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Living a Love-Based Life (Part III)

Posted by Roberta Grimes • January 23, 2021 • 59 Comments
Human Nature, Jesus, The Teachings of Jesus

Morning has broken like the first morning.
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.
Praise for the singing,
Praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the world.
– Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) from “Morning Has Broken” (1931)

Two millennia after Jesus taught us how to love as the Godhead loves, that perfect divine love of the Godhead still is vanishingly rare in the world. Which fact should not surprise us! The truth is that we never have made much of an effort to understand the phenomenon that came to us long ago as Jesus the Christ. Anyone who reads the Gospels can see Jesus openly living God’s love at such a wise and fearless level that for millennia we have altogether misunderstood both the Lord’s actions and His words. We have seen Jesus associating with lepers (MT 8:2-3; LK 17:11-15), dining with tax collectors (MT 9:10), confronting authorities (MK 11:28-29), turning the other cheek (LK 6:29), using the powers of His mind to invoke the powers of the minds of other people (MT 9:28-29), and then choosing to suffer an excruciating death for the sake of all of humankind (JN 19). Each of these acts would be unusual even today. Two thousand years ago, for someone to do all of them together must have been incomprehensible! So all along we have been assuming that Jesus was so different from regular folks that we had no way to relate to Him. His Gospel teachings were seen by Christians not as directives, but just as aspirational thoughts. In fact, however, the Lord’s Gospel teachings are something more like precision tools that can easily raise our consciousness vibrations. That fact is extremely important, since raising our vibrations is the whole reason why we chose to enter these earth-lives. Following the Lord’s teachings is the most rapid way for us to raise the consciousness of this planet, and thereby bring the kingdom of God on earth.

We have been  missing the point of Jesus’s message, and of His entire life!

What Jesus demonstrates in the Gospels is just the natural spiritual state of humankind. Beneath our grabby egos, our amnesia-enforced ignorance, our human-made fears, and the daily battering of negativity that comes with living lives on earth, each of us is already a highly advanced spiritual being! So each of us, once we are free of the negative detritus of our lives on earth, will be able at last to easily live the perfect love that Jesus taught.

What Jesus is doing in the Gospels is actually telling us what our life-goal is, how important it is, and also how we can best achieve it:

* The goal that Jesus has for us is that we help to bring the kingdom of God on earth. He tells us this repeatedly! It is even the first request in the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray: “Our Father, who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven (MT 6:9-10). Nothing could be plainer! Our first and greatest request in The Lord’s Prayer is that we be empowered to bring the spiritual development of the kingdom of God to all the people on the face of the earth.

*  Our efforts to attain the kingdom of God will also empower us to get what we need. Jesus said of our need for clothing and sustenance, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you” (MT 6:33).

* We can best achieve this greatest of all goals by closely following the Lord’s Gospel teachings. As He says, “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). He tells us that our following His teachings is our basic and most essential requirement.

In sum, as we work to bring the kingdom of God on earth by closely adhering to the Lord’s Gospel teaching, God promises in return to supply all our needs. That seems like a pretty fair deal to me! The teachings of Jesus are very effective at raising our personal consciousness vibrations so we can begin to purge negativity from the minds of all of humankind.

The Lord’s teachings are earth-shakingly powerful. Jesus tells us that if we will follow His teachings, we soon will attain something like His Own powers. He says, Truly, truly I say to you, the one who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I am going to the Father” (JN 14:12). It seems clear that transcribers got this somewhat wrong. They made the Lord’s promise dependent on the fact that He would be returning to God, but so do all of us return to God. No, what is important here is Jesus’s astonishing insistence that we all will attain even greater powers than His Own! Indeed, the very core of what Jesus taught culminates in this glorious announcement: “If you believe Me and follow My teachings, you also will do the work that I do. And you will do even greater works than I do!”

