A Jesus Christ Series — Part 14: Seeing With the Eyes of Christ
Transcript of portions of my helper session with Moira Shaw 11/14/13
Gary: Presenting Problem: I have a stronger streak of materialism in me than I had realized. Part of this realization came via reading Pathwork Lecture 248: Three Principles of the Forces of Evil – Personification of Evil. The second principle of evil according to this lecture consists of the forces of materialism. I notice that I have been exploring my relationship with Jesus Christ when in fact I am trapped in materialism and deny even the existence of the spiritual non-material world itself! No wonder I struggle and wrestle with Jesus Christ as a subset of this spiritual world! So I have this root of atheism in me, if you please. Moira: (laughing) That’s great Gary. So welcome to the world of being utterly and merely human. I welcome your attachment to the earth plane and all that that means, both in the best sense and in the worst sense, and I will give you my best as I join you on your journey today, being merely and utterly human. Boy, you’re cooking today!
Gary: Before we begin I want to share how I am experiencing the Pathwork Lectures these days. I am noticing that I am really getting into these Pathwork Lectures anew as I do them in this expanded format where I spread the phrases out across and down the page, letting each phrase breathe and have life. It can take days to put a lecture into this form – taking it from 10-12 pages to 45-50 pages. The process of preparing these takes me deeply into their meaning for me. Moira: Beautiful. Gary: I’m constantly asking, “What does this phrase mean,” or “How do these ideas amplify the meaning of the overall lecture?” I insert words to amplify and hopefully clarify the meaning of the words. In this process I feel I really “get” the lecture. Moira: Wonderful. Gary: I put them on my website, and if anyone wants to look at them in this expanded and amplified form they can.
I also wanted to share a moment of encouragement I received concerning my blog and recordings of the Lectures. A person commented that she was moved by my blog. I wasn’t sure who this was, and when I tracked her down it turned out she is a Pathwork helper in Brazil. She got into Pathwork in 2000, the same year I did. Then she said she had a friend in Brazil who is no longer reading the Pathwork lectures but rather listens to them – and of course they were my recordings. I felt very encouraged by all of this. Spirit encouraging me right when I could use some encouragement. Moira: That is so interesting, Gary. The synchronicity is so beautiful. So in these recordings and in your blog you are a real Helper.
Gary: (laughing) Yes, a “Non-Helper” “Helper!” Moira: No, you’re a real Helper! And the helper in Brazil was “sent” from the Spirit World, as if Spirit was saying, “We’ll give this encouragement to Gary.” Gary: (laughing) Yes, this all pours in on me from the Spirit World I don’t believe in! Moira: Yes, to you the Spirit world doesn’t exist, but you’re getting the encouragement from it anyway. That’s how the Spirit World works – they don’t care whether or not you believe. You don’t have to believe in them for them to do what they want to do. They have their job to do. What you’ve shared here is a beautiful story of encouragement, something to pause and savor.
Gary: And Sevenoaks/Mid-Atlantic Pathwork (MAP) is going quite well without me – I’ve now been out of the organization for six weeks! I notice there is new blood, new energy in the Sevenoaks leadership, and I can actually celebrate that. In recent years I was getting weary with MAP organizational activities, and I sense that my weariness, my negative or tired energy, was affecting MAP negatively, dragging it down in a way. I can see that some of my ways of being, some of my attitudes, and some of my negativity was sneaking in and undermining results we were aiming for.
Moira: Can you give me an example? Gary: At our most recent gathering of MAP helpers that I attended in early August it was decided that the helpers should get together more frequently – something I fully support, especially for continuing education and personal development as a group of Pathwork leaders. But it was decided that this should not be extended over a long weekend, something I felt was needed for getting what we need, but rather be a one-day event during the week, from 10:00 – 5:00. And the event was not to be for continuing education but for just gathering and working our process with each other. I was disappointed in this shortened format and could not see myself driving two days to and from Sevenoaks (1,000 miles in all) for a seven-hour event. I said as much in the meeting, but the energy of the group was for the one-day mid-week format.
