THE LIGHT EXPANSION CENTER

We are Melora and we welcome you most heartily, Dear Ones. We are not in the habit of calling people "Dear Ones" ordinarily because it is our perception that the guides who come in and sort of drip "syrup" over you are not necessarily the highest guides of the Light. Higher Guides of the Light have more subtle ways to how their love for you.

We have been hearing recently from so many that they still feel separate from Source Creator, as much "work" as they have done in seeking spiritual attainment. This is a "felt"--not an actual--separation. On some level you know that you have created this separation. In pulling back and separating yourselves and in isolating yourselves in your own psyches, your own spirits, you create the separation instead of maintaining the sphere of union that you enjoy in attending workshops of the type that we support.

We say this not to make you feel bad about yourselves. This is for instruction. This is a learning process for your awareness and consciousness of how powerful you really are in creating your reality. And so you can choose to create that union, or you can choose in the moment to separate yourself from that union. The question that comes next is: Why would one choose to separate oneself from this beautiful, loving Source?

Discipline

The answer is: The work that is still left to be done. Even choosing to begin the spiritual path takes tremendous courage and discipline. The true meaning of "discipline" is not rapping someone's knuckles with a ruler in parochial school. Discipline means "to learn." This is a Latin root word, as in "disciple." There is no value judgment, no connotation of hardship or austerity. It simple means to learn.

So--courage and discipline on the spiritual path. To learn means "This happens. I make a mistake." One makes many mistakes during each lifetime. To learn means: "I become conscious of what didn't work," what was not beneficial, what was harmful to self or others, what was done for the wrong reasons (however sincere). In that consciousness, one simply then makes the more beneficial, optimal choice the next time. That's all it is.

To learn doesn't mean: "I thought I got over this five years ago, and now I'm going through it again!" The illusion is that you still haven't learned the lesson. The reality is that there are arms, like octopus arms, and the core issue is like the main body of the octopus. You may have "taken care" of one or two arms, but there are about six left. Do you see? You keep thinking that you have resolved a certain issue and now here it is, back again. But what you've done is to go out to the periphery and have resolved a tangential expression of that issue. You have resolved only some behavioral aspect. Yes, you've stopped doing whatever that is, but the core issue still remains.

And so in our Soul Retrieval work we go for the core, so that you no longer have these other "arms" to work with. When you encounter another aspect out here, the appropriate response is now to work with that and to resolve it--not to say: "I must be stupid" or to berate oneself for supposedly revisiting something. It's never the same river, as that saying goes. You may dip your foot into the River Ganges in the same place seconds later, but it's no longer the same river, do you see?

If you start thinking about these situations as opportunities, then you will have more excitement about being given the chance to work with them and to resolve them. As we have said, Growth is ongoing. Our Jyoti said to us one time: "When you're in a human body, knowing that it goes on and on and on can be pretty depressing." It's as "The Myth of Sisyphus": He's in Hades, rolling that rock up the hill one more time, only to have it roll right back down again." (laughter) That's the Greeks' notion of Hell. And that is also the idea inherent in Reincarnation: "Back again. Didn't do it right. Can't get over this."

Two elements are important here: (1) Acknowledging and taking responsibility for the fact that it is you choosing to create these events, including the most uncomfortable ones you can think of and (2) that you have an opportunity to learn and now to choose what's beneficial. These are critical factors in whether you do indeed move on, take your body to Light, and now have your focus in 5th Dimension all the time, instead of just getting glimpses of it.

Compassion

People confuse compassion with empathy, sympathy, and so forth. Compassion is actually much more neutral, and we will tell you why. We will take the word "pity," and we will show you how pity is more about you than it is about the one being pitied. In order to pity someone, you first put yourself in their place. You're really saying: "Boy, if I were in that place, I would feel" . . . such-and-such. You really don't come into compassion in doing that because it's really about you.

In having compassion you are merely acknowledging that person with love and non-judgment. Now, with pity (and even sometimes with sympathy) there's an odd mixture of emotions, is there not? Sort of a repulsion in which you're perhaps thinking: I really feel sorry for you but please keep away. Like the transient or the bag lady. You may feel sorry for the person, and you may give them money, but you physically recoil. There is judgment in that.

With compassion there is no recoiling. There is no revulsion. You simply reach out with love to the person, exactly as that person is. You do not need to try to make yourself feel more comfortable around that person. That's merely behavior modification.

It is exactly the same in relating to yourself. These are some of the reactions you experience so intensely in desiring, and at the same time recoiling from, the Path of Light, because some uncomfortable things go on as parts of yourself jump out of the woodwork, and as the skeletons come out of the closet and dance and play piano on your head. (laughter) That's the revulsion, because you say, "I want to feel this wonderful, spiritual love and be embraced by it, and yet I'm not willing to acknowledge that I've got to clean my closet, my attic and my basement."

In talking to someone yesterday, our Jyoti said, "What if you took everything out of your attic and your garage, and your basement and closets, and put these things all around the inside of your house in your living area? How would you feel?" (laughter) How would you feel, living among this junk? That's what a number of you are experiencing right now. All of your "junk" is out. You're trying to be in your space, and it's just closing in on you. Our Jyoti said: "Well, what do you do? You have a garage sale. You get the junk out of your house, out on the lawn, and other people might want to use it. Or you take some of it to the Salvation Army, or you throw it in the trash."

