Conversations with Zoe and Buddha: Does Money Matter?
Buddha: Today I wish to speak to about wealth and whether it matters. This is a subject that many of you fight with yourself about. By wealth I am going to focus on money: the mechanism that you have for acquiring large amounts of things and experiences.
The world was made abundantly. There was always more for you than you could ever utilize or use. It was made with great love and given to you with great joy. More than you could ever utilize: a land of milk of honey. But where you have gone wrong is in thinking that more of it was meant for you than was designed for another.
Over the ages man has ensnared man even to the point of physical entrapment . Further more many have sold what they felt was their right to sell: the physical body of another. This is fundamentally against the principle upon which this reality, this earth, was created.
It is possible to go back to having enough for all but a culture shift will need to happen that is so vast you could call it cataclysmic. This will be started by a shift in consciousness. Many of you feel this. Your institutions feel this and their answer is to try and shore their institutions and themselves up in more wealth as if that means the cataclysm can’t and wont affect them.
Many of you are currently suffering feeling you do not have enough. If you feel this is you, please take the time to look around and you and see if this is true- do you really not have enough? Enough of what? Food? Look in your kitchen. Money? Look in your bank. And with this one also look at your spend. Many of you claim to not have enough but actually have more than you could ever maintain physically by yourself: your home, your cars, your electrical goods and so forth. This is indeed a time of change and in these times you are asked to look within and find your own personal answers to how much is enough for you. Once you have enough, cycle your excess: this was, and is, the basis of charity and community.
It is entirely possible that the cycle of money you circle in this life may come back to you when you may need it for yourself. Lonely is the person who shores themselves with big bank accounts and excesses of living whilst others are in pain. This is how it is. This is how it always has been. This is how it always will be. This is because you are part of each other. To shore yourself against another defies your nature, so your nature will suffer. To sell another for personal gain without thought and feeling for their well-being is another example. It defies your nature and so your nature must suffer.
I say end this suffering: discover your enough and circulate your excess. All is well with your world.
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.
Conversation with Jesus and Zoe: Heed The Murmurings
Jesus: So you think you can do this on your own, this life? This existence?
You can’t. You are all interconnected and interwoven, dependant of the well being of all, all than the one. All of you at the day of reckoning will be held accountable to Us for your ignorance, misdemeanours and misnomers towards others.
Each of you must learn to turn the other cheek, help the stranger, love your neighbour before the ascent of your race is possible. This is why highly evolved beings return to earth – to ease the suffering. Thinking of the All not just the One. The suffering tide is coming. It will come in TV shows and books, churches, synagogues, mosques, earthquakes and hurricanes and it will ask each of you to look within and find the humanity, the strength, the willingness to help those who are weaker, more vulnerable and less able than yourselves.
For those of you who worship at the bank and in “goods” this will be shaken or taken away and a New world order, a New earth will emerge and fill the cracks, the voids in the old ones.
The prophets are in place. The time is now. Those that feel the move will move with it.
For those that ignore and refuse the inner murmurings (it’s in you All) there will be consequences.
Hail the new order has come and with it a new beginning, a new possibility a New Way of Being for you All.
Heed the murmurings, awake to the realities of your life and your consequential affect on the lives of others and you will hardly notice the change take place.
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 Buddha and Zoe: All Is Impermanent
Buddha: Begin now to look at the world the way we see it. This world is of temporary form- always shifting, always moving out, shifting each of your every lives. This world that you live in is bigger, bolder and greater than the individual life that you currently inhabit.
With this knowledge learn to respect the earth. Learn to keep the earth’s greatness in your mind and with every choice that you make be aware of consequence. I say this to each and every one of you.Yet do not become fixed on the permanence of damage or sustainability or even on life itself.
Think of yourself as in transit. You are always moving from one form into another. Birth, life stages, days, places that you visit- always moving in and out of form. Not just within the lifetime of the soul but within the lifetime even of the day. One moment is always different from the next, yet you remain. So treat your host with respect and dignity, your host the earth. You are traveling through this lifetime and leave it well.