The first of these one-day events was two days ago. I did not attend, but it turned out that those who attended experienced the meeting as wonderful. Here is where I could see my negativity saying ahead of the meeting, “I hope it doesn’t work. I hope nobody comes.” This spiteful energy in me is not helpful to the cause.
Or consider another example. With the Pathwork Transformation Program or the new series of workshops we are offering this year, I am not agreeing with what we are teaching or how we are teaching it, and so I could feel my negativity – wanting them to fail, again out of spite. Moira: Fail without you? Gary: No, fail even with me. Somehow I did not know how to influence these programs or was too lazy to step into leadership with developing new ideas about what we were all about. So my weariness and not stepping into stronger leadership resulted in negativity, and my negative energy clouds over and impedes the effectiveness of these offerings that others seem so enthused about. So in my weariness and negativity I felt confirmed in my decision to step out of leadership, thinking it best for me to withdraw so those leaders who are fired up can carry forth their visions, visions with which I am not onboard.
Moira: Yet the Spirit world, the world you don’t believe in, keeps moving forward regardless of your negativity. So even without your higher self and your positive intent, things are happening anyway. Your negativity is not so strong that it can impede Spirit! Gary: Yes, Pathwork lecture 248 that I referred to earlier says at the beginning, “It is so obvious that Spirit is working and growth is happening that only a fool could say it is not!” (laughter). So when you ask for examples I just look at my energy and see how my negative pleasure arises when MAP programs fail. Moira: So you’re utterly and merely human! That is a human reaction and not something to judge yourself for.
Gary: So just to be able to be with my negative intentionality and to recognize its presence in my personality without going into the toilet of “I, as a person, am so bad.” Moira: That’s right. Gary: I am frequently aware of this negativity in me, and sometimes I just laugh at myself, at my “delight in working hard but my efforts not working.” Moira: It’s so humorous to be human. So the task is to tolerate your humanness and see that it doesn’t matter all that much because things are working in spite of your humanness. Gary: Spirit working in spite of me.
Moira: How do you feel about Spirit working in spite of you? Gary: “What! Spirit doesn’t need me?” Moira: Yes. Gary: (laughing) My ego is not happy not being needed! Sometimes I feel like Jonah – being sent to Nineveh against his wishes and how he ended up in the belly of the fish. Moira: So notwithstanding your negativity, something is guiding Sevenoaks, and something is guiding you – in your blog, in your helpership, in spite of your not thinking your blog or helpership are worth much at one level.
There is a Force at work in you, Gary, if you could just tune into it and ride that wave and not take your negativity so seriously but rather just be aware of it and say, “OK, fine, my negativity is here, but we are going forward.” Something much bigger is at stake here, Gary. Something marvelous is moving your life. Gary: (laughing) And then I decide I don’t want it to move my life. Moira: And that’s OK too. It’s still going to move your life. Something else is happening. Gary: So I can just relax a bit and notice, just notice, just notice. Moira: Yes. Gary: And despite all odds Life proceeds. “OK, we’re going on!” Moira: Isn’t that great! The Life Force is the movement of Good, and it is moving you in spite of your shit. (laughter) Wow! You’re in God’s hands. If you could just be receptive to letting the Life Force work in you and through you, because it does so anyway, then possibly you could call upon it consciously and be a co-creator with it. Gary: Being receptive to what is happening in spite of me, and that “being receptive to what is happening” could be an avenue to happiness. It’s going to happen anyway, if I could just be open to it I could actually be happy while it is happening rather than being negative when it is happening. Moira: Yes.
Gary: New topic. Since we last talked I also had a paper to write for my writing group. Each of us was to identify what is positive in us. In this short paper I noted that what was happening through me during my life had had outer signs of “success.” For example, for several years I was the CEO of a successful company, that’s true. I was a market development executive, that’s true. I was in leadership in several organizations, again this is true. But while it was true that there were outer signs of success, it was the seemingly little things that mattered most to me as I look back – the “How I did things,” the values I held while in these leadership roles that now mean the most to me and what was remembered by others. The “achievements” were far less important than the “hows.”
