Had she responded out of Love instead fear, she would have still been alive. And maybe the desperate thief wouldn’t have been so desperate, had he been treated with Compassion.

Opportunities to change the face of our World exist endlessly all throughout our days.

I Am

The Son also Rises.

‘What a mess’, I thought, as I looked at my chart. Conflict and opposition all over the place. I could understand why I felt at war with myself. Heart in conflict with head. Actions in conflict with desires. What was I? A crash test dummy of inner conflict?

I saw the Light alright.

The ‘me’ I displayed on the outside, the ‘me’ the World knew, really didn’t accurately express the genuine ‘me’, that was on the inside. Intimacy was a big issue. I wouldn’t let people get close enough to really get a good look into me.

I was a con artist. I would compromise myself all the time. Saying things to be nice or polite, that I really didn’t mean. Answering questions based on what I knew the other person wanted to hear. Answering questions based on what answer would get me liked or get me whatever it was I was seeking to get out of the person: sympathy, support, agreement, funding, etc. My list could go on and on.

I guess my problem was that I really didn’t know who I was. I also didn’t know why I did what I did or, felt what I felt, most of the time. I didn’t know my Self. All I really knew was an artificial construct I had made, in response to what other people did or did not like. You like this, so I’ll be this. You like that and I’ll be that. I’d change as the ‘you’ I was trying to please, changed. I was a database of stored responses, like a puppet with strings anyone could pull.

There was a part of me, unknown ‘til then, that bristled over the idea of being a puppet or, a pet, like a dog that would do anything for a pat on the head and a biscuit. How could I hold myself so lowly in esteem?

It was then I became aware of the kind of relationship I had with myself. It wasn’t a Loving one. I wasn’t the Real me because I didn’t believe anyone would really like the real me. The one that wasn’t ‘Perfect’.

There was a legion of things about myself I didn’t like. Characteristics I condemned and rejected in the confines of my own heart. Tendencies I’d like to stamp out of existence. Pleasures I enjoyed even though I wasn’t suppose to.

I wasn’t very nice in what I believed. I wasn’t kind, either. Nor respectful. Being ‘right’ was much more important then being Understanding.

I was a dictator of conditions when it came to what I was willing to accept and tolerate. Everything had to be my idea of ‘right’ or I went emotionally ballistic. It was ‘my way or the highway.’ And this is how I acted towards myself in the confines of my own head.

My inner world ran on fuels of fear. Fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of punishment and, fear of pain. I found no Courage. I found no Valor. I found no Honor. I found no Integrity. I found nothing that would have meant I had Heart or Self Respect.

I had as much backbone as a jellyfish, when it came to having Faith in myself.

For a while I wallowed in my own self pity. A victim, blaming any and every authority figure in my life for teaching me this example of how to relate to my Self. I remembered thinking as a child that I needed to learn all the big people’s rules, in order to survive in the big people’s world. What I learned was ‘Stuff everything people don’t like away in some deep dark hole inside, then pray to God it never gets out.’

Fa-la-la, I am the Light and all that. I knew I had a dark side. No matter how ‘good’ I acted. I knew I wasn’t Miss Smiles & Sunshine. Sooner or later, all those pent up, repressed, and suppressed parts of myself would start acting up, sabotaging my Life. Locking these parts up didn’t make them go away. Locking them up just made it so part of me was living in the dark most of the time. And it was the conscious part.

My subconscious lurked within me. Like my Nemesis. I couldn’t divorce myself from it. Decades of trying had proved the futility of that idea. There was no way around it. I was going to have to attempt making friends with myself. My first step was to find out why so many parts of myself were against me. It didn’t take long to learn the reason.

I had sentenced parts of myself that didn’t live up to my ideal of perfection, to live in darkness. Shut off from my acknowledgement or recognition. Shut off from any Understanding or Compassion. I made a box inside myself and stuffed all my rejected parts in it. I created my own personal hell and, sentenced all the parts of myself I didn’t like, to live there.

The problem was…,

That it was ‘me’ living in that hell of my own making. And no matter how rotten I imagined I might be, I didn’t like the feel of living in hell. It was miserable.

And boy did I feel stupid, knowing I was the one that had sentenced myself there.

I did it because I had never been taught or shown, how to Love ‘me’. I was taught that Self is supposed to be sacrificed for the ‘good of others‘.

As a result, I didn’t know how to Embrace ‘me’. I didn’t know how to Accept ‘me’. I didn’t know how to Tolerate ‘me’. Much less know how to Enjoy my own company.

And I knew it.

I knew how to be self condemning. I knew how to be self rejecting. I could come up with a list a mile long, at a moment’s notice, of reasons I was unworthy and should therefore, be sacrificed for ‘the good of others’.

For all my intellect, for all my education, I didn’t know how to be self nurturing.

