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/
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:
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
I haven’t written for a while as there are some changes happening and I am re-evaluating my blog – well my life actually. I have been taking some actions to help myself follow my desires, find work I love, find out more of who I am. I have been very busy and struggling at times with my 9-5, Monday to Friday job. Also, the last 15 months have been intense with things I have had to do for my son, who is an adult with Down’s syndrome. That story is a whole new post, but needless to say it has impacted life greatly and I have to look at my law of attraction and what it is really saying to me – not what I think it is saying.
I don’t find that easy, but the fact is I haven’t created much time to think about God or the Divine Truth teachings. I haven’t been able to help with the transcribing or watch many videos. What I have been doing is to keep challenging some comfort zones and have done a course to help me discover my desires and give me some tools for that. It has been really good. I have done some performance poetry, which I have loved and wrote to people I never would have done before. There has been fear and battles with apathy and/or addictions, but I keep finding a step to take and it feels good.
I am also connecting with people again and boy that brings you lots to learn about yourself, your fears, your addictions and your fears. Much more effective than hiding away – which I was doing for a few years.
I haven’t found time for everything and certainly still not spending enough time on things I love, and still emotionally resistance to feeling the deep stuff. I have discovered how important being present in my body is to feeling and realised how long I have been escaping out of my body to avoid feeling so now have some spinal work to see if that will help me unlock some emotions and of course I have to be willing.
I haven’t heard my guides for a while ( I don’t feel worthy a lot/resistance or in addiction, which prevents them helping me), but today I was sitting knitting ( a new hobby) and it stops me thinking and opens up another part of me and I started to write what I was “hearing” and got reminded that in all my busyness, my doing and trying, my intellectual working out of my issues, that I am still avoiding the big one: my relationship with God. Every time I have tried to do it, I stop as soon as I hit something, so my guides said that I need to prioritise above all else my relationship to God and all the things I am trying to and weighed down by will become clearer and easier. God’s love above all else will help me change my life. To feel my lack of faith, my blocks to God’s love are the biggest thing to focus on.
I have listened to this so many times from the DT talks, but like many, I keep going for the easier stuff ( or so it seems) as I don’t really know or have faith in the power of God’s love and I am afraid of it too. My guides gave me 4 pages of advice about this and then this is how it works. The law of attraction brought me a conversation with a friend, it triggered some emotions about men. I immediately went out for a walk, found a quiet country lane and stomped along swearing and ranting at God – so pissed at Him. I was rambling on like a mad woman until I actually ended up talking to my human father and crying about him and the feeling of never being good enough to be loved: touching the side of that deep fear that I am not lovable.
The funny thing is, I think of Divine Truth every day in some way and I wanted to write about the difference it has made in my life and I am not even on the Way yet, not properly. I haven’t opened to God’s love and I have lacked humility so many times. Yet, it has impacted my life hugely. What will it do when I really let God in?
So I thought I would write a list of how I feel Divine Truth teachings have helped me and changed my life already. For those of you who are curious maybe this will make you more curious. What I do want to do is acknowledge what it has done, with gratitude to Mary and Jesus (That’s me in 2013 – yellow top, just behind Mary and Jesus) for sharing what they know, with so much patience and compassion and for God, for creating such a system, that doesn’t let us get away with anything, but takes us to a place, a path, to our real, amazing selves. I am getting an inkling of me, a twinkling out of the corner of my eye, enough to make me look further. There are others such as Jesus and Mary, and the people like Aphraar ( see Robert James Lee trilogy on the extras page) who know more than me so do look there. In the meantime, here is what the DT teachings have done for me:
Many of these statements are just intellectual understandings for me at the moment, some are hopes that they may be true and a few have really hit home. When I first listened to Secrets of the Universe back in 2012 it really hit my soul that truth I had been seeking was here. I didn’t anticipate how much it would rock my world and uproot every belief and everything I thought I knew. Until recently, I built any self worth I had on my intellect and then to learn that my intellect meant so little and in fact I honestly had to admit my intellect alone had not found the answers or healing I was seeking. I have been and continue to be confronted with my own unlovingness, my own lies and self-delusion: in fact most of the things I have known have been shown to be wrong and boy do I resist the change, the challenge to my belief structures and hold onto fears and anger: anything to feel safe.
BUT I have not been happy in my so-called “safe” zones. I have been a shrivelled mask of my self, disconnected and disassociated from real love and life. With Divine truth I have seen things differently, experimented with new ways and admitted truths to myself and it has made me now think more carefully about my choices and my behaviour: asking what is really loving in this moment? What would Love do? What is God’s truth?
It turns out that God’s truth is that we are all very, very important; very, very loved and with a ton of potential to be amazing ten times over, once we choose to seek true Love. Divine truth has and is changing my life and this is with only small steps on my part. I observe others doing better on the path than me and so the changes in their lives are greater and for some reason I can never and do not want to let it go. There is nothing like these truths. This is not meant arrogantly: I have tried many other things and beliefs and nothing sparkles in my soul like this.
It has gifted me so much already and I don’t think I know it fully yet, but it has. My outlook on life has changed and now my actions are starting to follow in certain areas, at least. What we are seeking is already here. I hope in the next few years I can demonstrate more, and be walking my talk more than I am now. But whatever I do, you can choose to check it out for yourself and if you do I hope some of the things on these pages help you.
In gratitude,
Maxine
Dennis Arthur Falloon (My Dad/ Big brother)
My father recently passed and even though I know he continues his life, in his spirit body and that he is still the same man, really in the early stages of a life that will continue for a long time, I felt so many emotions because the story of me and my dad is complicated. I have gone from angry, confused, very sad and grieving and full of regret. I am still in the process of unravelling and allowing all this to move through me. It is coming in fits and starts. Not a river, but more like someone turning the tap on and then off again.
The other part of this is that lately God has been showing me in many law of attraction events that working through my block to Him in relation to how I feel about men and myself in relation to men is really vital right now, if I am to progress. The emotions and beliefs I currently hold are blocking me from my true Father. God’s truth is that the person I understand as my father is in fact an older brother, who had the role of caring and teaching me. I can say and understand this intellectually, but I don’t know this in my heart, which means I don’t know this at all. To think God is my father, to read this, to hear this from Jesus (in fact my dad stuff also affects how I feel about Jesus) – and Mary, is one thing, but to know this truth deep in my heart is really knowing it, really feeling it and that is an emotion I don’t have and in fact I am not yet truly convinced emotions will help me. It is in my thoughts a lot and maybe a few times in my life I have opened the door of my heart slightly to feel what this means, but mostly I can’t and I can’t because my experience of “father” has been difficult, confusing, frustrating and mostly painful and I have held on to the emotions, either in denial, resistance and/or fear.
