Conversations with Zoe and Jesus: Times of Suffering
Jesus: There will be times when you feel you cannot cope; you cannot find the strength to carry on. Perhaps a loved one will pass, a fortune lost or a child has suffered and died. Even in these times turn to us. It is not your destiny to suffer although during your life much suffering will occur. Turn to us and we will lift you; lift you from the pain and misery that can set in after a tragedy. Pain will and must be felt but life goes on and so too must you. Choosing to suffer does not help anyone and certainly does not serve the world, nor me.
Jesus: On the eve of the day of reckoning few will be able to sleep. There will be an unease, a malaise, across the world. Events will have come and gone and many will be awakening to the changes we have put in place.
Economic viability now will be the bed rock for the individual. Teach yourself now how to care for yourself materially. Strip the excess now and many years of financial pain will be spared.
Learn to honour and respect what you have now and God’s grace will be yours. The yearnings, the desires for what others show, deliberately instilling desire, consumerism and envy is coming to an end.
Turn in now and let the peace come over. In truth there is nothing to have or know but yourself. In yourself you will find us. You will find love, hope, peace and charitable intent. As the turn inwards begins, do not be tempted back to the world of man’s greed where no form is enough – more shoes, clothes, bags, money, bigger, better, stripping the earth, killing the cows and deafening the sound of your inner reason.
You have enough. Free yourself from the greed, the pain of wanting and fill yourself with us. The truth of this shall set you free.
Conversation with Jesus and Zoe: Listen and Look Inside
Jesus: For those are willing to listen, listen now. The change is upon us. Are you with us? If you are looking, look inside and ask yourself honestly,
“How do I feel?” No measure of spirituality can deny true existence of pain.
Pain is unable to be transcended by Us. But with willingness to acknowledge its existence and wholesome desire for a better way of being we can lift you out from it and it can disappear.
Meet us half way and we will lift you into our arms. Do this by taking the time to look inside. There is nothing you could find that would ever inhibit our desire to help you.
Allow yourself support and rest in your honesty and your fears will be now more.
Conversation with Jesus and Zoe: Alleviate Suffering
Jesus: The suffering of many can be greatly alleviated by the few. Ensure the people you place in power represent your desires in relieving the pain of many, either by direct action, lobbying or simply standing up and speaking. The time to take a stand for what is important is now. For those of you without a voice, without faith and hope of relief, understand that your time will come. Your suffering does not go unnoticed and you are never unloved.
For those of you with voice, with means or capability, take a stand for your fellow men. Your fate is their fate. Consider that at the day of reckoning your individual lives may be measured against the fate of your peoples as a whole. I say this not to instill fear or guilt but to simply provide you with an opportunity to refocus, make choices and serve the whole rather than the self in isolation of the world around you.
Do what you can with peace, faith and hope as your bastions. My work is through you workings.
Conversation with Jesus and Zoe: Lesson on Love Part 2
Jesus: Giving love freely without needing permission or having expectation is lesson 1. Lesson 2 is learning to love what is yours and not what is someone else’s or something you don’t have.
Many of you ask me for help and I help. I wish to help further by making you aware that the source of pain is often your own inability to love who, what and where you are now. I love you in this moment. Not when you are thinner, more beautiful, more wealthy, have time, make more effort or on a good day. Love does not exist outside of you. It exists inside you and it is always there. Learn to accept you now. Learn to love your self now. This is my greatest hope and wish for you.
Buddha: Lets speak more about mind. As you know there is no one conscious reality, there is no one consciousness. Instead, there are interlinking realities. And what is that interlinking reality? Love: love inter-relates all. What do we mean by love? The ability to be joyous in just being.
The flower is just a flower. A rose doesn’t try and be a lily; it simply extends the best of itself to try and meet the sun as a beautiful expression of the creative wonder of God. And this is what we want for humanity. If you are a rose don’t try and be a lily. If you are a lily don’t try and be a chrysanthemum. Simply be, learn to be.
