Forgiveness | Linda Chubbuck

October 22, 2018 Forgiveness, Healing 1 Comment

Why I Visited a “Horrible” Place

I expected to feel horror.

Yes, there was a little of that. But to enter the National Memorial for Peace and Justice was to walk into a sanctuary of sorts.

National Memorial Peace-Justice Powershot Camera

From the moment we passed through airport-style security, the atmosphere was hushed and reverent. Visitors were coached about photography restrictions and told where water and restrooms were.

We began a long walk, past bronze statues of slaves in chains, naked, awaiting the auction block – which over a century ago was only a few blocks from this now-green hillside memorial. A mother with babe in arms, reaching for her husband, who was chained a few feet away to be sold down the river.

On this bright blue day, the harsh realities of being black stand in front of us. On the wall are historical facts about the racial terror lynchings that followed the freeing of the slaves over a period of close to a hundred years. Here, in the United States of America.

A former president used the term “Shock and Awe” as a war tactic. That pretty well fits how I felt as I experienced the long path up the hill to the memorial. Shock. Awe.

Then we entered the open-sided building itself. We met huge coffin size blocks of corten steel, suspended from above, at eye level. Each contains a county and state name. Below that are the names of people known to have been lynched in that county and state, and the date they were killed.

It is a little like entering a cemetery. Except that all the names are of murder victims. And all the victims were black.

My sense of awe continued, and as we made our way around the steel monuments, I saw the names of four people who died on the same day. They had the same last name. An entire family was lynched together.

I was alternating between sorrow, horror, and dismay. How can humans do this to each other? and why?

Gradually, the monuments above me were higher. I had to look up to see the counties and the names. The monuments were hanging. Just as many of the lynching victims were.

Along the walls, short stories tell of individuals who were lynched and for what (drinking from a white man’s well; talking to a white woman). Some were lynched because they were the family of a man accused who could not be found at that moment.

In the center of the four sided structure, which contains more than 800 individual monuments, I entered a large green courtyard, with the peak of the hill at its center. I walked to the highest point, overlooking the city of Montgomery. There I came to a square wooden platform and a plaque describing a frequent scene at a lynching – the accused was taken to a hanging platform, with a crowd surrounding him or her. The high point, the wooden platform, the surrounding crowd – those images were someone’s last visions before death.

So much sorrow. So much injustice. So much legacy of terror. There finally my shock and awe spilled over into tears.

The brilliant blue September sky over a peaceful Montgomery became filled with a crazed and hateful crowd calling for a death. For a moment, that death was mine and I could feel the terror and the outrage.

Then I walked down the hillside, still alive, still safe.

I returned to the memorials suspended above me. I took in the flowing water over the wall. I saw the glass covered table filled with earth taken from many sites where lynchings have occurred. I read the tribute to the many unknown lynching victims that will never be identified.

I walked through the identical monuments, laid like coffins, that are twins to the hanging ones, with identical counties, states, and named victims. Their purpose? To be given to the counties where the lynchings occurred, to be acknowledged and claimed. Is there one for my county?

Yes, there is.

So, I have friends who ask, “Why go there? What purpose does it serve? Why does it matter now! It’s over and a long time ago.” Or, “It’s horrible. I don’t want to think about it.”

I went there not for reasons of logic, but for reasons of soul. And Spirit. In this challenging time we live in, I feel deeply called to stretch my heart, to expand. To love more, even when I don’t feel like it. To be able to presence pain and sorrow and injustice. To sit with grief when called upon to do so.

That’s why I went. To sit with grief. To be present to sorrow and injustice. To acknowledge the ancestral traumas that racial lynching created that still affect all of us today.

I took photos inside the memorial with my iPhone and with my Canon Powershot. My iPhone reliably adjusted to the light and dark and captured pretty good snapshots. When I got home and loaded the Powershot (RAW) images into Lightroom for processing, I was dismayed to see spots all over the best shot I took inside the memorial. What!? I foolishly forgot to wipe the rain spots off my camera lens and spoiled the best shots. I was upset.

Then a couple of days went by. Looking at all the photos, I realized it had not rained that day at all – brilliant blue sky. I had not used that camera until that moment on the trip. There were no rain spots.

So it must have been dust. But the same location taken with my iPhone is clear. There’s no dust. And further along in the memorial, my Powershot has no dust spots at all.