And in order for me to see this and get comfortable with this, Spirit lined up a series of experiences for me. These experiences are what I wrote up in my paper. Isabelle (a member of our 7-person writing group) had suggested our topic of writing about positive things about ourselves, noting that she thought I in particular did not see enough of the positive in me as expressed in my writing all these years (our group is 13 years old, so she has seen a lot). So I began my writing piece with a big “Thank you” to Isabelle, because this turned out to be an important question for me to have pondered during the month between writing group meetings. After I shared my writing with the group Isabelle said, “Gary, this is beautiful. You need to hang this piece of writing up with your important artifacts, perhaps put it on your altar so it can remind you of how you bring good into the world. You are with other people in a kind way. This is what is important about who you are.”
At a recent company gathering what was remembered by some who attended was not my CEO performance (which wasn’t so hot it seems to me) but things like, “When my wife and I got married, you gave us a bible.” Or, “You really supported me when I had to fire an employee, even giving me a box of candy after it was over.” For me to see that “how I was in leadership” was the thing about me that was most remembered by others was important to me. I could take that in. And in my paper I wrote about how I was seen in my various roles – as a kind and generous man – and noted that this is what was important to others, rather than my performance, the organizations’ successes, or my achievements.
Moira: Yes. AND yet the roles and your performance in those roles were also important. But if your performance in these roles would have come at the exclusion of your goodness, kindness, and generosity, then things would have been lopsided and top-heavy. But Gary, to be human it is also important to be acknowledged for the achievement in these roles, roles which had enabled you to do these acts of kindness and generosity. So you were both a great CEO and you were a great person.
It’s important to you, as you are becoming more human, as you are seeing the negative, the materialistic, and so on that are on the one side of you, that you also acknowledge the positive side and see the whole person that you are: human AND Divine. Not just CEO, not just negative, not just kind, not just generous, not just selfish, not just Divine, not just human, but rather human AND Divine! Then you are a whole person. You can say, “I was CEO, I did make mistakes, I did some great things, I was kind, I was selfish – I was all of that.” Strong and soft. A great leader and a great man.
Gary: Let me take that in. … At the helper meeting that I did not attend two days ago, one of the men sent me an email saying that he could feel me there in Spirit, but that he missed me there in person. It was an energetic absence. Moira: So he was wanting not only your Spirit but also the power of your physical presence – the human Gary who really has a lot of wisdom to offer on a practical level. That is beautiful. And this is not from a prideful place. This is from another real human acknowledging who you were, who you are as a leader, as a practical leader. This is great. You are really a strong leader, and a sensitive leader. These qualities do not have to be mutually exclusive. They can be, but it is not necessary. Gary: The fact that it would pain me deeply to have to fire someone, that firing people was not something I would find easy, but I would at the same time do it if that were necessary. The people in SDRC would come to trust me because they knew that it was painful to me to do something that was going to be painful to another, even though it was the right thing to do. “I trust that Gary is doing the right thing, as best he can.”
Moira: So now that you are having both these levels in you, the human in a good way AND the Divine, do you want to talk about the materialism, the evil side? Gary: Yes. Perhaps a new book I just read, The Five Billion Years of Solitude by Lee Billings, is an example. It has to do with our search for life among the stars of the cosmos. The author, a capable and curious science writer in his thirties, interviewed leading scientists in astronomy and cosmology who are involved in searching for life on other planets (radio astronomy, Kepler spacecraft, etc., etc.). What I enjoy about the book is its establishing a vast time and space context of our material world, Moira, and that Billings points out how, even with this vastness in both space and time, how improbable life on our own planet Earth really is to start with, and then how challenging it is to search for life on other planets. In a way I learned nothing new here (astronomy has been a lifelong hobby), but somehow I took it in in a way that awakened me to the immense scale of things at a cosmic level. Let me review some of these (note, the following was added and not part of my session)
Billings notes that our planet is perhaps 4.5 billion years old and life in some form has been around for about 1 billion years, or 20% of this time. During this 1 billion years several life chains have evolved and been destroyed (e.g., the dinosaurs dominated the planet for 165 million years and were then suddenly wiped out 66 million years ago – in one of several cataclysmic extinctions throughout the 1 billion years of life on the planet – making it possible for human life to evolve and develop afterwards – pointing out that some life forms from different segments of the life chain could not co-exist, e.g., dinosaurs and humans – dinosaurs had to die off if humans were to survive). Human life is less than 100,000 years (vs. the 165 million years for dinosaurs – or about 0.000002% of the 4.5 billion year life of the planet), and within this 100,000 year period it has been only the past 100 years or so that our scientific activities on planet earth (e.g., generation of light, radio waves, etc.) would allow the existence of life on earth to be detectable by intelligence of living creatures from another planet.
