March Update: Volunteer Selection Project, Other Activities, Learning God’s Way

Hi All,

I can’t believe I’ve already been back in Australia for over two weeks!

My time has been mostly involved in the Volunteer Selection Project, other tasks I’m learning and being trained in to help with, and a bit of time maintaining my own business too.

With the Volunteer Selection Project, initially I thought to do regular recaps of what we’ve been doing, but Eloisa has been posting amazing ones on the God’s Way blog already that describe the ins and outs of our activities. So, rather than replicate her already awesome blogs, I’ll link to them periodically when I do an update, and here on my blog, I’m interested in sharing what I’m personally learning about God’s Way of doing things and the necessary attitudes required to be of service to gift, and learning about myself.

So thus far, here are the God’s Way Blogs on this round of the VSP so far:

God’s Way Blog Weeks 1 & 2 VSP Update

God’s Way Blog Week 3 VSP Update

Early morning cleaning supplies set up for a day cleaning a home

That being said…

A Short “What I’ve Been Up To” Summary:

The Volunteer Selection Project runs 1-2 days per week, and I’m both a participant and also observing and learning behind-the-scenes operations in the long-term desire of mine to start a Learning Centre somewhere in the world.

I typically arrive an hour before the program begins each day that we have it to help set up, and stay a couple hours after it finishes to do a bit of clean up (though we do nearly all of that as part of the program itself) and to observe Eloisa and Tristan, the facilitators, debrief, discuss the day, backup data, update their extensive documentation of various kinds and do other kinds of reflection and computer work related to the VSP. I’m learning so much from this and am so grateful to be able to observe!

In the behind the scenes component, I’ve also had the privilege to sit in and listen to some of the backend meetings of various kinds which has been fascinating, inspiring and is giving me such a better idea of what it would be like to do this myself. So again, this opportunity is priceless and I am so grateful.

There is also homework each week in documenting everything we do (so far this has been cleaning indoor and outdoor spaces, and weeding), and we have upcoming assignments which will involve speaking presentations to the group, individual and group research projects, and more.

Additionally, I’m starting to learn and train in a few things to be able to help with projects here. I’m just at the very beginning of that but hope to begin learning “markers” and tagging for studio recordings and Assistance Groups (which you can read about on Lena’s blog here if you’re unfamiliar with what I mean by “markers”), and dealing with FAQ questions that are sent into the office, an expansion on the project I did last year logging  questions (which ended up being 1000+!) that were written by participants during the 3.1 and 3.2 Assistance Groups.

Getting set up before a day of recording in the studio

And partly through the VSP and through other avenues, I’m learning how to help out with cleaning, environmental projects and other endeavors.

With any leftover time, I tend to my business as a nutritionist, catch up with Perry and continue to discuss our stuff (though trying to work through soulmate stuff from afar is pretty different!), and doing a little cross training fitness which I enjoy and makes me feel more capable and safe to do all the physical, manual work that is done here. It’s been busy!

What I’m Learning Emotionally

Emotionally, I’ve been all over the place! I feel so challenged and confronted and uncomfortable a lot of the time, but also invigorated and inspired at other times. In the course of one day I often feel like I experience 20 or 30 different emotions, and when I do feel really challenged and confronted, I feel like it’s about 20 different topics or issues. But it seems it’s best to let myself feel exactly what comes up as soon as it comes up, not delay it if possible, and not analyze things intellectually too much.

I notice that if I am not soft to the fears that are always coming up, then I go about everything with anxiety, start having insomnia, difficulty making decisions, and get rather obsessed with small worries while neglecting the big issues. I get really in my head, tense and pressure builds in me in an unhealthy way and I just get more and more rigid in my body and emotions. So I am trying to focus on my fear in a more gentle way and let myself cry about how overwhelmed I often feel. So far it’s seemed if I can just let myself feel how overwhelmed and disoriented and scared I feel–just process emotionally what’s right in front of me–then I come out of it feeling more capable, and optimistic, and my desire and excitement returns. And it seems I have to go through these cycles every few days.

