Independence And Financial Freedom

July 3, 2005

Samuel: Well, greetings, dears.

Greetings, Samuel.

S: Tomorrow is  . . .

Independence Day.

S: Thank you. That’s the one I was looking for. The only thing that was coming out was “loud popper day.”

Fireworks

S: Fire does work, yes it does.

There’ll be fireworks popping tonight here, I think, downtown.

S: Tonight. All right. So, tonight is loud popper night. So, today is your Independence Day, so what I want to ask you—just by way of hello—is what are you celebrating your independence for or from? [Long pause.] Well gosh, nothing. Kay. Lakshmi.

Well I’ve really had a delightful experience this month with Karen and Jason purchasing their first home. And I really had to have a long talk with myself about “This is hands off. They’re grown up. They have a family. They’re going to make their decisions and choices. And it’s no longer “You’re the parent of this child who needs to make sure she does blah, blah, blah—what you think she should.”

So a few days ago . . . 

S: It never ends though, does it? It never ends.

But a few days ago I was beginning to . . . certainly she’s been gone from my home for a long time, but somewhat of an empty nest syndrome again. And, then all of sudden it was just like I had this big shift in perspective. And I thought “Well, Kay, you have raised an independent, wise, mature, family-value daughter who if you were gone tomorrow would do all right. She’s that independent.” So I feel like I have gained my independence because I did the job that I should have done, and that is to make her independent. And that’s my celebration, my independence this month to say “Job well done, Kay.”

S: Very well done. If you don’t mind, I’d like to correct your story just a tiny bit. All right. You gained your independence when you realized that you’d gained your independence. Good work.

For me it’s been more of an interdependence, more than independence. I’m seeing how everything affects everything else.

S: And this is a good thing, yes?

Yes. A very good thing. And I think if you look at it from the concept of independence, it’s probably independence from the thinking of separation, that everything works in isolation or can work in isolation. So it’s independence from that illusion. So the coffee I have in the morning affects what I tell Sanat later in the day. You know, it’s even small things like that, so it’s just seeing how everything weaves together. It makes me . . . “Oh, my God, that I’m so responsible for everything!”

S: And that’s where the independence for comes in, you see. Independence allows you to . . . and that’s independence for, and in your case the independence you are aware of frees you in some ways, and holds you tight in others. And In actuality that’s realistically how it should be.

Crystal, dear.

This is my very first first-Sunday.

S: Well, welcome. Welcome indeed.

it’s really delightful here. Well I’m celebrating my independence from needing the safety of a full-time job, and just believing and trusting that, you know, I will be provided for, that there will be work, there will be money, there will be the things I need, and it’s quite a different feeling than I’ve ever been aware of before.

S: And you know, dearest, one of the reasons that that truly is a good decision and is going to work out is because you don’t—like some people—you don’t put out “I want work to do what it is I’m here to do, and it must be this.” And you know that when we spoke recently we talked about how that throws off your ability for manifestation, because the Universe is having to get all sorts of things wrapped up, taken care of, worked out in order for that box to happen. Some of the boxes—“Here is what I am. Here is what I can do. Here is what I cannot do. Here is what I will do. Here is what I will not do”—some of those boxes are actually prison cells, you know. And some of those boxes are going to take more than one life to finally get opened for you. But the key is “I’m willing to do what I need to do to have what I need,” and you’re not putting a strangle-hold on the Universe.

Colleen.

Well I don’t want to step on anybody’s religious toes, but thinking over these past . . . 

S: She means these.

Speaking over these past many years, I feel a freedom from a spiritual religious experience that was based on fear to one that is based on empowerment and love. And I can’t imagine how different my life would have been had I not heeded the call to be here.

S: Aye. Thank you. You know the reason that fear is very often used as a motivator is because it works. It will stop having power over you if you stop letting it work, and when you stop letting it work, you can return back to some of those old foundations that were, perhaps, even a very beloved part, for a while anyway, of your past and go with a whole new understanding, a whole new way of bridging that gap. And then that’s a very big gift. Good work.

Suzanne.

I’m celebrating independence from having to do it all myself.

S: That’s a good one, isn’t it?

I like it.

S: The independence from having to do it all herself. Now, just a small little question here: How was it that you ever came to that awareness?