How we feel about father, about men comes through the belief systems of our parents and environment. So how my mother feels about men, how my father feels about himself as well as other prominent people in our younger lives, whether it is grandparents, teachers or others. Some of these beliefs are generational and some from our parents experiences. Then to add to that are our experiences with our fathers and other men around as children, and how that effects future relationships with men. From those causes come the effects of how we relate to male relationships and how we view ourselves in those relationships. The most powerful effects come from us holding onto these emotions, suppressing them as children and then as adults. Sadly, most of us are trained to suppress our emotion, which means most of us are living in the fear and other negative emotions created from our childhood. Even if you think your childhood was okay, you may only have to examine your current life and your relationships to get an idea if you are carrying mistaken beliefs or error-based emotions in you.
For myself, I have a number of things I am clearly aware of and many others that have yet to come to light for me to fully understand and Jesus teaches that these awareness’s all need to be feelings and not just thoughts for me to really know why I do what I do.
My father was 22 when he married my mother, who was just turning 18 and most of my life I have heard my mother’s version of what happened in that marriage. She claimed my father was distant and violent. She described him pulling her down the stairs by her hair and other such stories all culminating in the day he left, well abandoned us, leaving my mum a single parent with two small children. This was about 8-9 years after they married. After he left at some point, mum and I and my younger brother, Dean moved into a caravan. We had very little money and I can remember mum begging the lady in the shop for some bread to give us some toast. My mum’s family did not help and apparently not my father either. During that period my mum had a male friend visit. He had been one of our neighbours in our previous house and was going through a divorce himself. It wasn’t too long before they decided to get married and within a year or so mum had had my other brother.
Mum was married to him for about 5 years or so and it was not a good time. I don’t remember my father’s violence, but I do remember my step-father’s. I remember my mother’s breakdown and suicide attempts were during this time ( probably what would now be post natal depression on top of the abuse that went on). We were all vigilant when he was there. He ruled the house through fear. At that time I was very grateful that we lived in the countryside and could roam out of the house most of the day. Also, at that time mum was friends with the vicar from our previous home. He was regular visitor and I went on brownie camps with him and others. There was something odd about him and I can remember some uncomfortable feelings around him and even writing this brings up fear in me.
This whole period wasn’t good, and many things happened: some I remember and a lot of it is still blanked out. I started to have regular nightmares, repetitive and frightening and ones that I felt I had to cope with alone. My mum got away from this marriage, when she met someone else and with his help and a couple of friends we were woken one night, put in a car in our night clothes and moved out of our home. We slept in the home of my mother’s new partner, who was to become my second step father and with two new step sisters. Like many in those days, we were not really told anything or asked how we were. We just had to accept the changes.
Out of all of my mother’s relationships this was probably the best. He wasn’t violent, but they were very focused on each other. Life did not settle and my mum still seemed affected, histrionic and unpredictable. I do not need to go into all that happened, but all I knew was I felt very alone, was often and continuing from my younger years, the parent/carer to my mother. I couldn’t wait to leave home.
My step father was very hot and cold and I never knew where I stood with him and there was period where he disappeared, left my mum in a meltdown and me caring for her and my two brothers. He had a strong belief that we all needed to earn our keep and when I was 10, in the first year we knew him I was cooking bar food in the kitchens of a pub we lived in and ran. It felt like we had to earn “love.”
So I could summarise my experiences of fathers as distant, disapproving, untrustworthy, weak, angry, frightening, abandoning, emotionally and physically absent, and never feeling good enough to be loved, love was very conditional on me being “good” in their eyes and earning the right to it. I felt very unseen and unheard and lost. I now realise this is how I feel about God. I have projected all my dad emotions onto Him, feeling his disapproval, distance, anger and feeling totally unloved and unlovable, like I am the only child he will never accept. So I think about wanting to receive God’s love, but with all these negative emotions I am too frightened to open my heart to my version of God.
On top of that I felt and heard all of my mother’s feelings and beliefs about men: they are weak, useless, selfish. A good man would provide for a woman, make her feel safe and secure. Mum was never satisfied with the finances we had. Being married was seen as proof of your “alrightness” as a woman. She indicated that sex was unpleasant and their physical bits ugly. Yet at the same time I had to act like a lady. I was not allowed to pass wind or swear and had to sit nicely, have long hair (that’s what men preferred). Lot’s of messages that I had to perform and present a facade of nice, good. Her ideal man for me would be someone earning a good amount of money and demonstrate his love to me with gifts and holidays etc. That was her dream really, one she never got.
I have told you all this just to give an example of some of the beliefs and emotions that effected me and many of you will relate to too and it was through all these filters, all these beliefs and all the damaging emotions from these experiences that I went out into the world with. I had also gone to an all girls school, had no confidence in myself and so the idea of men and relationship terrified me. I was too terrified to touch myself, let alone let someone do it. Mum had made me feel ashamed and scared of my own body and feelings and other childhood experiences had left me with no real sense of myself or my boundaries and many dark moments happened from that space.
My father had left when I was 4 or 5 and I didn’t hear from him until I had left home, was living in London aged 19. I had a call out of the blue. We met up. I remember two visits and some letters and I can’t remember what happened, but at some point he disappeared from my life again. As the years went by there were two occasions when I turned up at his house out of the blue. One time, when my brother wanted to meet him, and another when my son was about 2 or 3. Each time we would have contact for a while and for one reason or another he seemed to disappear again. So the last time I saw him physically was about 20 years ago. In the last 3 years my brother contacted him and met up with him and he and his family even went to stay with my father for a few days. I wasn’t asked to join them, but I did start an email communication with my father. The last email was last summer when I told him I had had the all clear from cancer, he replied and I replied to him, but then he didn’t reply back. What I didn’t know was that about that time he was being diagnosed with cancer, but one that he never recovered from and so he passed just over two weeks ago.
