Truth or Fiction? Do You Want to Know...?

I'm nearly bursting to share this one ... got all fired up from my reading this morning ... feeling passion ... wanting, no needing, to share...!

First, this must be watched (& yes, I know I use the "must" word a lot ... trying to not be all naggy and bossy, but when truth hits me smack-dab in the face, and screams "SHARE ME" -- I must heed). My friend Kevin Beck shared that (& his quote is featured in it) ... this lifts my heart ... I've so long feared the abusive power of men ... but this perspective allows my heart to adore the way men really ARE... and I believe that it will make the men I know rejoice!

Along with that, watch this video ... as the message is the same ...

Annnnnnd, along with all that, I want to share what got me all excited this morning..!

We've heard it all our lives ... we read it in every book ... we see it play out in every movie (at least, the good ones) ... we hear it in every sermon (don't get me started!) ... it's everywhere: the belief that we're in a "battle" of good vs. evil.

Don't believe it.

The reality is, we're in an awakening of truth over lies. And, it's not a battle at all ... just as darkness cannot resist the Light, and does not fight back, but is absorbed by it, so too does truth permeate lies, showing them to be the fluff-figments that they are.

Now ... our *minds* fight back ... that's what the drama-addicted ego does. It can't help itself. We can know this, and even use it. We can know that there is only conflict in the human mind -- which is virtual reality -- there is no conflict in the rest of nature ... nature shows us that all is One, and all is in harmony. It's when we think something *should* be a certain way, or that rules *should* be imposed, that we have conflict.

ALL conflict is the result of lies ... because there is no conflict in Truth. Truth doesn't need to prove anything ... it just IS. We accept it, and live in the resulting joy, or we resist it, fight it, deny it ... and create our own living hell.

Don Miguel Ruiz, in his brilliantly-simple little book, "The Fifth Agreement" (but first read, "The Four Agreements"), says this:

"Hell is nothing but a dream full of lies. Remember, our dream [this life] is controlled by what we believe, and what we believe could be truth, or could be fiction. The truth leads us to our authenticity, to happiness. Lies lead to limitations in our lives, to suffering and drama. Whoever believes in truth, lives in heaven. Whoever believes in lies, sooner or later lives in hell. We don't have to die to go to heaven or to hell. Heaven is all around us, just as hell is all around us. Heaven is a point of view, a state of mind, and so is hell. It's obvious that lies have been running every show in our head. Humans create the lies, and then the lies control the humans. But sooner or later the truth arrives, and the lies cannot survive the presence of the truth."

Here's a whopper of a lie that most of us have been conditioned into believing:

Nobody's perfect.

Oh really...?!?

What if every human in this world is perfect, but that we've believed propaganda? What if we've been judging ourselves, and everyone else, against a false image of perfectionism [grasp the difference here, between perfect, and perfectionism]?

What if everything in creation, including humans, IS perfect...? What if you believed that, and realized, with joy, that it included YOU...?

To see that only perfection exists is a critical step in our human evolution (yeah, that dreaded "e" word -- sensing some lies at work there, too...? ;) ). If we say otherwise, we are saying that we are yet-unaware of who we are. Don't just acquiesce to saying you're perfect ... believe it. Do what it takes to get there (yes, I am preaching to myself here too...!).

Face this: we live in a world filled with superstition, much of it all gussied up in the straight jackets of religious dogma.

Imagine going back a few centuries in time ... when it was believed that the world was flat, and that bathing was dangerous (oh thank You, God, that I was born in an era where bathing was seen as good!). Close your eyes (OK, just mentally, or else you can't read any more...) ... let yourself feel what it would be like to be surrounded by ignorant superstition ... which was enforced by odious threats. Feel what it would be like to know that everything you believe threatens everything that they believe. (Some of us don't have to try too hard to know THAT one!)

How long would it take before you'd be labeled a heretic, a witch, a blasphemer...? How long before someone would threaten your safety, or your life?

