RESPONSIBILITY 13

Thank you, Kim for leading the group last Sun.

P. 83-87

I do not have recording for last week, so I will include some of that material in this discussion.

A thought: 

Although Paul's books do not focus on the idea of Illusion as much as A Course in Miracles does, the concept is still quite  present. What I am becoming aware of is that the illusions that are spoken of are much more illusions of the mind rather than simply ones of the material world.

So I look around me and I could say, This chair is an illusion, this body is an illusion, and on and on.” That kind of focus can really make me crazy at times and what it does is, it truly distracts me from the illusion that I need to be working on in the first place. My illusions are reflected in my perception of things and oftentimes my perception of myself, my qualities, and those of other people are distorted or limited by my judgment, and judgment as it is spoken of is simply another reflection  of fear.

************

The major focus of this section is about being of service. I realize that each one of us can create all sorts of images of what that might be like-being a doctor or a lawyer or any one of what we call the “helping professions.” Now that might be true for some and yet that limited restriction leaves many people out of the picture.

The simplest and most profound way I have heard this spoken of is when Ram Dass said, “The only thing I have to give another human being is who I am at this particular moment.” I interpret that as saying, “The only thing I have to give another human being is my perception of myself at this particular moment.”

I can perceive myself as not having anything to give you, as being a victim; I could also know myself as a Divine Child of God and in that awareness I can give to you from the depths of my  being. 

“Now how each of you serves in this manifestation of your life is predicated on many things. You all have gifts. You all have ways of knowing yourself through what you choose in your worth. The gifts you have been given have been meant to be presented to your fellows in compassion, in worth, in sharing, so that others may benefit from your presence. As you all give your gifts forward as your expression, you align to each other in your worth, and your compassion for your fellows, your realization of gifts forward as your expression, you align to each other in your worth, and your compassion for your fellows, your realization of their divine inherent worth, is amplified and the world that you live in plays its music in song in perfect ways.”

There were a few questions that were asked that might serve as a jumping off point for each one of us to become more in touch with the unique expression of the Divine that we are. That is the ultimate service that we offer to ourselves and all other beings and that is living out of the highest truth of Who We Are. 

“How am I to be responsible for what I don’t know?” 

Where is your love? 

Where is your passion? 

Where is your joy? 

They will always teach you what your worth is, and how you claim your worth will show you how you serve. If you like to paint, go paint; if you like to cook, go cook; if you like to speak, go speak. But you will be in service as yourself as you align to your worth in whatever way is expressed as you in the highest way possible.”

I was mentioning in class the question it seemed so meaningful to me at this point in my life was “Where is your joy?

One of my biggest learnings is the realization that, for whatever reasons, whether having to do with this lifetime or others, I have a tendency to be drawn into negativity. In a strange way fear, shame, guilt, worry all seem to have a rather seductive effect on me. 

*Now you might notice, as I just did In this moment, that this partial description of me is not the truth, but a perception that is a very limited piece of awareness. I was defining myself in terms of a perception rather than the truth. Do you get a sense of how this is continually happening to us and that the spiritual work we are doing is freeing us from these outdated perceptions that never were the truth?

This is why we keep repeating this Mantra of Truth, “I know who I am I know what I am I know how I serve.” We are not saying that to create something new we are affirming it as being the truth.

A classmate mentioned a passage from The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament. I think it is especially important tor realize our “stuff” does not just disappear, but its hold on us becomes less as we work.

From NTI Book of Acts Chapter 19

(v 8 – 10)1The beginning of your path may seem to be a time of study, reflection and questioning, but more is happening within your mind than that. 2You are beginning to let Me loosen thoughts you have held firmly to until now. 3It is important that these false beliefs be loosened, so you can take the next step to let them go. 4Therefore, do not be disheartened if this stage seems to take time. 5It is important to the whole. 6You can help in this process by having faith in Me and the guidance that comes from within. 7Follow internal prompts to read certain books or go to certain teachers, but do not feel you need to go to them all. 8Do not feel that they have an answer they can give to you. 9The answer is always within. 10But the books and teachers that seem to come before you can seem to help you, as you give willingness to let old thoughts be loosened within your mind. 11It is their role to help, and they are grateful to help, but do not expect more from them than they can give to you.

