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Michael Channeling and Commentary by Shepherd Hoodwin |
INTRODUCTION BY SHEPHERD HOODWIN
Right Use of Will: Healing and Evolving the Emotional Body is the title of a book channeled from God, according to the author, Ceanne DeRohan, and published in 1984. Several other books in the series have followed. They are unique both in style and content in channeled literature.
Reading it several years ago was profoundly transformative for me, not so much because of its information but because of what I felt as I read it. It seemed to energetically help me clear denial. However, I did not "get into" the second book, Original Cause, and gave up on it halfway through. I haven't read any other of the books in the series. Others have told me that they had the same experience. Those who have read further seem divided into two camps: some feel that the channeling became increasingly distorted; others find this series to be the focus of their spirituality.
For a while, there was a "buzz" around the book, and during that time, several clients asked Michael about it and the others in the series during private and group sessions. Here is an edited compilation of their comments, which many found to be balanced and illuminating. (Questions are italicized.) Following it is a letter I wrote replying to someone who had commented on this channeling.
MICHAEL
Where do Right Use of Will and the subsequent books that claim to be channeled from God come from?
This channel is indeed tapping into an aspect of the organizing force, the highest or most generalized aspect of consciousness, of this individual universe. (She is not tapping into the Tao itself, which is the source of this universe.) This consciousness does not converse in language as human beings know it. (In fact, neither do we, but we are closer to the physical plane and relate more readily to it.) With its assistance, she is translating this input into what are for you intelligible terms, in her own way. It could look quite different through another channel.
If the God of this universe was having that much trouble getting His act together, as portrayed in Right Use of Will, was that a reflection of what it was like for the Tao to come together in the force it is now?
The Tao could not be personalized in this way. The Tao is pure force. At least, this is how you would understand it. This particular universe, like all universes, has experimental elements. What is being described in these books in a personalized way is that the beginnings of the experiment, as with many experiments, were difficult. What is being portrayed in these books is both literal and not literal. It is being expressed in the way that it is so that you can relate to it. The different aspects of this unifying force for this universe does not converse within itself in what you know of as words. You are getting an approximation of thought process. Do not assume that you are getting any more than a hint of what happened, just as if you read something about history in a book, do not assume that you are getting any more than a little piece of what really went on, and probably a biased piece.
You know that if someone reports to you about a conversation that occurred, and then you go back to others who were there, you might find that there was quite a lot more to it than you were led to believe. In the case of these books, a little bit of a report on what occurred can be useful in its application to your own life. That's the point.
Does the kundalini energy relate to the concept of the female aspect of the universe known as "will" in the books which we have been speaking of?
Yes, there is a connection here. However, the term "will" refers to something more expansive. Kundalini is, you might say, the pure, energetic aspect of will as it manifests in the body. Its rising is symbolic on a personal level of the unification of spirit (or the male aspect) and will.
When we cycle off (complete the physical plane), why do we leave our bodies behind? I understood that the rejoining of will and spirit suggests that the body will become transcendent on a cellular level.
"Lost will" is not a matter of the physical form; it is a matter of the soul. Whatever is lost of will continues from lifetime to lifetime and even continues through the experience of cycling off. There are certain aspects of lost will that relate to physicality but even they continue in the soul when it is not incarnate. Cycling off occurs when the soul feels it has done all it can do on the physical plane and it is ready for a new game. It does not mean that all lost will has been recaptured or that perfection has been attained. When you graduated from grammar school to go on to junior high, you did not do so because you were perfect, but simply because you were ready for the next step. Whatever needs to be completed in terms of the recapture of lost will may have to wait for another opportunity.
Isn't our objective to reclaim all lost will, or as much of it as possible, right now, as part of healing ourselves and the planet?
Everyone has different objectives at any given time. Certainly it is a major objective for your life. Other souls are not focused on reclaiming lost will. They have other tasks that are equally important to them. If it is your desire, then it is appropriate for you to pursue it. Remember that the concepts you are studying in these books are just that, concepts. They are understood as you understand them. They are useful as they are useful to you. Someone else might see something quite different in them, which may or may not be useful to them. As you understand it, the reclamation of lost will is an important goal for many souls on the planet at this time. Another way of putting this is becoming whole. Some people want to become more complete with their past so that they can move on to a higher level of the game, whether they are a young, mature or old soul. This is partly what reclaiming lost will refers to.
I thought that it's not just a question of my heredity and past in this lifetime that I'm looking to reclaim: I'm looking to go back to when I was around with Mother and Father God and whatever denials were present at that time. It feels so important to me and I'm getting from you that it might not be as important as I'm making it.
When we said that you are completing what has gone before, we did not put any time limit on it. We are also saying that what is important for you right now is not necessarily what is important for others. If you believe, having read these books, that it is everyone's duty to reclaim their lost will, that this is the most important thing for everyone, then you will start a new religion. Of course, that is your choice. However, the world does not need any new religions! There are different speeds of growth and each person has to do what they can do at the speed they can do it. Many people are not ready to undergo the process you call "reclaiming lost will."
When I focus on love and surrender to it, there is an emotional reaction against it denying it, before I realize it. How can I avoid this?
It is not that you are generating denial; it is that you are allowing already-present denial to come to the surface. This is positive. If you are having an accurate experience of love, you can more easily love and accept the denial, giving you a chance to root it out. If, on the other hand, you judge the emotional reaction that comes on the heels of your loving meditation, you might examine just how accurately you experienced love in the first place. If you did experience it accurately, then you might also examine vestiges of judgment that are present in you and are condemning whatever appears to be unloving. This is not love that condemns what is unloving; it is guilt, primarily. Love your guilt and judgment.
In Right Use of Will terms, love as we are using the word does not translate as spirit or as will, or even as Father/Mother God. Love is what brought all those things into being in the first place, the father and mother of Father and Mother God.
How can we know that what we are experiencing and calling love is in fact that elemental source from which all life comes?