After my father left us, he did meet someone, remarried and had two more sons. These two sons were the ones who decided we needed to be told our father had passed and they have been truly kind and understanding and invited Dean and I to the funeral last week. It has been a rollercoaster of emotions and also we have discovered lots about our father we didn’t know. He had many friends and family at his funeral and he was described as gentle, loving children and nature. I felt immense grief and still do. I am very sad that we didn’t get to know each other better; I am very sad that many years were wasted because of my fears and hurt, but also because of my father’s hurt too. He would come towards us, but then for whatever reason back away again so that I felt unloved and unaccepted again and again. I also felt that because I look like my mother, he could not see beyond that to ME. He was very traumatised by what happened with my mother and is the reason he said that he could not maintain contact with us – it was like he was afraid of her and her behaviour.
The information we have had about dad certainly changes the story my mother has relayed all these years and she did not respond well to knowing we wanted to go to his funeral, meaning that my father’s passing has also triggered some dark emotions about my mother and how much she was a block to us getting to know and have some sort of relationship with our father and how she may have manipulated the truth because of her own fears and anger. I am struggling to put all the pieces together, and can only now continue to let myself fall into the emotions that arise from all this. I am switching between romanticising my father, to trying to see the truth and to find the balance, as well as not blaming myself for not contacting him, even though I can see I was avoiding another “rejection.” But it has been really good to find out more, to feel things and to want to continue to.
It has made me acutely aware of the filters through which we see and feel things and how as children we absorb emotionally so much, so many beliefs and so many emotions from our parents: all of it obscuring the truth. I want to be able to separate God (as father) from my father as my father (rather than the older brother who was given the opportunity to be my temporary father, guide and teacher). I want to be able to separate my feelings about my earthly father from my heavenly Father, but I can’t right now. It is all overlapping and difficult, but it is just as it is and until I feel more about my father and my relationship with him and my step-fathers it won’t happen.
I am also learning that thinking something really doesn’t work. I am a great thinker, I have spent much of my life in my head, trying to figure things out and getting exhausted in the process so I know it doesn’t work. It may give a temporary fix- up, but it is a plaster over a gaping wound and the only thing that will heal that gaping wound will be to open up that wound and let all the pus (feelings) out so that it is clean and ready to let in truth and heal. I was a nurse and I know how wounds heal; I know we have to clean them to allow the new cells to grow. If we don’t clean out the yucky stuff there is no room for the new. It is the same with the error/emotional damage in us; it is the pus, that once removed allows us to feel the truth of a situation and that is what sets us free.
So through the process of allowing feelings to move through us, however long they may have been in us. If I allow this now about my father, I will find out the truth about him, but also most powerfully, I will understand better who my true Father is and then and only then will I develop trust that he loves me and wants to give me His love and then I will let it in.
It is very easy to look at this spiritual path I have found – The Way of God’s Love, and say yes I want to feel God’s love, but the truth is I don’t right now. Because of the injuries I have around fathers (and subsequently men) I feel too afraid to let God’s love in, or even trust that God loves me and wants to give me His Love.
Today I heard Jesus say that we are often putting all our energy into trying to change ourselves in order to receive God’s love. We have got it all wrong, because it is receiving God’s Love that will change us, transform us. So starting with trying to change ourselves – which is bloody hard work, exhausting and often pointless, because we are often coming from our minds and willpower – we should be looking at what stops us emotionally from letting God’s love in NOW and then working through those beliefs and emotions so that we can then let this Love in and let God transform us.
The penny finally dropped with me today on that! I have been so addicted to trying to improve myself, to be perfect so that my parents might love me and accept me, I have not seen the truth of allowing God’s power to transform me and therefore not seen the true power of humility (having a passionate longing to feel all my beliefs and emotions all of the time, no matter what anyone else thinks or feels).
The other wonderful thing is that God knows which emotions I am able to deal with right now and shows me daily by the law of attraction what ones to focus on, so I don’t even need to mentally work that out! All I need to do is pay attention and be willing to feel what comes up.
So for me this time with my dad and about my dad is an incredible opportunity to experience emotions I have had buried for a long time. I have gained some understanding this week about my father, but I can feel I have much more inside. So I pray to go there, to have the courage to do it and be grateful for all that comes.
So if you are struggling to with how you feel about God – that you doubt He is even there; that if He is he is just to awful or frightening, take time to list all the things you feel about Him and then have the honesty and willingness to see that all the things you feel are how you may feel about your parents or other adults around you (including religious ones) and try to separate God from that as you do. I have longed all my life for a father who loved me totally and unconditionally, who found something special in me, accepted me, and wanted the best for me. Because of my emotional injuries, I have tried to make my father something he wasn’t or even in the times he may have tried to do this not believed he did and I do need to find some peace through this by releasing emotions. However, the crazy thing is my dream father does exist and has done all along: my true Father God and when I get to feel this truly – wow! What a day that will be!
But in the meantime, I continue to search emotionally with and for my earthly father (probably in error and truth in different moments) and I hope through my own mediumship and emotions that I may talk to him again at some point. Or maybe I won’t need to if I feel the emotions, who knows? And I have a process of forgiveness and repentance to go through too. I do wish him well though, and I do hope he seeks his true Father too. I am still dreaming I can feel… that is where I am at…
Dennis Arthur Falloon, may you ask and it will be given to you: seek and you will find: knock and the door will be opened for you. Have courage and walk with the light ones.
For me, softening, desire, honesty and courage are required. I am fortunate enough to even have an awareness of all these different things as taught by Jesus and Mary: they have given detailed instruction on how to clean that wound – it’s all a case of whether I really listen and act accordingly, or even want to. I feel my journey with my father/Father will continue for some time, all dependent on my own will, but in the meantime I hope my own reflections help you with your own.
FATHER
When I was 5 you came to bring us gifts of love
Made with your own two hands.
A garage for my brother and a dolls house for me,
But I had a sinking feeling,
A look on your face, I didn’t want to see.
You knelt and spoke and I felt so sad,
Like my heart would break in two
As you walked back to your car.
My heart cried out, “Do you feel it too?”
I lost you that day for a further 15 years,
But I am sure I didn’t even cry or let out tears.
Because life got tough and no one replaced you.
In fact, I spent my time hoping it wasn’t all true.
So after 15 years you called me on the phone,
I was shocked, afraid, but hopeful,
I’d been feeling so alone.
We met, we talked, but it wasn’t simple.
I carried my scars and fears on the way,
You didn’t really understand
And you disappeared again one day.
This happened again and again through all my adult years.
I didn’t know how to be myself;
I longed for acceptance from you.
But I constantly felt rejected,
Even if it wasn’t true.
I wish you had persevered
And not given up on me.
I wish we could talk right now,
Because I can finally see.
