

### The Human Soul

### The Gift of Free Will

### By

### Jesus (AJ Miller) &

### Mary Magdalene (Mary Luck)

### Session 1

### Published by

### Divine Truth, Australia at Smashwords

### http://www.divinetruth.com/

Copyright 2014 Divine Truth

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

### This ebook is a transcript of a seminar delivered by Jesus (AJ Miller) and Mary Magdalene (Mary Luck) on 21st April 2012 in Murgon, Queensland, Australia. In this seminar they outline loving guidelines for the use of our free will, what constitutes an act of violence from God's perspective, and the situations under which it is loving to limit others' free will.

### Reminder From Jesus & Mary

### Jesus and Mary would like to remind you that any document produced by Divine Truth containing any information from Jesus, Mary or any other person includes only a portion of God's Truth that they have personally discovered.

### It does not and cannot contain the entire of God's Truth since God's Truth is infinite and humankind will forever continue to discover more of God's Truth as we progress in receiving more of God's Love.

### Please remember that due to these limitations information contained within this document may need to be revised in the future.

### Many other ebooks have been published by Divine Truth, including ebooks translated into a variety of different languages.

### Please visit <http://www.Smashwords.com/profile/view/DivineTruth> or www.divinetruth.com for further information.

### Additional sessions on the subject in this book can be found on www.Smashwords.com/profile/view/DivineTruth

### For more information go to:

Divine Truth (www.divinetruth.com)

Divine Truth Channel on YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/WizardShak)

Divine Truth FAQ Channel on YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/divinetruthfaq)

### Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Free will is a gift automatically given to us by God

3. Understanding free will cannot be achieved with the mind alone

4. God's definition of free will must exist within the soul before it can act appropriately

4.1. An example of a child treating a gift with disrespect

5. All of our pain and suffering is a result of how we use our free will

6. Loving guidelines for the use of free will

6.1. We can use our free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth without having any negative consequences

6.1.1. Using free will in harmony with Divine Truth and Divine Love always results in soul growth

6.1.2. Using free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will confront error in others

6.1.3. Using free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth is beneficial to the environment

6.1.4. Using free will that is not motivated by love will always have painful consequences

6.1.5. An example of assisting a gamble

6.1.6. Summary

6.2. We can use our free will in disharmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth but there will be a negative consequence

6.2.1. Any action taken out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will cause the soul to degrade

6.2.2. Any action taken out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will harm others and the environment

6.3. Using free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth cannot involve any act of violence

7. Definition of an act of violence

7.1. Violence includes thoughts, words and actions based on emotions that cause attack

7.1.1. An example of a fear of snakes

7.1.2. Types of emotions that can cause attack

7.2. Violence includes acts of physical violence, acts of spiritual or psychic violence, and intentions of violence that are not acted upon

7.2.1. Consequences of acting on versus thinking about acts of violence

7.3. There are varying consequences to the soul perpetrating violence towards different levels of living beings

7.4. There are varying consequences to the soul perpetrating violence depending upon whether the action is taken, felt, or agreed with

7.5. If we are in fear of violence from others, we are perpetrating violence towards those others, and there is a consequence for such a use of my free will

7.5.1. If another person created the fear within myself, then they also bear some consequence for my violence

7.6. If we are afraid, and we avoid acting in harmony with Divine Love and Truth as a result of our fear, we are automatically perpetrating an act of violence

7.7. Any act of violence taken towards oneself bears the same soul consequences as the identical kind of act of violence towards another

7.8. An example of a mother's actions towards a child who takes drugs

7.9. Threatening physical violence is also considered as violence

7.10. A person at-one with God cannot be damaged by acts of violence

7.11. Summary about acts of violence

8. Limiting the free will of others

8.1. It may be in harmony with God's Love and Truth to take actions that limit the expression of free will in others

8.1.1. God limits free will by establishing the spheres of the spirit world

8.1.2. God desires that we learn to express our free will in the same manner He does

8.1.3. God's definition of Love and Truth are used as the basis for lovingly limiting free will

8.1.4. Under some circumstances, limiting free will of another may be necessary for us to remain in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth

8.2. What governs how we may limit the free will of others

8.3. We can remain in complete harmony with God's Laws while restricting the free will of others, as long as such restrictions are taken in harmony with the principles of Divine Love and Divine Truth

8.3.1. An action of restricting the free will of another may actually be demanded of us if we wish to remain in harmony with Divine Love or Divine Truth

8.3.2. An example of the importance of limiting the free will of children

8.3.3. Organisations have a loving purpose when they are established for the benefit of people as long as they are in harmony with Divine Love and Truth

8.3.4. Organisations that have an unloving purpose are automatically out of harmony with God's Love and Truth

8.3.5. Being a parent is a gift from God to allow parents to become involved in teaching God's children about God's Love and Truth

8.4. Ways in which to limit free will without any negative consequences

8.4.1. With the emotion of love being present within myself towards the other

8.4.2. With the motivation of giving the gift of my love to the other

8.4.3. With the motivation of helping and assisting the other soul to grow

8.4.4. In harmony with God's Truth and God's Love

8.4.5. Loving restriction of free will always bear positive growth results for my own soul

8.5. An example of restricting a violent child

8.6. Ways in which to limit free will without any negative consequences (continued)

8.6.1. Actions taken to limit free will in harmony with God's Love and Truth result in soul growth, while actions taken in disharmony with God's Love and Truth result in soul degradation

8.6.2. Actions taken to limit free will in harmony with God's Love and Truth may expose error and trigger pain

8.6.3. Actions taken to limit free will in harmony with God's Love and Truth will always be beneficial to the environment

8.7. Limiting the free will of others out of harmony with Divine Love and Truth has painful consequences

8.7.1. Actions taken to limit free will that are out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will be harmful to our souls

8.7.2. Actions taken to limit free will that are out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will be harmful to the souls of others

8.7.3. Actions taken to limit free will that are out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will be potentially painful to the physical and spiritual bodies of others unless they are at-one with God

8.7.4. Actions taken to limit free will that are out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will be harmful to the environment

8.8. Limiting the free will of others without having a feeling of love that is in harmony with Divine Love will create painful consequences

9. Embracing the concept of "what we sow we reap"

10. Limiting the free will of others (continued)

10.1. If we are involved in an organisation that limits the use of the free will of others, we can remain in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth as long as the organisation itself remains in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth

10.2. Limiting another's free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth cannot involve an act of violence

11. Closing words

Appendix: Seminar Outline

1. Introduction

So the subject today is part of the Human Soul series of talks and the title of the talk is "The Gift of Free Will". The reality is that if we all knew how to use our free will in a loving manner, right at the moment this planet would be peaceful all of the time. There would be no violence, there would be no wars, there would be no conflicts, there would be no anger, there would be no resentment, or any projecting at other people. And it is because of our inability to understand the gift of free will that the majority of these things happen in our lives. And so it is a very, very important topic actually to understand; this topic of the gift of your free will.

So what we are going to do is: Mary is going to engage me in more of an interview process.

Mary: A discussion perhaps.

Sort of like a discussion, and the reason why we are going to do it this way is we would like to make sure that we cover quite a lot of information. We also would like to make sure that the information is given to you in a relatively concise manner. The other thing is that we have typed up five pages of notes for you in the seminar outline, and that is going to be placed on the website so that when somebody, i.e. AJ (smiles) gets around to actually changing the website, which he has not done for four months now. It will be uploaded onto the website so that you can download it and consider the points for yourself.

So you do not have to make a lot of notes today. The key is to try and be involved as much as you can even though we are not involving you as an audience as much, but note down the questions you have as we go through the discussion, that is our recommendation. So that way we can include many of your questions tomorrow. [00:04:53.08]

The gift of free will involves every single area of your life; every single area of your life. It also involves every single area in society, this gift. So if you think of the area of politics, religion, medical profession, any area that you can think of, education, the gift of free will exercised appropriately can vastly change every single area of our existence and this is why it is such an important topic to get right and understand how it works. So let's get started shall we?