The iPhone photos of the monuments glow with light. When I look at the photo I feel a presence of Light. The Powershot photo is filled with what many people call orbs. Filled with them. I cannot explain that. Except both accurately portray the sense of Light and Angels that I felt in the Memorial.

National Memorial Peace-Justice Powershot Camera – ORBS

A favorite passage of mine from A Course in Miracles says, “The blood of hatred fades to let the grass grow green again, and let the flowers be all white and sparkling in the summer sun. What was a place of death has now become a living temple in a world of light…. The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love.”

My soul sent me to the Memorial. I’m beginning to understand why.

September 10, 2017 Accountability, Forgiveness, Judgment, Shame 1 Comment

Judgment Day. Then Beyond.

In the aftermath of Harvey’s unprecedented flooding of Houston this month, cartoons and soundbites have portrayed the flood victims as being punished 1) for voting for Trump or being alt-right Nazis, or 2) for Houston having a gay mayor (recently, not currently).

Other vicious social media posts have scorned Joel Osteen for not immediately opening Lakewood church to flood victims, and Mayor Turner for not ordering Houston to evacuate.

Watching with a bit of Inner Peace it seems a big slice of humanity is hell-bent on judging others. From the far right, from the far left and probably from the middle as well.

Judgment knows no politics.

Hey, I’m susceptible to judging myself. It can feel satisfying, self-righteous, and just plain good. For the moment. But I’m convinced there is a delayed hangover headed our way after we indulge in a frenzy of judgment. Call it karma if you like.

The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge — of Good & Evil

I’m not a Bible scholar nor a born-again Christian. But my dad, a lapsed evangelical, quoted the Bible and Shakespeare about equally when I was growing up. Some of those scriptures stayed with me, and others I’ve discovered on my own. Here’s one that I find astonishing still: The Garden of Eden story.

Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Not the Tree of Good and Evil. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Prior to eating that fruit, presumably, Eve and Adam did not discern between good and evil. All things just were so.

After that, they became aware of their nakedness, and left that perfect place of peace and abundance.

What changed? They became aware of Good. And of Evil.

The One with Knowledge of All Things

I’m sure fundamentalists will condemn my views, but what they think of me is none of my business. Here’s how I see it: the Garden of Eden story is about humans learning to judge – this is good, this is bad. In the Garden, only God judges. Not because he’s the Big Guy in Charge of Everything, but because He/She/It is the only one with the Knowledge of All Things.

We, as individual humans, only have the knowledge of one person. Or maybe a group. But not the Great Seeing that the Divine Being has.

So of necessity, we judge poorly. We judge wrong. We judge cruelly, mistakenly, heartlessly. All the time.

It’s not our job.

Another profound Scripture is “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

So fast forward to this week. We are seduced into buying the latest judgment of a public figure, a person who ended up in the public eye, a person of another political party/race/color/religion/point of view.

The Weapon to Keep the Miracle Away

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

A Course in Miracles says, unequivocally, “Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself, to keep the miracle away from me.”

“To keep the miracle away from me.” Say what?!

That’s not my intent. I can use all the miracles I can get.

One year I learned what it was like to judge others. A lot of others. Caught up in a year-long marriage to a man who judged people right and left, I found myself joining him. It was either that, or he’d leave me. And hey, I could see his point. He probably was right anyway. So, I judged also. With him goading me, I judged this person for being dysfunctional, this person for being enmeshed, this person for being inappropriate.

It was the most miserable year of my life. I alienated my family and friends right and left. I ended up isolated and alone with him, and eventually afraid for my safety. I kept making secret plans to apologize “when this is over.”

I finally did leave, and I apologized to my loved ones with tears and chagrin. They forgave me, my relationships mended and I started over.

Whenever I’m tempted to judge I remember that year; I remember where judging takes me.

Judgment takes me into isolation. Into anger. Into self-righteousness. Judgment takes me into a place where there are no miracles, only sadness.

Our whole country is dangling on the edge of judgment daily. Left judging right, and vice versa. White judging color and vice versa. And more.

“Put her in the stocks!”

It’s a regular occurrence to publicly shame someone who has behaved poorly. Or worse, whom we believe has behaved poorly. How is this different than the stocks in the public square of old?

Brené Brown, best-selling author and shame researcher, says we resort to shaming when accountability has failed us.

Wow! That’s the tip of a huge iceberg. Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting we don’t hold people accountable. I am saying the difference between holding a person accountable for unacceptable or illegal behavior, and shaming them, is comparable to the difference between a trial by a jury of peers, and a lynching.

