Posted by Roberta Grimes • March 23, 2019 • 20 Comments
Book News, Jesus, The Teachings of Jesus
Amazingly, this is the first decade in all of human history when we know for certain why the universe exists and why you and I are in these bodies. No mogul or king, no prophet through even the end of the twentieth century could have known what you and I know now. Had some of them known the truth, of course, human history could have been much better; but apparently that was all part of the plan. We come to earth to experience negativity so we can push against it and thereby grow spiritually, and Lord knows our history has been rife with negativity! In a reality without time, there are millennia now when people can incarnate into ignorance and pain in an effort to attain greater spiritual growth. And wonderfully, we are being told that at this point the plan is for us to learn how to elevate our personal vibrations to the point where we can raise the consciousness vibrations of this entire planet. We really can do that! Growing spiritually to the point where you and I need never come to earth again turns out to be an easy process.
Another thing that no one knew before the twenty-first century is the fact that Jesus is historically real, but His mission was entirely different from what Christianity has been telling us it was. And when we put together what Jesus taught with our fresh information about the nature of reality, we find that they fit together as well as if they had been one divine revelation. What I will share with you now is the easiest and most effective way to raise your personal consciousness vibration, to bring the kingdom of God on earth, to achieve greater personal happiness while here, and to make this your last earth-incarnation. It works so well that you can feel a 
substantial improvement within months, and you can achieve most of your spiritual development in as little as one year’s time! I have written an entire book on this topic, but for this series on the kingdom of God I will give you just a quick summary.
Understanding Our Task
What we are talking about is nothing less than transforming ourselves from the inside out. The way we think, the way we act, and every reflex that we ever have had: almost nothing can remain the same. The transformation required of most of us to materially raise our spiritual vibrations is so profound and complete that we must begin to think of the teachings of Jesus as mandatory! And He knew very well what He was asking of us. He said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; transform your mind and believe in the Gospel” (MK 1:15). Those Gospel teachings are the easiest and the happiest process for raising our personal spiritual vibrations ever devised! I will give you this process as discreet steps, but while the steps should begin in order, it isn’t necessary for you to finish one before you start on the next. In fact, the first step is likely to be an ongoing process for the rest of our lives.
1) Learn all that you can about the afterlife and the greater reality.
The more you learn about what actually is going on, the easier it will be for you to inhabit the fact that your life is eternal. And really knowing that changes everything! Instead of the old “life sucks, then you die” way of viewing the world that has tended to be humankind’s default setting, you will start to see your life as ongoing forever and fundamentally joyous. You will stop focusing on meaningless temporal pleasures and begin to live in an eternal and essentially non-material frame.
2) Begin an active gratitude practice.
As is true of learning about the afterlife, developing a strong gratitude practice helps to soften your mind spiritually and better prepares it for transformation. I urge you to begin right now to keep a gratitude journal. For at least the next three months, spend ten minutes of every day writing down one new thing that you are grateful for, and why. For the first month or so this is pretty easy! But eventually you will be looking for reasons to be grateful even for mosquitoes and train wrecks.
3) Understand and master your ego.
Your ego emphatically is not you! It is a fear-based gremlin whose only purpose is to make you frantic to protect your body and to protect your ego itself, and you will shed your ego when your body dies. So inevitably your ego is going to die, and it makes you frantic about that, too. I think the ego likely is useful in childhood, but as an adult you don’t need it at all! And your ego will fight your spiritual development, probably because once you grow sufficiently it is going to shrivel and fade. For example, my own ego terrified me with worries that growing spiritually was going to lead to my final oblivion. Doing A Course in Miracles with a study group through the extinction of the ego might be the best way to squash it, but simply understanding what the ego is and refusing to give it mind-space also can work. Every fear that you ever experience is ego-based. So every fear is groundless! You are forever God’s best-beloved child, and once you have internalized that fact you will laugh at your ego’s petty fears.