Well, it’s been very gradual, and it’s been in different stages. And the most recent stage was that I used to be able to at least think I could do it all myself, and was under that illusion. And then things happened like, well, I get sick so that I can’t do it, and the kinds of things that I rely on to do it myself—my powerful voice, my, I don’t know, my commanding presence—I don’t have them. And also I don’t have the time to get them, and so I have to ask for help, and I have to basically say, “Will you stand on this side and hold me up? And will you stand on this side and hold me up?”

And it’s not just here, it’s also in my family.

S: Absolutely. Yes.

And it’s so much more fun, I’ve noticed, to not boss everybody around and have them do everything themselves anyway. And just to say “Thank you,” instead of saying, “Why don’t you do this?” and then my son saying, “I was just going to do that.” And it’s a much more loving, calm environment. So I want to learn this lesson so I don’t have to lose my voice again.

S: I like the part where you find out that your needs are taken care of, even when you cannot ask for them to be. I like the part where you thought the sky would fall if you weren’t there to make sure it happened, and it happened anyway. But best of all, I like the part where you looked at it with wisdom and love, because those lessons are so easy to miss if you’re caught one more time in the prison box of “Well, I’m the only one who can do it. I’m the only one who can make it happen. It won’t be good enough if I don’t do it.” And the gift of those who prove you otherwise could very easily—and you know this because you do it yourself—could very easily be discounted, justified. So there is a lot of mastery that comes in what you’re seeing now.

Independence Day. Independence Day is also a film—yes? And it’s the space monsters or Martians or something—is correct, yes?—coming to take over your world. I just wanted to let you know that it’s too late. You’re already here. Yes. The aliens in this world? Look around, check the mirror.

And although I say that with laughter and very much love . . . [Oma starts barking.] Are you taunting my dog? Ah yes, there’s mum, “Oma, leave it.” Well now you know, love, that they did not allow my other dogs to come, so Oma’s all I’ve got here tonight.

Good. All right. Now, where was I with that? Independence Day, movie, aliens, you. Aye. And the reason that I say that, other than it’s fun to play with that word alien, and it’s fun to play with the idea of extra-terrestrial—green men, that one’s easier. Little green men. But the fact of it is, in the largest picture, there is no human on this planet that started out here. Even your science is recognizing that what you’re all about originated long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

It’s in some ways a great celebration of independence for all of humanity these days, because going on in your world right now is massive and positive change. “Wait a minute, Samuel, that word positive is throwing me off? Clearly you haven’t been letting the Form watch the news, because if the Form was watching the news, you would see that it’s quite—what?—negative out there?” Aye, but you know I think chaos is a good thing. And right the first time, that is why I call it positive, because I call chaos a good thing.

Remind me, please, what is chaos?

Our friend.

S: Again.

Our friend.

S: Chaos is our friend. Yes. Frank.

Unlimited potential.

S: That’s right. And what does it take for unlimited potential to become structured and effective?

Intent.

S: Intent.

Vision.

S: What were you going to say, Stuart?

It takes negotiation, compromise, knowing what you want, what you want to create out of the chaos.

S: Good. It takes intent, hand in hand with vision. And it takes the willingness to negotiate, to . . . tell me compromise. Compromise. How is compromise different from negotiate? Compromise allows.

It opens up more opportunity.

There’s a trade-off.

S: Trade-off. Good, Gwendolyn. Yes.

I have a bad taste for compromise in terms of the meaning, because I believe it says that you’ve given up something that you wanted, whereas negotiate can allow you to both get what you want as long as you change your vision and point of view. Compromise implies lose/lose, as opposed to win/win.

S: And you’ve got to be careful with that. I would say that negotiation is something that you do every day. And if you’re not, you should be, because negotiation is a positive function of free will. It is because of free will that the need to negotiate comes about. I am going to drive this vehicle through the crosswalk at the very same time Kathy is going to walk her vehicle on two legs across the walk. Well, there’s got to be some negotiation that goes on there. That negotiation does not mean that either party is going to lose. It means that there’s going to be a change—small or large—in the direction, the way—let’s see—the road, the highway that gets you to where you’re going. Negotiation is planned. Negotiation is conscious. Negotiation is a function of—no, let me change that—negotiation should be a function of higher consciousness, allowing you to remain on the path to the vision you’re working with. Compromise is the attitudinal result of a negotiation you did not like.

Lisa.