Of course on other planets life may have also have evolved a billion years or so, may have had several lineages (such as dinosaurs, or other life forms) and may or may not have mammals evolving into intelligent humans that have in turn reached our level of consciousness or, of course, could be way beyond our level of consciousness as would be necessary for them to have the technology to search for life outside their own planet.
But Billings introduces an interesting and severely limiting caveat. Billings says that scientists in this field do not assume that intelligent life, once established, goes on unbroken from then on. Billings says that scientists assume that such a civilization, once it got to our level of technology, that level of technology required to either be detected or to detect others, would likely destroy itself within 100 or 200 years! This is an amazing assumption, one I had not before considered. But witness our own proliferation of nuclear weapons, global warming, and raping of the earth’s resources – its just that these scientists are assuming that whatever causes us on earth to put our own civilization at risk would also put any other intelligent civilization at risk once it reached our level of technology. Billings says that, in effect, scientists think our own civilization cannot be sustained for more than another 50 or 100 years without someone starting a nuclear war or without our destroying our atmosphere or using up global resources. And ditto for other life on other planets.
Expressed another way (and a way that is expressed in one or more Pathwork lectures), scientists seem to agree on and take as fact that, as with our earth’s evolution, technology on such planets would advance faster than the consciousness required to control destructive forces and make other choices that would be sustainable indefinitely in a cosmic time frame of millions or billions of years before the planet’s own star would destroy the planet in its star’s life cycle. I find this nihilistic assumption an amazing concession to negative forces, that is, evil, being predominant in the cosmos and overcoming the good – as I recall the famed scientist Stephen Hawking said at one point in the past several years. Several of the Pathwork lectures speak of the need for consciousness to grow faster than technology in order for good to be victorious over evil and for an intelligent civilization to survive – including ours.
Assuming the scientists to be correct concerning this assumption about self-destroying intelligent civilizations, this window of 50-200 years of being observable or being capable to observe is a very narrow window of opportunity for intelligent life on a planet either to be discovered or to discover life on another planet. And the time factor, Billings points out, makes the situation even more complex and challenging. The closest star is about 4 light years away. So even if intelligent civilization was, in this moment, in the 200-year window of its existence that it could be communicated with, a round-trip communication exchanges with us would be 8 years!
But that’s the closest star, and we have no evidence that it is a candidate with life-supporting planets. Now consider that only a tiny percentage of the stars in the universe are within 1,000 light years – making the round-trip communications of electromagnetic waves 2,000 years, and thereby making communications impossible: the 200-year window of discernable life would be over before a signal was even 20% of the way to the prospective life-bearing planet. Of course perhaps other ways of communicating could come to be understood, ways that are not bound by the speed of light – perhaps the instantaneous changing of electron spins by atoms far apart, or …?
More perspective. The Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light years across, contains 200 billion or so stars and is but one of an estimated 200 billion galaxies (each with about 100 billion stars) including the “nearby” (“only” 2.5 million light years away) Andromeda galaxy with its 1,000 billion or so stars (five times as many as our Milky Way galaxy). So while having countless stars where life may exist (and perhaps even this is a rare occurrence), they are too far away to even communicate with us via electromagnetic waves.
All of this leads to the title of his book: Five Billion Years of Solitude. I can feel the existential solitude his title suggests. When he adds to this the point that we are likely to and even inevitably will destroy ourselves and the planet in a few hundred years, the Earth becomes a very very lonely and scary place. This is the materialistic worldview we are left with.