We were also reminded of the choices we have, and how by habit or attachment we can be practicing that old definition of insanity, “Doing the same things expecting different results.”

Bringing to mind this wonderful little poem

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters by Portia Nelson

“There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk”

Chapter One

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in.

I am lost . . . I am helpless.

It isn’t my fault . . .

It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.

I fall in again.

I can’t believe I am in this same place. But it isn’t my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there.

I still fall . . . it’s a habit . . . but,

My eyes are open.

I know where I am.

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Chapter Four

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter Five

I walk down another street.

The guide's then begin to speak of us doing some work together. I am reminded that the guides are not limited by time and space, that even though these words were dictated in 2013, the energy and the learning and working together exist right here right now. 

“Now the song has begun. As we work on you each in frequency, you must allow this. We cannot do anything without your permission, nor would we want to. You have been gifted with free will, and that includes the ability to keep your stuff even when it makes you suffer. So many of you believe that you will not know yourselves without your pain because you have self-identified as pain. The self-identification as pain perpetuates pain, and pain wants to know itself as you.(what Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body) Fear creates itself. The need of fear is to replicate itself as you. When you claim pain “as your identity, that aspect of yourself that aligns to pain only knows himself through his creations as pain. So as we move you upward, we must ask your permission:

“Am I now willing to be released from a structure of pain that I have used to self-identify myself as? Am I willing now to release myself from the cycle of fear that I have perpetuated because I believed I must? Am I willing now to be received by my Creator in accordance with my true worth, my Christ-born worth, the divine worth that is instilled in me and in all men?

“As I say yes, I receive. As I say yes, I allow, and as I say yes, I accept my gift from the Source of All That Is: I know who I am, I know what I am, I know how I serve.”

If You say “Yes” to this (and by the way you say “yes” to this by choosing to be present to this material) as you say “yes”  following blessing becomes yours.

“Receive, each of you, the love of God through and as your being. You are allowed this, you know, there is no one on this plane who is denied this. There is no one on this plane who is not worthy of the love of God. So let yourself be blessed, let yourself be gifted, and let us receive you as loved.

We know who you are, we are your friends, we are your teachers, and we align to you as you move into your great potential. You are in authority now of your own creations. You have decided this. And as the one who can choose, you choose yourselves, you choose your freedom, you choose your well-being, you choose your worth and you sing your song.

We will end this chapter shortly. We have much to teach you still. The end of this chapter will be a benediction to each of you who wishes to receive it. And we are going to sing your song for you now in allowance of your willingness to serve:

As I lift my light to be seen by my fellows,

As I lift my worth to be received by myself,

“I align myself to service so that my gifts may be realized,

So that my gifts may be shared, so that my gifts may be seen,

And I may accept myself in my divine plan:

A manifestation of the Creator in form, here to sing my song for the benefit of all,

I know who I am, I know what I am, I know how I serve.

I am Word, I am Word, I am Word.”

In love and gratitude for your continuing support of this work. Your presence, your financial support, and most of all your love and willingness to grow.

RESPONSIBILITY 12

      P.83

“Once you understand that the creations you hold are out-pictured by you in consequence to your frequency, and that your frequency is born of thought, and creation responds to thought, you can play a new song and create a new vibration that claims you in its way. You are your music, you know, and your song is your expression.”

Much of our work today centered around this idea or  as it has been expressed many times in the past, “you create your own reality.”

This is a huge oversimplification. Yes, our thoughts contribute to the reality we find ourselves in, but we are not the only ones who are creating reality. Not only are there any number of individual consciousnesses that are creating, we also create on a racial-conscious level or group conscious level. And if it is our thoughts that create then we are creating not only from conscious thoughts but from unconscious ones as well. In other words, many of us are continually influenced by patterns of thought that have been formed perhaps even when we were preverbal. An aspect of the work we are doing now is to help heal those mistaken notions or those negative thought patterns that might continue to create imbalance or even physical illness.

You see the difficulty in the oversimplification of “creating your own reality” would show up, for example, if you were ill from something as simple as a cold to anything more serious. Because someone versed in metaphysical thought would say to you, “Oh you have a cold. You created that.” That makes perfect sense on an intellectual level, but there seems to be something missing.

