Category Archives: Facade

FEAR

Posted on by under desire, Divine Truth, emotions, Facade, fear, Grief, love, REal self, resistance, Truth, Uncategorized

 

daily-bible-verse-devotion-fear-love

A couple of months ago I was stood on train station platform at a time that I was reflecting a lot on fear and its impact in my life and the impact of fear in the world. I was looking at the advertising boards and had an image of giant posters with just the word FEAR printed on them in giant letters and I knew that in that moment that would be enough to make people afraid. That’s how big fear is in our lives – just the word can cause an emotional reaction and trigger our fear.

Since I first started reflecting and attempting to feel fear in recent months, the corona virus has hit the planet and today when I was in the supermarket the fear was palpable, but more than that were the emotions that were present to avoid the fear: panic, judgement and anger.

The root meaning of the word crisis is opportunity which I find amazing and in many ways represents to me how God created everything: there is always an opportunity and a different choice to make, even in the darkest moments. It is the Law of Attraction in play, offering us a chance to choose to feel our emotions and discover the Truth!

Last week when I sat with my fear, triggered by numerous pieces of news and social media posts about the virus and let myself feel some I felt lots of fear wrapped up in the initial feeling: fear of death because I don’t want to die in my current soul condition; fear that I haven’t been able to make my mark on the world as me, the real me; fear I haven’t done enough, been enough and more. Then it suddenly became the fear that permeated my childhood: that my mother would die and would abandon me. Her suicide attempts, the time I sat by her bed trying to wake her, trying to save her. I didn’t fully feel it, but it was good to just let myself travel down the fear for a while, which is when I realised the gift in this virus and what it may be asking us to experience emotionally. In fact, I suspect that all the unfelt fear in us has created it.

I noticed a few posts, encouraging people not to watch too much news, not to feed the fear, in fact to “stay calm” and tune into things that take your mind off of it: some of these posts were by teachers and coaches that have a lot of influence. But this is the wrong advice – dont ignore your fear, just feel it, experience and like me you may be surprised what layers are unpeeled.

I think one of the things that is happening, is that people are confusing panic with fear. It’s taken me a while to understand the difference and when Mary said that panic is an addiction to help us avoid our fear (Divine Truth Assistance Group 2014) I really had to sit with that one – it messed with my head for a while.

Panic seems like fear because it can feel awful, it can make us hyperventilate and feel extremely anxious, our heart racing, as in a panic attack. It tends to make us jump around and is frantic and grabs a lot of attention from others around us and actually ‘infects’ groups of people.

Definition of panic (dictionary.com):

A sudden overwhelming fear, with or without cause, that produces hysterical or irrational behavior, and that often spreads quickly through a group of persons or animals. (that is we act out in a way that helps us avoid fully feeling the fear)

Fear on the other hand is all encompassing and when you choose to feel it fully, you don’t think, you’re not able to run to the supermarket for toilet rolls: it has you in its grip, emotionally, in that moment. You can’t really function and at its extreme, when it is terror, you become almost blind and deaf and you shake uncontrollably. These extreme feelings of loss of control are what frighten us so much and often why we don’t want to feel fear. We have become afraid of fear itself.

The dictionary definitions of fear (dictionary.com):

a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

I have done a lot of personal reflection on fear in recent months and a few weeks ago it came out in long verse in my journal. I have recorded it as an audio file:

 

It has been quite painful to see how much I have let fear lead my life; how much I have lived from fear; how many times I have made decisions from fear.  That is I have wanted to avoid the experience of feeling my fears so much that I have I have made choices in addiction and in survival mode a lot of time: flight, fright or freeze.

For example, I have moved so many times and at times told myself it was a new adventure and that I didn’t fit in. I felt unhappy so I have thought that moving would improve things, but I was running and wanting to avoid the underlying grief I felt and the fear that I was truly unlovable and unacceptable as a person. I have moved at such a pace and never given myself to really feel the truth – I wanted to avoid the pain. I learnt this in my childhood, but sadly I have continued the pattern and added it too it.

I can often observe how fear impacts events in the world, but I am finding it harder to see the harm my fear has done to others around me. I am aware of some of the damage to my son, but I know I have a lot more truth to face in this area. We often play down the damage fear does. We are somewhat quicker to acknowledge the harm anger does (though even here we lack feeling the full truth of its damage) but with fear we justify it constantly: “I can’t do that, I am too afraid too,” and we often receive a lot of sympathy from others.

Many of Jesus talks include information and teaching about fear, which indicates the importance of this emotion if we don’t feel it and what can change if we do. Some talks have fear in the title, but you will also find it covered in talks about emotions, truth and other topics so I can’t list them all, but I have put a few links at the end of this post.

Some key points that Jesus said:

  • Fear is a False Expectation Appearing Real. It is an untruth.
  • Feeling fear will unlock other emotions
  • Fear always suppresses desire. I f you are not feeling your desires passionately, you must be afraid.
  • We can choose to feel fear. It is just an emotion and God created us to feel all emotions, including fear.
  • Fear rejects truth
  • Fear prevents you from being at one with God
  • Holding onto fear prevents truth from changing your life.
  • Truth and error on any one subject cannot exist in our soul at the same time so we need to release error: releasing error, including fear has to be done emotionally. It is not an intellectual process.
  • All fear is what causes physical pain and disease in some way.
  • Fear is about suppressing, denying and controlling the underlying emotions.
  • Fear is a life of constraint
  • If we act in fear there are penalties on our soul so it increases our pain and suffering.
  • Every time we are afraid for our children’s welfare we are no longer loving them – we’re controlling them. There is no love in fear.
  • If you are not feeling your fear, you are living in it.
  • Living in fear means you are surrounded by spirits who want you to remain afraid, often so that they can manipulate and control you. They surround and oppress a person in fear. Anything that is false can be manipulated. If you feel your fear fully you will no longer attract these spirits and you’ll start to feel you desires again.
  • Embrace your passions and desires, it will trigger your fear so that you can feel it and release it.
  • God is not afraid for you, not afraid of your choices and not afraid of what happens to you.

That last point is a big statement – it tells us a lot: our irrational our fear is, because if God is not worried for us then logically we must ultimately be safe. In the Divine Truth Assistance Groups of 2016 Jesus draws a vase or pot on the board, which represents the soul – the error in our soul we need to release. He asks the audience how much of that pot is fear and the response is that a large proportion of what we have to release is fear. But we are wrong and what is a large chunk for us is in reality just a slither in that pot. Most of what we have to release is the sin we have done in order to avoid feeling our error emotions, including of course fear. There was silence for a moment as the penny dropped. At home, watching online, I rewound the video and listened again.

Gosh we have made such a big deal of fear, we have raised it up into an insurmountable mountain when in reality it is a hill. We have justified holding onto it and living in it, growing it in our imaginations to avoid feeling our underlying grief, oppressing our hurt child. I can now see that is how I have lived most of my life – living in fear, making poor choices, not fully expressing my desires or pursuing my passions and in fact self-sabotaging and compromising myself hugely. I have not shared the gift of myself with others and have projected fear out into the world and become part of the problems fear creates: war, injustice, prejudice, anger, violence, neediness and narcissism.

I have dishonoured who God made me to be and hidden in the shadows. All this makes me feel very sad. In fear, I did not make the most of the opportunity I had in Australia last year at the Volunteer Selection Programme: choosing fear over truth.

I have felt like giving up a number of times, which is giving into fear and it’s time to stop that – it has become an addiction to live in fear and stay small. Well, I’m bored of that and I have been experimenting with my desires, looking back at little Maxine and her personality and I beginning to see and like some of it. There is a lot more to me, to all of us. Living in fear is like being in monochrome, when God made us to be in technicolour and I like colour, lots of colour!

Maxine@2020

Talks on Fear on the Divine Truth YouTube Channel or Divine Truth FAQ YouTube Channel. There is so much information on fear – this is just some of the talks:

Earth Changes, Fear and Desire parts 1 and 2:

Fear is Your Friend parts 1 and 2 ( 2008)

Fear Revisted (2009)

The Human Soul: Processing Fear (2009) Parts 1 and 2

Fear and Addiction (2012)

Facing My Fear of Emotion (2016)

 

 

DRIVING

Posted on by under addictions, anger, denial, emotions, Expectations and Demands, Facade, fear, Truth, Uncategorized

cruella-deville-crazy-driving

(Image from 101 Dalmations – Cruella da Ville) 

I am taking more notice of my life these days and I have discovered that the truth is in the everyday things we do and how we live. For instance, driving: something most of us do most days.

I started to pay attention to what kind of driver I am and my emotional reactions to it and to other drivers. It told me quite a lot about myself and I don’t think I have discovered all of the truth its revealed yet or even assessed it all correctly, but I am attempting to.