It will feel accurate, inclusive and right. There's no guarantee that you are experiencing accurately as far as an objective measurement. You can only trust your intuition and do the best that you know. If you do this, your capacity to discern love will grow. That is what we are all learning.
God is vast, just as this universe is vast. The Right Use of Will books are not literal accounts; they are representations of what happened in human language. How could the true events really be put into human language? That is the dilemma. You could also interpret this material as an archetypical psychological drama that is parallel to what has occurred in all of us, in our thinking, like the Greek portrayals of the gods.
As to the statement that angels are intent on denying will, there is an aspect of consciousness for which this is true. Is there not a part of you that believes that it is right to deny will? It is not really important to you if it's happening out there in the macrocosm; its value to you is to see these characters as being parts of yourself. If it is happening in you, it is probably happening on a larger scale as well, for you are part of the macrocosm.
When it is said that this will no longer be permitted, you might instead say, "This can no longer go on in me." You know how sometimes you can exist in a conflicted situation for a long time, and finally you say, "This cannot go on." You cannot bear for it to go on, which is another way of saying that it is time to do something about it. Everything at some point must find its right place. The right place for all things is ultimately pleasing for them, much more so than the wrong place. So do not take these words as being threatening. Perhaps the channel would see such words as a threat and so they came through that way. It is not a matter of "Shape up or else!" However, it is wise to become conscious of these things and to, for example, integrate will with spirit in oneself. It is more pleasurable to be integrated than it is to be divided in oneself. This is a good time to do that. There is much support for that.
The Tao gives birth to the universes. New universes come into being from time to time. One universe builds on the lessons of the last universe. When a universe is born, it is like a baby being born. It is new. It doesn't know what is yet to come. All the possibilities are inherent in it. But none of the realizations of those possibilities have yet occurred. There is a core consciousness for a universe just as there is a core consciousness in you. Your toe and your finger have consciousness, but they are not the core consciousness of your body. God could be defined as the core consciousness of the universe, and as such it is evolving.
What is channeled in these books relates to earth, since it was channeled by a resident of earth. Physical plane space and time are irrelevant to God, so the statement that God just realized something in the last fifty years is not an accurate way to look at it. You might instead say that the realization of the core consciousness of this universe as it relates to earth through the experience of itself in the history of the earth was able to reach certain conclusions through the events of the last fifty years.
Everything that happens is in some way unique. So through every event, painful or joyful, there is expansion of the consciousness of this particular universe, and of the Tao by extension. Through the purging that occurred in World War II, there were realizations. Everyone, incarnate or not, took part in those realizations, whether they knew it or not. And everyone is a part of God, because everyone is a part of this universe. So there were realizations in God as a result of the actions of Hitler and World War II in general, just as there is in all events.
God is not the Tao. God is neutral, as is the Tao, in a sense, and in a sense God is not neutral. You might say God is a step between the Tao and our individual experiences here. All of us together make up the experience of God as it relates to earth, as that is where we are, just as the experience of the various cells of your hand create your experience of self as it relates to your hand. But you are greater than just your hand. In a sense, you are neutral about what happens between cell A and cell B in your middle finger on your right hand. Yet you are also an interested party. You, in terms of the consciousness of your whole body, are relatively neutral because you are relatively far from it. But only the Tao is completely neutral.
The Right Use of Will books say that everything to this point has really been a mistake, even if it's been a valuable lesson that may have needed to be learned.
These books depict a process that is inherent in all growth. One does not grow without making mistakes. If all understanding were already present, what would be the purpose of inventing a new game?
Where we differ from these books in our view is that there is a subtle but nevertheless pervasive attitude present in them that all of this should not have happened--that it is wrong, rather than simply the game being played. Conflict is not, in and of itself, bad. There are of course lower and higher qualities of awareness present. There have been some quite ugly manifestations of this game that in a sense have not been ultimately necessary in that they could have been avoided fairly easily, but this does not imply that the game is wrong.
It is natural to swing to extremes in the quest for balance. Earth itself is an experiment in balance. There are more opposites present here than on any other planet of which we are aware; and the task is to balance them. The universe itself--this universe--is imbalanced. Mind you, you are imbalanced whenever you walk: walking is basically falling forward. Movement comes by reason of imbalance. In the case of this universe, it could be said that the imbalance is presently more weighted on the side of what is called in these books spirit, or the masculine pole of things, and this is reflected in your patriarchal civilization. The balance has swung in the past: there have been times when the will polarity has been more dominant. But in general the spirit pole has tended to hold sway. This is due to the fact that the universe from which this universe sprang was slightly more will-polarized. It is true that this is a time of integration of spirit and will. It is couched in the terms of "recovering lost will" because spirit has been more dominant. When the will pole was more dominant, channeling such as this might have referred to "recovering lost spirit." But those times would have been in the minority.
Both spirit and will are necessary. Balance is a mature state. It is natural when there is not mastery to swing from one extreme to another. By definition, an extreme blocks out its opposite. It is natural when you are learning about the will polarity to exclude spirit, and vice versa. When you know enough about both, you can merge them. Only when they are merged is there equilibrium; when there is equilibrium a new game can begin.
Each person has experienced a similar flip-flopping from lifetime to lifetime: for example, being in a male body and not understanding the feminine principle, then being in a female body and not understanding the masculine principle. One tries to get together with his opposite, occasionally rejecting it, yet there is that longing for union. As the soul progresses, there is greater integration of the opposites.
Could you clarify the seven essence roles versus the names of the spirits?
When a spark of the Tao comes forth into the universe to play the game of planetary sentience, it chooses an essence role through which to play the game. That spark, because of its character, also tends to be aligned with one of the types described in the Right Use of Will series. For example, this channel, a sage during this grand cycle, is most aligned with what was described as a heart angel. Heart angels serve others through the synthesis. Not all sages are heart angels. This is true of the spark that is at his core, so in a previous planetary cycle in which he was a priest or a king, he could have still been described, in whatever the language was, as a heart angel. That is his usual function within this universe--that is how his character as a spark of the Tao manifests within the context of this particular universe. In a prior universe, there would have been a totally different game to play, so nothing that we have ever spoken with you about in terms of classifications would apply.