Scary or not, though unconscious, this is the worldview I have held. I would not really consider the non-material world as a possible reality – actually as a child I, like my peers, was probably a bit into First Principle of Evil: evil spirits fighting against angels, against my God-images, against my Jesus Christ images, etc. Then, when I grew out of this worldview, I entered the world of the Second Principle of Evil: Materialism, where there were no other realities or levels of consciousness beyond the material space-time cosmos.
But now being confronted with the consequences of such a materialistic picture, I ask myself, “Is this really true, that the material world is the only reality?” The Second Principle of Evil: Materialism, laid down in Pathwork Lecture 248: Three Principles of the Forces of Evil – Personification of Evil says that the answer is, “Yes, the material world is the only reality.” This principle rules out other levels of consciousness and Spirit worlds when it suggests the material time-space cosmos is the only reality. And this is the world where the scientist in me plays. But the question remains: “Is this materialistic view as the only reality really true?”
This, Moira, is the ultimate evil of materialism: that materialism is all there is to reality. This helped me to better and more fully embrace the Spiritual reality in the Universe. When the Guide introduces a lecture with his, “My dearest, dearest friends…” I feel he is inviting me into a space beyond anything of the vast space-time domain described by Billings. Could I consider the possibility that Spirit is real because pure materialism is so impossible even to my scientific sensibilities? There would be no purpose to the Cosmos – and a purposeless Cosmos makes no sense to me, to my deep intuitive Knowing, when I see all of the beauty and Mystery of nature around me. Or when I experience love, joy, hope, and other feelings – these feelings, for me, are certainly beyond materialistic brain chemistry, though of course, per Wilber’s four quadrants, such experiences of consciousness have corresponding physical phenomena. This of course gets into cause and effect – is chemistry the cause and consciousness the effect or consciousness the cause and chemistry the effect? Perhaps this is another both/and.
So Lecture 248 has been helpful. First, yes, get rid of all the superstition concerning devils and evil spirits – the immature and infantile ways of looking at evil – “the devil made me do it,” “curses,” “punishment by an angry God or reward by a pleased God,” etc. (First Principle of Evil). Then with the Second Principle of Evil we have materialism where we take self-responsibility for this mess rather than blame evil spirits, but in the end, by dismissing spiritual realities, we take on too much responsibility, dismissing Spiritual forces altogether. Without spiritual reality, depression and nihilism set in. Finally one awakens to a minimal level spirituality beyond materialism, but then the Third Principle of Evil then sets in: Confusion. As we awaken, in a rebirthing process, the answer to the question of ultimate reality emerges, and we answer the question of whether or not materialism is the ultimate reality with, “Materialism is not the ultimate reality, Spirit was here the whole time!”
Moira: Let’s slow down here. How do you Know that God was here the whole time from the work we do? That you exist as God, that you are a co-creator with God? How do you know all of this through our process? How do you know there is a God? How do you move through the confusion [of the Third Principle of Evil] and come to Know there is a God? To go from no God – the atheist (of the Second Principle of Evil), to confusion (of the Third Principle of Evil), to now be at clarity? How do you think you get there, to clarity?
Gary: I think in part it’s identifying and then dismantling some of the beliefs I’ve held unconsciously about the materialism. It wasn’t that I only did not believe in Jesus Christ but beyond that it was that I did not believe in God or in a reality beyond the material time-space domain. At the core of my ego I think I was materialistic. Being such a bible student, etc., I was still somehow blind to this fact – that I was a materialist, but looking back I think it is true.
And when I would do acts that were kind and loving I tended to deny and devalue those (unconsciously insisting on materialism as the only reality). This was a confusing space – being a loving CEO on the one hand and on the other hand trying to identify with being a powerful CEO, which I clearly was not. Somehow being with all this confusion – somehow the confusion dissolves and it feels like subtracting off the material aspects and looking underneath and there seeing and experiencing the goodness coming through me, which has nothing to do with CEO performance being good or bad.