I was an empty vessel. Empty of feeling any of the feelings that would have been supportive and fulfilling. Looking always to the World outside of me, to provide me with what I felt I lacked. And I was seeing this, not as a Mystic, not as a Religious devotee but, as an Engineer. Talk about a revelation.

Most of us have been taught completely erroneous ideas about the field of magnetism. We’ve heard phrases such as ‘opposites attract’. When no, they don’t. Not quantum mechanistically.

North magnetic fields only attract North poles. South magnetic fields only attract South poles.  North magnetic fields don’t want ANYTHING to do with South poles. And South magnetic fields don’t want ANYTHING to do with North poles.

Penguins and polar bears don’t coexist.

When I magnetized myself as ‘south’ or a ‘negative’ field of interest, the only people I ever attracted, were those that fit into my idea of life. They had to be ‘south’ or ‘negative’ towards me, too. Whatever it was, if I thought negatively about it myself, I’d find they’d express that same negativity, too, polarized towards me.

I’d always believed I felt the way I did because it was what everyone else told me. When according to quantum physics, everyone else had simply been mirroring, whatever I had been imagining. ‘Negative’ was all I was capable of attracting, so long as I was polarizing myself as ‘negative’, in my own attitudes.

I realized I had been the one to set the currents in motion, that had brought all the negative stuff that had washed up on my shores. I was the one that had judged myself. Everyone else in my life had been an echo. Cause. And effect. I sowed. And I reaped.

It didn’t take me long to catch on, that when it came to what I believed, I was FREE to be my own authority. Above and beyond all others. I didn’t have to wait for others to tell me what to believe, like I was some sort of answering machine being programmed in responses. I had the power to decide that on my own.

I will believe, whatever I WILL to believe.

Because I AM. And that means I CAN.

Ever since then I’ve claimed Sovereignty over my own Realms of ideas. And discovered when my ideas are connected to my Heart, instead of coming from my gut, I possess all the Self Assurance I need.

I have chosen my own beliefs, since. Especially about myself, Life and what many of us call God.

I’ve chosen to believe in the Passion of my Life.

Here’s an exercise in reclaiming and getting to know yours.

Choose any subject: money, love, God, sex, marriage, work, etc. Then fill in the sentence, ‘Money is ______’ 20 times. Or ‘Love is ______’ 20 times. Whatever subject you choose, complete the sentence 20 times.

The first few will be easy. By 7-8, things will be slowing down. And by 11-12, it will take some time coming up with new answers. But be patient. Mostly likely it’s been a while since you’ve taken an inventory of what’s in your subconscious, if ever. When you finish, look over your answers.

For each answer, ask yourself if you really believe it. It doesn’t matter where you heard it or read it. All that does matter is if you choose to believe it and accept it as True in your life.

(I’ll share a tip with you. When it comes to believing, ask the Self in your own heart. “To Thine Own Heart Be True.“ )

How does believing ‘this’ or ‘that’ make you feel? Cross off any and all beliefs that make you feel awful or negative about yourself or Life itself. Simply refuse to believe it. You can, you know.

After you’ve cleared out the list of things you don’t really believe, start adding up what’s left. Integrating them together into a Whole outlook.

Contradictions will be difficult to integrate. Water can both freeze and boil. Just not the same water, at the same time, in the same location.

See how scattered your beliefs are about any subject. And apply a basic principal of physics. Buckshot doesn’t have the same impact on a target, as a focused projectile.

There will be no right or wrong answers. This is simply an exercise is getting to know yourself and what is lurking around below the level of your awareness most of the time. Here is the software programming that’s been running or ruining, as the case may be, your life.

For an adventure, take back the Sovereignty over your own Heart and Mind.

Stand up for your Self.

And your Freedom to simply Be.

Understanding

“The warriors of my tribe would call you ‘woman who knows too much and it has made you crazy’. Your curse is that you have to live with yourself.”¸ he said.

That’s Clel, he’s always popping off saying something like that. Something that plain makes me laugh. People call him crazy, too, half Native American, half Mexican, and proud of it. A real firecracker. Of course, it’s his craziness I find thoroughly enjoyable about him. He’s astute, with much insight and, is totally clueless.

My Husband spoke up, “Maybe the curse is living with the rest of us?”

At that, I started to laugh. “It’s a real experience all right. Like living with a bunch of Helen Keller dolls. Ever considered what it’s like to be right in front of someone and not be seen? Run over, run through, bumped into, stepped on, ignored, you name it. I really do try my best to stay out of the way most of the time. It’s ‘safer’ that way.”

My Husband rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t sound very complimentary.”