But still, until we can sufficiently raise the consciousness vibrations of humankind, we are living in a world rife with fear and rage. We desperately want things to be a lot better! We can envision a much more loving world in which humankind lives in peace and plenty, and we want that liberation so badly that we think we would do almost anything to get it.

 Our dear friend Father Richard Rohr is calling for “a new story” that will encompass “new paradigms and visions” to enable us to “discern where and how God is calling us to act.” He offers the example of the Brazilian Archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara (1909‒1999), who was a saintly man “well-known in his lifetime for his love for the poor and his embrace of nonviolence.” Fr. Rohr tells us that “his teachings have shaped many of my thoughts on the nature of evil and our freedom to choose how we respond to the suffering and injustice present in the world.” And he quotes the good Archbishop as saying:

“When you look at our continent [of South America], where more than two-thirds of the people live in sub-human conditions as a result of injustices, and when you see that the same situation is repeated all over the world, how can you help wanting to work towards human liberation? Just as the Father, the Creator, wants us to be co-creators, so the Son, the Redeemer, wants us to be co-redeemers. So it is up to us to continue the work of liberation begun by the Son: the liberation from sin and the consequences of sin, the liberation from egoism and the consequences of egoism. That is what the theology of liberation means to us, and I see no reason why anyone should be afraid of a true, authentic theology of liberation.”

Each time I read these words that were spoken by a profoundly good Christian man so long after Jesus taught us how to love, I want to weep for all of humankind. This one passage conclusively demonstrates that we still have learned almost nothing from Jesus! You and I know very well why we are “afraid of a true, authentic theology of liberation.” If we were all Jesus, we could make it happen easily! But since nobody on earth is Jesus, such a deeply good society based in lovingly helping the least of us would have to be imposed by a government. And we already know that every attempt to structure from above a “more just” society has ended in tyranny and death. It is estimated that Communism alone resulted in more than a hundred million human deaths in the course of the twentieth century. By comparison, about thirty percent of those living in South America are deeply poor, which amounts to some 185 million people. So human beings are so altogether benighted that in an attempt to help the most disadvantaged among us, we tragically killed innocents in such ghastly numbers that they were more than half of the number of people the saintly Archbishop was trying to help! A “true, authentic theology of liberation” can never arise naturally or be sustained for long unless just about everyone is operating at a spiritual level that approaches the perfect love of the Godhead.

It is clear now that for us to begin to live the love that Jesus taught is going to require that we internalize a whole new way of thinking. The love that Jesus taught is not just a coat that we can put on. No, that perfect love of the eternal Godhead is something that we must BECOME.

Living divine love is a transformation! What Jesus gives us in the Gospels by the examples from His life shared above is a glimpse of how each of us actually WILL BE when we have BECOME the love that Jesus taught! What we are witnessing in action in the life of Jesus are the core characteristics of a Being so spiritually elevated that He has attained the level of the Godhead. So none of what Jesus taught is aspirational! He isn’t only telling us how we should think and act so we can behave a little better. No, in the Gospels Jesus shows us who He is and who you and I already are!

Fr. Rohr tells us more about “the new storythat humankind so desperately needs. He says, “This new story is, of course, as old as incarnation itself! Somewhere along the line, we lost the thread of the true story of union, of wholeness, of God-with-us and us-for-each other.” And he is precisely right! But that new story is in fact the old story that still survives in the teachings and in the exemplary life of Jesus as they are preserved for us in the Gospels.

It will be up to you and me now to take seriously the Lord’s Gospel directives. The “new story” that Father Richard Rohr dreams of, and that you and I yearn to bring into being, is the very old story that Jesus tells, and that we still today can choose to become! But meanwhile, we will look next week at how it will be for us to live in that very much better future when significant numbers of people are living the perfect love that Jesus taught….

