Category Archives: Facade

Challenge the Lies: Find the Truth

Posted on by under Divine Truth, Facade, fear, resistance, soulmate

backpacking-980

That is how it goes: when we let go of a lie, a falsehood, a false belief, an error on a certain subject our soul can then know the truth about that same subject. Jesus teaches that a truth and an error, on a particular subject, can not exist together in our soul. If we have an error, the truth can not exist: if we have the truth then an error can not exist – and there are thousands, probably more, different subjects we either know the truth or the error about. And this is not an intellectual recognition ( that’s the easy part, from my point of view); it has to be accepted emotionally: discovering the truth and accepting error is an emotional process. One expands our soul: one shrinks it. ( Human Soul Series: Divine Truth FAQ YouTube Channel)

I was just re-looking at my blog: examining the bit “About Us” and realising that when I wrote that I felt I knew the truth of a lot of things especially about Robby and I’s relationship. I knew so little, if anything! I wrote what I wanted to believe: that we were soulmates, without actually being a hundred percent sure, emotionally. How deep our self deception and self denial goes because we don’t want to accept we don’t know. That is more arrogant than being humble enough to really tune in to our true emotions. In this case, for me, it is being afraid of NOT knowing who my soulmate is – avoiding all those feelings of grief about my soulmate and not being able to connect with him, avoiding all the emotions I have around the opposite sex and my own gender: the dozens of reasons I don’t yet know in my soul who my soulmate is for sure. I have had moments of thinking I knew Robby was: but moments aren’t certainty. Moments are whispers in the wind, not the strong gales of truth. He may be, he may not, the truth is I do not know yet and he will agree neither does he about me.

But it is not soulmates I want to write about, it is about discovering truth and that was what this blog was about in the first place. I am in the process of unlearning lots of things I thought were true and finding out the real truth. This year, I have been struggling with my progress. I have confused unloving actions for loving ones, been in denial and resistance. What happens is that we find this path, this Divine Truth and we think, “Wow, this is great stuff.” It hits something in our soul that changes the way we look at things, but it also challenges many things, if not all, we thought we knew. So we start trying to feel our emotions, to get to know God. Then we discover, that feeling all our emotions all of the time is difficult: we’re not used to it. Then we discover, we don’t actually want to know God, in fact we pretty cross at him for making it so hard (our perception). We have to constantly re-look at things, poking and digging around in long forgotten dark places we wanted to forget. We keep trying, as we get intellectually, that what Jesus/AJ is teaching makes sense: it’s logical. Then there is the Jesus stuff to work through. Did we ever imagine Jesus would actually return? Could actually return? And when he did, he would be an Aussie with a large variety of T-shirts?? So we look at our expectations and fears around that, but we keep listening to this guy and he seems so loving, so truthful we feel we know he is Jesus. Because we keep listening, we discover more truths, intellectually and a few on a soul level. The trouble with listening to truth is upsets the error and the false beliefs ( which we actually feel are true) so much it scares the living daylights out of us and because of our fear, we keep resisting, denying, letting a little emotion be felt, then misunderstand how much truth we actually know. We keep going, and these new truths, this feeling of some emotions, opens up Pandora’s box: all those emotions we have suppressed are being stirred and more fear appears. These are some of the deeper emotions we have been doing a million things for years trying to avoid or pretend they are not there: all that childhood stuff and anything we have piled on top is shaken up. At this point, many leave the Divine Love Path. Even then they don’t often know why, they don’t realise their fear is shouting. So rather than know the truth, they blame Jesus, God, others, “The Path.” They go off looking for something that makes them feel they are trying to change, but is less uncomfortable or they return to their addictions and the life they had before. Sadly, people leave just at the point they may be about to hit some life-changing emotions.

This year, I feel this happened to me. I didn’t want to leave following these teachings, I didn’t want to stop trying, but have been in huge resistance in feeling, particularly fear. So I have blamed and closed off at times. There has been some progress in following my desires, such as my art, but emotionally I have been stubborn and hard-hearted, addicted to trying to control still. But God is ever-loving, and behind all that I still prayed sometimes, with feelings. I often haven’t even found the words. But because I haven’t been feeling my emotions, my body has been in pain, everyday. What I used to be proud of to call my high pain tolerance, I have now realised is just my ability to control and not allow myself to feel. The pain is the suppression of my emotions.

As a child, expressing my emotions led to judgement, punishment and shame so little me created a strong me that became very good at holding it all in: this is turn created “good girl” facade. The facade that “protected” me from harm – and that is just one facade. We all create many facades, which we learnt to pull up in different situations – sometimes to be liked, sometimes to avoid the threat of harm, to act the way we think we are expected: whatever the reason, it has come from a childhood hurt and an avoidance of feeling mostly fear and grief, but also anger/rage. We are so used to living this way, we don’t even know we are. The real us is squashed under our hurt self, who is squashed by our facade. Our facade wants to avoid feeling our true feeling so much it creates dozens of emotional addictions and some physical. We get into addictions with ourselves and with others, creating co-dependent relationships, that can appear happy ( because we get addictions met).

Understanding all this has helped me start to see and feel the damage my addictions and facade have done. I feel that I don’t know where or who the real me is; I feel I have been much more unloving at times that I want to admit, to others and very much to myself. My facade may have kept me “safe”, but I have been very unhappy and unfulfilled. In the Australian Assistance Groups, ( see the divine truth website) Mary and Jesus talked about breaking down our facade and addictions as the toughest thing we will ever do. I have to agree; I am finding it very, very tough and I am going to need to push myself further, and desire to know myself and God more.  So why go on? Why not try something else?

