Jesus here.

This thread is intended to be a practical guide to the practice of forgiveness. It will not answer the question "Should I forgive?" but will instead answer the question "How do I forgive now that I've decided I want to forgive?" If you want to have a debate about whether forgiveness is needed, please start another thread. If you want to ask questions about the praxis of Christian forgiveness -- what you're supposed to do each day as part of your daily life to live according to the Way, the Truth, and the Life -- then stay here, and please! ask me practical questions!

Again, this is practical, not theoretical. In this thread, I assume you want to know how to forgive. I assume you think it's a good idea. And I also assume you have no idea where to begin. This latter assumption may sound like a stab in the dark to you, but I'm basing it on my own experiences 2,000 years ago. The idea of forgiveness sounded marvellous to me then, but I had no clue whatsoever how to describe it, how to "find" it, or how to "keep" it. But I learned. So I hope to be able to help you understand your own innate ability to forgive, which is part of your divine inheritance from God the Mother and God the Father.

I will be using some scientific terms. If you don't understand them, please ask me, or please do a little research on your own. I can't emphasize enough how important it is for you as Christians to begin to include some scientific understanding in your theological discourse.

Let's start first with an important image I'll be returning to as we go along. I will call this the Parable of the Bodybuilder:

The Parable of the Bodybuilder
Delilah and Samson are sister and brother. They each stand 5 feet 8 inches tall. By the age of 25, Delilah weighs 135 pounds. Samson weighs 155 pounds. They are healthy. They look attractive. They eat balanced, nutritious meals. They sleep well. They have loving relationships with their respective spouses. They have a loving, balanced, normal sexuality within their marriages. All is going quite well, as far as God is concerned.

One day, after Delilah has been watching TV, she looks in the mirror and says, "I'm fat! I'm ugly! My husband doesn't desire me anymore!" -- none of which is true, but Delihah says it anyway. Then Samson, who has always tended to follow his sister in her beliefs, looks in the mirror and says, "I'm fat! I'm ugly! My husband doesn't desire me anymore!" [not a typo]. Delilah and Samson say to each other, "What shall we do?" They think and think, and then Samson says, "Let's become bodybuilders. Then we won't be fat anymore. Then we won't be ugly anymore. And our beloved partners will love us."

To get a perfect six-pack, they have to go to the gym every day. And they do. They follow very specific exercises. They repeat them hundreds and hundreds of times. They listen to the trainer's advice. They change the food they eat. They take banned substances to force their bodies to realign muscle, fat, connective tissue. Slowly, their bodies begin to change shape. The shape is not the shape dictated by their own DNA. The shape is not a shape that's natural to either males or females. The shape comes at a great cost: more injuries, more bouts of illness becaused of impaired immune function, more sleep disorders, more problems with libido, more problems with impulse control, and more conflicts within their relationships. The shape, however, is all that matters to them. Each day, Delilah and Samson make the conscious choice to reshape their physical bodies. Their bodies obey. Their muscles grow and grow in certain places because they're forced to. But that doesn't make their bodies healthy or happy.

Delilah and Samson show us how powerful our conscious will power is. They show us how much our daily disciplines (whatever they are) can radically alter the natural shape of our bodies. They show us how much our conscious will power and our daily disciplines can override our DNA. They show us that we have the power to change and damage our bodies if we try really hard each day. Just be using our daily thoughts and actions.

Now . . . take the image of the bodybuilders, and apply the same story to your brain.

It's helpful here to remember that your brain is a physical substance. It's a part of your biological body. Your brain is not the same thing as your mind. Your mind is a generic term to describe your non-physical state of "consciousness" or "awareness of self." Mind is 4-dimensional, and can't be seen or measured in the 3D reality where you live. Your brain, on the other hand, is totally 3D. When you die as a human being, you take your mind with you as a soul. But you leave your physical brain behind inside your physical body. Your physical brain, being part of your physical body, is just as easily controlled and damaged by your conscious will power as your physical body is. Just as the bodybuilder can slowly but surely force his or her physical body to change shape, you (and yes, I mean you!) can slowly but surely force your brain to change shape.