This is exactly what would be appropriate to do with some of these things that are "in your face" right now. However, do not confuse these things that are dredged up from your attic, basement and closet with WHO YOU ARE. This is what happens. It is important now that when what our Jyoti calls those "rodent voices" (those tape recordings from your childhood that make you feel bad about yourselves) start gnawing on you, you begin to take charge. You begin to say: "No! That's not true!"

The truth is that you are exalted, beautiful beings of Light and Love, temporarily choosing to be trapped in a body in this thick, gelatinous density you call Earth. If you "get it"--if you remember that you are divine against all odds, if you're able to prevail and transcend and see through the illusion that you are not divine--you make more spiritual progress than you ever could by remaining in some disembodied state, strumming your harp, and having no challenges whatsoever.

It is not desirable that you go some place and coast forever, never changing and never growing. It is desirable that you learn, that you remain a disciple, and you do that by starting right now. You start making choices now. You don't revisit your mistakes or punish yourself for what has gone on before in your process. Honor your own process. Love the fact that you have the ability to become conscious of yourself as a spiritual being who happens, right now, to be a consciousness focused in a body.

We have said that people are often very competitive in the various spiritual communities. This is just succumbing to peer pressure. (laughter) The need for approval, do you see, is a great barrier to true spiritual growth. If Jeshua (the Christed One) Buddha, and other great Masters had been worried about what people thought of their messages, those messages would never have been delivered! They had good news, and they had bad news, do you see? People like to hear that they might be able to release karma. People don't want to hear that change and growth are required.

Some people are even competitive with themselves. They say, "I ought to be farther along," but these things go in cycles. It is not the same river. Even if you say, "I should have known better. I thought I resolved this five years ago" . . . whip, whip, whip. Cat-o'-Nine-Tails. That certainly does not help you grow spiritually. In fact, it sets you back because this is self-hatred.

Human Emotions

It is important not to feel that if you are disturbed or angry, or whatever, it automatically means that you have some demonic possession or something. This is the other aspect of what we wish to talk to you about today, and that is: If you weren't meant to have emotions, you wouldn't be here. If you hadn't chosen to experience the gamut of emotions, you wouldn't be here. And, so, righteous anger, justified anger, is appropriate but not anger that harms another. Righteous anger would cause you to come to someone's aid who needs your protection . . . seeing some universal principle--someone being violated. Protecting what you call Civil Rights: the rights of being not to harmed. An example would be Jeshua's turning over the tables of the money lenders in the temple. So many people believe that Jeshua didn't have human emotions, and it's simply untrue.

We would suggest that the most fruitful way to deal with these emotions is to acknowledge them. In doing so, you de-fuse them. When you deny them you give them power. As an example (as the great J. Krishnamurti pointed out), all human beings have the potential for violence, and so anyone who says "I am not violent" is fibbing. If you want non-violence, you don't deny or hate violence; you acknowledge it. You say: "You know? I have a violent streak within me." When you say this, the violence actually goes away. When we deny it, the pressure builds.

What we're saying is that when you're on a spiritual path and an emotion that you judge to be "non-spiritual" occurs, and you deny that that emotion has a right to exist in you if you're truly spiritual, you shut yourself off from your own consciousness of your own divinity. Your own judgment of what you consider to be inappropriate behavior for a "spiritual" being separates you right in that moment. And we know what you're thinking: "It's easy for you to say, Melora."

Our Jyoti has said that to us a number of times over the past years. But these are not absolutes, and we agree with you. You go in stages. Growth means that you develop from some "point" to some other "point." When you were first learning to walk, what would have happened if, when you fell down after trying to take the first step, your parents said: "You are SO BAD!" Actually, they said: "Good boy!" or "Come on, Susie! That's it." Such love. This is the way WE feel in looking toward you. We're saying, gently: "Come on. Come on. You can do it." You can do it, and we are not the ones "punishing" you. You are punishing yourselves for "falling down."

Think of where you are on your path right now, and where you will continue to go, because you never "get there." There's not some specific point that you're going to reach. Only in your own mind is there such a situation. So look at yourselves with compassion. This is not self-pity. This is: "You know what? I've really come a long way. I want to acknowledge myself for what I have accomplished. I could be a schizophrenic now because of all I've gone through, but I'm not. I took my courage and pulled myself up by my bootstraps, and I'm strong. I'm courageous, and, yes, I still make mistakes. But, by golly, I've done some pretty miraculous things, considering what I've had to work with."

So when you examine yourselves, start being fair. Start bringing up these other things that you've done, against very great odds, that are so fabulous. Look at those things, "for goodness' sake." And when you think of us, these beings that you perceive as so high above you, you sever your connections with us by thinking, I am less than . . ." You've been so conditioned to think that it is Ego when you say, "I'm great! I'm beautiful! I'm talented! I'm divine." No. That's not Ego. That's reality. And when you think of us, whatever you think of us as being, know that the reality is that we're saying: "Come on, you can make it. Come on. One more step."

We thank you for listening. Wishing you great Joy of the Light, we are Melora.

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contact Joanna Neff:

The Light Expansion Center <lightexp@infionline.net>

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