I can only give this analogy. When you first find Divine Truth, hear about God’s Love, it is like a number of us going on a honeymoon in Spain: the sun is shining, the sea is warm, everything feels new and fresh. As you liked it so much, you decide you want to travel further, to see the world. So you jump on trains and planes, but your journey is not as romantic as you thought: there are delays, bad accommodation, dangerous drives up mountains on the edge of dirt tracks – it is exhausting and disheartening. You try a few journeys, but it just doesn’t seem to be going your way and you can no longer see the point, even when there are promises of seeing paradise, you decide you have had enough and you are going home to a warm bed, a hot shower and a cup of tea. You leave.

But not everyone goes, a few persist, despite the setbacks, they journey on, ever curious to see more. They start to experience the highs of climbing that mountain, swimming in that lake. As they learn to survive without all their creature comforts, they discover pleasures in new things they didn’t even imagine. The journey starts to take them to incredible places, vast blue oceans, tropical jungles, vast plains with exotic animals and the most glorious beaches. They start to look forward to the tropical island they have been promised at the end of their trip and when they arrive it is beyond anything they ever imagined – so beautiful it takes their breath away: it is paradise and now they really feel the honeymoon is about to begin… and this one, this one lasts forever.

I have always been a seeker, always looking for answers and experiences of some kind and I sense my seeking has brought me on a journey like no other now. To quote Jesus from the first century:

” Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks will receive, and anyone who seeks will find, and the door will be opened to him who knocks.” (Matthew ch 7 v7-8)

So this is why I am still here, even when I am not doing so well. I have some faith in God’s vision for us and a feeling in my heart paradise exists. I want that honeymoon, where love abounds, for always.

with love
Maxine

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Itsy Bitsy Truth and Updates

Posted on by under addictions, Divine Truth, Facade, fear, soulmate

me and robby edit 2

I feel I want to be honest in where I am at right now and in my relationship with Robby, and with God. The journey of writing this blog is part of my own spiritual journey to know God, to know myself, which includes the other half of my soul: my soul mate. During this journey I have written in facade, in addiction and hopefully some truth. I still have emotions about being judged and disliked, of being attacked and hurt for not being “perfect.” But I have realised I have to face these fears and share as truthfully as I am able at this time, because I have a desire to share Divine Truth, to be in harmony with Love and to share my journey in the hope it invites some of you to try the experiment and seek God’s Way of Love, which I feel to be beautiful and unique in it’s power to change us and change this world. Most of the Divine Truth I share will come via Jesus and Mary, and any other “truth” is likely to be my personal truth. As you listen, question, feel and investigate for yourself. I suggest that all you need to do is to be open and bear with me as I try to express what is in my heart. If you want to know more ( and hear a much better explanation of what I am talking about) please go to divinetruth.com.

In the last few weeks I have suddenly realised that I am smiling a lot (its been a while) , with the feeling that I am blessed to have discovered what I have, since I first heard of AJ/Jesus, and what I continue to discover about the Way of God’s Love. And I smile, not at any special time, it is just in ordinary moments: when I am walking to work; putting out the rubbish; strolling round the shops buying vegetables; driving or the other day I was just sitting in a car wash after my car was in the flight path of a dozen seagulls. This was the third time in a week so it felt like an another attack. It was most certainly the law of attraction showing me something, but as I sat in the car wash, I was so grateful I knew about God’s law of attraction: this wonderful gift that constantly presents itself to show what we still need to heal and what is healed. I haven’t always liked it, sometimes I have screamed at it when it seemed painful or I just haven’t got what it was showing me. And to be honest even after I heard about it in one of the Divine Truth talks, I didn’t really take on board that paying attention to it would be really helpful! That is what happens when our brain hears something, but we don’t really want to hear it on a soul level – mostly because we are in denial or resistance and hold error in our soul that is challenged by the truth we are presented. However, something has finally sunk in ( 2 years later ) and I have started to pay attention and feel the truth of it more in my soul. So when something happens I can ask: Ok, so what is God trying to show me? If I do that and soften my heart I can feel the answer. If I soften and be humble then my guides can also help me. Now I can really start to appreciate the gift that it is. Funny thing is we feel God as so distant and yet he talks to us constantly through his laws and the love that created them.

In many ways this has been the most challenging two months since I discovered Divine Truth just over 3 years ago, so smiling a lot is an interesting development and proof that the more we feel our error, the more we feel joy: we just feel more! Some truth that Mary shared with me after I wrote for some advice, dropped a bomb in the life that Robby and I shared. A life that was comfortable, but plodding on. We had a certain cosiness and routine with each other, but little passion or deep connection. Also, I had been working in a job for a few months that I realised had a small amount of  soul desire in it, but many addictions and I felt trapped and drained: trapped in my job, trapped in my addictions, trapped by my fears; trapped by a low income: surviving but not really living. I was stuck in a rut and felt that for some reason my soul condition had degraded and I couldn’t work out why. At the same time I had been reading the Padgett Messages and continued to listen to Divine Truth videos and there was a stirring of increased desire to have a relationship with God and heal my soul. I knew about God’s Way of Love, but hadn’t been living it and was and am blocked to receiving God’s love: I am still not on the path; still not walking the walk. I wrote to Mary and received a reply. Jesus and Mary don’t always reply to emails. If they feel you are in addiction it is not loving to reply and meet you addiction, just as a loving person would not give an alcoholic a beer.  As they will testify, I have written in addiction a number of times (awkward smile). It is not loving of me to do that, but in my wounded state, my avoidance of feeling the real emotion, my fingers tap away and I click on send. I  have realised when I feel compelled to write I must not: a compulsion is an addiction so stop!