I saw our story through my mother’s eyes
And other hurt that happened,
Didn’t make me wise.
You also had your story so you sometimes locked up your heart
And now I struggle to understand
What happened, what wasted times
Were spent apart.
Cause a part of me from long ago
The little me I feel
Turned into woman now, is still not able to heal.
Because I still wish for you and hold you in my heart
Mixed up with bewilderment
Of why we were kept apart.
So now you have passed through the mists
To the other side,
I pray to feel the emotions
I have kept locked up inside.
To grieve all the broken dreams of you,
And set myself free,
So that maybe one day
We can talk again and you will sit with me.
That we will find peace with this,
And can let each other go,
And be as God intended
As only He can know.
May we know our brother-sisterhood,
Instead of clinging on to pain.
And knowing our true Father
Can love each other freely,
Without self-gain.
I’m sorry that it couldn’t be
What it was meant to be,
But I have some faith, that one day I will know
That God loves me truly
As he does you too:
Where-ever we go,
Whatever we do.
We are both his children.
And to feel that deep inside,
Will be the greatest gift of all.
Where true love does reside.
@Maxine Bell 2017
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!):
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
Once upon a time there was the Great Seamstress. She lived in a place far, far, away, but with the eyesight that could see far and wide, and yet could also thread the thinnest cotton through the tiniest eye of the smallest needle. This Great Seamstress had always existed and only she knew the secret of her existence. For many, many years she had been gathering threads of every colour, making needles of every size and printed fabrics of every design she could think of. She had a plan, a most incredible plan that would change her life forever. For a long time now, the Great Seamstress had been sewing alone and had created many beautiful things in the first stages of her plan.
She had stitched a huge black fabric, and weaved into it circles and spirals of colours, and small sparkles of gold and silver that created light against the dark. Amongst the dark, were also many wonderful circular planets of different shades and colours and one particularly special circle that stood out among the rest, because of its vibrancy.
On this planet, which she called earth, she had stitched many blue and green fabrics in swirls and waves to make the sea; she had sewed white and violet clouds into the sky, as well as a yellow circle, she called sun that was so bright it lit up everything around it. Her needle had gone up and down millions of times creating tiny delicate flowers in many colours into the grass, which had been made from thousands of stitches in greens and browns. From there, sprouted small and large trees made in rougher fabrics and tiny leaves in many different, intricate patterns and shapes for the Great Seamstress loved variety.
As the patterns grew, grey, red and brown rocks appeared in solid, thick fabrics with translucent blue rivers running over and around them. Some were big enough to create magnificent mountains. In other parts the land shapes were in yellows and ochre, soft hills of sand. As she sewed the Great Seamstress was pleased with her work and was having great fun in her creating. She began to add more and more shapes, more stitching, more hues so that more and more plant shapes were formed, more landscapes of every variety made. Her work was good, very good indeed.
She looked at her design. Here was a place to live. But who was to live there? One of the secrets of the Great Seamstress was her heart. It was a heart that spanned time and space, that grew infinitely and was so full and overflowing with love that she wanted to share this love with others; others that would be creators like her, others that could enjoy the playground she had so lovingly made, stitch by stitch. She formed a plan and she looked inside herself, for the Great Seamstress held another secret and that secret was that she was also a Great Tailor. She possessed the qualities of the imagination and skill of a Seamstress as well as the practical and mathematical skills of a tailor.
She now knew who she would like to share her love with: she would make many, many little seamstresses and tailors, who could learn how to sew, and in time become as good as she was at creating and together create a great and magnificent tapestry. She knew that as they grew, that through her magic, more threads and fabrics would be created and she would put no limits on their potential, as long as they worked with love, as she did. She grew very excited and in no time at all the first little seamstresses and tailors were born. The purpose of their life would be to learn about the greatest of all things, love and to discover their individuality, for each seamstress and tailor was capable of making their own unique part of the tapestry.
And because the Great Seamstress knew the love of her own Great Tailor, she made it so that each individual was half of one picture and when they found the other half of the image they were to make, it would bring them an even more blissful and wondrous life as one work of art. Each work of art would be one piece of the Great Tapestry of life so that she could share her love and the spark of life and existence with all of them and as they became more and more skilled in their making, the tapestry would become more and more beautiful.
However, the Great Seamstress was also very, very wise as well as loving and she knew that to truly allow her little seamstresses and tailors real creativity and growth they would need to complete freedom to experiment and discover the wisest and most beautiful ways to stitch. She also knew that would make mistakes and some may even want to destroy what they making, not being able to see the potential of what could be and that they would even forget the Great Seamstress herself.
Before they came into being, to start stitching, she had already anticipated the mistakes that would be made and she had used her magic and her love to make laws that would allow her little ones to see their mistakes and encourage them try a new stitch, or a different stitch, one that would lead them back to her love and to their own potential. Those little seamstresses and tailors that progressed would learn over time about these magic laws and know how to follow them and they would not be afraid to ask the Great Seamstress for her love and help. Some of the little Ones would, however, take a bit longer to learn, would refuse her help, and would make more mistakes, before they realised the right and better way to sew their life into the beauty she had planned for them.
But the Great Seamstress was in no hurry. She would wait for eons, for all her little seamstresses and little tailors. She would rejoice in their triumphs and wait patiently during their mistakes, quietly and gently guiding them back onto the right path. For she loved her little Ones greatly, and wanted them to all to find a blissful life where they could truly express and create their uniqueness, where the stitches that made, fabrics that they used, would make a beautiful, sparkling, everlasting tapestry together, that they all could enjoy.
And so whether you are a little seamstress or a little tailor, please know that even if you think you have forgotten to sew, you never truly can. It is in your very beingness that the Great Seamstress created you to sew, to find your other half and to find the Great Seamstress herself. Sometimes she may seem unreachable, but that is just our own insecurity, because she is always there, always waiting and always loving you very, very much. So do not give up hope, but know that you are a very, very important co-creator of your uniqueness and part of the Great Tapestry of Love, so keep sewing, one stitch at a time; one stitch closer to your Self and one stitch closer to the great Love of the Great Seamstress herself.
@Maxine Bell 2017
Note to self, but also a sharing for those of you interested and curious about why the Divine Love Path ( The Way) is so amazing. Written by Eloisa, who is more progressed in Love than I am ( this is no judgement on self – just the truth) and so is writing from her own experience all the big pluses of being building a relationship with God…
I notice that Jesus & Mary always help us to see and understand the benefits of applying Principle’s of God’s Truth to our lives and I am seeing how this helps to inspire personal desire to try stuff in my own life.
