Some of you have messaged me wondering about how things are going in Australia and what I’ve been up to. Thanks for your interest in wanting to know what’s happening for me–it’s really nice. So I thought I’d write an update post now.
There were various major issues of love and truth within myself highlighted to me in my 4.5 months volunteering and being involved (between March 2018 and July 2018). I’ve been very resistant to moving on these issues, and am often still choosing to sin in the same way even after being told about the various problems, including, but not limited to, the issues I mentioned in my most recent blog about country-based injuries.
Jesus & Mary & Elo: recording in the DT studio
At the moment, the truth of where I am at right now–previously my facade would have insisted otherwise–is that I don’t really want to give and serve, want lots of selfish addictions met, and don’t have much interest in a relationship with God, and in most areas, I don’t want to do things God’s Way. You can probably see that it will be difficult to be a loving and effective volunteer for God’s Way or Divine Truth when these emotions and attitudes are still within me. And so, I will not be able to continue to volunteer until I can progress on some of these issues.
Jesus and Mary explained that the current issues which prevent me from being a good volunteer will take some time to address, and that it is important for me to take that time to properly feel about them without feeling time pressure, particularly since these issues are going to be some harder things for me to address than some of the things I’ve worked through so far since finding DT.
So, my goal now is to address the main issues that were highlighted to me which affect my being a productive, effective and loving volunteer, and afterwards to return to volunteering–and Australia–in the (hopefully near) future with more of a feeling of service, initiative, and a stronger feeling for God.
In the meantime, there are a lot of opportunities and situations where I can challenge many issues of love and truth, and feel through many emotions, such as within my business, finances, partner relationship, family interactions and more. I want to maximize the Law of Attraction opportunities that God will bring me during the next phase of my progression.
I want to write more about the feedback I received during this visit, and more about where my true condition is at, and how the whole experience was for me. However at the moment I am very much “in the thick of it”, looking at the issues, feeling about them, exploring what’s really within me emotionally, and why those issues are there. I also will need time to wrap my head around the whole experience during the months I was involved, which was a very significant experience of my life.
I want to be able to talk about the experience I’ve had with good clarity, and with more of God’s Perspective on it. I also want to share more about the injuries themselves after having some headway into facing them, and even making some progress on the causes of the issues.
Naturally, I save my most impressive fashion statements for mulch-forking.
I want to share some public thanks: I want to thank Jesus and Mary for inviting me to Australia for this experience and coordinating a lot of details about the trip, and for their generous assistance personally to me: they have spent a great deal of time with me, assisting me to see my issues, and this has been a huge gift. I also want to thank Lena for hosting me in her home for almost all of my stay, and being one of the main people who trained me, and who gifted lots of time in both job training, and in personal assistance. Thank you also to Eloisa, who also gifted a great deal of her time training me in the studio, and to both Elo and Tristan, who spent countless hours in the huge effort of running the 9-week Volunteer Selection Project I participated in and who also helped me personally with feedback. Thanks also to Catherine for hosting me at her home for several weeks as well and for her help and guidance.
I always like wrapping up my blog posts here with DT material recommendations, so I would like to recommend videos about Truth, and about developing a love for Truth. For me right now, I’m going back to the fundamentals: the fundamentals I arrogantly thought I understood already, but actually am rather clueless about. Jesus and Mary’s material about Truth is hitting me in a different way now!
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:
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!
As I gaze out my window at the snow outside here in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA–a stark contrast to the near 100-degree F Aussie summer I just came from–and feel about writing this blog, I realize I could write a book about what I learned in education and about myself while there. It’s hard to know where to start! I can always write more later about particular specific topics, but still, I feel like I will be reflecting on everything for years and still not have digested it all. How do I do the experience justice via writing? And when I think about the magnitude of the gift I was given, I feel like I’ve been one of the luckiest people of the last 2000 years. And so with that in my heart, I think, well, I’ll try to share as much as I possibly can in the case it might also benefit others for me to do so.
This is probably a good place to recommend Mary’s blog post which discusses the groups, training program and more, as well as a couple blogs Eloisa has written mentioning it as well. Mary’s blog discusses criteria and the process for the upcoming New Volunteer Induction Program, so check that out if you find the idea of volunteering appealing. Some great pics of our stay to be seen on their blogs too!
