This Is How We Roll

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New Years used to be a time when I would review the past year in terms of the lessons learned, the highlights, the low lights and how much I felt I'd grown. Then I'd look forward - what did I want the next year to be about? what did I want to emphasize and focus on? I loved doing this. I kind of made a big deal out of it. I used to say that New Years was my most special annual event and I'd feel all mature and evolved about it.

Now it all feels kind of 'blah'. It reminds me of the message of Christmas 'Peace on earth, Goodwill to all men' that largely gets lost 11 1/2 months of the year and is then revived briefly while everyone trucks off to family and friends, has a BBQ and tries to promote peaceful, loving relationships under a tree with gift wrapping strewn about them.

(I read an article once that stated that one way to tell how much spiritual progress you had made in the past year was to see how you coped at Christmas time when you are thrown back into all of your family dynamics. I thoroughly agree! Its pretty difficult to fake deep spiritual transformation when you are faced with your parents, your in-laws, and elements of your immediate and extended family all in the same vicinity for an extended period).

So, why aren't we promoting resolving our issues and reviewing our lives more frequently than just one hurried month a year?

That's the question I've asked myself. 

As a result I am now far more aware of what I've learned and where I want to head on a far more regular  basis. 

All that said, it does turn out that a big phase in my learning does seems to be coming to a head at the moment, neatly coinciding with the end of 2012. I'm thinking and feeling a lot about my direction. 

At the moment I have more questions than answers about how I plan to continue to pursue my passion for teaching and sharing Divine Truth. But I don't feel too concerned. Times like these usually signal big changes. And change? Well to me, that's a good thing. 

I already have some concrete ideas about the way I wish to present this blog so look out for some shift in focus here in next couple of months. I am also still working on the 'Humility in Action' Study Course but there are already some slight changes to how I will be presenting it.

Today I'd like to tell you about a new tab (see above) 'Current Projects, Future Dreams' which will tell you about desires that Jesus and I are working towards. These will likely be 'Behind The Scenes' projects that we want to bring into being and are using our time, and resources to support. It is by no means a comprehensive list! There are many, many more dreams and desires that we have but I hope the page will be a small snapshot of our very short range focus at any given time.

I plan to be more transparent about what we do and how we do it. Recently I've realized that many people don't really have an awareness of these things. So I'm happy to share if it helps others to understand our ethos and approach. 

We are always living in God Reliance and by what the Law of Attraction is telling us. i.e. we know that if a desire is not coming to fruition seamlessly then there is a lesson of love for us to learn or embody. Honestly, lately, I'm finding this an exhilarating way to live. 

It goes something like this:

What do I want to do/ give? 

Will doing it be inline with what I have learned so far about God's Laws, love and taking personal responsibility? 

Yes? 

OK, lets start. 

If it doesn't work - why? 

What more do I need to learn about love, God etc? 

How can I address these issues both inside of myself and practically in my life?

Sorted?
Great lets keep going.....

Its how we roll and I feel closer to God every step of the way.

So folks, whatever you choose to get up to this 'silly season'  - have fun, be real, God Bless.

Mary

Bound

We are planting trees. 

Some have sat in the nursery a long time, waiting for us to prepare good earth. 

My breath catches as I ease this one out of its pot. Its roots are bound. 

I have to break up them up otherwise they’ll stay growing in circles and the tree never grow tall. 

It will live like it’s still got the limits of a 4x6 pot – when in fact all around is fertile soil. 

My hand is tentative as I work the roots. You see, I know what it’s like – this sudden shock. To have every part of where you thought you were going and growing to, suddenly exposed to naked air. Everything you thought to be truth abruptly in question. Sudden blank space where you thought there would be solid ground. 

It stuns you. It winds you. It’s scary and hurts more than a little. 

It can feel lonely and lost. 

It causes you to question: ‘What is right?’ ‘What is good?’ “What do I really want anyway?’ 

Nothing feels certain for a while. 

But in the end, I’ve come to give thanks for this process. In fact, I know that to grow I’m sure to repeat it. 

Just like this tree, we each of us have things in our roots that would keep us bound and small. We don’t always see them, these patterns of growth that keep leading us toward pain and restriction.

Life has led us to view some errors as truth, some truth as error. There is a great challenge in coming to understand that in at times what seems like comfort and goodness, is actually a limit and drain. There are threads of truth amongst the weave of error and humility is the only way I know to grow in discernment between the two, to grow this soul in love.

photo source with thanks

And this is it - I don’t know of a seamless, sedate and calm way to reassess who you are, and to truly make change. 

It takes a shake up to break out of the mould. 

Some roots are bound to error and breaking that away, breathing into new ways feels foreign and flawed sometimes. It takes faith in things higher to shift forward and expand.

At times, it takes bowing in deepest humility to discomfort and uncertainty, before the greatest truth can come.

So I steady my hands and make them firm as I pull away roots from their inward spiraling course. 

I know the joy that comes out of this kind of struggle and shock. 

I make a good bed for this tree to rest in. 

Don’t worry little one, this shock and upheaval will pass. And you will find yourself in a place to be nurtured; a new world of possibilities surrounds you. 

All this shaking loose is just you shaking free.

I smile and sigh. 

Go well little plant, find new earth, become something you cannot even yet dream. 

  We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein

Live From The Heart: Humility In Action

What I love about this speech is that Robert Kennedy is basically saying that each of us have a choice. We can choose to be humble to our pain and loss or to retaliate in hate and revenge, in avoidance of that pain.