Depends on how we choose to take it. Offense can only be taken. If our goal is blindness, then I pay Us a compliment of great Respect and Admiration. We have succeeded in our goal. It’s only if we don’t consider ourselves as blind and recognize our goal of blindness, that my statement is less than supportive. I consider myself part of ‘Us’. I’ve been blind. I’ve been deaf. And I sure as hell have been dumb. Maybe not in this lifetime to the extent of others but still blind and deaf and dumb. Being able to admit it and accept it, is the cure for it. I haven’t met a One of Us yet who were ignorant on purpose. We don’t know what we don’t know. We’ve all been there.

Being able to see ourselves as we are, not as we wish to be seen, creates the inspiration within us for change. What I know as ‘True Repentance’. When we see ourselves in a mirror and don’t like what we see, we’re inspired to change. If we want to change the reflection, we need to change what’s doing the reflecting. Show thyself improved. It’s like looking at myself in jogging pants and a baggy sweatshirt, inspires me to go change my clothes. Better yet, it’s the picture entitled ‘Vanity’. You know the one I mean. From one perspective, it appears to be a fine lady sitting in front of her dressing table but then you get a good look at it and…it’s a picture of a skull.

I remind Us that Helen Keller was a magnificent woman. She radiated much Light of Understanding into the worlds of those we labeled ‘defective’. She was truly brilliant. Once her world within was unlocked and ways of expression learned, we could all recognize it. It’s the same with the rest of Us, once we begin to unlock what’s within Us.

Brilliance. That’s what within Us. Every single One of Us. To the extent we don’t know it, is the extent our veils are blinding Us to it.”

“Veils?”, my Husband asks.

Blinders, screens, filters that obscure, veils. The only reason everyone doesn’t know what I know, is because of the filters. The filters obscure the Light of Clarity and the Light of Truth.

Try imagining sunglasses instead of veils. If I put on a hundred pair of sunglasses, I wouldn’t be able to see much of anything, if anything. It would appear to me that nothing was there, no matter what was there. Reminds me of a little kid that thinks if they cover their eyes, I can’t see them. If I want to see, I need to start removing the sunglasses, one pair at a time.

It’s the same way with our veils. And these veils are made of our beliefs.”

“What we think?”

“Not necessarily. Our beliefs are what we really feel in our Hearts. Our heads aren’t in contact with our Hearts a lot of the time. Intimacy is a BIG issue for a great many of Us. So whether our thoughts accurately reflect our beliefs is questionable. Sometimes, yes. Most of the time, no. We don’t think we’re blind. We believe we are.

We knock our lights out then complain it’s dark.”

“What do you mean ‘knock our lights out’?”

“We stick a finger in our eye then complain that something’s in it.

We don’t believe we’re capable of knowing ‘God’, so…we don’t.

Like I’ve said, ‘The only way to overlook the obvious is not to look.’

There’s a belief that ‘God’ is beyond a Human Being’s capacity to know and understand. That belief, is what I call ‘knocking our lights out’. It negates our minds, our cognitive ability, our ability to associate ideas, and our capacity of imagination. And let’s not forget our Intuition. This belief in ‘not knowing’ is Ignorance. Perpetual, congenital, ignorance. It has been specifically written that we were made in ‘God’s’ image. Unless ‘god’ is a dumb-ass, there’s no reason we should be.

I don’t accept the idea that ’God’ is beyond our capacity to know and understand. I refuse to negate and dishonor the Ever Loving Mind I have and am Sovereign over. If I divorce myself from my tool of Understanding, then I won’t understand, that’s for sure. Just as poking my eyes out insures I’ll be blind.

It’s simply a matter of perspective who’s really crazy. I’m not crazy; the World is.”

“That’s one of the classic symptoms of being crazy: thinking it’s not you”, says Hubby.

“You’re right. I did question myself. Long ago. I ‘studied’ and now show myself improved. I used to be crazy, too, so long as I thought and believed the way the World taught me to think and believe. I was young then. And naïve. The World’s pattern of thought is all conflicted.

I’ve got my own litmus test for crazy: Making sense. I make sense. The beliefs of the World, don’t. If anything, I’m too sane. No matter how long it takes me to talk in circles, I always make a point. And when I do, I’ve come full circle. It’s called ‘complete’.

“The only way to overlook the obvious is not to look?”

“Precisely. Once I’ve negated my tool of Understanding, there’s clearly no way I’m going to Understand, no way I’m ever going to experience Understanding and, no way I’m going to respond to life in an Understanding way. I can’t give what I haven’t got.

If we don’t believe we can Understand, we won’t put forth any effort to even try. Understanding being a door that is closed to Us, we’ll concentrate of being ‘right’ instead. We have to ask ourselves what we really believe in. Being Right? Being Righteous? One does not necessarily mean the other.

Blind faith requires we live that Faith, blind, without Understanding. Once Understanding sinks in, we’re not blind anymore. Reminds me of being so desperate for Loving, that we’d use 2 paper bags to ‘make love’ to an ugly hooker. The first bag being to mask her face, the other being used to mask ours in case hers falls off. That’s what ‘blind faith’ is.