I’d been to one weekend seminar Jesus and Mary gave in November 2013–almost exactly three years earlier–in San Diego, California, so this was my first Assistance Group and first time to Australia. It was so wonderful to see Jesus and Mary again after so long, and to meet the volunteer team and others who I’d seen on videos or who I’d interacted with before via email or forums. It was incredible to be able to get a glimpse into just how much preparation goes into each group and how much love, care, and time is taken in creating the material. I was also amazed to witness the full technical operations for the group: it is truly massive. There is so much work that goes into it prior to it happening (apparently over 500 hours by Jesus and Mary!), and then there’s all that goes into the live recording hours of the group itself, and then J&M and Lena and other volunteers are often working still when most of us have a day off during the AG and they often don’t have days off. I just came to appreciate it all so much more.
Assistance Group Homework!A dawn walk along the water.
I loved the material in the Assistance Group and I loved watching Jesus and Mary’s love and enthusiasm for the subjects. The material itself many times touched my heart and brought me to tears, and at other times, I was quite shut down and struggled to pay full attention. It makes me sad that I missed fully absorbing as much as possible while physically there, which happens when we have resistance to what’s being taught and are suppressing our own emotions about it. Spirit influence can shut us down too, though that also only happens through our suppressing our own feelings. It’s such a gift to be able to watch the groups again on youtube later; I’ve been looking forward to them so much. I highly recommend watching all of this third group. As Jesus and Mary say, it contains some of the most important information for our entire existence both here and later in the spirit world. Who am I kidding… I highly recommend watching every minute of every subject of their material! Nothing is better!!
Jesus cracked my heart open! Sometimes there’s no escaping.
After the group, I helped a bit in the packing up day (holy equipment!) and then my friend Nicky from the UK and I headed off to the countryside with Tristan, where we would begin the Training Program along with the third overseas participant from Barbados, David, as well as several local participants.
In my first weeks, I stayed with Tristan for a week followed by Catherine for a week, and was so grateful to have been able to spend extensive time with both of them in their homes. Thank you both so much for hosting me!
Our first task was to deep-clean the Learning Center house which the three of us would eventually stay on. I like cleaning and so this day was, while long and physically taxing, mostly enjoyable for me. I’ll never forget my first longer chat with Eloisa–about soulmates–while I chipped off hardened mud wasp nests from the toilet with a knife on all fours and she stood in the shower scrubbing it top to bottom.
Cleaning is as important of a task to have a good attitude about as learning software or shoveling things outside. We had another cleaning day as part of the training towards the end of our trip of the studio and Jesus and Mary’s home which we all utilized during the training.
Catherine, Tristan and Nicky hit the sponges!
It was incredible to learn about all the technology and software used for DT from Jesus and Lena, as well as Igor and Mary. In the first weeks our other activities and education included unpacking all the equipment from the Assistance Groups and organizing and labeling what was to be stored till the next group, learning about the particular cameras that are used for both groups and studio recording, and how those cameras are all connected with other aspects of the recording and an overview of the entire recording flow. Lena and Igor gave presentations on attitudes to service and what loving volunteering really is about. Mary gave us a talk with additions and amendments to their presentation, as well as a talk called “Good Practices for Presentations”. I really enjoyed hearing about how to, non-addictively and with love, give good talks from her.
Lena setting up camerasLena, Igor, Nicky, Eloisa, Tristan when we learned studio setup
I also got out in nature and went with groups led by Cornelius twice to the Bunya National Forest, a subtropical rainforest with incredible plant and animal life which Jesus said that long ago, was how a lot of Queensland was, over a much larger area, even as far away as Wilkesdale where the Learning Center is and where Jesus and Mary live, though it’s an hour’s drive away. A lot of Australia’s countryside has been depleted by agriculture–primarily animal agriculture. Cornelius invited us to consider how God created an ecosystem like that to work and where God’s Principles could be seen in it, and how that kind of terrain could potentially be restored long-term in depleted areas nearby.
The Bunyas!Lena and I playing Tarzan
We had several sessions of being taught and having Q&A’s about sound editing from Jesus and it was so cool to watch him work and hear him talk about it. Of course, he’s got decades and decades of expertise in computer technology and so many other areas in technology; I just got a glimpse really into the incredible amount he knows. I personally didn’t even know what a hertz was a few months ago (when I told Jesus this, he joked, “A rental car company!”), much less about decibels and how to remove “clicks” in audio and what compression and timestamps are for, so it was a steep learning curve for me. But, over the course of the weeks I started to really enjoy it. Fixing things–audio included–is fun! There’s something crazy satisfying about seeing a problem and then clicking a few buttons and BAM–it’s vanished!
