A Note from Neale...

Hello my wonderful friends...

We continue this week our ongoing series on The Holy Experience. As I said last week, the second step in creating the Holy Experience is understanding that you are worthy of having it. This understanding is born of the clarity that God finds us whole, complete, and perfect just as we are, in this moment, for we are not judged by God in any way.

Yet even if we accept that God will never judge us and never has, there is still the question of our own self-judgment — the harshest judgment of all. And so a major process for us, a huge portion of our internal work and of our personal preparation for the Holy Experience, and what we termed the most important key of all, has to do with self-forgiveness.

Almost always it is easier for people to embrace the idea that God forgives them than it is for them to forgive themselves. We have a whole list of "wrongs" we imagine ourselves to have done in our lives, and we can't forget them.

We, and only we, know the inner workings of our mind, the quiet scheming of our heart, the sad assessment of our very human conscience, as we look at our lives and give ourselves a grade.

The trick here is not to try to forget our misdeeds, but to do just the opposite. Remember them, and remember them vividly — for it is what you resist that persists, and what you look at that disappears. That is, it ceases to have its illusory form.

Remember all of your alleged wrong-doings, then do two things at once: (a) agree with yourself never to repeat those behaviors again, and (b) allow yourself to let go of any guilt you have about them, replacing all guilt with regret.

Guilt and fear are the only enemies of man. Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross used to say that (it was one of her most oft-spoken wisdoms), and she was profoundly right. So get over your guilt about what you've done in the past. Just get over it. Get over it.

All of us have made mistakes — and for some of us they have been some pretty big whoppers — but that has nothing to do with your worthiness to see God, to be loved by God, and to have the Holy Experience.

Indeed, part of the Holy Experience is understanding this.

Hugs and Love,