4) Learn and practice prevenient forgiveness.
There is a big reason why Jesus emphasized forgiveness! Until you can forgive everything completely, you cannot love in the universal way that really raises your consciousness vibration. He said, “Do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also” (MT 5:39-40). “Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return… Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (LK 6:35-36). “You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (MT 5:43-48). So we are meant to forgive everything, no matter what, as if it never had happened at all! In fact, the whole secret to substantially raising your spiritual vibration is learning how to forgive right now every bad thing that ever will happen in your life.
While we are in bodies, we can access only a limited part of our eternal minds, and these earth-minds have three characteristics that especially fit them for rapid learning. Our earth-minds are lazy. They seek and take the easiest course. They quickly adapt. So if we rearrange whatever used to be their easiest course, they will take the new route without hesitation. And they operate largely by habit. Just as they learn how to 
operate our bodies or use a phone and then perform automatically, so they learn what is a threat to us. And when they are triggered by any threat, they summon the ego’s fears and rev us up to do battle, even if that stimulus is only socks on the floor, being cut off in traffic, a pissy attitude from a twelve-year-old, or a dear friend’s unjustified behavior.
Who teaches our earth-minds what is a threat? Why, we do, of course! So it is up to us to change their programming. Forgiving things after they have set off our defenses always will be a battle, but we can re-program our minds to stop perceiving stimuli as threats by spending a few months forgiving everything. Just, whenever anything happens or is about to happen that you know will set you off, quickly gather it up with sweeps of your arms and form it into a nice, tight ball. Include all the people, too! Then with both hands push that ball away as you say aloud, “I love you, I bless you, I forgive, and I release.” Do this two or three times for each threat at first, until your irritation goes away. Until your mind accepts the fact that you will no longer react to its nonsense. You are the one who taught your mind to be irritated by your mother-in-law, so it is your job to kill that programming.
And yes, once you have transformed your mind you will find that everything is equally forgiven.There was a woman whose son had been murdered, and once his killer was convicted she began to visit this young man in prison. When eventually he was released, she gave him a home and helped him to make a new start. Only when I had transformed my own mind did what she had done for her son’s murderer seem to me to be the easy and obvious response.
5) Understand and practice universal love.
A Course in Miracles tells us that “special loves” are as counterproductive spiritually as are “special hates.” As Jesus says, even tax collectors love their own families! The kind of love that matters spiritually doesn’t single out a few people as our beloveds, but rather it reveals to us that even the worst dregs of humanity are completely beloved and sacred in God’s eyes. Every human being must become equally our own beloved!
Looking For Signs of Spiritual Growth in Yourself
I first put this all together a decade ago. So I have been your guinea pig, and I was an excellent test subject! It is hard for me to remember now the way I was back then, but if I think about it I can make myself blush. Times when I was cranky with my husband and children, and even prickly with my poor mother who refused to believe I knew what I was talking about so she fought her dying to the end. Competitive driving. Snapping at store clerks. Playing into the petty squabbles of friends. I wasn’t worse than your average American, but for sure I was no better! But then in the summer of 2011 I set out to apply what I had been learning.
I first noticed a change in myself about six weeks into my new forgiveness practice. Something happened that should have set me off, but I felt no irritation at all; I told friends at the time that it was as if there had been levers on the outside that people used to fiddle with and make me crazy, but they had been disconnected now. When people fiddled with them, I felt just softness and peace. Then soon after that, I began to notice that everyone around me was a lovely person! Even strangers on the street. I loved everyone! It turns out that once you get rid of all that ego-based ballast by forgiving everything, your spiritual vibration begins to rise on its own. And this change in me has been amazingly self-reinforcing. Over the past two years I have been subjected to tremendous deliberately-inflicted stress, but I have had no trouble forgiving and loving all the perpetrators. It has been seven years since I last had to form a forgiveness ball. Dear beautiful friends, this works! And nothing else works so easily.