When the Right Use of Will books describe the coming forth of newborn angels, spirits, et cetera, what is being described is the connecting with and bringing forth of certain aspects or potentialities of the Tao into the conditions of this universe. Whatever imbalances are inherent in the new game will be magnified so that they can be explored and reconciled eventually, resulting in growth.
The spark is unique based on all of its prior experiences. There are many sparks that have never played a planetary game. In fact, there are some who have never manifested in a universe in any way, shape or form. But these are in the minority. When the spark that is this channel decides to play in a different game--in other words, in a different universe altogether--what he is will look quite different because it will be in a different context. Let's say that what this channel is at his core, when it comes through the prism that is this universe, looks purple. In a different universe, there may not even be prisms at all, but something entirely different. And so there would be no color purple--or no heart angels.
Right Use of Will said that the angels rejected their wills which became the ronalokas at a later manifestation; that this is an error, and they've got to accept will or be thrown out from God. My question of course is, how can space exist that is not already part of God?
Let's delineate between the Tao and God--God being the overall consciousness of this universe, the Tao being that which propagates universes. Everything springs from and returns to the Tao. The ideas you refer to illustrate that this is a fairly mature universe. It is winding up the game: it's not quite at the ninth inning, but let's say the seventh inning--it is at a point of climax. The spirits that do not wish to integrate with will cannot continue this particular game into the eighth inning, because the game is about balancing these extremes. Those who do not wish to continue in this game will be separated, and that will be pleasing to them. When any consciousness finds its appropriate place, it is content.
Will this spawn a new universe? We don't know. Those who do not wish to continue with this game will probably play outside of it for a while and then be reabsorbed back into the Tao. You might say that they are like a waste product of this universe, composting and going back to the earth. But all things have consciousness, and there will be choices to be made by those who identify with what is refuse from this universe. There are no bad choices. It is for each one to decide, to discern what feels right. We do not expect that any entities or even cadres will be broken up by reason of such choices; the connections of cadre are pretty strong, and so cadres and especially entities will tend to lean one way or the other. We suspect that those who choose to bail out from this game will be very few; but that tale is not yet told.
Is an entity, consisting of over a thousand individual souls, all heart angels, or Cherubims?
No, but there will tend to be a preponderance of two or three of those types.
How do they get mixed?
Entities are cast from the Tao continually. This has nothing to do with the progression as described in the Right Use of Will books insofar as the birth of this particular universe. When all the heart angels came forth, this was not a time when every entity with heart angels in it was cast from the Tao. What is being referred to here is the emergence from the Tao of particular energies or forces. All energies have consciousness and behave in certain ways. We mentioned that sparks of the Tao tend to resonate with particular classifications such as heart angel. But the energies coming forth initially were part of the setting up of the structure of this universe--how this game was going to be run. These are not specific sentient fragments. When resonant sentient fragments are cast from the Tao, they fit themselves, so to speak, into the structure provided by these initial energies. How this channel, for example, functions as a heart angel in this universe was "set up" by the initial heart angel energy as it was brought forth from the Tao.
Sentient fragments are coming and going all the time, from and to the Tao, in a steady stream; but the structure of this universe remains in place. Let's make an analogy. The genetic structure of your body is determined at conception. Immediately following conception, different organs of your body begin to be developed. In the fetus, where does the heart come from, where does the liver come from? These structures are brought forth from the mother through the genetic blueprint created at the time of conception. However, twenty years later you do not have the same heart that you had when you were born. Your present heart is made up of material from food you have eaten, among other things.
Suppose you ate a carrot; a carrot has certain nutrients, certain vitamins and minerals and not others. So one component of the carrot ends up in the heart, another in the liver. Another is passed as waste, and so forth. It will fit into the heart according to the blueprint established at conception. Inside that carrot is life force. Life force inside a beet behaves differently. If you ate a beet, there might be some vitamins in common with the carrot--some of the vitamins in the beet might also go into the heart. Yet there may be some substances in the beet that are beneficial for the skin, and hence will go to the skin, which the carrot does not possess.
Now let's step it back a little further: Let's say that the carrot is eaten by an aardvark. This would be like an entity going into a different universe; an aardvark has a different design than a human body. The carrot eaten by the aardvark, while it still has the same materials, will function quite differently in the aardvark. This is a limited analogy, but we trust that you understand the parallels.
An entity would be like a carrot with several different nutrients (sparks) combined. A different entity would be like a beet, and a carrot being digested in a human body would be like a particular entity coming to this universe. That same carrot being digested by an aardvark would be like that entity going to a different universe; it would have a different impact on the structure as it is set up.
In the analogy, what would be the genetic code?
That would be the pattern upon which that universe was based. For example, this universe is based on the law of seven: that's why there are seven roles, and so forth. In other universes, seven would not necessarily be the foundation.
If it is said that this channel is a heart angel, it should not be understood that his core is forever defined in that way. However, his spark tends to resonate with what in this universe is called a heart angel. In a different universe, or in the Tao itself, it could look very different.
The ronalokas, heart angels, etc., refer more to the structure of the universe that reflects certain aspects or qualities inherent in the Tao, but that form them in specific manners. So let's say that ronalokas are like the pancreas--they provide a specific part of the structure of the universe's consciousness. A king fragment as a spark may be most aligned with ronaloka energy and therefore manifest as one in this universe, thereby providing a "nutrient" in his "carrot" (entity) that helps build the pancreas.
For any spark of the Tao to play a planetary game, it must choose one of the seven roles. The role is its format for expression in the universe--how it's going to experience this universe during this cycle. It has nothing to do with whether that particular spark resonates with ronalokas or heart angels or rainbow spirits. Remember that the vitamin A from the carrot that you eat could end up in your kidneys, or it could end up in your big toe.