I am not sure about you, but my first reaction we could be to be angry and annoyed at them, and then to think, in a limited way, “Well, I guess they're probably correct. Now what's the matter with me? What's wrong with me that I would create an illness for myself? I must really be more messed up than I thought!

Let us stick with that example of an illness because it is probably one of the easiest or more poignant examples we can use. yes my negative thinking what are the low vibrational thoughts I might be thinking or living in have probably certainly contributed to my being ill. however there might be many other factors that are involved perhaps I am overly tired more susceptible because I have been doing a lot of work for other people that's just one simple example. There could be a karmic element in my illness. Something that I need to balance out for whatever reason either this lifetime or perhaps others. my illness might be a way of my higher self forcing me to slow down my body. obviously would be much simpler if I just had the thought to slow down but sometimes I need to get whacked on the head.

There are even time when we might have a cold or other upper respiratory stuff going on and the body is actually cleansing itself.

Here's another thought, Suppose I am taking on this illness either consciously or unconsciously to protect another from contracting it.? For example what would it be like if I were presented with a decision either your grandson has this cold or you do which one am I going to choose?

Now I realize that's very edgy ground and we could probably debate that one forever but to me it is worth thinking about. What we are doing here is expanding our consciousness to be aware of other ramifications to “creating your own reality.”

There is also that wonderful story in Christian scripture where man was born blind and the disciples came up to Jesus and ask him, “Who has sinned this man or his parents that he should suffer this infirmity?” (There are some histories that claim the original bible had  many references to reincarnation, but most of them were removed. The reason that is suggested is that church leaders would have much more control if everyone thought this one lifetime is it. This is one of the references that slipped by) Jesus replied, “No one has sinned. This man has this affliction for the honor and glory of God. And after saying that he healed the man of his blindness.

What about all of those individuals who have entered this world with a birth defect or an affliction or what we perceive as suc? Now I realize that there was probably a karmic reason for that choice for them, lessons to be learned, and yet how much have we learned from those who might be disabled or handicapped. The example came up in class of a family who had a child with Downs Syndrome and what a blessing that child is to all those who meet him.

Welcome to the mystery.

You see what most of us do when presented with illness or conflict, especially if we have a little bit of metaphysical knowledge, is to approach it by asking questions such as, “Why do I have this? Why would I manifest this? Why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to someone I love?”

The problem is that none of those questions have a sufficient answer. We are asking questions that we think somehow or another can be solved by the intellect and they cannot. I'm not suggesting that we be overly passive, but I do believe the questions we ask ourselves and ask our situations in life, need to be geared to a level of understanding which gives us information that we can positively work with.

So asking instead, “What am I supposed to learn from this? How can I heal? How can I see this differently?” These are all questions that the soul can answer not in a linear, intellectual way, but we can get answers and information in ways that allow us to move forward.

“Since nobody knows what caused your cancer, I don’t know what you should change in order to help cure it. So why don’t you try this. Why don’t you use cancer as a metaphor and a spur to change all those things in your life that you wanted to change anyway. In other words, repressing certain emotions may or may not have helped cause the cancer, but since you want to stop repressing those emotions anyway, then use the cancer as a reason, as an excuse, to do so. I know advice is cheap here, but why not take the cancer as an opportunity to change all those things on your list that can be changed?”

― Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber

There is a phrase that is used in 12 step recovery that says “Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's Universe by chance.” It is all created by us, in some ways, to learn and to grow from.

On a personal level I must confess that I am prone to periods of negativity or depression. I don't mean depression in a clinical sense( that is a much different situation). When I hit these places of low vibration, low energy I am not always aware of what is happening, and so I can find myself getting sucked in to this downward spiral. When I finally realize what is happening I am already caught in a rather sticky web that is difficult to remove myself from. That is when I begin to think or to say to myself, “What's the matter with you? How many times do you have to be in this place before you learn to do this differently?” So I will get the stick out and beat myself up for a while and then I will beat myself up for beating myself up. That pattern can continue for quite a while. Sometimes my whip hand just needs to get tired enough so I stop and reframe. Here is what I am learning, even though I forget sometimes, negativity or low vibrational thoughts and ideas, things that bring me down, come to the surface of my consciousness not to plague me with self-doubt, but they rise up in my consciousness in order to be healed.