This time, despite some addiction in my email, that stirring of desire for God, meant I received a truthful and loving  (and ever patient)  reply. I had to face some harsh truths about my unloving behaviour at work, represented in my rebelliousness and arrogance. This happens to a lot of us who try to follow the Divine Love Path. We listen to a number of Jesus’ talks, understand them very intellectually and think we know what love and truth is and in the end we end up using these Divine Truths ( what we think they are – not what they actually are) to feel superior, be condescending and arrogant. All addiction! All unloving! And for me, it’s to avoid feeling inferior, insecure and worthless. I thought I was doing the right thing – I called it truth, but when Mary said not, and I felt about it, it felt very yukky. Getting past the shame, I then felt what I thought was loving to myself and others was actually arrogant and very unloving. No wonder I felt my soul had degraded. Jesus and Mary are both more progressed than I am and have received God’s love so I listen to what they say. It’s not that I can’t question it and I feel it’s good to, but most importantly I feel the truth of what they tell me in my soul – not all of it ( If I did I would be more progressed than I am!), but certainly parts that I am ready and willing to hear and feel, enter my soul. In the spirit world, spirits (people) that are more progressed in love and truth have brighter spirit bodies. If they are brighter than us, they have more truth and love in their soul (which we can also feel) and it is humble to listen to what they tell us. The brighter the spirit the more truth they have. Jesus and Mary feel like that. I may not see their spirit bodies, but I can feel they have more love, that they know more truth. They are not just talking the Way, they are walking it – as they have for 2000 years – and this too inspires me to listen to them and try to walk the same path.

The other painful truth that came up for me in the email, was that Robby’s addiction to spirits and his addiction to be looked after was currently his main motivation for being with me, and of course I was meeting his addiction to be looked after with my own addiction to rescuing others and to avoid a feeling of aloneness in me. Hence, co-dependency. This hit me like a truck. It hit me because I had already started to realise it, but had put my head in the sand. Also, I was doing yet another “caring” job, as I have done for 30 years, as I have done most of my life, but about that time I had begun to feel how depleted I was and how much grief I had about forgetting myself. It is not that Robby and I care nothing for each other, but that we still both have so much error in us and so little knowledge of real love, our relationship is unhealthy and unloving ( in God’s eyes) in many ways. At times we have felt we were soul mates and yet neither of us is in a condition to know that for certain. Something has kept us together  – whether that is a soul mate connection or addiction is as yet unclear.

For the first weeks after Mary’s email I emotionally left the relationship completely….if it could be called that, as we both fear intimacy so much. Much of what we have had has been addiction and facade. Though, I will say we have also triggered much in each other which has also helped us progress in certain areas and I feel we have learned how to be a bit more loving with each other and I am very grateful to the truth that Robby has told me. He is much more fearless in saying what he feels than me. It has not been easy, and after the first 2-3 weeks of a honeymoon period we have either hit big periods of triggering, projected and received anger, been confused and hurt with intermittent periods that were more peaceful, but would have included the facade of happiness often created by co-dependency. Emotionally leaving the relationship was caused by huge fears that came up for me, that I didn’t allow myself to feel. Instead I froze in my fear and closed my heart. Robby, of course, felt it, but was confused by the suddenness and cause and I was initially too scared to say anything. Coincidentally, he went home to Belguim for 10 days and I will be honest and say I was glad of the break. Of course, I was running away and living in my fears.

Eventually, Robby and I talked. It wasn’t comfortable, but what I find amazing is that every time that happens, every time we talk more truthfully, and don’t live in the fear, it feels so much better: a weight is lifted and we are able to feel our emotions better. So we had to admit our addictions with each other (those we are aware of), but then face the fact that until we had more of a relationship with ourselves, having a relationship with someone else was impossible. Also, what became apparent was I have a greater desire for God than Robby and at the moment he is resistant and angry at God and not wanting to listen to Divine Truth. This is painful for me because I wanted to share this path with someone and avoid that loneliness I really feel inside. So now I can’t avoid it: which is good.

Robby and I have decided that we must break out of our addictions and one thing we have both have faith in is that if we are soul mates, being in more truth and love will eventually bring us back together again in a more loving way or if we are not, allow us to separate, peacefully. Love and truth is, after all, the magnetism that draws a soul mate to you. If we are not with our soul mate at this time that may include the truth that we don’t really want to meet our soul mate, because our fear is too great or our gender issues are blocking the relationship.

So for now, Robby has a real desire to experiment and follow his desires. He has never really done this: he was so shut down as a child by his parents, never seen as an individual who had the right and free will to discover his passions. He lost his will very early on and now has a desire to find his will again and find ways to open his heart and expand his soul. He has decided he would like to do this by working in area of need in the world: do something meaningful, that will take him out of his comfort zone. For him, he has decided he wants to volunteer in Nepal, following the earthquake. He has set up an appeal for funds and been putting lots of energy into making it happen and trying to embrace the journey of all that it brings up for him.

When I wrote to Mary, I wanted to quit my job, but I decided initially to return to work, but with more humility and from that place decide what to do. So for the last couple of months, I have been working with a new attitude and awareness. I have been watching out for that rebellious and arrogant streak, trying to be more humble to what comes up for me. It is an absolute journey for me, as it will be for many of us, having learned to shut down my emotions as a child and continued to add to that all my adult life. So my constant prayer at the moment is to be a river of emotion, rather than a rock of numbness. I am using my bit of will to love, by softening to my law of attraction and the emotions it encourages me to feel. I have had some fear triggered, though have yet to fully surrender to the terror. And I have had grief about the loss of myself and the false belief that my needs don’t matter and to the loss of my dreams, loving desire and passions. In the feeling of my grief, I have begun to remember the things that make my heart sing: music, art, ballet. I started to draw again and love it and I am not worrying about the result, just enjoying the experiment. I have cried when I have watched dance and felt the desire in my soul and body to move and in that I have been guided and found a teacher who is willing to teach a 48 year old ballet! There is more to feel so that I create the funds to make this happen. I went to an open day at an local art college and for the first time for a very long time I felt alive and connected to the real me: I could have flown home that day and one of the courses there made my heart sing. It was wonderful.

