At my request, Linda Dillon has forwarded two channeled messages from Jesus Sananada in 2003 on love. One is posted today; the other tomorrow.

Greeting, I am Jesus Sananda, brother and friend, fellow traveler. I come this day to remind you to burn the tri-flame of magenta brightly in your heart – the flame of my beloved brother Maitreya and Sai Baba (Shirdi) and myself – and it is the gift of our essence that we give you, and we give it to you every day, every moment of existence.

It is not simply bestowed upon you once – for that would not be enough. Many of you forget of this gift and extinguish the flame and turn away – and so we give it to you time and time again so that you will never be without.

I come this day to speak to you of unconditional love – for it is the only kind of love there is. There are many expressions upon the planet that speak of love but they do not truly encompass the absence of expectation or conditions. There is a great deal of despair, of disconnection, of disassociation upon the planet at this time and it is the feeling of disconnection from self. This feeling [is] of truly not knowing that you are part of All, and not knowing which way to turn.

Where you have need to turn my brothers and sisters is inward, deep to the core of your being. I do not speak of the personality that is present in this lifetime but rather of the soul essence, the full design that has been activated within you. It is time for you to become fully familiar with this design and to embrace it and the wholeness of yourself. That is what this creation exercise is about – it is the co-creation as the expression of your design.

And what does this have to do with Love? Where there is a feeling of pain, disappointment, despair, disconnection and hurt, there is no Love. Let me clear about this. Yes, my brothers and sisters, I know this feeling for I have walked this Earth as one of you – and many of you have walked with me and you have turned to me and said “Lord, it has never been this bad. It cannot get any worse”. And then of course it did.

And some of you sat and wailed against the enemy and some of you ran away. Some of you ended your life, but many of you saw this time of bleakness as a new beginning, as an opportunity to touch and open the hearts of many. For where there is despair, there is also the deepest yearning to be and to exist in Love. Otherwise there would not be this feeling of desolation. There would simply be a feeling of nothing but emptiness.

Now again as you look around your planet and see the chaos blossoming from those who would take up arms and destroy your brothers and sisters, to those who simply sit in depression, to those who are leaving the planet by the millions. Once again you say to me “Lord, it has never been so bad. How can you speak of new beginnings and Nova Earth and the fullness of the unfoldment of the plan of the Mother when all we see is darkness. What can we do?”

And I say to you, LOVE YOURSELF. For if you are not wholly and completely unconditionally in acceptance and Love of yourself there is no resolution, no light. There needs to be a complete embracing of who you are. This does not mean acceptance or lack of responsibility. It does not mean to say to yourself “Oh I have behaved badly but it is OK because I love myself”. No, it is to look at the dark spots within you and say I will love myself. I will change this. And I will shift the energy to an absolute reflection of Love.

How will you do this? You will do it by the actions of Love – trust and hope and forgivingness – and the expression of this is not just to love those who are similar to you but also to love your enemies, to love those you think are insane and disdain.

It is to take them into your heart with compassion and wholeness and to hold them close to you, the same way you would hold a child who is throwing a tantrum and is out of control. You will hold them so that they will not harm themselves or anyone else. That is what has need to transpire – not to drop into the depths of despair for out of the darkness is the Light.

Understand, my brothers and sisters, as above so below. In the existence in the heart of God, in the Universe in the heart of One, there is only Love – there is nothing else. It is when you move to this point, the connection of unity, that you are home. We have brought you home, home to the heart of Mother/Father that you may hold and exist in this Oneness and then express it upon the planet.

That was the gift of the 13th Octave – it was to instantaneously heal the hearts of everyone on the planet. It was a gift prematurely given and never before bestowed – to be able to be in physical form and connect in the hearts of One. Make this connection deeper. Forge this connection to Love more solidly than you ever have before. Where you are feeling despair, pain, disconnection, love it away. No, I do not mean acceptance of it. I mean complete and total surrender. For it is a myth, an illusion. It is part of the mindset of mankind that has created separation.

I have know moments of despair and I have known moments of human love, and in this day and in this moment I know my complete love for you – for each and every one of you – not just as the spirit you are but for every hair on your head, every smile, every pore on your skin, every action you take, you are loved.

So when you do not know how to proceed, when you feel limited turn to me and say to me “Lord, how will I love myself?” And then let me show you, for you are my dear ones. We walk the planet together during this time of momentous change, opportunity and yes my friend challenges like you have never known upon Earth.