Sweet the rains new fall, sunlit from Heaven,
Like the first dewfall on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning,
Born of the one light Eden saw play.
Praise with elation, praise every morning,
God’s recreation of the new day.
– Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) from “Morning Has Broken” (1931)

 

Golden butterfly photo credit: Wild Chroma <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/44614344@N07/50146328328″>Silver-washed Fritillary</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Caterpillar’s face photo credit: Vicki’s Nature <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/7327719@N06/50754675333″>12 Days of Christmas Butterflies & Dragonflies: #11 New life – Black swallowtail caterpillar in fennel</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Fingers with caterpillar photo credit: Mean and Pinchy <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/33695431@N00/6080873959″>Fat-erpillar</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Caterpillar with flowers photo credit: Carobi44 <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/52877873@N02/13042542654″>Chenille papillon monarque</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Girl with chrysalis photo credit: Pictures by Ann <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/12560758@N07/50574679637″>Raising Monarchs</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Emerging monarch photo credit: Su02420 <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/90509953@N00/50776960103″>Miracle</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>

Roberta Grimes
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59 thoughts on “Living a Love-Based Life (Part III)

  1. Hi Roberta, hi everybody, thank you for this thought-provoking blog entry! It is important, when coming to understand this process, that we understand the mystical nature of who we all truly are, and the larger idea of how and when we are choosing to become.

    The traditional Christian notion of our lives as being sort of “manufactured” by a completely separate God who, after producing us in a heavenly factory then “ships” us to earth, carries with it a limited self image.

    In fact the evidence shows us a truly different nature that is eternal and independent of our earthly incarnation—which is in fact an experience we freely choose to have.

    As Father Rohr himself has pointed out, we must cease being afraid of ourselves and our true eternal power.

    1. Dear Mike, this is such a wonderful point! And it may have been the most important discovery I made in the nearly fifty years that I have spent doing this research. When I was young I was steeped in the limiting and fear-based teachings of traditional Christianity. I saw human beings as creations of God, limited and small; but I gradually came to see that in fact we are aspects of the Godhead, co-creators with God, and infinitely greater than any of us can imagine! Jesus Himself told us who and what we are. Now it is going to be our great joy to trust in Jesus, follow His teachings, and step into our own glorious birthright.

  2. Thank you, Roberta. This is very uplifting. We really do need to, “internalize a whole new way of thinking.” We have a tendency, and have been so conditioned, to look for and focus on the negative, within or without, real or imagined. While one need not deny that “evil” exists, as a couple of the guests on your show have stated, “when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you,” and as Jesus taught, we should not resist, or dwell upon, evil. Einstein said that a problem will not be solved by the same consciousness that created it. If we want to raise ourselves, and the world, to a higher level, a higher vibration, one thing to do is focus on the beauty, in each other and in the world, no matter how dark things may seem to get. Focusing on the beauty leads us inexorably to the the Love and Light at the center of our beings, the Oneness that connects us to each other and to all of creation, the Fire that will never cease – to peace.

    1. Oh my dear Scott, from your mouth to God’s ears! The amazing and somewhat frustrating truth is that for us to raise our individual consciousness vibrations enough to bring the kingdom of God on earth is actually pretty easy. And, as you wonderfully quote Albert Einstein as saying, we cannot solve our present problems from the same level of consciousness that created them. The way forward is easy and plain, and the result is certain, if we will only trust in Jesus and put forth the modest effort it is going to require from each of us to at last bring the kingdom of God on earth!

  3. Fear is indeed such a grand factor. Recently I had an interesting experience I can share here. Here follows a copy of my email to a spiritual info sharing group of whih I am a part:

    “Dear brothers and dear sisters,

    We have glasses in the house that, when accidentally dropped on a hard tile floor, shatter in an explosive manner in all directions over the floor in what looks like a thousand pieces.

    I happened to drop one of these drinking glasses a few times in the past. So, you can imagine that I started to develop a slight fear about dropping them. They literally explode all over the floor like tiny bombs.

    Last week I took one of the glasses out of the kitchen cabinet and immediately was hit by that fear once again and wouldn’t you know it? The broom and dustpan to the rescue after I dropped it of course. I blamed my clumsiness, lack of attention, and lack of grip on the glass more than the real underlying cause, which I will reveal in a moment.