Returning to work with more humility has allowed me to feel that I need to step back and out of my addiction to rescue. It is just helping me avoid myself, and the fear that I am so awful, and unlovable. Also, I have a lot of anger and grief about service, false beliefs that love is sacrifice and it affects my life hugely. I need to feel these emotions as I want to have a more pure desire to serve. On Monday I handed in my notice and signed up with a teaching agency: it will allow me flexibility and hopefully time to pursue my desires to follow the Way, to do my art and my writing and in the process the best way to serve. I have an interview for an illustration degree (yay!). I do not yet have the funds, but I know my desire for this is everything and changes everything. I am going to let myself experiment and play. I am terrified about how I will survive financially; I am terrified of not being in control, of, as Jesus puts it, “letting go of all the balls;” I am terrified of the chance my dreams may not come true; terrified of many things. However, I know that triggering my fears is one of the biggest gifts I can give myself. I know fear has been leading my life, giving a false sense of security, but keeping me shriveled and not really alive – far away from God and far away from my real self. Fear is my very real and painful prison, but only I hold the key to my freedom. I have to want it and I have some faith that as soon as I put the key in the lock to turn it, I will be surprised that the door will fly open. In her blog, Mary describes feeling our fear as jumping out of the plane. We need to jump: I need to jump; I am starting to want to jump because I want to know me and I want to know my parent. I have now moved from crouching in the cabin of the plane and feel I am standing at the door – most of the time, though still holding on for now. But I am taking action at last.

I am curious about God, this Being, this Creator, our Parent, because as I read more about God and God’s love and as I hear more about Divine truth I long, even more,to really feel this love, to understand its source. I am terrified of love too, because I have so many false beliefs around it, but there is a stirring of faith that God’s love is something so special, so wondrous, that when I do eventually feel it, I will wonder why I waited so long and laugh at my own foolishness for choosing fear instead, for so long.

I am so grateful for discovering the teachings of Jesus – the real teachings of a soul that has been closer to God that any other human I feel – so far. Because we can all do what he has done, what he is doing, what Mary is doing. God made us all equal and equally capable of following her Way. I have some barriers to break down to be able to receive God’s love and say I am really walking the path and I want to share my journey, because this truth is so awesome and in the sharing of my own journey I also learn. I feel there is still some narcissism  and addiction in my sharing, but I know if I am open, God will show me how to purify me desire to write and serve, and the more humble I become so it shall be. But I also know (intellectually) that it’s ok to not be perfect and to allow this to be a journey where I will still keep tripping up for now.  My main goal right now is to look at my resistance and blocks to God and receiving his love and to be that river – the river of humility, feeling everything, discovering who God intended me to be, discovering what it is like to feel the flow of Divine Love in me and experience it’s power for change in my soul.

So this is update on where we are: my attempt at less facade and more truth. It is a bit bitty, but I hope helpful.

I want to end this post with a quote from the Padgett messages: some incredible Channelings to James Padgett at the beginning of the 20th Century. Many of the spirits are Celestials and talk of Divine Truth, Divine Love, Spirit World and other topics. I highly recommend them ( see extras page). This quote is from Volume One, from Solomon of the Old Testament. It truly touched my soul and I have re- read it a many times and intend to follow his advice. Here it is:

What is the greatest thing in all the world?

Prayer and faith on the part of mortals; and Love – the Divine Love – on the part of God. The latter is waiting, and the former causes it to enter into the souls of men.

No other truths are so great and momentous to men.

Let what I say sink deep into your memory, and try the experiment. I know you do try, but try and then try and never cease trying. Love will come to you and with It faith, and then knowledge and then ownership.

love Maxine ( trying and trying, again and again…)

Why is humility so hard?

Posted on by under Divine Truth, emotions, Facade, fear, humility, love, resistance

flower shadow

“It is pride that turned angels into devils;

It is humility that makes men as angels.”

Saint Augustine

Jesus describes humility as “the passionate desire to feel ALL of our emotions.” That is every single emotion in every single moment. It is the process of tuning in, becoming sensitive, to how we feel ALL of the time, to listening and acknowledging what is going on in our soul. Our feelings are part of our soul and if felt properly tell us the truth of what is going on, what is going wrong and what is going right. Humility is an essential part of healing, our self-growth and realisation, our growth in love and truth, and if we so desire, our journey to to become at one with God by receiving his love.

So why is it so hard? I have been pondering this question tonight and see that is not the real question. The real question is:

Why am I not more humble? Why do I resist feeling all of my emotions? So why do I resist truth and keep myself from love?

It makes no sense and I have always prided myself on my common sense. I am creative, but I love logic too. I look around at the world and see so much illogical thought and action and wonder why so many don’t see it too. So logically, it makes sense to have humility, to feel, to release the error and discover truth and mostly to choose love, for myself and for others. Logically, humility is obvious, simple and powerful.

So what does humility feel like? For me, in the times when I let myself feel true emotions: rage, fear, grief; afterwards it feels soft, but strong: beautiful, and real. The harsh edges have melted, the armour dropped away. I gain a small sense of the real me. It is surrender and surrender is freeing: wings unclipped, effortless. It is as though I can rest: I don’t have to “try”, or be strong, or keep going, or pushing or pulling one way and another. Even if I am in tears, there is a huge relief, of not have to keep trying to be what others or I expect of me. The is no “should” just I am. It is amazing and yet I resist. Why?