I was thinking of compromise in a more positive, thinking that you can still retain your vision, but it’s a shifting or a letting go of something so that you can still retain your vision. It’s a looking around and being flexible about there’s more than one way to get there.

S: If negotiation is a conscious action, you could say that compromise is the unconscious result. But what you describe has more to do with what I would call negotiation. Compromise is not a bad thing. And, in fact, sometimes compromise is the only thing that gets you back on the road.

“Samuel, one more time please? How is it possible that compromise can get me back on the road?” Well, when you are focused more on being right, doing it your way, being in control, and the person that you were about to run over in the crosswalk because they got in your way, caused you to stop, hold, and go another direction, that is very often the road that the Universe is having to take to get you back on track when you’re stuck in “Well, it’s got to be this way or no way.” To you, it looks like compromise, but maybe just tomorrow you’ll realize it’s a gift. Maybe just tomorrow you’ll realize, it’s really where you needed to be to begin with. So do not automatically resist the idea of compromise, but do seek conscious negotiation.

Everything in your world—everything—is a function of communication and requires negotiation. I cannot ever say that enough. Everything is a function of communication, hopefully good communication, and requires negotiation.

But compromise often, to us, when we can’t see the bigger picture, feels like we have to let go of something.

S: Yes.

Which comes across as loss to us, but then we can realize later that it was a good thing to learn to let go anyway, and that we got, you know, we got what we needed anyway.

S: Perfectly said.

We were just learning how to let go.

S: Perfectly said.

How many of you . . . a baby puts it in its mouth.

Pacifier.

S: That’s the one. Pacifier, as in Pacific. Yes? You probably felt that it was a terrible compromise when you had your pacifier removed, but as you look back on it now, don’t you think it would have gotten in your way.

You could say the same thing with potty training. I mean it really wouldn’t work to wear diapers . . . 

S: The way you were going was just so nice, but until you’re later in life, you don’t even want to go back there.

All of this seems to look silly to me, though, when you’re trying to figure out between compromising and negotiating, because you put this all under the umbrella of this is about willingness to dot, dot, dot. And as long as you know what your intent, and you’ve got a pretty good grip on the vision, that can be like the light for the doing of it that makes it so much easier. And it doesn’t have to be really complicated. It can just happen in the chaos.

S: Yes, but realize that what I’m saying is you are describing negotiation, and the idea of compromise has a very bad reputation in your particular language, but compromise is a form of negotiation. You think it’s a bad thing when you believe you had to give up something that you did not want, but that’s only there because you are not stepping back far enough to see. “Is this something I don’t want? Is it really a gift? I did not get it.” Or, “Is the Universe pushing me off this track? Now I need to look for another direction to go. Is it a turn-the-other-cheek opportunity? Is it a beat-my-head-against-the-wall opportunity? Is it a back-off-watch-and-wait opportunity?” It’s all here. And that really isn’t where I’m going tonight, but it’s an easy way to get started.

What I’m wanting to do tonight is recognizing that the first six months of your year have been all about, in so many ways, negotiating and compromising, in releasing the old, and that releasing might be a vision that no longer fits, a belief that isn’t yours. It might be moving away from a relationship that no longer works. It might be changing the nature of the work that you do. But these last six months have involved change that has to do—oh, this is going to be a very interesting sentence—change that has to do with change. Don’t you love that? You could make that the title for tonight. Change with change.

Doors have been closing. You have been dealing with letting go, whether it be freely and easily, or your fingers being pulled off that grasp, that grip, yes. You have either sought these changes, or you are now recognizing them, or you have been on hold, not knowing where to go and what to do with them.

The first six months of this year has had massive energy influx. Massive energy influx always creates chaos. Why?

Because it causes imbalance.

S: All right. That works. Jim.

No, it was my hand up.

S: Was it? All right.

Because it brings in with it new energies that then create possibilities within this realm of existence.

S: That works as well. That does. That works as well. Sallie.

The unknown.

S: Yes. What does the unknown . . . why is that a problem?

Lack of control.

S: You feel like you don’t have control. You don’t know what’s going to happen, so you’re not sure what you need to do in order to make it work out all right. You have thoughts that you’d not been having to deal with. You have opportunities that you don’t know what to do with. You have people around you behaving in a function that seems erratic, sometimes scary. Large energy boosts unhinge you. And that’s a good thing, if—as we started our discussion with—you are in a place of recognizing and, indeed, welcoming independence. If you are moving out of the prison box, if you are seeking change to better function towards your greater and your intent to reach that vision.