    Last night, I wanted to drink some coconut-rice milk and needed a glass. But the fear of dropping it also “reared its ugly head” once again. This time quite a bit more, actually. I’m sure you know the result already. I have become an expert at sweeping the shattered glass of the floor!

    Then it struck me as a spiritual revelation: it was the =FEAR=, my fear, or perhaps even some naughty mischievous spirit enhancing that fear, that caused the fall of the drinking glass to the hard tile floor.

    And then followed the wonderful epiphany and awakening: it is really the FEAR of something that causes undesirable things to happen. My fear manifested the result, not my clumsiness or my not paying attention. This became became so liberatingly crystal clear to me: fear is the cause of (the) trouble, the preventer of progress, fear equals the remaining wall between me and God, and fear is the troublemaker in relationships, and thus in all areas of life and reality. I actually felt that dropping the glass was God’s intentional way of showing me that and answering my prayers about different fear aspects in my life. Wow, right? In other words, it certainly was no longer about a broken drinking glass, but about life at large! (and according to God’s message to medium Ron Pappalardo, also in terms of fear and the corona virus; the more fear you have of the virus; the more susceptible you become, as fear weakens your immune system).

    Fear often is said to be the opposite of love and this obviously includes self love. A person who loves oneself has confidence and there is no fear in sight. No drinking glasses dropping like exploding bombs. When confronted with danger, such a person knows how to act and react, but can do so without fear.

    My epiphany was such that it contained the clear and hopeful and exciting realization that my deep understanding of the cause and effect of fear is real. This experience boosted my self confidence and boosted my spiritual growth and understanding. I feel I have gone up the ladder of spiritual progress as it went so much deeper than mere truth-realizing. It had that wonderful liberating spiritual revelatory, euphoric aspect and growth attached to it. Praise God and Hallelujah indeed!

    God works in mysterious ways, even through exploding drinking glasses!

    Love you all,
    Adri”

    THUS: Fear as such has now been greatly diminished in my life.

    Thank you for your weekly posts Roberta! God bless you!

    1. Sounds like you got the spiritual message “crystal clear,” Adri. I love the symbolic pun, like something you might get in a dream, but for you it was waking life, so all the more powerful. The more clarity we have, the less fear can drop bombs on us.

      1. Indeed, dear Scott. Fear is always bogus, since in truth nothing ever can harm us; and when we are thinking clearly, not even the illusion of fear remains. As A Course in Miracles says, “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”

    2. Oh dear Adri, you have written an entire sermon! You are profoundly right in saying that our entire problem is not any of the things that we fear, but rather it is the emotion of fear itself. As you point out, fear is the opposite of love, at the lowest and slowest end of the consciousness spectrum, and in fact fear is the source and grounding of every evil. And as you also have found, once you understand what a deeply negative force fear is in our lives, you have already gone haft way toward the active banishment of all your fears; and then as you continue simply to choose love over fear in all instances, you can permanently raise your personal consciousness vibrations. No need for us to make this process hard, when in fact it is so easy!

    1. Great question! I have thought that what He was talking about there was the grand elevation of our consciousness vibrations, and the resulting elevation of consciousness vibrations everywhere, over all the earth. Since we never have attempted it, we really have no notion of what the powers of all of humankind will become, when we at last begin to really bring the kingdom of God over all the earth!

  4. Hello to all,
    One of the many things I still don’t understand is, if Jesus came down here to show us the way, why did he do such a fondamental action in that way, meaning just living a simple life. In fact, what do really know about him. All we have are stories reported by some dudes who wrote these, like 300 years after his death. How can these guys have really written what he really said. How is that even possible. And yet, we refer to these words today and to some “father” who enrolled into that “religion” that was created by men, not Jesus. The message is nice, but its origin is more than nebulous. Roberta, I thought your message was based on your study of the afterlife.
    What do the deads think of the bible. Why should we listen to a man whose whole life has been about religion. I have much more confidence in what someone who is actually in heaven has to say, than any man on eath. Why do we keep referring to the bible and religious figures when the real answers are up there ?

