Posted by Roberta Grimes • December 28, 2024 • 0 Comment
Jesus, The Teachings of Jesus
When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.
And when the broken-hearted people living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see.
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.
– Paul McCartney & John Lennon (1940-1980), from “Let it Be” (1970)
These few days between our celebration of the birth of Jesus and the dawning of the day when we will welcome a new calendar year can be Jesus’s special gift to us now. Perhaps in previous years we never have seen this transitional week in quite this way, because we haven’t realized what it represents as a part of our larger relationship with God. But in many older and very ancient cultures, the last days of a passing year and sometimes also the first days of a new year did have great symbolic significance. For you and me, there is the simple fact that the year ending now carried certain events, whether we thought those events were good or bad, important or trivial, which will forever be tagged in our minds with a date in the year that is now ending. And our beloved Wayshower and Best Friend, Jesus, is asking us to pause here with Him, and to make special note of some of the significant events which happened in our lives in this passing year.
Before our promised Messiah was born as Jesus, there was so little difference in our relationship with God from one year to the next, or even from one millennium to the next, without end. But Jesus tells us that He chose to be born on earth specifically so He could first study us and learn to ever better communicate with us, and then so He could teach us how to learn to better love and forgive so we could raise our personal vibrations so efficiently that each of us could raise our own personal vibration ever higher, and thereby we could make this lifetime our last necessary earth-lifetime. That was Jesus’s announced mission on earth, and oh, how perfectly he then carried it out! The Lord’s Gospel teachings are ideally suited to give us precisely what Jesus came to earth to give to us, which was the perfect means for vastly more rapid spiritual growth. Jesus did in fact at last powerfully give us the means to end the ancient cycle of eternal deaths and rebirths!
For example, Jesus said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (MT 22:37-40). “The Law and the Prophets” was, of course, what the ancient Jews called our modern Christian Old Testament. And Jesus said, “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (LK 6:35-36). And Jesus further said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return” (LK 6:37-38).
Jesus’s requirement that now we must not only love, but now we also must forgive was a new command, and it felt vexatious to most of the people around Him. Peter, His disciple, griped to Jesus about it. Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Even up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven” (MT 18:21-23). Or in other words, no matter how many times your brother sins against you, you must always forgive him. Every time!
Jesus has already told us that God never judges us. He said, “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father” (JN 5:22-23). And Jesus has told us that He, Jesus, does not judge us either. He said, “If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world” (JN 12:47). Elsewhere, of course, Jesus tells us that what He came to save the world from was ignorance. Repeatedly He says things like, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (MT 7:7-8). And, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (JN 8:31-32).
So, all right then. Why does Jesus want us to consider this one brief week out of the whole year to be so special? Why does Jesus hope to begin a new habit with us now of spending these few days between Christmas and the first day of the New Year together, every year? What is it that we can productively do together right now?
My dear ones, ours is the first human generation on earth of which a preponderance of the members understands the fact that we are eternal beings. If you are reading these words, then by your very nature you always have been alive and aware, and you always will be alive and aware. Oh, true, in a different age you occupied a different physical body and you were called by a different name, but such details mean nothing to your fundamentally eternal nature. Your eternal home is not in this material universe. But rather, you cycle back here every once in a while because this harshly negative emotional environment is a much more fertile ground for rapid spiritual growth. Each time you come here, however, you do unavoidably have negative experiences, and you encounter some negative people. So you will return to your eternal life with a lot to forgive, and especially in yourself.
Which is a good thing! It’s a great thing! As someone whose true home is among the astral stars, one of the first things that you will do when you transition home again will be to have a review of your life just ended. In your life review, you will experience each event of your life just ended here from the viewpoint of each of the people that you affected. Then you will be asked to forgive everyone in your life just ended who might have harmed you at all. And finally, you will be asked to forgive yourself.
This might seem to you to be easy enough to do now, but trust me on this. It won’t be easy at all. People who have gone through a life review tell us that they remembered and they were prepared for most of the bigger places where they knew that they had screwed up in that lifetime. But, wow, there had been so many little places that they had altogether forgotten about, or that they never even had noticed in the first place when they had hurt someone’s feelings, or ruined someone’s day, or missed some great chance to do someone else a real kindness! And when they went through that post-death life review, their whole life looked to them now as if it had been awful, miserable, and littered with failures! So rather than the pretty good life overall that they had expected to find themselves reviewing, they had been staggered to find themselves reviewing a life that they could barely forgive at all. Our spirit guides and others, perhaps even including Jesus, also will be there to help and coach us through our life review. But self-forgiveness is so hard! And while your big-deal, post-death life review is already happening, it is far too late for you to be just beginning to try to learn to forgive yourself, for heaven’s sake. Because if you cannot learn self-forgiveness quickly enough, your personal vibration will soon start to slow, and then it will slow more rapidly; and then pretty quickly the Outer Darkness awaits you.
So what Jesus suggests to us now is that we use the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day each year from now on to review, and then to fully forgive each of the troubling events of our year now ending. Don’t search your memory so much for the things that you might have done that harmed someone else just yet, but of course include those as well if they occur to you; but try to list everything that has happened to you this year that might have upset you in any way, and that you really ought to forgive right now. List each incident with enough detail to make it unique and memorable, and especially include the names of all the people if you know them; then either write it all down, or perhaps list each event with its details on your computer or your iPad. And if this will be your first year of doing this, and if some incidents from prior to this year also occur to you, then write down those prior incidents as well. In future years, this process is easiest if you are keeping your forgiveness list all year long.
Precisely HOW you actually forgive is going to be up to you. Jesus is eager to help you if you would like His help, perhaps if you want to pray over some particular item on your list, and especially if someone has severely harmed you. Personally, I have found our frame-verse today to be a good way to lift the weight of a pain as I meditate on forgiving something, since “Let it go. Let it be” is a powerful mantra. Some people know that I teach forgiveness using forgiveness balls and a mantra which goes, “I love you, I bless you, I forgive, and I release,” which also works very well. What you need is a specific way to briefly dwell on each item on your forgiveness list, to allow yourself briefly to feel the pain of it again so you can feel it lift, and then to signal to your mind that the pain is forgiven and let it then fly away. Then cross out each item as you forgive it.
Forgiving yourself is a great deal harder than it is to forgive others, even when you have to forgive others for some very big things. But once you have learned to make forgiving other people an automatic reflex, which is just what it will become after you have joined Jesus in a few years of His Christmas-to-New-Year’s-Day forgiveness marathons, you will find that self-forgiveness will become a great deal easier for you as well. And that is what Jesus is really trying to make happen for you now! He tells Thomas that He has been a part of a great many life reviews by now. And he has watched far too many people struggle to forgive themselves for even trivial errors in what had been otherwise some very good earth-lives. He certainly does not want that to be you, too! He wants you to become a forgiveness expert!
As Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way that you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you” (MT 7:1-2). Oh my goodness, my dear beautiful friends, that is more certainly true than we ever before have imagined!
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.
And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me.
Shine until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be,
And let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be,
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.
And let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be,
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.
– Paul McCartney & John Lennon (1940-1980), from “Let it Be” (1970)
(Many photos are from Vecteezy.com)
