January 2, 1994

Samuel: Well, greetings, dears.

Greetings, Samuel.

S: [Looking over the group] Good, good.

Are you feeling these days fully, completely, holy?—for the “holy-days.”

Well, that’s not a joke. That really is what it’s about, you know. The only way you could have gotten the early peasants to take part in understanding and being a part of your religious belief system was to make days that were enforced non-labor—saints’ days and such, holy days. If you had enough of them you’d have all sorts of followers: “Sorry, can’t work today. It’s a holiday, you know. No gleaning in the fields; it’s a holy day, you know.” There was a time the calendar was filled with—and it’s where it came from—red letter days. Well now, you’ve still got a few left. They are your holidays.

Which means that you’ve come full circle, right. Right now you’re back to the understanding of the sacred holly and you’ve got a holly day instead of a holy day. (All right, that one did not work.)

All right, a couple of gifts, gifts about an angel you’ve met. All right? You can do this. An angel you have met. Somebody? Yes, good.

I met an angel in my sister. We spent the day together yesterday, and it was as a delightful day of playing.

S: With your sister?

With my sister. We went shopping, and we tried on silly hats, and she wanted to give me a gift, which she did. And it was just a delightful day, and it was a time of us sharing some time together that we hadn’t done in a while.

S: How was she an angel for you?

Well, I had been doing this little thing with the Universe, which is I just tell it that I’d like to receive in unusual ways.

S: Brave, don’t you think? Truly brave statement, to tell the Universe “I want to receive in unusual ways. A powerful act there.

It’s very unlimited that way, and that’s one of my ways of stretching and being flexible, is to not tell the Universe how I want to receive. So it’s been gifting me in very unusual ways, and one of those ways was that my sister gave me a gift. So she performed the act of being an angel.

S: She gave you something, and along with the present, she gave you something that made her an angel. What?

Well, I think in some ways she was receiving communication within herself, those connections that I feel as well, and she acted on them; and that acting on them was a gift.

S: She acted on something. Is there somebody here who can tell me what made Lillibeth’s sister an angel? What was it her sister was giving and receiving?

Love.

S: Yes, yes. Love.

What is an angel?

An angel is anybody who is doing or being so that you can understand love in a different light.

S: All right. In the particular way that it’s being used this night right now, it’s anybody or anything—or any creature—that is allowing you to experience—let’s use the big word—love. Now, in the more hierarchical explanation, what is an angel? What realm?

Devic.

S: A devic being. What work do the devic beings do?

They work with humanity in the physical realm.

S: They work with humanity; they work in the physical realm, the devic realm. What else.

Guardians.

S: They are guardians of what?

Form.

S: Guardians of form. Can you get any more clear than that? The devic realm, which is not just angels, but is also what? Elementals, aye. The lower elemental and the higher elemental, of which the angels are the higher, the archangelic even higher than that. [They] have one work to do, and that is to create and uphold creation. To create and uphold creation. And in the lower devic realm, that’s such things as you think of in the old stories [as] those impossible legendary creatures like fairies and gnomes, whose work is to literally help create and guard creation. I call Donna a flower fairy because she is the human manifestation of that work, who creates and guards creation working with the flower realm. Lillibeth’s sister created and guarded creation for a few hours yesterday. What did she do that created and guarded creation? You’ve already answered it. What did she do?

She expressed love.

S: She expressed love. She pulled it out of herself and gave where she had not been giving. She pulled out of herself the highest and best of what this dimension is about, manifesting love through form, creating it, guarding its creation; and that made her, for a moment, an angel. And you know, the words are “Be not forgetful to entertain a stranger, for in [doing] so some have entertained an angel unaware.” Who’s unaware, the angel or the one doing the entertaining? And indeed, that’s the question. Do you think that Lillibeth’s sister thought, I am going to be an angel to Lillibeth?

Exactly parallel to your awareness of your spiritual growth—your spirit self—exactly parallel to your ability to know what you really are is your ability to see the angels in your life. And sometimes that angel is the wee creature that entertains you in the park, reminding you that there is a stunning, glorious creation out there, and sometimes it is a friend that knocks on your door in need, and sometimes it is … tell me, somebody, because I asked for two [gifts]. Yes.