According to the books, all the spirit essences that are on earth are in some way separated from the original sources, so we're all fragments in that sense. The essence of a particular individual body on earth could be someone else's lost will. If you're living high on the hog now in America, you can be sure that you've got lost will that's suffering in Africa or wherever else the suffering is going on. And that together is part of your parental spirit that needs to be recovered.
We think what is being referred to here is karma--what naturally happens throughout various incarnations. If you are living high off the hog, you probably chose that because in a past life you were starving to death, and you wanted to experience both extremes so that you could find balance--not so much the balance of circumstance as the balance of consciousness, so that you would be attached to being neither rich or poor. Now some people make a theme out of this, and they go back and forth for eons--rich and then poor--they don't find success in uniting these extremes. In other words, they don't recover their lost will.
A past life, in terms of how the essence experiences it, can actually be in the same earthly time frame, so you may have a past or future self now living in Africa starving. The goal, as we have often said, is agape. Agape constitutes a union with the All. One part of that union would be the unification of these two consciousnesses. Another example of this is being a murderer in one life and a victim in another. You can bounce between those two until you finally "get it"; then you don't need to do that any more. Will and spirit are thus united.
Will being the victim, and spirit being the murderer, in that analogy.
Correct.
Anyone who, for example, commits murder, unless it is by agreement--in other words, anyone who violates the right of free choice of another person--must repay that karma. This is usually achieved by being murdered, in a similar way. There are more enlightened ways to do this, but this is the way it usually occurs. Someone who tortures will be tortured.
If a soul tends to be more spirit-polarized, when he is the victim his emphasis will not be on his suffering (although there will be suffering), but he will already be plotting his revenge, very often, and he will live for the day when he can again be the victimizer. Someone who is more will-polarized, when playing the part of victim, will feel that victimization all the more keenly because it will resonate with his already present point of view. When a will-polarized fragment is committing the murder, it will likely be because he feels himself to be a victim--that he must do this to escape his victimization--like terrorists often do. They kill, not so much because they get off on killing, but because they feel themselves to be a victim. Most human beings, by the way, are a combination of will and spirit polarization; very few are 100% one or the other. Like the male/female energy ratio, you could assign percentages to each.
A good therapist is able to receive whatever rage a person has, so that it can be neutralized, along with his victim feelings, fears, and so forth; he knows how to receive from either end. Let's say that you are about 60% will-polarized, and you're married to someone who's about 60% spirit-polarized. You would each need to receive the other's rage and fear. But you might be receiving more rage and your partner might be receiving more fear.
If you are identified beyond either spirit or will, but as the Tao itself that seeks to bring balance--in other words, if you are not attached--you will be able to let these forces move so that they can be neutralized and healed. An advanced student can let his rage out without being consumed by it. You recall that in the Bible, the Lord God spoke to Moses out of a bush that was burning but that was not consumed. When you are identified beyond rage or fear, you are like this bush. The fire is allowed to burn in any way it needs to, and healing is thereby brought. We are not implying that this analogy in the Bible merely refers to disposing of rage. Rage is parallel with fire, but fire can also represent love when it is under control. A fire in a fireplace bringing heat and light is very different from a destructive fire burning down a forest.
Can one's male/female energy ratio also be thought of as expressing spirit and will?
Not necessarily, although that is often the case.
Virtually any therapist can tell you that most human beings are full of pent-up emotions. They are pent up because individuals have not known appropriate ways of releasing them. It is smart to repress your rage if expressing it means killing someone; killing someone will bring more negative repercussions that will lead to more rage. There is a place for repression. Repression is a tool for the immature to keep things aside until there is greater maturity. There is much more emphasis nowadays on expressing feelings, because there is greater understanding of how to do it safely. You are not a whole person until you have allowed your fear and your anger to move. However, we do not wish to imply that expressing these emotions needs to be violent or overt. They can move in more subtle ways.
Anger and fear is simply energy that is stuck into a nonproductive pattern. It is the nature of energy to move--it doesn't like not moving--so there's pressure that builds up. When these energies are allowed to move constructively, so that they do not do harm to others or to oneself, then all that formerly stuck energy becomes available to experience the wholeness of life. So it is to one's advantage to release old rage and fear.
Would it follow that an older soul would have progressed and therefore have been learning to release and express more, or would an older soul have more built up?
You could not generalize about such things. One old soul may have had three lifetimes recently in which much attention was given to releasing old stuff. Another might have had three recent lifetimes of generating a lot of new stuff. It is a question of where you are in your individual cycle of things.
You might say that when you create karma, you are creating fear, because you know that it will come back to you. When you are repaying karma, you are releasing anger that was generated when you were the victim of karma. When your karma comes back to you, you are releasing fear. So where you are on the karmic scale, so to speak, determines where you are in terms of release. It is possible to have rage and fear without there being karma involved, but the biggest pieces of rage and fear usually involve karma.
The growth relates to the karmas being completed?
Yes, that is one aspect of growth. There are many others.
When you complete karma, you reach a balance point, but if victims plot their revenge or victimizers feel they must be punished, new karmas can be quickly created and a new imbalance forms. This flip-flopping continues until the person "gets it"--until there is recognition that this is a futile game. You may do two or three lifetimes playing the game of victim/victimizer until you get it, or you may do it over a dozen lifetimes if you're a slow learner. It depends on you--and it depends on how strong your identification is with the spirit or will polarity. This is not the same as saying what your percentage is. As the soul gains enlightenment, it begins to see that life is simply a game being played, and there is more detachment from these patterns that allows you to get off the karmic wheel. You stay on the karmic wheel until you catch on that it is not necessary to continue like a broken record.
Many people are quite unconscious. We have spoken of the "waking sleep." When someone begins to stir from the waking sleep, there is awareness that the rage or fear can be disposed of in better ways. One can spend one's entire time on the physical plane in the waking sleep, and there will still be lessons; but the lessons will not be integrated until there is wakefulness.