But for those who are unable to reach within and find the resources to deal with massive energy, the chaos is frightening. The fear is security issues coming up, and one of the major security issues coming up in the world around you and—here it comes—even in your world is financial. I’d like to talk to you a little bit about that. All right?

The first six months of your year has to do with things ending. The next six months—and this isn’t so generally for every year; it is very so this year—the next six months have to do with things opening up.

Now, what does that have to do with money? What does that have to do with your financial security? What does that have to do with things opening money-wise? Well, when things are opening up, for the individual who is functioning with the right intent, who is choosing to live love, live in the most positive possible—well, all right, all of that’s true, but really for anybody on the planet—when you have before you many opportunities, you are put in a place where you must make decisions. When you are forced to make decisions, your security issues come up. Your security comes up, and as a whole, although it is by now a famous joke, the fact of it is your security issues show up, Retta, in what three ways.

Sex, money and body fat.

S: There you go. Sex. Money. And, all right, body fat, or not body fat but your self image, your self esteem. And if your self esteem is tied up in sex and/or money, then you’re that much more troubled.

When your security issues come up, your automatic response, the physical part of you, the brain, says “Trouble? Prepare.” And with that, the natural tendency is for the body to release an outpouring of hormones to create change physically speaking. What am I talking about here?

Fight or flight.

S: Fight or flight. Adrenaline charged living. Here is a little aside. All right? You need to be aware that functioning on adrenaline has more to do with the aging process than even the number of years you have been alive. Adrenaline in overabundance causes the cell’s wiring—I’m being very general there—the cell’s wiring to break, to go astray, eventually causing cell death without replication. Your body stops sloughing off old. It stops creating new, be that your organs, be that your […], in overabundance, makes you old and cranky before your time. Adrenaline causes the body’s system to immediately go to work and when it goes to work, it puts out things such as “You’ve got to go out and collect all of the nuts and store them up for winter, because you may not have the opportunity ever again.”

Now, although I said that in a very—hopefully—give you a chuckle sort of way—and no, whoever is sending that thought, that’s not what I’m considering that I’m doing: collecting the nuts and storing them up. Although sometimes I do wonder. That shows up in such things as unconscious eating, unconscious spending. Say the word.

Addictions.

S: Addictive behaviors. Addictive behaviors are a response to a security system breach. Oh, I like that. That sounds very impressive, doesn’t it? The security system breach causes your body to prepare for the worst, and when your brain is determining what the worst is, your addictive behaviors—no, let me change that—your addictive tendencies, which are all about security, your addictive tendencies come forth, and if they are not caught and redirected—I did not say ignored or lost; I said caught and redirected, it’s a pity not to use that energy—then you’re going to come up with addictive behaviors. Money doesn’t make sense now, does it? That when all of a sudden you’re in a place of chaos, and it feels as though you’re security system is on guard, and it’s because you have all the money you need, and you’re not worried about it at all. Not likely. It’s because maybe you did not have the extra five cents that you needed for a purchase you were making. Maybe it’s you did not have the extra five thousand you needed to get the car you were looking for. Maybe it’s because . . . but your security system has gone into protection mode, and your addictive tendency comes into play as a way of letting the body know really, there is no problem. And it does that by wanting to spend.

Shopping therapy.

S: Shopping therapy. Retail therapy. I like that. I like that a lot.

The addictive behavior is your means of controlling something else. The addictive behavior is a distraction to keep you from thinking about the lack of security that you have. And it’s not always spending. No, I should say that differently. For each one of you, it is not necessarily spending money. Some of you, it’s spending time unwisely. You are in a very stressful sort of place and you freeze up, you cannot act, you’re not thinking. You’re in a dither. Do you get into dithers?

What do you do to eliminate an addictive behavior? Now, a few moments ago I gave you a vital clue. What was that?

Redirection.

S: You redirect it. So if your addictive behavior is about spending—money, time, whatever—what’s the redirection that you need? Now, hold just a moment because your answer to this question, hopefully, is going to allow you a way of viewing your behaviors that you’ve not looked at before. So answer that. Aye.