I was sitting at work New Year’s Eve, and I got a telephone call from a man who is organizing a conference using a person and his wife for very important men’s work on gender reconciliation using African tribal techniques to bring the sexes together. And he was concerned about my attendance, and I was thinking about what you were saying. He was a person that had been moved by the same work and had taken some of the principles and taken them to Pennyrile State Park, thereby creating things, but doing the reconciliation to guard the creation for all of them.

S: How was he an angel for you?

He helped provide the essential bridge into that work with national figures that I was looking for.

S: Aye, good. Opening a door so that you can do more. An angel was the gatekeeper there.

All right, I saw a couple of hands when I finally said to you, “All right now, this is a parallel with your spiritual growth, your ability to see angels.”

“I see angels all the time, Samuel. I just remembered all the angels I see all the time.” Somebody? Tell me. Yes.

I saw an angel in my father over the holiday.

S: Beautiful, good. Tell me.

Oh, it was wonderful. He came to me and shared a very special moment in his life. My father’s a professor, and a student had called him up years before, and he had a conversation with her and changed her life, and he never knew it until she told him, and now she has since gone through graduate school and been hired by his department and is a respected assistant professor in the same department. And she said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you this, but I never knew the time, that this conversation that you had with me many years before helped me make the decision to come.” And he said, “I never knew.” And she said, “Well, Merry Christmas.” And he said, “Well, you just made it.” And he was deeply touched, and I was deeply touched that he could share that moment with me. It showed me that he trusted me; it also showed me that it’s [in] our everyday lives that we touch people all the time, and most of the time don’t know what we are creating. So my father was my angel.

S: How many angels in that story [holding up three fingers]? Beautiful, well done.

Somebody, remembering that story, tell me what you got from it. Tell me a gift you received from Jean’s gift. Yes.

It reminds me, when I listen to my family when they share things with me, to not listen about what I am in it, but to hear their life and their gift and I get to see a little bit of their wings.

S: Very nice. Another. Yes.

When you can return the gift that somebody has given you at some other time, even at a late, late time, it is a very appropriate thank-you and sometimes even as great as the gift that was given.

S: Keep thinking, because there are more gifts there. When humans have worked beyond their basic need for instinctual security, they move beyond simply fear for the physical and begin working in the arenas of the mental, there is one thing that opens doors, one thing that creates connections—it is literally, truly, a foundation door—and that is recognition. You can create a bond with that. It requires your giving and somebody else receiving, which creates a circle of power. As an act of consciousness, I choose to look to see how I can recognize the good going on around me, to look back over my life and let people know where they have helped me on the journey. By making an act consciously of recognizing, you are creating those bonds then on a sacred level. It is a powerful gift for you, a powerful gift for you, to recognize others. And it is very pleasant for them also.

Give me one more thing about Jean’s gift. Aye.

Her father gave a gift to another person, just in the process of his daily life. He obviously had given other people similar gifts. Yet it created things in her. She went through her program—educationally—living her life with a focus and drive and intent to change her life. So he affected thousands of people there. She is now in a position of teaching where she is going to be dealing with hundreds of people on a daily basis, so that one act has multiplied.

S: Beautiful. Beautiful. That act multiplied. You have no idea what you’re doing, whom you’re touching, the effect that will come from your being there, from your being, from you. You don’t know what you’re doing, whom you’re affecting, or how far that reach will go by everything that comes out of your mouth and almost everything that manifests itself out of your thoughts. You don’t know your power. You don’t realize your power over.

Beautiful gifting. Thank you.

You are at the beginning, according to your calendar, of a new year. Of course you know that your year has been going on for quite some time. In fact, you have several cycles of new year that go on with you all the time. At your birthday, you begin a new year—your personal year. and for those of you that have not an awareness of these cycles, if you imagine your birthday as being twelve o’clock, that is a power time for you. Six months later, at six o’clock, that is a second power time for you. What are these numbers [holding his arms out like the hands of a clock]?

Three and nine.

S: Three and nine o’clock are action months for you. And if you look at your life, at your own cycles, that’s something that you can allow yourself to work with rather than against. What’s your birthday? Now take six months from it. It’s just as crazy as your birthday is, isn’t it? You see? Power. Power squandered is a crazy time—set you up for that one.