I’m proposing that when I – or when you – see someone doing something we consider unacceptable and I’m momentarily outraged, that I stop.

I consider. Hmmm. Is there any part of me that does a perhaps milder version of that behavior? Is that something I should clean up on my own side of the street? No? or Yes?

Is it True? Is it Helpful? … and Does it Let Miracles Come to You?

Is it even true? Should I dig a little deeper and find out if they really did what I think they did?

Then, should I report them to the authorities? Should I share with an activist group I’m part of? Should I write a letter to the editor? Should I pray for them, and for the situation? Should I launch an investigation, start a group to respond to this? Or join a group already active in this area? These are appropriate actions to hold someone accountable.

Or should I post (or repost) a shaming comment or cartoon on social media? Should I rant with my friends and sparring partners about the situation? Should I spend the next few hours despising the person for what she/he did? These are primarily shaming actions.

Because I’m interested in drawing miracles into my own life, I’m sticking with the effort to give up judgment. I will do my part to hold someone accountable. I refuse to do shaming of another.

Back to the Garden

Here’s why. I don’t believe my judgment makes the world a better place.

I don’t believe my judgment brings that person to justice.

I don’t believe my judgment makes me right and another wrong.

And, most of all, I don’t believe my judgment can possibly know all the circumstances that led to the behavior I don’t like. Only God can know all those things.

I can and will do my part to hold another accountable, to bring a person to justice where needed. But while doing so I will remember that he or she is a human being, that judgment belongs to God, and that holding someone accountable does not include shaming them. I’m keeping my mind and my energy focused on miracles. Judge not, lest I be judged.

I’m stepping beyond Judgment Day. I’m making my way back to The Garden.

August 8, 2017 Channeling, Conversations with Yeshua, Forgiveness 1 Comment

Both People Have Parts of the Truth, But They Are Too Angry….

Conversations with Yeshua. This is channeled material, edited minimally for clarity only. It is personal information given to me and my husband Stan, but relevant to many situations and this is one I am asked to share with the world. A special hug and thanks to Stan for allowing me to share this one.

There are a great many topics of interest in your lives and on the planet currently. You are welcome to speak the ones of interest and we’ll address the one that Linda brought up as well.

S: …That was how we trigger each other which leads to resentment and arguments and bad feelings and disconnection. Avoiding that is obviously something we want to do. We’d both like more heartfelt communication.

Disentangling the lump

There are parts and pieces of your communication dynamic that are valuable and other parts that are best avoided. In your minds and your behaviors those episodes are all one lump so we’ll help you deconstruct and disentangle the parts and pieces over the next few minutes.

Both of you are coming into your own as confident defined beings with certain inalienable rights. And we think you can feel the truth in the fact that that sort of confidence can easily tip over into arrogance. Can you feel that? So living as two strong independent beings in the same environment is a new skill, a new art. What’s going on in your marriage is also what needs to happen in your communities, in your nation and in your world.

When people become confident and take their power back they often ride roughshod over others. But not always. So in simple terms we’re going to encourage you to take your confidence back and combine it with generous listening.

And know that for each of you, where you perceive a right of yours has been violated, your partner may have a different perception and only the courage and the kindness to talk it over clearly will likely result in a shared perception rather than two opposing perceptions.

Specifics – getting to a shared perception

So we’ll get specific here. With the story from yesterday about the sound system speaker and its placement*, Linda perceived a danger to a valuable piece of equipment by your placing it in a driving area. She was concerned and expressed her concern. And Stan, you dismissed that concern but gave no reason. Is that correct?

S: Uh-hmm.

And so she nursed that hurt for 2-3 hours, feeling dismissed and unheard. And she still had her initial concern about the safety of a piece of equipment that she cherishes. Several hours later when she brought it up again and you had a conversation you expressed the need to put the monitors in a different place than the speaker, and a proper arrangement. You explained your reasons. She understood and the distress went out of that conversation.

Do you see what the factors were in the revisiting of that topic that made it turn out differently?

S: More information and no dismissal.

And Linda for her part was actually listening. She was not trying to dominate. She heard you and said something to the effect that she might have put something in that driveway to protect the sound system had she had time to do that. But she understood the placement after that. And then there was no conflict because at that point you had a shared or nearly shared perception. So, that process requires several behaviors and mindsets that are not familiar to you both, and it’s similar to what is going on culturally.