And that happens on the physical plane?
It can.
Or does it happen as the overview after the life is completed?
Certainly there is much more detachment when the lifetime is over, but ideally it happens on the physical plane. A person may tire of being victim and victimizer and may end that game without fully seeing consciously what has been going on. The lesson has been learned, you might say, the hard way, and they are valid lessons, but the person may not yet fully know that these lessons have been learned.
Right Use of Will says if you're not vibrating at the speed of light, then you have some denials that you're holding, because originally we could just come in and take form, and transmute the form. Death was unnecessary.
Yes, that is correct. Death is now part of the earth game, and it is acceptable for its particular lessons. There was a time when sentient life on earth did not experience death; there was also a time when there was death, but that life spans were much longer than they are now; and there have been those since death came about who have managed to escape it. But the tendency of the current human form is to die. It is possible to transmute the physical form so that it doesn't die, but that is beyond the lessons of most people. There's nothing wrong with dying, and dying can be relatively painless if the life has been lived well. Humanity is approaching another era in which death can again be eliminated.
Right Use of Will says that will, being magnetic, tends to stay with the death of the body, and spirit just pulls out and says, "Hey, that was no problem," but will has suffered a bit.
When you incarnate you supervise the construction of the body you will live in. It is built to your specifications. You usually do not actually move into the new house until it is finished--in other words, around the time of birth--but you hover around, generally speaking, quite early on, so it reflects you to a certain extent. When you die, your body does not cease being a part of your totality. The body matter decomposes and is reused; it is like waste. But the body consciousness is part of your overall consciousness until after you cycle off. That part of you stays with the body longer than other parts of you. It may hang around for quite some time. A ghost is a body consciousness that won't let go of the body. This occurs more in a will-centered soul. Eventually, though, the body consciousness is reabsorbed into essence, along with the other aspects of the personality, including the overleaves. It becomes a part of the enlargement of essence.
When I asked you what I was, and you saw me as a blue rainbow spirit, with some green, which causes me to question you how would I have a combination of colors? Is that because I'm fragmented?
No, it's simply that you resonate with more than one vibration.
But don't I have to have a pure color, at least at my birth?
No. Remember that you are not a rainbow spirit; you simply resonate with that structure--just like the vitamin A in the carrot can go to the liver, or it can go to the liver and the kidneys. But we would say that you are a little stronger on the blue.
Please discuss the metaphysical concepts of the trinity, triune ray, the seven rays of various colors, angels, archangels, spirits, and various other factors of "divine hierarchy." Please discuss the historical information as given by Original Cause, about the spawning of these various "children" of God.
The trinity relates to love, truth and energy. Together, these make up essence for the individual fragment, and the core of the entire whole of the physical as well as astral and causal levels. In a collective sense, the combined energies of love, truth and energy send out focused forces that interpenetrate all other realities. You might say that the triune ray is the bloodstream of the universe. It is the connection with the Tao.
Angels and archangels are those with specific responsibilities for overseeing all that goes on in this great experiment. They report directly to the Tao, so to speak. We check in with them from time to time (except that there is no time!) about the nature of our teaching, for instance, and get their feedback. We have switched gears more than once in learning some additional information.
How are will and affection alike and dissimilar from love?
Love is disinterested; will on its own is partial. Love is the result of the blending of what you would call spirit and will. When these polarities are not at odds but are complementing, there is the possibility of love. Affection can be an expression of love. It may be only partial and often is on the physical plane. Affection might be defined as an expression of caring. Sometimes the caring is partial and sometimes it is total. Any caring is a step towards love, or agape, but in and of itself may not be that agape.
The polarities of will/spirit, male/female, etc. could be said to be universal. However, the balancing of these polarities is a particular emphasis of earth.
The idea that "all is choice" is true, but there are different interpretations of that truth. "Whatever you choose, it's okay, it's all just a game" is true on many levels, but for me, on far more levels, "Choice matters, and you can make 'wrong' choices, choices that hurt others and yourself" is more true.
We do not mean to trivialize human life when we refer to it as a game. It is an important, serious game, with important ramifications. On the other hand, the participants of this universe's game are generally playing it the best they currently know how. Your task, when you gain awareness, is to teach others better ways to play. It is a game without opposing sides; all are on the same team, so to speak.
Hurting others is against the rules. That is why there is karma. Karma is not an arbitrary law. It works automatically in an energetic way. If someone is violated (hurt), that energy will come back to the one who is violating, just as surely as if you throw a ball up in the air, it will come back down to the ground. It may appear that some people are getting off the hook, but in the long run, from the larger picture, the balance is maintained.
We have said repeatedly that people may choose to either grow through joy or through pain. In a sense, it doesn't matter what people choose, because growth occurs for all choices. The ultimate goal of every consciousness in the universe is to grow to the point where love is the total experience. All growth leads to that, eventually. Of course, the more skillfully you play the game, the more you grow through joy and the less through pain. That is why we teach: to help people play the game more consciously and skillfully.
The Tao doesn't wish for anyone to suffer needlessly. The game, however, is in motion and the Tao can't do much except to adjust the large picture occasionally, for example, by sending teachers such as the infinite soul to shake things up.
We all volunteer for this game. People can sit out an inning, so to speak, on the sidelines, but there is a very strong desire in the soul to reach the goal, so most choose to keep on slogging through the pain in hopes of getting to the other side as quickly as possible. That is why, for example, most souls don't put off repaying karmic debts for too long.
RUOW implies that karma as a principle has not worked, that too often it has not balanced the scales, that one side has 'suffered' while the other side claims all has been equal. That karma plainly hasn't worked as a law, with too many on one side finding loopholes to avoid payback, and too many on the other side suffering way beyond the balance points.
There are no loopholes. Energy cannot be manipulated in that way. As the commercial said, "You can't fool Mother Nature."
