April 2012 Newsletter

Jesus teaches,

The Little Willingness

The holy instant is the result of your   determination to be holy. It is the answer. The desire and the willingness to let it come precede its coming. You prepare your mind for it only to the extent of recognising that  you  want it above all else. It is not necessary that you do more; indeed, it is necessary that you realise that you cannot do more. Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what He does not ask, or you will add the ego to Him and confuse the two. He asks but little. It is He Who adds the greatness and the might. He joins with you to make the holy instant far greater than you can understand. It is your realisation that you need do so little that enables Him to give so much.

Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly yourwillingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this, and be not disturbed that shadows surround it. That is why you came. If you could come without them you would not need the holy instant. Come to it not in arrogance, assuming that you must achieve the state its coming brings with it. The miracle of the holy instant lies in your willingness to let it be what it is. And in your willingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as you were meant to be.

Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you. Your difficulty with the holy instant arises from your fixed conviction that you are not worthy of it. And what is this but the determination to be as you would make yourself? God did not create His dwelling place unworthy of Him. And if you believe He cannot enter where He wills to be, you must be interfering with His Will. You do not need the strength of willingness to come from you, but only from His Will.

The holy instant does not come from your little willingness alone. It is always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited power of God's Will. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare yourself for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and not believe that it is up to you to establish the conditions for peace. God has established them. They do not wait upon your willingness for what they are. Your willingness is needed only to make it possible to teach you what they are. If you maintain you are unworthy of learning this, you are interfering with the lesson by believing that you must make the learner different. You did not make the learner, nor can you make him different. Would you first make a miracle yourself, and then expect one to be made for you?

You merely ask the question. The answer is given. Seek not to answer, but merely to receive the answer as it is given. In preparing for the holy instant, do not attempt to make yourself holy to be ready to receive it. That is but to confuse your role with God's. Atonement cannot come to those who think that they must first atone; but only to those who offer it nothing more than simple willingness to make way for it. Purification is of God alone, and therefore for you. Rather than seek to prepare yourself for Him, try to think thus: 
 

I who am host to God am worthy of Him.
He Who established His dwelling place in me
created it as He would have it be.
It is not needful that I make it ready for Him,
but only that I do not interfere with His plan to restore to me
my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal.
I need add nothing to His plan.
But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my own in place of it.

And that is all. Add more, and you will merely take away the little that is asked. Remember you made guilt, and that your plan for the escape from guilt has been to bring Atonement to it, and make salvation fearful. And it is only fear that you will add, if you prepare yourself for love. The preparation for the holy instant belongs to Him Who gives it. Release yourself to Him Whose function is release. Do not assume His function for Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how little is your part, and how great is His.

It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. You make it difficult, because you insist there must be more that you need do. You find it difficult to accept the idea that you need give so little, to receive so much. And it is very hard for you to realise it is not personally insulting that your contribution and the Holy Spirit's are so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasised that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give right now.

Forget not that it has been your decision to make everything that is natural and easy for you impossible. If you believe the holy instant is difficult for you, it is because you have become the arbiter of what is possible, and remain unwilling to give place to One Who knows. The whole belief in orders of difficulty in miracles is centred on this. Everything God wills is not only possible, but has already happened. And that is why the past has gone. It never happened in reality. Only in your mind, which thought it did, is its undoing needful.





An experience with a Little Willingness

It is with a little willingness that you are even reading a newsletter this month or are able to click on the link to the church service below or view the dance video created by myself and the media team here.Left to my own devices, none of these things would have happened. Left to my own devices I would be 'content' to hide in the shadows, play small and refuse to do my part in the Spirit's plan for Awakening.

As I sit here to put together the newsletter having just watched the church service and the dance video, I am reminded that in my recent review as a Living Miracles Minister, I gave my willingness to the Spirit to be used more 'publicly'! Ha!! That was fast!!! So, here I am, writing a piece for the newsletter and featuring, so it would seem in both of the only videos that feel prompted for the newsletter!!

What I keep seeing is that I REALLY have NO IDEA what anything is or is for!! I mean truly! And I am constantly in awe of the Spirit's grace to bring to me exactly what is needed at exactly the right time and how everything unfolds in an orchestration far beyond what my 'attraction' to littleness could conceive! It would seem that all I need do is keep showing up and being willing! Being willing to question everything I think 'i' might want, need or desire - being willing to go beyond what I think the little 'i' can do.

The prompt from Peter to film me dancing for a music video has been a glorious undoing. For months now I have been pouring my heart into the dance floor in a room here at HeartSpace behind closed curtains. Dance for me is a communion with the Spirit, a connecting to the heart and a way to allow whatever emotions are moving through. There have been times when I've been on my knees with some undoing and I feel the prompt to 'go and dance'. It is usually in such times the last thing I would 'choose' to do, but I follow anyway with some small willingness and a miracle always happens. Somehow the Spirit takes my little willingness and transforms my mind back into the softness, into the love, into the joy. I am always amazed and grateful.

So when I heard the prompt to have my dancing be filmed, I assumed it was just for me to look at! I had never seen myself dance and because it is a sacred communion with God, it feels very vulnerable and precious. Peter however had heard the prompt to film me for a music video for the church service I had recently given on The Little Willingness! Yikes! Time for me to practice what I was talking about, ha!? So I headed out with Peter and Rochelle for a glorious sunrise session, thinking really that I would still be 'in control' of the footage.The Spirit it would seem had other plans and Peter and Rochelle and filmed and edited a beautiful piece to I Feel You Like A River and then posted it all over Facebook!!

For me it has made me look at all of my self judgement of what my dancing looks like, not being a 'trained' dancer, worrying over what people will think, not wanting to be seen...and on and on. It has been an experience of coming face to face with the belief in self hatred and being open to it washing through and choosing again. Show me Holy Spirit how to see this differently. It is the washing away of the concept of a small 'i' who can do or say or be anything in fact; a dissolution of the egoic construct that I think I am.  I am not the dancer, but I am the one who is 'danced through', I am not the Minister, but the one 'ministered' through, I am not the newsletter editor, but the one 'written through'. I am being washed of my judgement, of my belief in a self, small 's'; being washed of my belief in the judgement of 'others' be it in the form of 'praise' or 'criticism' - they are both the same. I desire to see all things as neutral, be it the Spirit asking me to make a dance video or clean the toilet and I desire to have the willingness not to judge 'myself' in the process or have some order of illusion that one is more special or difficult than another. I desire to just have the willingness to say 'Yes', resoundinly, wholeheartedly and regardless of the seeming form of the request and to trust that I do not know what anything is for!!!!!!

All my love,
Melanie.