But let me be clear: I have come to walk with you, hand in hand. So I would dearly hope you would not leave and I would dearly hope and trust that you will not turn your head away and absorb the negativity and despair and chaos that is now leaving. The chaos has need to ascend, as that is truly the meaning of the ascension! It is the ascension of all former emotional beings into new form, into clarity and light.

You have hesitated to proceed with your creations and the hesitation has come from the lack of acknowledgement and love of self so what I ask of you now – your next assignment, your peace-keeping assignment, is to take time every single day and preferably every single hour to check in with me and to see that you are Love, nothing but Love – for that is your soul design, it is the expression of Love.

You took the best you thought of the Father, the most glorious expression and you said, “OK I will go exploring now, for I have my suitcase packed – it is called my soul design.” You are prepared, you have all you need. You are my disciples, my apostles of Nova Earth. Come. Walk with me now. Farewell.

Channeled by Linda Dillon, Council of Love, Feb. 10, 2003
© 2015 Council of Love, Inc.

What many religions usually offer the faithful is a passage to Heaven, Valhalla, Paradise. They promise the winning of salvation, redemption, the reward of the just.

Usually the faithful will go to Heaven if they follow the ways of a particular religion. Implicit in that is that others who don’t follow them won’t go to Heaven, be with the elect, etc.

That is a caricature of the truth. What is the truth? What piece of that story is in any way accurate?

Well, we are on a spiritual journey so that part is accurate. It’s a journey from God to God.

But it isn’t just the followers of a certain religion that will complete the journey and realize God. Everyone will. Sri Ramakrishna taught that:

“All will surely realize God. All will be liberated. It may be that some get their meal in the morning, some at noon, and some in the evening; but none will go without food. All, without any exception, will certainly know the real Self.” (1)

Krishnamurti agreed: “One day you will have all knowledge,” he said. (2) And Mata Amritanandamayi concurs as well: “Whoever it may be, he who has sincere interest can know and see God.” (3)

Thus there’s no foundation in truth to the statement that only the true believers of one religion will attain heaven or be ushered into the presence of God, etc.

To us, all that’s knowable and noticeable from our ground-level view is that we progress from one dimension of consciousness to another. This is the microcosmic view. The macrocosmic view is that we’re returning to God, whence we came.

To be totally accurate, what the early Christian masters meant by “Heaven” was the Fifth Dimension that we’re headed to. What others meant by Valhalla and Paradise is not as clear.

What’s being vaguely and obliquely referred to is the experience we call “enlightenment.” Enlightenment is what carries us from one dimension to another.

If we’re to get to Heaven, Valhalla or Paradise, it’ll be because we became enlightened. And enlightened to a certain stage because there are stages to enlightenment.

Enlightenment itself is virtually (that is, to all intents and purposes) endless. It goes on so far down the road that it’s pointless to talk about its end. Can you imagine life just getting better and better to an unbelievable extent? And yet that’s what awaits us.

I haven’t been enlightened in this lifetime. It’s implicit in what I know about myself that I have been in others (as have you). But that knowledge is not available to me at this time.

Therefore my intellectual understanding of enlightenment combined with perhaps two dozen spiritual experiences of a lesser nature than illumination is all I have to go on in defining enlightenment.

For me, enlightenment is a radical discontinuity in knowledge and experience that lifts a person, temporarily or permanently, to a higher plane of life. It may involve the seeing of a light or a cherished form of God. Or it may involve an event in consciousness such as a heart opening x 100.

When temporary, it leaves its traces like increased confidence, increased ability to love and experience bliss, certainty that one is immortal, etc.

Enlightenment, Krishna has said, is the reward of all action. (4) Very few desire it and, of the few who do, very few again have the discipline or perseverance to carry that wish through to the end. (5)

“Ascension” refers to a “movement” of sentient beings from one plane of consciousness to another. In Jesus’s case, it was an individual phenomenon. In our case, it will be a mass or collective phenomenon.

Ascension is unto itself the attainment of a stage of enlightenment. But of what stage I have no certain knowledge. If we were in the Third Dimension, I’d say that sahaja samadhi catapults us from the Third to the Fifth. But the Mother has said sahaja comes deeper into the Fifth Dimension.

The paradox that situation creates is that, without sahaja, ordinarily we would need to be reborn into the Third. But I cannot conceive that we, being in the Fifth and not having had sahaja, would somehow return to the Third. So it’s a gap in my knowledge as to exactly what stage of enlightenment triggers Ascension.

However, the celestials remind us that the journey goes on well past Ascension to the Fifth.