    1. Hi François and all — Others, especially those who we used to think of as “dead” will do a better job at responding to your excellent point, but allow me to give my best try: The answer as preached by non other than Fr. Rohr himself is that ideally and eventually, none of us will need to listen to words in any scripture nor to any teacher in this experience we perceive as incarnation. The truth is within us, and when we reveal to ourselves our own true eternal nature and power — with the support of our spirit guides (this has been an ongoing topic and will come up again), we will not need to teach each other but we will teach ourselves. The truth, unlike the saying goes, is not “out there”; it is within each of us, an we are having this experience here and now as part of our discovery of that truth.

      1. Dear Mike, this is perfectly right! Actually, real spiritual growth seems to be mostly a matter of subtraction, of removing what is not-God and not-us so we can be lightened and free and begin to grow more fully into who and what we truly are!

    2. Hello my dear Francois! No, the first written Gospels were committed to paper just a few decades after the Lord’s death. And apparently the Gospel accounts are very accurate! Those that we used to think were dead confirm the truth of much of what Jesus is reported to have said, although there are some suspect passages that they tell us were in fact added later. Indeed, they confirm that direct translations from Aramaic are less accurate than are the two-step translations that include a Greek detour! I have come to conclude that the two-step modern translations that the dead tell us are so accurate were literally overseen by the elevated dead. There is no other possible explanation for how amazingly accurate they are!

  5. Hello Adri, Your post resonated with me. I have acquired a medical condition that requires a procedure that is terrifying to me. I went in for the procedure and my blood pressure was measured as 206/110. It is normally 130/80; a little elevated but not life-threatening. The nurses freaked and wanted to send me to the emergency room. Instead I drove the 30 minutes to my regular physician and by the time I arrived my BP was down to 140/85. The mind is a powerful tool/weapon when operating on fear. If only I could figure out how to harness the same power with loving energy.

    1. Dear AC: You are so right. The mind controls body functions much more often than people are aware of. Once you made the decision to travel to your physician’s office where you would feel more comfortable, your blood pressure started to come down so that by the time you got there, it was at a much more acceptable level. I certainly agree with you that if we could harness that power with loving energy instead of fear, we can only imagine what amazing results we would see.

      1. Doctors call it “white-coat syndrome.” Whenever I have my blood pressure taken in a medical office, it is quite elevated. When I take it at home on the machine my doctor gave me to try, it’s perfect. It is really mind over matter!

    2. Ah yes, dear AC, that is indeed our greatest challenge! How can we make divine love ascendant in every aspect of our lives? How can we banish and defeat all negativity and fear, so they can never again blindside us?

  6. “If the doors of perception were cleansed
    everything would appear to man as it is –
    infinite.” William Blake

    Dearest Roberta, it is as if humanity is a man huddling in a mean, worn, wooden cottage that resides on an infinite plain, expanding boundlessly in all directions forever.

    What would happen if he dissolved the low roof of fear and let the abundant light in? What if he pulverized the splintery walls of ego and conditioning, and opened the cramped space to the boundless green plain all around him?

    When we become the perfect love of Jesus does it leave us with a sense of the infinite, of the eternal? The human lifetime is a fleeting moment in eternity and the world we see around us is illusory. We can’t really trust something so fleeting that is at best, a convincing illusion. Will Love Divine free us at last?

    “I am certain of nothing but the holiness
    of the heart’s affections and the truth of
    the imagination.” John Keats

    1. Dear Efrem, I think that the only way to dissolve what you so accurately call “the low roof of fear” is to begin to actually become the perfect love of Jesus. Doing that is the key to a much wider and more enlightened reality in which fears are vanquished, new and much brighter horizons are glimpsed, and our further elevation begins to become effortless. We are rising naturally and inevitably toward ever greater heights of love, as a bubble of air rises in water toward the light.