It’s more of an intuitive Knowing from my heart, it’s not proof-text knowing with my mind. And my Essence seems to be getting more and more comfortable with the veracity of what I Know intuitively without having to “prove” it to myself or anyone else logically. There is some way of Knowing it is True. I don’t know that much about God – I am being increasingly open to what is trying to unfold within me regarding the reality and beingness of God. This is what it seems like.
Moira: OK. When you are “Gary Vollbracht, the Christ,” when you can see this, when you connect with being the Christ and you see through the eyes of God-consciousness, your Christ-consciousness, then you have an experience of yourself as vast as the Universe – when you can see with such vision. But because you are human that powerful and inspiring experience doesn’t stay. But if you can see yourself as human AND divine, then the reality of divine becomes: It’s not either you are divine or you are human, and if you are acting out then it means you are not divine. No. Rather it means you Know you are divine when you are seeing in a Unitive way, when seeing as God would see, as Christ would see. Then, for that moment, you are identified with God. Then you Know that God always was, that the Universe is within you. In order to understand God you have to understand first that you are on the earth plane, so you are both human AND have the potential to really identify with the Divine, of being the Divine, not 100% all the time, because you are merely and utterly human, but you have those moments, as the Guide says, those glimpses of seeing that all is good, all is well, all is health.
Gary: So I have a choice. If I were not a being on the Earth plain, here in a place where both good and bad are present, that is, if I would not be in dualistic consciousness where I have a choice of either good or bad, I would be either in a “sphere” of consciousness (“sphere” being the term the Guide uses as domains of existence) that is behind where I actually am and in darkness (“bad,” lower state of evolution, lower state of consciousness) or I would be in a sphere of consciousness that is beyond where I actually am and would be in the light (“good,” higher state of evolution, higher state of consciousness). It seems that the spirits that are further evolved than I am and as such are in a spiritual sphere or domain, but who still have a residue of negativity to purify or transform, can reincarnate on the earth plain of dualistic consciousness and more effectively work their process of purification and transformation in their next incarnation. There are more nuances here, but this is the general idea. Moira: Right.
Gary: But as I evolve on the Earth plain I shall be able to accept and feel the kindness that comes through me. Then when someone comes up to me and comments on my kindness perhaps I will not dismiss that feedback. In fact I noticed that I found myself being very warm when a person spoke to how kind I was as CEO or manager. Moira: So what you are saying is that in the past you would dismiss such comments and feedback about how loving you are. Gary: It was beyond dismissing! If someone, like Pat, for example, would say, “Gary, you are a nice person,” I would be triggered and want to kill her! Part of me did not want to be seen as a “nice” man, did not value being a nice man. I wanted to be a strong man, a true and assertive man – a man that I more highly valued than a nice man and a man that I assumed would be more attractive to Pat.
Moira: Because if you were always loving and nice, that would mean you would have to give up the part of you that was human. Perhaps you thought that if you were loving and kind, that would mean you could not also be human and, as a merely and utterly human being, also be a mean and selfish man. So you felt trapped in not being yourself, not being human. Gary: Where I struggled and continue to struggle was and is to exhibit healthy positive aggression of a more mature Christed being. I see an image I have here of strong even positive aggression in men: I assume that strong aggressive men cannot be positive – likely an authority distortion issue. With this distorted image that all aggression is negative, I would assume that any time I am being strong that this strength has to be coming from my ego, my lower self, or my mask self. Of course, since I am human this does happen, but not 100% of my aggression is negative. So once again the issue is not accepting the limitations of my humanness. I see that I have a choice here: I can be more empowered and stronger from a positive place, from my Christedness, rather than assuming that any strength coming from me would have to be negative.
Moira: So from the ego, from seeing things in duality, strength can be either negative or positive, but when you are seeing through the eyes of a Unitive consciousness then Strength can be divine. Gary: From Unitive consciousness I wouldn’t make myself evil just because, in my humanity, sometimes my aggressiveness and power are sometimes distorted and evil. Rather, I can say I am Divine in my essence, but I am also purifying aspects of my limited human dualistic consciousness that gets distorted. And by not rejecting all strength and aggression coming from me as negative I can be open to seeing where my strength is really needed and helpful. AND similarly, being kind and loving is also helpful.