Begin to recognize that there are those that have gone before you who knew and understood this and worked to leave no footprint of themselves upon the earth. Take a step towards this. This will do two things: Firstly this will give the respect to the earth that it deserves. Secondly this will begin to train you in the nature of your reality right now as you sit and read these words. This moment, whilst real now, will be gone in a moment from now. Take from it what you need. Recognize the impermanence of all and become still and settled within that. Great is the suffering of the many who try and fix points through time, through desire.
Whilst great things can be achieved within a lifetime, within a year, within a month, a week, a day, all is just single moments threaded together. All is impermanent.
I taught to think of moments, of actions, of words spoken to others, of thoughts, all of these as beads on string. Each bead represents that thought, that moment, that desire, that action. This will be the legacy that the soul will carry forth from you. You will with you a string of beads and on that string will be your decisions whether you have been conscious of them or not. This is what you will take to what id beyond form. I taught that this is all that is important- a string of beads- and that isn’t even real in form but metaphysical.
Today I will teach you to value the impact of your life, your choices. Delve into your thoughts, your desires to help you become aware of the impact of your life and your choices, conscious or not.
Life is different today. Different in the fact that impact is greater, desire is greater, restlessness and suffering is greater and this happens at a time when many of you have more of that which is in form. Therefore switch your focus from your daytime job to give you things, material forms, and instead focus on your inner world. This is your real job and it matters not what you do in the world of form. What matters is how. Bring conscious awareness into your life, into your moment and learn to keep the focus on your internal world. learn to become aware of when you become out of yourself and learn to hold the moments where you are inside. Inside your body, inside your life, inside what you are doing- this is where you meet the present. This is where you are doing you inner work.
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.
TM: I’ve received quite a few inquiries about money and requests to talk about it. There has been a great body of writing on this from a spiritual perspective. What do you say to someone who asks, “What is the proper relationship to money, how much to have, how to use it, how to get it, etc.?”
Master Buddha: First of all, there isn’t just one way to view this because each person has his or her particular orientation to money given his or her life path. Anything I say must be understood as general statements and then I can offer examples of individual circumstances to show how some principles may apply.
As viewed from the spiritual perspective, meaning from a non-material realm, money is as worthless as a bicycle would be for travel across an ocean. It is purely a human creation. So your question presumes a spiritual oversight that doesn’t exist except in the form of advice and counsel that may be offered from time to time. That is the spirit in which I present these ideas today.
Let me attempt to simplify the concept of money in relation to a person. Humans have decided that money shall represent a value of some thing. Those things may include the physically inanimate object (house, car, etc.), a personal action (one’s labor), a promise for future delivery of value (speculation), restitution for past value (grievances resolved), a gift of love or social obligation, so on and so forth. The second premise is that the value of money shall equal approximately the value of that thing in the exchange. Sometimes the values are not equal, and if they are too unequal, then one or the other person feels either elated or cheated.
The third premise created by humans is a system of ethics regarding transactions between one another using money or the thing valued as the currency. This is a point of departure between the diverse cultures of the world. The one dominant force has been the Western philosophy governing the use of money. The ethics of the Western system have varied over the past two hundred years, but for the most part they have represented an idealism that while noble in its aim has not achieved its goal.
TM: So is it possible to answer my questions?
Master Buddha: I’m getting there, but needed to frame my response for clarity. The proper relationship to money must take on a general perspective representing larger society (we’ll call general ethics) and the particular relationship of an individual to money. From the general ethics, the idea of freedom to choose one’s occupation and one’s level of income and expense, is I think the best arrangement. As we have discussed in these conversations there is a point that one must consider that individual freedom intersects with group harmony. This means that it is necessary for individuals to contribute to the whole in a way that brings harmony to the whole and doesn’t disturb the peace of the many. This is the greatest insurance for all. The current system in Western society doesn’t achieve this goal, but with modification it could.
