These, then, are the tools with which I communicate, yet they are not the methods, for not all feelings, not all thoughts, not all experience, and not all words are from Me.
Many words have been uttered by others, in My name. Many thoughts and many feelings have been sponsored by causes not of My direct creation. Many experiences result from these.
The challenge is one of discernment. The difficulty is knowing the difference between messages from God and data from other sources. Discrimination is a simple matter with the application of a basic rule:
Mine is always your Highest Thought, your Clearest Word, your Grandest Feeling. Anything less is from another source.
Now the task of differentiation becomes easy, for it should not be difficult even for the beginning student to identify the Highest, the Clearest, and the Grandest.
Yet will I give you these guidelines:
The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love.
Joy, truth, love.
These three are interchangeable, and one always leads to the other. It matters not in which order they are placed.
Love is the ultimate reality. It is the only. The all. The feeling of love is your experience of God.
In highest Truth, love is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be. When you move into the absolute, you move into love.
Fear is the other end of love. It is the primal polarity. In creating the realm of the relative, I first created the opposite of My Self. Now, in the realm in which you live on the physical plane, there are only two places of being: fear and love. Thoughts rooted in fear will produce one kind of manifestation on the physical plane. Thoughts rooted in love will produce another. [...]
These are the two points — the Alpha and the Omega — which allow the system you call “relativity” to be. Without these two points, without these two ideas about things, no other idea could exist. [...]
If you knew Who You Are — that you are the most magnificent, the most remarkable, the most splendid being God has ever created — you would never fear. [...] But you do not know Who You Are, and you think you are a great deal less.
Every human thought, and every human action, is based in either love or fear. [...] Decisions affecting business, industry, politics, religion, the education of your young, the social agenda of your nations, the economic goals of your society, choices involving war, peace, attack, defense, aggression, submission; determinations to covet or give away, to save or to share, to unite or to divide — every single free choice you ever undertake arises out of one of the only two possible thoughts there are: a thought of love or a thought of fear.
Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms.
Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals.
Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.
Every human thought, word, or deed is based in one emotion or the other. You have no choice about this, because there is nothing else from which to choose. But you have free choice about which of these to select.
You make it sound so easy, and yet in the moment of decision fear wins more often than not. Why is that?
You have been taught to live in fear. You have been told about the survival of the fittest and the victory of the strongest and the success of the cleverest. Precious little is said about the glory of the most loving. And so you strive to be the fittest, the strongest, the cleverest — in one way or another — and if you see yourself as something less than this in any situation, you fear loss, for you have been told that to be less is to lose.
And so of course you choose the action fear sponsors, for that is what you have been taught. Yet I teach you this: when you choose the action love sponsors, then will you do more than survive, then will you do more than win, then will you do more than succeed. Then will you experience the full glory of Who You Really Are, and who you can be.
What is hell?
It is the experience of the worst possible outcome of your choices, decisions, and creations. It is the natural consequence of any thought which denies Me, or says no to Who You Are in relationship to Me. [...]
I tell you there is no such experience after death as you have constructed in your fear-based theologies. Yet there is an experience of the soul so unhappy, so incomplete, so less than whole, so separated from God’s greatest joy, that to your soul this would be hell. But I tell you I do not send you there, nor do I cause this experience to be visited upon you. You, yourself, create the experience, whenever and however you separate your Self from your own highest thought about you. You, yourself, create the experience, whenever you deny your Self; whenever you reject Who and What You Really Are.
But if there is no hell, does that mean I can do what I want, act as I wish, commit any act, without fear of retribution?
Is it fear that you need in order to be, do, and have what is intrinsically right? Must you be threatened in order to “be good”? And what is “being good”? Who gets to have the final say about that? Who sets the guidelines? Who makes the rules?
I tell you this: You are your own rule-maker. You set the guidelines. And you decide how well you have done; how well you are doing. For you are the one who has decided Who and What You Really Are — and Who You Want to Be. And you are the only one who can assess how well you’re doing.