There is masses to learn to be able to be of help, and I’m realizing how important it is to deal with all my blocks about learning and education, how it feels to not understand, not know, not be good at things yet. I have to remind myself to be patient, that I am not going to be perfect at everything tomorrow or next week, and to just keep trucking along, plodding and learning and processing my emotions along the way, and at some point I will get it and I’ll become more skilled.

In the V.S.P and in general, fear is predictably one of my biggest problems: fear of confrontation and attack, fear of holding to what I feel is the most loving way to do a thing even if it means others disagree, fear of making mistakes and getting things wrong, fear of being totally honest. These issues affect things daily in my life, and probably hourly and by the minute if I were to really see them for what they are. However, I am so grateful for so many opportunities to see when and how I live in and act in my fear, and most of all I am finding it is really important for me to see how it impacts others when I justify, live in and act in fear.

Honest Communication

We are learning in the VSP about what the facilitators are calling “honest communication”. From one of Eloisa’s God’s Way blog posts, she explained it like this:

Participants are encouraged to be themselves and to honestly communicate with each other. This means that when a conflict or feeling comes up in one or more of the participants they are encouraged to truthfully feel what they feel and speak up about it. Participants are encouraged to feel how they feel, say what they thing in a self-responsible manner (not blaming others for how they feel).

Just saying what I really feel is so challenging for me! It has been sad for me to realize that all my life, my communication with everyone has been the exact opposite of this. I’ve always misrepresented my feelings, hidden what I really feel and think, make out to others that I’m ok, lie if it means I can avoid a confrontation, or avoid attack and disapproval, and been happy to put on whatever opinion or face any particular person wanted me to be. And yet, as many of us in the VSP are finding, honest communication rapidly exposes emotions and is a very fast way to resolve issues.

VSP “mother of millions” plant weeding

A Comparison

At the moment, the main topics on my heart are this:

I am realizing that the people here who have and are teaching me, and who love me–Jesus, Mary, the VSP facilitators Tris and Elo, and many other friends I have here–encourage me to act the exact opposite of how my parents and family, and most people previously in my whole life, wanted me to act. This is a really emotional realization for me and I have a ton more to feel about with regards to it.

Let me be more specific in some comparisons below. When I say “here” I’m referencing the most loving of people here, not necessarily everyone in the local area or who are participants of the VSP.

♡ Here, I am encouraged to be honest about what I really feel. Being honest without blaming or pushing my emotions on another is considered very good. I am never attacked or rejected for being honest.

In my childhood, if I was honest about what I really felt, I was always rejected and punished, even if I wasn’t blaming or unloving with it. Honest communication was actively discouraged and punished.

♡ Here, I am encouraged to be myself, and am taught about how being myself and sharing myself is loving to others, and not doing so is unloving. The real me is appreciated and desired.

In my childhood, I was attacked for being myself, and taught that being myself and sharing myself was unloving to others. The real me was considered a bother and a nuisance.

♡ Here I am taught that self-depreciation is an addiction and an issue of love that needs to be resolved.

In my childhood, I was taught that self-depreciation was good and right, and that I was not doing it enough, and should do it more.

♡ Here, enthusiasm and passion are encouraged and a good volunteer would have them. They are seen as positive things.

In my childhood, my enthusiasm and passion was an indicator to others it was time to squash, discourage and oppress me. No one wanted me to feel passionate or enthusiastic.

♡ Here, I am encouraged to stand up (in a loving way) to people who are being unloving to myself or others. When I don’t say something, this is a problem.

In my childhood, saying something to those treating myself or others badly was punished and silence was praised.

♡ Here, upholding a space of love and truth is of primary importance.

In my childhood, there was absolutely no value placed on an environment of love and truth; the opposite was created.

♡ Here, everyone wants to build me up and help me have more worth, to see the real reasons why I have low worth. Nobody pulls me down.

In my childhood, my worth was torn down. Nobody wants me to see why I have low worth or heal this.