      Yes, our beginning to achieve the perfect love of the Godhead will indeed free us at last.

      1. Gotta say my dear, I do love the image of the air bubble rising in water towards the light. Also the idea of effortless elevation towards higher love beginning to happen after a time. This sounds beyond wonderful! 🙂

  7. “The human lifetime is a fleeting moment in eternity and the world we see around us is illusory. We can’t really trust something so fleeting that is at best, a convincing illusion.”

    I love these words, Efrem. It does seem like everything is a “convincing illusion.” I don’t want to sound dramatic, but these words will stay with me for the rest of my life. I strongly feel that we can limit ourselves in the afterlife as much as we do here (similar to your analogy of the man living in a “worn wooden cottage” and clueless to the potential all around him). .

    1. Hi Efrem. That really is a great line from William Blake, very mystical, and it also makes me think of another great one from Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, which Roberta has spoken so highly of. The line, depending on the translation, is about seeing through a glass darkly or in a mirror dimly. (I gather the latter is more accurate, and Corinth was known for its brass mirrors, hence the analogy) Roberta’s comment above on spiritual growth being about subtraction really resonated with me. The metaphor rattling around my head the last couple weeks is that our earth mind is like that glass, or mirror, but it is as if every bit of fear and negativity leaves a bit of dirt and after a while our inner God light is hard or imposdible to see. Instead of looking outward for God, we need to get out the spiritual Windex and find that God has been right there inside, all along.

      1. This is lovely, my dear Scott, as are so many of your observations! And the concept of subtraction as our deepest key to spiritual growth took a long time to begin to make sense to me. It is Thomas’s view, a key insight from my guide who so much favors simplicity and doing away with all the human-made confusions that so much plague us. For a long time I was asking him why it was that we needed to come to earth to grow spiritually, when our minds are already part of the mind of the Godhead. I didn’t understand his answer until I myself had managed to get rid of a lot of that negative spiritual gunk, and beneath it I began to glimpse the purest divine light.

      2. Hey Scott, I think the reference to looking into a mirror dimly is a great one. It is extremely apt in relation to Roberta’s point about subtraction.

        As you know, the Hindus have long practiced subtraction to reveal the Spirit. The Spirit or God is; ‘not this,’ ‘not that,’ ‘not this.’ All the world and ego oriented things are duly ruled out.. Eventually one is left with the very essence of all things.

        And I’ve heard it said that enlightenment is what happens when there is nothing left inside but love. 🌅

        1. Dear Efrem, all of this is true! And it is one reason why eastern religions took such a hold in American culture in the 1960s. Eastern practices were indeed helpful spiritually, but they were sufficiently foreign to Western minds that they never gained much of a permanent foothold. Even though they were far more spiritually helpful than anything that any Christian denomination was teaching!

          What is wonderful and transformational about today is our recent discovery that the Gospel teachings of Jesus work even better and more easily than Eastern practices to raise our consciousness vibrations! And Westerners are used to revering Jesus and His words. This really is a game-changer!

          1. Roberta: Years ago, the Catholic church considered it a sin to acknowledge Eastern religions, as that meant you no longer considered Jesus to be your savior. This scared a lot of people into staying away from Eastern religions because they were scared they would be thrown in hell. Why am I not surprised?.

    2. Dear Lola, your speculation that we might be able to limit ourselves in the afterlife as much as we do here is, by the evidence, entirely right. And it is one of the reasons why I feel so driven to teach the entire world what happens at and after death! The afterlife literature is full of tales of people who have, for example, been so certain that there is nothing after death that they wandered in a fog for eons until someone rescued them. Also people who had been so certain about what the afterlife would be like that they at once gravitated to some boring hollow heaven or other – often St. Peter’s pearly gates – and, again, had to be rescued. Even people who had been so guilt-stricken about something they had done in life that as soon as they were free of their bodies and rising, they gravitated directly to the outer darkness and bypassing the general afterlife process of counseling, life-review, and personal forgiveness that could have cleansed them and prepared them for a happy afterlife.

