The Teachings of Spirit

Holy Spirit: The desire to be loved by others is the desire to avoid your own perceived self-hatred. I say “perceived self-hatred” because you do not truly hate yourself. You hate an illusion of yourself. This is very important for you to see, and it is this realization that will allow you to let go of everything that you fear.

Think for a moment about your desire to be loved…your desire to be approved of, to be liked or to be looked at favorably by others. When you are honest with yourself, you will see that this is one of your greatest worldly desires. When you do not love someone in the world, it is often because you believe they did not love you first. When you love someone, it is usually because you feel loved by them. There is a direct connection between your feeling for others and how you perceive they feel about you.

The desire to be loved is a great obstacle to awakening, because it covers your greatest fear. It is also an obstacle to following guidance or to “being authentic” because you will deviate from the guidance you hear, at least to some measure, if you feel that you may not be approved of by others.

I’d like you to take a moment now to look within your mind at your human memory and realize what an obstacle the desire for love is.

Now that you’ve realized what I say is true, let’s look at the reason for this obstacle. The reason is clear and easy to see. Below the desire to be loved there is an intense and boiling belief in the hatred of Self. This feeling…the belief…is so intense that you seldom look it right in the eye. Instead, you prefer to look in the eye of illusory approval, but do not lie to yourself. Illusory approval is illusory and not based on truth. You realize this when you notice that illusory approval is shifting and changing. It is never consistent and it is not something you can count on in trust. This is why you are always acting in some way, not being truly authentic. You are fearing the loss of illusory approval and doing (or not doing) whatever you feel it takes to maintain the approval you crave so desperately.

Now that I have painted this picture for you, and you are looking at it honestly with Me, I’d like to talk about what you are doing to yourself. It is important that you see this as an obstacle to your true happiness. If you do not see this as an obstacle, you will not let it go, because you believe illusory approval is love and you know love is the only means of happiness.

When you seek illusory approval or when you believe illusory approval has been found, you are placing your trust with something that is not real. Because you are the Son of God, you know at a level that is intuitive that you are trusting the false as if it is something true. You also know this is a lie and that as a lie, it must fail you. Therefore, at a level that may not seem conscious, you live your life of illusory approval as a life of fear. This is why you can never relax. The foundation you have placed your faith for happiness on is not solid, and as the Son of God, you know this.

I said that this idea that you cannot trust illusory approval seems unconscious. I say it seems unconscious because in truth, it isn’t. If you look at it carefully with Me, you will see that the fear of loss of approval is never truly unconscious. You may not admit to yourself that you are doing this or that, never truly being fully authentic, because you seek approval. But if you look at it slowly with Me now, you know it is true. The idea that you must win approval is always there, lurking in the open back of the mind. Therefore, it is not unconscious. And if it is not unconscious, you can look at it more directly with Me.

Now let’s look at your greatest worldly fear. Let’s imagine no approval. Let’s imagine there is not a shred of it. Let’s imagine that everywhere you look, you encounter open hatred directed toward you. There isn’t a single soul you can count on. The entire world is joined in agreement on one thing, and that one thing is that they don’t like you. They don’t want you. They don’t want to lay eyes on you. They don’t even want the thought of you crossing their minds because it causes them such terrible agony. The one thing that the entire world is in agreement on is this: They thoroughly and completely hate and are disgusted by you.

Sit in this for a moment, and notice how much you fear this idea. Don’t worry that it can be true. It can never be true. It is impossible to be totally abandoned by love. But look at this for a moment as if it is true, and notice how much you fear this as an idea of truth.

Now let’s look beyond this idea, because there is another idea that you fear more. Hold My Hand and willingly engage your free flowing imagination as we step in together and look closely at what you truly fear.

When you see the world hating you, despising you and cutting you off, you are lost in a terrible suffering. But do not look away from why you suffer. Your suffering is not truly coming from them. Look carefully, honestly and completely at what you are feeling now. You are suffering because you believe the hatred they project onto you is true. You believe it is real. And you believe it is real, because you believe it is deserved.