Seeing things coming together now and knowing we are watching God in action is a source of such absolute wonderment that to deeply think about it puts you into bliss! It is said that when the Buddha achieved enlightenment, what he said was, “I am awake.” And now you and I have been given the power to awaken just as he awakened. The power to live all that Jesus envisioned. The power to transcend and then transform the world! The hour is late, but it is not too late. Next week we will begin to envision what it actually will be like to bring forth the Lord’s long-promised kingdom of God on earth….
Hi Roberta. Beautiful beautiful post. Thank you for this. We all need these constant reminders. Everything that irritates us is a forgiveness lesson. “Everything that SEEMS to happen to me, I ask for and receive, as I have asked” …ACIM. In reality, we are not forgiving others, we are forgiving ourselves for thinking that we are separate from our brothers (and sisters). So we draw to ourselves those people and situations we need to grow and heal. Sometimes I get so bogged down in the stress, I forget
So thank you for the reminder to “think again”.
Thank you for commenting, dear Nancy! And thank you for that lovely reminder from ACIM, that everything that happens to us is a part of the plan that we ourselves have devised.
Thank you as well for your reminder about self-forgiveness! One thing that there simply wasn’t time to get into in a blog post that already is overlong was the vast importance of forgiving ourselves. When I was forming forgiveness balls, I simply jumped into every one of them myself, figuring that I must have some fault as well in whatever was upsetting me. But I have found when I teach the technique that some people balk at the need to forgive themselves at first, especially when they have suffered some great wrong in their lives. They need to work on forgiving that first. So now I don’t emphasize self-forgiveness, but eventually – when we are more in control and not so easily distracted by angers – then forgiving ourselves really is our main need!
Thank you for your post, Roberta. This is a valuable lesson for everyone. Years ago I read this in your book that all we are here to do is “love and forgive” and since then I have shared this many times, especially with my children. Once someone realizes that this is their only obligation in this life, a weight can be lifted, worries can be diminished, and relationships can flourish. As I have said many times, you are a wise person and I am grateful for you!
Oh my dear Chef Dez, thank you! But I’m sure you realize that all of what seems to be my wisdom really comes from Spirit, and all I am is their servant. A decade ago I gave my life to God, and I make that gift freshly again each day. I am convinced that anyone who wants to do that will be given this sort of wonderful work to do!
I do, though, feel like an imperfect vessel. My beloved primary guide has promised me that his team will not allow me to make a mistake, so now I trust in their promise. But still I tread so carefully! They have given me a lot of surprising information in the past six months that I then have shared with you, but not without some trepidation. “Really? Are you sure about this??” I mean, the first time my fingers typed that God is a Collective, I nearly fell out of my chair! But I am learning to trust what they give me. And my deeply wonderful primary guide seems to be quite a bit happier now. I just feel foolish when you give me credit for something that is really all their doing!
Thank you, Roberta. I still find it a challenge to forgive my past commissions, and omissions . . . mostly omissions! Why didn’t I do this, or that. It’s quite a struggle sometimes. This post gave me some pointers.
Oh dear Bruce, your name is legion! It is impossible for any of us to get even as far as middle age without having a great many regrets, as you must realize. But it is important that we still go forward, and if you try to drive while looking in the rear-view mirror you are bound to hit a tree ;-).
The best part of your life is still ahead of you! And it is going to be so wonderful. You can’t let it be hampered at all by your continuing to think about what you cannot change, which is why it is so important that you make the effort now to use forgiveness balls centered on yourself to remove all of that from your mind. Whenever any thought of some past omission or commission tries to claim mind-space, make that forgiveness ball right away. And keep on doing that! It won’t be long before you notice that the past is no longer obsessing you. And then your glorious future can begin!
Thanks, Roberta, for the encouraging words. I will keep my eyes on the road!
Should I worry about being “legion”? Ha!