“That sounds awful! What do you really mean?” Clel asks.

“Blind faith asks Us to worship a psychologically ugly persona, ‘the ugly hooker’. ‘Hooker’ because her ‘love’ is extended only through barter. That tells me it’s ‘need’ disguising itself as ‘love’, for genuine Love extends itself freely. ‘Ugly’, because of the beliefs we have painted on her face. Beliefs in Being conditional. Judgmental. Rejecting. Vindictive. Jealous. Angry. Possessive. Abandoning. The face is so ugly the way we paint it, that we have to blind ourselves to it. The bag over her head, masks the hideous face we painted. The bag over our head masks our face, in case hers falls off. For We cannot hide what we truly feel. There is truly and genuinely no way we’re ever going to feel Love and Attraction towards this ugly persona. So we hide our face to mask our shame and deceit. This is a relationship pattern between Us and ‘God’, specifically the Holy Spirit, imagined as one of ‘need’. This isn’t ‘love making’. It’s prostitution, where our emotions are raped at the same time.

I won’t divorce myself from the Universal Principal of cause and effect, reaping and sowing. ‘Adoration’ is a consequence of Being ‘Adorable’. You BE adorable and I’ll adore you. I hardly find the condemning, rejecting and emotionally insecure ‘god’ of the World adorable at all. Far from it. I don’t happen to see Condemnation, Vengeance, Retribution and Abandonment as Loving much less Lovable. This face we paint on God isn’t attractive. The persona is insecure and limited. Not my kind of ideal…a limited unlimited. And the purpose of this ugly face, is to repulse Us. To motivate Us to avoid ‘Intimacy’ at all costs. To ‘Know’ God. To ‘Understand’ God. The Unconditionally Loving One. With the beautiful face and comforting embrace.

Always embraces all ways.

I admit, my perspective has to do with my choice of values, what I find of value and what I qualify as valuable. To Value means to Love. Here’s a good question: What’s the Value of a value system founded on lack of value? Absolutely nothing. Yet, that’s the value system most of us believe in and are trying to live.”

“A Value system founded on lack of Value?”

“Yes. The World’s Value system is founded on lack of Value. Denial. Specifically, self denial. Denying Loving ourselves Unconditionally. The less Loving it is, the more valuable it is to the majority of Us, since that majority believes in Love only upon condition. This isn’t ‘Love’ in the first place. It’s the lack of it…it’s ‘need’. Us that don’t have, seek to ‘get’, through barter, through trade. And any other means necessary: force, coercion, subversion, extortion, etc. We’ve created a global economy based on emotional insecurity. Loving the lack of Love. See what I mean by crazy? A Value system with no valuing in it.

And as for this value system’s ‘moral code’, it is essentially a code of conduct for the amoral.”

“A moral code for the amoral?”

“Yes. ‘Moral’ means that which is chosen. What with all the conditions placed on being loved and accepted, freedom of choice is negated. If I take choice out of the picture, then no ‘morals’ are possible. It becomes a code, not of morality but of a-morality. A code of conduct for the amoral.

Any moral code impossible to live, can’t Be lived. But we can try. That’s all we’ve been doing. Trying to make the impossible possible instead of realizing the impracticality and futility of it. Any code that only promises rewards upon death isn’t a code that supports Life. The only way to actually live the code is to die, for Death is the purpose and goal of the code. But it’s important to realize that not just any death will do. The greater the suffering, the supposedly greater the rewards gained from the freedom of the grave. It’s not only Death that is worshipped, it’s death by slow torture that is the pinnacle of this codes moral achievement. And forget about living in Integrity with the code. It’s impossible to both live and die at the same time and place in the same dimension. So long as we live, we live in conflict with this code.

Just as soon as I came to this realization myself, I changed my code. Most of us don’t even realize it’s a code of death we really believe in. We think we Love Life. But Fear of Death is not a Love for Life nor does it bring to Us the Wisdom to support it.

What we worship with every breath of our Life, is death. It’s subliminal for most of us, but it’s there if we but allow ourselves to look and ponder. But we must look seeking Understanding instead of being ‘right’. If there is imagined a possibility of torture, pain and suffering upon Death, then Death becomes feared. This fear, can then be used as a whip to control and enslave populations of People.

If you look around our World, it’s obvious what beliefs are being expressed. Daily. Hourly. Moment to moment. Experiences of separation. Separated from feeling Loved. Separated from Life. Separated from Sense. Separated from each other. Separated from a loving Universe capable of being embraced with open arms. The World uses Swords of Mind to draw lines. I don’t draw lines anymore. And I erased the ones I did have.

My values start with sense, as in making some. E-sense. The goal of my Life isn’t to reach death’s door through as much suffering as possible. The goal of my Life is to live it.

