[Chrysalis Foundation]

CONVERSATION THIRTEEN—"Beyond Attack and Victimization"

Today I was upset with my separation and judgement toward others. I wrote an affirmation: "I AM the power, master and cause of my attitude, emotions, and behavior." I felt myself rebel at this thought. It seemed to be a male, spirit-polarized idea that sounded false and disconnected from my experience of living in the world. My unconscious would not buy it.

The world is full of aggression and attack. Are they not causes in my world? I certainly feel their effects.

The expression of others triggers where you are not yet free.

I feel anger rising. What about life?! Is a jerk running through a forest with a chain saw or bulldozer, knocking down all the trees, not a cause that damages life? Can the trees philosophically say, "I am the power, master and cause of my attitudes, emotions and behavior"? How about a small child in Bosnia killed by a deranged zealot, or the pain of the mother of that child? Such a statement seems arrogant, far removed from the human experience.

It is not to deny that the pain is there. It is not to deny that humans treat each other inhumanly. It is not to deny that great pain is caused needlessly everywhere, everyday. This is a fact.

It is to say that there is a place beyond it all where nothing can touch you. This place I call the Kingdom. It does not deny that your brother lashes out, or that you feel wounded. It is a place that denies the ultimate reality of all that is not of love and peace. What creates attack but the perception of danger, the fear of attack? What can be attacked that can truly be injured or lost?

Jeshua, this is where it gets difficult for me. It all feels so spirit-polarized and masculine, denying the holiness of form and our humanness. To say you can’t be attacked denies the vulnerability of the body, emotions, and mind. I see people damaged all the time. Isn’t it cruel and heartless to tell them they are responsible for their crippledness and suffering—that the beatings that emotionally damaged a child should have no effect? This seems ungrounded—disconnected from the immediacy of the human experience. Do we blame the victim and glibly say, "It’s her karma"? It all seems like a suppression and denial of the human self.

Your anger is understandable. You have felt victimized and attacked by your brothers and sisters and the world. The perception of attack warrants anger and defensiveness. I would not take that from you. They are a doorway, a passageway back to me. Nothing should be denied. Yet look at it all as steps on the way to peace. How do you feel when the anger is fully felt, fully accepted for what it is?

Better. More peaceful.

By allowing your feelings, you come to freedom and truth—if you are willing to look directly at their source in thought and perception. You perceived that you have been attacked, yet could it be that this perception itself is unreal?

I don’t see that. When Karen blows up like she did tonight, complaining about how I don’t do this or that, it seems very real to me. I can also recognize my insistence on seeing it this way, and how real it all seems at a sensory level. I want an explanation that includes my humanness, one that doesn’t just work for the realms of spirit.

No one could deny your humanness but you. Did I not say I was the Son of Man? I know the pain of being unloved, of being attacked and crucified. I join with you in your pain. I seek to shed light on the root of the pain, the source and cause of all attack. This is what you ask for.

It lies, my brother, in the identification with the body and your lower self. You are not that, but are instead that which illumines and expresses through it. It shall turn to dust, and you shall continue eternally.

No matter what happens to the body, you remain eternally untouched. Yes, bodies and emotions become damaged, yet you remain eternally untouched where you truly reside. Identification with the body creates fear and the immediate perception of vulnerability. It could be no other way, for the body is limited and temporary. What you are is unlimited and eternal. To truly believe you could be damaged and cease to exist would naturally cause fear—yet this perception is untrue, and based only on identification with the body.

This perception in no way denies the body as the temple of the spirit. It does not deny the sacredness of God’s body. In fact, this sacredness can only be seen with eyes unveiled by fear and body identification. To see the body as self is to immediately create attachment to it, and to loathe it.

It is this polarity that you see so clearly demonstrated where you now live. There are those who seek to master and dominate the Earth, and those that seek to defend and save her. Both are in identification with the body and lower self, at least to some degree.

Jeshua, I love the redwoods. I feel they need to be defended against the greedy people who think they can cut them down for their own selfish interests. To call the attempt to save them attachment seems aloof, impractical, and insensitive to the Earth and our humanness.

Is attack loving? Does it affirm the divinity of man or the trees? Defense is attack. It denies that your brothers and sisters are you. You see only yourself in them. The aggressor you see is yourself. When you are free of fear and aggression, what is seen is a cry for help. Those who seek to save the forests are often in fear and denial. Those who seek to chop them down are also often in fear and denial. As you yourself have said, every polarity represents "two sides of the same coin."

Jeshua, what about when you were in the temple and drove out the moneychangers? You beat them with a whip. Is there not righteous anger?

The appropriateness of the action does not deny its source. I but mirrored them to themselves. They drove themselves out of the temple by their own perceptions. I only assisted them in completing what they had already done to themselves.

This action may have seemed cruel and unfitting for a prince of peace, yet it was born in love. This alone is the test of righteousness. It was my love for them that acted. There are times when the demonstration of separation creates a strong response in love. Life called me to the temple. It acted through me in love.

Jeshua, isn’t life acting through all these people who are chaining themselves to trees?

Yes. I do not deny this. It is not black and white. There are many awakening Christs in the forest, acting from love.

I don’t get it. It all seems contradictory. One minute you say they are acting in fear and separation, and the next you say they act in love.

Both are present within all humans. You would not still be in a body were you not a mixture of both. The same is true of those who seek to cut down the trees. There is both love and fear acting in all.

God! I can see how impossible it is to reduce it all to something you can get your hands on—some simple principles that allow one to define and manage it all.

Life is a mysterious process. It is not to be managed or controlled—it is to be lived in surrender to the process itself. The only guideline that I give to you is that of love. "Love one another—even as I have loved you, love one another."

Even that seems to be a matter of degree. Whose heart is totally open?

Only one who has come to know me completely. And to know me completely is to see me in everyone. This, my brother, is the journey of awakening.

PREVIOUS CONVERSATION HOME PAGE NEXT CONVERSATION