So if I am not humble, if I am not letting myself feel my emotions, what am I doing instead? Instead, I am in a facade and I am used to the facade; I like it; I am used to it. I created it when I was young to protect me, to help me survive. My parents may have encouraged the facade, because the facade rarely upsets the status quo. The one where we are all pretending to be alive, to function, to be a family, to live some kind of life. The one where being too emotional is seen as weakness or drama, where emotions are suppressed, from the first moment our mother says, “don’t cry sweetie, ” we are told not to feel. Feelings frighten us, the truth frightens us. We fear being overwhelmed and create a desire to control and manage our life and our emotions. So this is what I have done, and so have you.

From conception, I inherited emotional injuries from my parents, and so it continued as their injuries spilled out into their parenting and my childhood. This cycle of damage perpetuates the pain and builds the facade. To make it worse, if we want to scream or cry because we feel emotional pain, we are told to be quiet, to not cry, to not express: we ingest our parents and environments beliefs about emotions. So we build more facade. This cycle shrinks us and we become masters of control: I became a master of control.

The facade is our survival technique, but the longer we hold onto it, the more damage is done. But we are in it so utterly, that we will do anything to keep it. We create emotional and physical addictions to numb the pain, to not feel too much: we drink, we eat, we take drugs, we demand to be rescued, to be saved, to look for someone to care for us, to keep us feeling good. We will do anything to feel good and avoid our pain. Over a lifetime we create thousands of addictions, so many, so ingrained we don’t even notice.

So here I am, like many of you, living in a facade to protect my heart, to keep the lid on my Pandora’s box of emotions from my childhood. I am so used to living this way, that even though I have experienced a little of the wonder of humility, my desire to NOT feel outweighs my desire to feel. Inside, I am terrified to feel overwhelmed. So many overwhelming things happened when I was a child: tsunami’s came my way and I couldn’t swim. The constant flight and fright mode, left me fighting for control, amid the chaos. And I got it, I got how to control what I could, whether it was food, feelings, my environment or people: anything to NOT feel the terror of what was going on. And I am still there, afraid of the terror and the grief inside.

So now I sit with feet in both camps. I know, intellectually, that to have humility will change everything for me. I understand it is the way to the real me, to knowing myself and my soulmate, to knowing my real Parent and yet, I stubbornly hang on to my facade and addictions: clinging to the rock face; not wanting to jump and yet knowing I must. Because without humilty I can’t progress, I can’t love or be loved and that makes me sad. I see how in my facade, I defend my point of view, I deny what I really feel to my own detriment and to the detriment of the other half of my soul. My facade hurts me and it hurts others. It is harsh, yukky, unattractive. It pushes away my soulmate, that beautiful man.It keeps me away from God and her love and from real joy.

I don’t like my facade. It has become like an old item of clothing: once a favourite – familiar and safe and yet if you really look at it, it if full of mothballs, scruffy and musty. I really need to throw it out, “thanks for you help mate, but it’s time for you to go.” It’s time for me to feel.

So it’s not humility that is hard. Being emotional is how God created us. It’s our resistance to feel,and the deep hold we let our facade and addictions have in our life. In the end we have the choice to change it, as we do with everything in life. It is our desire, our will to make it happen that creates the change. So far, I feel my desire has been half-hearted. I have made fear my God and fear weaves a web of denial and lack. Fear keeps me from love.

I am sorry, to all those who offer me love and I keep it at bay through my fear. I am sorry I do that to you and I am sorry I do it to myself. My facade has a firm hold and it cares not about Love, but about maintaining itself – at all costs. But I don’t want to give in to it: chip by chip; brick by brick; wall by wall it will come down if I really want it to.  I believe in Love – not the love the world has shown me , but a love my soul understands exists somewhere. I believe in a life with so many more possibilities than the facade can ever offer us.

Humility isn’t hard, my facade is. Humility offers freedom, fear a prison. Humility takes us to truth and to love, not to pain and suffering. Humility is one of the biggest gifts we can give ourselves. It is the biggest gift I can give to myself: all of me.

Maxine Bell

In Search of the Real Self: Cracking the Shell

Posted on by under Divine Truth, emotions, Facade, God's Love, Heart words, Hurt Self, REal self, The Three Selves

facadesedit

Jesus has a great analogy of our three selves. He likens us to an egg and for me that image works really well. The beautiful golden center is our real self: the wonderful true self that God created, the one we are trying to discover in our physical incarnation. The egg white is the hurt self: that part of us that is damaged from the environment we are brought up in from conception. The shell is the outer layer, our facade self: the part that is firstly created by our parents and environment and then developed by ourselves. It is the part of us we create to survive, the part created by the suppression of our real self and hurt self: the suppression of our emotions. It is this part I am focusing on today as it is this part that is the most heart-breaking for me at the moment.

But first, the real self. To be frank, I know very little about the real self. I have some intellectual understanding from the Divine Truth teachings and my own hopes. It is the part most connected to the soul God created me to me: my true personality, my true desires and passions and the part aligned with God’s love and truth. Very few of us discover our true selves in our physical incarnation because currently and for thousands of years now we just haven’t developed in love enough: love as God understands, not the human version. Our real self is hidden just like the yolk of an egg: hidden deep in the core, unseen until we crack open the egg, let the shell break and the white ooze away.