I just recently started a weight-management research project, and it’s making us consciously aware of our choices and stuff, but I was addicted to caramel macchiatos from Starbucks that have . . . 

S: Say the word again.

Caramel macchiatos.

It’s a drink.

It’s a drink. A coffee drink. It’s bitter sweet, like life.

S: You’re such a poet. The caramel macchiatos life.

And they have about two thousand calories in each one.

S: And that’s more or less good for a day.

Yes. Yes.

S: Although it does put a new slant on drinking all day. Drink one of those and you don’t have to do anything else, because you’ve already. . .

Yes. And so I stopped drinking them.

S: Was that a compromise or a negotiation.

A negotiation.

S: Good for you.

Yes, because I really want to lose weight, and it was worth it to let it go to get my goal. So. . . 

S: So where is the addictive behavior in your illustration?

I would go and get the drink because I was stressed out.

S: Yes.

Yes.

S: Yes, and how have you redirected it?

I walk more.

S: All right. That’s how you replace it. How have you redirected it? And I’ll give you a hint. You started out by saying you are in a weight loss research program. That’s. . . your desire to lose weight was what you needed. Your desire to lose weight was bigger than the Caramel Macchiato.

Not much.

S: It doesn’t have to be much, love. It doesn’t have to be much. And what I’m saying there is that the redirection is not the action you’re taking. What is it?

Desire.

S: The intent. The desire. The focus of your mind. It is that point of letting go in order to have something you want more. And an addictive behavior—remember that I am talking about money, but you may fill in the blank with any addictive behavior you wish—an addictive behavior must be redirected, because the energy behind the addiction is promising a great end product. And right there, the way I said that, right there, that is going to give you a key to your redirection, because you might look at that end product—two thousand calories a day for a ten-minute drink—the end product of doing that would be, “Oh gracious, something I don’t want,” which is sort of like retail therapy, using credit cards to the max, is going to become foreclosure, bankruptcy, and if that’s what you’re after, you’re on the road, doing a grand job. But if that’s not what you’re after, if that end product is not what you want, then you’re going to have the power to change it by figuring out what it is you do want. That’s the redirect, and then the action that takes the redirection into your greater goal.

This is going to be a very broad statement.

[Small child making a lot of noise.] Lakshmi, love, tell him he’s not supposed to talk when I am. Well, I’ve been telling him and he just keeps talking. No, right now she’s negotiating for him. He thinks it’s a compromise.

Your ability to look at what the end product is going to be, your ability to take it on out and see what it looks like, is where your power to bring about changed behavior shows up.

All right, having said all of that now, I’m going to give you a very brief crash course in the problem with money. God and your father. “Wait, Samuel, we know what these are. We don’t need to hear this again.” Well, apparently you do, so let’s talk about it.

Money is a symbolic thing. Your dollars, your cents, they represent—I’m not real sure what they’re supposed to represent. Gold, or . . . a government that says we’ll back it, or something like that. But you use them thinking that they’re going to allow you to exchange them for goods that you wish for. It’s a symbol. I have put out this work, or I buttered up my grandmother, or. . . and I have received this. Now I am going to give it to you in exchange for this. It’s very simple, yes?

The money itself isn’t the problem. There are a whole lot of people in your world who have the same dollars you do, and they don’t have the same difficulties that you do. It’s not the dollars. You’ve got to pretend I’m waving dollar bills at you here. It’s not the dollars. Money is a problem, very obviously off the top, when what you want to exchange it for is greater than what you have. Right? That simple. So what you need to do is figure out what you can do to get more of the dollars so that you can use them to get the greater amount of what you have. But what gets in the way there?

[. . . ]

S: Well, yes, it does doesn’t it? One of the fastest ways to get more money is to want less stuff. But the fact of it is, in your world that’s not always possible. The problem isn’t the money, it’s the beliefs that go with it.

Money is all about, in this society, responsibility. You judge yourself responsible when you have the money you want to get the stuff you want. You judge yourself irresponsible when you don’t have the money you want, or when you have used the money you have on things that aren’t getting you what you want. You judge yourself responsible and irresponsible based on it.

Money as a symbol is a masculine function, because it’s all about form. It’s the dollars, and the nickels, and the quarters, and . . . the symbolic representation of “I can get what I need.”