A few weeks ago, I had a minor car accident, when someone drove into the front left of my car as I pulled out of my drive way. She was driving too fast, but if I rewind to how I felt that morning I see that I got into my car, ungrounded and pushing down emotions I didn’t want to feel. I had woken up really not wanting to go to work: I have been struggling with work since I got back from Australia (my trip to Australia shone a light on my life and nothing I thought was real has felt real). I felt very tired and upset and really had to force myself to get ready. I was a bit late and I did that very English thing (maybe not just English) of “pulling myself together” and got into the car, pulled forward, looked left quickly, didn’t see any oncoming car, pulled further out and then there was this big bang, a jolt, everything went into slow motion and then I was sat there motionless, stunned, with bits of my car and the other drivers car on the road.

I’m not certain, but I think it happened to show me I wasn’t paying attention to how I was feeling: I was “shoulding” myself, pushing myself, telling myself to be responsible and go to work. (My facade is SO pushy, a bully). It was nothing about the truth. It was all about the lies that made me do something I really didn’t want to do and avoid what I felt: sadness, fear, pain, frustration, powerless. It was also a few days after a disgreement with my mother, where she didn’t like what I said; where she wanted me to maintain a facade of myself that she wants me to be to suit her view of herself as a good mother. The car was written off and it was a car she had bought for me – a first financial gift from her that I had infact accepted insincerely, feeling it was owed to me. I ignored my conscience and led with my fear ( my old car was not in a good state) and anger at the time.

Before the accident, I had started paying more attention my driving, because sometimes I am really shitty to other drivers: impatient, judgemental, critical, pushy, nasty even. A lot of these things are how I am with myself at times, but why am I like that with other drivers? Either way it’s very unloving.

So everytime I started to get angry, judgmental, condescending ( all parts of my facade)  even I started to ask why? What was going on under that? Being angry meant I wanted an addiction met. Wanting an addiction met meant I had a fear or other emotion I didn’t want to feel.

A few examples:

“Come on drive faster! Should you be out on the road? Do you need your eyes testing, you keep putting your brakes on?” 

ie you should drive the way I think you should drive! I want to be in control or I’m afraid you’ll cause a crash.

This happens when I am late for work or something else and there are a number of different emotions and layers of emotions going on, depending on the situation. I may be judging myself for being late or angry with myself or angry that I even have to be at the place I am meant too. Then under that I am afraid of what others may think of me or I may be “found out” in someway. I am often also avoiding some sadness and pain over areas of my life and how limited it is. The layers can go on, into my lack of self love or worth.

“Arsehole, you cut in front of me and it’s my fault!?” ( as a man makes rude sign and swears at me)

I don’t like the anger being projected at me, but rather than feel the fear and sadness, I project back at him. I deny how it really made me feel because I don’t want to feel powerless and terrified.

There are many other examples, but I hope you get the drift of it. Looking just at my driving is showing me how unloving I can be; how much my facade controls everything; how I want it that way because I am afraid and/or unwilling to feel the other emotions that I judge as weaker, or wrong or I am just so used to suppressing. I believe this to be normal and in fact observe it around me in so many others. I deny there is another way to be, push aside my hurt child and deny any chance of the real me being present.

But it has been so useful too of course. The truth of my unlovingness isn’t good to feel, but it is the truth and I find if the anger starts to come or it just happens, I catch it quicker, breathe and ask myself, “What’s really going on Maxine? What don’t you want to feel?” This sometimes lead to me feeling some of the fear or some sadness ( tiny amounts at the moment). Or sometimes I have a really good scream and rant in the car, but not at others.

So two main points here:

We have a choice: to be unloving or to love (ourselves, others, our environment)

Truth is revealed in the everyday things – what annoys us, irritates us, how we react to minor events, other people etc.

God doesn’t keep secrets – he’s telling us all the time: we just need to pay attention – desire to know, see, hear, feel. Have the courage to see the truth of our life: we can’t change what we deny, ignore, minimise or judge.

 

 

How do we know what is our facade?

Posted on by under addictions, denial, Facade, Hurt Self, REal self, The Three Selves, True Self, Truth, Uncategorized

facade self

We need to talk about our facade if we want to change: we need to understand why we have it, want it and feel about it to change and we can’t have a relationship with God in our facade. God wants a relationship with the real us. Today, I was talking to someone about our facades and how ingrained it is: how convinced we are that it is us and so live in a lot of denial that we live in this facade at all and hate it being confronted because we want it so much. In fact, in our current society we are even encouraged to live in facade: through social media, celebrity, vanity, work, families and constantly judge anyone who does not fit our version of “the norm.” We are constantly projected at to not be ourselves and we do the same to others. The older we get the more ingrained our facade gets so it can seem like an almost impossible task to crack through this tough shell. It isn’t easy and Jesus describes the deconstruction of the facade as the hardest thing you’ll ever do.

A blog I wrote 2014 was about this cracking of that shell: https://thetruthofitall.co.uk/category/the-three-selves/ . When I read it now I can actually see that I was in a lot of facade writing it. I had had some intellectual realisation, but not a soul-based emotional realisation and hence here I am still in facade most of the time… I am clear evidence that without emotionally feeling about my facade, why I have it and the sin in having it, nothing really changes.

I don’t think in 2014 I really understood the depth of my facade or my fears about letting it go; my addiction to it and its addictions. I am still learning, but I am now trying to pay more attention to it and this involves a lot of cringing; a lot saying to myself “Maxine, you’re in facade, what are afraid of feeling; what are your avoiding?” or not paying attention and staying in facade for whatever reason i.e.  I want something from my environment/ am willing to barter myself for this.  I thought it would help if I share what helps me and some information that really gives me no excuse for not knowing when I am in facade. I will put the links below this post, if you want to read or watch in more detail.

In 2014 Jesus and Mary ran their second assistance group which contained essential information for anyone wanting to know how to progress, including information on understanding the three parts of ourselves that currently exist: the real self (the undamaged self God created), the hurt self (created by your environment and yourself) and the facade self (created by your environment and yourself to avoid the other two selves). Jesus had talked about this material before, but these talks brought together previous information in a very clear and direct way. Part of the reason was many people had been listening to Divine Truth for years by then (it was 2 years for me at the time, but of course it’s 7 years for me now) and showing no progress, because they had not understood or more likely not wanted to know that they were in facade and why that is such a big problem. I recommend listening to these talks as many times as you need to.

But also on the website Jesus published an outline for each talk and I have printed off the “Understanding Self: Introduction” because it summaries why we are stagnant and don’t develop our real selves and gives a fairly comprehensive list of adjectives about each self and I use this list to help me identify when I am in facade.  For more detail, please refer to the links below this post.

But just to give you an idea, this is what Jesus says and it taken directly from his outline on www.divinetruth.com:

My real emotional self:

  • Is sensitive, aware, perceptive and insightful
  • Is expressive, animated, communicative, open and unrestrained
  • Is honest, truthful, sincere, frank, candid, blunt and transparent
  • Is adventurous, courageous, daring, bold, creative, brave and audacious
  • Is curious, inquisitive, questioning, probing, searching and enquiring
  • Is emotional, feeling and sensing
  • Can develop to become wise, intelligent, clever, gifted and logical
  • Can develop to become sensible, practical, responsible, accountable, dependable and rational
  • Can develop to become loving, caring, kind, gentle, considerate and compassionate

[Beautiful hey?]

My hurt emotional self:

  • Is pained, hurt, aggrieved, wounded, injured, upset, and distressed
  • Is timid, nervous, shy, fearful, hesitant, apprehensive, cautious and concerned
  • Is fragmented, disjointed, uneven, suppressed, dormant, undeveloped, concealed, embryonic
  • Is humiliated, shamed, embarrassed, disgraced, unfavoured, and self-conscious
  • Is rejected, discarded, unwanted, and unneeded by others
  • Is angry, rebellious, self-absorbed, self-centred, and lacks awareness of surroundings

Now wait for this one – it’s quite a list and when you start to feel your facade it’s going to feel pretty yucky and you can see why it’s not good. Do you recognise yourself?

