November 5, 2006

Samuel: So how are you doing? Feel like you’re living?

Yes.

I feel like I’m living, but it’s sort of like a circus, you know, it’s sort of observing a circus in a way.

S: Welcome to my world. Like observing a circus, yes. Why?

Well, just observing people doing the strangest things. I mean, acting so weirdly. You know, things that really break your heart, but, you know, it’s so sad. It doesn’t seem, well, real.

S: I’m not certain that’s such a bad thing. I’m not certain that it’s helpful, but it’s not bad. Now, what I meant by that is it’s not necessarily helpful to find that you’re watching from the outside and what you’re seeing is chaos, the circus. However, it’s not such a bad thing because ultimately that is what you’re doing, isn’t it? You are so much more than the costume you have on, and it’s helpful now and again to be in a situation in which you remember you have a costume on, that this isn’t all there is. It’s nice, now and again, to have your perspective shifted, and sometimes that means that your perspective is shifted so that you are seeing something that you’ve experienced a hundred times in a wholly new light—maybe a new light that is holy. That’s always helpful. Better than pants, anyway. [A] little slow!

It’s also good because it gives you an opportunity to be different, to be a different you, and there is rarely harm in that. The harm in it comes when you start thinking that’s what you are, but that’s true with any of the “you” you put into the world. You’re wearing the costume; you’re not the costume. Don’t always believe the costume, and now and again when you step back and you realize “I’m in costume. Everything is in costume,” well enjoy it.

Bonnie.

Talking about perspective . . .

S: I am.

. . . you once said—I think you said it to me—I was seeing the world through new eyes. Well in the last month I’ve had cataract surgery on both eyes, and all of a sudden I am, I’m seeing everything. Colors are so much brighter. The world looks so different. But the new perspective I have when I looked in the mirror, I had thought I was aging pretty well, and all of a sudden I am seeing these wrinkles that I didn’t know I had. I looked pretty good until I had my eyes fixed. So now I’m seeing . . . I even hollered for Vernon, I said “Come look! Look!” And he came in there, and I looked at him, and here was all of his wrinkles. I am seeing things that I haven’t seen for a long time, and [with] a new perspective. I’m a lot older than I thought I was.

S: Would you like to go back the other way?

No. It’s kind of like wearing sunglasses and not seeing the world. But everything is so much brighter and more beautiful, the colors.

S: And there will come a time—it would be so nice if it was in this life—when you look at that mirror and you say, “Everything is so much brighter, and so much [more] beautiful,” because it is.

This is a time of power. You know it. And what is that power? Oh, lots and lots of answers can come up here.

David, dear, what is the power?

Growth.

S: That’s a good one. I was thinking you might say something more along the lines of Samhain.

Okay. Samhain.

S: He makes the ad, yes? Sorry, love, [I] did not mean to hold you up and smack you at the same time. What is that, and what’s the power of it?

It’s a time when the veil is thinner.

S: All right, rumor is.

It could be a smaller version of what is really happening.

S: Good. I like that.

The veil is definitely thinner, and it’s followed by All Souls’ Day, All Saints’ Day, when the doorway to the unseen world is open.

S: Remember that. The doorway to the unseen is open.

It’s ending and beginnings. It’s time for completion, and time for transformation.

S: Endings; beginnings; completions; transformations. Yes. That’s good. More. Will somebody put a label on it other than Samhain?

It’s the Celtic New Year.

S: Thank you. Or at least in some versions of the old Celts and in some versions of the wheel of the year it was the ending of the year. Now, why would you pick now to be the end of the year? And I will push it into a little box of we are talking this basic part of the earth—top part, not bottom part—does that work that way? Top, bottom. You’re going to make me work too hard. Keep going here. Come on. Suzanne.

Well, it would be a natural thing for an agricultural society to think that this is the end of the year, because they would be gathering all their crops and then they would start the cycle again.

S: Perfect. Absolutely perfect, yes. Because when your world is all based on what you’re going to eat . . .