Both people have parts of the truth, but they are too angry to talk to each other about it.

So do you want to deconstruct one more incident and see if you can get to that place of shared perception there as well?

S: I’m fine with that.

So, as supper was in process — we want to say that we not specializing in mind-reading. We have access to Linda’s mind because we are using her as the channel. And working with other people we would not have necessarily have access to this material, at least at this point in the development of the channeling. Do you understand that?

S: Uh-hmm..

So, you, Stan picked up a hot griddle and brought it to the table as the food was ready, leaving the burner on. And Linda for her own reasons, part of which was the busy-ness and the sharing of the meal preparation which can get a little territorial, challenged you for having carried the pot away without turning off the burner.

Now starting from that point, what would add to the ‘more information and generous listening’ and not defending anyone’s position? What would be the next step?

S: On my part, an acknowledgment that I’d left the burner on, and that there was kind of a “get-er-done” mentality that paid no attention and that has done it repeatedly over a long period but not very often. It does happen.

Alright. That would have been more information that was relevant to the situation. And do you think she might have listened well?

S: She may have heard that but it doesn’t get to the anger at the bottom of it or the kind of rough-shod attitude that’s at the bottom of it.

Of your conversation or hers?

S: Of mine.

Get-er-done vs. request for changed behavior

Part of what you are both dealing with is respectful, clear communication. And part of is, sometimes there’s a request for change in behavior. We think that Linda’s request is for changed behavior.

That may not be what you are wanting. So that can be an issue too.

She is requesting that you bring your consciousness to bear and turn the burner off as you pick up the pan. And that may be something that for whatever reason you don’t wish to do, or that you wish to do in some other way.

But those are typical conversational challenges. You have not only the clear and respectful communication but sometimes you have requests for behavioral changes that one person wants and the other one does not.

What would your opinion be in this relatively calm moment about that unspoken request? For a commitment to attend to that in a different way than you have?

S: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the request. Underlying that for me is a judgment and criticism of Linda’s nitpicking which I consider to be an overly concerned fearful attitude towards the world.

That’s very clear.

S: And I refuse to live that way and comply with that.

So it becomes not really about a burner left on in the kitchen. It becomes about your judgement of her as fearful.

S: Right.

And your refusal to participate in that.

S: My refusal to make it a big deal. And I take it as a personal criticism of me because it stings.

And in concert – the speaker and the burner – together with other situations in which I judge her to be fearful and constricted in life, it adds up to a quick reaction pattern in my case.

So now in this quiet moment, as you look at Linda as a whole, do you see her as a fearful person?

S: No. Not overall.

Do you see her as someone who lives her life in a fearful way? Compared to average? or even compared to above average.

S: No.

But when it comes to a request of you, you see her as fearful.

S: No, I don’t see her as fearful overall. I see her as having an area of her life where she IS constricted, IS overly concerned. Obviously leaving a burner on is not something you want to do, but it’s also not a big deal.

So we’re going for challenging perceptions here. So when you were married to your previous wife, how would you have felt if once or twice a week you came into the kitchen and the burner was left on? What would you have said over time?

S: We need to pay attention to that, honey, could be dangerous.

And would that have been a mark of being overly fearful on your part?

S: In that way I don’t think so.

What would be different?

(long pause)

S: It’d be…. kind of gracious, and acknowledgement of a potential problem. And yet when Linda does the same thing to me, I feel a sting of personal criticism.

A third party in the marriage

So back to this situation, when she says “you left the burner on,” what do you hear?

S: My mother yelling at me.

So there is no way for Linda to share feedback with you without you feeling a personal sting. Is that valid?

S: There might be a more gracious less pointed way to say it. I feel fear in Linda’s voice about the burner. And I think that puts a little sting in it.

What changes would you be willing to make to shift this pattern?

S: I’d be willing to work on remembering to turn it off.

And the larger dynamic of hearing your mother when Linda asks something of you?

S: I’d be willing to discuss unpacking that fear-criticism from a gentle warning.

So your commitment is to talk about it with others, to talk about it with her? We’re asking what you are committing to.

S: It happens so sporadically I’m not sure how to work on it. It happens in the moment. In a hurried moment and I’m not aware of a way to bring more presence to that moment, isolated by 2-3 weeks of no problem.