This can be a good thing, or this can be a bad thing, depending on what belief system you choose.

I will further reduce these ideas to a maxim:

What You Put In Your Brain Matters

If you get up every morning, and think of your old friend Harry who once cheated you, and you say to yourself every morning, "I hate Harry. Harry deserves to be punished. One day I will get even with Harry," then what you are doing every morning is forcing your brain to try to grow new fibres (like neuronal dendrites, neuronal axons, and sundry glial cells) to connect to an idea called "hate." Your DNA, by the way, does not come with programming for "hate" because your DNA originates in your soul, and your soul has no programming for hate. However, just as your physical body does not naturally grow a perfect abdominal six-pack, but can be forced into it, your physical brain can be forced into building a paradigm labelled "hate." This paradigm becomes physically hardwired into your brain. It is not "just an idea" that has no physical reality. Hate is a series of interconnected brain cells that you have forced your brain to construct through constant repetition of your "need" for hatred and your "need" for revenge.

If the bodybuilder wants to return to a normal human shape, it will not happen overnight. Just because the bodybuilder suddenly changes his/her mind about having a six-pack does not mean the muscles, etc. will instantly realign themselves. The bodybuilder will have to patiently and carefully institute a new daily regimen to coax the body's tissues in a new, more healthful direction.

The same applies to your physical brain. If you decide you no longer want to hate Harry, but that instead you want to forgive Harry, you will have to persuade your brain to literally chew up the dendrites, axons, neurotransmitters, etc. that are currently plugged into your "hate paradigm." There's a little cluster of brain cells whose job it is to keep track of the "hate paradigm," whose job it is to inform you that it's time for you to have your daily hate-fix, whose job it is to remind you that you "hate" Harry, whose job it is to tell other parts of your brain that hate is, in fact, a very useful way to cope with life's stresses. (!) And that cluster sits in there till the day you die unless you "fire it," give it the pink slip, show it the door and tell it not to come back. It will go, and it will go quite happily, but only if you give it clear, consistent, continuous instruction. This means that you have to give your brain a new set of instructions to follow, a new set of instructions that are intended to supercede the previous set. The new set of instructions is the "boss," and the boss takes charge of sweeping out the old paradigm of hate, of literally pulling the plug on the biological circuits that are generating a false sense of "hate" in your poor, overburdened brain. This part of the job can be likened to your body's mechanism for getting rid of bruises on your skin. A bruise is visible to your physical eyes because blood has pooled under the surface of your skin following some sort of trauma. Your body sends in various specialized cells whose job it is to eat up the dead blood cells sitting in the bruise, and reabsorb the components into your body for reuse or disposal. The same thing happens in your physical brain. The "hate paradigm" is like a long-lived bruise, but unlike a bruise in your muscles, the brain-bruise will stay there until you give clear instructions that you don't want it anymore. But once you make that choice, your body will begin to send in specialized cells whose job it is to literally eat up and reabsorb the dendritic connections, etc. But this times time. And most of this work is done by your body while you are asleep. And sometimes the chewing-up process is so finicky and complex that you can have temporary side effects like headaches. It's like a construction zone on the highway. While the work is going on, the construction site causes slowdowns and detours. But in the end, when the smooth new asphalt is in place, you're grateful for the temporary but necessary inconvenience that created a much better highway.

I hope I'm making this clear. Forgiveness is not just an abstract idea. Forgiveness is also a biological process. And to learn how to forgive, you have to make allowances for the biological changes that will take place in your physical brain.

Would it be too much, then, to say that learning how to forgive can sometimes give you a headache?