      Dear friends, the most important thing you can do for yourself is to learn enough to considerably reduce your own fears, but then try to die with an absolutely open mind!

      1. Roberta: Your advice of keeping an open mind is priceless. In that way, you eliminate any fixed ideas that would be detrimental to spiritual progress. Not too many realize that holding onto fear and guilt will serve no purpose. I assume there is help available for those who ask for it and that the mere act of asking for this help will start them on the right track – at least I hope so!

        1. Dear Lola, the advice that we should expect nothing in particular except the fact that we will survive, and we should simply keep an open mind, actually comes from the dead themselves! And yes, there is tremendous help and counseling available for everyone who has been in any way damaged by events or beliefs developed during their earth-lifetimes. We aren’t the first people who have had our minds damaged that way!!

          1. Is it at least easier to overcome trauma from damaging Earth-lifetimes on the Other Side than it is here?

    3. Dear Lola, to me the thought of someone limiting themselves in the Afterlife, as much as they do in life on earth is a little unnerving. Imagine that!? Though I don’t doubt that you are right and it happens. 😵

      And thank you my dear, for saying that some of my words were resonant for you. I’m so glad! 🙏🏼❣️

      1. My dear Efrem, I think it’s important that everyone realize how common it is for us to go off-track at death. According to Mikey Morgan, as many as 25% of those who die will go off-track, and most will need to be rescued. To your point, one of the primary causes of these detours is the ideas in our minds at the time of death!

      2. You don’t have to worry about limiting yourself, Efrem, as you are not in that category. However, there are those who insist on hanging onto false beliefs and thereby limit themselvcs by being unaware of their true potential.

        1. Dear Lola, this is perfectly right. Belief-systems can develop a peculiar hold on our minds, so we persist in beliefs – whether religious beliefs or cultural beliefs – even if they make little objective sense. And our minds are very powerful! They can quite literally manifest at our deaths whatever we believe is going to happen. Apparently this is a very common problem 🙁

      1. That’s a chuckle, Roberta, and maybe I’m blushing a little.☺ I seem to be on a bit of a roll this week, but what the heck. This theme of subtraction and clarity in regards to spiritual growth reminds me of a dream I had many moons ago that seems to tie in perfectly. It was one of those BIG life altering ones, and I think is probably an example of how our guides can steer us along, even when we’re fairly clueless, as I was. It was in three parts. In part 1, I saw a model of a human body made of what seemed like clear quartz. I felt it represented me, or my astral body, and felt a bit smug about how clear it looked. As if to say, “Oh really?” I saw a closer view and there were all sorts of inclusions, imperfections, and cloudy areas, and I got the point that I needed to do a lot of work still to get everything clear. In the 2nd part, I was on a quest for a very special holly tree, which I imagine was a stand-in for holy (or wholy?) and a message on how to get clearer by seeking to be holy in thought, word, and deed, or as Jesus would say, “perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” The third and final part seemed to be a promise of where these practices could lead. I was running around laughing and almost drunk with a sort of joy/love like I’ve never experienced before or since. It reminds me of what I’ve since read in some of the Sufi literature, or maybe of agape in the Christian tradition. Talk about a spiritually transformative experience! It still influences me to this day, and it seems my guides knew, even way back then, that I would eventually be delving into the sorts of topics we’re discussing here.

        1. Dear Scott, indeed your guides knew what was ahead for you, as all our guides know our whole life-plans. It isn’t predestination, and we do have free will, but all of us loosely follow what amounts to a lesson-plan to help us get the most spiritual growth in each lifetime.

          But your trio of dreams is fascinating! It makes me envious, since I almost never recall anything from my dreams beyond a vague sense of having had a dream. I once asked a dream expert why this was, and she said it was likely that I didn’t need to remember them and not to worry about it. But you are reminding me of how much fun I’ve been missing! Did all three parts happen on the same night?