In a whoosh…a quick change in perspective…you see clearly that the judgment you fear is not really theirs. You fear your agreement with their judgment. You fear your judgment of you. You fear your final and complete, self-devouring hatred of your Self. And whenever you seek approval…whenever you want someone outside of you to love you…what you are not seeing is that what you truly desire is simply to love yourself.

Loving yourself is not as difficult as you may think it is. Loving yourself is simply a matter of learning to see yourself as you are instead of as you are not. And although your eyes are trained to see you as you are not, both when you look at yourself and when you look at others, your mind naturally directs your attention also to see that which you are. It is simply a matter of recognizing one as your truth and the other as that which is not the truth of what you are.

This is why I ask you to look beyond the body as you look for the truth of what you are. You can never limit your view to your body, or to any aspect that represents individual as self, and love you as you because separate is not what you are. You must broaden your view to all things in order to love Self. You must let your eyes gaze out the window and land on a bush or onto a specific leaf on a bush, or on an airplane, a car, or a piece of rolled up paper moving through the street with the wind. Let your eyes land on anything that seems not to be the body and say to yourself, “That which I see is also me.”

As you broaden your view by holding this thought in the mind repeatedly day-after-day, one moment of remembrance to the next, you will begin to see that you do not truly hate Self. You fear hating Self, but that is because you accept Self as less than all it is. When you broaden the view of Self to everything, you cannot hate it. Everything can only be loved. To judge and to hate, you must separate. But without the illusion of separation, there is only love.

Willingly broaden your view of self. You can’t love an illusion of you, because it isn’t true. But love of truth is flowing, and you cannot be separate from that flow when you accept that the flow of everything is you.

Question: Holy Spirit, I have several friends who seem to believe they are victim of their own minds or victim to the thoughts in their mind. They are caught in a loop of believing and experiencing that they cannot seem to emerge from, and they are clearly feeling trapped in hell. What is most helpful to share with these friends who are seeking help? I surrender all thought to you and wait gratefully for your answer.

Answer: The answer lies in remembering who you are all of the time. Although you may not have the experience of being creator, you have the knowing of it, at least intellectually. That little bit of knowing is enough to take you very far. But when you remember yourself as victim, you forget who you are. In that moment you are being you, pretending to be something else, and the entire experience you are having is coming from you.

When you remember what you are, and you decide to trust that knowledge with faith, you begin to create an opposite driving force. It is the opposite driving force that will begin to create an opposite driving experience. Then experience and faith can be combined to create a stronger opposite driving force.

The beginning of reversal is most challenging. It is helpful to praise even the smallest of gains with intense gratitude during this time. Remember that where ever you focus you carry yourself, and be willing to focus your mind in the direction you want to go.

The first step in reversal is the choice for patience. If you expect some kind of perfection from yourself when you believe you are not experiencing perfection now, you will only have the experience of failure through judgment. This isn’t helpful to your goal. Decide on patience, not perceived perfection. Remember that patience is a symbol of love in what seems to be a world of time, and remember to love yourself through patience.

Patience is more than being nice to yourself, and it definitely is not treating yourself with the gloves of weakness. Patience is a powerful, powerful trust in yourself, which teaches that you will reverse the energy of the universe through will. And patience also knows that the energy of the universe is never reversed through force, but always through cooperation. So as you see, the energy of patience is love.

Once you have decided for patience, you have taken a giant step toward the reversal of energies that seem to harm you. Take time to be grateful for patience. Take time to celebrate your decision. Through these simple actions, the energy of patience is increased, and the energy that seems to surround you is softened through love.

Now that you have decided for patience, decide to take the time to do the work I have already asked you to do. Will for awareness of your thoughts, and will for awareness in gratitude. When you remember who you are, you are grateful to see all that you do, because you know all that you experience comes from you. To not see is to feel trapped, but to see is to know clearly that you are free.

When you see, you will notice a temptation to judge. Notice this temptation and feel the power of the attraction it seems to have. Stay there, feeling the attraction. As you stay in the attraction without following it, the attraction in time will grow weak.