There is nothing to do there is no way to be, other than through the suspension of mind. Yet, interestingly, it is mind that inter-relates all. There are many paradoxes to this as there are many layers of reality. What is real for your cat Zoë, is real. What is real for the bird that the cat is watching, is real. What is real for you watching the cat watch the bird, is real. What is real for me is the connective force that unites all of us, of which I am part, and the willingness for a transcendence. The transcendence of the current state of humanity. This current state is nothing but a state mind. When enough people change their state of mind there will be a change in the state of reality. This is not hard. It is easy to do and it starts with every individual taking account of their lives, their works and choosing to wake up.
Spending your time as a rose trying to be a lily is exhausting. Ultimately you will fail. But understanding that you are some sort of flower that through becoming peaceful with the self turns out to be a rose will be a wonder. And this is what we wait on: the return of the rose.
How do you know if you’re a rose trying to be a lily? It hurts. How do you know if you’re a lily trying to be a rose? It hurts. You are reaching for something that is beyond your form, beyond essence, beyond your blueprint, yet you bend and twist and dye, and contort. And ultimately there will be no peace, there will be no stillness, there will be no wholeness- there will only be pain for a rose cannot be a lily and a lily cannot be a rose. How do you know if you are a rose? You are a rose and you have peace. How do you know if you are a lily? You are a lily and you have peace.
What is peace? A fundamental feeling that all is well and all is well with you.
All that is not well can be resolved. Some things will take large efforts, some things will take smaller efforts. But ultimately only a rose can be a rose and ultimately only the lily can be the lily. To try and be something else is to inflict pain. This is not the purpose of a rose even though it has thorns! This is not the purpose of a lily even though its pollen can be toxic! A rose is a rose and a lily is a lily. Let that be for now.
Conversation with Buddha and Zoe: It Simply Is (Part 3)
Buddha: So once peace has been established, once there is recognition of it is, then there can be resolution. But this resolution need not be the end point, for what does this resolution mean? In some cases the end of suffering will come from having peace with what simply is. When the mind can let that go there can be an immediate and everlasting end of suffering with this issue. However, in other cases this will not be so.
There will be an immediate end of suffering and then there will come the realisation that action, rightful action, action borne out of the desire to end forms of suffering entering into one’s life, to end one’s karma with these particular issues will ensue. An example is, “Why, why, why, this hurts, this hurts, this hurts. I want this car, why can’t I have it. I feel so unhappy I can’t have this car. Life is poor, I am poor.”
When there is an understanding of it, there will be a resolution and for some this will mean an acceptance that a perception of poverty is acceptable. And for others there will be the understanding that, ‘Yes, it is and this is not the way I wish to live my life therefore I will take action’. But rightful actions are very different from the actions coming from the needs to satisfy our desires that will lead to suffering. So some actions will end suffering, some actions will lead to suffering.
This is why we ask you to consider the concept of rightful action. Does this lead me out of my karma of pain or does this lead me into another karma of pain? How does one distinguish which is which? One simply knows. If one is unsure one finds a place of stillness and asks the question once more. There is nothing difficult in this. If one is unwilling to find a place of stillness to ask a question of oneself, then one is creating karma of pain and suffering. This must be made clear. This is the end of this lesson.
Buddha: The aim of my discussions with you, Zoë, is to bring stillness into the lives of many, and as I was on earth, to relieve the suffering of the many. The suffering that is just and unjust. By that, we mean the suffering that is created by us and that which life unfolds for us.
Man was not made to suffer. So why does he we hear you ask. Over-development of the intellect: plain and simple. It has become a muscle that has become too strong, too strong for the creative urges of man, too strong to be able to let go with any ease. Intelligence was given to you as your species came down to exist here on earth. Your gene pool was taken from that of the animals and you were developed, given the gift. Yet though the gift was given from God, from all that is, it has become what has taken you away from all is, and fundamentally this needs to be rectified. We need you now to use your minds to learn to train and control your intellect. To take that muscle and through work, through dedication, allow its control to become flaccid and its repartee- its ability to distinguish what is right and wrong in a situation- to remain. So if you like, what is needed is a lobotomy and this muscle needs to be halved in size. Once halved in size it will become equal once again and be able to balance with mankind’s other gifts, its creative urges, its flows, the intuition, and the instincts. There is nothing that cannot be achieved on earth. Not through the intellect but through the creative flow and then the utilization of intellect henceforth.