No! A person who is learning how to forgive is a person who is undertaking to change the physical shape of his or her own brain. So you might get some temporary physical symptoms during the "reconstruction" phase. If you know this ahead of time, you will not be frightened or confused. Most important, if you know this ahead of time, you cannot be tricked by another human being into being told the headache comes from a supernatural source -- for example, negative energies, negative entities, past life karma, negative thoughtforms, the devil, or a wrathful God. It's just part of the natural healing process. Other parts of your body give off uncomfortable sensations like increased tenderness, pain, itchiness, and lack of strength while they are healing. The brain is no different. The fact that the tissues inside your skull have no immediate receptors for pain is irrelevant. I don't want to hear back from anyone who wants to insist the brain does not feel pain. This is false. The brain does feel pain; it just doesn't feel the pain inside the skull where the neuron's cell bodies are located. Instead, the brain generates pain impulses along the very long neuronal axons that stretch far into your body from your brain, and you sense the pain in your body, even though it's being generated inside your brain. So . . .

The first step in learning how to forgive is learning to understand it as a biological healing process.

That's enough for today. No doubt, some of you will soon get a headache.

Love Jesus
November 7, 2007

Lesson 2

Readers who very much wish to view forgiveness as a mystical state of grace conferred on them by God are not going to like Lesson 2. Lesson 2 is all about the ways in which learning how to forgive is very much like learning how to stop smoking cigarettes.

If you've ever smoked and have tried to quit, you'll know what I mean when I say that the fight between your will power and your cravings is a bugger.

Learning how to forgive is a fight between your soul's will power and your Darwinian brain circuit's ongoing cravings. In the beginning, while you're first learning to forgive, you will be dismayed at the number of ways the Darwinian circuit of your brain can "trip you up" (i.e. give you cravings to hold onto your grudges and lack of forgiveness). There is nothing intrinisically wrong with you when you get these unloving cravings. You are not filled with "original sin." You are not being tempted by the devil. You are not weak. You simply do not yet have enough functioning, healthy brain cells in the soul circuit of your brain to take charge. Your task, as a Christian learning to forgive, is to understand this process, and to use your conscious understanding to help you stay the course.

God and God's healings angels will help you in the task of building more of the kinds of brain cells that you need. But -- and this is a non-negotiable but -- they will not help you if you don't actually want to learn to forgive.

Oh, you say, that's not fair! Of course I want to forgive! Why wouldn't I want to forgive? I'm a good Christian, and all good Christians want to forgive because that's one of Jesus' greatest commandments.

And I say to you that almost no Christians on the planet at this time actually want to learn to forgive.

Most Christians today expect God to give them gifts, blessings, abundance, and help in fighting their "enemies." Few Christians want to let go of their grudges, their excuses, their cruelty towards others, or their false judgments.

So let me warn you in advance: learning how to forgive means that you will be doing more than just learning how to forgive. Learning how to forgive means that you will simultaneously be learning how to stop blaming other people for your own mistakes.

There are few things in the universe that are impossible. However, one of the impossible things is this: it is impossible to be in a true state of divine forgiveness towards others or yourself if you enjoy holding onto excuses, grudges, or self-pity. There is no place anywhere in your soul or in your soul's DNA for self-pity. By self-pity I mean an emotional habit involving whining; narcissistic, self-indulgent tears; insisting on seeing the glass as always half empty; a refusal to even consider the glass as being half-full; a chronic pattern of blaming everybody else for your problems; and a chronic pattern of viewing yourself as a Victim with a capital V.

I tell you this now to save you the trouble down the line of wondering what's going on in terms of your own process. Your own personal will-power and your own conscious desire to change are the Number One factors in your brain's ability to grow new, healthier brain cells. If you don't really want to change -- if you don't want to stop hating Harry because you get a high out of hating Harry -- your brain will stay the way it is today. No amount of prayer or meditation can change this fact. Let me repeat: you cannot pray your way into getting a more balanced brain by asking God to heal it for you. God will heal it with you, but God will not heal it for you. There's a huge, huge difference. God has free will. God's healing angels have free will. They will choose not to help you rearrange the cells and circuits of your brain if you are not genuinely interested in being a nicer person.