The truth is, I’d like to do more than just survive. I’ve been surviving all these years. I notice I’m still here. But I’d like the struggle for survival to end. I see that just getting by from day to day is still a struggle. I’d like to do more than just survive. I’d like to prosper.
And what would you call prospering?
Having enough that I don’t have to worry where my next dollar is coming from; not having to stress and strain just to make the rent, or handle the phone bill. I mean, I hate to get so mundane, but we’re talking real life here, not the airy-fairy, spiritually romanticized picture of life you draw throughout this book.
Do I hear a little anger there?
Not anger so much as frustration. I’ve been at the spiritual game for over 20 years now, and look where it’s gotten me. One paycheck away from the poorhouse! And now I’ve just lost my job, and it looks like the cash flow has stopped again. I’m getting really tired of the struggle. I’m 49 years old, and I’d like to have some security in life so that I could devote more time to “God stuff,” to soul “evoluting,” etc. That’s where my heart is, but it’s not where my life allows me to go…
Well, you’ve said a mouthful there, and I suspect you’re speaking for a whole lot of people when you share that experience. I’m going to respond to your truth one sentence at a time, so that we can easily track, and dissect, the answer.
You have not been “at this spiritual game” for 20 years, you have been barely skirting the edges of it (This is not a “spanking,” by the way, this is just a statement of the truth.) I’ll concede that for two decades you’ve been looking at it; flirting with it; experimenting now and then… but I haven’t felt your true—your truest—commitment to the game until just recently.
Let’s be clear that “being at the spiritual game” means dedicating your whole mind, your whole body, your whole soul to the process of creating Self in the image and likeness of God.
This is the process of Self realization about which Eastern mystics have written. It is the process of salvation to which much Western theology has devoted itself.
This is a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, moment-to-moment act of supreme consciousness. It is a choosing and a re-choosing every instant. It is ongoing creation. Conscious creation. Creation with a purpose. It is using the tools of creation we have discussed, and using them with awareness and sublime intention.
That is “playing this spiritual game.”
Again and again NDEers use the same adjectives to describe [the life review], referring to it as an incredibly vivid, wrap-around, three-dimensional replay of their entire life. “It’s like climbing right inside a movie of your life,” says one NDEer. “Every moment from every year of your life is played back in complete sensory detail. Total, total recall. And it all happens in an instant.” [...]
During the instantaneous and panoramic remembrance, NDEers reexperience all the emotions, the joys and the sorrows, that accompanied all the events in their life. More than that, they feel all of the emotions of the people with whom they have interacted as well. They feel the happiness of all the individuals to whom they’ve been kind. If they have committed a hurtful act, they became acutely aware of the pain their victim felt as a result of their thoughtlessness. And no event seems too trivial to be exempt. While reliving a moment in her childhood, one woman suddenly experienced all the loss and powerlessness her sister had felt after she (then a child) snatched a toy away from her sister.
Whitton has uncovered evidence that thoughtless acts are not the only things that cause individuals remorse during the life review. Under hypnosis his subjects reported that failed dreams and aspirations — things they had hoped to accomplish during their life but had not — also caused them pangs of sadness.
Thoughts, too, are replayed with exacting fidelity during the life review. Reveries, faces glimpsed once but remembered for years, things that made one laugh, the joy one felt when gazing at a particular painting, childish worries, and long forgotten daydreams — all flit through one’s mind in a second. As one NDEer summarizes, “Not even your thoughts are lost… Every thought was there.” [...]
Like Whitton’s subjects, NDEers universally report that they are never judged by the beings of light, but only feel love and acceptance in their presence. The only judgement that ever takes place is self-judgement and arises solely out of the NDEer’s own feelings of guilt and repentance. Occasionally the beings do assert themselves, but instead of behaving in an authoritarian manner, they act as guides and counselors whose only purpose is to teach. [...]
