June 2018

Dear One,
 
There are no words that I can find that can describe the depth of anger, rage, bitterness, grief, sadness, laughter, joy and then the remembering of the Divine light which I experienced while teaching and playing in Brazil.
My trip was incredible and indeed 'beyond words." It was a fabulous birthday present.
Celebrating my 85th birthday with "Soul Mates" was a hallelujah experience.
We dived into the pain, we danced into the joy, and marinated in and finally knowing the difference between "special" love and "unconditional" love.
We breathed into the fear, and with G·d's help released it.
We felt the miracles that self love produced in each one of us.

"The true man of G·d sits in the midst of his fellow man, and rises and eats, and marries and sleeps, and buys and sells at the bazaar, and gives and takes, spending the day with other people and yet never forgets G·d even for a single moment." ~ Abu Sa'id Ibn Abi'l Khayr

Our time together was recognizing the face of G·d in each other and radiating in the Oneness.

When I came home, I found this translation of Emmanuel's teaching on Relationship on my computer. (My teaching was about unconditional love)
How timely. There are no accidents.

"What has love called me to do? The first thing that love asks of you is that you be present. Not simple, is it, in a world fraught with distraction, teeming with fearful account. To be fully present seemed to you, when you were very, very young -- all of you, no human being is exempt from this -- to be a very dangerous thing. "What do you mean to be fully present? What do you mean to be fully present in this madhouse, where I am not seen, I am not received, I seem not to be loved, I feel totally criticized, I feel I absolutely cannot belong. Why would I want to be present when it seems as though at every turn there is heartbreak, there is pain, there' is disillusionment, and I am greeted not with open and perfect love" -- for that only exists home in the world of eternity -- "but I am greeted with fear, I am greeted with distrust, and sometimes I am not greeted at all."

"To be present" you ask? Yes. In spite of all this and because of all this. Love has called you to be exactly where you are, exactly who you are in this very moment of eternity. And in the next moment the call is the same. And in the next and in the next. For in each moment there is change of course; nothing remains as it was a breath before, nor would you want it to be, no matter how blissful that moment may seem. For if there be not change, there is no hope. I want to say that again: if there be not change, there is no hope. Even though one moment may appear to be perfection, it is only perfection for you in that moment. In the next you have become another you, for with every exhalation all things die, and with the next inhalation all things are reborn, but not as they were before -- I want you to know this, it is very important that you do.

Fear will take your hand and pull you aside and say, "don't listen to that". That's absolute carelessness, irresponsibility -- certainly not worldly. Fear will say to you, "you and I know the nature of this world; spirit either never knew or has forgotten. When you are here with me," fear says, "in the world of separation, in the world of otherness -- you behave as I tell you to, if you are to succeed at all, " whatever succeed may mean to you. Each one of you, by the way, has an entirely different meaning of succeed than the one sitting next to you. You have all been taught to agree on what success means, but you are far too wise to allow that to impinge itself on the truth of your knowing... but again there is no formula, there is no right nor wrong way to live each moment of your life. There is just you, the source of all things walking in your own creation, your human world, bound by your holy vow to follow the voice of love where love calls you, and to bring to that moment, moment by moment, breath by breath as much of your truth as in that time is available to you.

One enters from the womb, one exits from the womb; let us use it from that viewpoint. One goes from oneness, from the vastness of home, from the holiness of all that is into the world of fragmentation. The angel -- this is important -- holds the memory of home, in all of its promise, all of its miraculous nature, all of the joy and the bliss, and so for a portion of you -- bear with me, there is no severance -- but it is that portion that is denied, that the word -- if you will -- of the human experience says, that must be questioned; that must be doubted

Let me say that one more time: Without the belief in the truth of that moment of separation... without your willingness to invest it with truth there would be no illusion -- illusion cannot exist without that one ingredient, which is your willingness to believe in it. The belief begins the moment of separation.

At that moment, you as a bridge builder between the world of heaven and the world of earth, if you will, have begun your journey, have begun the task of fulfilling the purpose for which love has called you. It seems as though you burn the bridge that would take you back home, but of course you do not, but you stand, most committed, facing towards the world of human reality, though you never leave that bridge.

Then relationship begins, of course, instantaneously.
Relationship, as you know it in the human world, can only take place if you believe in separation; otherwise the concept of relationship has no place to be. And so in order to honor illusion and to honor at the same time love you bring into your lives, each one of you, the means by which you attempt to keep both worlds true -- to keep the world of separation, the world of illusion, a reality for you, you perceive things in relationship. To keep the world of oneness alive you seek to bring the light of that loving.

And so you already perceive the quandary. "Well," you say, "what world do I focus on? If I turn my gaze towards the journey, then I find myself instantaneously in pain, in separation, in distrust. How do I then align myself also with the faithful call of love?" That is exactly what each human being is attempting to do in one manner or another.