RUOW's perspective is that 'the waking sleep' is itself part of the problem. As things were pushed further and further into the unconscious, it created all of this, reflecting the problem stronger and stronger. The gap itself is personified by people acting totally from unconsciousness and not bringing consciousness awareness into it. Imprinting is running things, on a totally unconscious level, and it is time to wake up, especially here on the deepest levels of physicality.
We agree entirely. The game became much more difficult and ugly when consciousness dropped to the level of unconsciousness. People are beginning to wake up now, just beginning, mind you. However, all the experiences in the waking sleep will be used to advantage, to reinforce the knowledge of how to consciously stay conscious once consciousness is regained.
The nature of Love in RUOW is deeply tied to heart, which itself is deeply tied to balance between spirit and will. Heart's disconnection and disinterest have been part of the problem, and a reflection of the lack of balance, even while it's been claimed that that 'disconnection' is really 'higher' and 'deeper' love, when in fact, it's been a symptom all along of how screwed up things have been. How can a 'loving' God allow suffering? The answer has been, "Love allows it because of the higher perspective, seeing the bigger picture" which itself is a very spirit polarized view, and not balanced at all. And "Poor will is so partial; if only she'd realize that her suffering was for the betterment of everything."
Again, it's not that the suffering was ultimately necessary, but it will be used for good, eventually: all experience eventually finds its way into the "compost pile" where it becomes rich fertilizer for future experience.
We agree that many people's hearts have been literally disconnected, but that means that they haven't been functioning properly. A properly functioning heart has compassion for all suffering and seeks to eliminate it by using all the input from body, mind (spirit) and emotions (will).
We are aware that many Christian churches say that suffering is good and noble, and that God wants people to suffer in order to purify them. That is hogwash. Suffering is indication that things are out of whack. It should be used to awaken all involved that something is wrong, so that hopefully they'll fix it. It is true that some people do use hardship to wake themselves up to what really matters; that is good work.
I see fragmentation as the cause of the number of people on earth--they are not just individual essences. Entities and cadres are fragmented and misaligned groups of energy, rather than a designed 'group.' Cycling off is spirit and heart, leaving will (and some body) behind, going off and away, back to the Tao/heaven/etc. Yet they come back because of the magnetic pull that cannot ultimately be resisted. This is covered up with the denial of saying "Hmm, I think I'll go back again and have some more fun...I'll play the game some more." So while some essence does leave and 'cycle off,' lost bits remain and cry out for their owners, who come back again... and again... and again...
There is valid fragmentation, which is the fragmentation of entities into individual essences at the start of the game for the purpose of physical incarnation. You are referring to the fragmentation of fragments. A fragment cannot cycle off until it is reasonably integrated, enough so that any relatively minor internal fragmentation remaining can be corrected on the mid-astral plane. There is very little internal fragmentation beyond that point, but anything that remains is worked out before completing the causal plane. No fragmentation is taken into the high planes, nor are new cycles begun in order to recapture lost fragments--after all, these new cycles could be in an entirely different universal project.
Basically, you work on things are you are able, as you have the necessary knowledge and skill. You may be ready to cycle off without knowing everything you need to in order to complete your internal integration. Some of the knowledge you may need might not even be available at that level, so you handle it in your "post-graduate" work. Also, humanity (including those of us on higher planes) is continually learning new things, and we all benefit from that process. We all work together to advance this project, whether incarnate or not. So the passage of "time" is useful, too.
There is good work in anything that increases love.
By the way, when we speak of love, truth, and energy, love refers to emotion (will), not to heart. Heart is neutral, like the assimilation axis. Love corresponds to the inspiration axis (where you'll find the emotional centers), truth to the expression axis (the intellectual centers), and energy to the action axis (the moving centers). The heart is represented in the seven chakras, however, of course in the center.
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER BY SHEPHERD
Your thoughts about RUOW and the Michael teachings bring much to mind for me.
I've attended personal growth workshops where we played growth games, games in that there were rules and parts being acted out, but they were not trivial--they were designed to reveal more about ourselves to ourselves. Have you ever participated in those kinds of games? I have a few friends who go into companies as consultants for team-building, facilitating better communication skills, etc. among employees. They often use games to teach, reveal, and heal.
My understanding of the universes being games is along these lines--I don't see them as being like Pac Man!, merely recreational ways to while away the time. The Tao constructs these situations, with rules (or structures) designed to bring out new sides of self.
When an infant soul is having its first lifetimes on a planet, it is totally without experience and is therefore bound to blunder a lot. The same must be true of the new consciousness of a universe--the rules are laid out, but what they all mean is a mystery. Putting one foot in front of the other, so to speak, this new consciousness, this "God," moves forward and gradually figures it out. Everyone and everything in the universe is part of that consciousness. You identify more with the part of it called mother; I identify more with the part of it called heart. But we are all in this together; we are all part of the One. And I have to assume that most of us really do the best we can most of the time--if we really knew better, we would probably do better. We keep banging into walls (growing through pain) until we learn to move forward using our eyes, ears, thoughts and feelings wisely, with conscious awareness (growing through joy). What you are calling God is not separate from any of us, and so, in my view, cannot be blamed as if "he" were something else. Father, Mother, Heart and Body are aspects of all of us, even if one aspect predominates, at least in our current experience.
No sensitive person could fail to be impacted by the horrendous suffering on earth. The capability of many humans to be cruel is astounding. We have all had lifetimes of horror and sorrow beyond our capacity to fathom and cope. My understanding is that the game was never intended to be this hard but that our particular experiment or game here on earth got way out of balance. This experiment in balance went out of control, and we are just now entering a window of opportunity to bring it back onto a sounder footing. Hence, the abundance of teachings such as RUOW and the Michael teachings that give us tools for learning how to come into balance.
Many ancient texts talk about a garden of Eden or paradise. I'm sure it wasn't perfect--no doubt there have been denials and imbalances all along--but compared to what we have now, it must have been incredible. According to many sources, for tens of thousands of years in the golden age of Atlantis, for example, some people lived for thousands of years and people generally died when they chose to. There was very little disease, and whatever there was, was usually handled effectively in healing temples. The climate was temperate and pleasing, with an abundance of food. So growth must have been a gentle, fun process.