When I am unaware, however, and I find myself in one of these painful places, I do the most natural thing and that is to attempt to push the pain away. Of course, I do not realize what I have mentioned above and that is the pain there is a reflection of a wound that has not completely healed, and so as long as I keep pushing it away, I am preventing the healing from taking place.

This is a tough one because what I am being asked to do, in this place of vulnerability and low vibrational thought, is to embrace the pain, to embrace the circumstances that have allowed it to come to the surface even if I do not understand it, even if I cannot name it. I can be pretty sure that it is something from my childhood that has not been fully addressed as yet. I am being asked to embrace it and to ask it, “What do you have to teach me? How can I heal you?”

A metaphor that is helpful for me to use is to imagine that I am being approached by a child who is hurt or who is in pain. I do not push him or her way as being a bother to me. My heart almost automatically opens in compassion and I hold them lovingly. I might even know I cannot take their pain away, but I can offer them strength and love as they work their way through letting it go and allowing the energy of healing to come through. I don't just do that once or twice I do that as long as is necessary for that child to heal. Even if I am experiencing myself as being depleted and not able to give or contribute that much I still know that I can offer that child my presence my love my caring my concern even if there is nothing else I can give.

Now, of course, what we are looking at here is each one of us being able to do that for ourselves.

For most of us, healing our woundedness is not a one shot deal. The woundedness might need to come up in layers,a bit at t time The difficulty here is that our emotional self is going to experience this woundedness pretty much the same way each time. It comes to consciousness and then the mind will take over and begin to think that we must not have done a very good job in healing the first time because here it is again. The deeper truth is that we do heal in layers, and it even though my emotional self might not be able to distinguish it, each time this woundedness comes up for us and we work on it consciously, we are healing that wound. It is not the same process over and over again; it is dealing with a deeper or another layer of the hurt or shame that has now come up into consciousness in order to be healed.

It was always rather amusing for me to think and hear people talk about calling Silent Unity,  here's their number by the way it is a 24-hour seven-day-a-week prayer line where someone, a living, loving being will pray for you for whatever intention you have. 1-800-669-7720.

I can recall people telling me “Well, I called them up yesterday. I guess I need to wait a couple of days.” As if someone on the other end is saying, “Oh that's Gerry calling again. What a pest! I'm not going to pray with him anymore.” It sounds ludicrous when we put it that way, but sometimes that is still is our thinking. Obviously the prayer line is available whenever and wherever you need it even if you need it minute by minute by minute by minute.

So here I am perhaps struggling with some of my own demons and yet I can come to the point where I can reinforce my knowing that I am responsible even though I don't know how I am responsible for being in this particular place in this particular position. In some way or another, I have created this. I am willing to take responsibility for my creation, unless I do there's nothing else that can happen. So I take responsibility, then I open my heart in compassion to this wounded part of myself that is in pain and that somehow or another has sort of hijacked my consciousness for a while, and I gently put it in its place reminding myself that I have this but it is not who I am.

Then I open myself up in prayer to the Divine Self within. I welcome all those other guiding spirits who are part of my life. All of us who have been doing this work with Paul Selig for a while have become more and more consciously aware at these beings we are calling “the guides” are also here for us as well, not just to be classroom teachers, but to be lovers, to be healers, to be counselors-- all of the above and many more.

As I thanked you this morning, I thank you again for being an answered prayer for me and most likely being an answered prayer for quite a few others as well.

Be at peace.

RESPONSIBILITY 11

P. 81-83

One of our classmates shared an incident this morning: seeing a homeless person possibly drunk or deranged and wanting to help in some way and yet not knowing how.

We all probably have images of how Jesus or Gandhi or Buddha or Mother Teresa would have handled a situation like that, probably in some ways dramatically and heroically. for most of us though we live in a world that in some ways does not show itself as being very safe.

A modern-day version of the parable of the Good Samaritan might also show some thieves and robbers hiding in the bushes waiting to entrap some naive good do-gooder.

Even in saying that, I find myself being rather bitter and cynical. I would like to be of help, but I'm not sure how. Many circumstances are going to influence our decision. Even being in a different mood, or  the sun shining, or someone else in the car with me.