I think the answer to the question, “How do I Know the reality of God?” is my being increasingly comfortable with “NOT knowing or having a clue even intellectually” about how to be in a situation or what is true, and at the same time, setting my logical, thinking ego aside for a moment, increasingly allowing myself to have confidence in my Knowing intuitively what is true in a certain situation. In other words, to say, “I can trust my intuitive Knowing.” From this trusting of my intuitive Knowing I have a felt sense that I don’t have to have a locked up logical proof-case on the outside in order to prove the veracity of my intuition from the inside. From this place I am no longer in fear of somebody disproving me, saying my intuition isn’t logical. Guess what? My intuition may not be logical, but that does not make it wrong. My intuition is a deeper level of Knowing than my mind, and it seems that my opening here is my coming to be more comfortable with trusting my intuitive Knowing the Truth of what is going on in a situation.
Moira: What is the intuitive Knowing, Gary, about yourself, about Pat, about your kids, … ? What does Gary the Christ, looking through the eyes of Unitive consciousness, through the eyes of God-consciousness, see? What is this “Gary’s intuitive Knowing”? Gary: My intuitive Knowing is that all of these beings are divine, are struggling, like I am struggling, but there is a foundation of Divinity that is one with All Divinity, which is trying to manifest.
Moira: So let’s keep it personal, Gary. How do you view your own life struggles from this intuitive Knowing? Your struggle, your selfishness, your meanness, your hatred… How do you view your struggle from this consciousness, from this intuitive Knowing? Gary: It has to do with my acceptance of my selfishness, my meanness, my hatred. Moira: OK Gary: So that I’m not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so I’m not going into moralizing, but rather I am going into curiosity, “I wonder where this selfishness, meanness, or hatred is coming from.”
Moira: Perhaps, but also maybe not. Is Christ saying, “I’m curious about why Gary is selfish, mean, and hateful in this instance?” From the Unitive consciousness to view your struggle, your selfishness, your meanness, and your withholding, you said you would start with an acceptance of that, you would forgive yourself for it. Maybe the curiosity would come from a healthy ego. Gary: Yes, the curiosity about it comes after it is accepted. Initially I can just be with my selfishness, meanness, hatred, withdrawing, etc. in awareness.
Moira: Right. Then you could switch and be the healthy human that says, “OK, now where does this crap come from?” But how you are perceiving to Know God, to Know yourself, is for you to perceive from the perspective of the God consciousness, the acceptance and the forgiveness, that all is well ultimately. Gary: In other words, the curiosity of the healthy ego isn’t one of, “I’m broken, I’m defective, I’m a poor miserable sinner so I better fix myself.” Moira: Right. Gary: The healthy ego says, “Wow! I can see where this is really causing myself and others pain.”
Moira: Right. That’s the healthy ego that can be curious about what is going on in you. And the Divine in you, your Christedness, in order to get there, has to first of all accept and forgive yourself for what you do. After acceptance and forgiveness by the Divine in you, you, in your healthy ego, can look at why and how and what the effect is.
Gary: Of late, having things come up with my ex-wife, I can really feel my remorse, I can see how I really took advantage of her good will toward me, her trust of me, her love for me. My behavior toward her was just wrong, mean, and selfish. Moira: OK. So the healthy ego feels the remorse, sees that was wrong, accepts itself for it, but now from the Christ in you, the God in you, the Knowing that you are God, how would you see what you’ve done to your ex-wife? Gary: There would be a combination of sadness and excitement. Moira: Let’s consider that that’s still the healthy ego, the human part of you: sadness, and excitement because it’s going to lead to an opening. See if you can identify with the Christ. (long pause) Gary: It seems like it would just be observing the situation and being OK with it. Yes, it happened, and life goes on. It’s not, “So, Gary, you are some evil person, some poor miserable sinner!” but rather, “Gary, it’s all OK: you were who you were, you did what you did. And I love you through and through just the way you are.” Moira: Yes. It’s like it is in Pathwork Lecture 258 Personal Contact with Jesus Christ — Positive Aggression — The Real Meaning of Salvation when the Guide said, Your higher self (actually your Divine self) looks down upon your human self and doesn’t see it as a tragedy. Rather your Divine self looks down upon your human self and says, “Ho, hum; this is Gary on his path, getting involved in the human condition.” Your Divine self is neutral. Your Divine self just sees, loves, accepts, is merciful, and has a totally unattached, but loving, perspective on your human self.