Things haven’t changed much.

S: . . . then you’re going to have your cycles built around the production of what it is you’re going to eat. And, in fact, that point is true in your life—not the part about eating—but that your life is set up around what it is you have built up as most important to you. What you have built up is that which is most important to you. And if you’re not sure what that is, and if you’re still wondering, “Why isn’t it eating? I’ve got to eat,” well you can go ahead and make that a part of it. All right? But if you take a look at how you spend your time, that’s the easiest way you’re going to find out what’s important to you.

And the answer may not be eating, it may not be even what you are spending most of your time with per se. You spend eighty hours a week working, and unfortunately there are some in here who do that. Sixty to eighty seems normal. That’s really scary. But it’s not that you just love your work so much, it’s that you love your . . . what it’s giving you. The income; the prestige; the house; the family; the . . . whatever it is that it’s giving you.

The life.

S: The life that you don’t otherwise have. Your social connections. Your way of feeling good about yourself. It may not be the nine-to-nine that you’re working, but it might be why it is you’re doing that work.

How you are spending your time gives you your version of your wheel of the year. And right now, certainly in the times of the older, agrarian societies in this hemisphere, this was the time that the crops were being put away, the land prepared to rest, be nourished and then changed, and those constant sunrise-to-sun-up [sic] days of working were going to begin shifting into a quieter version that would allow for planning, introspection, preparation.

In one way or another you are experiencing that as well. Your physical body responds to the change of light that causes the whole seasonal change anyway. You naturally begin to readapt your behaviors. You just changed over your clocks, yes? And you did that in order to have more or less light.

More.

S: I find it very confusing.

You set them ahead in the summer for longer evening hours, then you turn it back so you have more light in the earlier part of the day.

S: And do you?

Now I’m confused.

It all gets dark eventually, so you know.

S: But you begin responding to that, and you make the changes that allow you to continue doing what it is that is important to you. And that, actually, isn’t even the point I’m going with tonight, except that, for too many of you that is such an important reminder. You are in the middle of a time of change, and that change very obviously has to do with the light and dark cycles, the seasonal changes, and even that instinctual part of you that wants to relate to “It’s been very, very busy, it’s time now for that to slow down.” Of course, that instinctual part of you has never met Christmas, right? Never met advertising.

You are at a time of choices. And even though it’s not where my point is going tonight—unless Oma keeps really wanting me to go there, and then I will—you need to take a look at what’s running you.

I’m going to get very gritty for a few moments. All right. Hypothetically, anyway, all right, what is a prostitute? [I] told you—gritty.

No, wait, You’ve answered. Hold up. How about over in this abyss section, where everybody is sleeping? What? Sure.

A prostitute would be a person who gives up a valuable part of themselves, compromises that part of themselves, for something that gives them something else.

S: Yes. A little convoluted in working so hard to be politically correct and without judgment. Let’s have one not so politically correct and with not so much judgment. David.

A prostitute is a woman who will have sex.

S: Or man.

I would call that a gigolo, but who will have sex with you for money.

S: All right.

Or something of other worth.

S: That’s all right. That’s all right. That was sort of where I was going. I was wanting the shock value, and was getting the holy answers, and that wasn’t what I was after. No holy answers here. Just say, “Somebody who gives it and you pay for it.” All right.

[ . . . ]

S: Do not go there. And, for whatever reason . . . I’m trying very hard to stick with where I’m going and not into other dynamics of such a direction, usually the idea of prostitution is something that you try to sweep under the radar, under the rug. Under the rug is different than under the radar? Oh, sorry.

Under the rug is you hide. Under the radar is just to do it but not be seen by the authorities.

S: Both. All right. Both. That’s right, both of them work. It’s one of those things that you don’t want to see, for a lot of reasons—break your heart, break your wallet, either one—it’s one of those things you don’t want to be most of the time. It’s one of those things that, in a whole lot of ways, is accepted as just one of the ills of the developed world.