Three months before your birthday and three months after your birthday, your personal wheel of the year, a time of action, a good time for your personal physical ability and mental acuity. That’s just gravy on the cornbread, or something like that. That’s one sort of cycle of the year that you have. Another cycle of the year is, of course, working on an earth cycle, where, for your planet your year ends when? We’re talking planetary holidays for your particular hemisphere. When? At Samhain—at the end of your October, at the beginning of your November, when, for the most part—unless you live in Florida—your harvest is over and it’s time to begin preparing to go within. The time of action is complete; you’re going to have time of moving within, of recognizing what you have accomplished, of quiet, before you begin the process again in the spring.

And then, of course, with your calendar, you have another end of the year, which is at the end of December and the beginning of January, which puts you fairly well in the middle of your winter, when you are usually winding yourself down anyway. Your cycles of change.

Because of that, it’s my choice this night to talk to you about guess what?

Cornbread? Who said that?

About death. Yes. Because very often what you get at this time is time to make resolutions, time to begin anew, be free, time to start over. And to wonder why, year after year, you put out the resolutions and you don’t follow them through. You wonder why you go to make so many changes, and yet a little farther down the road nothing has really changed. Because you’re forgetting that, in order to be born again, you’ve got to die first. You don’t keep your resolutions that are based in fear until you’ve died to that which frightens you. You cannot live until you know how to die, and you will not die until you have lived—that’s a threat. I hope you heard it. You cannot live until you know how to die, and you cannot die until you have lived.

So that’s what I want to talk to you very briefly about this night, very briefly—about how to let yourself go.

Tell me what resolutions are about—New Year’s resolutions. Tell me one. I’m going to lose weight this year. Good.

Change an attitude.

S: I’m going to change an attitude this year. I’m going to make a friend; I’m going to stop doing this; I’m going to begin doing that. What’s the idea behind a New Year resolution?

Changing something you don’t like.

S: Very, very often it’s changing something you don’t like. Or maybe it’s promising to add something you do like. Inevitably it is, however, based in dissatisfaction, isn’t it? And I want you to remember that you do not modify behavior by encouraging what you don’t like. Behavior modification isn’t “Good, you hated that? Let me give you more of it.” [It is] “Okay, that was great. Let’s do some more. Good!” Positive recognition.

Security is the instinctual issue at the basis of human behavior. It is the number one basis for every action on the most basic level of human activity—security. Either that security is space—”I have; I’ve got to have a space. My space must have these things. I cannot be happy unless I am in a place like this, where I am secure.” Some of your ancestors long, long ago may have seen that as being a cave that gets me away from the bears. You’re still saying the same thing: “I want a cave to get me away from the bears, get me out of the elements and away from that which might eat me.” Nowadays we call them creditors.

Sexuality—reproducing yourself. You know that you do not have to have sex to do that.

Tell me what I’m saying here—to reproduce yourself.

To try to change the people in your life to be like yourself.

S: Exactly what happens. It shows itself up as control and manipulation. I’m not speaking in terms of the other word for leadership here. I am talking [about] the intense need in security to reproduce oneself. Why? Why do you want to reproduce yourself?

So you can control it.

S: Control what? Give me a bit more here.

Things that are familiar to you—you don’t have to research …

S: Because you are familiar with that, because you know how it is your thinking, and if everybody’s thinking the way you are then you don’t have to hurt—it’s not going to be hard.

Why else?

Affirmation.

S: Affirmation of what?

That you’re okay.

S: That’s right. When I see myself in you, that lets me know I’m all right. It doesn’t matter how sick it is, what I see. I’m all right because somebody else out there is doing the same thing, feeling the same thing. That is why you surround yourself with that which is you. Scary thought, looking at your friends, don’t you think. [You] surround yourself with that which is you in order to affirm yourself, in order to affirm the changes that you’re going to be making, or don’t choose to make. You are reproducing yourself, and it doesn’t mean that you have to have sex to do it. You do it in your friends and in your co-workers and in your family.

And on a higher level of work, it is a process of looking to what is chosen to be familiar, chosen as the common denominator—”I choose to be with you because you have these qualities of spirit, of happiness, of wholeness that I want to emphasize in my own life.” But on the lower levels, on the fear levels, it is, I am with you because it is familiar. It’s easy to be with you because I don’t have to—how about this word?—think. I don’t have to consciously act.

Sweet souls, at the highest level of spiritual being, you are always “on,” and when you start getting tired of being always on, you are choosing to behave unconsciously, and that is “off.”

