weren’t happy with that and so in the end at our request they, with the exception of Tristan, left our company a few days early. While I had some personal emotions to feel about their desire to control us and attack Jesus, Jesus and I had some great discussions after this all happened.

We decided that we only want personal relationships with people who:

  • value and embrace humility
  • desire truth and
  • want to love

People who don’t value or want truth live in façade. These people, through their resistance to truth, also exert severe pressure on the people around them to not be truthful about who they are, what they want, and attempt to force people to accept everyone’s façade.

People who don’t want to be humble towards their feelings and who don’t want to love are going to punish the people around them for their unresolved issues, live in addiction and not be concerned about treating others with a lack of consideration, respect or love.

Our desire to only form close relationships with people who have the three qualities I listed above applies irrespective of whether a person is a blood relative, their partner or an old friend. Worldly expectations – familial or otherwise – no longer apply.

Conversely any person, whoever they are or how I meet them, if they are someone who is humble, who speaks truthfully and desires to love then I’m interested to get to know them. They don’t have to share my belief about God, the Universe or even who we are. If someone has those three qualities then, in the context of a relationship, they can be trusted to treat me well or at least work things out without the need for condescension, attack or bullying.

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.

So, I have been reflecting on and feeling about these three states of being myself for some time. Having Jesus’ family gathering was a great way to bring a lot of things into clear focus for me. In the wake of it all I’m excited to be even more clear and assertive in my desire to only share myself with those who love, or who aspire to love through being humble and embracing truth.

During the drama we both fell ill with a throat, chest, and head flu. Neither of us has been that sick for years but gladly as we worked through things we got better again.

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Our Soulmate Relationship

Jesus and I have also been working on some relationship issues that I feel really positive about.

I should probably say that we are always working on the betterment of our relationship but at the moment I feel that I am making some key shifts that will drastically improve our individual happiness and unity as a couple. This is where some of my long term resistance has been and it feels great to make some changes and feel the positive difference.

I am beginning to experience the difference between ‘working on emotions’ in order to ‘get through them’ or to ‘solve a problem’ and the true state of surrender.

As I start to understand and even experience the state of surrender it feels a lot like changing from a ‘thinking being’, governed by intellect and analysis, who sometimes has feelings, into being my feelings with thoughts, decisions and aspirations that stem from those feelings. It is the allowance and embrace of all of my emotions, all of the time. Not because it is the ‘right’ thing to do or because I want to ‘deal with something’ but because this is who I truly am – a feeling being, a soul with a body and mind. This is the Way that Jesus has been speaking about for so many years.

It still feels awkward to try and explain it but as nearly as I can put it right now; surrender is accepting the truth that God created me as an emotional being and my wanting to experience myself as such again.

I’ve fought this state for years and years and honestly I observe that almost everybody who hears Divine Truth does this. I’ve come to realise that I’ve been terrified of just how emotional I actually am and I perceived that others would judge and attack this in me. I’ve judged my surrendered state as being a ‘histrionic woman’ who won’t be taken seriously. Ironically I’ve been far closer to histrionics and melodrama in my resistive state than I ever will be in a surrendered state. In fact, surrender is the opposite of being dramatic, emotionally manipulative and over-the-top.

When I allow myself to surrender my passions and aspirations are impossible to ignore. Allowing more of my emotions, without being selective, I find that what I want to do and how I want to create is impossible to ignore. That feels great. I sometimes feel scared – how will others treat me when I embrace my love for God to its full degree? – but in this surrendered state even feeling that fear feels good. I find it ironic since I have been telling myself for years that connecting to myself will be traumatic, only leading me to be sad all the time and to realise that I am a terrible person. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

So, how does my working on all this relate to our soulmate relationship? Well, obviously my resistance to allowing all of myself all of the time has a huge impact on how Jesus and I can connect. It is impossible for us to be emotionally and physically intimate while I am resisting the experience and sharing of my true emotional self. But even more than that, my judgement of the surrendered state which has stunted my own soul growth has also had an impact on Jesus’ personal progression.