Ponder these thoughts for a while…What’s an ‘All That Is’ got to be jealous of? And Possessive? What’s that all about? What else is there besides ‘All That Is, Was and Ever Will Be’ to possess? To need? That’s goofy. Love extends Itself for the Joy of extending itself. Love doesn’t need anything in return. No conditions. No lines drawn separating reality. No One left out, rejected or abandoned.

I simply refuse to be dumb just as I refuse to be blind. Such is what happens when we open the door to our Hearts and allow the Essence of Understanding in. It’s like light bulbs going off inside Us. One ‘Aha!’ moment after another.

We start seeking to add things up. ‘Adding things up’ being one of the expressions of the Essence of Unity. In order to be ‘Whole’ everything has to add up. Can’t be any part left out or it isn’t Whole. ‘Adding things up’ requires the use of our cognitive faculties in bringing forth the Essence of Understanding, precisely what most religions do not want done.

The Essence of Understanding expresses itself most basically in our ability to associate and relate ideas. We play with ideas in our minds like kids play with blocks. We build concepts. We build beliefs and belief systems. We build cultures, civilizations and societies. This is the faculty of cognitive association and generally speaking, most of us have the use of it. Should we choose to use it.

Sometimes we call this association of ideas ‘thinking’. I’m picky about it. Integration and Integrity are my goals. They come in a package deal with the experiences of ‘Whole’ and ‘Complete’. In order for me to give credit for ‘thinking’, there has to be more to it than a hodge-podge of random ideas associated in such a way that nothing makes sense. ‘Adding things up’ requires the use of Reason. Reasoning is a process that associates ideas in ways where nothing is negated and no contradictions are made. It used to be known as ‘common sense’, since this faculty of Reason is common to All of Us.

According to my Understanding, the thought patterns of our World in no way resemble much in the way of thinking. Proper parroting, I call it. What’s considered ‘proper’ is to Parrot. That’s why I’m ‘improper’ because I don’t Parrot. I’m not reflecting to the World, what the World expects reflected.”

“Parrot?” Clel pipes up. “Nothing sucks seeds like a Parrot.”

“Very funny. I have a different idea of what it means to succeed besides sucking seeds. By ‘parroting’ I mean that the majority of Us have never entertained an independent thought. The only ideas in our heads are those put there by our family, our religions and, our governments. We don’t question. We’re Parrots.

“Bird brains? Asks Clel.

“I didn’t say it; you did. I give the birds more credit.”

“Now you’re getting downright mean.”, says Clel.

“I’m being truthful and honest. ‘Mean’ is a judgment of qualification because you didn’t like what I said. It doesn’t mean I’m ‘mean’. It simply means you didn’t like it.

I don’t give the birds capacity to think. A bird’s brain isn’t that big. It’s not big enough to process information. It’s not big enough to store information, like all the directions needed to fly south for the winter. And since I haven’t spotted any tiny microchips and microphones they all use to communicate when to turn in formation, I know they rely on their senses, specifically their ability to sense gravitational fields. E-senses. Like the basic Essence of Life that acts to support and nurture all Life. ‘Instinct’ in plants and animals. ‘Intuition’ in Human Beings. Same song of Life, just different octaves of expression.

Birds don’t have the same freedom of choice to divorce themselves from their means of awareness as we do. A bird can’t choose to short circuit it’s Love for its own Life. It’s only Human Beings that have the free choice to negate our most basic ‘Instinct’. Our Love for Life. And the majority of Us have done it.

We draw lines of limitation. Endeavoring to emulate an historical ideal that was a product of the imagination of a ragtag bunch of primitive nomadic tribes. Volcano blowing up was understood to mean the ‘gods’ must be displeased. Or better yet, that ‘god’ was offended and demanded some form of restitution in the manner of sacrifice. A god that needs. An impotent Omnipotence.

We, Humanity, didn’t even understand our World was round back then. Even now, we’re somewhat pathetic. There was one of Us knuckleheads spouting off a while ago that Hurricane Katrina was ‘god’s’ punishment for New Orleans being a city of ‘sin’. Notice how blind, ignorant and ‘righteous’ we can be?

If we build our house below sea level, then we shouldn’t be surprised when water comes into our kitchens. Just as if we build our house on the side of an active volcano we shouldn’t be surprised by lava in our living room. Making choices in defiance of reality is one thing. Offending some sort of insecure deity, quite another.

I give most of Us credit for acquiring some smarts over the past few thousands of years. We didn’t stagnate. We’re Living Beings. We’ve grown in our understanding of our World and now, maybe it’s time we grew in our Understanding of ourselves.”

“Primitive nomadic tribes? Are you insulting my tribal culture?’ hollers Clel.

“I’m talking about the nomadic tribes of thousands of years ago, that were interspersed throughout the Middle East and Europe. Our ‘cradle of civilization’ for Western Culture. Our current culture is riddled and infiltrated with primitive beliefs: taboos, fetishes and superstitions. From a time in history when what passed for ‘god’ in our imagination, was simply a bigger version of ourselves and, just as limited in terms of Understanding and Compassion. Later, these beliefs were translated into ‘sins’.