This blog is just to share how awesome I feel it is when I do have a go at applying Principle’s of God’s Truth to my life, or even have an intention to do so! (I am presently going through an excited patch of discovery, smile).
A few of the benefits I have discovered of experimenting with honouring God’s Truth, having an intention to live in harmony with God’s Laws and aspiring to Love as God Loves are as follows:
You learn HEAPS about yourself (your whole soul – as you open up to it), others, children, God; actually as much and about as many subjects as you…
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This summer has been extremely busy for me. I have been working and selling and packing up my bits to move to a smaller – and more importantly cheaper place to live. But mostly, I have had the task of helping my son set up his new life following his graduation from college where he achieved an NVQ in Hospitality as well as a number of other qualifications and certificates. He has worked hard for three years at the most progressive college in the UK, as far as I can see: Foxes Academy.
I drove round hundreds of miles to check out different colleges, but nothing stood out like Foxes and when we visited I got that feeling right in my gut that lets me know: this is it! This is the place! (Or the person or the thing to do) When it comes to my gut feelings about Ben it has always worked out. I have fought many a professional, found my voice on behalf of him many, many times and followed my gut, listened to my heart, had faith and quietened the fears created by professional opinion and “realism.”
I have spoken up on his behalf much better than I have for myself. I have discovered a strong assertiveness and determination with regards to helping him create a meaningful and happy life more than I have for myself. On reflection, this is an error, as in God’s eyes I am no less important than Ben; in God’s eye’s I am equally loved and equally have the right to a happy and meaningful life. Intellectually I get that; emotionally I have yet to. But that will come – when the error is released.
In the meantime, Ben has not had the ability to speak up as he would have needed to or access to the right information or understanding to fight for his own needs because Ben has Down’s syndrome. He has had to grow and learn and experience in a body and brain messed up by an extra chromosome – well that is the physical cause. The emotional and soul based cause is multi-generational, including myself and his father: error based emotions eventually impacting the physical world so much as to “disable” a potential healthy human body, which in turn impacts the soul. Of course we have the potential to help our children to heal by correcting the emotional error and false beliefs in ourselves.
However, I did want to talk too much about Ben’s dis-ability, but rather his capability. I am not trying to brush over the struggles and pains of having a disability or of being a parent, but this summer, I have just felt the beauty in Ben, the silver lining, the way God uses every situation to Love – and I wanted to share it. I may have been Ben’s voice many times; I may have drudged my way through a ton of paperwork, phone calls and meetings to get basic rights for him whilst ignoring the doctor’s so-called predictions of what he wouldn’t be able to do, but in the end it has been Ben who has done it.
The truth is Ben has proven them wrong many times: crashing through their thinly disguised pessimism. The truth is Ben has a soul based knowing at times uninhibited by fears of looking silly or sounding ridiculous. The truth is he like many people with learning disabilities, smash through our complicated thinking with a simple, heart-felt answer to the big questions about life and love. The truth is I may have helped Ben at times, but he has helped me and others in deeper, more meaningful ways ten-fold over.
What I find amazing is that even though it is human error and arrogance that has caused these problems, a gift has been created for us and in this gift is another demonstration of Love – the love of God: pure, simple and powerful. This is what I want to demonstrate today.
For my son it is not an easy at times: he is frustrated he cannot speak clearly and be understood easily. He has limits on his intelligence that mean he cannot just go out in the world independently – he has to rely on the help of others. His dreams are restricted compared to others of the same age. For instant, he cannot just hop on a plane to Japan if he wishes; he cannot go to the bank and sort out a mortgage.
In our materialistic, economy-based Western world he is unlikely to be seen as a success because he is unable to earn lots of money to plough back into the money market, or become a celebrity, or get a degree in Astro-physics and design a rocket to Mars. We have encountered people who ask what a person like Ben can contribute to society. Are they just not a drain on the economy? (This included a cardiologist we once met in a famous London hospital!).
There are two reasons this is both arrogant and ignorant. Firstly, Ben did not choose this. He did not choose to be born in this body; he did not choose to have a learning disability or a heart defect or poor eyesight or poor speech. It is not his fault. Ben has to try to survive against the odds in many ways and has no choice, but to need help. He is part of the most vulnerable in society – not by choice, not by harming himself or others, but just by being born as he is.
Secondly, not realising what Ben and people like contribute is to really lose touch with what being human is or created to be. To value only the material, the physical, the monetary is empty: a house built on sand. Ben demonstrates every day his humanity, his love, his openness, his free spirit. He is as capable of being inhibited by external forces; including me of course as any person is, but mostly, I have tried to allow him to just be him: loving, cheeky, fun, kind and brave.
Ben demonstrates to me how to let love flow through you, he reminded me how to be silly again. He taught me spontaneity, living in the moment, how to be free in that moment. I let go a bit with him. I happily would sing out loud on my way down and around the shops with him in his buggy. We would make up songs and rhymes to teach him colours, numbers, shapes, animals. I sang “Chitty, chitty, bang, bang” for hours and hours.
He gave me a chance to love freely. My heart skipped a beat to watch him sleep, to wonder at this miracle of life that lay before me. When he was born, it was traumatic – discovering he had Down’s syndrome. It was traumatic that first year before the holes in his heart were repaired. But I always loved him from the womb all the way through. My heart ached, not knowing what he or we were going to go through, but I knew he was innocent and he needed care. I was a single parent, for most of the first ten years. It was tough at times: I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to love myself, so loving someone else wasn’t always possible.
I would struggle, but then the magic would happen. A trip to the supermarket became a dance down the aisles or me running about picking up clothes he was trying to remove. Nothing was “normal” and yet it felt more alive than normal. He walked three years earlier than they predicted: he was out of nappies three years earlier than they predicted. He loved to dance and sing. We had our own secret sign for music. He walked further than they said he would. He was incredibly fit following his surgery; he never got fat and he never had mucus and the hearing loss they predicted.
He was and is a near- fearless climber, loves to free-run, break dance and can drum for hours. He learns the drums by listening to music over and over, repeating it many times until he knows it. He can recognise a song from the first two notes. He is a romantic and loves feeling “in love.” He wants to marry one day. He is a stronger and braver swimmer than I and a good athlete. He is incredibly perceptive about people and his reaction to someone says a lot.