The white of the egg, so to speak, the next layer of our selves is the hurt self: the damaged, wounded child mostly. It’s the damage we inherit, the damage done to us by our parents and others in our environment, and we can build on that damage by not acknowledging that hurt child, ignoring her and acting out from this hurt place. This lost child is full of pain so it can feel a hard place to go. Why do we need to relive it, we ask. We don’t, but we use this fear to justify not letting her have a voice. As adults though, we can provide a safe place, a loving permission for her to express and feel all that locked up emotion without actually reliving the events. Yes it will feel overwhelming, but it will set us free. I haven’t got there really. I have cried over events from my past, but so far it’s mostly tears over the effects, rather than crying about the cause. The adult me thinks she protects her by keeping her locked away, too scared of being overwhelmed with emotion. And sadly, I have got very very good at locking her up. I have been listening to the Divine Truth teachings for nearly three years and sometimes I have felt I was on The Way, but the truth is I have listened to much and understood a lot with my mind, with the odd flash into my soul. I feel very much I have heard Truth in these teachings, but The Way is an emotional journey – it needs to be felt, experienced because the change happens in our soul and our soul is emotional, and our soul is connected to God, and God is emotional. I find it a beautiful concept, but one so different to what I know: it is a huge shift. Yet, at the same time I am very tired of the old way, the way mostly managed by my facade.

So we come to the shell, the mask, the facade. Well I listened to a talk on the facade about 18 months ago and I don’t think I really heard a thing. I know the meaning of the word, but I didn’t get it and now I finally know why. The recent teachings on deconstructing the facade were like a big bell ringing in my ears: I got it! Well much more than I ever have. Weird really as I believe it was my facade which prevented me from understanding it before. Our facade is created from wanting to avoid the pain, from the moment we are not accepted as our real self, in our real emotions, by our parents, our facade starts to be created. We start to become the person our parents want us to be, our teachers and the rest of our world wants us to be. This facade is about fitting into the world, surviving. We become the person our parents are happy with to avoid punishment and judgement. Very sadly, we lose touch with finding or knowing our real safe as layers of hurt develop from this rejection of our self and the building of facade we believe necessary for survival.

We don’t even know how much we are living as a facade and we develop it further as adults: developing many facades depending on where and who we are with. One for our parents, one for our lovers, our friends, our work. Most of us even accept we have a facade for work, and one for our family and some friends, but we often believe we let our real selves out with our long term friendship and love relationships. However, our facade permeates every aspect and every relationship. I had, like alot of us, a childhood where my emotions were suppressed and I was punished if I did not conform to my parents idea of being a “good girl” and on reflection, I see my facade was developing from a very young age, and as more events occured, the more I buried my real self and my hurt self. It deeply saddens me to see how much and thick my facade is.

So what is the problem with the facade? Jesus describes the qualities of the facade as insensitive, unaware, false, controlled, untrusting, dishonest, insincere, illogical, unemotional, immovable, thoughtless, irrational, reckless, irresponsible and careless. It loves compulsion, addiction, resistance, manipulation and coercion: it loves cruelty, nastiness, meanness, arrogance, condescension and superiority. It is the main cause of our unloving actions. Do you recognise it’s existence and influence in your life? in this world? Yep! It’s pretty unpleasant, dark, even tragic that we are so far from our true self, from Truth, and from Love, real love.

All week I have been reeling a bit from the realisation that it has been my facade keeping me from God; from feeling my hurt self; from knowing my real self; from knowing Truth and from feeling Real Love. The facade cares not for any of those things. The facade cares only to keep it’s addictions met: to have it’s own way. Mine is controlling, minimising and untrusting. Mine controls my emotions and tries to control my environment and other’s in it. It pushes me to follow compulsions, to do anything to feel good and avoid the pain inside or search for the real me. However, the feel good of the facade is temporary, relying on the quick fix of addictions. It is the greatest con artist and the reason for much unhappiness and unloving behaviour. It’s our dark mate, disguised as our friend. It sucks away the life in us, we age and shrivel. Pretty awful stuff!

But my goodness what a discovery: this truth. The walls of my facade are thick, containing many bricks, but  I plan to knock each one out. It will be the hardest thing we do in our life, says Jesus, deconstructing our facade, but the most rewarding. Once a crack in our shell appears, our hurt self can ooze out and we can start to taste the golden yolk of our real self. Therein lies our true joy and therein we can connect with our true parent, God, who is patiently waiting for us to want to know him, to receive her love and receive all of the gifts he has waiting for us. Knowing God, knowing ourselves, finally experiencing real love, free from addictions is where our true life is, our real happiness and the transformation of our souls into an ever expanding wonder of the universe.

As far as I can see, there is no other way. This all makes so much sense to me. Why? Because it is SO different from other things I have tried or studied: because it is SO different from how we live in the world now, how we know ourselves – that way hasn’t been working and the world is now in a dark place. I want something different, for myself, for the human race, and for this beautiful planet. So I am about to start the most difficult thing I have ever done: deconstructing my facade. I have been feeling it this week: it’s heaviness, it’s rigidity, it’s addictions and habitual behaviour. I can see it rears it’s ugly head in my writing, interferes with my expression. It feels like a heavy tight suit, some thing like a straight jacket. It restricts me and I don’t want to be restricted. It keeps far away from love, and I want to find out what love really is. It lies to me and I don’t want lies anymore – I am looking for truth. It pushes and shoves me and I don’t want to be pushed, I am tired of trying. I want to connect to God, even though I don’t really know what that will mean yet and I want to experience love with my soul mate and know my whole soul.

So here I stand: knowing very little about love or truth, not knowing who I am. I am confused, but at peace with being this way as I have faith it is all to be found and even though I may have given up on God for most of my life, he never gave up on me and I have a teeny bit of faith knowing God will be more a wonder than I can imagine. Thank goodness there are some who are The Way – Showers. They give me hope and faith this is really worth trying and not listening to my facade – I have some faith in myself.

I want to become a Divine Angel: a healed human, feeling God’s love all the time. When I feel this I can see rainbow colours and lights in my third eye: it looks pretty cool. Just putting one foot forward….. and one day I hope that foot will belong to my real self only.

Popping the Cork..