Why is the system designed this way? The divine system is designed this way because God has given each of us free will. God expects us to try to use our free will wisely. If we prefer to use our free will in intentionally harmful ways (and from God's point of view, the decision not to forgive is an intentionally harmful decision) then, well, you know, there are going to be natural and loving consequences.

One certain consequence for the misuse of one's free will is a buildup of stress hormones in the body. In other words, if you continually make unloving and unforgiving choices, your body will pump out large volumes of stress hormones. These stress hormones will in turn impair your immune function, and in high doses they are toxic to your own brain cells. Needless to say, this is not a good thing. You will get sick. Is this divine "punishment?" No. This is biology, and it's hardwired into your DNA. So don't think you can pray your way out of the consequences of your own intentionally harmful choices. You can't. That wouldn't be fair to anyone, especially not to God. God the Mother and God the Father carefully and lovingly designed your DNA so that there would be many checks and balances, many redundancies (redundancies are a good thing, by the way!), many ways to hear what your own soul is trying to tell you. The Cartesian mind-body duality is false. It is misleading. And it is ultimately damaging because it tells people their minds don't affect their bodies, nor their bodies their minds. Take Descartes's theory and chuck it out the window. Modern science has shown it to be false. Your brain and body are intimately intertwined. Your brain and mind are intimately intertwined. You can't separate them. They're not meant by God to be separated. Work with what God has given you. Deal with it. Deal with it in as loving and kind a way as possible. You're going to be human until the day you die, so you may as well work with God's system instead of against it. Let me assure you of three things (the psychopathic hubris of certain readers notwithstanding): you are not smarter than God, and you can't trick God into giving you what you think you want, and God is always a hundred steps ahead of the selfishness that originates in the Darwinian circuit of your brain. Put even more simply: It's God's way or no way. You can choose to be your best self, in which case God will choose to help you. Or you can choose to be cruel and judgmental, in which case God will choose to not help you.

You can choose to learn to forgive, or you can choose to say "To heck with that. Sounds too hard. I can't be bothered." You can use your free will in whatever way you please in the full knowledge that your own soul and your own God always gets the final say.

Note that I'm not promising you any easy or quick fixes. In contrast to the teachings of many Christian leaders, I'm telling you that you must apply your free will to the task of finding God's grace. I'm telling you that you have to rise to your own potential, the potential that God the Mother and God the Father already see in you. I'm telling you that learning how to forgive is hard in the same way that giving up cigarettes is hard. It takes time and will power. Some days the old cravings come out of nowhere. But don't judge yourself for this. Be kind to yourself on this journey of healing. Believe in yourself, as God already believes in you. Keep trying. Keep practising. One day you'll wake up, and the glass will be overflowing with forgiveness. And that forgiveness will be YOUR gift to God.

On that day, you'll feel God's grace.

Amen to you.
Jesus
November 9, 2007

Thank you for this gift.

Thank you. I'll continue to build on this as Jen's time permits.

Amen.
Jesus

Lesson 3

In this lesson, I will compare and contrast the practice of forgiving with the practice of meditating.

Forgiving is a different practice than meditating. Forgiving is a parallel practice, a complementary practice to meditating. Forgiving is a practice that can be done separately from meditation. It can also be done in sequence with meditation. It is, however, impossible to simultaneously empty your thoughts and focus on a single point (for example, focussing on your breath) while at the same time engaging in the practice of forgiving. Meditating, as it's generally thought of, is a practice of calming your thoughts, limiting the number of thoughts that go through your head, redirecting your thoughts towards a specific point, and seeking stillness. Forgiving, on the other hand, is what I would call an "active practice," one that requires you to think more thoughts at a time, not fewer thoughts. It would be wrong, however, to conclude that the practice of forgiving allows you to put in your head any ol' thoughts you wish. The practice of forgiving requires you to put in your head certain specific advanced forms of thinking that will help you reshape your brain's physical structure.