My façade emotional self:

  • Loves addiction, compulsion, obsession, urges, cravings, fixation and mania
  • Loves bullying, force, harassment, oppression, repression, coercion and manipulation
  • Loves abuse, cruelty, nastiness, meanness, brutality, viciousness and unkindness
  • Loves resistance, conflict, confrontation, disagreement, quarrel and squabbling
  • Loves arrogance, condescension, superiority, conceit, disdain, pride and egotism
  • Is insensitive, unaware, lacks perception or insight
  • Is un-expressive or false in its expression, pretending and made up
  • Is unanimated or false in its animation, lethargic or forced vibrancy
  • Is closed, reserved, controlled, forced, guarded and untrusting
  • Is dishonest, untruthful, insincere, lacks frankness, opaque and is not candid
  • Is prying, interfering, snooping, nosy, meddling, intrusive, invasive and pushy
  • Is unemotional or falsely emotional, unfeeling, unwise, dumb, stupid, and illogical
  • Is fixed, immovable, predetermined and rigid
  • Is apathetic, lazy, disinterested, uninvolved, bored and unconcerned
  • Is unwise, imprudent, thoughtless, irrational, reckless, irresponsible and careless
  • Is selfish, self-absorbed, self-centred, narcissistic and vain

So there you go, it’s a great list and very helpful. Now don’t be, as I have done, hard on myself about it (that’s your facade and an addiction anyway) – just be honest and if you want to understand more see the links below. Hope it helps and thank you to Jesus and Mary for such great information. . I am a beginner in really starting to understand this so please refer to the experts, so to speak – those who have deconstructed much of their facade (walked the walk)  and know the benefits of doing so, including understanding in their hearts God’s truth on this subject.

Each link is either a document of the outline of a talk and/or the YouTube video of the talk itself. This is not a comprehensive list, please go to the divinetruth.com website under downloads for the complete series of talks in the assistance groups of 2014, which introduce the topic and 2016 where there is more wonderful information on the creation and deconstruction of the facade and development of the real self.

https://www.divinetruth.com/docts/2014/20140729-1400-1400-jesus-dt-agp-lintro–Understanding%20Self%20Introduction–en-outline.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXaVvi0xXck&feature=youtu.be

https://www.divinetruth.com/docts/2014/20140730-1100-1100-jesus-dt-agp-lintro–Understanding%20Self%20Deconstructing%20the%20Facade%20Self–en-outline.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-qDtsGiikA&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTjpad9xQGU&feature=youtu.be

https://www.divinetruth.com/docts/2014/20140731-1145-1145-marym-dt-agp-lintro–Introduction%20to%20Addictions–en-outline.pdf

https://www.divinetruth.com/docts/2016/20160604-1410-1410-jesus-dt-agp-ledmls–The%20Creation%20of%20My%20Facade–en-outline.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynXrm3omg6Y&feature=youtu.be

I want to do it MY way, not God’s way!

Posted on by under anger, Expectations and Demands, Facade, God's Way of Love, Godsway, shame, Truth

tantrum child

I just watched a film called “Run the Race,” (its on youtube) and the last lines in it were “You can either run from God or to God and for a long time I was running from God, but I tell you, turn around and embrace Him because He’s just there right behind you and He loves you like crazy.”

And there it is my message from God, one of the many that come my way every day since I got back from Australia, regardless of how I have felt – and I have hit some really low points, God has never stopped sending me messages or signs. Many would say that is just my interpretation and maybe it is, but too many synchronicities, too many drops in the ocean of my anger, despair and shame have stood out.

Returning to England after the Volunteer Selection Programme I felt initially relieved to back in the familiar. But within a few days I knew I was angry – angry that I hadn’t received the approval; the validation that I was okay really; the reassurance that God understood my sin – the reasons why I had done these things; the excuses I have used and the pain I have felt: He got that I was messed up and I was a bit of mess, but “it wasn’t that all that bad really.” I wanted to know that God was as convinced of my good girl facade as I was. I had thought that my “trying” was enough – after all this has been my lifelong go-to – the use of my will power and intellect.

But God is not conned and is certainly no fool and those that are growing in God’s Way of Love are not fooled either. I couldn’t fool them: they saw me, they saw my injuries, they saw me “trying.” They did see the good too and I stayed beyond the first week because I was so happy to be there, and willing at that point to hear a bit of truth. But by the second week of the VSP I was in a panic, I got overwhelmed and didn’t even recognise it because as soon as that happened I fell into my desire to “manage” it, manage my feelings, and get them under control again. When I was asked a question, instead of saying the truth, I tried to say the answer I thought they wanted and I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to speak or hear the truth – it hadn’t worked in the past and even though I was there for the truth, when it came I didn’t like it because it exposed all the unloving things I was doing to avoid my pain. Now I could have gone wow, I know what the problem is now and be humble to feel the emotions, but I didn’t. I wanted to hide from my ‘good girl’ facade being confronted, no matter that was what I was there for.

woman-carnival-mask-in-venice

I felt huge shame and still do feel shame that I was told I was very needy and to be blunt that has made me an emotional vampire and open to those that will either reassure me I am not or those that will use my neediness to use and abuse me: something that has happened many times already. I couldn’t emotionally feel the sin of my neediness or the position it has put me in my life. Many of my friends and family see me as a strong person: I am strong in controlling my emotions, in presenting a face to the world, that hides the fear and shame that I am inherently flawed and worthless and I am angry about the things that happened to me and I have held onto this anger, but with a smile or seriousness presented to the world. With gritted teeth, “I’m not angry and I am not terrified – I am a good girl and I will become whoever you want me to be just so that I am not hurt, judged, attacked or rejected. “

So for the first two months back home, I went into an angry state and then a depression because I wasn’t feeling it. I felt unwell, exhausted, numb, foggy, de-motivated and hopeless. I hid away in my cave, spacing out on TV and food. Then I got afraid about what was happening to me and a book fell from my shelf and a few other things – it felt like God was saying “I haven’t given up on you, don’t you give up on you either.”

So I listened to the feedback I received a couple of times and I felt the compassion and kindness in it and I recognised intellectually at least everything that was being said was right, painful as it may be, it is right.

Then I remembered the love, compassion and tenderness in the feedback.

Then I remembered that the truth was told to me so that I can change it.

Then remembered that whilst I was there I felt like I was experiencing real love for the first time in my life and it felt beautiful and different and I was curious to know more.

Then I remembered that I got to experience this new way to live, what it is like to be around people who are always truthful and that it is actually far less exhausting (even when it freaked me out).

Then I remembered all the moments, the special moments when I got to hear some of their future plans, when I got to share with friends, laugh, wonder, talk – all of us with a common interest

Then I remembered that I can no longer look at the green, rolling hills of Devon in the same way without seeing the decimation of the land from agriculture and wonder how God really made it before we stomped over it without due care or responsibility.

Then I remembered that when Jesus gave me a farewell hug I got to feel the beautiful, powerful, softness in his soul. I think I said to a friend can you receive a rainbow in a hug? I think I did. It’s there because so much of God’s Love is in his soul…. and he’s telling us we can be that.

Then I remembered that I had met other brothers and sisters, and that somehow we had all got there, that there was something in our soul wanting this – a seed that needs watering (and soil that needs a lot of weeding).

Then I remembered that I was experiencing and hearing things that very few have heard yet and what I do with this matters, not just to me, but to everyone.

So many memories and feelings about that 3 months I can’t name it all: so much magic and in such a magnificent place in the world.

I would love to say I was ready to return, because as I come out from my sulk I want to be there again and again and make much more of the opportunities I was given, but I know I have emotional work to do first. Tristan, Eloise, Jesus and Mary said they want to experience the real me and they meant that sincerely. I was confused by that, if I am honest, because I don’t know who she is. When I am alone is maybe the only time I let her pop her head up –where it’s “safe.”

Basically, I have got to walk my walk and stop just talking about it and I know I need to soften. My facade is rigid and hard and wants to hang on tight. So I have started doing things to understand why I want my facade so much and what I think I gain in this state, what I am covering up, what I am ashamed of, what I am avoiding wanting to feel. I know I have to deconstruct my facade so I am just going to try anything and everything for a while.

I’ve started reading books on God, on emotions, listening to music that opens my soul, that I can dance to as that moves something in me, and instead of hiding away in my cave, have started going to meet ups to be around people and to tune into the creativity that is in my soul – a place where I stop over-thinking, therapy, and of course listening to Jesus and Mary’s talks on the facade and addictions from 2014 and anything else that seems worth a try.

I’m going back to basics trying to re-sensitise myself – doing things with my body, listening to my body, walking and I have even come across a group for women where we can go and have a tantrum and a good scream and shout because I am still resisting feeling my anger. I start a bit and then feel like a fool, obsessed with the idea someone is listening and is going to judge me. It’s becoming a bit of a frustrating (ironically) habit so I thought if I put myself in a room with women who have similar issues, but in an environment where we will be pushed to start letting it out, it’s worth shot. I am going to experiment with whatever comes up and see what happens. I am after all breaking down a rock face J

That film that I mentioned at the beginning was one of the things that “popped up” unexpectedly and of course the main character has an issue with God – he’s angry about the things that have happened to him and he can’t pray because of it. He’s really pissed at God….