          1. I have been doing a lot of dream work lately, especially in the last 2 years. We have been “taught” to think of our dreams as a psychological shedding, but many have dreams that contradict this “modern” attitude.

          2. Yes, Roberta. It was one dream, sort of like a play with three acts. The first seemed to present the question or issue, the 2nd the course of action, and the 3rd the potential outcome. It reminds me of a three card Tarot reading, but that is something I knew nothing about then.

  8. The dream work can be a nice complement to what comes from meditation – a more broad brush picture, often with more than one layer of meaning, and the conscious mind is put of the way, whereas in meditation one has to keep an eye out for the mind trying to jump in. Do you do dream incubation Mike, or ask for answers to specific questions?

    1. Scott, the dreams come to me with a rhythm and life of their own. They are definitely a series and I know when a particular dream is “significant” from my other dreams. Then I am part of a dream group that talks about them.

      1. I am so jealous of people who have these big fancy-pants multi-part saga-length dreams!! I never remember anything about my dreams, beyond the fact that I seem to have just had one. Where is the justice in that??

        1. Roberta, remember that my beloved spirit guide Arrow chose dreams to formally identify herself to me and provide me with some insight she knew I would need about some next steps for me. In your case, Thomas comes through boldly during your waking life. Dreams are not the “preferred mode of contact” when it’s easier just to talk (something Arrow has now started doing with me more often than the dreams). So, to paraphrase the saying, “to each his or her own” and whatever is most effective at getting the guidance through!

          1. Well, Mike, I wouldn’t exactly say that Thomas comes through “boldly.” He speaks from within to get my attention, and then he gives me feelings, impulses, convictions, certainties. Which is what he always had done, for the first more than sixty years of my life! It worked fine then, and it works even better now. But he never says anything that’s precisely quotable, since during 2015 – when he was speaking a lot – I would generally blab to friends whatever he was saying. Oy. Now I guess he’s right to be cautious!

        2. Scott: Your 3-part dream is awesome and certainly remembering all 3 parts of it has to be extremely rare. I too am envious, but the 3 part dream is definitely more interesting than the one about the cargo trucks that you had a couple of weeks ago!

        3. Dearest Roberta,

          When it comes to dreams and the lack of remembrance thereof, I can sympathize as the most I can do is to remember that I had a dream and later on remember that I remembered having one but not the content. Oh well, shrug it off.

          Cookie

          1. Dear Cookie, I am told that our inability to remember dreams means that you and I don’t have a spiritual need to remember them. Our issues are all resolved. Wow, I certainly hope that’s true!!

  9. Not to make you jealous, Roberta, but when doing dream incubation, on a good night it can be pretty obvious that most or even all the dreams I have are dealing with whatever I auto suggested I dream about. Maybe if you start a dream journal, you could start remembering some dreams. Even if you only remember one tiny flash of an image, write it down. It is like a muscle that can get stronger with time, and also the process of writing down whatever you recall can sometimes tease out more memories of that dream. It might be worth a try.

    1. Actually, Scott, Thomas doesn’t want me to get into the dream thing. It’s another of the ways that he wants me not to try to get closer to him, because he wants our work to be all-business. He is annoyed by the extent to which I still care about his famous prior lifetime, and also all our 17 lifetimes together, so he forbids dream-work, regression, and even much thinking about anything but our having a formal working relationship now. He assures me that after I come home he will help me to know everything, but for me to know any of it now would be just a distraction from the work that he wants me to do.

      1. I will second that with my own guide, who despite the dream revelations has made it clear that I know as much as I need to and am ever going to know about our eternal relationship. It is about the current mission now.

      2. I kind of figured that Roberta, but thought I should put a plug in for dream work for those who might want to try it. 🙂

        1. Thank you, Scott! One of the beauties of our all working together is that it empowers us to explore and then share the results of many different ideas.

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