Music, sports and food are his loves. When he eats he does not talk and will not talk with you. Instead, he sits and tastes passionately every mouthful. If he goes out for the day, the first thing he will tell you is what he had to eat.
At college he was challenged to go beyond any previous pre-conceptions of what an adult with a learning disability can do. For years, post 16/18 education has been much the same old thing: life skills, gardening, craft and animal care, possibly a bit of catering. There was no particular goal except to teach some life skills and give them something to do for 3-5 years. Foxes have a different view: they are getting them ready to have a life – to live as independently as possible, to find meaningful work and interests and relationships, including love and sex relationships. Foxes are all about outcomes.
Since he left for college 3 years ago, I went on quite a journey within myself: a grieving and a lot of facing some harsh truths about my parenting. I tried to be the parent I didn’t receive myself, but not having a clue I have made many mistakes. When he left for college I spent a day sorting through the 5 boxes of paperwork from his years in education and the health system. It took over 3 hours to burn it and I cried over most of the papers I read through. I told myself I was letting go, but it took a bit longer than that and in truth, is ongoing.
The first two terms Ben did well, settled in, enjoyed his work and social life, but he also had some problems with a girlfriend who was controlling and bossy and was easily influenced by others. He came home for the holidays and we had some sticky moments. It took a while for the penny to drop, but I started to see that I was micro-managing too much – in fact trying to control his choices, as well as project demands at him. At times he was aggressive with me and/or himself. I was doing too much for him and expecting him to fulfil emotional “holes” I needed to fill myself. I started to see I was harming him and what I was calling love wasn’t.
Over the next few months I focused on “un-hooking”, watching out for my addictions with him and try to own the feelings and fears. It wasn’t all perfect, but goodness a change happened in him. At college, the penny dropped that he was there for himself, for his own aspirations and dreams. He started to do much better and cope much better with the challenges that came. Last year he was second outstanding learner and he has come out more mature, more confident and capable. He is bold and decisive and chose a new life, living with a friend, away from me, with support workers to help him. He was fully involved in interviewing and choosing his support workers and we are currently settling him into his new life.
I still have to watch myself, to step back. I encourage Ben to tell me when I am being to bossy or interfering, when he wants me to not be around or not to help. We are really working on a more honest relationship and he is speaking up more clearly and assertively. His courage is incredible and I am honoured to see this young man grow. He has such character, such a sense of fun and incredible love in him. He also shows a perception about life and talks about wanting to teach others how to have an open heart.
I feel stiff next to him. I can feel the walls around my heart built up from my injuries – from my childhood and what has happened since. Yet I have this son – well God’s son, this soul in my guardianship demonstrating to me that opening is the way forward. He is lighter and freer than I and I long to feel that.
As parents of children with disabilities, the trauma of discovering your child is not quite what you thought, what you may have been through with them – through illness, or schools or other care needs creates a strong protectiveness. We can feel them so vulnerable that our fears and unshed tears drive our actions, which we may think of as love, but isn’t always, especially as emerging adults. We can feel an internal pressure to make them feel okay, to feel better because we don’t want to feel vulnerable about them ourselves – somewhere inside we may know unconsciously we have some responsibility for what has happened. Whatever our feelings, and for their sakes, we need to own our emotions – our fears, our grief, our anger, feeling overwhelmed, exhausted – we need to be brave and honest and unselfish. Like any adult, they need room to breathe, to explore and to experiment. They need room to make mistakes and learn how to cope with that and to learn to live in a world they probably don’t really get, but one they can benefit from given the right help balanced with the right freedom to choose and live.
We must not patronise them, they are great teachers:
Ben’s bravery shows me I need to be braver.
Ben’s openness shows me the freedom in breaking down those walls around my heart.
Ben’s spontaneity and joy is there for my inner child to awaken again.
Ben’s pleasure in simple, everyday things demonstrates an unspoken gratitude and acceptance.
Ben is happy in his own skin, happy to say he is handsome, he is a dude, and he is a good dancer. He is not obsessed in judging his body as I have mine. He is just “this is me and this is okay.”
For Ben, life is now, in this moment – whether it is eating something delicious, doing a cartwheel, drumming to Muse, or singing along to Lazy Town. He is not wasting energy mentally fretting over yesterday or tomorrow. The only real time for him is now and therefore he gains more from the moment than I do.
Ben has compassion. He is not happy to see a man sleeping in a doorway, or a child screaming or a dog yelping. He “feels it in his heart” that something is not okay and he wants to change it – with Love and kindness.
Because of all this, Ben is closer to God than I at the moment. These qualities he demonstrates are qualities and attributes of God. There is the gift: God appears in many ways, through many people and the way they live their lives. Even in what can seem a tragedy to many, God finds ways to express and demonstrate Love, to help us see where we can improve, where we can be more honest and reflective, to create change.
I don’t believe we have to have a world with people with Down’s syndrome or other disabilities to demonstrate all these qualities or to bring out these qualities in ourselves. This is unloving as having a disability is not easy and I have seen grief and confusion in Ben at being “different,” but until we learn we have a choice in all these things, until we turn to God more and our own spirituality and soul, we can be good guardians to these brothers and sisters, whose worth is equal to our own. They often help us open our heart, have more compassion and understanding.
They can give us a taste of our Father, a doorway to heaven, by their own demonstration of love, fun and kindness, but also by what they bring out in us: patience, tolerance, humour, love, compassion and kindness.
In many ways, Ben is a man and in many ways he is Peter Pan – never growing up. But I sense none of us really understand what being grown up is. We live in a world of injured souls, whose need to control their environment and “manage” life is seen as being an adult. So in this way, Ben helps me question my own “adulthood”, my addiction to control, to avoid fear, what true responsibility is.
Maybe the Peter Pan’s of this world remind us of what Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.”
(Matthew 19:14)
So thank you Ben, and all the “Ben’s” out there. In adversity, you shine, with no self-pity. In a controlled world obsessed with what others think, you dance and sing, no matter what; you are freer. In a world full of competitiveness and hierarchy you only see equality; no man lesser than yourself. And most importantly, in a harsh world – you love.
love Maxine “mum”
Events, reflections, feelings and then…. a poem on a subject I am “in utero” on…. in so trying to imagine the true greatness of Divine Truth is beyond me as yet…. but still.. partly felt, partly imagined.. it’s a start…
A Gift more precious than Gold, from God
A Love greater than we can imagine
A flower as strong and beautiful as an orchid
Outstanding when seen, experienced.
A treasure beyond our understanding
To be held close to our hearts
Away from the dust; a mirror to our errors. ..