TM: I’m not clear on what you mean. Are you saying that there needs to be a balance in interest between the range of individual freedom and the needs of the whole population?
Master Buddha: Yes. For example, in Western society a person is permitted to amass unlimited wealth. On the other end of the scale a person is permitted to starve to death or die due to exposure to the elements because he cannot afford shelter. What is preventing Western society from implementing safeguards at the bottom end of the scale?
TM: We don’t allocate budget for it because we’ve determined other things are more important.
Master Buddha: And the contradiction is that your idealism states that you cherish life above all. Your military runs to all ends of the earth to rescue those in peril. Your governments send aid to foreign countries in an attempt to prevent starvation and lethal diseases from spreading. Yet in your own domestic domain you have families living in such poverty that their lives are at risk daily.
TM: It isn’t a perfect system for sure and most Westerners will agree that we can do more to clean up our domestic programs.
Master Buddha: What do you think is stopping you from doing this?
TM: We have an overly complicated and increasingly corrupt political system that can’t philosophically agree on just how much we are our brother’s keeper.
Master Buddha: It is first and foremost the obligation of your governments, using the general treasury, to prevent starvation and health-related problems derived from poverty. This cannot be left to the generosity and goodwill of individuals. It must begin with your domestic sphere first. It is there that you work out the ethics of being your brother’s keeper as you phrased it. Once you have mastered that step then sharing that wisdom with other cultures is a natural extension.
TM: We have the resources to do what you suggest, but not the collective resolve to do it.
Master Buddha: This is true, but you asked for a perspective on the proper relationship to money. You will have to work out the politics in order to deliver a just relationship.
TM: Okay then, maybe you can state what a person should be required to do in order to receive assistance that raises his status above poverty. That’s where we fail; we can’t agree on that. Some people say we should be self-reliant and others want to give to others with little or no requirements for self-responsibility. So, what is the answer?
Master Buddha: Ah you see, now you are into the business of designing a society that grapples with such ethical obligations yet stumbles at the final step failing to complete the mission. If the US government felt the collective will of its citizens favored a system whereby no citizen would be permitted to fall into poverty, could they achieve that?
TM: Yes.
Master Buddha: Then it must be that the collective will of its citizens do not favor such a system.
TM: How many citizens create a collective will?
Master Buddha: Enough that under your political system you could legislate and implement the system.
TM: Then you must be correct. Sadly it must be true. But you still haven’t answered my question of self-responsibility.
Master Buddha: Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. Your society has through its own design created an array of citizens from the genius to the infantile. Your society is responsible on a par level with the individuals that make up society. It will take many generations of enlightened governance to correct the mistakes and injustices created by past policies and practices. It will likewise take time for individuals to climb out of their ignorance or unfortunate circumstances due to conditions beyond their control.
Wandering your streets are the insane and the helpless. They cannot take responsibility for themselves in any way.
You have many people who are indolent and averse to responsibility through personal predilection and familial training. They will have to be educated on a new understanding of their responsibility.
You have a growing number who have turned to crime and are either incarcerated or among the general population. They will have to be educated, and until they are they will remain incarcerated because you have no other way to assimilate them.
There are those who through no fault of their own have fallen upon hard times due to major shifts in the economy. They will need to be retrained in new occupations and helped along the way.
When there are enough enlightened citizens there will be a more enlightened government and they will realize the long-term commitment required to correct your system. It is a race against the clock.
If you do nothing to correct this situation, because as a society you think it isn’t your responsibility, then you will suffer the consequences of doing nothing. The consequences will include a greater divide between the economic classes, thus more poverty; less efficacy in minimum education achievement among the lower classes; increased criminal activity; reduction of individual freedoms due to crime prevention measures; compartmentalization of community along class lines further reducing the efficacy of government and the erosion of community infrastructure. You can probably project from there what will transpire next.
