Tag Archives: Love

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

Living In Fear & the Freedom to Choose Differently

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Does It Mean “Living in Fear”?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfortunately we do this everyday.

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

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Signs We Are Living In Fear

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

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

Denial

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

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

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

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

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

1. Avoidance

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

2. Attempts to control & manipulate

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

3. Anger

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

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

 

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Awareness – It’s Not Enough

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Really Releasing Fear

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

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

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

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

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

1. Always allow the experience of it.

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

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

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

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

Understanding the Power of Choice

Fear when left unchallenged pervades our life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love Words {Jesus Quotes}

I live with a guy who says great stuff… like all the time…

But then you probably already know that? I’d say I’m preaching to the converted.

Anyway, he saves me from deep pot-holes of doubt and self-deception often… again you’re not really surprised are you?

He inspires me daily. He lifts me up with his faith, and his down-to-earth expression of the most glorious Truths there are.

Quite honestly, I question how we all don’t just sit down and listen.. really listen.. to him more.

I see people get thrown off  by his laid back nature, or the lack of polish or fancy prose in his delivery. He’s fun, he doesn’t put on airs and graces, and he doesn’t demand anything from his listener.. but boy does he say great things.

He also lets us all have our doubts and objections, and our general thrashing it out internally while he speaks. He feels it all, and knows that in our preoccupation with maintaining emotional equilibrium, we often miss half the wisdom in his sentence.

That’s why I write stuff down. Because I sense there’s gold in them there words, and sometimes I need to catch my breath, and revisit, to fully soak them in.

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I think he looks so adorable in this shot – but I’m not sure he likes it.

Even at home, I scribble incredible things he says in the margin of my journals.

While I make the dinner, or he does the laundry, he tells me soul truths, God Truths. They flow easily and unassumingly from him – products, not of doctrine or dogma, but of lived experience.

I swear, on my darkest days, he literally saves my soul. He guides me to the light, he makes poetry out of this existence (and if he read this now he’d probably tell me I’m being too fancy and pomp.. to him he’s just a guy who loves God).

One thing he’s taught me is this (my somewhat awkward paraphrase here):

God’s Truth doesn’t need embellishment or fanfare or dressing-up – its power speaks for itself. When we try to make it fancier, or more palatable to others, we, in arrogance, believe we know better than God about how to reach a person, about how to deliver a gift.

In effect we are saying that the Truth, as simply as it exists, needs modifying, for human consumption.

We are denying that the fabric of God’s Universe is built in Truth, and, as His Children, our souls are designed to respond to pure, unadulterated Truth. If we believe that God’s Truth is said thing, why would we feel it could be shared in a way that seems ‘softer’, ‘prettier’ or ‘kinder’?

Isn’t God the most Caring, Loving character there is?

So wouldn’t sharing His Truth, just as it exists about any given matter, be the most caring and loving thing to do?

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I try to remember when I write, that simple and direct is kind and loving (I’m a bit prone to flowery prose and apt to try to over-explain to get people ‘on side’).

Jesus taught me that if I say it how it is with love, and without pressure for people to agree, or any desire for them to change, then I give a gift.

I give the gift of truth, and I also give the listener the gift of allowing them whatever feelings they have in response. It doesn’t mean that I’ll stand there and absorb abuse from the listener, but neither would I try to stop them from feeling any emotion that might be triggered through our exchange.

God Himself knows, that sometimes its taken me.. eh hem… a long time… to make peace with some of His Truths, and for some He’s still waiting on a call back from me. I haven’t quite given Him the nod on everything He’s trying to teach me – much as logic would compel me otherwise, I’ve got un-felt emotions that make me resist.

So letting others take their time to work through whatever emotions the Truth triggers in them, well that’s love. We’ve all got error that’s going to shake loose at some stage or another. Sometimes a big Truth (or a little one) delivered by you, by me, or by Jesus, might be the very thing that starts that soul-quake in another.

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So, reeling myself back in from that tangent, lets get back to the actual ‘Jesus Quotes’ part of this post.

The other night, we were talking, and Jesus casually mentioned a few things to me.

(Did I mention that this man takes my breath away?)

I thought that they were worth a share.

“Love is knowing that you can leave at any time – but wanting to stay anyway.”
Jesus, February 2013

“If you don’t want to have anything to do with love – then the “love” that you’ve had wasn’t any good. (i.e. it wasn’t love in the first place)”
Jesus, February 2013.

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A brief postscript:

I’m not sure if my idea to regularly share my ‘Jesus Quotes’ will work here. Are you now reading them now, saying, “Yes so? I knew that?”

At the time he says these things – they are very significant to me. My soul is open and they become a very loving, yet shocking, suckerpunch to my reality.

My intellect (the one usually in control) would smugly say, (despite extreme evidence to the contrary), ‘sure I know that!’

But in the precise moment, these truths strike my soul and suddenly I’m dissolving.

“what, really? Love isn’t about obligation? duty? sacrifice? All that ‘love’ that made me feel guilty, and came conditionally – that wasn’t love?”

Sure I might say I get it with my head – but do I live that, connect to that, really know that?

No.

(And if you are someone who read the quotes above and said ‘so what, not so profound’ – does your life really offer you evidence that your know and live these things?)

Quite simply, when my man says stuff sometimes, its like my heart hears it for the first time.

I cry.

I write it down because I want to revisit these Truths time and again. I know that if they entered my soul (not just my tenacious intellect) that they would change my life forever.

What do you think – does it work to tell you too? Or should I just keep scribbling this stuff in my margins, saving it up for some other purpose?