You know, Bruce, when I saw what I had written I almost stopped to think about a better way to say it, but we were heading to an afternoon gathering of friends and my husband was standing there with his keys in his hand. This man has a saintly patience about the fact that his wife spends her whole life working and blathers to him about her work, including sharing with him conversations she has with the other man in her life (my guide, Thomas), when he would so much prefer to have a normal retirement! And on top of it all, he still goes to Mass. What I ever might have done to deserve him, I never will know. So I left it. Sorry about that!
As I assume most people know, the phrase “my name is Legion” comes from the Gospels. It means “very many” and I tend to use it in conversation when talking about many people, but I likely shouldn’t. Jesus asked a demon what its name was. Its response: “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many” (MK 5:9).
Sorry about that!
No offense taken!
It did make me curious about the Greek use of that Latin word. It simply means, as you say, “many.” It is also used when referring to “legions of angels.”
Thank you for your encouraging words!
“Forgiveness” and “love” are two ways of talking with the English language about the same experience — which in English is also called “creation.” We are educated to believe they are separate activities, and in a sense they are; as in, they are “parts” of Creation, which is an ongoing divine phenomenon that WE experience as a relationship — God as lover to us as beloved.
We are also educated to think of Creation as something that happened long ago: 13.8 billion years, 6,000 years…a gazillion years… it doesn’t matter how long ago we place it–because Creation takes no past verb tense. It is NOW. Always an activity of NOW.
Creation cannot help but grow; along with its power it encourages growth, changes, tries things, tries again, is curious, understands that everything is worth a try in an irresistible flow toward growth. As the vernacular says, “it’s all good.” This, to someone wondering about their place in the universe and their own desires to grow, would feel very much like what we call heavenly guidance and unconditional Love, wouldn’t it?
Forgiveness is the letting go so we can participate in this flow. Love is the act of flowing.
Dear wonderful Mike, I especially love that last line: “Forgiveness is the letting go so we can participate in this flow. Love is the act of flowing.”
And the rest is really beautiful, quite advanced teachings of the sort that I also have been getting of late, about how all is creation and in reality all that exists is Now. My team is working weeks ahead at this point! Apparently we will soon be talking about the source of life, which is something that scientists truly have no clue about. Oy. Wow. Just when you think things are slowing down, they speed up even more! I find it amazing to see how much those at the upper level of reality are being energized by this moment.
Roberta, like you, I don’t feel that I deserve credit for a lot of what pops into my head and down to the keypad these days! That last line you allude to astonished me when it came to me. She’s not very excitable (so different from me), but she’s excited! I do love it when these words come to me from her though because I get to “sound” very smart!😉 Let’s see what happens next week!
Thank you sweet Roberta for your insights and spiritual teachings. I have been following you since you reached out to comfort me during the loss of my dog. You have been a great inspiration and comfort to me!❤️
Oh my dear Linda,I’m so glad to have been there for you! We are all helping one another to get through this lifetime together, aren’t we?
Hey Roberta,
Well my first daily entry in my gratitude diary will be gladness for this week’s post.
What you have prepared for us here, is pure transformation. As Jesus said ‘transform your mind’ (metanoeite) and these five steps are designed to do just that.
– They are big things.
I certainly will focus on these five points; I realize that they are channeled from the highest Source and I am quite eager to grow in this lifetime.
Somewhat automatically, I seem to be learning all I can about the wonderful Afterlife and this knowledge has already changed my understanding significantly. Roberta, I can feel my perspective subtly adjusting with the learning thereof. The beautiful thing is that the esoteric experiences that I have already had in life have shown me that all this exists! I get the feeling that the veracity of Spirit will only keep emerging. New spiritual experiences will keep on happening. I’m excited for the journey AND the destination.
The other three points are superlative; gratitude awareness, prevenient forgiveness and universal love. Each is mighty and deep. I shall give these things my whole heart.
Ego mastery is needed, true. This limited, fear based, small self must be shed. Surely this is the time for the breaking of the human shackles. Come the day that the dusty eagle is freed from its fetters and takes flight !