Unless you are a highly adept meditator with many years of experience (such as a Tibetan Buddhist monk), the practice of meditation will mean for you that your brain is generating an overall pattern of alpha brainwaves. Alpha brainwaves (measurable on an electroencephalograph or EEG) create within your mind a pleasurable sensation of being calm, even slightly "zoned out." Alpha brainwaves are important to your overall health. They help your brain get control of the various centres in your brain and body that produce stress hormones. They help you diminish the overall levels of cortisol and other stress hormones in your body. They help you feel more relaxed, and more able to cope with life's stresses. So from the point of view that meditation can help you generate alpha brainwaves, meditation is a healthy, useful practice for Christians.

The practice of forgiving, on the other hand, is not a practice that leads to the production of alpha brainwaves. The practice of forgiving will eventually change the wiring of your brain so much that you will be able to generate widespread gamma brainwaves.

Not many people today could be said to generate consistent, non-aberrant gamma brainwaves throughout the different regions of their brain. Gamma brainwaves are the highest known frequency of brainwave that can be measured on an EEG. Gamma brainwaves, you'll be pleased to know, are linked to a person's ability to experience frequent moments of intuitive insight, spontaneous creativity, deep joy, and an unshakeable sense of connection with God and God's love. At a quantum level, gamma brainwaves are a 3D harmonic of a 4D angelic communication frequency. In other words, if your brain operates on a regular basis in the gamma brainwave frequency, you will regularly be able to pick up intuitive messages from God and/or your own guardian angel. You will also feel great every day.

Why do so few people have these brainwaves? This isn't genetic. This is all about the way people use their brains. Returning to the Parable of the Bodybuilder in Lesson 1, if you choose to put grudges in your brain, you will grow big "grudge centres" in your brain, but since grudges don't belong in God's loving universe, the various brain cells in your grudge centres will not help you produce healthy gamma brainwaves. Instead, they will act like a bruised or traumatized area. They will use up resources. They will not supply beneficial resources that would be helpful to other parts of your body or brain. They will be a burden to your brain. They will not contribute to an overall pattern of health.

The more grudge centres you choose to hardwire into your brain, the fewer places you will have available to produce the healthy gamma brainwaves you need.

You only have so much physical room in your brain. If you fill it up with crap, you won't have room for the good stuff.

Got it? What you put in your brain matters.

(By the way, if you're wondering why I keep saying "gamma brainwaves" instead of the simpler "gamma waves," it's because some readers will be familiar with the electromagnetic frequency spectrum of physics, which also has a frequency labelled "gamma." I don't want to confuse anyone.)

Thanks for your attention, folks.

Love Jesus
November 12, 2007

Lesson 4

In this lesson, I talk about what it feels like to forgive. For those of you who are interested in understanding what I, Jesus, taught during my ministry, I am about to explain what the Kingdom of Heaven feels like. (The Gospel of Matthew uses the designation "Kingdom of Heaven," which I prefer to Mark and Luke's Kingdom of God.)

You will know you are learning to forgive when you start to notice the world is getting a little more complex and ambiguous than it used to be. (It's not the world that has changed, though, but your perception of the world.)

You will know you are learning to forgive when you begin to ask God for answers to the really tough questions. (It's not the questions that have changed, but your willingness to ask them that has been transformed.)

You will know you are learning to forgive when you begin to notice that you sometimes make mistakes. (It's not the frequency of your mistakes that has changed, but your willingness to acknowledge them that is different.)

You will know you are learning to forgive when you find it easier to say "no" to unreasonable demands from others. (It's not the unreasonableness of the unreasonable demands that has changed, but your ability to recognize the unreasonableness that has changed.)

You will know you are learning to forgive when you are willing to experience emotions of shame, guilt, or remorse without feeling shame about feeling shame. (It's not the emotion of shame that has changed within you, but your understanding of what that emotion means that has been radically altered.)

You will know you are learning to forgive when you are willing to go into a quiet, private space and weep tears of sorrow with God for the harmful choices you once made, and then come out of your quiet place and get on with your daily life.

You will know you are learning to forgive when your heart begins to hurt more than you ever thought it could. You will then ask God for help in coping with the pain, and in learning how to transform that pain into wisdom, empathy, trust, and knowledge.