Jesus explained to us that sound is the most important part and so that is why so much time is spent on it–a lot more time than the video editing. And basically the whole time I was there, Jesus was putting in massive amounts of hours doing that editing on the computer, day in and day out, usually for 12-hour days. Yet another of the countless things I was able to see which made me that much more astounded at the work that goes into producing every youtube video and downloadable audio file. It’s so easy in our world of entitlement and instant gratification to just go watch the DT videos on youtube, which are provided for free, and not even think of the amount of effort and time that goes into not only producing them, but producing them at such a high quality. I really can’t say enough about what really goes on behind the scenes. We also got to learn some about the mixer and switcher from Jesus as well.
Jesus teaching sound editing in the studio.
Another part of our training was to give a ten-minute presentation in the studio discussing some aspects of love and using at least one of six Bible verse options Jesus and Mary picked for us, which we’d then get feedback from them on our structure, delivery, content, and our personal emotions that affected them. Soon after, Jesus gave a wonderful talk on how to give good public presentations. I was still living in a lot of fear of doing one myself (more on that later), but I really just adored hearing him talk about it. I was like, “OMG I’m learning about teaching from the ultimate master teacher ever!” We learned about flow of material, audience considerations, delivery, structure, preparation, emotions and addictions, and so much more. It gave me such good stuff to consider when creating my own presentation.
My own presentation preparation was one of the more emotional sagas of my time there. When I first got the assignment, I just felt terror. I put off developing my presentation for a little while. When I finally desired to feel about what I might want to talk about, I had some ideas come and began creating a structure for it. I started to feel a bit better as I wrote things out; enjoying playing around with the organization of it and prioritizing what I wanted to say. I rehearsed it by myself a number of times and felt pretty good about it. Then, my Learning Center housemates Nicky and Dave and I decided to rehearse all of ours with each other. When I got up to do mine, I completely disconnected from myself and somehow my 10-12 minute talk went to 5 minutes. Every second of it I wanted to run away. Afterwards, huge emotions for me came up about not wanting anyone to look at me or watch me, feeling like everything I say is a waste of time, and I have nothing of value to give–ever. I went away and had a sob for a couple hours about it.
When presentation day came around, compared to how I was in my first rehearsal, it was miles better! I didn’t forget half of what I wanted to say and I was more connected to myself than the first time. However, I have a such long way to go with those fears and feelings about myself, and so Jesus told me I was very nervous still and wasn’t being myself in my talk, and gifted me with some reasons emotionally why that was. But I also had this weird feeling like, hmm, I have such terror about this and yet I can kind of feel like if I get through some emotions I might actually really enjoy public speaking! Jesus also gave me a really great explanation about one of the verses that I’d misinterpreted (*facepalm*: misinterpreting Jesus’ quote to Jesus), so that was awesome to learn about as well. Note to self: feel about the real meaning Bible verses thoroughly!
Can I just say that almost everything I write here I feel like could be its own long blog post. This blog ended up being about 8 hours to do and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. It’s ok y’all, I’ll eventually recap it all in detail over like five years time…
But yes, the presentation days were awesome. Eight or nine of us did them, and I just loved watching everyone’s talks and learning from the feedback Jesus and Mary gave all of us afterwards. I learned heaps and heaps from those days and it was just such a gift to have that opportunity to practice sharing Divine Truth with an audience and then be given feedback and direction about how to do it better next time. I also got to try out switching the video live during one of the presentations, which takes lots of attention and practice to know what camera angles to choose when and why, but I thought it was really fun.
Mary & Tristan doing camera switching while Eloisa sets up her talk.Jesus and Mary giving feedback on talks. They’re THE BEST.
Another major aspect of the training was about environmental restoration. Jesus gave another stellar talk (I feel like I’m needing a thesaurus now so I don’t have too many “awesome”‘s and “amazing”‘s in this blog) on restoring land and eco systems. We have all impacted the environment severely, primarily through eating animal products and also through various other addictions we have in our lifestyles and consumerism. Because most of us have consumed so much meat, dairy, eggs, leather, etc., we have compensation for that. What Jesus was wanting to hit home with us was that it is no easy task–in fact it is extremely difficult and it takes incredibly long–to restore an environment that’s been decimated. In his presentation we learned about how certain plants play certain roles in the recovery of an area, and how to foster that recovery with various methods. We talked seeds, water, soil, how insects and animals help restore land, and tons more. I personally have such a passion for educating people on the main way we destroy the planet–through consuming animal products–and also I love nature and eco restoration, so this all really excited me.