Now, an aside: That’s going to get you in a little trouble if you decide what you need is not really what you need nor accessible to you. And that happens. You know of people—and this is not so much the problem that many of you are dealing with—but you know people who always, always, seek what they’re not going to have. And it’s not that they don’t have really good things, it’s not that they don’t have what they need; it’s that passion in life has been traded in for the pursuit of stuff. The societal security system that says here is what you need has gone askew, and what you want has gotten mixed up with what you need. But that’s an aside.

A masculine function. I say that because, as a whole, energy is—oh, what’s a good way to say it?—magnetic, electrical? It is moving toward or pushing away from. It is a thought made manifest in a particular form, and the thought in this case is value, money, having. And that’s a masculine function. All of the functions that are masculine—gracious, this is sounding simple—affect you in particular ways.

Your relationship with masculine energy as a whole has everything to do with the way you use money. Masculine energy in everybody’s life is epitomized by your father. “Samuel, not me, because I never knew my father.” Yep. “Samuel, not me. I really love my father. We’ve got a great relationship.” Yep, still. Move yourself back, and let yourself think about the relationship that you have there. And you’re going to find, probably, one of three things: there and well; there and gone—do you know what I mean by that? Present physically, but for whatever sort of reason, not present emotionally, mentally; or gone but there—and that can be “your father is going to get you when he comes home,” or “if your father knew about this, he would roll over in his grave.” Gone, but kept very present. So you understand those two now?

And your relationships with money show up pretty much the same way, don’t they? Working fine, there’s balance there. Don’t have it, always want it. Have it, but it’s associated with abuse.

But there is an even higher step here, and that is money as God. And when I say that—very respectfully of your cultural beliefs with that—when I say that, I’m very aware that many of you were very specifically trained that spiritual people do not have much money. It’s not holy to have it. If you are really spiritual, it will come down in small packages that land at your feet so that every morning, when you get up, you can pick it up and have what you need for that day. Oh, wait, that was manna, right? And yet an embarrassing large number of you believe that. And I know that because you have the consequences in your life all of the time. And the consequences are “I must not be very spiritual. I must not be very powerful. I must not be very good, because I don’t have little packages coming down from heaven so that when I wake up, it’s right there for me.” That’s really dangerous thinking, you know.

In your culture—well, not just your culture—but the most prevalent view in your world right now is that God is something like a Supreme Court judge, but maybe the President of the Supreme Court. And God’s job is to sit on his throne and pronounce judgments. “Smite him! Level that city and all inhabitants because they used my name in vain. Squash ‘em like a bug!” You’re only laughing because you recognize it, because you know that your God demands that you be very, very good, and if you are not good, you are going to be very, very punished. And that function of authority shows up in your resistance to authority within your own family, so that your father-awareness and your God-awareness get sort of crossed up, and you start thinking that your father was supposed to be the benevolent and wise and good, but instead did a lot of punishing and smiting.

A whole lot of you, having grown up with that cultural God, decided somewhere along the line that that wasn’t a workable version for you. And rather than thinking “Hey, maybe it’s just the way I’m seeing it,” you just dropped the whole idea, creating within yourself—interestingly enough—a great big hole. And when you have in your life a big hole, you are forced into action.

How many of you have had an absent father in your life that came back later to become a very good relationship? So many? Very few. It does happen. Now I want to ask how many of you once had a vision of a punishing God that you ran away from, and have very happily found that your vision of God was maybe not so right—looking the wrong way in the mirror—and now you are becoming reconciled with that whole idea of God. How many of you are doing that?

And those of you who had your hands raised just now—and don’t raise your hand to answer this—how many of you are beginning to find your financial situation becoming easier than it has been? I’m not saying you’re making more money. I’m not saying you’re spending less. I’m saying that you are becoming more aware of what you have.

I wish that I could say to you—well, actually, that’s not true at all. I don’t wish I could say this at all, but I’m going to say it anyway—that if you get your relationship with your father worked out, you’ll never have a money problem again, but that’s not true. Because you see the fact of it is the bottom line of it all is, it’s about resistance to authority combined with your self-esteem—no, I won’t even go so far as to say self-esteem—I’ll say combined with your view of yourself.

Now, some of you know that your resistance to authority is all because of your view of yourself. Some of you have already figured that one out, and that’s good. I’m going to give you the short cut. Earlier tonight, Mary said that she was becoming more aware of the oneness of things, lack of separation. The lack of separation that you insist on seeing between you and your understanding of God is right there at the bottom of your money problems.