Amen.
Jesus
December 1, 2007

Lesson 5

Here are two prayers. One is a prayer I wrote yesterday for this series of teachings on forgiveness. One is a prayer I wrote 2,000 years ago (give or take) to address the same issue with my followers. You'll recognize the second prayer, as Paul co-opted it and took credit for it himself. Note that the second prayer, as I originally wrote it, ended where it ends on this page.

Please feel free to use the first prayer without fear of copyright violation. For the second prayer, I acknowledge the NRSV Bible.


THE COURAGE PRAYER
Blessed God,
I believe in the infinite wonder of your love.
I believe in your courage.
And I believe in the wisdom you pour upon us so bountifully that your seas and lands cannot contain it.
Blessed God, I confess I am often confused.
Yet I trust you.
I trust you with all my heart and all my mind and all my strength and all my soul.
There is a path for me. I hear you calling.
Just for today, though, please hold my hand.
Please help me find my courage.
Thank you for the way you love us all.
Amen.

THE LOVE PRAYER -- 1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-8A
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast [some sources read body to be burned], but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.


I recommend that you make uplifting prayer a daily part of your practice for learning how to forgive. You needn't choose either of these two prayers. But please do not use any prayers that talk about or imply conditions such as original sin, unworthiness before God, or the existence of fallen angels (eg. Satan). Choose only prayers that overflow with the idea that the divine cup is half full, not half empty.

Blessings to you today and always.
Jesus
December 3, 2007

Lesson 6

So what is forgiveness? I will explain what I learned two thousand years ago, with the help of my angels and my loving Mother and Father, but I'll put it in modern terms to make it more relevant.

Forgiveness is not a state of grace that mysteriously descends on you. The Gospels report (not to their credit) that the Holy Dove descended on my head while I was being baptized. These passages have led many a faithful person astray because "descent of the Holy Dove" wrongly suggests that God singles out "special people," and confers on them special gifts through grace.

Am I saying there is no grace? Of course not. I'm saying that everything in God's good creation is grace, and to single out one event for one person is to highlight 1% of God's ongoing grace, and ignore the other 99%.

You are here, living a life as a human being on Planet Earth, so that you might understand, in your eternal life as one of God's angelic children, the transformative power of forgiveness. You are not here because you're unworthy of God's love. You are here because God trusts you as an angel, and God knows that when you die as a human being, you will take what you have experienced here and transform it into forgiveness and wisdom.

However, you do not have to wait until you die and return Home to Heaven. You have the tools available to you here and now to begin this transformative process.

Your primary tool is your will power. Forgiveness, as a divine experience, is 100% pure will power. There is no mystery. There is no magic. There is no ritual, no potion, no esoteric way to go about this except to learn to use your divine free will in the same way your divine Mother and Father use their divine free will to forgive the harmful choices you make. Although the method of forgiving involves no mystery, the result is filled with unending mystery. When you accomplish divine forgiveness, God's true beauty shines even more brightly for you, if such a thing is even possible (though it is . . .). In other words, I find it much easier to put into words how you can get to the place of forgiveness than to put into words what it will feel like when you get there. That is the sacred part of the journey for each person.

Forgiveness is what you end up with when you use your soul's Courage, Trust, Gratitude, and Devotion to make a permanent choice to wrap up a harmful choice in a permanent layer of love. The harm (caused either by you or someone else) is like the grit inside an oyster's shell. The grit hurts. But the oyster painstakingly covers the grit in smooth, nacreous layers that take your breath away with their beauty. The grit inside the pearl does not go away. But it is permanently transformed into a thing of beauty. The task of forgiving is like the efforts of the oyster. The task of forgiving is not to erase or deny the pain. The task of forgiving is to use your will power to turn the pain into a divine string of pearls.

