Pain and suffering are the penalties of guilt. They are also the price of ignorance for guilt is optional, being self imposed. Peace and joy and love are not the prize achieved for becoming a better person. They are the “option” when forgiveness replaces guilt as what we want. Only our thoughts can hurt us. Both attack and forgiveness may seem to focus on someone else, but their seeds are planted in our own mind, and it is there they both will first bear fruit.

The world is changing. It will soon reflect a different perception from what we now see. One of the most dramatic changes we will note is that there will be those who find no need for the body to die. Not because we have found some miraculous way to save it, or because it is important to who and what we are. This will happen because we are accepting it is irrelevant to who we are and we are finding less need to maintain our separateness from one another. I say this in spite of what seems to be the escalation of hatred and violence we are seeing in the world. We will speak more of these “appearances” in the weeks to come. For now it is important to remember that what “happens” in the world is what we expect to find there. It is of our making and we will find what we are looking for. Do we need more of an incentive to look for love?

What you wish for your brother is what you have already chosen for yourself. What you want for yourself is the gift you offer God. Oneness is a fact, not a choice.

There is nothing in the world that can make us happy or sad, peaceful or afraid. For we have given all things all the meaning that they have. “They,” in fact could not exist without the purpose we have for them. And the purpose of the world we see, the thoughts we have, is to support the image of the ego self that we have made. To change our world, then, we must let go our concept of the self that it supports. To find a world that we can love we first must learn to forgive and love ourselves.

Hi everyone – We are nearly moved in, though the remodeling and furniture shopping seems endless. But I’m happy to be back on line and hope you are all well and happy too.

Here is a thought to get us started again:

The world is what I make of it. My experience is determined by what I want to find there. When love is all I want to find my ego’s perception will no longer distort my intentions or falsely confuse me as to the source of the world I see. In truth, we are creators of Truth and extend Truth simply by “seeing” it. So I can safely say, all the world depends on whether I choose to look for love, or something else.

When you find yourself expressing love to someone close to you, consciously expand your intention to include everyone, everywhere. Let yourself learn that love has no measure, does not discriminate where to begin or end. Stay with this thought until you feel love returning to you. You will notice you cannot tell if it was “your” love or had another “source,” for love, to be love, must bring everything it touches together; it will be discovered wherever you choose to find it. Now, rest here a moment more and bask in the realization that every loving thought that has ever existed in the Mind of God – was meant for you.

Dear Friends – I will not be posting for a couple of weeks as we are moving our winter home from Kauai to the desert of southern California. Happy New Year!!

Let this be the day when we forgive the thought of sin. Let us need no more thoughts for which to suffer pain, nor find reasons for us to die. Let us discover that when fear has gone, joy quite naturally takes its place. The world can now reflect the innocence we have found within our Self. With no more judgment to project, no reason not to join, we begin to remember what oneness is. Let this be the day when our need for learning and other self deception ends, for now we know that we are fully loved, and free to love again.

We have made the world then given it the purpose to punish and imprison us; to justify our fears and teach us the danger of trusting love. In it we see our one consciousness divided into bodies that cannot join, that suffer pain and die. Yet, We have made this world. It’s only purpose is to serve us. We can forgive the world by changing the goal we have given it. It can become a “place” where love replaces fear and happiness abounds, when that is all we want for everyone we see.

When we forgive ourselves and our guilt is gone, we will see nothing in all the world that we do not love.

What I am witness to in the world defines who I think I am. When I describe the world as being in turmoil and as a place of suffering and feel the fear these thoughts engender, I am a witness to a self made of fear. And my world will continue to bear the fruit of that perception. But when I remember I did not create myself, that I have never had the opportunity to do more than misperceive the truth, I can begin to see instead a call for love and recognize the gift I have to give.

Create a moment when everyone you see, all those you can think of, are filled with a loving glow. Their smile beckons you to join them. No trace of conflict here for every thought, both yours and theirs, flow together in perfect harmony. There is nothing to be lost or gained for everyone is wholly loved. Hold this thought as what you want. This is not your imagination. It is a moment of truth and you have made it real by wanting it to be so.

When the thought of guilt has been forgiven, there is nothing to disguise the Presence of Love.

