June 2016 – God, Love, and Truth

Lessons in Change and a Steep Dropoff

“It is wonderful what God can do with a broken heart, if He gets all the pieces.”

-Samuel Chadwick

My life has changed more in the last 6 months or so than it has in a very, very long time. I ended a 5.5-year relationship, figured out I’m actually straight, not gay (I know, I know–that’s whopper of a blog post in itself), moved houses and states, and realized that my biggest passion in life is to share divine truth. Additionally, since being back from London, everything has completely fallen apart with my family and now I’ve chosen not to be in communication with all but one of my six adult immediate family members, something that’s unlikely to change soon.

Every month of this year has felt emotionally totally different than the month before, and at times that’s felt amazing and exciting and at other times scary and painful. Since being back in these last few weeks in particular, I’ve felt at the least, disoriented every day, and depending on the day, there’s a varied buffet of panic, confusion, restlessness, and sadness. On some days after I’ve felt through some fear or had a really good cry, that day I tend to feel still a little disoriented, but have a lot more faith. Overall though, I feel like I’ve been thrown in a tumble dryer and I still haven’t figured out which way is up, and though my faith is slowly building, it’s been an intensely emotional process that feels far from over.

I feel like I’m at a pretty significant fork in the road in my life. Even though I want so badly the next positive changes that will lead to more happiness for me, I feel afraid I won’t know how to make them or God won’t guide me. I have always had huge injuries about my passions being absolutely impossible to have, and since being introduced to Divine Truth, the way I could describe it is that I have almost no faith in the Law of Desire or that my desires and passions, even if in harmony with love, will be something I’m allowed to have or that will have any power at all. I’m still working through that big, lifelong aloneness feeling I mentioned in a recent blog, and sorting out the differences between God reliance and self reliance and self responsibility and what’s just plain fear. And of course, the family stuff is really hard as I still get worried that what they say about me is true, and I know that inclination to believe them covers some final layers of resistance to feeling the truth about their treatment of me and resistance to the gravity of how that would feel to accept. A lot of days feel like desperation and I’m holding on to every moment I’ve had with God, every teaching from Jesus and Mary that’s stuck in my heart and I know by memory, every song that reminds me of God’s goodness, all my favorite Padgett messages and quotes from Robert James Lees‘ channelled books. Also a great help is that I’m spending more time in the mountains than Julie Andrews as Maria von Trapp (the hills really are alive with the sound of music, y’all).

Things have happened faster than they ever have for me and I can feel the momentum of it, and I feel like I have to be super careful about what I choose to do in this phase right now. And I’m struggling with that. I’ve been so tempted to fall back into physical addictions–food, social media, TV–to calm my anxiety. And some days, I’ve chosen the addictions instead of to love, and other days are definitely better in that regard. And yet I have this sense that if I do avoid my emotions and numb things out, just how destructive it will be at this point in my life, even more so than it ever has been. It’s not that I don’t think I’m allowed to make mistakes, but I also have moments where I can acutely feel that it matters very much whether I go for that chocolate, spend my night watching (non-triggering) movies, or choose to go surround myself with people instead of feeling my aloneness. It feels like I’m walking on a narrow ledge and there is a fatally steep dropoff on either side. I’ve never quite felt the truth about this path being a “narrow way” quite so much as I do right now.

It feels like once real change on this path has started happening for any of us, things will then happen faster and faster, and it becomes that much more dangerous and destructive to try and slow or stop it. It’s like the train has left the station, picked up speed, and jumping off of it would be catastrophic. And the ways we jump off of it are numerous: engaging in addictions, controlling things, justifying avoiding the next set of fears in front of us. And maybe, it’s not necessarily more dangerous or destructive than before to choose avoidance and addictions, but rather we just become more sensitive to and aware of the implications of sin than we were before–I’m not quite sure.

I’m reminding myself that just because I’ve allowed a lot of change already and made a lot of progress in my resistance to change, this is no time to rest on my laurels. Fears will come up in the face of change, I’ll work through those fears and make the changes, and then more fears will come up in the face of the next changes, etc. I can’t try to control things and say, “Ok that was really intense, I need things to slow down so I can breathe for a bit and adjust to what’s changed.” Sounds reasonable, right? Except slowing it down is just fear, plain and simple.

I have had a few more Law of Attraction events that have helped encourage me to keep on keeping on. One day recently I came across a picture with the text again, “You are not alone.” Then after that, my LOA brought me the quote below.