I’m not sure why God thought that would be good for me to watch 😉

But seriously, I love these ‘synchronicities.’ They happen all the time and are an indication of how much help we have. I would love to be ready to do the next VSP and wish I could re-do week two with what I have now realised about my behaviour that week, as I had such a huge opportunity to change something right there, with the gift of loving, honest people around me who would longed for me to be truthful because they care.

I feel more positive right now (today) and like the idea that God loves me like crazy. It must be crazy love to be so incredibly patient with me.

A bull in a China shop

Jesus said that when our facade is confronted, as mine was, it is the time many walk away from God’s Way and Divine Truth. I’m not walking away, but I’m having trouble letting go and really getting started, but I have decided it is better to clatter my way experimenting with different things and it might look a bit like a bull in a china shop, (if fact an angry bull might be a good description!) but it’s better than doing nothing. Then one day I can look back at this post and go .. oh boy there’s my facade, and there and there and there… thank goodness those days are over – what was I holding on for?

LEAVING THE SHORE OF SIN

Posted on by under Analogy, creation, desire, emotions, Facade, God's children, God's Love, God's Truth, Mary and Jesus, The Creator, Uncategorized, Understanding Sin

shore 2

 

It’s not a great name, but it’s what I am calling it and this is where I am at. When I was born into this world I came into a world full of sin and I see it as a large shore, (clue it in being a large shore – aren’t we meant to set off somewhere?) . My parents, not choosing any different, thought it was normal to dump me on this shore where just in front of me was the sea of emotions. It’s pretty cloudy on this sin shore, not much light or life and any life that is there is tainted by the grey skies. Even the sand looks grey. I am a child and I have a natural curiosity about the water and the little light I can see in the distant horizon. I try to paddle in the water and sometimes I am successful, but my parents panic and they pull me back. They are afraid of the water and I remind them they once had the same curiosity and they don’t want to be reminded of that.

Sometimes they even punish me for going near the water: they hit me or shout at me or shout at each other about who is to blame for my curiosity and they tell me they do this because they love me. It’s hard to tell which one is more afraid and in fact what I discover is that all the adults around me agree with them: it’s not safe in the water and we must do everything we can to avoid going in there. Overtime, because of everybody’s reaction, I learn it is safer to not go near the water, even though sometimes I still want to. I then start to adopt some of the same techniques they use to avoid acknowledging the existence of the the vast expanse of water: not talking about the water, distracting myself from the water in many ways and as I grow into a young adult I am pretty much convinced by the world’s view that to go in the water is not loving and not safe.

Because we never go in the water we get covered in dirt and mud, and the layers get thicker. My parents can hardly move because they are so covered in mud.

I get very confused about love and the sea of emotions and I learn that “love hurts” so I decide to just live my life and enjoy little comforts and pleasures as much as I can. As an adult I go out into the world with these beliefs and even when I feel pain inside I do everything I can to not feel it and in fact I think there is something very wrong with me. I stand on the shore and if I forget I sometimes let my toes in, but it feels so wrong to do it, I step back. I distract myself with food, TV, sex, drinking, working, and doing. I soon start to become like all adults, covered in mud.

I’m not happy though and I start looking for answers, someone to talk to,  but find none that really help. I try to be what others want me to be, agree with them. I give them things and they give me things and it feels good for a while. I don’t feel so confused and worthless and it feels a bit like love. But things don’t go to plan and people leave my life or tell me it’s because I am not this or that.

Every now and then without me knowing the water comes up around my feet. On one level, I like the feeling and it helps me understand a few things, but then the fear creeps in and my mother and others attack me when I do it. They scream at me, “Don’t go near the water!” I don’t want to get hurt so I back off and step out of the water.

On the surface I am living, but inside I am dying. The mud gets so heavy my body starts to hurt sometimes and I feel exhausted from the effort of pretending and putting on a facade. I still look for answers sometimes, but other times I just feel hopeless. I convince the world so well that I am what they want, I lose myself and start to believe my own creation. After all this facade and not going in the water has kept me ‘safe’ and people like me and I want them too.

I have a child and I do the same with him. I convince him the water isn’t safe. In fact, I am so afraid of the water now that I do anything to not go near it, including murdering another child I was too afraid to have and harming others. I want to run away from my fear and I demand others help me do that. I want to run away from my loneliness, despair and unworthiness and I demand and get angry at the world if it doesn’t help me avoid the sea.

But over time I notice my world is getting darker, my body develops illness and disease. Every day something hurts and the mud restricts my movement. I feel lost and I don’t know how to receive or give love. My heart is turning to stone and I want to die. Then I come across people who seem happier and know things that exist that we can’t see. I am drawn in by the secret world they seem to know about, full of magical beings. I learn about things like meditation, past lives, chakra clearing. They have found all these quick fixes which I experiment with and for a while I feel better: I feel special.

A few years pass and during that time I have a relationship with a man who also likes the magic and I think it’s wonderful. I feel worthy, sexy and loved and I learn that sex can be ‘sacred.’ But within a year it comes crashing around my ears, he finds someone else and I find myself thrown into the shallows of the waters. I can not make sense of anything, I feel I may drown. I feel unworthy, unsexy and unloved and I don’t want that. I look for answers in the magic, but nothing works and I start to see that in fact it’s not really working for anyone and we are just all pretending.

I am angry and sad, standing on the shore, touching the edge of the ocean and I call for help, for truth. In the distance, I suddenly see the light again and it starts moving towards me. It lights up the sea where I stand and I can see that the water isn’t grey, it’s turquoise and clear and on the horizon there is a land that is lit up, full of colour and bright. The light tells that is where happiness and joy lives and that it’s creator, who is the Creator of all things, has been waiting for me to seek and ask. She is a being so full of love and we are her children, but like a good parent, she wants us to want the Land of Happiness. I want to be there and I learn from the light that to be there I have to swim in the sea of emotions. I have to go a journey to let go of all my false beliefs about Love and seek Truth and a desire to know my Creator, who is Divine and good.

Over the next few years, I paddle in the water a little. I call the light and I learn more about the sea of emotions, about Truth, Love and the Creator. I don’t find it easy as I am still very afraid of the sea and I am not sure who to trust. Sometimes  people around me start to attack me, if I try to swim. I am also stubborn and cross and want to do it my way! Why do I have to swim? Why can’t the Creator just send a nice little boat for me and pick me up?

Then I come to now: I am standing on the shore and the light has been teaching me again and I finally understand. I have to swim, I have to feel. In fact that is how I was made to be. The light has in fact done the same journey and I see that the light was once a man and woman like me. I cry with wonder and joy that they were like me and could now be such a beautiful light.

I am confronted with the difference and yet a longing to know what kind of light I might be. I have learnt I am only half of my light, but if I swim I will help the other half of me come to the shore and swim too and that we can live in the Land of Happiness and Joy together. But first I must face the truth of what I have become and the only way to lose the false version of me is to swim in the emotions and let all my sadness and fear go. I will have to feel my anger at the Creator too and for a while the sea will feel very choppy and dangerous, because it is so opposite to the grey shore. But, I must wash the mud off and because it is so thick it will take time.

I will need courage and a strong desire to change and I will need to be comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. I have a lot to feel sorry for, the false me and all the bad things she did and said and thought. All the pain I have had can only dissolve in the sea and it will hurt to come out, but once I feel each pain it won’t come back if I keep swimming and if I have faith, just as God does, that I can do this. He created the sea to be very special and possible for every one of us to swim in.

So here I am making the decision to swim, to keep my eyes on the horizon and let the sea wash off my mud. My toes are in, the water feels unfamiliar and I am afraid, but I am curious about so many things: what light I am, what being mud-free feels like, what the island of happiness and joy is like, how I can repair the damage, especially to my son and the other young souls I harmed.

My family are going to scream at me from the shore, I do not know where I am swimming to, but where I have been has become too painful and too restrictive. The light has given me an idea of the Love just by being the light and tells me the light of God is even greater. I am curious about the Light.

So if you are standing on the shore, feeling weighed down by mud, listening to all the voices that want you to stay there I hope I have made you curious about the sea, the Land of Happiness, the Light you can become and the idea of meeting your Creator: meeting Love face to face and Heart to heart.

Thank you God for Creativity,

Maxine

**Inspired by attending Assistance Group 4.2: Understanding Sin and Its Causes, which will be online in the next couple of months. It’s pure magic and being here has been incredible. Thank you to Mary and Jesus for an education like no other, your endless love and compassion: you walk your walk and demonstrate God on earth. I hope to repay you by joining you in the ocean instead of just talking about it!

 

 

http://www.divinetruth.com

A Story about Hurt in Wolfdom

Posted on by under Emotional Injury, emotions, Facade, God, God's children, God's Love, heal, Hurt Self, Mary and Jesus, Uncategorized

I have just read a wonderful story, written by a sister also trying to follow the Way. It is a lovely analogy of all of our stories and the hope we have to do things differently. Please check out the link below:

https://divinetruthhub.com/a-story-about-hurt-in-wolfdom/

Anger, Addiction, Suppression, Resistance and Denial: The Dark Night of the Soul.