We’re blind to the fact that such beliefs express our own limitations. Where we’ve drawn lines and chosen to pick up swords, repeating the past.”

“You mentioned drawing lines a couple of times. What do you mean?”

Negative poles are always attracted to negative magnetic fields.

Every moment is a Present. Whether that moment is happy or sad. How often are we appreciative and grateful for our Presents?

How much do we Love Life?

It doesn’t matter what side a person chooses in a polarity game, red or blue. A polarity game is a game of separation. It’s why I don’t play. Only losers play games of polarity. And I’m not a loser anymore. It goes something like this: Polarity = Loser. AnyOne of Us living a reality divided into parts, like right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark, etc., has already chosen to live life as a loser, choosing to limit ourselves. The only winning move is not to play the game. And the only way out of it, is through Understanding the Unity of Life, as Christ exemplified.

The current Understanding of ‘Christianity’ doesn’t have much Essence of Christ in it. I’d call what we created a ‘Jesus cult’. It’s easy to spot members of a Jesus cult. They’re the ones of Us carrying around crosses and wailing about our roles as martyrs and victims. A Jesus cult worships suffering. One time a fundamentalist asked me if Jesus knocked on my door, would I answer? I said ‘yes’ and went on to say that I would tell him he was welcome in my house, however, he’d have to leave his cross at the door. For Christ already dwells in my house.

Jesus represents carrying around a burden of Guilt. Christ represents freedom, from it, through the Essence of Forgiveness. Ones wears a crown of Thorns, the other, carries a Lily. Guilt and Forgiveness are mutually exclusive terms. Not a One of Us going around whipping ourselves with guilt over some imagined ‘sin’ genuinely believes in Christ.

“You’re stepping on quite a few toes, Honey,” says my loving Husband.

“I know. I’ve been accused of being ‘anti-every religion I know’ at one time or another. I never will forget the Holocaust survivor that about blew a fuse when I mentioned ‘reaping and sowing’ and related it to beliefs founded in arrogance, bias, supremacy, and prejudice. Religious arrogance, religious bias, religious supremacy and religious prejudice. They didn’t like it at all when I illuminated that if We don’t want to reap it, then We should quit sowing it. Dissolved the ‘victim’ perspective right out from under them. They went ballistic. It was almost as good as the time on the 4^th of July when the boys got the mortars in the wrong shells and they exploded only 8’ in the air. You know I love fireworks, Dear. Smiling.

It’s what I was saying about the difference between what we think and what we believe. We think we’re ‘Christians’ if we think about it at all. “Christian” actually means Christ-like linguistically, when what we truly believe in, is Guilt. Limitation is the World’s Passion. Expansion of the Kingdom, Mine. Nothing separates heaven from Earth unless I choose to see it that way. This is where the World and I differ. I don’t choose to see it that way.

I don’t idolize man-made nonsense, as in, a limited Unlimited or an impotent Omnipotence. It’s Understanding and Compassion I value, not Condemnation and Rejection. Sooner or later, we’re all going to realize that the abstract can only be brought down to earth by choice. This requires we cease our knee jerk reactions to judge and condemn, to draw lines and, start building a healthier relationship with Life through Understanding.

If you think about it, ‘determined’ and ‘stubborn’ describe the same energy of Willpower. We’re very Willful, which means we’re conduits for the energies of Willpower. We know how to ground it, anchor it and use it. Which adjective is used to describe us, depends on whether the person describing us, happens to agree with where we’re going or heading. So forget the labels and simply celebrate your Willpower. Concentration and our ability to focus that concentration, is a Gift. Especially when we start focusing that concentration within. The Gift of Clarity comes with it.

We bring the Light of Understanding into worlds of darkness.

We’re not sports cars. We’re trains. We may not be quick out of the starting gate but once we get going, there’s a lot of focused momentum behind us. If a sports car hits a brick wall, the brick wall wins. If a train hits a brick wall, it goes right through it.

Choo-choo, I’m the engine that could! How ‘bout you?

My daughter accuses me of never being a child. Because I focused so much on being responsible. Accountable. Sensible. And Practical. Especially when it came to money and assets.

For many years money, assets and other things money could buy, achievements and awards were my placebos of Worth. See what I had accumulated? See what I had accomplished? Aren’t I a worthy person? It was what I had been taught ‘worthiness’ looked like.

You see, I counted on these things and the appearance of these things, so other people would approve of me. Because deep down inside, I was exceedingly insecure. I really had some doubts about myself. I doubted whether or not I was ’ok’. Whether I was ’good’. Whether I deserved to be loved.