It is a costume, though, and a costume that you wear way too often, because although you might not be prostituting your sexual experiences, you do prostitute very important parts of your life. And the pay isn’t even that good. And holidays are a real easy time to figure out what your version of sex is. Well, typical prostitution is sex for money, right? Well, some of you are so far away from having sex you hardly remember so certainly that, obviously, isn’t going to be the . . . never mind.

It might be for you instead the answer to that question at the very beginning about “Where are you spending all of your time? What is it that makes up your year that’s ending now?” And it may not be exactly why it is you’re working those sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week. You are doing that in order to have this. And that’s what I’m talking about. Are you all right with what you give up to be you? Are you all right with what you give up to have the freedoms you do, the things in your life that you’re grateful for? And just in case that did not get through, I said “The things in your life that you’re grateful for.”

[You are] not allowed to cough on the front row. So he leaves.

Is the price you’re paying worth it?

Now, to shift into where I’m going, which interestingly enough actually does work with what I was discussing just a moment ago—no, this is not a talk about prostitution; that’s not where I’m going—it’s a talk about trick or treat. Trick or treat. Might be the same thing again.

That’s what I was thinking.

S: No, you’re just so not awake. A trick for treat.

All right, this is what has come out of a harvest festival recognizing the cycles of life. Now it has become a night in which you put on your favorite costume and you go to doors and you knock on them, and they answer the door, and you say, “Give me something now or I will harm you!” Have you ever thought about that? Oh, it’s so cute to see that child, that dog, that adult, in that lovely costume, and they come to your door, and very innocently blackmail you. “Give me something or you will be sorry! Trick or treat.” All right. So you continue the lesson that will show up throughout the rest of their life: that in order to get what you want, you’ve got to ask for it, and you’ve got to add just a small amount of threat in it as well.

Wait, that’s not what it’s supposed to be about, is it? It’s supposed to be a harmless little night, full of fun, in which everybody just gives candy to everyone else. And once that night’s over, you take off the costume, and you put it away, or throw it away, or wash it away, and I guess you eat candy for a while.

Sometimes you compare how much you got with how much somebody else got.

S: That also never changes does it? Here is all the stuff I have. How much did you get?

You spend every day of your life wearing a costume. [Oma barks.] Be glad it’s not that one. Every day of your life wearing a costume, and on Sundays more than one, and it’s absolutely all right to wear a costume as long as you know you’re wearing it. It’s absolutely all right to have a closet full of them that you step into and out of with ease, as long as you are stepping into and out with ease instead of believing that “this is what I am.” You live in costume. You adapt your life to fulfill the needs of that costume. You spend your life asking people for whom that costume is important, asking them to believe that that costume is you, giving them reason to believe it. Getting into trouble when they don’t have enough reason to believe it. You spend a lot of time organizing your life so that this costume does not overlap with that costume. Every day of your life you are wearing a costume, and you have put on the mindset of that costume, and you have created the set to work for that costume. And sometimes the costume stops fitting. And sometimes it’s not worth it to set up the stage and make everybody believe. That’s when it turns to prostitution, because you are continuing the charade that you care, which usually is what the client wants.

This year has been absolutely filled . . . well, with chaos. You know I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s been filled with chaos. Opportunities in which you have learned things about yourself, important things—not only learning what makes you tick, but why you keep ticking. You’ve learned a lot about adaptability, and I’m really proud of that. You’ve learned a lot about what you want and what you don’t want, and you’ve learned a few good things about how to get what you want, and a whole lot of things about how not to.

Many of you have been learning that, much to your disappointment the world does not give you everything you want. It just gives you everything you deserve. That’s not a joke, because every moment of your life you are writing out that check that comes to you. It’s the nature of the beast. Everything you do returns to you. It’s the surprise package though, because it’s beautifully wrapped in a lovely package, and you tear it open eagerly forgetting that—oops—that wasn’t such a good day, was it?

You know it with every fiber of your being. You are being asked to change, to release what does not work. But the only way you are going to be able to do that is to know two things. Now, let me ask that back to you. What do you think those two things might be?