There is no rule book for responding to the needs of another. That is what the mind is looking for. I want to know exactly what to do in each particular situation, but that kind of certainty just does not exist.

You know, there have been times in my life when someone has reached out for help and I was experiencing myself as so depleted, I let them know on some level I have nothing to give you. It was a miserable, helpless feeling, and yet there I was. At times like that in the past, I did not have the wherewithal to realize that I was locked into my limited perception of myself rather than the truth. Today, if confronted with a similar kind of situation I might be able to work beyond my perceived limitations, to pray for strength, for guidance and direction and perhaps connect with this person on a higher level.

I do not know what another person needs from me. I have a difficult enough time knowing what I need myself. What I can do in situations that call for my compassion, is to pray that I might do and give as much as I can in the most loving way possible.

There are so many layers to this that I will probably only be able to cover some. Perhaps the best I can give this person and in fact what they might even be asking for is to pray for them, to hold him in the light. If it is true, and I believe it is so, that each one of us is a unique expression of the Divine then your or my prayer for this person might be exactly what they need rather than a $5 bill or a 911 call.

Ram Dass once said, “The only thing you have to give to another human being is who you are in this moment.”

I can also be grateful for my heart opening in compassion as difficult as that might be at times. Perhaps in the past I might have been so preoccupied with my own self centered thoughts that I never would have even been aware of this individual.

Here again we come to being aware of the difference or the distinction between my personality self and my divine nature. My personality is attached to drama, to figuring things out, to having exact and precise answers for any questions. My love in a sense is simply the expression of love in the best way possible. I do not know what that will look like or what form that needs to take in future events. As we mentioned above, there is no rule book. We meet every situation in life as best we can and under the circumstances that we find ourselves. As we continue to grow, we can begin to notice that there are more and more possibilities in loving action that are open to us.

Above all we are encouraged to be gentle with ourselves. How can I truly love another if I am beating myself up for not doing it perfectly?

There will probably be more thoughts and ramifications around this study of loving action. Please do not hesitate to explore and to share your learning with one another. We are all on this trip together. As Ram Dass so lovingly says “We are all walking one another home.”

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So let us take a closer look at the lesson from the text today. 

You are not becoming anything or anyone other than what you truly are. It is just that the truth of our being has been so masked and covered over with fearful thoughts and beliefs that we have a difficult time seeing through all the stuff that mankind has created. It would be as if you are trying to see yourself in a mirror that is covered with mud. You might get a little glimpse of your true reflection here and there, only in a moment. 

Essentially, we are cleaning off the mirror. We are revealing what is already there. The biggest piece of this for me is to wipe away or let go of my attachments to the personality self and all is perceptions that I have created over the years. It does not all go away, but I hold true to the realization that this mask, this illusion, this personality is not who I am and in fact was never who I am. The mask or persona does not disappear but I allow myself to recognize Is for what it is. 

 “Now, the frequency was always here, you know, but the density of your creations precluded your manifestation. The belief that it could not be so was paramount in creating the wall of separation that you have existed through. The planet is in shift. The frequency of the planet and all things on this planet are being moved upward in consequential vibration. There is a sequence at hand, you see, and that which will no longer hold the truth, that was born in fear, that was born in negativity, that was born in the need to control another, is being released so the true self, the self in honor, in knowing, and in worth may be reborn as you.”

“You do not negate these aspects of the self, the self that is fearful, that denies herself her worth. You realign them.”

Although we have spoken this many times before it is always helpful to remember when you claim “I know who I am in truth; I know what I am in truth; I know how I serve in truth, you are not only affirming a truth that already exist but in the words of the book you are aligning yourself to that truth. You are identifying more and more to the truth of Who You Are.

I realize sometimes we become confused about what this concept of “alignment” means. Let us take a very simple example: let's suppose you are with someone who loves you and you know that. You can choose to align yourself with that love, in other words, to be aware of it, to take it in, to vibrate with it. You could also choose to remain in a negative self-centered frame of mind where you spend all of your time with the loved one griping and complaining. I think it would be fairly obvious which one of those patterns is aligning to higher vibration or a lower vibration.