I’m also learning some lessons about emotional overwhelm. It seems that if we’re really sincere on this path, the emotional overwhelm is going to be very frequent, and maybe during certain phases, constant. What I’m finding is that my bar for what I consider the extent of overwhelm to be is being challenged to a new level. It’s like right when I think I’ve got the overwhelm thing down (and maybe I did for where I was in my progression), deeper and bigger emotions are exposed, and more things happen all at once, and so now the scope of emotional overwhelm is going to be deeper and wider. I remind myself a lot that God made me to handle all my emotions, in their full intensity, even if tons of them are happening all at once.

I also get the sense there are spirits who are rooting for me to fail right now. I can feel them encouraging my self-judgement injuries, fueling my fears and urging me to engage in the physical addictions. I had a terrifying nightmare in the last couple weeks, one that I woke up from feeling total dread, short of breath and tight in my throat, jolted awake when my physical body sort of spasmed and I woke up, as if I came back to my body somewhat violently and suddenly. Of course, dark spirits can only fan the flames of my own emotions I haven’t dealt with yet, so I’m not a victim to them. It doesn’t help that one of my biggest fears is dark spirits–another thing hopefully I’ll start facing soon.

The overarching imperative in all of this is that I must keep seeking to move out of self-reliance and into God-reliance, to build my faith and to pray to God, and most of all, to seek God’s love in the process. To ask for God’s love and grace not to lessen the pain I need to feel through, but rather to love me while I feel it. Jesus’ urge to ask us all to consider, “God is good” has pulled me through so many tough days recently. One of Mary’s older but absolutely golden blogs, found here, has also been treasure for me lately.

So I thought I’d write this blog partly to challenge my belief that if I’m struggling and don’t have much profundity to share, I’d just be wasting time by writing because it’ll be self-indulgent and depressing and won’t help anyone. And yet, if I only post on the blog when I’m through the other side of something and never when things are messy, then I’d just be in facade with this blog anyway. And also, if some of these quotes, songs, thoughts–any of the bits that are helping me right now might help someone else, then I’ll be very happy about that.

With that, I’ll end with this song I stumbled across recently (cheers for God’s LOA again) that I had never heard. Some of the lyrics have helped me connect with some of my own feelings of a lack of faith and brokenness and get into some good tears about it.

*Edit 7/22/16 – I thought to clarify that while parts of the lyrics of this song have helped me many times into sadness and hopelessness and still does, God does not plan broken hearts, and God does not want us to give over our will to Her. I tend to think of those particular lyrics as coming from an error in understanding about God driven by brokenness, when we in error think God has created our pain (which I have indeed had the false belief about). I have thought of the Thy Will lyrics as pertaining to God’s larger will for us all to grow in love. Other lyrics in this song have also moved me deeply, but it felt important to clarify all this.

Love,

Courtney

My First Divine Truth Video + More

Greetings, Friends! I’m stoked that the videos recorded while I was in London are now up!

The first is the video Perry and I did on “Removing Parental Emotions Towards God”, wherein we “discuss the relationship between the emotional injuries we inherit from our family of origin, how we automatically project those same injuries towards our true parent God, and the process of removing our parental emotional injuries so that we can start to develop a real relationship with God based on Truth.”

It was a new experience for me as I’ve never talked to a camera before, but I had so much fun chatting about these topics and absolutely loved the experience of making the video. I love talking about Divine Truth! Makes me want to create a channel. Hmm…

Next, check out Peter, Perry and Nicky’s first public, recorded divine truth seminar, “Introduction to Divine Truth” and after that, the Q&A. I shared a bit about watching them prepare for this seminar behind the scenes and my reflections on desire and taking action; if you want to read that blog, click here.

Happy viewing!

Courtney

A Windy Hilltop and My Faith

I wanted to share about a pretty wonderful law of attraction event I had earlier today that I am feeling really grateful for!

Where I currently live near Salt Lake City, Utah, I am surrounded by the majestic Rocky Mountain range, wherein I am blessed to have access to spectacular nature and hiking trails. In such expanses, I can easily find solitary spots, which are one of the best places for me to feel emotions and pray to God, partly because the beauty of nature has always been such an access point for me in connecting with God’s goodness.