Also my dear, I’m reminded of associated understandings that will likely quicken growth: Perhaps a key thing is not to judge others or myself. I’m wondering if just seeing and watching brings understanding, and relieves the knee jerk reaction to judge someone or something. Perhaps clear observation, without an immediate rush of thought, is a better approach here….
Also, life has taught me to accept people just as they are. It feels so easy to enjoy someone’s presence by just accepting them and being glad of seeing them at any one moment. In addition, I do try to be patient with others and myself.
And as to love, I wonder if we can love people effectively if we don’t love God ? This is just a thought, but to love God and then people certainly seems to amplify love. Maybe we do need to love God first.
Life has taught me one thing; the love that I enjoy is the love that I give to others. So being ‘other centered’ feels like a necessary and enriching life path.
These reflections have been sparked by your five steps to make this my last life on Earth. I can see that over time, should I hold firm, authentic change will happen. And this path seems much more real that just ‘yielding to the Divine’, as espoused by various, ecclectic esoteric sources.
Lastly my dear, I realize that you are the friend of all of us here equally. There are no favourites and that is just as Jesus would do it. Universal love is thus made manifest. (I’m glad of this.)
As you have mentioned, the prospect of many of us working together in this lifetime is starting to become a reality. Count me in for that, as it will only increase our effectiveness in changing the world. A shared journey too, is often so much more enjoyable than going it alone, methinks.
This week’s post was key for me Roberta. Also, I do enjoy your parlance out of which arises so many outstanding quotes. (I also enjoyed Mike’s quote here about forgiveness and love.)
I would love to hear any response to my ramblings, Roberta. Without exception, your replies have been salient, enlightening, incisive and fun ! 🙏🏼❣️🌅
“Enlightenment is what remains of us, when there is nothing left but love.” – Anne Strieber
Hi Efrem,
Thank you for citing “my” quote, but by way of amplifying what you have so well expressed about having things revealed, those words came to me from a very high level being via my guide, whose tribal dialect name translates to Arrow (an apt name for a guide, I think). Like Roberta said, I wish I could take credit but at this point Arrow is doing all the work!
Oh dear Efrem, you want me to say something wonderful here, but I have read your comment three times now and there is nowhere in it where anything more wonderful than what you have written can even be shoehorned! Thank you so much for this, dear beautiful friend: you have given us much additional wisdom.
It has been very hard for me to accept the fact that what I write is channeled. I was a practicing lawyer, for heaven’s sake! I was a disciplined and skeptical facts-based researcher! The breakthrough for me was Liberating Jesus, in the Spring of 2015. That book was for certain written by Someone extraordinarily more than I ever could be, Who took up residence in my mind for two weeks. When He was just simply gone on the morning after He finished the last appendix, I was a dishrag. So from that experience, becoming used to the fact that everything I write is coming from someone else who is a lot smarter than I am has been an easy step!
I especially like the forgiveness information. I recall vividly one morning in late July of 2011 when I was so frustrated with trying to do what I now call “bespoke forgiveness” – forgiving things after they have happened – but I was still grumpy, suffering a kind of forgiveness hangover. So I spontaneously gathered up whatever was bothering me, formed it furiously into a ball, and pushed it away, saying, “I forgive and I release.” Oh. Well, that seemed to have helped a little. I did it again. And that helped more! Pretty soon I was doing it proactively, which has turned out to be the whole secret; but I’m sure that forgiveness balls came from Spirit. The “I love you, I bless you” came later – likely also from Spirit – when I started to routinely add people.
And that business about our simplified minds and their characteristics? I recall when I was writing The Fun of Growing Forever, and that popped right out onto the screen. I looked at it. Wow. Did that make sense? Perhaps it did! And now I see it as profoundest wisdom.