Posted on by under desire, Divine Truth, Emotional Injury, emotions, Facade, fear, God's Truth, Parenting, suppression

pop the cork

It has been a few weeks since I wrote. I have felt uninspired to write or pursue any other passions, like painting, dancing or the kayaking I have longed to try. I have been so flat and it happened out of the blue. Even writing today feels like I am pulling a heavy stone along with the keyboard: a dense weight is in my system that I didn’t understand until a few days ago. If you follow my posts you will know that Robby and I have a personal spiritual journey: soul journey and we feel we have a found a teacher who really understands God’s truth: Divine Truth. There is a ton of free talks and other resources on their website ( see the links page) and I have been listening to FAQs on the human soul. These talks contain incredible knowledge and I suddenly am getting an understanding of why I feel some things, but hardly anything of the deep causal emotions in me. These are the emotions that create change in our soul when we feel them and release them: when released they open a window for us to receive Gods love if we desire to. These are the ones I have really found hard to access. I understand many of them on an intellectual level. I can recall certain events in my childhood that created them. But feeling them? NO! And getting frustrated or judgmental about not feeling them only blocks the flow further.

We can often believe we have the desire to feel things, but if we did, it would just happen. The truth is I must not have the desire or will to feel these emotions. If I did, I would feel them. This is just fact. The fact is I am terrified to feel these strong emotions, to be overwhelmed. I am terrified of my anger and afraid of the level of my fear and in denial about how deep my grief may go…. and there is not just one causal to clear. It is the same for many of us. From our birth we are blocked from expressing our soul, from expressing full stop. We learn very quickly that to express our emotions can lead to punishment, being ridiculed or humiliated. Our parents do it because it was done to them and so forth. Without judgement, observing an everyday event, I noticed a young mother on the bus with her baby last week. Every time it wimpered the dummy was put in her child’s mouth: it was silenced. I also felt how self conscious she felt if the baby made a noise, as though all eyes were on her and at times many were. I see it in the street too, a toddler yells, people stare and whisper, judging the mothers ability to keep her child quiet. We don’t like the noise, but we are terrified of the emotion. This shutting down of our children is acceptable and is even considered good discipline by the parents in our soceity. Despite outward changes in family life I observe the old belief that children should be seen and not heard running through family life, education and soceity.

In some families this becomes more extreme, where the parents lives dominant and the child is made to feel unloved, unseen and unheard. In mine, there was so much drama going on around the adults in the house, we all felt secondary and fairly invisible and unimportant. It may not have been deliberate but it just was: a sad and painful was. I quickly learned to silence myself. I created a cocoon to protect myself from anger and abuse. Of course it was an imaginary bolt hole. I still experienced the violence and chaos of my youth and sucked in all the emotions and much of myself to please my mother and the other adults around me. As a young adult I continued with this habit and now am an expert at sucking it in, maintaining “control” and avoiding those deep pains. But it has become exhausting. I am tired of the weight I feel in my body, on my shoulders, in my neck and hips. I am drained from holding in my emotions: stuffed full with pain with little room for  joy or love or my passions. It hurts. It hurts bad.

Jesus explains we need huge amounts of humility, desire and will to feel our emotions, especially if we have suppressed them all our life. Two weeks ago my guides gave me a cartoon picture in my third eye. It was me with a narrow topped bottle stuffing in what looked like enough cloth to make a hot air balloon. I was stuffing away trying to keep this “balloon” from escaping. So when I have believed I haven’t had enough will to feel my emotions, that I need to build up those muscles of my will I was shown I have enough will, but I need to change where I am using it: from an unloving ( to myself) suppression and resistance to my emotions into a more loving and freeing feeling of my emotions. I need to use my will to set myself free. I have wasted so much energy resisting and rebelling against my true feelings and nature: it makes no sense. In fact, on reflection I know this holding on to my emotions made me ill in the past.

Well it makes no sense any longer for me. I have listened to how my soul works and I get it all intellectually, but these last two weeks some of it has been hitting my soul; suppression, resistance, presence, dominance. The talk on suppression really hit me and I felt how pointless my suppression was, I felt how tired I had made myself and now I pray and will myself to change this. I am still terrified and unsure of myself in this process, but I know what I have heard is truth. I know God wants this for me and I want this for me and I want to want it more. I do not wish to continue how I lived in the past and present: imprisoned in fear, trapped and caught up in addictions to stop feeling the fear. I know my story: we all have one. Much has happened to us, but it is not permanent. We can change this, we can change ourselves and the world we live in. We can do it the long way: still rebelliously independent from God or we can do the short way with God’s love to help us. The short way may take 20 years, but its better than another 47 years like this or another 1000 years doing it on my own.

I know now that I lost my passions a few weeks ago when I suppressed another emotion. When I shut down one emotion (a painful one) in my soul I helped shut down the rest. So tonight I had to use my will to write: I had to feel how it felt when I tried to write. In the use of my will and my feeling something shifted a couple of paragraphs in as I felt the truth in my soul of what I am learning and experiencing in trying to follow The Way of God’s Love. I felt the passion for that truth and I felt my love of writing, of words, of language, of self expression. This weekend I may paint. Its been too long since I played with the colour palette and pulled out all my boxes of “Stuff”: bits of fabric, paints, glitter, threads, wool, fur, and so on.

Opening up to our passions is one way to feel again. As we allow a feeling, we allow more. God created us as emotional beings: an expression of some of his qualities. This world is emotional. Look at the incredible detail and beauty of nature, of life and our response to it. Who doesn’t sigh at a beautiful view? Who doesn’t feel it stirring something in their soul? In those moments, we feel awe, wonder, love, gratitude, and maybe even a sense of knowing our Parent.