We suggest that you start with a serious look at the habit you have of hearing your mother’s criticism in normal household and spousal conversation. If you take that out of the equation completely then you have a woman and a man living together communicating with each other. But when you bring your mother into the marriage and everything you ever felt with your mother that was less than pleasant, you literally have a third member of the marriage. And then simple things like leaving a burner on or bringing mud in the house are no longer simple between Linda and Stan. They are complicated because your mother is with you. And you are unable to distinguish between what’s accurate and what’s not.

You make judgments that are inaccurate. Linda feels completely shocked because she thinks she’s dealing with you and instead she’s dealing with perhaps a teenage boy who’s angry at his mother. And for each incident, there could be answers found if your mother wasn’t part of it. Do you understand that?

S: Yeah.

Do you agree with that?

S: Yeah.

For example, how many times you have license to leave the burner on without Linda getting freaked out. That could be straightened out. But not if your mother’s part of it.

S: Uh-hmm. And not if I’m already triggered by multiple fearful reactions on Linda’s part, or multiple criticisms. My mother’s not just somewhere in the background but an active angry reaction part in my life.

We respectfully offer that you will not see your wife as fearful and constricted when your mother is no longer riding with you everywhere.

Can you hear her heart – and your own?

You will begin to see Linda as an adult woman who has certain preferences in life and sometimes your preferences match and sometimes they don’t. But they won’t be so difficult to navigate if you do what you need to do to put your mother forty years back in your life and not riding with you today.

It’s normal for a husband and wife to not have every preference alike, but when you bring an angry judgment with you and call your beloved wife fearful, constricted and angry, how can you make love to her? How can you hear her heart? Do you really care to hear Linda’s heart? Or do you care more about protecting yourself from your mother? Do you hear how generous listening has gone out the door?

S: Uh-hmmm.

You are carrying your mother with you. And there’s truly nothing Linda can do about that. In fact, you carrying that version of your mother – which is only one version – produces more fear on Linda’s part. Because if Linda were carrying an angry judgmental father around on her shoulder and seeing you as that angry judgmental father three or four times a week, how solid would your marriage be?

S: Not very.

Advisor to the king

Do you understand why she might be more fearful because you are doing that? It makes her feel like she doesn’t know you. And that you’re not the man that she can trust. Which to some extent is true. You would not trust her very much if you knew that she were riding with an angry fundamentalist father on her left shoulder. And he had the ability to color her eyes so that as she looked at you, she saw him instead of you.

It would color everything about your marriage. And these little day to day incidents would not be easy to unravel with him riding there.

So we’re going to give you a picture of what is, right now. See your mother in her most angry, scornful blazing way. And put her on your right shoulder. Take her with you everywhere and let her interpret life for you. When you look at your wife, your mother has turned your wife into herself, because she’s so close. She has your ear. She’s like an advisor to the king.

And you lose the ability to see Linda in this present moment because your mother is taking you back 40+ years. To every hurt she ever inflicted on you and every judgment you ever made about her.

Gooey paint from the past

All of those are the costume you put on Linda. And it leaves the two of you unable to navigate something simple like turning the burner off or where to place the speaker. Because you are not in the present moment. You are not just dealing with the facts of speakers on pavement or burners on stoves. Your memory-mother is blanketing that situation with gooey paint from the past. It’s all over everything.

And of course it colors your ability to feel close, to be close. It coats your heart. As long as she’s there you cannot listen generously because she is whipping you up into a righteous fervor. So do you see this picture?

S: Yes.

What do you see as needing to be done?

S: Well, I remove my mother from my shoulder and work towards healing the wounds.

You may not be able to do that all in one step, you understand that?

S: Yes.

In this moment

The process of removing yourself from the grip of the memory-mother that you imagine in your mind is a huge step on its own. And the other piece is being in the present moment ANYTIME you have an exchange with Linda, even if it’s just breakfast, or getting ready for church. You can remind yourself that even though you haven’t done all the healing work, you are now, here, in this moment, with your wife. And that has nothing to do with your mother. This you can do today.

The deeper work of putting your mother off in the distance, forgiving your mother, forgiving yourself, that will take a little time. Bringing yourself into the present moment, today, takes no time. It just takes a commitment. And you will immediately find things are much easier to resolve when you are here in the present moment, and your mother is 30 feet away at least. And if your commitment to that wavers just imagine your wife with an angry fundamentalist controlling father on her right shoulder and see if you want to be married to her.