All of us are working with Spirit. It is impossible to be in a body without having at least one spirit guide. Most of us go through our lives having hunches and inspiration and waking up with new ideas or clarifications, and all of that comes from the wonderful best-friends that each of us meets with often while our bodies sleep, these spirit guides who help us make the most of our lives. And now, as the veil between there and here thins, more and more of us are working with our spirit guides more and more actively! Mike J-R has begun his active phase with Arrow, although he realizes now that he knew her long before; and I first met Thomas in 2015, but I realize now that he has been lovingly guiding every breath I have taken.
Everyone reading these words has a similarly loving and similarly devoted guide, and if you have the sense – as clearly our wonderful Efrem does – that your guides are becoming more active in your mind, don’t hesitate to reach out and give them a big spiritual hug! Somewhere in the hopper that Thomas has developed to keep me from thinking I can stop blogging anytime soon is a post on how to better work with your spirit guides, but you needn’t wait for that. You can begin now to more directly receive their wisdom, and in return you can give them your love!
HI Roberta,
Two more points, and then I may be finished for the week:
1) “…Instead of the old “life sucks, then you die” way of viewing the world that has tended to be humankind’s default setting, you will start to see your life as ongoing forever and fundamentally joyous. …”
2) “…And now you and I have been given the power to awaken just as he awakened. The power to live all that Jesus envisioned. The power to transcend and then transform the world!…”
Similarly to the way you envisioned sitting at the feet of our Lord and hearing his words as people in His day would have actually received them, imagine how humans on this planet envisioned the Divine long before 10,000 years of cultural and political influence affected our relationship with God and one another. It’s not that hard to do, actually. Imagine again being a child. Or, as Alan Watts said, “Imagine waking up without ever having gone to sleep.” Babies do not come into the world with a notion of a “savior” or of a superhuman “king on a throne.” As babies grow into small children, they notice all of the wonderful things they can do with their bodies, they notice that other bodies can do similar things, that water is wet, trees bend in the wind, birds fly but babies don’t. Causes have effects. And — most significanly — children realize they are aware that they are aware, and that they can share their awareness of this with others. There is amazement in this self-awareness, and eagerness to see how this fascinating “power” of consciousness can be applied in the world. They don’t think in terms of what they CANNOT do or ARE NOT PERMITTED to do by moral authorities. A child’s focus, until they are inculcated by society or religious organizations, is on the source of their power of awareness.
This would have been humanity’s primal vision of what we now call “God” (which we can’t call God anymore because when you say that word, everyone gets very nervous). When you consider the power and freedom the genuine God embues us with, Jesus’ teachings change in our ears at that very instant when he said (paraphrasing again, but you know the actual reference), “All this and more will you do!”
Oh dear Mike, what a wonderful point! As A Course in Miracles says, our process of spiritual growth is fundamentally a process of remembering who and what we already are. It is so easy for us because we really are learning nothing new!
Your talking about what human spirituality must have been like 10,000 or more years ago has reminded me of a course I took in college that flummoxed all of us at the time. Someone had analyzed the very earliest stories and chants and bits of stories and chants still extant, all of which were happy and were full of gods and exalted beings. This researcher had concluded that the minds that produced these very old materials were fundamentally different from our own, and that these ancient people literally did not see a separation between themselves and the gods.
What were we devout modern students of early Christian history to do with that confusing information? In fact, our response – and the professor’s – was to feel superior. Those ancient people had been spiritual children! Now we moderns knew so much more.
I come to see now, though, that your point is well made. We didn’t feel a need to separate ourselves from Spirit until the human need to master other human beings began to obsess us, until governments and religions instilled fear in us in order to better control us, including fear of what we derisively call “supernatural” beings and events. That civilizational fear in turn caused us to erect barriers to direct divine communication. As so many of us begin now – after 10,000 years! – to live once more in direct communication with the spirit guides who are in fact God’s minions in our own lives, we are only now beginning to discover the bliss of union with God which before civilization took it away was humankind’s natural condition!