In NDE after NDE [the light beings] stress two things. One is the importance of love. Over and over they repeat this message, that we must learn to replace anger with love, learn to love more, learn to forgive and love everyone unconditionally, and learn that we in turn are loved. This appears to be the only moral criterion the beings use. Even sexual activity ceases to possess the moral stigma we humans are so fond of attaching to it. One of Whitton’s subjects reported that after living several withdrawn and depressed incarnations he was urged to plan a life as an amorous and sexually active female in order to add balance to the overall development of his soul. It appears that in the minds of the beings of light, compassion is the barometer of grace, and time and time again when NDEers wonder if some act they committed was right or wrong, the beings counter their inquiries only with a question: Did you do it out of love? Was the motivation love?
That is why we have been placed here on earth, say the beings, to learn that love is the key. They acknowledge that it is a difficult undertaking, but intimate that it is crucial to both our biological and spiritual existence in ways that we have perhaps not even begun to fathom. Even children return from the near-death realm with this message firmly impressed in their thoughts. States one little boy who after being hit by a car was guided into the world beyond by two people in “very white” robes: “What I learned there is that the most important thing is loving while you are alive.”
There is nothing you cannot be, there is nothing you cannot do. There is nothing you cannot have.
That sounds like a pie-in-the-sky promise.
What other kind of promise would you have God make? Would you believe Me if I promised you less?
For thousands of years people have disbelieved the promises of God for the most extraordinary reason: they were too good to be true. So you have chosen a lesser promise — a lesser love. For the highest promise of God proceeds from the highest love. Yet you cannot conceive of a perfect love, and so a perfect promise is also inconceivable. As is a perfect person. Therefore you cannot believe even in your Self.
Failing to believe in any of this means failure to believe in God. For belief in God produces belief in God’s greatest gift — unconditional love — and God’s greatest promise — unlimited potential.
Now, in the realm in which you live on the physical plane, there are only two places of being: fear and love. Thoughts rooted in fear will produce one kind of manifestation on the physical plane. Thoughts rooted in love will produce another.
The most notable feature of these great cities is that they are brilliantly luminous. They are also frequently described as foreign in architecture, and so sublimely beautiful that, like all the other features of the implicate dimensions, words fail to convey their grandeur. In describing one such city Swedenborg said that it was a place “of staggering architectural design, so beautiful that you would claim this is the home and source of art itself.”
The Masters who have walked the planet are those who have discovered the secret of the relative world — and refused to acknowledge its reality. In short, Masters are those who have chosen only love. In every instance. In every moment. In every circumstance. Even as they were being killed, they loved their murderers. Even as they were being persecuted, they loved their oppressors.
"I ask only one thing in return," the Friendly Soul declared.
"Anything! Anything," the Little Soul cried. He was excited now to know that he could experience every Divine Aspect of God. He understood, now, The Plan.
"In the moment that I strike you and smite you," said the Friendly Soul, "in the moment that I do the worst to you that you could ever imagine — in that selfsame moment... remember Who I Really Am."
Nothing is painful in and of itself. Pain is a result of wrong thought. It is an error in thinking.
A Master can disappear the most grievous pain. In this way, the Master heals.
Pain results from a judgment you have made about a thing. Remove the judgment and the pain disappears.
Judgment is often based upon previous experience. Your idea about a thing derives from a prior idea about that thing. Your prior idea results from a still prior idea — and that idea from another, and so forth, like building blocks, until you get all the way back in the hall of mirrors to what I call first thought.
All thought is creative, and no thought is more powerful than original thought. That is why this is sometimes also called original sin. Original sin is when your first thought about a thing is in error. That error is compounded many times over when you have a second or third thought about a thing. It is the job of the Holy Spirit to inspire you to new understandings, which can free you from your mistakes.
Mine is always your Highest Thought, your Clearest Word, your Grandest Feeling. Anything less is from another source. [...]
The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love.
Joy, truth, love.
These three are interchangeable, and one always leads to the other. It matters not in which order they are placed.
It was 2015. I was 24 years old, sitting on a pier overlooking Sydney harbor. A guy was sitting next to me, dangling his feet off the edge. He had blue eyes that sparkled in the moonlight.
We'd met earlier that evening at Friday night drinks. He strode straight up to me and said hello. Then he asked me a question, and I asked him one back. And he asked me a question, and I asked him one back. And in the space of an hour, it felt like we'd talked for eternity.