♡ Here, developing loving leadership qualities, being bold, brave, and taking initiative is encouraged.

In my childhood, any leadership, boldness, bravery or initiative I displayed was treated as bad and squashed.

♡ Here, fear is never justified. No amount of it is an excuse to be unloving, and it is an urgent issue of love to be resolved.

In my childhood, I was taught that fear is always justified. Fear was a completely valid excuse for unloving choices. Living in fear was never considered an issue of love.

… I could go on! When I say how certain things were in my upbringing (and still are the same in my family), of course I don’t mean I was actually verbally told to self depreciate etc., but essentially I am realizing, these are indeed the things I was taught, even if facades and lies were used to gloss over what was really happening.

I think a big reason I feel most of the time confused and disoriented and upside-down, is because this environment feels like the polar opposite of how I was treated in my childhood, how my family still feels towards me, and how most other people in my life previously have felt was the right way for me to be, and the polar opposite attitude towards various emotions.

I am constantly having soul double takes of how strange it feels that what’s being encouraged of me here could not be more polar opposite of what has been encouraged by others in me before, and of course which I have come to also think is right myself and continue to choose to act in myself.

Essentially, God’s Truth and God’s Way and my way and my family’s way could not be more different.

So my experiment for now is going to be to try to trust that God’s Way of doing things is better, to trust Jesus and Mary and others in what they are encouraging me in, experiment in acting in those ways even though it feels so foreign and wrong. Acting in the more loving way sometimes feels as counterintuitive and strange as it has felt driving on the other side of the road!

So I think I need to just experiment with it all, take the risks and make decisions and speak up, and let emotions come up in the process of that. Action really can yield so much emotion. It also seems if I can deal with how I was treated and what I was directly taught that created such wrong info on how to love and how to live God’s Way, that will be a good way to clear up blocks too. So anyway, that’s my current train of thought/feeling. I’ll let you know how the experiments go and where I’m on track or not in them!

Till next time,

Courtney

 

Off To Oz Again And Thoughts About Fear

Well, I’m officially headed from England back to Australia again! I often think to myself, For a person who really prefers the addiction to the safety of staying in one place, I sure seem to move and travel really often. I actually counted a year or two ago and I think I’ve lived in about 20 different residences in the last 10 years!

My time in England with Perry will be coming to an end soon partly due to U.K. visa limits, after which I’ll be going back to Australia. My emotions are very mixed, as you might imagine: I’m feeling really sad about having to leave Perry yet again and also so excited and grateful to be taking another step towards my desires in learning about and helping to share Divine Truth and God’s Way of doing things.

The months Perry and I have had together in England this visit have been full of lessons and emotions, definitely for me and for both of us to an extent. While I’ve been here Perry and I received some more feedback from Mary and Jesus about our relationship after I’d asked for some; this time mostly about my addictions and fears in the relationship, which was challenging initially for me to receive, but I know I must deal with if I want to love Perry and myself in the way God loves. I want to share some of that feedback in a future blog focused just at those issues as they’re so important. So will save that for another blog at some point.

---

Next Plans

Next I’ll be participating in the next Volunteer Selection Project as part participant, part behind the scenes with the facilitators to learn how things are run. My long term desire is to start a Learning Centre somewhere in the world, or to long-term be a part of the one in Queensland, and so, these programs will hopefully be run at other centres in the world someday as well, to take on volunteers there. During the V.S.P. and after I have the opportunity to learn and work towards that long term aim, and it is such an incredible opportunity from Jesus, Mary, the God’s Way Directors and Managers and others.

I have a lot of growth, learning, purification of my attitudes and desires, and more to do to be able to fulfill this desire of starting a Learning Centre and/or branch of the God’s Way Organization, and while often I feel daunted by the road from A to B both logistically and emotionally, I am also so excited to learn. The vision of Learning Centres all around the world makes me so excited and every God’s Way blog makes me feel so alive. If you haven’t read the God’s Way Constitution Jesus wrote, I highly recommend it–it is so beautiful! There are so many things I want to learn about about and understand about the process, and I can’t wait to observe all the things happening already with the God’s Way Organization and Learning Centre there.