It is not you who can be sad or sick. It is not you who resists being loved. That is only the character in the charade we play. You are the one who seems to sleep, but is untouched by dreams of any kind. You are the one who will remember and awaken and hold the truth for everyone. You are the one that is part of me.

There are two entirely different ways for us to think and see. Both are motivated by what we expect to find. One looks for what is wrong and finds a world made to meet its expectations. The other looks for a light it dimly remembers but cannot find with eyes that see the world guilt has made. But it persists, as it must do, for it cannot be satisfied with less than what is true. It looks for goodness and for love within itself then embraces all it sees with that vision, making everything like itself and part of what it is.

What comes first: The way someone treats me, or my expectation of it. We cannot be too often reminded that our primary challenge in changing our experience in the world is to change what we are looking for; what we expect to find. Is it possible to find only love in the world I now see? Can I trust what someone would do if I just loved them? If you feel it is worth the “risk” to find out, say to your God Self, “I am willing today not to be afraid of love. Help me.” Then know that you have changed the course of the world.

To stay in the present moment, accept yourself now. When you accept yourself as innocent and complete in this moment there is nothing in the past to judge and nothing for you to become in the future. You are free from the need for time, now.

Amidst all of our uncertainties and challenges our daily prayer need only be, “Let me know all things exactly as they are.” We can free ourselves from the stress and fear of yet another variation of what will satisfy the ego’s needs by remembering that finding peace and happiness, being free of lack and pain, does not come from our efforts for “self improvement. These are attacks on what God has created whole and perfect. All that we must change is the mistaken idea that there is something about us that we must change.

How often have you wondered, if there is someone who does not see the truth of who they are, what you can do to help? In truth, we need only find and accept the truth of who we are for ourselves. In that awareness is all the world transformed to what it was before the world began. And in that moment, with time set aside, the Vision of the one Self registers everywhere and for an instant our one consciousness knows Itself, without exception.

The last words to me from my dying mother were, “Have you forgiven everyone?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I replied.

“Well, dig deeper! It is so important!” came her whisper. She believed it was her inability to forgive someone that ultimately led to the cancer that killed her.

Forgiveness is usually a process, but sometimes it happens in a quantum leap. When I found out that the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with had been having an affair with my sister, I thought I forgave them. But the confusion, anger and blame were really suppressed for 12 years and it affected ALL my relationships with men.

Yet I really wanted to get free from whatever it was that kept me so jaded with men. One night I had a profound dream that enabled me to let go. As I explain in my spiritual memoir, Dancing with Duality, “It was 1989 and until that moment in time, that dramatic summer of ‘77 had felt like yesterday. Now, 12 years later, that summer of ’77 became for me a distant dream, completely irrelevant to my current life. Iwas free. Forgiveness is a process, but this time it happened in a quantum leap. Suddenly not only did I feel no bitterness toward anyone involved in that drama, I had no desire whatsoever left for Burkhard.”

Once you get the hang of forgiveness, it becomes a habit. My memoirs include my facing so many of the issues we women who pioneered the sexual revolution encountered: abortion, date rape, sexual harassment, physical abuse from a partner, eating disorders. I believed I had forgiven everyone, including myself. Yet in writing my memoirs, I was able to uncover ever so deeper levels of pain, and experienced a freedom by forgiving even deeper!

In the process of forgiving, I have always found some bit of responsibility for what happened, even if it goes back into a past life. Because of this, I have noticed that the hardest person to forgive has always been myself. Because the ego, the “self” is who we live with constantly, this is the most important one of all to forgive!

If we can’t forgive ourselves and others, it means we are hanging on to all this garbage from the past. It means we expect the same negativity in the future. Forgiveness is for the benefit of YOU, not the one who “did you wrong.” It rewires your brain and sets you free from the past.

Judgment proclaims that guilt is valued more than love. Forgiveness is a gift acknowledging there is no guilt. You choose which will rule your life by what you offer others. Forgiveness is the practice of letting the Holy Spirit re-evaluate our judgments made from guilt. The peace this brings to our mind is what “purifies” our thoughts, shifting our intention for them to be more in alignment with the nature of our one, whole, completely loving Self.