What have I just said there? Translate that into words you can use. Tell me what I just said there about being always on. What does that mean?

It could count, what you do when nobody is around you.

S: Joy says it counts what you do when nobody else is around, and yet you get so tired of that, don’t you? You get so tired of always having to stop, think the proper thing here. And until you are the proper thing, it will be an act of consciousness that brings it to you. As long as you are working consciously for unity, you must consciously fix your behavior. You are always on. The time comes, however, that it’s no longer an act, that you’re not faking it until you make it, because you made it. Until then, it’s the game of life.

Yes, propagation—you are looking to repeat yourself; security of space, security of self out there, and there’s one more. Anybody know it? If I said …

Self.

S: In what way?

Feeling good about who you are.

S: Yes, that sense of fitting in, which creates on the lower level remarkable chameleons, and on the higher level desert roses. What do I mean by remarkable chameleons? Yes.

We become whatever will be acceptable in a situation.

S: Whatever you feel is expected of you. You become so good at being what somebody else wants that you begin to forget what you’re really like. Such a good chameleon, but on a higher level a desert rose. What am I saying there?

That’s unexpected beauty in a place that wouldn’t look like it would support it.

S: Unexpected beauty in a place that looks like it would not support it. Yes, [but] it goes farther than that.

You adapt to conditions that ordinarily roses wouldn’t be able to bloom in.

S: It has adapted to the conditions to be able to express itself in the highest wherever it is.

The lower and the higher levels of basic security systems are what all of your actions are centered around. How’s that for a scary thought? Space, propagation, and sense of self. A secure environment—space. Finding yourself out there—repeating yourself; everybody around you is like you or in training to be like you—or they don’t fit. And self—the ability to be you. And if all of your worries are about your space—that is to say your physical domain, your sense of prosperity, of how it is you live in the world and what you need to do that living—if all of your focus is on how it is you’re getting away from the bears, if all of your focus is is it going to rain and spoil my parade, if all of your focus is surrounding yourself with people who think just like you—a social panel—if you find yourself in a place where you’re not challenged—”Oh, wait a minute. I have finally reached the point of spirit where I don’t need challenge anymore; out there away from those situations where I’m going to find myself getting upset or angry or sad … I don’t need that anymore.” Did you know that turning the other cheek means you’re still standing in the midst of the fray? It doesn’t mean you’ve learned how to turn your back on it?

You are not of this world—you know that? But sweet soul, you’re in it for a reason. You are in it for a reason. And if all of your security is based upon your need to rigidly define yourself by your rules and you wonder why the same old things keep happening over and over and over, then perhaps it’s time to have a really good funeral and let that frightened being go.

When the foundation of what you are going to be tomorrow is based on giving up who you are today, you are acting in fear, because, in truth, until you are able to recognize and be grateful for who you are today, that’s the person who will guide your tomorrow anyway. Until you have reached the point in which you are able to see that this overweight, smoking, drinking—what else is it you make resolutions for?—unhappy person is you for a reason, is you because that’s the one who has functioned in the world, healthy or no —until you are capable of seeing that who you are and what you have experienced is a glorious, magical part of who you are right now, even though who you are right now doesn’t need those sorts of experiences, until you are aware you can say goodbye with love rather than turning your back and closing your eyes and just ignoring, you’re not changing anything.

Who you are today is because of who you have been. You know how fast you can run, and you know how long you can stay in the hot sun until you start to sweat. You learn the functioning of the physical body and you learn to work with it to function in the world, and yet you do not allow yourself to learn the functioning of your mental and emotional body to understand why you function as you do. You simply ignore it and try something new. Because you’ve not had a proper funeral, you get haunted by your own ghost. It always comes back because it was never truly dead.

So what do you do to truly change?

The first thing that you do is you recognize that what you are doing isn’t changing; you are adding to what you are about. You’re not changing to leave something behind; you are adding a new dimension to expand all you are. And although that may seem like simply a word game, it’s a working word game. Let go of the language of failure, because in your language, changing this, not doing it anymore, implies it did not work. But who you were must have worked—must have worked—or you would not be here now. Who you were brought you safely to who you want to be. Who you were brought you safely to where you can see what you want to be.

Second, you replace. Otherwise you are dealing with deprivation, and anybody here who has ever been on a diet knows that deprivation doesn’t work.

Oh, come on, that was funny. Wrong season to talk about diets and deprivation, eh?