Desire, Excuses And Fear

I wanted to share a bit about my thoughts about fear. I am still a fear-saturated person and I haven’t felt through any of my fears yet, and I can feel familiar ones coming up as the Australia trip draws near. So I wanted to write because I feel I’ve learning a few tidbits about fear in the last couple years that I could share, and also because I could really use my own reminder about it all too!

Recently, when I’ve caught up with others I know who listen to Divine Truth, and they’ve asked about my next plans, in response many have said, they also really want to do the V.S.P., or attend an Assistance Group, or engage more in some other way, or follow their own passions in harmony with God’s Way, but they feel they aren’t in a good enough condition of love or progressed enough to apply, or go or do whatever it is yet. Sometimes they “know” they won’t be accepted, “know” they would be asked to leave, that they won’t do it lovingly enough etc. That they should wait till later when they are “ready”. I know of some who have done what I did, and changed their mind about engaging/attending at the last minute, letting their fears dictate choices yet again.

On a mentor meeting in 2016 I once said to Jesus and Mary that while I wanted to volunteer, it hadn’t occurred to me that I would be the one to start a learning centre in the US because I felt like I was so far away from being progressed enough to do such a thing. In response, Jesus said: “It’s not about progression, it’s about desire.” and later Mary said, “It’s the desire that often leads you through so much progression.”

Obviously our condition in love is important and a factor; I’m not saying that doesn’t matter how loving we are. But these things above that I’ve always told myself in life and since finding Divine Truth, and which a lot of people also tell me, feel now more to me to be just excuses masked as a false humility that sounds virtuous but isn’t genuine.

These excuses are ones I’ve justified in myself for years. I often find myself defaulting back to thoughts like:

This is a bad idea to do this. I’ve got so much growth to do, look at all these areas I’m so out of harmony with love! I shouldn’t do this now. I’m just not ready yet. I’ll mess it all up anyway. I’ve got this problem and that problem. I shouldn’t do it with my condition as it currently is, I should wait till I’m more progressed. Yes, that’s the responsible thing to do.

I still do tell myself this, though I’m more apt to catch those thoughts now and give myself a side-eye when I notice them.

When I do tell myself I’m just not loving/progressed, enough, I first remind myself that if I’m genuine about growing in love, why wouldn’t I see that whatever issues which could cause me to not be in a good enough condition of love to do something, or which would cause me to be asked to leave, is something I could start changing–now, today? That could shift significantly sooner than I think, if I really wanted to? And then wouldn’t even be a factor anymore anyway. And if I’m not making any movement on my personal issues of love and truth, then am I really sincere about wanting to be more loving before participating? Is it true that I want to engage with that thing at all? Because maybe I just want to think I do because it makes me feel like a good person to say so but really the desire isn’t there.

I also think insisting we need to wait to be more loving or more “ready” can be to mask the fact that we just don’t want to put ourselves in position to receive more personal truth and feedback. We don’t desire personal truth, though we might want to tell ourselves we do, but our real desire is to avoid situations or interactions that might expose personal truth about ourselves. We would rather hide and not get exposed.

Additionally, for myself, when I tell myself I am not ready or progressed enough to take the action or follow the desire, or consider backing out, it is usually because I want an excuse to not face my fear of acting, my fear of emotion and other specific fears. This is when I can get heavily spirit influenced as well. Spirits amplify the fears I already am holding onto within myself, reinforce my bad feelings about myself and I can end up in a really bad spiral where I just want relief from all the fear and running away to a safe hiding place becomes very attractive.

It can sound virtuous to our facades to say we want to be more loving or more “ready” first, but I feel’ for myself this has not been true humility, rather it gives me a way out.

I’m learning it’s important not to then beat ourselves up, another addiction often choose when I realize I want to avoid fear. When I’ve been willing to face the truth of why I choose not to engage, and if I can also not judge myself for it, I can then look into the real reasons for it and have the chance to shift on those issues.