Now, how easy is it for *you* to see that they were believing lies, were immersed in superstition, a figment of their ignorant imaginations...? From their perspective, they thought (or "knew"!) what they believed was true...! That way of life was their "normal" ... they didn't know better.

What IF what you believe, what our entire culture/society believes, and is even so SURE about, is just as full of superstitions as what they believed, then...?

And what if we are maligning the ones who see beyond the surface, in the same way they were, back then?

Here's another lie: there's something wrong with our bodies.

Who says?

Our bodies are gifts ... wonderfully and awesomely made ... works of art ... completely loyal to us -- but we judge our bodies and berate them, and treat them as if they were the "enemy". We abuse our bodies, with our thoughts, with our neglect, with our judgments. Our culture tells us what attractiveness looks like, creating false images superimposed with air-brushing and photo-shopping, and holds up these standards tauntingly, EVERYwhere we look ... and we cannot, nor should we, attain such a standard! The ceaseless message is that we do not measure up ... that we are not worthy (as IF our worth was dependent upon what we look like!).

I know this pain, all too well. I didn't spend 21 years of my life, enslaved to bulimia, because I liked my body. I bought into all those lies ... I tortured myself relentlessly, nearly depriving myself of life, in order to fit that image I had been force-fed. Trying to fill up the emptiness, and then rejecting it, out of my assumed unworthiness ... trying to cleanse what I believed was my inner-filth. I know the enslavement of that "this is beauty, and you didn't make the cut" mentality.

It's a LIE...!

How many other lies do we believe ...? And would we know them, if we faced them? When we refuse to be puppets any longer, we start to see that our lives have been guided by lies and superstitions. Do you want to know? Do you want to see them? Do you want to be set free to live out the love and joy and bliss you're here to experience...?

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I've been a knowledge-accumulating-junkie. I seemed to have been born with an insatiable desire to know ... to explore, to understand. And this would've been fine and dandy, if I hadn't been domesticated, "tamed" ... forced into conformity with the "standard and approved" data. So, yeah, I accumulated a heap of knowledge ... at least, the pre-approved fare ... and was slapped down when I ventured behind the curtain, the veil ... and what's happened is that all of that knowledge has been nothing more than a fog ... a thick (yet illusional) fog that hasn't allowed me to perceive truth, what really IS. I've only seen what's "safe" to see ... what won't rock the boat ... what won't get me in trouble ... the leash of fear has let me go only so far.

I don't think I'm that unique here ... I think that most of us are this way. Most of us only see what we want to see ... hear what we want to hear (that is, what's "safe to hear/see"). Our belief system is like a mirror... only showing us what we believe. Which is a limitation. There is MORE.

But we make assumptions that what we believe is truth, and is all there is. It doesn't occur to most of us that our "truth" is just a relative truth ... a virtual truth.

We humans make a boat-load of assumptions ... but assumptions are (mostly) lies ... not the truth. Fiction. Making assumptions and then taking them *personally* is a form of hell. Assumptions are just the lies we tell ourselves. The "story we tell ourselves," according to Byron Katie (a prophet of our day). And y'know what? We can tell ourselves a different story! We can keep trying on different stories until it measures up with what we know INside ... until it resonates. Rings true.

When the truth arrives (& it's always arriving, if we're open to it), the lies are dispelled ... and we can see that we were torturing ourselves for nothing.

Here's some truth: we get what we need when we need it. Gifts arrive ... but our pre-conditioned thinking (based on assumptions, based on what we believe) can get in the way, and prevent us from receiving the gifts. We may think we don't deserve the gift, or that it can only look a certain way, or that some gifts are "good and others are "bad" ... or, we can receive them, with gratitude, and let them be what they are. We can let them unfold ... and teach us. They come to show us who we really are.

We don't need to live in assumptions ... we can ask, and be open to a deeper understanding than we had fathomed was possible. If we don't make assumptions, we can let ourselves see truth ... rather than what we thought was the truth. Then we can see life as it is ... rather than how we think we should see it.

What if we could harness all the energy we put into the assumptions ... and instead used it to create a new dream -- our personal heaven.

What if ...?

Shalom, Dena