You are not conditioned to work with deprivation. To simply let something go and never have it again puts a hole in your life, and you know what you do with holes, don’t you? You have an intense need to fill them up with something. And since what you work with is the familiar, very, very often you—I think that I cannot ask this question because of the nature of the organization, but for the many of you that have taken part in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where you are surrounded by all of these marvelous people who have taken drinking out of their lives, you notice that very often it is replaced with all means of things—cigarettes, coffee, candy. There is a hole where an addiction was. “Well, what can I fill it with?” Well, the addictive personality looks for something else to be addicted to because that is familiar. If you don’t do it consciously, your unconscious self will do it for you. You cannot simply take something out without purposefully putting something else in.

What is it that you wish to put into your life? It works the other way, too. you are either going to consciously be expanding yourself and saying, “I am adding to all I am here,” or you are purposefully going to be letting go of an old behavior and bringing something in to replace it—that’s the only way it works.

What is it you want to bring in? I have a couple of suggestions. I encourage you to be an angel. Every day—consciously—be an angel. That alone is going to expand and push the proverbial envelope for many of you. But to take out a grudge against this person and to consciously, purposefully choose to do something nice for them; maybe every day for three weeks, until your self is in the habit of giving love their way.

Perhaps it is that you choose to be an angel with your smiles and with your love, choosing to be the bright energetic light in every grocery store you walk into. By being an angel—whatever that means to you—you are allowing yourself the opportunity for many different versions of conscious activity that is a constant changing of the old, habitual, unconscious activity.

Be an angel for somebody. For a group, be an angel.

Another thing that’s much along the same line: I recommend a resolution to serve. Sounds like being an angel already, doesn’t it. But I’m going just a bit farther with that. To serve. That doesn’t mean rush right out to McDonald’s and see if you can get a job. It means look for a way to give of something you are—I did not say something you have—to give of something you are in a place where you are receiving. Service requires that act of wholeness—you are receiving there; therefore you give there. Then it is service. If your service is, for instance, teaching spiritual or mundane things, it is because your students are giving back to you and you are giving to them, and your students are giving back to you—you are the teacher, you are the student; they are the student, they are the teacher—that it becomes service. It is service, meaning a higher act of spiritual consciousness, which adds to your potential here and brings you a sense of wholeness. It is service when you are giving of what you are where you are receiving.

There are so many possibilities there. First it requires an awareness of where you are receiving, and that becomes a major crux, doesn’t it? Where are you receiving in your life? Where are you receiving? How can you give back? Frank just said everywhere you are receiving; that’s true. Everywhere, you can give back.

And for those whose work in resolutions tends to be what you would consider the more mundane, the more everyday—”I want to lose this weight; I want to stop this habit; I want to be different this way”—I recommend that you replace the fear, once you have discovered what it is, with conscious love, when you have discovered how to give it. You will not be able to escape the cycle of incompletion—I want to lose five pounds, I want to lose five pounds, I want to lose five pounds. You will always be losing the same five pounds until you are aware of why it is you want to lose this and what it is that you’re really losing. Be aware of what I’ve just said there and what it is you’re really losing. And if you should find a fear attached to that, how do you get rid of fear? What do you replace fear with? What is the other side of fear? Love. Look for a way to replace the behavior with an act of love—outward in the world or inward with an act of love. And it stays off.

Death to the old; all hail the new king or queen of your life. Death to the old; all hail the new king or queen of your life.

The death requires space, ritual, a good grieving, a bit of mourning. Honor what was; be grateful for it; have a bit of a memorial service in your shower one day as that old self goes down the drain, off to Valhalla.

And then greet the new with joy and cymbals and dancing—maybe not. Greet the new with a pattern of behavior the self can respond to, not out of base security but out of conscious love. New life.

1994 is the Year of Synthesis. 1994 is the Year of Synthesis, and, sweet souls, why not the year you synthesize with the angel you are, that you become one in fullness with the light you are, that you have a new year, newly born into a realization of the power of the Source that you are.

Synthesis is service as a habit.

I’m going to be talking a lot over the next few months about some very specific activities for getting that life of synthesis, but none of it will work if the old isn’t gone first. Not just put aside for another year, and not just something to tally yourself up next to, but true transformation. This is the year for it. Under new management.

Glochanumora. Happy, happy trails.