And then, it was time to take it from the classroom to the outdoors, and we had several days of long manual labor, which included shoveling and moving softwood and hardwood chips, some days for eight hours in the heat. I really enjoy manual labor as I’ve always been into physical fitness, though often heat/humidity makes me feel oppressed, and so there were times that, because I didn’t want to feel how I felt about it, I instead went out of body and wasn’t connected to myself but rather just doing the rote movements of shoveling and physical labor but not feeling. Circumstances like hard manual labor in heat can trigger us into emotions we have that are good for us to feel through if we’re humble to them–I wasn’t.
Jesus, Mary and the softwood we moved a lot of. Photo by Eloisa L-H.
After a couple days of this labor, I thought to myself, “If every person had to do an equivalent amount of compensation via manual labor eco restoration immediately after having a burger or a glass of milk, a lot more people would be vegan!”
We got some great tours from Mary and Jesus around their property about what the land used to look like, how it’s progressed so far and how they’ve done it, and shown various methods and experiments they’ve done on their property. One of my favorite parts was Mary showing us a huge trench they’d had dug uphill from where their fruit trees are. This ditch was originally very deep, and it was also quite long, and she explained how they’re throwing in organic material which retains water so the water soaks in the ground rather than sliding off the surface of the hardened dirt terrain. Despite how dry it is there, the fruit trees downhill from this trench were green. They were “happy little trees” as famed American artist Bob Ross would say.
Mary showing us the soil experiment. Photo by Eloisa L-H.
Cornelius also gave us a tour of his property, which is adjacent to Jesus and Mary’s, and what he’s working on there to restore it. He taught us a great deal about human manure and how it can be used to help restore land as well. Pete also gave us a cool presentation on waterless container gardening. There are so many cool ideas to try out and it’s such a gift a lot of the guys there in Queensland have been experimenting with so many things so we can learn what hasn’t worked and what’s worked better. And hopefully come up with our own experiments!
Corny and his fully decomposed soil/human manure mix!Some of Corny’s orchard
Eloisa and Tristan gave a really interesting talk on education and how God’s Way of Education for both children and parents might look like and the experiments in education they’re already doing in that area with Eloisa and Pete’s three kids. I’m so excited to see what these guys continue to create. We got a digital tour also by Barb, who heads up the transcription and translation teams–another massive volunteer undertaking.
I just absolutely loved learning everything. I felt like I was soaking up all this new information and every single part of it mattered so much for such a bigger important purpose. No learning was superfluous, every morsel was vital and interesting. Sometimes, I struggled to understand the full scope of things, particularly the technological side, though I realized that was mostly about my own feelings about not being capable and my fear of making mistakes, particularly since technology is an area I usually feel comfortable with and enjoy. But I started putting pressure on myself to understand everything perfectly, yesterday, and so that’s where I stumbled and in the end actually prevented absorption of new information at times. Overall I felt a bit like I was in college again, trucking my notebook in every day to learn totally new things to me. It was great.
I also got to attend in-person the mentor meetings for those desiring to share Divine Truth with the world that I’ve been so lucky to be a part of for the last six months. Mary led two great ones while there, one primarily about self-responsibility (following off what we began to learn about it in the AG) and another primarily about unloving attitudes towards Jesus. All so important for any of us to effectively and lovingly share God’s Way, because how can we share God’s Way when we’re still majorly opposing living it ourselves?
Post-mentor meeting chatting
And of course, it was wonderful to hang out with everyone in various casual settings at shared meals and informal hangouts of various kinds, whether swimming in dams or hiking some great little mountains. Speaking of shared meals though, I gotta be real here: if I felt like wouldn’t be disproportionate for me to post 30 photos of the incredible food I ate there, well, I would. It’s like there’s this secret little grove of incredible vegan chefs hiding away in rural Queensland. They’re like a delicious pot of gold at the end of a rainbow and my waistline by the end of the trip proved it!
The delicious farewell meal Jesus and Mary hosted for us
At this point in the blog, I’m thinking to myself, wow, I feel like I just recapped the activities themselves in about 1% of the detail I could, and I haven’t really even gotten to the emotional part of it, the how did I feel part of it, and really, as we were reminded often during the program, our attitudes and emotions are far more important than how much we know skill-wise.
I am tentative to share about how I felt about things, which is partly because I feel again daunted how to write that all out, as that could hypothetically be a really long blog post too. But also, I have a set of emotions which makes me not want to share how I personally felt and rather just hide behind a recap of the events themselves and then sign off. I want to share the info with you, but not myself. However, this is one area I was gifted a lot of feedback on from Jesus and Mary and others while there, and is a big area of growth for me to come. And that is: I want to hide from the world, I want to not be taken notice of, I want to not be known.