Posted on by under addictions, anger, denial, Divine Truth, emotions, Facade, God, God's Truth, suppression, Uncategorized

dark and fire face

It has been a long time since I have written my blog. I have thought many times to write and then changed my mind, which relates to the comings and goings in my own soul: the feelings of overwhelm  – which I still don’t like and then dipping ( bit of an understatement) into resistance – preventing the flow and making words difficult. But I do have a desire to share so that it may help others just as other people words and experiences have helped me, so here I am.

I was completely blocking God and God’s truth out for a while, struggling with other issues in my life and stubbornly being self-reliant and following old patterns and addictions ( emotional and physical). But during the last couple of months my desire for change and to learn more has come back and I have been spending more time listening to videos and reading about God. What I have found really useful is journaling as soon as I wake. I scribble away about sleep state, dreams, things that that I felt the day before – just about anything, without restraint and I am learning things about myself all the time.

I love what I read about God and the universe we live in, most of the time, but sometimes the contrast between where I could be and where I am hurts and that is what I am going to write about.

To understand more of what I am about to talk about, it will really help you to listen to “How the Human Soul Functions” and “Emotions and Feelings” on the Divine Truth FAQ Youtube channel and on the Divine Truth channel, “Understanding your Emotional Self” from 2014. ( Also found on divinetruth.com)

I am going to list many of them and then explain further below: (please also see the glossary page for some short explanations of some of the vocabulary I use)

  1. I am an absolute Master of suppression, resistance, and denial.
  2. I am full of anger – mostly adult anger, related to my many, many addictions that I use to suppress, deny and resist more painful emotions such as fear, shame, grief.
  3. My anger is there every day ranging from mild annoyance to full blown rage. I do not allow it to be felt.
  4. I believe that controlling/denying/resisting my anger is a good thing, but God’s truth is if it is in me it is coming out into my environment, being projected at others. Denying it is the worse thing.
  5. God’s truth is my anger is very, very damaging to myself and everyone around me. It is hellish and whilst I have it in my soul I am in the Hells.
  6. I have not awakened to the sin (something out of harmony with love) of what holding onto my anger is doing to myself or others.
  7. I hold onto my anger as I feel in control and more powerful. I do not want to feel weak and vulnerable.
  8. Ironically, I am currently more able to be manipulated and controlled by spirits in my current condition. The feeling of power is a facade, but one that I like and I am willing to be in addiction with spirits to maintain it.
  9. My huge amount of anger and addictions is covering about a huge about of fear and terror that I don’t want to feel. I am very desensitised to most of my emotions, in fact.
  10. I am the creator of my own suppression, denial, resistance and substitution of emotions – though I was also taught how to this as a very young child, by my environment, but I have honed the skill!
  11. The original causes may be from my childhood, but I have added and added to them and in fact, whether I like this or not, I am the only one who can release all of my emotions. I am the only one who can allow the expression of my anger – allow it to flow.
  12. Expressing my anger must be done alone to be done in a loving way.
  13. The anger is part of my facade as are my addictions and it is will take an EXTREME use of my will to release and break down my facade. It will be the hardest thing I do, ever, I feel.
  14. Living in suppression and resistance and denial has not made me happy and has led to suffering and pain and will continue to do so if I continue to hold on, especially now I have heard God’s truth on this.
  15. But the suffering and pain is God telling me something is wrong – it is a message to call me to correct it, to try a new way: it is an act of love – something I struggle to understand emotionally as being shut down to emotions, also means I am shut down to love.
  16. God is offering me a solution in every moment, but I need to make use my free will in a loving way and allow myself to become sensitive emotionally, ( as God designed us to be), to develop a desire to love ( allowing myself to feel is loving), a desire to receive Gods love ( which will speed up and help the whole process), a desire for God’s truth and a desire to be humble to truth and love and feeling all my emotions.
  17. When I accept all that I just said in point 16 emotionally, my life will change dramatically.
  18. When I accept point 17 emotionally I will know this.

 

This is a really important point that Jesus (AJ ) mentions again and again. We cannot KNOW something until we feel it emotionally. Our soul, which governs everything in our life, is emotional – it learns and experiences emotionally or for many of us now – it’s not learning much because it’s do full of error-based emotions. I can vouch for this from my personal experience. I am an intelligent person. I pick up a number of things quite easily. My IQ is pretty good.  Even Divine Truth I can spout off the theories and things I have heard Jesus and Mary say pretty well. However, despite all the things I “know” intellectually my life remains quite small and restricted. How come an intelligent person like me can’t sort that out? With all the information I am holding in my brain I should be in a high-flying career possibly, in a good relationship maybe and out there in the world, doing more, even having a few adventures. But also, I have listened to the Divine Truth teaching for 6 years and yet only a few small changes have occurred and in fact I am still dodging the big stuff all the time.

From that, it is logical and obvious that I don’t really know it. I have just retained information. If I really knew that Divine Truth and God’s Love would change my life in wonderful ways wouldn’t I be doing it every minute of the day? I am on my third reading of the Robert James Lee books, where there is such incredible information on the how everything in this universe is based in Love and how much God is doing to call us home to know our true selves and to know Him, to be happy. I do cry  when I read some parts of it. It does touch me in some way, but if I really believed everything Aphraar tells us in that book, I would be living and breathing those truths every minute of every day. I am not. Therefore, something is stopping me from truly knowing and understanding it and it’s not my intellect. Also, I am very determined about something when I want to be. So I have a strong will, but it is questionable in how I am using it right now.

So if it’s not my intellect and not a weak will, as such, it has to be emotions. Over the years I have tried many ways to heal – Christianity, atheism, psychology, therapy, hypnotism, NLP and various other new age methods, yoga, meditation, chakra clearing and the list goes on. They helped somewhat for a short while, but inside lay this deep despair at times, a feeling of lack about myself, a hopelessness about love, confusion about life and much self doubt and poor decision making.

So it is and has to be emotions in me. I haven’t known the truth emotionally indicated by my life and how I feel. For instance, at work I have had a facade of confidence, capability, but many times I would go home and cry, criticise myself, feel crappy, eat a lot to comfort/suppress and also get mad at people for not helping or making me feel better ( addiction).

The world is currently in a state of avoiding and being terrified by emotion. The world is currently in a terrible state: wars, lies and deceit, secrecy, fear, poverty, children are being murdered by the millions. Our desensitisation is not working! Our hidden dark emotions of anger and fear rule our lives. It is so obvious really. We have created many things from our intelligence – space rockets, computers, medicines, but we can’t feed everyone, or provide shelter for all, or take care of the plants and animals that actually help us sustain life. Something is wrong and it is not our intellect.

So despite all my “efforts” at healing, I am now in the place of having to face the truth of the layers of what I feel is protection and safe, but actually, is just a pile of addictions and anger to avoid how I really feel; how  much fear and shame and sadness is still in my soul. I keep trying to skip the anger as I was taught it is not something that is not “ladylike” to express; I have to be a “good girl;” if I express I am damned to hell forever; I will be punished, denigrated, shamed and blamed; I am selfish and horrible; afraid of what expressing my anger will mean/where it will lead.  All these false belief systems that I live in and ignoring God’s truth that I am allowed to express my anger ( lovingly) and it is good for me to do that as it’s the top layer; it’s loving to myself and the world to let emotions flow.

Firstly, I am letting the people who taught me all that still rule my life and I am shutting out the one parent, who loves me unconditionally. My God is fear, a prison of my own making. But WE CAN ONLY CHANGE THE THINGS WE STOP DENYING and I guess I am moving out of the denial phase. I have been doing that very slowly for the last couple of years, but now I am facing up to the fact that i do have a big pile of unloving emotions in me and sitting on top of everything is my anger/addictions and a huge facade.

I need to and am beginning to want to swing the pendulum of my strong will across from suppression, denial, resistance, substitution and fear over to one of truth, love and humility. Even as I say that I can feel how difficult love is for me and I feel overwhelmed with the task ahead, but fifty years of destroying my life in many ways so what is another fifty sorting it out – though the more desire I develop for Love, Truth and humility the faster I will progress. But in perspective I will have a much longer time of good things that the fifty years of hell I may have been in.

I am curious and that helps me: What is it like to be an emotional being? Can I really feel that God exists and that She loves me? What would heaven be like? What is love like? What is it  like to be truthful and fear less? Who am I really without all this “mud” stuck to me? So many questions and curiosities stirred by discovering these teachings and witnessing first hand two people walking that walk.