So today I went to the mountains to feel through some big emotions I’m having come up about a lack of faith, hopelessness, and feeling alone in certain areas of my life and growth. Without making it a long post with the specifics (maybe another time), I’m basically realizing that my main prayer needs to be for more faith. In these particular areas, I feel a lack of faith in my own ability to figure out the truth about something or the best course of action, and also a lack of faith in God’s guidance. Despite that I’ve grown faith in other areas of my life in regards to God and myself, obviously my relationship with God is in its infancy and there are still lots of emotional wounds to heal before I can feel a strong sense of faith in God and myself in every area, and with every emotion.

So I climbed to the top of a hill off the beaten trail in the mountains, and today it was quite windy, so I knew I could go there and be pretty sequestered visually and auditorily while having a good cry. I’d been teary all day, so the full force of the emotions started coming out as soon as I found my little spot. I began crying about my lack of faith and fear of not being able to the truth about certain things, and doubt about receiving guidance. I eventually got to this lifelong feeling of being alone in regards to God, and unsupported in general, sort of a thrown out into the rain to fend for myself by God kind of feeling. Not surprisingly, the only physical pain I have, which I can remember since my pre-teen years, are chronically tight shoulders and neck related to the amount of self-reliance that I haven’t really wanted to be in, but felt I had to be in and the lack of faith that I’m supported completely by God, which causes a general scarcity of relaxation and trust in my life.

So I was having a pretty full-body sob about it and had been sitting there for about twenty minutes in the emotion, my head was in my knees and my eyes were closed, and I was feeling and thinking specifically, “Why do I feel so alone?” “If I have so much love and assistance from God and also my guide, why do I just feel so completely alone in this?” “Why do I have so little faith right now that I’m not alone?” “Why have I always felt so alone almost all of my life?”

Right at this moment, I heard a person run up behind me. I turned around and a man in running gear said simply,

“I didn’t mean to intrude, I just wanted to tell you you’re not alone. Whatever it is, you’re not alone.”

… and then he ran off.

And of course, this crystal clear law of attraction event got me into even more grief as in that moment I started to feel just how much God and my guide want me to know I’m not alone even if I don’t believe it yet, so much so that they inspired someone to come remind me at the exact same moment I was thinking those thoughts.

Every time I get a reminder and feeling like that of how God is with me every second, aware of every single feeling I’m having, it just blows me away. It triggers so much grief when I feel the truth about the incredible tender care and complete attentiveness God has for me–all of us–in every moment and every situation, and how God doesn’t miss a single thing that’s happening in our souls. It’s like I get this little budding feeling of how precious each of us are to God and then all the worth-based emotions spill out, of course. And even though I still have much more emotion to go through about the causes of that alone feeling from my childhood, and more to go through before the alone feeling I’ve carried through my life is replaced with faith, this beautiful LOA gift gave me some faith right there and then.

I’ve always had this feeling of so badly wanting God reliance to be possible, even before finding Divine Truth (though I’ve had used different verbiage than that), but feeling like I dare not get excited about it because it was too good to be true; it wasn’t really something I could trust in. I’ve felt it was naive to think my life wasn’t just solely up to me, that getting my hopes up for something so wonderful from and with God was a dumb fantasy. I’ve also had feelings before that perhaps it was even more noble and spiritual to do it all by myself and maybe that’s why it seemed like I had to.

So now I’m feeling a bit more faith that I can, and God can help me, release the emotions that have caused my feelings of aloneness in my life and doubt that I am supported and guided by God. And even though I still have some of the feeling of not daring to believe in the beauty and gift of God reliance despite how much I love the idea of it, I feel such a feeling of excitement when I let myself believe it’s possible.

Love,

Courtney

Taking Action, Following Desires, and London

Hi Everyone,

I began this blog post writing from a quaint coffee shop in London, one many Americans like me find so novel and exotic, with a view out the windows of old, quintessentially european buildings, climbing vines, and small, charming shops. I finished this blog where I currently live in Salt Lake City, Utah, after a week of reflection on what was quite an epic trip.

I went to visit my longtime friend Perry, meet my new-to-be longtime friend Nicky, attend their first public Divine Truth talk, which they gave along with Nicky’s cousin Peter, and otherwise engage in any Divine Truth related happenings and conversations in which I was able to shoehorn myself into (which luckily, since these guys are amazing, was tons).

Hanging out with Perry, Nicky and Peter, and attending their talk, was so inspiring for me not only in the content itself that they presented, but also in witnessing examples of what a person does when they’re really in their passions. These three guys are exercising their desires and passions for teaching divine truth and taking action on them. I started writing this blog soon after their talk and was attempting to illustrate all that I observed behind the scenes, though they just published an awesome blog about all that detail you can read by clicking here.