I now know I must do what I can to feel, anything and everything; watching out for my automatic shut down. I do not yet comprehend what it is to really feel. I do not yet comprehend what it is to really love and be loved. My soul knows a little truth, a little love, but I have kept it crammed mostly full of pain. I am now choosing to shift my will to relieve myself of this pain, to learn to experience joy. For now, I am a strange concoction of resistance and fear sitting alongside determination and occasionally love. All I can say is thank God it is God helping me. I am a tough nut to crack so bringing in the big guns really is the only way.

I apologise for the lack of flow in my writing, but at least I wrote because I wanted to. On a final note I want to share a post I saw that inspired me to write tonight. A post that demonstrates the love, imagination and playfulness of our Creator and Parent, but also reminded me I can play too, that I am part of that loving creation. I saw the flowers, I laughed, I felt, I got to see a fragment of God’s love in a photo. Take a peek at these amazing images: what I am calling “The heART of God’s Love.”

http://pulptastic.com/16-flowers-that-look-like-something-else/

With love

Maxine

VULNERABLE WOMEN

Posted on by under Daughters, Emotional Injury, emotions, Expectations and Demands, Facade, Gender Wounds, God's Truth, Mothers, Uncategorized

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I went to beach today as many things have happened in the last few days that have brought up many different types of feelings in me: from anger, to fear, to sadness, to wonder, to joy, to relief. This is a relatively new experience: consciously choosing to connect with  my feelings, even the yucky ones. The sea seems to allow me better access to these feelings as well as some ponderings.

I sat on a large rock and was feeling some sadness about some things that happened to me as a child as a result of my mother’s anger and frustration at life. Thinking about her, myself and most of the women I come into contact with or observe I see how much we are holding on, how much we do not want to be or appear vulnerable in any way. The reasons for this are very old, of course. Thousands of years where we were treated as a second class citizens with no voice and not even the right to our own bodies. The amount of emotional injuries this has created in use through generations of women, what is passed onto us, and what we experience ourselves is massive. Even reading this will trigger many of you. But the truth is we need to feel it. The wounds around gender for men and women are many and deep: there is alot of repentance, anger and fear as well as huge amounts of grief for us to release. In fact, I believe if we could tackle the gender wounds the world would change beyond recognition.

For me, I have felt and continue to feel many things about gender. How I feel about women is affected by my relationship with my mother and how she feels about women and how my father feels about women. How I feel about men is affected by my father,  and how my mother feels about men. As a daughter I have felt my mother’s rage and I can feel how many women, including myself, have had a simmering rage in them about injustice, low self esteem, the way we are treated, not feeling heard or seen, or being treated as a sexual toy.  But the irony is, in our injured state we seemed to have shut down much of feminine nature. I am not talking about the desire to buy hundred of pairs of shoes, or straighten our hair. For me much of this is actually facade and/or avoidance of our true feelings.

So how have we dealt with our anger?

We have pretended we are not that angry. Instead we have learned to manipulate and control, using sex or other means. We “manage” the household so well, giving instructions left, right and center. Somewhere inside we feel if we control everything we will be safe and no one can hurt us. We become addicted to controlling our environment to feel safe and protected. If someone interferes, be it husband, child or another we feel threatened. It is then we may express our anger or just squash it down, bite our teeth and quietly project our anger out to whoever is in the way. We won’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

We fight back, become more like men ( or how we think men are) : tough, unemotional, free with our drinking and sexual behaviour. We convince ourselves we are equal, even when if we look deep inside, the messages from our environment are still permeating our soul: you are not so capable, you are not as strong, you are not as intelligent, your emotions are a weakness, you need to have sex with me to please me, to keep me; it is my right. We are afraid to be vulnerable.

We end up using our body and sex to manipulate and get what we want and then we deny the damage this has done to us. We are afraid to feel how casual sexual encounters or even dealing with sexual projections makes us feel. We don’t want to acknowledge our regrets or the affect on our self worth. We think if we act like men sexually, we are equal. But still for many in this world, we are not. But even men, are damaged by the false beliefs they are taught about sex. So it goes on, we do what we like, we deny how it made us feel, we don’t deal with what we really feel might be true. We are afraid to be vulnerable.

The irony is, in our efforts, to be “equal”, we become just like the injured men we dislike. We lose touch with our true feminine nature and the beauty of its expression. The irony is, the world needs this feminine nature to exist. It exists in God’s creation and it exists in us, and in men. The world needs our softness, our gentleness, our nuturing feelings, our feminine strength. The world and we need to allow all the gifts God gave us. So let’s admit we are afraid: of being hurt, humilated, and oppressed. Afraid that maybe what we have been told about being second class may be true: good for the kitchen, good for the bedroom and maybe not alot else. Of course, this is not true. In God’s eyes we are all her children: all equal, all equally loved and valued. It is our false beliefs, our wounded selves that created the untruths. To heal the wounded self, we need to be truthful about what we really feel, allow ourselves to feel it so that it can leave our soul and if you choose, pray for God’s help and love. ( For me things work quicker when I do that).

I have been the holder- on, the control freak, the silent angry, terrified woman projecting everywhere. I have been sexual injured many times in many ways and certainly not known how to love myself in this space. I walked in shame, blame and blamed. I have been tough, a survivor, a warrior, a fighter. What I haven’t been until now ( and it comes slowly) is myself, a woman loving and celebrating her vulnerability. What I haven’t been is powerfully gentle and soft. What I haven’t been is self- honouring and true to myself, not matter what pressure from outside forces. What I haven’t been is sexually free to say NO. Until now…. and now I am enjoying feeling the shift; I am enjoying finding out the truth of my anger, fear and grief; I am enjoying my recovery and discovery.

Even though this was written for and about women mostly, I know there is a similar journey for men. What a wonderful world it would be if we all did this: allowed ourselves to be vulnerable, to be open, to be truthful and to sit with each other as human beings, as children of God: accepting and accepted, loved and loving.

What a wonderful world it would be…