S: Hmmm.

And remind yourself. It’s not about burners, it’s not about mud on the floor, it’s not about where speakers are placed. It’s about whether you’re in the present moment, and being real and authentic with yourself and your beloved.

So we’ve given you two large assignments. One is to separately do the healing and forgiving work about your mother, and the other is to be absolutely present and not let any hint of that work contaminate your moment by moment interactions. Do you understand those two as separate assignments?

S: Uh-hmm…

Freeing your heart from the baggage

So we want you to check in with your heart right now. How does your heart feel at the prospect of making these changes?

S: Excited.

This is good work. It may not feel as loving as some of the beautiful things but we assure you it is. It’s not loving to carry around an angry shadow in your mind and to project it onto people that you love. Your heart closes down in that field of past anger coming with you everywhere. And what we are telling you is very specific but it’s also about freeing your own heart from that baggage.

You will be absolutely astonished at how much happier and freer you feel as you do this, that we’ve asked you to do. Can you feel that?

S: Yea.. I can feel towards that, I’m not sure I can feel it yet.

We are glad you come to listen. This is an important day. We are complete.

* The equipment was set up at an outdoor musical performance for Linda and Stan’s group.

August 1, 2017 Channeling, Conversations with Yeshua, Forgiveness, Healing, Intention Post a Comment

See Yourself as a Novice Buddha Sitting Surrounded……

Client: I feel the biggest issue that I need help with right now is regarding how to make my living. I need at least double what I’m doing now. I don’t know the best avenues if any to make that happen. I’d like guidance about how to find about the ways to do that if indeed that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.

Y. The question has been received and we are giving Linda just a little time to step to the side so that her thoughts do not intrude.

We see you as immensely rich, and at peace. We’re going to give you an image that you can meditate upon. We see you sitting upon your cushion, meditating, surrounded, literally in this order, by gold coins, by a ring of rich and beautiful foods, and by people listening to you, receiving what’s coming through you. And you in the center, at peace, knowing all this is yours.

You have gifts that have come in with you, gifts that you have polished and refined, the gift of a soulful eye which you use with your art, the gift of kindness which you feel and practice towards the world at large and the gift of healing which you have honed by doing your own work.

Add to this the gift of your words, the ability to put all those things into words and you are —truly —gifted.

But we also know that you have old familiar shackles that you still carry with you that keep you from even remembering those gifts at times. They are heavy like a ball and chain despite all the work you’ve done, and you feel frustrated with this at times, is that correct?

C: Yes. And more stubborn to change than I would like to admit. There’s something inside me I feel little control over that feels stuck and stubborn and unwilling to change. Fearful.

(silence)

We are going to ask you to —and we are going to ask you to repeat this practice —we are going to ask to to do something that dis-identifies with your name and personality.

This could be an astral journey, or this could be a meditative practice. But within this we’re going to ask you to pretend you’ve died.

Pretend you have died.

Imagine how you would want to come back? How would you bless this soul that is you with your greatest love? as if for your dearest friend or your nephew or anyone you felt love towards.

How would you want them to come back to the next lifetime? What would you gift them with?

And you don’t have to answer that now but if you have an answer we’re willing to listen. What would you bless them with?

C: Love. Belief in their own gifts.

Would you bless them with a loving family, or a challenging family? And if you don’t know that’s alright. Doesn’t matter.

C: I don’t know. I want to say a loving family.

Yes.

C: It’s been hard without that. Hard to find a place to stand in my life. Hard to believe in myself.

Play with that. Meditate on that. And then, go through a ceremony for yourself. Die.

"Hello Darkness" tall bearded Iris — “Hello Darkness” Iris

Then come back with all these gifts that you already have refined and honed. But you don’t have to live them as You, The Wounded One anymore. You can let him die and you can have a beautiful ceremony, for all the good he’s done and all the hard work that he’s done.

You are a soul. You are not only what Your Self experiences. Do you believe that?

C: Yeah, I believe that, I just can’t quite comprehend it.

Well, let’s imagine for a moment. (We’re taking you out to the edge.) Let’s imagine for a moment that you had received a dire diagnosis last week, and this was perhaps the last expectation of a week with your family.

Everything would be sweet and rich. Even all the pain you’ve suffered in your life, yes?

C: Yes, probably.

And the people that have loved you, and the love you’ve experienced, and the teachers that you’ve had and the joys you’ve had with your cats.