You had a God you grew up with, and in a whole lot of ways, just like the father you grew up with, can later become a friend you never had, later becomes wiser than he ever was with you, later becomes a valuable and important part of your life. All, of course, because he changed, right? Your understanding of God can do the very same thing.

I need you to understand that I am not in any way making reference to the God of your childhood, sitting on the throne, knowing all things, smiting all things, I’m talking about the creative and creator power of the Universe itself. That when you grow up and move from the God that judges harshly because you’re not following the rules that were made two and a half thousand years ago—oh, wait, they’ve been adapted for today—if you insist on keeping that God, you’re doing it because you believe you need to be punished. You believe that you are not worthy. You believe that you are not yourself an absolutely magnificent being of love, of light, of creative power.

When you don’t see your connection as a part of All That Is, then you are going to have to spend your life resisting those things that tell you otherwise. And you do that so that you can be right, and unhappy, and broke.

Now, am I saying that changing your view of God into something that is internalized before it’s externalized is going to take away your money problems? Well, actually, I am. It’s the pivotal point of redirection that we discussed earlier. Recognizing your function as God for your life, for the life you’re living, your connection in [sic] and part of All That Is is going to have—no—it should have a profound effect on the way you see you, on the things that you are capable of doing, of what you need to be what you want. When you are capable of making that shift, and then allowing yourself to live it, then the beliefs that have been holding you in the box are going to change, because your resistance to your belief that you are a magical, wonderful part of this Universe is going to cause changes in the way your world works.

The symbolic form of worth is money. The symbolic form of spirit in this world is you. In your life as a child, and in this society particularly, the idea of father is—well, you even call God that, don’t you? And as long as you are living in a way in which you are separated by fear—fear of punishment, fear of loss, fear of betrayal, fear of abandonment—as long as your view of father is a problem of resistance in your life, then your understanding of God is going to lay right over that and take your power away.

Well, that’s not independence is it? Think about your father. Do you respect him? Think about your father. Are you, a parent yourself, still jumping to the tune of your father? Some of you are. Have you spent a whole lot of your life resisting a real relationship with your father, insisting on keeping the parent/child thing going, instead of allowing a greater understanding, a greater possibility. How old were you when you realized that your parents were human? How old were you when you realized that society’s favorite construct of God is human? And with every spiritual bone in your body, you resist that. And that gives you that hole that you’ve got to fill with retail therapy.

Making amends with your father is not the point I’m after. Making amends with God isn’t necessary. Recognizing your co-creatorship and allowing yourself to honestly live the knowing that you are a part of All That Is opens the door to you to have what you need. It’s really not an overnight “Here, all right, I’ve changed my mind—it’s different.” But you have formulated your view of yourself based on the two edged sword of the function of father and father-God in your world. And the function of father is the first step in changing the way you see yourself. And the function of God is the first step in you changing what you do because of it.

One last thing: the fact of it is, the Universe really is on your side. The Universe wants you to have what you need because it’s going to make it a whole lot easier for you to do what you’re here to do. At the very least it takes the excuses away. The Universe is not the problem. It does not withhold from you. It’s not bearing grudges for that time last year when . . . well, all right, maybe small ones, but not big. The fact of it is the Universe wants you to have what you need to do what you’re here to do. The only time struggle comes into it is if you’re still stuck in “get squashed like bug God.” Now, think about that. When it’s all based on how good you’ve been, when who you are is all about what you do instead of what you are, then you get punished a lot, don’t you? And because of that you don’t allow the abundance that is yours in this world. What do you need?

I have a promise to you. I will do everything I can to ensure that you don’t have you to blame, no matter how hard you try. You are magnificent beings of light and love. You have chosen to come into this world at this time so that by becoming aware of what you are, you will bring into the world hope. It’s not set up that you’ve got to struggle for what you need. It’s all right if you struggle for what you want, because that has everything to do with learning focus, determining your intent, establishing your passion. When your world is based on punishment instead of love, your security measures are always being played, your adrenaline is on overload, you’re getting old fast, and you don’t have what you need because what you think you need is taking all of your attention.

It’s not hard. Don’t need it to be.

Glochanumora. Happy, happy trails. Good.