Life now is much harder that it really needs to be, although essence, being practical, uses "what is" to whatever advantage that is possible. We ARE essence, really, so WE choose to use these difficult, challenging circumstances as the fire of purification burning off the dross and leaving the pure gold of love.
Here's an excerpt from a recent post I wrote for the online Michael mailing list about karma:
"When we start out as infant souls, we are totally ignorant, and it is inevitable that we will make lots of mistakes, trespass upon others, and generate karmas. Of itself, this is not all that unfortunate--it is just a necessary part of learning and growing. What has been truly unfortunate on earth is that we humans have tended to be hardheaded and to keep making the same mistakes over and over, ad nauseum. How much easier on us if we can quickly learn from our mistakes and get on to making new ones.
"Forgiveness is relevant to karma. Let's say that in another life, I brutally attacked someone. If the other person was very evolved and is able to completely forgive me, AND I am evolved enough to get the lesson, fully realize the impact of what I did and feel total remorse, the karma can be neutralized through "grace." The energies are rebalanced without acting out the game physically (i.e., the other person brutalizing me). However, most of us are too dense and don't get the lessons unless we act them out. An intermediate step would be for me to save the other person from a brutalization as repayment.
"Forgiveness is still essential in garden-variety karmic payback. For example, if someone brutalizes me and I don't realize I'm paying back a karma, my first impulse might be to "get even" and initiate still more karma--nothing learned yet. If I can forgive at that point, or at least choose not to seek revenge, I get off that karmic wheel."
Karma is neither bad nor good. It's just the fact that if I pull on a rubber band, so to speak, one way, it will bounce back the other way. Things have to be that way. If we human beings are slow to learn our lessons, we keep bouncing around. I think that the earth is presently more dense and heavy than it was designed to be, and that makes us all less conscious and responsive. Hopefully that is changing now.
Denial is what we inevitably do when we're not yet mature enough to cope. We repress feelings we don't understand and don't know what to do with--otherwise, we explode, and we instinctively feel that that would be worse than the denial. Denial can only be healed and released when we learn greater love, understanding and compassion. Remove the denial without that, and you just have a lot of unrestrained ugliness going nowhere, a bunch of people yelling and screaming at each other, blaming and throwing tantrums--a chaotic insane asylum. Look at how children behave when there are few restrictions and a lack of examples of loving, mature behavior. We can only release denial into love. On the other hand, many of us have been carrying denials we're long overdue to release. I assume that that's why you and I have been attracted to the work of releasing them. A person will not release what he's not ready to let go of, just as it's hard to pull the apple off the tree before it's ripe. In my sessions, I often help people clear out energies they've been ready to release for even lifetimes but didn't know how to release or weren't aware of the possibility--it's like someone staying in a prison cell unaware that the door is now unlocked and all he has to do is turn the knob. Consciousness is everything--what we are conscious of, we can change.
By love, I don't mean here a goody-two-shoes "I understand and forgive you." In love, we go through the anger, rage, fear, whatever, with the intent to get fully to the other side of it rather than just glorifying and wallowing in it, as so many do in therapy, going nowhere. I believe that I made rapid progress in therapy because of my years of spiritual training preceding it and my grounding in love, my basic goodwill, my overriding desire to be fully honest with myself and live in the highest possible truth. I could stand on the solid, high ground of essence and say to the parts of me that needed healing and release, "it's safe to go through whatever I need to in order to heal; I provide the stability of love and truth. " For an unstable person, it is not safe to open the floodgates of pain--it can lead to a breakdown.
To me, "growing through joy" is equivalent to "living with conscious awareness and skill." Life is full of pitfalls, and we aren't going to avoid them all, but if we're awake, if we're driving prudently and defensively through life, making the wisest possible choices using both intuition and reason, and doing adequate research to see what our options are, we can avoid a lot of them and have a better life experience. Also, although we can't always choose our circumstances (there are surprises at times), we can always choose our attitude and approach. We can strongly intend to make the best out of everything we experience in life. We can, for example, use illness as an opportunity to learn to open to healing energy as well as to learn more about holistic healing techniques. We can use physical pain as an opportunity to learn deep relaxation techniques. No one wants to be in pain, but if that's what's on our plate, we may as well use it and get through it. And what we learn from it will be valuable in the future, when the pain is no longer an issue.
I don't believe that we choose everything in our lives, but we choose a lot, as much as is possible under the circumstances, considering that other people also make choices that affect us. The personality often says things like, "I didn't choose my lousy parents, etc." But personality is not separate from essence--there is only one self, albeit temporarily fragmented. We DID choose on some level, even if we forgot. We chose the best available under the circumstances. Unfortunately, there aren't too many opportunities to incarnate to parents who are loving, healthy, enlightened, rich, generous, and mentally/emotionally mature and together. So we take what we can get to accomplish whatever drew us here.
I think of physical plane earth as a tough boarding school. Currently, it is not all that much fun, although there are extracurricular activities that are pleasant enough, but it is a good place to get some hard, valuable work done. If I don't expect it to be easy, it's easier for me.
Still, I believe that joy is possible. All great teachers have told us that joy is the mark of the spiritually advanced being. True joy (as opposed to pleasure) does not depend on circumstance--it is a state of mind. There's some good material on this in my upcoming book "Growing Through Joy." In joy, one is not oblivious to the suffering of others, but the joy offers those who are suffering a higher state of experience that transcends the limitations of the physical world. I'm not speaking of people going into denial of their suffering, pretending it isn't there or isn't important, but a genuine experience of the truth that there is much more going on than the physical limitations. No matter what is going on, we're never separate from the larger universe and higher planes. There are many accounts of spiritual masters (such as those in India) able to go through things like dismemberment with little or no pain, and then reattaching the limb, healing the wounds. So what would be suffering to most of us becomes, on one level, merely a nuisance, and an another level, a joyous experience, because it is an opportunity to show others what is possible to all of us.