So what will help me/us?

  1. Developing a sincere desire to Love and be loved, particularly from God.
  2. Developing a sincere desire to receiving God’s truth.
  3. Developing humility – the sincere desire to feel all my emotions all the time and to receiving truth.

These three things will include help me have a strong will to release my anger, my addiction and break down my facade. From then underlying emotions will be able to flow out more easily. My hurt child will be able to grieve, my fear will be able to be felt.

Please note  – in saying this I am saying what I have learnt from Jesus and Mary who DO know this because, unlike myself yet, they have done it – they are doing the experiment and they and their lives have and are changing. But intellectually, it makes some sense to me – having tried pretty much everything else!

In the new age world, the dark night of the soul refers to feeling painful emotions, suffering in some way. I now feel that it may be difficult to feel certain emotions, but that is not where the dark night of the soul is. The dark night of the soul is the denial, suppression and resistance we are in; the life of physical and emotions addictions we live in day in, day out, where we cling to our “comfort” and “security” , but are in fact living in dark prisons of our own making, thinking and feeling small; living lives far away from what God intended. We are living in a dark, grey world from our souls’ perspective and the only way to bring in the light is stop the denial.

I have so much more I would like to say, but it is a long blog and well done if you have gotten to the end. I will write a follow up. The Divine Truth teaching shakes us to the core, but goodness we need it. Looking truthfully at ourselves, at our world right now will change everything.  It’s not pretty, but it’s not permanent, but we need to take the first step.

WE CAN NOT CHANGE THE THINGS WE ARE DENYING AS THEY DON’T EXIST UNTIL WE SEE THEM.

@Maxine Bell

 

THOUGHTS ON LOVE

Posted on by under desire, Divine Truth, Emotional Injury, emotions, Expectations and Demands, Facade, fear, God's Love, love, Mary and Jesus, REal self, soulmate, True Self, Truth, Uncategorized

love-is-a-gift

We live in a world where we say “there are plenty more fish in the sea;” where we console ourselves over lost love by imagining another person is out there and that our perfect mate is our choice. We just have to find the “right” one and often these days we have a list of requirements: tall, slim, happy, positive, makes me laugh, kindness, takes care of me, nice eyes, long legs, large breasts, intelligent, sexy, a good cook and so the list goes on.

In the process of looking for a good match, we make mistakes and kiss many “frogs” before we find out prince or princess. This is the same whether straight or gay. We keep looking for that other half to fulfil our lives, that person who will make us happy and whom we can share our lives with and yet we don’t want to admit there is maybe just one other half. The truth is we are told there is not just one special person, that there are many who we could match with and we just look for that best match. A few people believe in finding “The One”, but are often mocked about this. Our ideas about love and relationships is very confused and contradictory.

In the western world, at least, our ears are constantly filled with songs of broken hearts and lost love. The other side of the coin is the number of programmes about dating, finding dates, and even weddings. We are certainly looking, but in fact many of us are pretty confused about the whole thing. I recently watched a few episodes of a programme in the in the UK called first dates. I felt it was a bit of escapism, but I also think inside I am also trying to work out this love/relationship stuff, just like the rest of you. Before the dates they are the participants what they are looking for and in so many people I notice the first things people list are physical, even down the type of teeth, the next most common thing is “fun,” “make me laugh” and “be positive and happy.” ( to me this indicates how afraid we are of each other’s sadness) .For women the other frequent request is be a gentleman and be big/strong;  keep me safe and take care of me. There is very little mentioned about personality, qualities, ethics, morals, or much of any real depth. It may possibly be there, but they don’t say it.

Between the lines there is a lot of disappointment, confusion and hurt about love and relationships as well as a huge amount of fears about not being loved and accepted and safe. I too have these emotions, but what I have realised lately is that I have never felt truly seen or loved for myself. I always had this feeling that any mistake I made I would be punished and rejected. My belief is that to be loved I had to be perfect.

Then it hit me that the other side of this was that I had never allowed myself to be truly seen and that I didn’t even love or know myself so how could expect anyone else to love the real me. I don’t even know the real me, myself yet. I learnt early on in my childhood, like many of us, that to receive “love” I had to become the person that was acceptable to my parents and other adults around me. I had to be “good girl” or “helper” or “servant” or any other role that fitted their beliefs about me. I don’t remember my mother ever asking what dreams I had or what I would like to be. I just remember if I showed an emotion she didn’t like or expressed something she didn’t understand or want to hear or was too busy to listen too I was shut down, screamed at or ignored. So to not get punished or yelled at or ignored or rejected by my parents I became what they wanted and the feeling I have now is that “I” fragmented across the universe somewhere; went into hiding and quickly formed a facade that helped me survive, but in the long-term was and is deeply painful and got the point until recently where I really believe my facade is me.

This is the truth for most of us in one form or another and so we grow into adulthood with roles. For men is could be provider; strong; capable; husband; lover ( who knows what he’s doing)  or “DIY-er, for example. For women there are  many roles: carer; mother; nurturer; helper; virgin; sexy; sister; friend; multi-tasker and these days we are often expected to be able to and expected to be all of them plus have a career. It is pretty exhausting. But which one or any of them is us, the real us?

We can’t find love, I haven’t found love because I haven’t found me, and I haven’t found love because I haven’t even understood love. When I watched that dating programme I saw clearly, what Jesus has been teaching, that most relationships are based on co-dependency and we think that is love. We think that someone who fulfils all our needs or more truthfully, the “holes” in us is someone who loves us and we love someone if we fulfil all their needs: it is an emotionally addictive bartering system.The trouble with having a list of wants is that we are often never satisfied and is based on someone or both people sacrificing themselves or parts of themselves.

I can look back on all my relationships and see in each one I became who they wanted me to be. I fitted into their life, rather than discover what I wanted and when their were times I started to seek something for myself the relationship would start to break down: the bartering system started to shatter. In this process, I compromised myself in so many ways: self-love, sexually, ethically and morally. Over time, my disappointments and  hurts and pain got deeper and my demands to them got greater. I tried to have control over everything and I got angry and more in addiction. My fear and sadness got greater and the things I did and the things I wanted partners to do to stop me feeling my sadness and fear got darker.

Co-dependency is a sticky, thick, ugly thing. It is all about facade and it may feel “comfortable” or “safe” because it helps us avoid painful emotions, but is does not lead us to love. How can we be intimate when we are not being our true selves? We are being a lie and living a lie. I feel very sad about the lie I have lived for so long and because it has been lived for so long there is a lot of lies/facade to break down and a lot of unlovingness to myself and others to face.

So how to do we change it? How do I change it? For me, apart from a lot of self-reflection and increasing my longing to understand and know the truth I have also been trying to learn about love; the real truth about love – God’s truth about love. It isn’t easy and I find myself confused at times, fighting between old belief systems, the world’s belief systems, versus what Jesus and Mary are teaching. The facts are there though – look at the world – if we knew love, it would  not be as it is. If we knew about love, we would not be so obsessed with our version of romantic love that seems to go wrong constantly. We are not being honest that we just don’t know. The fact is I think we just have to start again – look at the whole thing again.

Something else has hit me in recent years and listening to Divine Truth is the idea that I have a soulmate – THE other half of my soul: the perfect partner for me, created for me by God. Yep, despite free will, it seems that we don’t have a choice in who our soulmate is! That is pretty confronting if you compare it with the world’s view. We can of course reject our soulmate and try to defy what God created for us, but for me it is a fact I can’t ignore. I am not sure if I have accepted it 100%, but I do know that I can’t just look at any man anymore. As those of you who have followed my blog you will know I have suspicion who my soul mate is, but because of all my emotional injuries I really don’t know for sure and to be honest, not even sure how I could have attracted him into my life even temporarily. I have some deep emotions to heal around gender and sexuality and other things.

But, logically, it makes sense that to know the other half of me, I need to start knowing who I am. If I want to be intimate with my other half, I have to find that intimacy with myself: fearlessly and I have to start challenging my beliefs about love because they sure haven’t worked so far.  The “love” I have known has been conditional and in God’s eyes that isn’t love. Jesus teaches, love is a gift: unconditionally and in my heart I don’t know that yet.

I have been reading a book called “Loveability: how to love and to be loved” by Robert Holden and he talks about our deep fear that we are unloveable and it has led to our obsession with falling in love. This obsession is about being loved rather than being loving, indicating that fear of unloveablity. He says we need to stop falling and start thinking what real love is. This is what Jesus has been saying for 2000 years – what is real love and indicating that real love is demonstrated constantly by God in so many ways in our lives.