When you are in the attraction to judgment, it is helpful to consciously choose to be there. Decide that you want to feel its pull. Imagine yourself standing in a strong current of water, and feel the rush of the water about your legs. This is the experience you want. You do not desire the experience of riding the current or pull. You also do not desire the experience of pushing upstream or fighting it. You desire the experience of being in it, feeling it and letting it rush by you, without the desire to surrender to it.

As you enjoy this current, the current will grow weaker over time. This is the power of the choice to embrace your experience.

When the waters have calmed, and this may seem to take several days of standing within the current, you are now ready to look more carefully at the thoughts you were tempted to judge. You will not see all of your thoughts immediately, but they will float to you one at a time like leaves floating upon a stream.

When a thought that isn’t helpful floats into your awareness, pick that leaf up out of the stream. Look at it. Always take the time to examine the leaves that float into your awareness. As you examine them you accept them, and through acceptance they can be seen as not wanted and released.

It is helpful not to think too much as you examine a leaf you have picked from a stream. Do not try to understand it or identify it with the intellect of a scientist. Look at it with the innocence of a child. A child does not care about the variety of leaf or wonder about the analysis of the tree from which it came. A child just looks at the leaf exactly as it is and decides, based on the pleasure that it brings, if he will keep the leaf or let it go, thereby setting himself free.

The work that you do is restful and patient, and it is love. Remember that you love yourself through doing this work in patience. It is a sunny day in the country, and there is no reason to hurry. Just stand in the stream, enjoying the work that you do, and wait patiently and willingly for the next leaf.

Now, let’s look at the thought that tells you that you can’t do this. You can feel the rush of the water as we pick up this thought. Suddenly the water is fearful, and you are afraid you will lose your footing and it will carry you away. Look up. There is a branch there. It is a thick branch and it is connected to a very strong tree. Reach up and grab onto that branch. Now, you cannot fall. Holding onto the branch, knowing that the tree is also holding onto you, go back to your memory of who you are. Remember to be patient, and remember that patience is love. Be in the rush of water and let it rush by you and around you and through you. As you stand here in this place of being, letting the fear be the fear it seems to be, the fear will grow gentler. This is a giant step into the calmness of knowing that is you. Each time you remember to allow the rushing of water, you choose the experience of peace. Through calmness, the work is more effectively done, and calmness is the effect of choosing not to panic now. Patience is not panic. Being in it is not running from it. Resting is knowing that despite appearances, all is well.

Let’s look at the idea that one idea is different from another. It tells you the work can be done with one type of thought, but another thought is fact. Feel the panic and the rush of waters. Grab onto the overhead branch and know, within the depth of your being, that this is never true. Let the water rush by you and around you and through you, and rest, knowing the idea of difference or specialness, including specialness of thought, is only an idea. And in itself as an idea, the process of letting it go is the same.

Nothing is ever different, and patience is the key because patience is love.

Question: Holy Spirit, clarity would be wonderful on this Christmas Eve. I ask you to guide me on the best questions to ask and how to ask them. I ask for your guidance in all things now, as I only want to listen to you.

Holy Spirit: You are seeing denial in yourself and others and feeling judgment towards the denial, which you do not want to see. Let’s stop for a moment and look at your judgment and your hatred of that judgment, which stems from the fear of hatred of your Self.

Everything that you fear is not real, and this is a thought you want to hold in the mind. When you remember that it isn’t real, at least a little bit, you are able to look at your hatred with Me. When you are fully believing it, you cannot look at it with Me, for I am the perspective that tells you it isn’t true.

Deep within your mind there is a strong judgment against your Self, and this judgment has many echoes that you can hear. Each echo is the same, although they may seem different, but it is helpful to remember that all echoes are the same, for they are echoes of the same source.

One echo, which you often hear clearly, is fear, but fear is not always an echo that you notice. When you do not notice fear it is because it is disguised as something else, such as a judgment or a hate thought towards another. It is easier to hate another than it is to hate yourself, but even in the hating of the other there is pain. This pain is a blessing when you awaken to it, for the pain is telling you that you are doing what you do not want to do.