The book takes you through a rather simple exercise. You are being asked to recognize a power or a sense or quality within you that allows you to be in your authority, your strength. Although they are using the metaphor of music you can use anything you like. The quality you might think of might have something to do with creativity, painting, artwork, music. It might be something as simple as doing a crossword puzzle or reading a book or listening to a certain type of music or gardening or playing with a pet ,being with a grandchild, being in nature. With any of those that you might name for yourself, to get in touch with the energy that comes to you even when you simply think about it, and then to take this one step further. To imagine that you you can have the same kind of high vibrational awareness with many other qualities you have within yourself. We are challenged then to be aware that the only limitations concerning our qualities and creativity come from our attachment to old beliefs and old ideas that no longer serve us.

You are welcome to let them go to not feed them anymore as you continue this journey in the realization of the Perfection of Who You Are. 

Peace

RESPONSIBILITY 10

p. 80-81

Thank you all for some great interaction!

In reference to any number of people exploring the idea of ENLIGHTENMENT—what it means—how it happens—Am I there yet?

William James in his book The Variety of Religious Experience describes two kinds of spiritual awakening. One is that dramatic seemingly sudden type of Paul being knocked off his horse on the road to Damascus or Bill Wilson after saying, “If there is a God let Him show himself," had this towering vision of the room being filled with light. James goes on to say that most of us will not have that kind of sudden awakening. That most of us will experience spiritual awakening of what he calls the "educational variety." Now that does not mean that the intellect is engaged as opposed to the soul, but that awakening will come gradually over time, often without us even realizing it until we look back.

It might also be wise to be aware of what the Buddhist teacher, Chögyam Trungpa, said  “Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.”

When these questions came up in another setting a few days ago, I could not but be reminded of the wonderful passage from The Velveteen habit by Marjorie Williams.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

The Skin Horse Tells His Story

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.

I am becoming more and more aware that what I define myself as is much more my perception at the moment as opposed to genuine Truth. The trap I fall into periodically is that I begin to measure my spiritual state or my essence by the state of my emotions. Simply translated, when I feel like crap, I think I am crap. This could not be farther from the truth, but I am pretty sure many of us might find ourselves there. A major difficulty is that I will continue to create incidents to affirm that my limited, unhealthy perception is true. In the language the book is using right now, I will find ways to reinforce my unworthiness.

“Now we ask you what it means to be you. We say this again and again. And as you question your worth, who and what you think you are, you may only come to one conclusion: that you are your own creation to the extent that the beliefs that you hold are identifying you in each situation in your life.”

What happens here is that we start to identify or define ourselves according to our external circumstances as well as our feelings. I am creating my perception of myself and then I start believing it is true.

The work we are doing is leading us to the embracing of our true nature, that is the higher self, which is both the giver and the recipient of unconditional love.

It is so odd that what we desire the most, we also seem to be most reluctant to accept. 

I am so often drawn to this parable of Jesus: “When the king came in to see the guests, he saw there was a man which had not a wedding garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.—Matthew 22:11-13

We have already been invited to the banquet, and (whether you know it or not, you have accepted the invitation, but none of us are quite sure what to do next. We’ve all been presented with a wedding garment( a symbol of our acceptance of God’s unconditional love), but we haven’t put it on yet.

"Can I really do this? What will happen if I open myself up too unconditional love and it is either taken away from me or somehow I realize I am not worthy of it? What if I out on my wedding garment and it doesn’t fit, or I find out it belongs to someone else?" So here we sit.

As one of our classmates pointed out a more valid question might be what am I missing by not accepting the truth of who I am?

“We continue to teach you today about responsibility, but in a different way. We want to bring you grace, and an awareness of what you can hold as you enlighten yourselves through the usherance of our work into your vibration. Now we say this in a way you may understand. “Usherance” is the word, and we are using it intentionally. We usher the frequency forward so you may claim it, and align to it and embody it.”

I have to be reminded again that I am not doing this alone. There are guides and angels around me, and even though they cannot make decisions for me, they can help to guide me in the direction my heart wants to go in. 

The link below is of the sport of Curling. I often look at the guides as being the “sweepers” who are helping to clear the way, guide the stone (me) to its desired place.

https://youtu.be/eg9foFo6vHk

Peace.