In the book, unconditional love is summarised and is very similar to what Jesus teaches so I like what was written:

  • “Love is not an act… not an audition.”  Jesus says that love and truth go hand in hand so you can not love or be loved if you are in facade.
  • “Love is not  a bargain.. it is not a currency you buy things with…Love does not make deals. Love does not say, ‘I will give you love, but first you must give me something else.” This is the bartering system I was talking about and most of us are in these type of relationships ( any type of relationship).  I love this quote by Hafiz, “Even after all this time, The sun never says to the earth: “you owe me!”
  • “Love is not idolatry… when you don’t feel equal you give yourself away and take on a role.. they block intimacy. They conceal dishonesty.” I have done this many times – made myself smaller, less important than the other. If you make someone else higher than you, you live in fear and suffering: this is not love. It is a lack of self-love at the very least.
  • “Love is not special…. such as, “I’ve been saving all my love for you.” You are making someone into your “holy cow,”  Robert Holden says, and use them to “milk as much love as possible.” Love is not exclusive for one person, the goal is to love everyone. When you love you can love anyone ( though of course soulmate love or love with God with is different – though I will admit I am struggling with this one).
  • “Love is not selfish..Love is full of desire. You are intent on knowing the whole person… drop the mask and stop hiding. ” This makes me feel that Love is brave and open: it flies and dances. I have felt lust and infatuation – both feel addictive and selfish – it is all about what you can get.

I think hearing that Love is a gift has been one of the most important things I have heard. It really made me think about my demands, my fears and truly how loving or not I have been over the years. From this point, I can ask myself: do I really love this person freely, without condition? Am I willing to gift my love without expectation or demand? Then if I feel any demand or expectation I know in that moment I am not loving them.

Also, do I really want to know them? Do I really want them to know me? Am I prepared to be vulnerable and open and humble to the errors and fears in me? This is intimacy – being prepared to be completely vulnerable and it scares the crap out of me and yet I am also curious. I have tried the other way and it has brought me much unhappiness, and suffering.

We need to be prepared to see the mountain of evidence that we know little about love and that’s okay. Just be honest about where we are at and build a desire to know the truth. When I was a child I had this feeling, among all the chaos around me,  that if they just loved more things would be better: that love would be the answer. When we are kids we do know much more than the adults around us often. I grew up sadly, feeling my heart had been very badly battered and bruised  – but it wasn’t and isn’t love that does that. It is not-love that does that. So to find love, to know love, we need to look at the not-love in the world: the not-love in ourselves, our false beliefs, our neediness, our fear, our grief.

We can’t change things we are lying about – because a lie isn’t a reality: it is a lie. Only the truth can create change, because it is truth and logically truth is real. For me, my personal truth is too impacted by emotional baggage at the moments so I look for a greater truth – a higher truth and only God has that. That is what makes God, God – she knows more than us – about love and about what is true. Jesus says to learn about love we have to learn about Love from someone who obviously knows more about love than us. Weirdly, we often try to learn from others around us who know as little or less than we do: we all scramble around in the dark together. So stop scrambling and look for someone who carries the torch. Only they can show us the way: the ones who carry the light: there are a few on earth, but a more guaranteed source in God. Praying for the faith to really know that in my heart – what a day that will be!

@2017 Maxine x

 

 

 

 

SURVIVING AIN’T LIVING

Posted on by under denial, desire, Divine Truth, Emotional Injury, emotions, Facade, fear, God, God's Love, God's Truth, Mary and Jesus, Nature, self worth, shame, Spirits

fight-or-flight-uncertainty

I had a realisation in early November that I had spent a lot of my life in survival mode. In fact it has become a recognisable bed I was lying in, but not a very safe one. The last 3-4 years have been particularly bad and my external life had reflected that financially, in my home situation, physically via the cancer and emotionally just feeling numb and being okay about having so little.

Living in survival mode means you are always living in fear: fear of death, fear of destruction, fear that the few things you have in life will crumble away and you will fall into the abyss.  That is how I have felt for as long as I can remember. This terrible fear led to becoming a control freak – trying to manage aspects of my life – money, relationships, day to day living, and my son – so as to feel “safe.”  Living in the fear, but pretending to yourself you are not; “its okay you’ve got it all under control Maxine.”

But the fact is in all those aspects of my life, I may have controlled them or felt I did, but they weren’t natural or loving and none were being done very well. Control does not allow for love to flow and controlling addictively to avoid fear is unloving. Avoiding fear, living in fear is unloving, restrictive and self-denying as well as unloving to others as to avoid feeling vulnerable you try to control those around you, sometimes heavily disguised as “taking care” of them, but still controlling them.

Being in survival mode is really bad for your health too. When we are in flight or fright mode we produce adrenalin by the pint and all this adrenalin constantly pumping around our system isn’t good. In the end it creates a toxic environment and it is exhausting. Now that I have started to pay attention to my fear, I have become aware that daily I do so many things to avoid feeling unsafe physically, emotionally and spiritually.

I have become an expert in batting back, ducking, avoiding, distracting myself from feeling fear. In the process I have created a facade that is dull and hard and uncreative. I have lost more and more of myself.

However, compassionately, there are some deep causal events and emotions that started this whole survival mode. John Bradshaw, in his book Homecoming, says “a witness to violence is a victim to violence.” I had a father who was violent, a step father who was even more so both, physically and mentally to my mother. I sat on the stairs or behind my bedroom door many times listening to the shouting and violence going on near me. I even have a memory of standing in my cot and feeling this big dark red cloud coming into the room. It was rage – I think it was my father’s rage, at my mother, I don’t have the details, but I feel panicky and scared…and there is still much I haven’t remembered yet.

Then there is the other violence, of being shouted at, clipped round the ear, blamed and shamed in one way or another as my parents, unable to cope with their own emotions, sent them my way. The terror that comes when you think your mother has killed herself – again and again and again: all these things and so many more.  I wish my experience was unusual, but it isn’t or am I minimizing it? As a small child, all these things shake you to the core and it has left me with the constant feeling that my world will end at any moment, that there is no solid foundation to exist from and at times no real love to be found.

When I hit the wall in November, my body aching from doing a job that was too demanding and pushing myself to the limits with it, and only months after major surgery and cancer and then coming home to live in a place I really don’t like, reduced down to living pretty much in one room with no space to get the things I love out – my art materials and writing materials and no money to buy new clothes when I need to or enjoy things I love, counting every penny and struggling to pay off some debts.

So I started to feel some emotions about it – yes mostly effect emotions – sadness, and some frustration, but mostly sadness, at the situation I was in, and created by my unhealed emotions, my choice to keep suppressing them. A painful realisation, but to be frank to feel something was a good thing and it created some small shifts in me, about what God wants for me and it not this – this small life.

In relation to this, for the last 2-3 of years I have also become aware that I have attracted a large group of spirits who do not want what is best for me, but only want to control my life, zap my energy and keep me small and at times completely destroy me. They have been with me for a good while I feel. By not feeling my emotions I allow that attraction to continue. It has been tough dealing with this. I feel them sitting on my shoulders, at times suffocating and crowded. It has kept me awake at night the last few months and I have felt I have no privacy whatsoever. Every time I try to take a step forward I feel they come for me. It has felt like a real battle for my soul. So I am in the process of feeling more truth about this, bit by bit.

I am letting myself feel that facade, I am returning to long-ignored passions that connect with my real self and I am doing a few things to come outside of my “comfort” zone/prison. They are a few small steps, but I am feeling a shift in some areas. I still have much to learn and feel and discover, but letting that control addiction go is tricky, but I really am beginning to dislike it. It doesn’t feel like me, just like a strange creature that has taken over. Plan A: to turn from rock to river!

I wanted to share this, to help those of you who may be doing the same as I have been. It is so important to be honest with ourselves, to look at our lives and see what it is showing us about our unhealed emotions, our self worth and our denial. We do have the power to change all this and we have much greater power to change all this if we include God in the process.  Step one, for me, is working through blocks to receiving God’s love. (which would so help me soften to emotions).

The blocks I think I have identified about God are (constantly up for review!):

  • Anger that God has made this so difficult (I feel it is very difficult).
  • Fear I will never receive God’s love/lack of faith
  • False beliefs about God judging me and deciding I don’t deserve Love ( parental stuff)
  • An addictive demand that God should give me love despite my lack of desire/fears about receiving or when I am being unloving.
  • Lack of faith that God is good and that her Love will make me happy.
  • I have more faith in my addictions
  • Lack of self worth prevents the openness to receiving.
  • A fear of emotional overwhelm/losing control if I receive God’s love; what will happen?

 

These realisations have created some changes. A week after my meltdown a new job came up and I got it and I am working in a more loving environment – though still having to watch my own self care in it, and with that my finances have improved and I am looking for somewhere new to live, and I am writing more and have joined something called solo autobiographical theatre which is triggering memories and emotions and pulling me out of a comfort zone and challenging me to do it despite fears that come up.