When you judge or hate another, you are repressing fear of judging Self. When you fear that you will judge, you have judged there is something bad to judge. So in the act of judging another, which seems to be a judgment away from Self, unbeknown to the conscious mind, a judgment of Self has been made.

Judgments against Self seem to be stored within the mind, only because they are not released. What is believed is held to and what is feared is kept through belief, so that the experience of judgment continues.

Judgment spawns judgment and judgment spawns fear, so that a trap of judgment seems to be created. But I say the trap seems to be created, because the Son of God is victim to nothing, and that includes not being victim to his own trap.

The light of awareness is the answer for the mind of the Son of God. And willing for awareness brings awareness, so the light is turned on through will.

I’ve told you before that the greatest error you make is judgment, and this is an error that continues to be made. In all that you do, you do with some error of judgment. It is time to look more closely at that.

What I ask you to do is to observe without judgment, and that includes observing your judgment from a place of non-judging. When you can watch everything you do without judgment, you are reversing the belief that judgment in the mind is deserved.

I would like you to will for seeing your judgments without judgment. This is a wonderful way to see. When you see that you are judging where you thought you were not, you will see why the mind is how it seems to be. When you see that the mind’s state is the effect of choices you have made and decided to believe, you can begin to choose differently and the activity of the mind will change.

Question: We would like to ask some specific questions. When the mind seems to be filled with thoughts that are oriented or directed toward not knowing thy Self, what is helpful for us to do?

Holy Spirit: Current thoughts, including current judgments, are the effect of thoughts that were previously accepted by the mind. By accepted, I mean heard and then believed. Because of a thought that was accepted, another thought has been delivered. In that way, the current thought is literally an echo from the past.

The mistake you make is believing that the thought you hear now comes from now, when that is not the case. The thought you hear now is an echo of the past. All thoughts come from choices that have been made before.

The power you have now is the power of perception, which can be called the power of choice or the decision to remember. Now you can look at the past and choose how to experience the past now. In making this choice you are accepting a version of the thought, and the version that you accept communicates your perception of reality.

All thoughts that come into your mind are based upon a perception you have requested to see. The creative part of your mind is always choosing its perception, so that perceiving is changing and not static.

Question: With this knowledge, what is most helpful to do?

Holy Spirit: Always remember you are looking at the past, but the power of perception is now. Rest in the knowledge of that power, and the mind directed by desire will know the perception it is directed to choose.

Question: Sometimes it seems that our energy is affected by the energy or perception of others, both seen and unseen. What helpful clarity can you share with us on this?

Holy Spirit: Perception is an individual decision…

Question: You began to provide an answer that referred to “individual decision.” I got stuck on the word “individual” and stopped the flow of your answer. What would you share with me now?

Holy Spirit: When we speak of perception, we must speak of perception. Within perception the choices you make seem to be individual. They are not, as you will see as your mind is arisen, but to deny your perception out of a judgment against Self isn’t helpful.

Question: Ok. Please continue with your answer.

Holy Spirit: Perception is an individual decision, and if you accept responsibility for this you will see that you are free. It is true that you are affected by one another, but only as an echo of the past. In the current moment you choose to be affected by the past or you see that you don’t have to.

It is helpful to imagine that you can control time. See yourself taking the current moment and slowing it down. When you think of the current moment as an instant it seems to be quickly gone, but when you slow the current moment to a timeframe that continues to stretch, the moment you have is never gone.

Now, in this endless moment that extends eternally, take the time to make the choice you’ve come to make. In this endless moment is the choice easily made, because it is the desire of the Son of God.

Question: I’m feeling a summary would be helpful.

Holy Spirit: The summary is simply this:

Experience is past and that includes the thought you seem to think now, but remembrance of truth is seeing through that past to what is now. It is this seeing that changes all things. Whenever you remember, you let go of the past, and a new moment of experience can be given.