My judgement of surrender has caused me to judge Jesus in his surrendered state. I have attempted to control him, a lot of our life, our interactions with each other and with other people in an attempt to prevent my own emotions. I’ve also been quite needy and oppressive, wanting him to share my feelings, validate them, help me avoid ‘making mistakes’ in love and basically tried to consume our life with a focus on me and my resistance. Jesus in an open, emotional state triggers my own emotions which I have wanted to prevent. And I’ve also lived in fear of how both of us would be judged and viewed if we were in a sensitive, surrendered state with other people. I’ve been angry about surrender and withdrawn into my ‘numb’ state again and again in an attempt to avoid the situation. This would lead Jesus to feel that the situation was hopeless and he would have to ask me to either leave or to deal with my emotions.

I would then become all ‘goal orientated’ about ‘getting to’ my feelings which is a completely different thing to choosing to live my life as a feeling being. Because of my resistance, as much as we talked about surrender and the Way, I really didn’t get how wrong I was getting it. I would ‘try harder’ to feel rather than surrendering to feeling all the time.

I am pointing this out because I believe that there is a valuable lesson here. The truth is that a person who is only interested in preventing their own feelings (like I have been) also has no interest in the feelings of others and actively tries to prevent others from feeling their feelings. That’s the truth and that is what I and anyone who resists surrender will do automatically.

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Because Jesus was already in the feeling state – he was a feeling being – when I met him it has been pretty exhausting for both of us living together. In effect I have been fighting my emotional self and fighting him on being himself every day. Whether voiced or not, there has been complete emotional disharmony between each half of our soul. There has been a difference in our states – one of us in a state of desire to live in the soul, the other in a state of desire to control the soul. Jesus has been trying to address this difference with me for the longest time and I’ve been trying to ignore it. I haven’t really wanted to understand it because it challenged my sense of control.

This is a more pronounced effect than that of two people living together who are both resisting surrender. These two people are actually helping each other to avoid surrender and so there is no conflict between their states of being.

Jesus’ sensitivity to my judgement, along with my overt and covert attempts at outright control of him, has made it difficult for him to remain in his previously surrendered state. Because of the extreme amount of pressure I placed on Jesus to conform to my non-feeling state Jesus has found it extremely difficult to feel any emotion while in my company. This has meant us sleeping apart for very long periods throughout our entire relationship, the latest period being 18 months. For Jesus sleeping together has seemed impossible since it feels like there is a soul based argument going on 24×7.

As we continue to work through this issue Jesus has been reflecting on his invitation and allowance of me living with him, in a state so opposed to his own, for so long. He presumed that me saying that I wanted to progress meant that I was desiring to live The Way. When in fact, despite what I may have been telling myself, I have been in direct opposition to surrender.

I have wanted power and control over my emotions and the only way I was going to get that was to have power and control over my partner and to have him feed my addictions. My over riding projection has been ‘don’t do anything that will trigger my emotions’ because I believed that being an emotional being 100%of the time would remove my power and expose me to some sort of harm. In this state I turned every confrontation of my emotions into a competition or a power play. Any person in an unemotional state who wants to stay unemotional will always feel and behave this way. Judgement of and desiring to control our emotions makes us view open emotion and honesty in another as a threat to our value, worth and power.

The truth is that surrender feels like the opposite of powerlessness. It is the end to competition. In this state emotions don’t feel like a sign of weakness but a beautiful experience of self. There is no judgement of what is felt only aspiration to experience it. And through that experience we can heal.

This much is clear; for a loving relationship to survive both parties have to be feeling beings.

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Jesus and I really want to talk about all of this in more detail in future presentations because this change in state is the key to living the Way and knowing God. Although Jesus has spoken about it many times before I notice that just about everyone who has heard Divine Truth is still struggling to even want to make this transition. So I feel that anything we can share that might encourage, inspire and assist people in this area is worthwhile.

Thank you again to everyone who has donated to us over the past month. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to live my passion to share Divine Truth with the world and each of you help to make that possible.

I hope that you are all experiencing your own growth and changes and that life is rewarding for you.

Until next time, with deep love and gratitude,

Mary

Welcoming Sorrow, Honouring Self

About a week ago I had a series of realisations. Like a mini power point presentation in my soul, every couple of hours ponderings in my heart, snippets of discussions with Jesus or pages I had read or written would coalesce and God would download another whopping ‘Truth Slide’ for my soul to tremble at.