If however, you find the collective will to make a long-term commitment to correction, then you will begin to see minor changes for the good. It will take patience beyond one, two or three generations. That is perhaps the greatest challenge for a society that has come to expect immediate gratifications of its goals (even though this hasn’t really been the case).
TM: What can you say to the questions regarding individuals and their relationship to money? What are some guidelines to follow is really what I’m asking.
Master Buddha: As individuals you must graduate through levels of ethical refinement regarding the role of money in your life. What is good for one person may not be good or right for another. For that reason do not be hasty in judging others for their view in earning or handling their money.
As Master Jesus and I have maintained throughout these conversations, release judgment from your view. Find your relationship to money based upon your path and your understanding and allow others to do the same without inveighing their choices. When you have come to peace with your relationship to money then you may offer a helping hand to others who may wish to hear from you.
Conversation with Buddha and TMichael: Anger Management
TM: May I ask about anger and its role in our lives and relationships? Will you begin with offering a definition of anger?
Master Buddha: What may seem obvious to most everyone is that anger is a reaction to not getting what you want when you want it or in the way you want it. It can be your fault, or it can be someone else’s fault. The second reflex of anger is retribution or evening the score to recover what you didn’t get plus a bonus for having suffered the agony of anger and inconvenience. There is also anger once removed, meaning on behalf of an injustice done to another for which you have a connection or affinity. The reflex of retribution is the same.
TM: I have a difficult time knowing when to express anger, that is, when it’s appropriate and when it isn’t. Sometimes I wonder whether or not anger is necessary or not, even though it seems to arise as an involuntary reaction.
Master Buddha: Let’s start with the involuntary reaction part of your statement and then move to the rest. Anger is a natural human emotion just like love, sadness, grief, joy, happiness, bliss, disappointment and others in the spectrum. They arise spontaneously as a reaction to what is happening in your life. This as a general statement is true for every human on earth. Then how do we account for the differences in reactions among people? Why do some people react violently to the slightest provocation and others almost not at all to severe events?
Humans share in common an emotional body that works in concert with your physical and mental bodies. There is an influence based upon one’s past life history—what must be experienced this lifetime? There is group connection—what must be worked out for this group of beings? There is the influence of parents, family and community that impacts one’s emotional body and conditions its reactions. Beyond these local influences, there is responsibility from humanity’s role on Earth.
The confluence of these many factors produce differences in reactions from one being to another.
As a social concern, there must be a range of acceptable reactions and for that humans have erected laws to regulate behavior. Within those laws one will find instances that permit retribution resulting in death of the offending party that passes as justifiable because of the provocation of anger and the acceptance that that person is not liable for such reactions, or as is in some cultures, entitled to the justice of the extreme reaction. Other cultures don’t condone anger reactions to that extent, but make some allowance for it that support the concept of it being involuntary if acted out spontaneously. There are also social customs below the threshold of laws that regulate behavior.
To answer your question of whether or not anger is necessary, we must ask to what purpose is it necessary.
TM: Some people I’ve spoken to about this usually say that expressing anger is natural and involuntary and that it releases the energy from you and that’s a good and natural thing, then you move on. Their assertion is that anger is within the constellation of natural human emotions as you just said and that we eventually evolve to the point that we can freely express anger without killing one another, but express we shall just like any other emotion.
Master Buddha: Would you say that as a rule, expression of anger has the potential to be more destructive in its effects than the expression of joy or sadness?
TM: In some cases yes. But maybe that’s because people overreact to some things due to repression of anger until they explode disproportionately.
Master Buddha: That’s possible, but let’s go back to your question to what purpose it serves and so is it necessary. If our definition of anger described the circumstances of anger, then let’s answer what is anger energetically? What purpose does the delivery of that energy serve?
Anger, energetically speaking springs from the desire nature, which in turn reflects human survival needs, and desires beyond the necessities of life. Anger is the defender of those personal and group needs and desires. If they are threatened, then anger arises to defend. Energetically, it is linked to desire and it does not discriminate between basic needs and frivolous wants without the help of the mental body. Anger at its root level, just is the defender that can be, when combined with mental energy, an impetus to aggression.