I used the word "permanent" three times in the above paragraph. This is because I wish to highlight the difference between "forgiving" and "shrugging something off." What makes forgiveness divine is its immutability. Once God makes the choice to forgive a particular harmful choice you have made, God will never go back on the decision to forgive you. Their forgiveness for that action is permanent. They will not say to you, "We take it back -- you're no longer forgiven." They will not manipulate your trust by pulling the rug out from under you. They make the choice, and they stick by the choice.

Human forgiveness is meant to be exactly the same. The forgiveness in your own heart must be an unflinching, unshakeable choice that nobody can talk you out of under any circumstances. If somebody can talk you out of it, it's not real forgiveness. Another way to describe this is to think of it as integrity. Forgiveness is an oath you make, an oath you make to your own soul. Forgiveness is an oath you make to yourself that you will put a layer of love around the harmful choice, and you will never, ever remove the layer. You would not be a person of deep integrity if you broke this sacred oath. So you choose each day to keep your oath, and you choose each day to maintain the layer of love.

Each harmful choice that is forgiven is its own pearl on your divine string of pearls. You do not have just one big pearl that keeps getting bigger and bigger. You have separate pearls for separate acts of forgiveness. Each time you experience pain that must be forgiven, you build a new pearl using your divine free will and your own innate Courage, Trust, Gratitude, and Devotion.

This is the manner in which your loving Mother and Father forgive you.

I invite you, as my beloved sisters and brothers in Christ, to step through the portal of wonder that will open for you when you choose to forgive.

Love Jesus
December 16, 2007

This is a beautiful metaphor, and it fits perfectly with what you're saying. Thank you!

Your pearl metaphor is striking! I needed this today, dear friend. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thank you, dear friends. I appreciate your comments.

Love Jesus
December 17, 2007

Lesson 7

Lesson 7 is a reiteration of a post I placed in another thread (Ann Coulter - the Voice of the Far Right). I'm reintroducing this material because of its relevance to the material I've written above in Lessons 1 - 6. Please consider this information carefully. It holds the key for many of you who seek your eternal Mother and Father. Ask God to help you find the courage to face those aspects of your own life where you are choosing status anxiety instead of compassion and forgiveness. Amen to you.

Jesus
February 1, 2008

***************************************************************************

Jesus here.

The thing you must ask yourself about an individual such as Ann Coulter is this: how did she get so far from the Truth? How did she get some far away from the Way, the Truth, and the Life? It is not a sufficient answer to blame the devil or any other evil-type entity. You must blame the individual herself and the cultural values that have shaped the way her brain works.

Inside Ann Coulter's angry, judgmental, cruel brain is the high frequency energy of her very lovely, very kind soul.

Needless to say, her soul is getting very little air time.

If her vitriol stems not from the devil, and not from the soul within, then where does it come from? This is the question you must hold uppermost in your own mind as you struggle to forgive Ms. Coultor -- and forgive her you must.

She is -- how shall I put this delicately? -- not choosing to be the best person she's capable of being. She's not choosing to integrate the best of her soul's potential with the best of her human potential. Instead of choosing compassion, she chooses status anxiety.

Now, you might say, "That's crazy! Who would choose status anxiety? Nobody would choose status anxiety voluntarily! Maybe it's not her fault. Maybe she doesn't have enough serotonin in her brain or something, because nobody in her right mind would want to be overcome by status anxiety." And I, as an angel, say to you that individuals make this choice all the time, quite consciously and quite voluntarily. And I say to you that when you continually make choices in violation of your soul's needs and your God's needs, then you create pain and suffering for yourself and others.