It only took a few days for several people to point out I was not showing my nature, was not opening up and being myself. At first this was a surprise to me. I knew I’d been really shy most of my life but I didn’t realize it was such an issue; I was just being how I was all the time, but others were sensitive to it immediately–more sensitive to it than I was even with myself. I learned that when I am subdued in fear and want to hide, it actually places a demand on the environment to work to get to know me, and it makes others have to put quite an effort forth to know what I really think and feel about things, which is unloving to them and myself. I also keep my heart closed to others until I’m sure they’re trustworthy, which sadly is something I did even with the most trustworthy and loving people in the world–Jesus and Mary. I missed a lot of opportunities to connect with them and others and to enjoy myself both in personal interactions as well as in the learning and activities themselves. On one hand I feel quite sad and regretful about that missed opportunity, but on the other hand given how suppressed and oppressed I’ve been in my life, I was the most open and the most myself I’ve ever been while there.
Bridges in Noosaville
But of course, everyone was only impossibly kind and gentle in their helping me see these issues. Recalling the love and care it took to not only notice, but the fact they desired to know the real me… well, I get really emotional every time I feel about it. I received such immense gifts of friendship, love and care–I daresay the first experiences of real friendship, love and care that I’ve ever experienced in my life from other people. Jesus and Mary helped me see why I’ve felt apologetic for everything about myself, like I’m a bother and an imposition to everyone, bad about myself and terrified of connecting to myself.
My avoidance of and living in fears of various kinds also dictated many of my experience and choices. I was afraid of sharing myself with others, and also another of my biggest fears–making mistakes and doing things wrong–affected things heavily at times. When I live in this fear, I defer to others who may or may not know better than me, and then in that process I in fact made more mistakes and contributed to more problems, which is precisely what I was trying to avoid. Even if a person does know more than me, deferring to them out of fear can mean I lean on them in an addictive way to tell me what to do and spell things out in a way they shouldn’t have to, which is a form of demand on the person who knows more and an avoidance of my own self-responsibility. This terror of getting it wrong also causes me to not take action, and not experiment, which affects everything in my life and affected how I behaved in pressured environments during the training.
Sunset at Tristan’s house
There were also instances where my fears of various kinds–some which I’ve mentioned above as well as others–caused me to not be generous and to force others to serve me because I was too busy living in my own desire to hide, engage minimally, not stand out, defer to others. In this way my fear makes me very selfish and self-centered and at times oblivious to others. I realized that truthfully, fear always makes me self-centered, every time. It causes me to think only of how to protect myself from my fear and how to serve it as my god, not how to love and serve others.
As I mentioned before, I will be digesting and absorbing the experience for a long while to come, and all the emotions I need to work on in order to get closer to God and share God’s Truth will also take a long while to come. But the experience for me helped me to connect to the fact that yes, sharing Divine Truth is what I want to do! It was the best 9.5 weeks of my life. In my heart and soul I can feel all I want to do is contribute in any way I can for others to know that God’s truth–and a relationship with God–is available to them if they want it. I don’t know God really yet and I don’t know much about love either, but I know Jesus and Mary’s teachings of God’s Truth have changed my life and are continuing to change it and I’m so passionate about it when I bypass some of my fear and bad feelings about myself.
Nicky, David, me
So, my desires are these: I want to return to Australia to continue training and learning how to help share Divine Truth. There’s a visa for those still under a certain age bracket which would allow me to go back for 1-2 years, which will largely just depend on my having the funds/donations to do so. In the meantime, I’m wanting to face some of my fears about sharing myself and the full scope of what I’m passionate about with God’s Truth. This is something I want to do in general, as well as in my current work as a nutritionist, where I assist people with going vegan and dealing with food addictions and eating disorders. I’ll also keep writing on this blog, and, though the idea makes me so nervous, I’m thinking perhaps to create some video “vlogs” as well, potentially both with my health/nutrition/food addiction work but also regarding anything else about Divine Truth.
Thank you to God, Jesus, and Mary for the massive gift of this experience. Thank you Jesus and Mary, for everything they do for all of us–I don’t know how to begin to express how grateful I feel for their gifts to us, for who they are, for what they’ve discovered and are now teaching us. Thank you to everyone who gifted me the experience with training, hosting me at your homes, hosting me at the Learning Center, and so much more. Thank you Lena, Catherine, Eloisa, Peter, Cornelius, Igor, Tristan and everyone else who gifted their resources, time, love and care to me. I love you all so much.
God, Love, and Truth 