And then, somewhere along in the next few months, you die.

And what happens then? What do you take with you and what do you leave behind?

C: I don’t know how that works. I think I take the love that I have cultivated.

Uh-Hmmm..

C: I fear I also take the challenges and the stuck-ness. And the fears.

Do you believe you have to?

C: I’ve been told that’s the way it works.

You’ve been told you have to take that with you?

C: Well, that that’s the way the cosmos works. We carry with ourselves both the freedom and the stuck-ness.

Well we’re going to tell you that we don’t agree with that. And that you don’t have to take the stuck-ness with you. We’re not saying it’s not real, we’re saying you don’t have to take it with you.

And you don’t have to die to do what we’re describing to you. But you have to go through some sort of death.

C: Yeah. I understand.

Different traditions will give it different names. The tradition that we are in, as Yeshua, we would call it forgiveness, compassion, and complete surrender. In other traditions it might be called the Emptiness. There may be other words for it. What we are suggesting is a complete Death. to everything tangible and everything that feels stuck to you.

Wrestle with, if you need to, wrestle with the part of you that says “You have to take all this with you.”

We say to you that part is the unforgiveness. Unforgiving of yourself, unforgiving of certain others, and we know its there, we get that, but you do not have to take it with you. But you have to use more keys to unlock that since it is part of your belief system.

Death is actually a freedom, a release when a person gets too tired of the patterns, and a chance to start over with compassion, with love. Some people do bring more than others with them. But that’s not the rule. There is no requirement for that.

If you can go through a deep and radical forgiveness you can do it all and keep this same body. It is possible and others have done it before you. If you start watching for those who have left behind a life of stuck-ness, a life of unforgiveness, you will see them. and we say to you, “You can do that.”

And when the voice comes up that says, “No, you’ve been too wounded, this will never work, it doesn’t work for me,” you respond, “When I die, I want to leave behind the stuck-ness. I want to leave with only Love, only Compassion, and hey, while I’m at it, I’m gonna do it before I die.”

Do you believe that’s possible?

C: I believe it, like, I hear the words, and it makes sense and I could see somebody else doing it, I don’t believe it in that I don’t know HOW, I don’t know Step 1 to take that I haven’t already tried a hundred times before. And with discouragement I say that.

Uh-hmmm.

Then the other suggestion we are going to make is this: we say to you this is possible. We say to you, you may want to make that decision in advance of your physical death to burden yourself less in your next lifetime, and we’re saying to you you can do it in this lifetime.

If you don’t believe it, call upon your favorite teachers and say, “Help Me Believe This!”

Any one of them, all of them. And we’re sure you know this, you’ve told others this —you don’t have to know HOW to do it. You just have to have a sincere and deep intention. And then kind of… go have fun.

C: Yeah, I know that. One of the most reliable ways I can get in touch with my open heartedness is I think of the many people who have honored me with their surrender to my wisdom. And have asked me for help.

And most of them received help yes?

C: Yes.

You are no less worthy

C: I can almost get in touch with willingness to change just in order that I might be more available to more people.

YES.

C: I know there are limitations when I am more stuck.

The use of the word STUCK is not entirely accurate. We would describe to you that you, over the years, have certainly changed, you have certainly made progress. But this is a way you describe yourself, and to you it feels as if the soul progress, the soul unfolding, the awakening process is very slow.

So we would invite you to stop using the word stuck, and just say, “I would like to release more, faster, and if that means I need to forgive my mother, if that means I need to forgive Trump, if that means I need to forgive… I’m willing to do anything that’s real and loving in order to get unstuck.”

You may not be able to say that today. But that’s what we invite you to say. And of course, we won’t even try to describe to you what could happen in your life and in your work as you do these things.

We started you out with a vivid image. Instead of seeing you the way you see yourself now, as a stuck curmudgeon, see yourself as a novice buddha sitting surrounded by everything you could have ever wanted. With people listening to your words and benefitting from them.

You are that. And it’s right there for you.

The answer to your question about your work is that the way you see yourself and the way you hold that stuck-ness as a default setting is the first thing that has to change.

You could market and market and market and as long as you hold that stuck energy feeling, you won’t have much more success than you have now. This is the answer that is relevant today.

If you were really facing Death how much do you want to take with you? How much do you think God or the Universe or Karma requires you to take with you? Think about those things. And then, if you choose, do it now, instead of at whatever time you choose to lay your body down.