The Divine truth teachings are never far from my mind and heart. The God blocks are still there, but by listening to the videos by Jesus and Mary, I learn about God’s truth and re-educate myself about Love and Truth and error and as always nature is one of my greatest teachers about God and her Love. Also, books like the Robert James Lee trilogy (see the extras page) give such hope and wonder and curiosity to keep searching and investigating the truth about God, and Love and life. I am blessed to have this knowledge and experience at my fingertips and I do not want to walk away from it until I start to really walk it and keep walking it, with no turning back and no fear.

This year is about my moving out of survival mode, of really finding out what being me is about, what loving myself is really about: to move from the pretend love that feeding my addictions gives me and finding out what God’s love really feels like.  To create a blunt analogy I feel I have been clinging to a pile of hard crap that I have convinced myself was a soft cushion: comfortable, but sticky and not allowing me to move much. Clinging because I felt there was this deep bottomless pit below, a drop into the unknown, to a point of meaninglessness and death, very related to childhood fears and flight/fright mode.  Now it is time to let go of clinging to this crap, falling into the abyss…whatever it may. My feeling is instead of nothingness or danger , I will find God’s hands there ready to catch me and lift me up to greater heights, even with wings to fly – just has he planned. I can see even see that knowing smile…… Yes my child, here YOU are… here you truly are…

Oh goodness, now won’t that be wonderful…

Maxine

SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE

Posted on by under addictions, emotions, Facade, fear, humility, VULNERABILITY

goldfish

“You use your strength to separate yourself from everyone, but it’s thrilling when your defences are down.”

This is a line said by Harry (Jack Nicholson) to Erica (Diane Keaton) in the film “Something’s gotta give.” I am not writing a film review, but I watched it because having never heard of it before it came into my view twice in 12 hours   – firstly, it was mentioned at dinner with friends and then the next day I wondered into a charity shop so see if I could find a film to watch and there it was standing out among the DVD’s on display. I felt I was being guided to watch it and so I bought it.

It came under the guise of a romantic comedy, about two people, who in their own way had shut down the idea of the possibility of a deep love and connection, both for different reasons. They were thrown into the path of each other and despite a tricky start they fell quickly and deeply in love. However, fear came up and one of them pulls back. I won’t say too much in case you want to watch it. It is funny and touching and I waited to see what it had to offer me.

On one hand it is obvious, I am terrified of giving myself to love and I struggle to receive love. I am very suspicious of someone saying they love me, because love has meant departure, manipulation, feeling used, disappointment, confusion and pain. In truth none of that IS love. I know this intellectually and I have a small feeling deep down there is something much more special that is truly love, but my emotional wounds, my parent’s/ environment version of love, like many of us, was wrong, is wrong and now I am attempting to understand what love is, but I am scared. Scared by previous experiences and my emotional knowledge of love. Yet to keep saying this is also an excuse and an addiction and re-educating myself about love is within my own power and choice.

Then on the other hand is this issue of strength. When this line was said it struck me – it was me. I use my “strength” to separate myself from everyone. I have noticed that I call my mother the bounce back queen. Despite all her own lack of self love, the damage she has done to herself and to others, how she has treated her body, she still survives, she still keeps going. She has a chronic illness- temporal arthritis which requires horrible medication, including lots of steroids. Because of this her bones are fragile and the smallest fall she breaks a bone. This year she fell and smashed 6 ribs, had a metal plate put in to fix them. She was home within 3 days. Last week, she discovered she had 2 fractures in her neck, that had gone undetected for a week and she still got on a plane to Spain for a week. Many will read this and think, wow she is strong. But is it being strong or is it being self-reliant and avoiding her vulnerability?

Last week at work, someone asked me some questions about myself, which I answered honestly and their comment was, “you are one strong lady.” It was said in a way, that I should be proud of myself, proud of my strength. It has been said to me before a number of times. But right now I don’t want to be strong. What does it really mean? I am addicted to it. I am addicted to “being strong:” to surviving through many things, to getting back up, to pushing on, to keep going. I am addicted it, but I am sick of it because it is as Harry says my strength has become the space I use to stay separate, to avoid relationships, to avoid love, and to avoid feeling. It also involves appalling self care at times because I ignore so much of my pain.

I can feel the damage it is doing to me, emotionally, spiritually and physically. I have pain in some part of my body daily and I don’t take analgesia. I haven’t for long time and I used to consider myself to have a high pain threshold. I do, but this is not a good thing, this is shut down of feelings. And there are many of you out there who do the same thing.

There is no judgement is this because we live in society, that celebrates this kind of strength, this way of coping. I am English and we have had a long tradition of stoicism, that “stiff upper lip” nonsense: “chin up!” In other words, pretend it doesn’t hurt, don’t be emotional, just grin and bear it. The words that aren’t said here are “don’t be emotional because that will trigger all my emotions which will make me and everyone else around me upset and we don’t want to be upset because we don’t want to feel our emotions either. Avoidance, facade and all of us meeting each other’s emotional addictions.

What I feel now, is that this is incredibly sad. It is incredibly sad that we are so locked up, that I am, because when I lock up my negative emotions I also lock up my positive ones. So I can not experience my joy and happiness as I should. It is the way our soul works – suppress one emotion and we suppress another and it builds up to the state of numbness and de-tunement many of us live in.

I am not happy being like this and I am sick of being “strong.” It means I am overly self-reliant and I don’t let others in and I don’t let them help me. Then I feel alone and then I feel upset and angry that no on will care for me: a vicious cycle. Compassionately, I have reasons why I became “strong:” it was a survival technique and in fact I was taught to be this way, to support my mother and to care for my brothers and I certainly wasn’t encouraged, like many, to feel or acknowledge my own needs. I may be “strong” to the world as it currently is, but the truth is I am weak in knowing myself, and allowing myself the real strength and courage to feel all of my emotions.

There is small part of me that wants to be vulnerable and the times I have allowed that have been the most amazing times and I have felt almost beautiful. After the crying, we often feel more peaceful, especially when it is a causal emotion. I long for that peace and yet I must have a greater desire not to feel at the moment, to hold on and if I really want to progress more quickly something’s gotta give.

Being vulnerable is something I don’t emotionally understand properly. I feel inside it is weakness, as many do. Most of freak out when too much emotion hits the room. We can cope with a bit, but if it goes on too long, either with ourselves or others we judge it, we get fidgity, distract ourselves, talk ourselves out of it, eat ourselves out of it, drink ourselves out it; anything to lessen the “drama” of a roomful of emotions.

But emotions are E – motions. They are meant to move in and out, like a river. Often, instead , they sit in us like a rock and despite on some level we feel the weight of stuck emotions we have become experts in pretending they are not there. It is similar to being very overweight, we keep buying bigger clothes, bigger chairs and bed, put elastic in our belts so we don’t have feel too uncomfortable and aware of that extra flesh.

Being vulnerable would be to put on those trousers we can’t fit into, feel how uncomfortable they are now, walk out in them, feel exposed and allow all the feelings of that to come. So for me this acts as a key to accessing my vulnerability – getting out my comfort zone.

In November I did a four day workshop called Solo Autobiographical theatre. I had 4 days of being outside my comfort and it was transforming in the sense that I faced fears, didn’t live in them, felt emotions, felt exposed and at the end felt empowered discovering bits of myself I hadn’t before. So now I am signed up for 2 terms of this and I keep looking for ways to get out of my comfort zone. Actually, I think I will call it my addiction zone, because I would say most, if not all, of my so-called comfort zone is full of emotional and physical addictions. It is pretend safe zone, but truly an avoidance zone and the truth is, the reality is this addiction zone may give me some sense of gratification, but it has not brought me real happiness, love or joy. So, on an experimental basis I would say that experiment has failed and it is time for  new experiment. No real love in our life is no real life at all: it is living life in the greyscale, instead of vibrant colour.

I have so much to learn about vulnerability and blocks to work through to allow it more in myself. Then I feel, I will also learn more about being strong in the true sense, strong enough, courageous enough to feel, to feel my emotions, to feel my Self and awaken all my senses, and start waking up to truly living again. It is in there, because God made us that way. She didn’t create robots after all, she created living, breathing, dancing, singing, creating, thinking and most of all, uniquely of all, emotional beings: all that makes us human.

The ability, the desire to feel all of our emotions all of the time is humility. Humility allows vulnerability to be present and allows us to move those negative emotions out of us and let in the new, more joyful ones in. Our current definition of strong for me is rigidity and denial: a painful holding on: the inhale. Vulnerability is softening, allowing, surrender: the doorway to more truth, joy and freedom: the exhale. Sighing…

“You’ve got to learn how to fall, before you can learn how to fly.” (from the film).

@Maxine Bell 2017