“The truth is that as we suppress fear we simultaneously strangle desire and most of us, most of the time, prize the avoidance of fear above the exploration of our wildest dreams and deepest passions.

We rarely pause to consider what we would be interested in or inspired by if fear was not a daily part of life.”

-Mary Magdalene

More About Deep Fears

In the last couple years, in the process of engaging more with Divine Truth, going to Australia the first time, making my own videos, my relationship with Perry and some other events/actions, some of my big fears (really terrors) that have been exposed are:

• Fear of making mistakes, messing up, getting it wrong
• Fear of being unloving (getting it wrong)
• Fear of the future being unknown, what may happen
• Fear of punishment
• Fear of personal feedback (due to my self judgment and terror of punishment)
• Fear of rejection
• Fear my desires are all impure and I’m just really bad

As I discussed in my 2017 blog Fear And How I Nearly Missed The DT Training, I’ve historically listened to these fears and unequivocally done exactly what they would dictate. I’ve hidden from life and avoided as much action as I possibly could. I’ve gone to great lengths to control as many factors as possible to prevent external things from going wrong and from me making a mistake. Making mistakes feels like utter doom. I’ve held onto my addiction self judgment and pulling myself down; I want to insist I’m deep down I’m abominable because that feels safer than any alternative. I’ve kept my heart closed and don’t share myself so as not to get rejected or attacked. If I can’t successfully hide and control by my own efforts, I’ve compulsively sought reassurance from whomever will give it to me. If there has been any chance of disaster, mistakes, or rejection by taking any action in my life, I’ve avoided doing that thing completely. A life where there’s been as minimal risk, decisions and action as possible has been my desire.

I have so many beliefs about fear that I’m learning intellectually from Jesus and Mary are incorrect and totally false from God’s Perspective. I’ve felt I shouldn’t have to feel fear, I shouldn’t have to deal with it. It’s too much of God to ask of me and it’s too much of others to ask for me. That love would takes away fear so I don’t have to feel it and be miserable. I’m not very prone to feeling angry about things generally except when a fear is confronted–then I can get angry. I feel like it’s not fair, that I’ve suffered enough and feeling fear is just more trauma I shouldn’t have to endure.

I feel so saturated with fear that it often feels like who I am, like a component of my personality and I feel intimidated, overwhelmed and at a loss as to how to get rid of it. I’m afraid of the sheer amount of fear I need to work through and afraid I can’t change. Again, these are not God’s Truths, but my own false beliefs and more fears about fear, I suppose.

When I’m told that God wants me to feel all my fear and won’t take it away for me and nor should anyone else, if I’m soft rather than angry, and can get into some emotion about how that makes me feel, I’ve been getting a particular visual:

It feels like I’ve been a homeless and lonely child out in the bitter cold, knocking on the doors to cozy, warmly lit houses all my life, desperately asking if I can please come in, but never being able to for long. Being told I must feel my fear feels like being suddenly thrust back outside, being told I must always live there and watching the door slam as darkness and cold surrounds me and I’m alone yet again. I feel like I’m being told I can never have belonging or joy or comfort or warmth: it is not for me.

And so I’ve used addictions all my life to avoid my terror and the terrible emotions underneath it. If I can’t ever go into those cozy houses, then at least I have some sugary thing I can huddle with to eat and temporarily forget how cold I feel. My food addictions have been feeble attempts at artificially creating comfort and joy when really I’ve felt spiritually homeless, destitute, and never excited about anything. I’ve hoped my relationships with men would give me the sense being wanted and good enough so I don’t have to feel rejection and how awfully I really feel about myself. Avoiding action and decisions gives me the false sense of safety and security I feel I absolutely need in order to emotionally cope with life and survive. I don’t want to have to cross the abyss of my fear with nothing to hold onto.

