"Your job is to render them independent; to teach them as quickly and completely as possible how to get along without you. For you are no blessing to them so long as they need you to survive, but bless them truly only in the moment they realize you are unnecessary. In the same sense, God's greatest moment is the moment you realize you need no God."

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"If there were such a thing as sin this would be it: to allow yourself to become what you are because of the experience of others. This is the "sin" you have committed. All of you. You do not await your own experience, you accept the experience of others as gospel (literally), and then, when you encounter the actual experience for the first time, you overlay what you think you already know onto the encounter.
If you did not do this, you might have a wholly different experience-one that might render your original teacher or source wrong. In most cases, you don't want to make your parents, your schools, your religions, your traditions, your holy scriptures wrong-so you deny your own experience in the favor of what you have been told to think."

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"Here is the paradox of all human relationships: You have no need for a particular other in order for you to experience, fully Who You Are, and...without another, you are nothing.
This is both the mystery and the wonder, the frustration and the joy of the human experience. It requires deep understanding and total willingness to live within this paradox in a way which makes sense."

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"It is very romantic to say that now that your special other has entered your life, you feel complete. Yet the purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness."

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"When human love relationships fail, (relationships never truly fail, except in the strictly human sense that they did not produce what you want), they fail fail because they were entered into for the wrong reason.
("Wrong," of course, is a relative term, meaning something measure against that which is "right"-whatever that is! It would be more accurate in your language to say "relations fail-change-most often when they are entered into for reasons not wholly beneficial or conducive to their survival.")"

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"You were told from your earliest days that you're "bad". You accept that you were born in "sin". Feeling guilty is a learned response. You've been told to feel guilty about yourself for things you did before you could even do anything. You have been taught to feel shame for being born less than perfect.
This alleged stated of imperfection in which you are said to have come into this world is what your religionists have the gall to call original sin. And it is original sin-but not yours. It is the first sin to be perpetrated upon your by a world which which knows nothing of God if it thinks that God would-or could-create anything imperfect.
Some of your religions have built up whole theologies around this misconception. And that is what it is, literally: a misconception. For anything I conceive-all that to which I give life-is perfect; a perfect reflection of perfection itself, made in the image and likeness of Me.
Yet, in order to justify the idea of a punitive God, your religions needed to create something of me to be angry about. So that even those people who lead exemplary lives somehow need to be saved. If they don't need to be saved from themselves, then they need to be saved from their own built in imperfection. So (these religions say) you'd better do something about of this-and fast-or you'll go straight to hell.
This, in the end, may do nothing to mollify a weird, vindictive, angry God, but it does give life to weird, vindictive, angry religions. This do religions perpetuate themselves. Thus does power remain concentrated in the hands of the few, rather than experienced through the hands of many.
Of course you choose constantly the lesser though, the smaller idea, the tiniest concept of yourself and your power, to say nothing of Me and Mine. You've been taught to."

Two Thousand Four
song 1
song 2
song 3
song 4

"You have been taught to live in fear. You have been told about the survival of the fittest and the victory of the strongest and the success of the cleverest. Precious little is said about the glory of the most loving. And so you strive to be the fittest, the strongest, and the cleverest-in one way or another-and if you see yourself as something less than this in any situation, you fear loss, for you have been told that to be less is to lose.
And so of course you choose the actions fear sponsors, for that is what you have been taught. Yet I teach you this: when you choose the action love sponsors, then will you do more than survive, then will you do more than win, then will you do more than succeed. Then will you experience the full glory of Who You Really Are, and who you can be.
To do this you must turn aside the teachings of your well-meaning, but misinformed, worldly tutors, and hear the teachings of those whose wisdom comes from another source.
There are many such teachers among you, as always there have been, for I will not leave you without those who would show, teach you, guide you, and remind you of these truths. Yet the greatest reminder is not anyone outside you, but the voice within you. This is the first tool that I use, because it is the most accessible.
The voice within is the loudest voice with which I speak, because it is the closest to you. It is the voice which tells you whether everything else is true or false, right or wrong, good or bad as you have defined it. It is the radar that sets the course, steers the ship, guides the journey if you but let it.
It is the voice which tells you right now right now whether the very words you are reading are words of love or words of fear. By this measure can you determine whether they are words to heed or words to ignore."

"Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable."

"Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart,"
but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love,
for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires,
let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings
its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart
and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart
and a song of praise upon your lips."