This Truth is.
Not a joke, or way to boost our morale..
Not a thing to help us avoid our pain,
Our low self worth; our hopelessness.
Not a tool to build up our value above
And beyond our brothers and sisters,
Or ride on the facade wave of intellect
And self importance.
Not this .. this Truth.
An eternal light,
Shining in darkness,
Capable of banishing it all.
An honour to discover; to seek; to find.
A reflection of the glory of its Creator.
Permeating all Creation,
Holding hands with True Love,
This Truth it is.
Not to be abused or used,
But to be ever sought.
Not to be taken lightly
In the measure of its worth.
Nor misinterpreted by egoic self absorption.
But held as a torch for the narrow path,
To God and Love
This truth.
Eternal, unchanging,
A song of Love and adoration
An education
From the Father of All
A Way: The Way
To know Him, Her, Our God..
With this Truth…
Beautiful, light, bright,shining…
Absolute…
Divine Truth.
Maxine Bell 2016
There are precious moments in some of my days when I feel I can touch the edges of heaven. Moments that come unexpectedly. I close my eyes and breath in these moments and hold onto them, breath them in.Sometimes it is words I have read or heard, a movie I have watched, music I have heard or the beauty of the natural world, that grasp my hand and heart and drift into my soul where the echo of knowing that these things truly are. It’s not easy to put feelings into words, but there is a longing, a yearning and yet a faint memory from sleep state and dreams of other places: beautiful places, familiar and waiting. Greater hopes and the building blocks of faith start here, and my heart sighs with wonder and relief that these things are, these places exist and most of all that the Universe we live in beats with the pulse of Love in all that is created.
I used to remember these places more clearly in my sleep state and now it is rare, sadly, but there are other sources of information that allow me to dream and know. what I can see clearly, as what I have experienced seems so small compared to the expanse indicated. There has been a more consistent shift in me to really feel the truth of life that goes beyond the grave, the infinite possibilities of such a life, the infinite possibility of a life I can have,even here on earth . This awareness helps me pull myself out of false beliefs and negative influence a bit quicker to search for God’s truth on the matter. I have been wondering about the truth of God, looking for evidence, that He is good, loving, kind and steadfast. I have been remembering those places that I can see sometimes in my third eye. I have been reading wonderful books that reveal more of God, more of the full story of life, of love. Funny things like making a poster to tell me that God’s truth is I am “the most wondrous of his creations.” Some of you may think this is a comfort blanket, but for me it is important. I have believed so much bad of myself, so much of what I was told I have believed to be true – that I am unimportant, bad, never good enough. I have believed it so much it has become destructive addictions that have made my life a painful existence instead of a fully vibrant life of discovery, joy and love. I have believed what my injured parents told me, when they only spoke through injury not truth. And living in these false beliefs, especially as addictions, is just a way to avoid the truth that maybe God sees me as wonderful and a tender child of His. It helps me avoid the grief I need to feel about all those projections, all the fears I have that it may have been true.
I need to re-educate my hurt self and to discover truth beyond what this wounded world shows me. The funny thing is the evidence is all around me, under the dust and dirt of this world. It is like when I walk on paving stones and then discover a small flower growing through the cracks: strong, vulnerable beauty pushing up to be seen. I wonder at it’s little power, it continual effort to exist and remind me of what is real. Only love can create that; the light in the darkness.
I am on my second reading of the Robert James Lee Trilogy of channelled books. Lee channels a spirit called Aphraar (Frederick Winterleigh whilst on earth). Aphraar has a passion to share the truth about the spirit world and earth with the world and tells the story of his passing and his existence and experiences in the spirit world, in order for us to have a greater understanding of what life and all it’s wondrous possibilities is about and tell the truth about God. I find reading them just breathtaking at times. The truths shared, the images created, the love revealed behind what he experiences and observes in spirit world just wonderful. Even in the darkest corners of hell Love acts, waits and hopes. For me, these books, reach into my heart and my imagination of what is possible and what is already existing for many. I also, know that my understanding of what he is telling is minimal to the true wonder of it all.
And why should I believe these books? Many would dismiss them as having no evidence in fact. But what arrogance do we speak from? What gods so we believe ourselves to be in that because we have not seen it ourselves or touched it, it is not real. We can’t see air, but it exists. I can’t see the world is round so I have to trust that the photos I have seen, what others have seen make be true. There are many things I have not experienced myself, but I know to be true through other people’s evidence. All I know is I have a feeling about the books that let me believe what I read. My soul is touched by the love demonstrated, but also by the sense and logic in the tales of the different lives of different spirits- from those earthbound to those living in the heavens. I have also spoken to spirits through mediumship so my experience has given me evidence of their existence, of life beyond the grave.
We are just afraid often by things we don’t understand and we live in it. Yet, there is so much to discover and I am grateful for these moments, these precious moments. One of my favourite chapters in the first book – “Through the Mists,” is the chapter about a poetess. It is a poetess that Aphraar was inspired by in his earth life and now gets to meet in spirit world. She demonstrated great faith in her poetry and helped his own faith in times when he felt very alone in his pursuits. In this chapter, Aphraar describes her home “like a realised dream in which some weary painter, musician or poet had sought – and found – rest.” He describes the gardens:
“Here, Color had wooed, won, and lived in sweet fidelity with Music. Before me lay the natal bowers of Beauty, Enchantment, Harmony, Grace and Rhythm, each of whom held court in one or other of the hundred odorous halls of grove, or hill or mountain.Echo and Song chanted roundelay upon the heights for which the lake rippled its approbation in silvern tones; birds of dreamlike plummage warbled their anthems of evergreen luxuriance..the heavens unrolled their canopy of atmospheric tones and tints which have no names or counterparts on earth.” This is not the Nature of earth – it is beyond that in beauty and grace. As a painter and a lover of nature, I tried to imagine this place. It was like one of those photo-shop images I have seen: more vibrant, more alive, more harmonious. The ones I have posted and others have groaned “oh that’s been photo-shopped.” A groan of despair that such a place could ever truly exist. But why not? Why stay stuck believing “What the eye can’t see…” What would a blind man say to that?
As I read this description for the second and then third time I felt my breath, my eyes close to “see” such a place. I remembered my sleep state experiences where I have visited, in the past, different places, but two in particular stand out as places I have been to many times. One, I sit by a river, with huge stones in it, the water dancing over them. There is small green bridge. The grass on either bank is a dark, but vivid, lush green: a thick warm rug underneath me. I am sitting by an old tree, looking out and up to beautiful mountains in the distance; the sky is blue and the light bright. I feel peaceful here and sometimes animals come and visit.it is so alive! In the background I can hear children’s laughter. Flowers grow among the grass, and happiness is a regular companion.