I listen to the suffering of many. “Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why?” No answer comes. However, “Why, why, why? This hurts, this pains, this hurts, this pains, this hurts, this pains. I wish for, I wish for, I wish for, I wish for, I wish for.”
What does this get?
“Why, why, why, why, why, why, this hurts, this pains, this hurts, this pain, I wish for, I wish for, I wish for.”
The resolution to suffering is not within the mind it is in the end of mind.
This is short today Zoe and it is very straight. We end this suffering from the cessations of mind. By this we mean the cessations of mental desire. Pointless mental questionings that are incapable of answers. “Why?”, “Because.” “Why?”, “Because.” “Why?”, “Because.” “Why?”, “Because.”
From now on when someone asks, “Why”, say, “It simply is.” This need not be pain, this need not be suffering. Accept the simply is and find the peace there in. There is no movement from this point for mind, except to take you away from this point. When you are taken away from this point the suffering and pain will begin once more. “Why, why, why?”. “It simply is”. Find the peace from this point and be aware that only the mind can take you away from this and you will resume pain and suffering. “Why, why, why?” I needn’t go on now Zoe.
Do you know that all enlightenment is this simple? Goodbye for now.
Conversation with Buddha and TMichael: Fear of Death and Life
TM: How does one accept death and the will to live at the same time?
Master Buddha: That’s not so easy to explain or understand. The reason is because of attachment to living and then attachment to accepting death in order to be free from fear. There is, in between the actual truth of acceptance of death and the first step, a period of elation at no longer sensing any fear around dying. When the fear of dying has so long ruled the physical life it is quite a relief to no longer walk in fear of it. However, there will come a test. And that test will present an option to die or an option to live and that is when you’ll discover how attached you are to the notion of dying versus the notion of living and which one actually carries the most fear. There are two parts to the fear aspect of living in the flesh. The first is fear of dying and that preoccupies all your thoughts, emotions and energy to avoid its actuality. Then there comes the fear of living, which exposes all the painful self-inadequacies. That’s enough to make one embrace death, now no longer feared, as an escape from the fear of living.
Just as one has to face the fear of death, one has to face the fear of living. The fear of living is the more difficult of the two because it is more difficult to imagine. Death is universally the same, except perhaps in the actual method or circumstances of death. Living on the other hand can be a slow form of death or a joyous expression of all that is. You can choose which it is. Again, just because one has the power to choose doesn’t make it easier. You must understand what it is that you are choosing and have the skills to choose according to your individual nature.
TM: So, my question assumed there was no fear of living, only fear of dying. How does the will to live then resolve with the fear of living?
Master Buddha: The will to live requires no effort because it is your innate spiritual will, which in the flesh is instinctual. The fear of living is concerned with those matters of quality and choice. How shall one live? What occupation shall one choose to provide the essentials of living? Shall one create a family, a marriage? What will engage my thoughts and my energy? Those are the questions of living that determine the quality of one’s life.
TM: Where do the self-inadequacies come in?
Master Buddha: That is the lifetime struggle for most humans. It depends greatly upon the wisdom of one’s parents and the living environment that one is exposed to during one’s formative years. But even under the best of circumstances it is unavoidable to deal with self-inadequacy to some degree. In the middle, that which is normal, one sees that before a child reaches school age already the seeds of self-inadequacy are planted and many more shall also be planted during the years of attending school. This is a tremendous challenge to change because parents are still struggling with their own self-inadequacies while trying to raise children, schools are populated with adults who are struggling with their own self-inadequacies and of course the children are in the thick of it as well.
TM: So, if I understand what you’re saying, it is self-inadequacy that is the root of our fear of living, not fear of dying.
Master Buddha: Fear of death is first, but it’s a mask for fear of living based upon self-inadequacies. One must first confront fear of death and then begin the process of awareness of self-inadequacies and correction in order to reach the joy of living instead of the fear of living.