I believe that humble hearts are the foundations of true and lasting peace on this planet.

Frankly though a problem I see at times is this:

People hear us say that humility involves an openness to every emotion within them.

People try to focus on their emotions without a clear desire to change themselves, see their errors or their embrace their lives. This creates self-absorption. This is not humble.

In fact these people are overlooking the fact that humility also involves openness to every situation and person they encounter. Someone who is self- centered, self-absorbed is the opposite of this. They are actually self-interested. They resist life and those around them in favour of focus on their own emotions.

A humble person allows their own emotional experience without resistance, and without valuing it over another person's experience.

Humility also involves honouring the truth that each of us are of equal value, as brother and sister, all children of God. A person spending all of their time and energy trying to manufacture humility is valuing their own pointless endeavour over the feelings and experiences of others. 

The fact that a person must try to embody humility means that they are resistive to simply putting it into action. When we want a thing, we engage it. When we can't, we find out why and take steps to change these blocks. But we never have to push or force ourselves into it. 

Trying, as I have often said before, is lying*.

Sad Fact: By trying to focus solely on their emotions people often miss the point. They become less humble and more self-involved. 

Often people try to be humble in order to gain approval, to feel they are 'living the path' the 'right' way. These people miss the point that 'The Way' is a journey, undertaken with the Father. He sees us and knows us but even the attempt to manufacture a facade of humility distances His Heart from our own. It is better to be honest about who we are and where we are at, than to push ourselves towards tears or to create 'paralysis through intellectual analysis'** of our 'issues'. 

Indeed, being real and open about who we are, without expectation or demand for approval or reward, these are the beginnings of walking in humility.

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While people focus totally on their own emotions and try to access them (thinking that this is what we mean is the basis of a relationship with God) they miss out on understanding true humility. Ironically, I have seen people living in emotional addiction, avoiding the deepest truths about themselves, and hiding it all behind the banner of 'humility'. 

Such people become isolated and separated. They use a 'spiritual term' to justify pushing their emotions onto others. In this, they not only distance themselves from God but they damage others' understanding of what it means to live humbly.

In contrast, true humility automatically creates connection, not only with self, but with others.  

The qualities of service, leadership, the willingness to confront error and bring about change, all flow from this magic quality humility.

To be humble we must stop trying, and begin allowing what God is truly telling us through our life and our feelings.

Recently I completed a series of interviews (no less than five) with Jesus surrounding the quality of true humility. I am inspired, as always, by the simplicity and power of what he spoke of.

I feel though that we all must be careful that simply hearing these truths does not lead us the arrogance of believing that we live them. That endeavor will take more of our time. The process of truly becoming humble is far more engaging, and beautiful.

Humility is the gift that we would offer our Heavenly Father in order that we would come to know Him and receive His Love and Truth.

It is the vital key to our homecoming.

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* This saying was told to me many years ago by a workshop leader. As the years go by, I see again and again, how true this is.

**The saying 'paralysis from analysis' comes from one of our dear friends, Susan.

The Gifts of Truth

I’ve been feeling inspired lately, recognising that

Change is possible

There is a quiet joy and celebration in me, as I notice “Wow, I’m different”

These are little changes, but they inspire me forward.

I am steeped in the quiet knowledge that

Courage is required if we are to truly Change

This quiet mantra is with me now. Not as an overbearing demand “You must change! You must grow!”

The cries of “If you don’t grow you aren’t worthy, if you’re not perfect noone will love you!” that have plagued me in the past are gone or fading.

Instead there is desire to change and grow. A deeper knowledge of Grace. And an understanding that

When we live in fear we loose sight of change

When we substitute fear for Truth in our lives, fear becomes our ruler, it restricts us, controls us, and limits our capacity to change. In fact fear screams at us “It’s not possible!” and without Truth we have nothing to combat the command.

I can see that the changes in me are only happening because I am growing a sincere desire to not only receive Truth about all things in my life, but also the willingness to live in Truth and to honour Truth at all times. This is where the courage bit really comes in!

But as always, when we step into more harmony with God, there are gifts.

I am finding, through my living and not just my thinking, that

One of the gifts of Truth is trust.

When a person is loyal to Truth – always and no-matter-what – the people around them can trust their word and their actions. A gift is born – the gift of closer bonds and deeper intimacy.

When I have the courage to live in Truth I literally feel the warms of God’s Love and Laws supporting me. Our relationship – the magic connection between me and my Creator (how humbling it is) – can truly commence. It is enabled by my willingness to acknowledge that it is He, not I, that controls how this Universe and the course of my life runs.

Fear, that harsh tyrant, would have me believe that I must control and protect every aspect of myself and my life, or all will be lost. This position places me, not only in opposition with all of the Loving Laws that God has created to guide me home to Him and who I truly am. But it also, in its arrogance, says that I must be the creator of who I am and what I become.

The Truth is something far more magical.

The Truth is that a Greater Hand than mine created me. He imprinted within me the design for a creature that I, in my current fear bound state, cannot even imagine. I must only surrender to His Love and Laws to enable the more beautiful, creative and loving creature to be born. 

Or it would be truer to say

I allow myself to be born again.

All of this grows, this trust in my Father, the deeper intimacy in my relationships, through my honour of Truth and thus my refusal to accept fear as my ruler.

Trust can only grow as we live in Truth.

In this season when there is such an emphasis on ‘gifts’ my wish for you, dear reader, is that you may begin to receive the gifts that Truth can bring to your life and to know that all things are possible with the One Who Loves the most.

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

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

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."

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[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.