The other place is a small, sandy beach surrounded by tropical plants and forests. There is wooden hut there, with beautiful hangings. Again I am surrounded by beautiful mountains too, which rise up around and beyond the water. The sand is warm and dolphins greet me, playfully from the sea, which is deep and wide, light dancing off it’s surface. I often sit just letting sand trickle through my fingers, reflecting, breathing, resting. I haven’t been there for a while.
In the previous chapter, Aphraar has discovered that when we sleep on earth, our spirit bodies do travel and do have real experiences and he has just be reacquainted with many friends, many people who he helped when he was on earth. He has remembered all of his sleep state and so is now meeting those he knew then. The poet is one of them. Her poems had “been almost my only companions in the solitude of earth life. She seemed to understand life, as I knew it, with its deep soul longings and unalleviated heartaches, like an almost kindred soul, but she had conquered and found a calm for which I vainly searched.” He discovered after her death that her upbringing had been “an education in the ministry of love,” as her father’s faith was deep. She related her own growing faith and closeness to God in her poetry and she inspired Aphraar to have faith as “she glided heavenward she sang- told all her deep experiences, reflected back again the sunlight which fell upon her soul, thus her voice came with wonderfully soothing influence upon the storms and troubles which encompassed me.” And now here he was on the same level – both passed from earth and experiencing the spirit life and he shares his wonderful experience meeting her again and learning what she had to teach.
She shares that despite her faith when she passed she had to realise the error of some of her beliefs that she would travel straight to God, to the highest heavens. She describes her experience of learning that we must climb step by step carefully and embrace each step, waiting for God to know when it is right for us to climb higher. There is a portion of a beautiful poem called “Waiting.” (p189). It ends in the book: ( though this is not the full poem)
“Oh, the vision would o’er power us,/ If it suddenly were given/ So we wait in preparation/ In the vestibule of heaven.” Aphraar was memorized and thrilled by her reading of her poetry, done with such longing and passion. He describes “Her recital was a calm confession of trust in God…she lingered over each recurring ‘waiting’ as if she drew from its deep spring the full sweetness of the assurance that ‘they too serve who only stand and wait,’ and was reluctant to turn away from the refreshing draught. She had forgotten me – everything save her God…” He was speechless for a while, in the presence of her ecstasy.
When they converse again, she shares her knowledge of the many stages of progression to God, that they may be infinite. She lives in a beautiful home already, but knows she can not even fully comprehend the beauty that is to come as she grows closer to God, even though some of her friends have tried to describe it. He asks, “When you think of such a consummation, do you not wish for the intervening stages to hasten by that you may obtain it?”
“Yes; and yet, no!” she answers. “That is the absolute ideal of every true soul, which, in common with them, I am anxious to reach. But at present I have not the capacity to appreciate and enjoy it, so the gift would be too overpowering and would only crush, instead of elevate me. You must remember that one who has been successfully operated on for blindness can only, be initiated into the light by degrees. We have all been blind, and God’s light will only come as we are able to bear it.”
She has learnt “every step I take towards Him becomes another messenger to me, bearing some fresh revelation of His love, every halting-place becomes another unfoldment, and every message quietly expands my soul into a closer likeness of Himself.”
Their whole conversation is full of treasures, full of information about God and God’s workings. It lifts my spirit, my gratitude and my curiosity to find out more. It encourages me to be patient, to let myself experience the steps on this journey, even the “halting-places” – of which, I have many right now. It also helps me feel God has a home waiting for me too and to have faith in that, based on what I discover, will help me never give up.
It’s tough a lot of the time still as I still resist and avoid, when I should surrender and trust. Books like this, words like this, information like all help me, nourish and feed my soul, educate me about love ( for which I am not even at kindergarten level). Many of us think we know about God – what He is or isn’t through our indoctrination or our complete denial He exists, but often we haven’t even investigated or questioned our beliefs, haven’t looked around at our world and searched for the answers ourself. What I have found as my desire increases, more books, films, music and teachings cross my path. I notice them and they are the jewels that are thrown on the rocky path I still choose a lot of the time right now: they are the precious moments that make my soul sing and for those brief minutes allow me to feel the possibilities open to me, the gifts God has waiting for me… when I am ready to receive them. I am the horse, God is the water… He will not force me to drink, but will long for me to thirst so that I may taste the pure waters of truth, the divine sup of Love.
So I start to see beyond my small, small world. Open the door a little and see the crack of brilliant light beyond. The door is heavy, but I really I am weak. I have a feeling this door is only as heavy as I believe it to be.
Maxine
WAITING
Waiting now upon the threshold,
Just within the porch of life;
Safe from all the storms and tempests,-
Hushed the discord and the strife;
Stilled the heart of its wild beatings,
Calmed the hot and fevered brain
Waiting now, and resting sweetly,
‘Til the Master comes again.
Waiting, where the rippling wavelets
Of life’s river lave my feet;
Washing off the stains of travel,
Ere the Master I may greet;
Till the voice is full and mellow,
And I learn the sweet, new song;
Till the discord is forgotten,
That disturbed my peace so long.
Waiting, till the wedding garment,
And the bridal wreath is here;
Till our Father’s feast is ready,
And the bridegroom shall appear
Till the seeds of life have blossomed,
And the harvest-home we sing.
Gathering up my life’s long labours
For my bridal offering.
Oh! ’tis not as men would teach us-
Just one step from earth to God;
Passing through the death-vale to Him,
In the garb that earth we trod;
Called to praise Him while aweary,
Or to sing, while yet the voice
With love’s farewell sob is broken,
Could we, fitly, thus rejoice?
No! we wait to learn the music,
Wait, to rest our weary feet;
Wait to learn to sweep the harp-strings
Ere the Master shall we meet;
Wait to tune our new-found voices
To the sweet seraphic song;
Wait to learn the time and measure,
But the time will not be long.
Wait to understand the glory
That will shortly be revealed
Till our eyes can bear the brightness
When the book shall be unsealed.
Oh! the vision would o’er power us,
If it suddenly were given
So we wait in preparation,
In the vestibule of heaven….
(By the Poetess, Chapter XVII, Through the Mists by Robert James Lee)