Archangel Michael says that he speaks to us from the Transcendental. Swami Vivekananda also came from the Transcendental and was an Elohim. So here we have the phenomenon of two exalted beings living in the domain of the Father and yet retaining their individuality and showing their up-to-the-moment knowledge of Earth’s ways.

It does explain however how Archangel Michael could say that we can return to the Father and then emerge again when needed, much as Swami Vivekananda did in coming to Earth.

While I look forward to enlightenment, I also know that everything about me – my desire to serve, my love of writing, my relaxing into composition – has increased with a simple heart opening.

It allows me a kind of measuring device: if this experience I had was this sweet, can I imagine what Ascension must be like? I admit I cannot.

Footnotes

(1) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 818. Hereafter GSR.

(2) J. Krishnamurti, At the Feet of the Master. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1974; c1910, 27.

(3) Mata Amritanandamayi, Awaken, Children! Vallicakavu, India: Mata Amritanandamayi Mission Trust, I, 49.

(4) “The reward of all action is to found in enlightenment.” (Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans.,Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 54. Hereafter BG.)

“The glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.” (Isaiah 58:8.)

“By contacting God in the world and in meditation you will find all your heart’s desires fulfilled. Then you will be a true man of renunciation, for you will find that nothing is more worth-while, more pleasant or attractive than the all-beautiful, all-satisfying, all-thirst quenching, ever-new, joyous God.” (Paramahansa Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ. Three vols. Dallas: Amrita Foundation, 1979-86, 1, 17.)

(5) “Who cares to seek For that perfect freedom? One man, perhaps, In many thousands.” (Sri Krishna in BG, 70.)

“Only one in a million sincerely longs for God, and few sustain that longing.” (Swami Brahmananda in EC, 194.)

“Then tell me how many
Of those who seek freedom
Shall know the total Truth of my being?
Perhaps one only.” (Sri Krishna in BG, 70.)

I’m a great admirer of positive psychology, which has been a fantastic corrective to the traditional ‘disease model’ of psychology and has provided an extremely helpful examination of the different factors that constitute human well-being. However, I think there is one important aspect of human well-being which positive psychology has largely ignored.

Spiritual Well-Being

Positive psychologists have suggested that there are two main types of well-being: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic well-being means feeling good in the present moment, and includes physical pleasure, peak experiences and a sense of gratitude or appreciation. Eudaimonic well-being is more long term – it includes a sense of meaning and purpose, of being connected to something larger, and of flourishing through creativity or self-development.

Martin Seligman’s PERMA model offers a similar perspective. According to this model, the five main elements of a life of flourishing and well-being are positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment.

However, there is one important type of well-being missing from these models: inner well-being, or what might be called ‘energetic’ or ‘spiritual’ well-being. This is a well-being which we experience whenever our inner being — or consciousness — is in a relatively quiet or empty state. You might experience it when you’re in the countryside, when the stillness and beauty of nature have the effect of relaxing and slowing down your mind, and you’re filled with a sense of ease and aliveness.

You might experience it during and after exercise, such as swimming or running. Even though you might feel physically tired, you’re glowing with a vibrant energy and inner calm and wholeness. It might happen during or after a yoga session, or after you’ve played music for a period of time: there’s a sense of richness and warmth inside you, which seems to have a natural quality of well-being.

In these moments we feel in a positive, contented state without knowing exactly why. We feel happy without necessarily having any reason to be happy. We don’t feel happy because something good has happened to us, or because we have something to look forward to. We feel happy just because a tangible energetic sense of well-being is inside us. It’s almost as if the energy we sense within us in these moments — the energy of our being or consciousness — has a natural quality of well-being.

There is a connection with the state of ‘flow’ here. As the investigations of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and others have shown, the state of being intensely absorbed in a challenging activity generates well-being, and it is important for us to regularly engage with such ‘flow-inducing’ activities.

And I would argue that one of the main reasons why flow generates well-being is because it has the effect of emptying and quietening our minds, and so allows us to experience the energy of our being in a pure and intense form.

Why should ‘being’ or ‘consciousness’ have a natural quality of well-being? There is no answer for this. It simply does, in the same way that water has a quality of wetness.

In the Hindu spiritual tradition, the fundamental reality of the universe is satchitananda — being-consciousness-bliss. Being or consciousness equate with bliss, and that bliss is both inside and outside us, as a fundamental characteristic of the universe, and of our own being. It is precisely because being has this quality of well-being that meditation has such powerful positive effects.

When we meditate, we remove ourselves from external stimuli, give our minds a rest from concentrating on tasks and activities, and try to slow down and quieten the surface thought-chatter of our minds. As a result, we begin to ‘tap into’ this fundamental quality of well-being within us.