A great example of joy in what is normally a painful condition is when a loved one dies. We all feel the loss of the physical form, but someone in touch with the larger picture also feels the joy of the person's spirit being set free. I've experienced this. The day after an elderly friend of mine passed away, I was feeling sad, thinking that I should have done more to help her, such as doing energy work with her in the hospital. Then she came to me and said "I'm free! I'm free!", waving her hands and feet midair. Another friend had the identical experience with her at about the same time. There was joy in her passing, in leaving behind a diseased body that was no longer any fun.
The book Talking with Angels has a most amazing account of a channel who was sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis. She had had a couple of opportunities to escape. The first time, she was concerned that it would jeopardize a friend if she disappeared. In the camp, she was so well liked and loved, even by the guards, that one of them tried to get her to say she wasn't really Jewish (she didn't look it) so he could get her out, but she wouldn't. She wasn't attached to that lifetime, that body--she knew that there would be others if she wanted to come again. She knew it was a test for her to see how strong she was in love. So she gave herself fully to that. Other prisoners volunteered for onerous work, moving rocks, just to be near her energy. She died in the camp, but it was a joyous victory for her spirit.
You mention the cruelty of animals eating other animals. I assume that that evolved on earth after things went way out of balance and the weather became extreme. Part of the year in much of the world, with snow on the ground, there would sometimes not be any food otherwise. So being carnivorous was/is better than being extinct. Maybe this will change as things evolve. I also think that it would be a mistake to assume that animals experience that in the way that we would. They are hard-wired to run from predators, of course, to maintain the balance in nature, and there is momentary pain at the kill (as there often is in natural death, too). However, the animal souls know that that is part of the package of what they signed up for, and probably don't mind too much. What they do mind, rightfully so, is their cruel, prolonged inhumane treatment by human beings in our despicable feed lots and slaughterhouses. There should be laws banning that.
You mention that everything is dying the moment it commences to exist. That is certainly now true of the plant and animal kingdoms (including humans) on the physical plane of earth, although there are accounts of human beings who have overcome death, who can materialize and dematerialize their bodies at will, or who have ascended. But death, if not our first choice as an exit to the physical plane, has many lessons. Michael has said that there is more growth in a well-handled death than at any other time. And to me, it's not really so bad, since what is behind every physical form is eternal. What IS bad is extended pain. From what I've heard, those who have spiritual mastery experience little or no pain, no matter what happens. The rest of us may be sometimes stuck with it until we get there, the way things currently are.
I have had much low-grade depression in this life. Slowly, as I've grown and have been able to create better circumstances for myself, it has been dissipating. (Lately, I've been taking St. John's Wort, too, which I think has helped.) I am finding that moments of joy are becoming less fleeting. I am finding much satisfaction in the beauty of nature, as I make space in myself to receive it. (Meditation helps make that space larger, although I am not yet a regular meditator.) I also find joy in the love of beautiful friends like you. There are some significant things in my life that I would like to be better than they are, but I have a growing sense that I am blessed.
It is said that we build upon what is, not upon what is lacking. Whatever beauty, goodness and wisdom there is in the universe (and I believe that there is a great deal), this is our starting point, our foundation, for creating the greater beauty, goodness and wisdom. If we focus too much on the ugliness, which is only a lack of beauty, goodness and wisdom, we give that our energy and expand that--we make the hole bigger. I think we should focus on it only long enough to bring release and healing.
There is a back-and-forth in any healing process. For example, to purify the body, there is fasting, then rebuilding, more fasting, then more rebuilding. Too much fasting without rebuilding brings starvation; too much rebuilding without fasting brings congestion (the new nutrients need someplace to go, which the fasting provides).
Mentally and emotionally, we focus for a while on the negative things (denial, etc.) that need clearing. Then we need to bring in the healthy thoughts and feelings that we want to be there instead. When I was emptying my "shit bag" over an eight-month period while working with a psychic therapist, I spend about an hour each day working on my own; I'd spend about 20 minutes releasing anger and rage, pounding my bed with pillows or belts while repeating the words that were coming up. That would naturally climax into tears, the purging of the hurt behind the anger, accompanied by another "mantra." Once that cycle was complete, the last 20 minutes or so would be a time of bringing forth the love and light that could fill the empty space I had created through release. For example, if I'd been releasing anger and pain around the feeling that my father didn't love me, I would bring forth in myself the love of my inner father-self, affirming my love for my inner child-self.
A concern I have with the RUOW approach is that there can be an unbalanced focus on the denials and "negativity" (I'm not fond of that word, but I don't know a better one here) and not enough attention on bringing forth the healthy thoughts and feelings to fill the space that truly purging them would create. Focusing too much on what needs to be purged can bring despondency and depression. Sometimes the new naturally rushes in to fill the space created when there is a true letting go of denial, but some people get trapped in the negativity: they get attached to their anger--their sense of identity, power and value become wrapped up in it, and they don't want to get beyond it. It's like people who spend years in therapy, and are no happier or more mature--they just now have more sophisticated reasons to blame their parents for why they're fucked up, rather than now taking responsibility for creating the life they want to have. I see a lot of blaming in RUOW people, and if people get stuck in that, they don't heal.
Our beliefs are so important--they are the software that runs our computers, so to speak. If we take anything we read too seriously and literally, it can strangle us. Fundamentalists of any persuasion are dangerous. True understanding comes from synthesizing truths from everywhere we find them, and validating them in our own experience. Our beliefs need to be loose enough to fit comfortably, flexible enough to address the complexity of life, always growing larger and more encompassing. Words in a book are never the truth--the truth is within us, and what is within us determines how we interpret what we read. Love recognizes itself. So does fear. Books can only provide models. In my view, models are reasonable facsimiles of truth if they expand our awareness and foster greater love, compassion, peace and understanding. When they no longer do that, it is time to leave them behind.
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