And so, this dear man /woman comes along in your life... and there is within both of you the longing, the homesickness, the memory -- even though you both stand with your backs to the light at the apex of your individual bridges. And you are looking into the illusion and you are hearing the voice that says, "I am lonesome, I am homesick, I am anguished. I'm seeking light. My heart is hungry for loving, and I want somehow to heal the wounds of my beginning."

And so you look to each other and you say, "I see something in you; I see the same remembering that I hold in myself. I see the same loneliness. I see the same intent. And I think in this moment that there will be an opportunity, though I cannot know in what form it will take or how the journey will begin or progress or end. I think there is a chance here that somewhere you and I together will perhaps hit a plateau of understanding wherein we can really bring into full satisfaction this gnawing, aching hunger in me that I cannot even identify, but that I only know demands my attention."

So you join hands, and the portion of you that remembers the agony of birthing says at great risk, and the portion that knows that just behind your riveted gaze -- the other side, if you will, of the bridge --
is the entire purpose for any human being's journey.

And so you come knowing there is duality in you that has committed itself to honoring both the darkness and the light, if you will, both the separation and the union, and it seems most reasonable, does it not, that to bring union, to bring oneness into the world of illusion one must take a stand, one must say, "Alright, now I'm with you, and together we make a oneness."

Therein lies both hope and its inevitable betrayal. Let me tell you why:
because within the world of illusion the fragmented self is seeking union with another fragmented self to bring forth the healing, but the healing does not happen there; the healing happens at the place, as you have said, within you, at the moment of the angel's wondrous decision to divert its gaze, to deny its knowing and to enter into the world where love has called you.

"Now what does that mean? You say, "if love called me, and this dear man/woman comes, and we agree to walk in the name of love, isn't it the same loving? No it's not. No it's not. Love most certainly called, but what did it call you from and what did it call you to do? It called you to remember that the essence of your being is oneness. "Well then," you would say, "but isn't that what relationship does?" No it does not. And this -- bear with me -- is the pain of all relationships.

Relationship says, "We honor duality, you are there and I am here, and in the name of love we come together. In the name of that love, one can only touch the edges, the fringes, the parameters of what you are longing for. The love you seek is your own. The union you seek is with your own holy remembering.

When you walk within the landscape, if you will, of illusion you can hold the memory of that oneness, but until you invite yourself in, until you are willing to risk that terrible memory of betrayal -- of the casting out of the oneness into the duality, and the longing again for that oneness -- unless you are willing to walk through that gate again you cannot bring wholeness into the world of fragmentation. You cannot bring angel and human together until you are willing -- let me say it this way -- to walk back through that gate, not back into the womb, because that is of course impossible, but back into your own loving, back into your own birthing, back into your own embrace.

Running the risk -- and fear has said this to you a thousand times a day -- of experiencing again that incredible wrenching and that is what fear says, this time will kill you. And it is all, one might say lightly, a charade. It is all the boundaries within which illusion is embraced.

Now am I saying that human relationship is a waste of time? No, I'm not. But what happens in relationships that hold great promise -- the soul's remembering, for no one walks with a stranger. The soul's remembering: "I know who you are! We agreed to meet right here, right now. And to create some wondrous miracle," and so you have, and so you have.The voice that calls you still is your own. It calls you not to disengage, but to re-engage.

You have heard me, you have heard me say time and time again, "fall in love with yourself." What does that mean? It means to be willing to risk -- and that is fear's word, not love's -- the incredible disappointment that you have already endured, that you already lived through, that felt very much like the absolute betrayal of love, by love. To move from the oneness that you've known into the world of separation is to break your own heart. To move from the world of separation back into the you that you have always known is to bring your heart back home.

And what has that done to you in physicality? The heartbreak is only a wrenching memory, it does not block the way. Habits certainly are formed in the name of self protection, you all know that as well. It seems as though spontaneous response, unbidden and therefore then, fear says, uncontrollable, bursts forth, and you find yourselves keeping yourself at a distance.

"No, no, you see, I keep other at distance!" No, you keep yourself at a distance. For if you allow yourself to enter into the here and now there will be no one on the planet that you do not absolutely adore. In the oneness there is only love. In the oneness of your own inner environment, there you are, you the angel, you eternity, filling the voids of your life with the light of your remembering. No risk, I promise you, but until you are willing to walk the path that fear says will be your destruction, you can never know if what I say is true or not. The mind can receive all manner of invitation, instruction, information, but until you walk it, you can only think it, and thinking, as you all know, is a very poor substitute for living." ~Emmanuel

To fall in love with yourself is the only way to become fully present and alive. If you are in the past you are not present,or if you are in the future... you are not present. If you are not present... G·d cannot be present. (B.A.)

Dear friends, join me in this prayer.

Dear G·d,
It has become my experience over my lifetime that
I am a channel for your loving presence on earth.
I ask that you help me release any remaining fear,
so that I may become a Master in Loving.

In gratitude, and grace,
Barbara Azzara (aka Glabman-Cohen)