Doing, Thinking and Being

When I teach positive psychology classes I suggest to my students that well-being stems from three main sources. Or to put it more directly, if you want to to be happy, there are three main approaches you can take.

First of all, there is doing. There are certain activities you can engage in which are highly likely to bring you well-being. You can have contact with nature, for example. You can practise altruism, being kind and generous to the people around you. You can exercise, spend more time socialising, and ensure that there are activities in your life which will provide you with flow.

You can try to ensure that there are goals in your life to engage you and for you to work towards. In this way, the path of doing is clearly a very effective way of bringing well-being into your life.

Secondly, there is thinking. You can bring more well-being into your life by changing the way you think. You can learn to think positively rather than negatively. You can identify your ‘scripts’ of repetitive negative thoughts and replace them with more rational thinking patterns.

You can learn to interpret events positively and train yourself to see the future in an optimistic light. And perhaps most importantly of all, you can cultivate a sense of gratitude and appreciation. You can learn to value aspects of your life which you used to take for granted, such as the people in your life, your health, the social conditions your live in (such as the peacefulness and stability of your life) and even the fact of being alive itself.

Thirdly, you can also find happiness through being. This means that you can experience the energetic or spiritual well-being inside you, by cultivating a state of mental quietness, by giving yourself the opportunity to ‘withdraw’ from activity and external stimuli for a while, and allowing your mind to slow down and empty.

Probably the best way to do this is to meditate, or practice other meditative-type activities such as swimming, running, tai chi or yoga. Meditation will allow your experience this well-being on a temporary basis, as well as helping you to ‘touch into it’ on an ongoing, long term basis too.

In my view, this inner aspect is in some ways the most significant type of well-being, since it suggests that well-being is actually the nature of being. In a very real sense, happiness is already here. It is natural to us. In fact it is our nature. And we are already happy, if we can allow ourselves to be.

“Does Happiness Lie Within?” by Steve Taylor, March 27, 2015 at http://wakeup-world.com/2015/03/27/does-happiness-lie-within-doing-thinking-being/

I’m still learning the ropes following a recent spiritual experience. (1)

Last week, I was on an emotional roller coaster. This week I wanted to smooth out my experience a little and recover some stability and predictability in my life.

So I returned to meditation again but more particularly meditating on the Divine Mother, who’s my ideal. And at one point I invited the Mother, with quite a bit of emotion, to come and live in my heart.

The Divine Mother is our original sacred partner. Genders and sacred unions are both designed to remind us of the original partnership of Father and Mother God. (2)

But the mystery of mysteries is that we are that Father and so, the Mother is our original partner. (I just got goosebumps saying that.)

I invited the Mother to sit on the swing, what Hindus call the jhula, in my heart. I began to use my Mother mantra again after some years. Now my mantra has a life in it I haven’t known before.

When I invited her into my heart, I felt elation. I have to tell you that I’m not constitutionally wired to use my imagination; I’m very factual. So doing things like inviting the Mother into my heart are not usual for me.

I’m more into tracking my internal space – feelings, thoughts, flows of energy. I suppose I’m a kind of empirical materialist in that I use my body, mind and senses, and now my heart, to know things.

But this use of the creative imagination worked. In the elation that I felt, I was totally carried away,

When I repeated the exercise some time later, I was filled with the most delicious love, tapering off into bliss. I wrote at the time:

“So here I am at this moment in bliss. I can only report. Everything hurtful, unwelcome, and unpleasant is forgotten. I’m as meek as a lamb. But I also feel the impact of thoughts just hovering in the background ready to catch up with me again.

“The deeper I draw in the in-breath, the deeper the experience of the Mother’s love goes.

“I allow it, with every sense.

“Utter calmness. Utter peace. No desire to move.

“Total obliteration of care. No, it’s deeper than that. Care does not arise in this place. In this space, the world would work for me no matter how it showed up. In this space, I am the change I want to see and my transformation is what has the world work out for me. Nothing external.”

And not only bliss but the thoughts flowed as well. I’m sure they were being sent along to me. At one point, I got that it’s my job, and yours and yours and yours, to show everyone who approaches us love and respect. I can’t say I’ve done that much or overly well. That was a hugely challenging thought. Thank you, Mother.

It’s probably as simple as this to make the world work: Love.

I cannot describe the way I feel at this moment, the feeling is so new to me. I’ve only felt this way when, say, I’ve won some really big prize in high school or something similar. “Aha. Life is working out.”

Footnotes

(1) A heart opening on March 13, 2015.