So what is status anxiety? And what can you do about it in your life as a Progressive Christian? The first step for you is to allow yourself to consciously accept the fact that status anxiety exists. If you don't believe something exists, you spend no time working to resolve it. You must "name the problem" before you can heal the problem. You must be honest with yourself. Status anxiety is the fuel for the part of the brain I've described elsewhere on this site as the Darwinian circuit of your brain (as opposed to the soul circuit of your brain). The Darwinian circuit of your brain is your biological toolkit from God. It allows you to exist in a 3-dimensional world on a temporary basis (that is, until the time of your physical death). Its role is supposed to be subordinate to that of the soul circuit in your brain. The role of the Darwinian circuit is to help you meet your body's physiological and safety needs -- food, oxygen, fresh water, clean and safe housing. The role of your soul circuit is to help you meet your soul's need for love, belonging, self esteem, self actualization, and service to others. This is the part of your brain that gives you the "feel good" natural high that comes from living in the Christ Zone -- from living with compassion and empathy for others. This is the part of your brain that's supposed to be getting all the air time. Unfortunately, as is excruciatingly plain from the behaviour of many people in the world around you, some individuals choose not to live with compassion and empathy. They choose to ignore powerful impulses coming from the soul circuitry of their own brain. They choose to ignore their own inner wisdom, their own conscience, because they've decided instead to settle for the much lesser "high" of the Darwinian circuit. They've decided to settle for the fleeting, unfulfilling dopamine high that comes when you get to carve a notch on your status belt. "Look at me -- I just got a fancier car than yours. Nyah nyah nyah. My kid just got into Harvard. Nyah nyah nyah. I'm a size 6 and you're a size 8. Nyah nyah nyah."

You get the picture.

Status anxiety is a dysfunctional state as far as God is concerned. Status anxiety means you're worried about yourself, and what God's going to give to you. By comparison, a person living in the Christ Zone worries about others as much as about himself/herself, and always tries to be of service to God for God's sake.

Status anxiety always leads to a religious experience based on status anxiety -- "Who will get into heaven first? Who will be punished first? Who will be rewarded first? Who will be rewarded best?" This religious experience relies on getting notches on the status belt -- who said the most prayers, who said them most faithfully, who gave the most money, who followed the most Old Testament laws (and don't forget those ever-so-horrid Old Testament laws about slavery!)

The most, the most, the most. The best, the best, the best. How has this mentality ever helped humanity -- or any other creatures for that matter -- on this beautiful planet called Earth?

You would be naive to conclude that millions of people don't actively crave this lesser high. Not only do they crave it, but they assiduously apply their conscious will, their conscious brain power, their intelligence, their talents, their experience, and their very own children to its pursuit. They choose the status anxiety and they dump the compassion, the empathy, and the very conscience from their own brains. It's very much an either/or proposition. You can choose to seek all the fleeting, ephemeral, micro-second highs of status anxiety . . . OR . . . you can choose to try to live in the Christ Zone, as I did. You can choose to live a life where most of the time you feel literally empty inside -- horribly, anxiously empty, unloved, unfulfilled, unconnected to God, and unconnected to your own self because you are -- or you can choose to live a rich, emotional life filled with intense comfort, peace, joy, connectedness, grief, sadness, forgiveness, and physical health.

It's your call, folks. You have to make the choice. God won't do it for you. God won't do the work of turning you into your best self, either. You have to make the choice. Then you have to stick with the choice. Every. Single. Day. You have to make the choice every single day to be the best self you're capable of being.

Maybe God will decide you need a new car, and maybe God won't. But you know what? You won't care one way or the other, because you'll be too busy being happy to look at the "notches" on the belt God is weaving for you.

Amen to you, beloved angelic friends. We love you!
Love Jesus
April 29, 2007

Good to see you again, Jen!



Ain't that the truth!



I think this sums it up pretty well. It's a conscious choice to "live in the Christ Zone" as you're putting it, or to not. Granted, I think there's a lot of pressure in our society to not - we live in such a consumer-driven culture - but ultimately, maybe it really does just come down to the individual's choice.



That's a good point, and I'm glad you brought it up...it's not an easy choice, and it's one that must constantly be upheld. But then isn't that the case with anything good in life? You have to work at it. If you want to be in good physical shape, if you want to keep up good relationships, you have to work on them every single day, too. Sticking to our choices can be hard, but they pay off in their own way, too.

Thanks for this

The lessons were helpful and inspiring from beginning to end! Thank you for writing them down and sharing with us!