As an adopted child, I had abandonment issues. Galore. What was so ‘wrong’ about me that my own Mom didn’t want me? And since I was rejected once, it could happen again. I better not mess up with these people or they’ll give me back as defective merchandise.

Oh, I needed to feel loved and had doubts about whether I was deserving. I always had doubts about myself. Crippling doubts. I was never sure of what conditions I was suppose to fulfill to be loved. The conditions changed depending upon each person.

The only thing that didn’t change for me, was the fact that I was going to be whatever the person wanted or liked, because I needed them to like me and approve of me. I would willingly sacrifice and negate whatever part of myself required, in order not to be rejected or abandoned.

In terms of my soul, I had a garment alright. A holey garment consisting of a bunch of holes I had created by symbolically taking a pair of scissors and cutting out parts of myself other people didn’t like. Holey, holey, holey. That was me.

This is the way I was taught to relate to myself.

And it’s the way you’ve been taught to relate to yourself, too.

It’s called the Creed of Sacrifice.

The greatest act we can make to express our Love of others, is to negate the Value of our own lives. Martyrdom. It is to volunteer to be the sacrificial animal on the altar of other people’s needs. Forget our own. It is to hold the value of our own lives as inferior to others, otherwise be branded ‘selfish’.

In order for the sacrifice to count, we have to cherish whatever we’re sacrificing, of course. We have to love it, whatever it is, so the pain of denial will really be excruciating. Our road to the cross has to be slow and tortuous, if we want our sacrifice to count in moral brownie points.

For it is no sacrifice, under this definition of the concept, for a Mother to sacrifice new clothes for herself in order to buy milk for her baby. So long as she’s the kind of Mother that loves the baby more then the clothes. But it is a sacrifice, to the kind of Mother that loves the clothes, more then her baby. It is no sacrifice for a man to die fighting for his freedom, unless he’s the kind of man that would rather live as a slave.

See what I’m getting at?

In order to count it has to hurt.

There better be plenty of suffering in it.

The only way it’s easy to play the martyr and, negate ourselves for others, is if we think of ourselves and our lives…our interests, our dreams, our hopes and our joys, as worthless. I had such an inferiority complex that the only way or idea I knew to rectify it, came by imagining I could somehow gain some semblance of value, from the grave.

I used my concentration and Gift of Insight, like you have, too, to deeply contemplate this code of sacrifice.

As much as my Honor and sense of person came from it, I came to revile myself when I saw it for what it was. I didn’t love Life. How could I? I didn’t even love mine. The code I caught myself serving with every fiber of my strong willed being, was a code that served Death. On a silver platter no less.

A martyr is someone who seeks their own death. Obviously.

Isn’t that sad?

The greatest worth or value that I could imagine for my own life, was not only my own death but death by slow torture. Once I chose that as the goal I was going to pursue, it didn’t really matter how I got there.

I almost drove myself into an early grave sacrificing myself for others. Always feeling like I had to serve those in need, doing and providing whatever it was they said they needed. And forgetting about my own needs at the same time. Trying to pretend I didn’t have any.

Me and my righteousness would really holler at other people, too. I was quite sanctimonious in decrying their lack of virtue as I saw it. Their lack of willingness to sacrifice their lives, too. In short, I’d use my willfulness to beat other people over the head with all my own self judgments.

You see, raised a Catholic, all I had ever been taught was conditional love. Obey the rules and be embraced. Don’t obey all the rules and be rejected. With Guilt being used as the whip of rejection.

In God’s Kingdom there were limits. Limits on what was Accepted. Limits on what was Tolerated. Limits on what was embraced in Understanding. Limits on what was Forgiven. Limits on Compassion. And limits on Mercy.

I was so needy, so emotionally needy, as a result of being fed all these conditions on being Loved, that I was an abject failure when it came to loving relationships.

I felt I really couldn’t sink much lower. It must be True. For reasons unknown to me since I was born, I was damned.

That’s when my search turned inward.

I ran across new information on magnetic fields, quantum physics, and the adage that ‘we all create our own reality’ at the same time. Coincidence? No. Synchronicity. And everything this new information pointed to, was the same thing all scriptures had always said about ‘reaping and sowing’. But happening on an altogether different level then anyone of us had ever imagined.

If I imagine myself and feel myself to be damned, then Presto! That’s exactly what reality I created to be mirrored back to me in experience. If the only value of my own life was to serve the needy, then my life was destined to be filled with the needy. In the Play of Consciousness, some jerk was going to be required to do some horrid thing to someone else, making that someone else end up in need. All so I could feel good about myself.

How I really undermined myself was that so long as I needed needy people, I really couldn’t say that helping them ‘not to be needy anymore’, served my self interests. So whatever I did made them into dependents, so they would always be dependent upon me. People who needed me weren’t likely to leave me. See where I was coming from?