One of them is security issues.

S: That’s good.

You would need to know what doesn’t work, and what to replace it with.

S: That’s good. Very good.

I’ve also been learning what I do want and what I don’t want, and I would love to say that what works is what I want, but they’re not always identical.

S: Hate that part. That’s good.

You need to release your perception of reality.

S: Hard to do if this is the only reality you know though.

You have to be on to you.

S: Yes. Yes.

You have to know that when you let go of something it doesn’t mean that you’re going to be without.

S: Helps.

You have to know where you’re going.

S: That’s the first one. You need to know where it is you’re going. Now let me give you a small hint about that one. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get there, and that makes the whole thing tremendously different, because when you put yourself into a rigid “I am going there, and this is the only way to get there,” you start setting up a rigid function that the Universe has to take a hammer and knock out of place so that you really can get to where it is you’re supposed to be going.

You’ve heard “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” It is the destination, just don’t be rigid about the journey. You’ve got to know where you’re going.

Now, I want you to try a brief experiment. All right? Just close your eyes, and I’m not going to ask you to get up and do it, but I want you to think about the steps it would take if you had no vision to get yourself to the front door of the building. Now, what if you did not have that destination? You would probably not do anything. You would just sit, waiting, “front door,” [sic] or afraid to try, or waiting for everything else to clear out and have the front door come to you.

In a whole lot of your life you are blind. Not blind because you can’t see the future. Who cares? No, blind because you have this physical impairment that by the grace of all of the gods is keeping you from seeing what you really look like, and then are amazingly surprised afterwards.

Just keep this in mind, love, if it did not grow old and wither away, you would be stuck in it.

[ . . . ]

S: Yes. Yes. And it really is true. You are only beautiful. Only. That’s all you can be, because as everyone in here will tell you—some with great relief for the personal implications they get from it—beauty is all about the inside and not the out[side].

But back to those two things: You are blind in so many ways, and the very same skills that you would use to maneuver yourself out of this crowded room without your eyesight is a version of the skills that you use every day to maneuver around this world without your eyesight. And, of course, you do have eyes, and for the most part they see a lot of things, don’t they? Every one of you sees with your physical eyes differently, and what one might see could be a little bit different for another, but you see. So obviously that’s not what I’m referring to.

And it goes back to that costume. You’ve got to know where you’re going, and you’ve got to know you, to be on to you, to know what works and does not work, to know how far you can go when you‘ve had this much sugar, and how far you can go when you’ve had . . . .

[Aside] Interesting look tonight.

You are standing at a doorway, a doorway that looks closed, and you don’t know what’s behind it. You don’t know if this particular costume is the one that’s going to be needed behind that door. You don’t know if the skills you have honed, the “you” you have created is going to be the one that works behind that door. And so you start avoiding the door. You start avoiding those routes that will take you toward that door. You start finding anything that will justify not going through the door, and surrounding yourself with those who also don’t want to go through the door, so that you can come together as a club and talk about why the door is worthless, and start greatly celebrating life on this side of the door, creating “this side of the door” livers [sic], and establishing a whole function in the world that never looks at that door. You don’t know where it leads, and you don’t know if you’re going to be enough to get you there.

I will tell you, this night doesn’t end with a pat little “All right, you do this and you do this, and—there you go—you’ve got it.” We’re talking about prostitution tonight. We’re talking about costumes that work and don’t. We’re talking about chaos and fear. And we’re talking about whatever it is David is bringing up right now.

I don’t know, does the caterpillar know it’s going to become a butterfly when it goes into its cocoon?

S: I don’t know. Is it a guardian caterpillar? No! Well, without all of the lovely stories that could be moved into that, just on an animal basis—no. There’s actually comfort in that, because you see what that means is the caterpillar doesn’t resist because it’s afraid it might not be the perfect butterfly. “This is the only time in the history of caterpillars that nothing happens!” Yes.