TM: What similarity is there between self-confidence and self-adequacy? In Western culture anyway, adequate is mediocre and not good enough if one is to get ahead in life. So where does this reconcile?
Master Buddha: Well, adequacy is a relative term in this case. If the standard in Western society is excellence then that is what is meant by adequate, that is one must be excellent to be self-adequate.
Self-confidence can be genuine or a rationalization that one has created to cover for self-inadequacy. There are only a handful of truly self-confident people, those who have mastered the fear of death and the fear of living. Most people are spread along the spectrum of self-confident, yet still self-inadequate underneath, to self-inadequate as a constant in their daily lives. The meaning of self-confident is to be truthful with one’s self. So, in that case, there can be a conscious level of self-confidence and fears around self-inadequacy at the same time. What I mean, is that you can be aware of your perception of self-inadequacy and still be self-confident in an honest way. That is the point of transition that many people find themselves now. They are exploring self-awareness, which leads to coming face to face with their self-inadequacies, which is giving them a genuine self-confidence that they are progressing toward joy in living. It’s not always perfect and there is still illusion, but it is in the right direction.
TM: Can any of us really be inadequate?
Master Buddha: That’s for each person to determine.
TM: Yes, but we’ve determined for the most part that we are inadequate and you’re saying that’s a problem. So, clearly we’re incapable of making this judgment.
Master Buddha: And by what standards have you determined that you are inadequate?
TM: We set the standard by looking around us and seeing the ones among us who are adequate and then compare ourselves to them.
Master Buddha: And how do you know what makes someone adequate?
TM: We’ve determined through our social consensus the traits that are desirable and those are the ones that form the foundation of our adequacy. Then there are individual traits that one can have that deviate from the social norm that enhance our adequacy.
Master Buddha: So, under your system the guidelines are derived by social consensus and then measured by each of you as you see it in others in contrast to yourself. Do you see others who are less adequate than you are?
TM: Of course we do. There are others who are more and some who are less.
Master Buddha: Have you ever heard someone say really flattering things about you and you felt those things weren’t true?
TM: At first it feels good to hear those things, but there have been times then when I doubt those things are entirely true, maybe a little.
Master Buddha: Do you tell yourself about your qualities that make you adequate?
TM: Not often, but sometimes.
Master Buddha: Do you tell yourself about the times you are inadequate?
TM: Probably more so than the other way.
Master Buddha: Why is that?
TM: Because I’m inadequate more often than not?
Master Buddha: Well, you were a good sport to fall into my trap on this one. Although I know that a part of you believes there is much truth in what you said. It’s hard in this world to counter the many messages of self-inadequacy. And that’s what everyone wants the most, to feel adequate and have others recognize them for this. It’s understandable that if you are telling yourself than you are inadequate that you would turn to others to get the feedback that you are adequate. What happens though when they confirm your belief that you are inadequate?
TM: That’s the worse when it all coincides to tell you that. That’s the worse kind of depression and despair I think; to feel worthless and incapable of living a good life.
Master Buddha: You have a fairly simple prayer that you recite to accept yourself as you are and know you are loved. Because ultimately adequacy has to do with being lovable, don’t you think?
TM: Are you saying they are synonymous?
Master Buddha: I think so, even though adequacy has to do with a performance of talents that in total can make you lovable, what is someone if they are adequate but unlovable? Are they happy? What if they conform to all of the social standards of adequacy, yet they don’t feel others see them in that light and they don’t experience love in their lives?
TM: Well, that pretty much sucks. So you become bitter or you try harder and harder to prove your adequacy, and lovability I guess.
Master Buddha: What is the prayer that you recite?
TM: It’s Love in Abundance. There’s one line in particular that resonates with me in terms of self-acceptance and self-love. “I am that I am and thus receive the blessings of love in abundance.” If I’m feeling critical or judgmental of myself, I often recite that line with a substitution for “that I am”. It could be, “I am selfish and inconsiderate and thus receive the blessings of love in abundance.” It has the effect for me of embracing the worse things I could think about myself in love and then I just feel love and not the power of the criticism or judgment.