Gary: What really struck me in Lecture 19 Jesus Christ (¶7) is where the Guide talked about the primary cause behind the Fall was jealousy. In that lecture he explains that jealousy came about because Lucifer and those who fell with Lucifer were jealous of Christ for having the most of God’s Divinity in his being. The Guide implies that the angels who fell at the Fall did not understand the fundamental nature of love, namely that it was not variable and did not depend upon the quantity of God’s Divinity in the being. That love is constant and is there all the time. God does not love Christ more or less than God loves you and me and Lucifer. Those who fell simply could not grasp this nature of Divine Love. So those who fell longed for God’s love and thought that Jesus would get the most of God’s love because he had the most of God’s Divinity. Moira: Yes, and from that perspective, looking at what you did with your ex-wife, how do you see it? Gary: It does change the nature of my intuitive Knowing about what being loved by God is all about. God’s love is not dependent on what Gary did, and likewise my Christ self or my God-self Essence also loves that Gary as he is just because Gary is.
Gary: This is a pretty big deal – to Know that love is not dependent on performance or beliefs or anything we do or don’t do! I am reminded of Romans 8:38-39: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Moira: Yes, Gary. Your performance or somebody else’s performance does not matter – love is not dependent on performance, love just is. Gary: Love comes out of the “isness” or whatever we call it. Love just is. It’s like light. Light just is. Moira: The Guide says to love our incarnation, to love, in effect, even our lower self. To love our incarnation and all that that means.
Moira: So no matter how much you wish the Sevenoaks gathering you spoke of earlier not to succeed, love is moving these gatherings. Gary: And what I notice is that I can encourage them, I can send them support, I can pass on my love to them, because that’s the right thing to do, as long as I Know that within my merely and utterly human nature it isn’t quite that way. Moira: Yes. Gary: The Guide said in one of the lectures, do the right thing but be aware that you are faking it. Moira: Exactly. Make do with what you have. Gary: Someone asked the Guide, “Do I show my hate in order to be authentic and in truth?” and the Guide responded, “No, do the right thing in love, but know that you are being inauthentic – do not deceive yourself into thinking you are feeling love when you are merely acting in a loving way. Moira: Yes.
Gary: So despite my attitude or negativity, God, Christ, Love and Spirit are all at work in, through, and all around me, in others, and in the Cosmos. I can find happiness if I get on the train, if I ride the wave that is happening instead of fighting it with my stubbornness and negativity! Moira: That’s right, and as soon as you recognize this, your very recognition allows the Life Force to increase and support the people and activities even more, moving things along the Plan of Salvation. The Plan of Salvation can’t be hindered anyway, but you participate in recognizing this principle and riding the wave.
Gary: And my happiness and joy come from aligning with what is happening rather than not aligning with what is happening or what wants to happen. Moira: That’s right. Gary: So my joy comes from being in the River of Life, not from fighting the River of Life that is happening anyway. I might just as well join the program. Moira: What’s going to happen anyway is the positive. Gary: For the ultimate good.
Moira: So you have to anticipate the impossible. If, to be aligned with Truth, someone has to change from what he or she is doing, hold out that vision for change in him or her. Anybody can change. Gary: And to really watch in me an energy that might say, “I don’t want him or her to change; I want to hold onto my case!” Moira: Right. Be with the energy that says “I don’t want so and so to change.” Don’t back off or deny that that human trait is in you. And then say, “Now I want to see this from another perspective.” Allow yourself your humanness, and allow yourself your Divinity. You are playing with lively ingredients here. Hold your impossible vision for what you would like to see in any situation, and what you would like to see in yourself – in your behavior and awareness in this situation.
Shared in love, Gary