You have in this particular society two very rough months coming up. I don’t say that because there is a cosmic radiation beam coming through the universe to affect you. I say that because it is moving into a holiday time that has a whole lot of issues about costumes and prostitution coming up. You stress out because of those two things: the costumes you wear, and the prostitution you go through in order to wear the costume that you need. You are buying off yourself or someone else with your behavior. Would that be, you are the tricker or the trickee? If you’re a prostitute, that’s a trick, right?

Turning a trick.

S: Turning a trick. Why do you know that?

You see I’m not answering.

S: So the “you have turned a trick,” and you have turned it on somebody . . .

I don’t think they work with the prepositions at all.

For an extra fifty they will.

S: You have in front of you the opportunities to find out—I just don’t know the words to use here; there are just blanks in this—you find out that you are either the prostitute or the one . . .

It’s “john.”

S: . . . being . . .

John.

The buyer.

S: The buyer or the seller. Yes! Thank you, Kathy. Thank you. You’re going to have a lot of different opportunities to find out if you are the buyer or the seller. And—looking forward to it, are you?—it is vital that you go in with your eyes open. What is the destination? Well, it depends. If the destination is making it through Thanksgiving, that’s a little different than if the destination is making it through today. And both of those are perfectly fine destinations if they really are what you’re going for, because you might be thinking, “If I can just get on the other side of Thanksgiving . . . ” and what you’re really wanting is approval from family that you see twice a year.

You’ve got to know what it is you really want, and you’ve got to know what it is you’re willing to pay, or give, for the payment of acceptance, a few minutes peace—wait a minute. Thank you, Matthew. Just a few people laughed at that one. What you’re paying for this feeling or that one.

And now, just to help Stuart get really nervous, I’m going to tell you a very quick story. It’s very easy. Once upon a time in heaven—and every one of you have a different view of that one already. Once upon a time in heaven, sitting before the great and glorious throne of God—in this particular case there was just one throne, one God—surrounded by all of the gloriously, brilliantly, beautifully lit—that’s not right; that’s when you’re getting just through Christmas, right?—beings of light—that’s different than brilliantly lit isn’t it? Beings of light whose great job was to say, “Oh God, you are so God!” Well, what would you say to a God? “This is all so godlike.” Worked for me. “Can I just get a little closer? Maybe if I could just touch the throne, some of that god-ness would rub off on me. Oh God, you’re so God!” And sort of off along the edges there, there were a few others of those beautiful beings of light—got it right that time—saying, “What is this? And probably [what is] that too? Are they lit? What is that about?” because they had a different perspective of all of this, and that perspective was “It’s all right if what you’re all about is standing before the throne of God, reminding God that God’s God. But that’s not doing anything. And in the midst of this amazing creation that is God, [it] seems like more might get done to help that amazing creation that is God if some of that energy was spent putting a little of that God down there. Do it!”

A few of them that said, “This cannot be all about God’s self-image. There’s got to be something in there about the image of God within the creation.” And so they suggested that a few of them sprinkle themselves about the creation, showing the creation how to live like God,”—which is probably a lot of the reason why so many humans just want to sit there. But, I call them the Angels That Be. Those are the “Oh God, you’re so God!” As opposed to the Angels That Do.

Now here is the scary part. You—and you know it—you are one of those trouble-makers because you’re an Angel That Does, whose purpose in this world is not to glorify God on the throne, but to be here, expressing that God in every breath that you take, in every thought you think.

If your costume this year was “I’m going as God,” would anyone recognize you, or would everyone recognize you? What is it you do to show creation “This is what God is like.”? And do you really think that God whines, gets irritated, impatient, irritated, angry, sometimes cruel? Do you think that the God you are showing the world would be recognized?

You are one of those rebellious, trouble-making, separatist leapers into the unknown, landing on earth and saying, “This is why you’re here.” So why is it you’re here? What is it you do dressed up like a human and being God?

I’m not giving you a map tonight, I’m giving you a bat. A bat. Trick or treat. Two months.

Glochanumora.