But to reiterate and expand on some of what I was privy to, in order to create the seminar, they had to take so many actions–similar processes I’d imagine Jesus and Mary likely go through to set their seminars up. In observing them for a few days prior, I watched them discuss the venue hire, how to transport equipment back and forth, plan out the topics and the overall flow of the presentation, and go through a huge amount of testing to make sure all the video and audio equipment worked. And as far as I know, all the equipment stuff was pretty much completely new to them, so it was a steep learning curve they had to go through. Then there’s setting up the room, breaking down the room, deconstructing all the equipment, and then of course all the editing of the videos and creating a youtube-compatible presentation after the fact.

It’s not like the understanding of all of this is entirely new to me as I’ve heard Jesus and Mary discuss the details of presenting and recording seminars before, but perhaps there’s something about the fact that I’ve known Perry for 7+ years and am getting to see him follow his passions, and also all the guys are around my age and have been listening to Divine Truth for a similar amount of time as myself, which feels so relatable, and also, it’s different seeing the process immediately in front of me. It’s like, with Jesus and Mary, it can be easy to perpetuate some excuses with myself: they’re so much farther ahead than I am in their development, I’m not there yet, I’m just lil ole’ me.

And this is also only talking about the logistical aspects involved in making their first seminar happen. There’s also the emotions around it they had to go through to do it all, and it made me reflect on many that I know I’ll personally need to go through as I have a passion to share Divine Truth in similar ways as they are: concern that I’m not far enough along to share anything of value, fear of bumbling and blubbering incoherently in front of a group of people live and on video, fear that I wouldn’t be able to figure out all the technology involved, fear of human and spirit attack, concerns about if nobody showed up and I looked like a fool. For me, I imagine it’d be about worth and fear of others’ opinions of me more so than fear of handling logistical aspects or tech, but the bottom line is there are always emotions triggered when we start following our passions.

Witnessing all the gifts these guys give as an expression of their passion and love–not just their main seminar but also a more informal (but with a larger audience!) talk that Perry and Nicky did, and also seeing Nicky put so much work into managing the forum, and what went into creating a video for their Divine Truth Experience channel (I did one with Perry–watch out for it!)–reminded me that when we are really passionate, we will do whatever it takes, both in regards to taking logistical action and also in regards to feeling emotions that come up before, during and after taking those actions. It reminded me that following our passions is a resolved exercise of our will in so many directions. These guys don’t need hand-holding to follow their passions, they don’t have a demand people listen and appreciate, or require validation in order to exercise them, and yet at the same time are so humble in desiring guidance from their guides and God along the whole way.

It reminds me that if we are truly desirous of living in our passions–whatever they may be–we would start acting now, and start feeling our emotional blocks now. We wouldn’t wait till next week, or in a year or exist in irresolution until some nebulous point in time that we’re not even sure what the criteria would be to start. We actually wouldn’t even be able to wait, because the passion and excitement would propel us through even if we had to go through a lot of hurdles and a lot of emotions in order to make it happen. I’ve begun to feel how following our passions is a significant part of self-love, and how not following our soul’s passions in line with who God designed us to be is actually a very damaging use of our will against ourselves, our soulmate, and keeps us from being closer with God. Expressing our soul is about being in harmony with love, and we are choosing to remain disconnected from our own souls when we hold off from following our passions and desires in harmony with love.

So with that, I really recommend watching their presentation. The main seminar, “Intro to Divine Truth” can be found here, and the subsequent Q&A can be found here.

I also love this quote from Jesus, from which the content could be an entire other blog post I’d adore writing about my feelings on, but that may be for another time:

“Most of us have suppressed our true, personality-based passions due to external, injury-based influences in our childhood which we took on that have now morphed into fears and addictions in our adulthood.

That is why so many people feel ‘lost’ when it comes to what they are passionate about – internally they are resisting humility to their fear and grief about potential rejection and/or financial lack and therefore become quite disconnected from their childlike feelings of enthusiasm for things.”

To finish this blog post, I thought I’d share a few photos from my trip to London, which was filled with amazing discussions about God and God’s Way, wonderful friends, delicious vegan food, gorgeous parks, and a slew of new english slang (“Pop your clogs” and other delightful vernacular) that I’m joyfully confusing my American friends with.