This particular self realization made me feel sick. Here I thought I was being a hero. And all I had really been doing is stopping other people from finding out they were heroes, too. So long as I always did things for others, those others never learned how much they could do themselves. They never learned self confidence. They never learned how to make choices. Since they never had to live with the results of most of those choices. I saw to that.

Ms. Fix It. I was a control freak. Insecure down to my very bones.

I was the road crew that quite dutifully went around filling in potholes, so other people’s lives would flow smoothly. And putting barricades around the ways I couldn’t get to.

As afraid as I was in screwing up, so was I afraid for those I loved and cared about, when it came them screwing up, too. Through the use of our dependencies, I would reach out to control other people and the choices they were making. I would quite genuinely swear my intentions were because I was afraid for them and I would be believed but, like any good salesman, it was only because I believed it myself.

I was really afraid of them. I was afraid they would make some choice that would lead to some experience, that I couldn’t’ “handle”.

Handle physically, in terms of manage and control. (Minimize loss.) Handle emotionally, in terms of coping skills. (Will it upset my precarious and insecure cart?) Handle mentally, in terms of ‘things I don’t want to see’. (Will my mind go blank as I attempt to wipe out a reality that I’m afraid to face?)

I was a Victim of my own imagination and beliefs. Send out a signal of ‘victim’ and attract being ‘victimized’. Send out self judgment, get back self judgment.

I did it.

To myself.

So that when the time came for me to stand before the ‘pearly gates’, I had a pocketful of suffering to show for myself.

My first instinct upon self realization, was to curse myself for being ten times a fool. Cursing myself for imperfections being the way I was taught to relate to imperfections. Perfect = good. Imperfect = Bad. Love good. Reject bad.

Following this procedure over and over through many decades was how and why I dug myself into a pit. The last thing I desired to do was dig my pit deeper.

So I changed.

There were skeletons in my closet and it was time I faced them. I began the journey through the valley of the shadow of death, in order to bring all the abandoned parts of myself out of there.

The only sensible thing to do when we find ourselves in the middle of hell, is keep going. It’s equal distance out, either way. At least by moving through it, in search of all the parts and things about myself I didn’t like and, had tried to abandon, I would be able to put it all behind me.

Sense.

Something just nagged at me. Something just didn’t make sense. Then I found it.

There’s no way the Whole, can BE whole, through the negation of any part. Even if that part is just “me“. Smucky, imperfect, human, me. I went to research the concept I had been taught and found out that the word ‘sacrifice’ comes from Latin. Sacre, meaning sacred. Facere, meaning to make. ‘To make sacred.’ ‘To uplift.‘ There’s no loss implied. No suffering, either.

Then I thought about it, deliberation and contemplation being a habit. I wondered what else I had been taught that was screwed up and didn’t make any sense. I thought about ideas like “All“. And Absolute. Where ever I looked within myself, there were beliefs nullifying any and all such concepts, as ALL. As Unity.

In place of “All That Is, Was and Ever Will Be”, was “all that is, was and ever will be, except for this and this and this and them and them and them.” Similar to the rendition The Pope, you know the person I mean, similar in its tone of bias, prejudice, partiality, bigotry, discrimination and arrogant superiority.

What my beliefs represented and expressed about myself, was that I was a completely unprincipled person. Same as the Pope is saying about himself.

When it came to values I served, my inner inventory wasn’t in all that great of shape. My Love was Conditional, therefore, limited. My Acceptance was Conditional, therefore, limited. My Tolerance was Conditional, therefore, limited. My Understanding was Conditional, therefore, limited. And what was lacking most of all, was Compassion.

And it was this inner scarcity, that was the reason I felt so needy in the first place. Why I felt rejected and abandoned. Where ever there was a limit, I had cut myself off.

I didn’t know how to be nurturing, self nurturing, in what I believed about myself, because it was the pattern I had been taught. At home. At church. And by the World.

It’s a pattern of Conditional love. Like ‘god’ was a whore who only barters for favors. A limited unlimited. An impotent omnipotence.

Notice how none of this makes any sense? Notice all the contradictions?

Is it any wonder most of us are screwed up mentally and emotionally?

I began my journey out of hell equipped and empowered by Unconditional Love. I devoted my concentration on seeking to Understand. That meant I was going to have to start suspending my judgments about ‘bad’ and start asking ’why’, instead. Always delving deeper inside myself, discovering layers of old wounds I had tried to banish.

If I was creating my own reality, if I was reaping what I sowed, I wanted to understand what I kept doing to myself. So I could stop.

I made the most selfish decision of my life.

To save my own ass.

And what I found out, was that by learning to Love my own Humanity, I became a Humanitarian. By finding out what it took to transform me and my life, I found out what it takes to transform the rest of us and our World, too.

Compassion.

Overflowing from our Hearts because we have given it to ourselves.

I introduce myself as a Complete Idiot. Made perfect by and through my own imperfections.

Care to be one, too?”