It seems I believe feeling fear means subscribing to a life of loneliness, sadness and coldness. It’s like I believe facing fear means I am finally signing on the dotted line and subscribing to permanent residency alone in the cold streets. But then kicking into my thoughts sometimes is what Jesus and Mary teach about fear, and I think how far off I must be in this false belief, how I must be forgetting that God is at the other end and GOD IS GOOD. How differently I might feel about the notion of feeling fear as an emotion if I believed God was good.

When I journal about these things or write even now, I get a sad feeling because I’ve had some experiences which suggest that these beliefs and my fears themselves, are not true, and which make me suspect I’m really causing my own suffering by continuing to avoid dealing with fear.

There are a few things I’ve done in the last few years, including attending the Assistance Groups and the Divine Truth Training, making my own videos and many other smaller examples, when I’ve been absolutely concrete in my certainty that my fears would come true in taking those actions, which then to my total shock, almost all of them didn’t happen. And often the precise opposite of what I “knew” would happen, happened in a positive direction, not a negative one. I indeed saw in those instances that F.E.A.Rs (False Expectations Appearing Real) were actually just “Paper Tigers” and not real at all.

Following some of these situations where my fear didn’t come true, and things were better, not worse, emotions have flowed about the truth of how my fear shackles and strangles me, how much I’ve done to pretend I’m not suffering by a life justifying fear, and how I’m avoiding so many emotions about how I was treated and what I was taught in my childhood to create so much terror, and faith only in a world and God that is cold, harsh, punishing, and oppressive.

“Fear when left unchallenged pervades our life.

By living in fear we are agreeing to the lie that we really do have things to be afraid of and that love is not the most powerful force in the Universe.”

-Mary Magdalene

I don’t really understand fear and I couldn’t tell you how to get through it yet from experience. The main thing I wanted to share in this blog is that it seems that acting despite fear exposes it and other emotions and that acting despite fear is a good way to experiment with the belief that our fears are totally true. It exposes my false beliefs and errors in thinking, and is a good way to experiment with God’s Goodness. There’s a crack–though a tiny one–in my beliefs about fear which makes me a bit more likely to try things than I used to be.

In engaging with the VSP and otherwise in Australia, my usual fears and bad feelings about myself are already coming up again because I haven’t dealt with these issues yet. But I often think of the regret I’d feel at the end of this earth life if I never even tried to challenge any of them, only to find out I caused myself and others more unnecessarily suffering when I could have been happy and striving to create and support the sharing of Divine Truth in the world. The amount of opportunities available to all of us because we are alive while Jesus and Mary are back teaching God’s Truths is unbelievable. I’d be gutted to be hit with the magnitude of willingly foregoing those gifts available to me in favor of coveting my fear.

So anyway, I think that’s it for now and I hope to have some time to blog as the program goes on, or at least, I will after the VSP is finished. I am so grateful to Jesus and Mary, and the God’s Way Directors and Managers for offering this massive opportunity to me, and to others like Lena who are gifting various things to make it possible and easier for me to come. I have been given so, so, so much and I really want to learn how to be more sincere and effective in giving back as well, though I don’t know if I can ever repay Jesus and Mary for the gifts they’ve given me through all the means they have (though of course they don’t expect that!). I just feel so blown away by it all.

Here are some links before I wrap this blog up.

Divine Truth videos from Jesus and Mary that may help re: these issues:

Videos: Facing My Fear Of Action

Videos: Facing My Fear Of Emotion

Mary’s Blogs on Fear

Also, search “fear” within any of the 3 Divine Truth Youtube Channels for more.

To learn more and register interest in the next Volunteer Selection Project, click here.

To learn more and register interest in the next Assistance Groups, click here.

“If you just rely on yourself, having courage is very hard – how much courage you have is completely dependent on your own limitations.

Whereas God is an unlimited God, with unlimited Goodness. If I trust and have faith in God, now my courage will be dependent on God’s feelings, not my own. To me, that means I can do anything, no matter how afraid I am.

I don’t consider myself to have much personal courage. I simply have faith in God and God’s Goodness.”

-Jesus

Love,

Courtney

Thanks to the photographers from unsplash.com and pixabay.com for these images.