Below is the list of my ‘Truth Slides’. I can’t programme html to save myself so they appear as numbered points but if you can imagine God gave them to me in this really cool cascading flow chart, every couple of hours the next slide would appear and I could feel how it snugly related to the previous one.

1. I have never really loved anyone. I have always been in addictions in close relationships.

(Do you sort of get to feel why I needed a couple of hours before the next slide?)

2. I am in almost complete denial of my true self. I have squashed my true self and all of my feelings into   a tiny ball in a dark corner of my soul. Every now and then when she tries to appear I (judge) stamp on her to make her more squished and tiny. My true self is full of sorrow

3. My inauthentic self, created to get approval and avoid my sadness is not content, confident or able to love authentically because she is created through addiction. She is needy by nature.

4. If I want to know and accept my true self I must be willing to accept her sorrow. She is full of pain. I want to reject pain but now I realise that pain is a large part of the real me. I can’t know me unless I let my grief be present and tell its story. In order to know myself I must open my arms and welcome pain.

5. Allowing my sorrow will not only connect me with my true self but it will bring about my healing. Even in my sorrow I will be able to love and give authentically because I will have reached an authentic place within myself.

6. My authentic self knows and desires her Soulmate (my inauthentic self stresses about not desiring or knowing – this is just an effect emotion) My authentic self knows what she wants and what is good for her.

In the wake of the God engineered slide show in my soul I have this to say.

We tell ourselves that the adult, invented self is strong and the protector, that the child within is weak and needs protection. In fact it is the child within that holds the wisdom, she is the one connected with her emotions, the emotions that make us sensitive to what is good, safe and wise for our well-being and happiness. Our denial of the painful feelings, created when we were harmed, suppressed, bullied or disrespected as children, desensitizes us to the passion, creativity, surety, desire and heart-trust that is innate to our fully feeling selves.

We must welcome our pains in order to know our desires. We have been taught to trust our minds and rationality (and look where it’s got us: sick, divorced, overweight, discontented, dissatisfied, unsure, cynical and mistrusting). If we can find the scrunched up part inside that holds our true self, full of pain; if we can sit with it and ask it to expand, to stretch out into the fullness of our being we will feel its pain and loneliness. We will feel its fears and losses but we also will for the first time in so long be feeling our true selves and there is so much power in a person connected to themselves. This feeling creature that we were created to be, is also aware and connected to everything around it. It feels nature, it feels others, it allows its own feelings and as a result it knows what it wants! If we desire Love and God from this space the potentials for peace, joy and fulfillment are no longer even potentials – they become realities.

The key for me is to begin to view my pain as something different to ‘bad’, ‘the unpleasant part’, the ‘please can I get it over and done with’ thing that I have to do. I want to love me and that means loving my pain because it is a part of me right now. In fact it tells my story, by allowing my pain I am honouring my story, I am coming to know the complete me. By judging and avoiding my pain I am judging the largest part of me (largest for now). I am saying to the real me ‘you are unpleasant’, ‘I wish you weren’t there’, ‘you make my life hard and miserable’.

The starker truth I have come to face is that I, the manufactured me, have made my life unpleasant and miserable and the more I fight the real me, the more miserable I become. I have blamed ‘real me – full of pain’ for unhappiness only to realise now that allowing ‘real me – full of pain’ unlocks my joy and even during the feeling of my pain she, the real me, has the capacity to love, to make decisions, to create and connect with others.

We must change our attitudes to pain. We must desire not only God but ourselves – and if our true selves come clad in pain, abuse, loss or fear we must welcome them and let their grief tell our story, for ultimately they will become our greatest teachers, they will instruct us in love. They have lived so long without it, they have felt the absence of it so acutely that, when we allow them, our darker feelings will give us knowing and make us hyper-aware of what it loving and what is not.

God, of course, will be our constant companion but at present so many of us invite Him from our inauthentic selves. We say “God, come sit for a while, come for tea and I’ll show you my best self, we won’t talk about that scrunched up part of me in the distant, dark corner down the hall because, frankly, she bothers me. I wish you would just clear her out of here, take her off my hands.”

And all God can do is smile gently and try to have us hear His response “But my beloved, this part is you and I love her so much. My Arms of Love long to embrace her – if only you would embrace her yourself.