TM: In the desire nature and its list of wants, do you include things like dignity and respect?
Master Buddha: Yes, of course. That is a matter of ego interpretation of necessities that we have covered elsewhere.
I wish to draw your attention to the fact that anger derives its force and origin from its role as defender within the human realm of physical, emotional and mental.
TM: From that are you implying that anger doesn’t exist in other realms, such as spiritual?
Master Buddha: I say emphatically that anger does not exist in the spiritual realm because there is no need that goes unfulfilled.
TM: What about the whole Lucifer rebellion? That sounds like some needs unfulfilled.
Master Buddha: That was a matter of pride and desire, not of anger. It was a calculated, creative execution of a perceived right of domain. It failed.
TM: So spirits in the universe weren’t angry with Lucifer and his minions for disrupting and corrupting everything? I mean it seems like a major conflict and you’re saying there was no anger involved and I find that hard to believe.
Master Buddha: What can I say other than what I know to be true? There was disappointment in the whole affair, but not anger or retribution associated with anger. There were consequences that were accepted with responsibility by all involved.
TM: Okay. Please go back to your line of thought.
Master Buddha: Anger finds its origin in the human realm. Given that, we can look for its necessity there. Its purpose is to defend. But is that necessary?
TM: I think I know where you’re going. You’re going to argue that our desires aren’t necessary, neither is defense of them; so, anger isn’t necessary.
Master Buddha: That would be a difficult argument wouldn’t it? Many people would disagree that desires are unnecessary. What about basic survival needs? Don’t those need defending? Can’t anger be necessary for that?
TM: Yes, I suppose so. But couldn’t they be defended without anger? Why is anger necessary to arouse defense?
Master Buddha: Because it is. This is where humanity is right now. As the human race evolves closer and closer to its spiritual nature there will be a diminishment and eventually a disappearance of anger as the impetus for defense. Over time there has been and will continue to be this gradual receding of anger.
TM: I’m surprised. I never would have guessed that the official ‘Master’ position is that acting out anger is okey-dokey.
Master Buddha: Well, we have to cover this a bit more to qualify that position. I think what you’ll discover is that our understanding of human nature encompasses a realistic perspective of long term evolution of human characteristics and traits. The expression and use of anger as a defense mechanism is one. There are others.
TM: I think I need some elaboration on this, because it goes against what I believe.
Master Buddha: And you believe?
TM: Anger is a natural emotion arising from our attachment to what we desire and feel entitled to have. I don’t believe it’s necessary, but we are conditioned to express it, violently sometimes, and to accept it and actually be entertained by it. I believe there are ways to express anger without being harmful to others and that seeking revenge and retribution create more attachment to the experience. I agree this is an evolutionary process, but surely we at the point where we can see that anger isn’t necessary so that we can explore other ways of providing for our survival.
Master Buddha: Does it make you angry that others can’t see this point and share your belief?
TM: A little.
Master Buddha: This is one of those conundrums for which we can’t assert what should be based upon what we’d like it to be—it just is what it is. And at this point in human evolution there is a substantial number among the world population that experience anger differently from the belief you have stated and it’s going to take some time for the weight to shift. In the meantime there is progress toward peaceful solutions among people who have recognized, if nothing else, that peaceful solutions grant more security to the protection of needs and wants than it does by using anger and retribution. It’s a start. You don’t make the shift by being angry or judgmental towards those who still regard anger, violence, war, or force as the natural solution to feeling threatened. It is the natural solution for those grounded in the materiality of humanity, and that is the majority population of the world.
It will change over time through the enduring examples by those who have mastered peaceful solutions to threatening situations. It will happen. Patience is required.
TM: It always requires patience doesn’t it?
Master Buddha: Patience and a non-judgmental perspective.