2. Free will is a gift automatically given to us by God

Mary: Okay so you have already introduced the topic as The Gift of Free Will. Can you talk to us about why we are calling it The Gift of Free Will and not The Law of Free Will?

Well it is very important for everyone to understand that free will is not a right. This is probably the very first and most important thing to understand. The reason why mankind has a tendency to cause a lot of trouble on the planet is because they all believe that free will is a right, and unfortunately they do not see it as a gift. The reality is that God gave lots and lots of gifts to humanity and these gifts include the gift of life, the gift of sexuality and those kinds of gifts, but the gift of free will is one of the primary gifts that God gave humanity. God gave this gift to every single soul ever created.

Mary: Yes, okay so it is something that we all have whether we like it or not?

It is a gift that God gave to us without us asking for it. There are a whole class of gifts that God only gives when we ask and then there is a whole class of gifts that God gives whether we ask or not. The gift of free will is given to all souls ever created and that was immaterial of whether the person asked for the gift or not. Then there is a series of gifts that are all related to Divine Love, which God gives to people when they ask for it. [00:07:07.10]

So for instance the gift of Divine Love is one of those gifts, but the gift of forgiveness is another gift that God gives, and when you ask for it, you are open to receiving it. And so there are classes of gifts that are automatic and then on the other side there are the gifts that we have to ask for.

Mary: So those gifts are more gifts that we have once we engage a personal relationship with God, whereas things like free will and self-awareness, and the gift of life itself are just given to us by God.

Given by God as a gift without any strings attached. So God has no strings attached to our free will, if you like. That being said though; every one of these gifts has laws controlling them or controlling their exercise but they are gifts that are given to humanity, they are not rights and they are also not things that we can demand. And also they are not things we can give to ourselves either. God, in the way She has created us, has given us these gifts. So we need to understand this very, very important thing that free will is not a right, it is a gift.

Mary: And it is not a law either?

It is not a law either.

Mary: That is something, just in preparation, I was talking to our spirit friends and they said, free will is not a law; it is a gift that God has given us in order to understand all of the laws, His other laws.

Exactly. So free will, if we exercise our free will appropriately or even inappropriately, we will finish up discovering lots of laws in the process. But there is no such thing as the law of free will.

Mary: It is not something we can demand; or that we should be able to do whatever we want.

Correct, very important to understand.

3. Understanding free will cannot be achieved with the mind alone

Mary: So now, just before we launch into really understanding free will, there are a couple of points that we thought would be good to just cover about the entire discussion that we are going to have. The first thing we have noted here is understanding free will cannot be achieved with the mind alone. [00:09:17.14]

Yes this is one of the most important things we need to understand at the beginning and it is the same that applies to many of the things once you understand love, that it is impossible to actually understand free will with the mind. You cannot work out how to use your free will with your mind. Many people try of course, and fail usually. But even when they try they don't realise that there is a different emotion coming from their soul than often what they think is coming from them, or what they hope is coming from them. In terms of what they are thinking or intellectually hoping will happen; there is often a different feeling coming from their soul. And free will applies to the soul not to the mind. So, therefore free will and all of the different associated principles associated with free will, can only be embraced by the soul.

Perhaps we can maybe give some examples of that in the process but it is very important to understand that this free will is a gift given to the soul not the mind and therefore it is the way the soul exercises free will that causes either the degradation of the soul or the elevation of the soul. It is not the way the mind uses free will.

So what I see many people doing in an average day-to-day process, is they go, "I am going to try and be loving here and I am going to try to do that, and I am going to try and exercise my free will and I am going to try to understand." And so then when a situation comes to them, they are using their mind to work out, "Now what should I do here, what should I do there? Okay I think I will do that because there are all these laws of love and free will needs to be exercised in harmony with all of these laws of love. So I need to work it all out in my mind." And the opportunity to exercise free will has passed by the time you have actually worked out what to do - the opportunity has gone. [00:11:23.02]

The reality is when the exercise of free will is built into our soul and we understand free will in our soul, we can instantly respond to any given situation totally in harmony with love, every single time.

Mary: When would that point occur?

Well of course that point occurs when you become at-one with God; now you are exercising your free will in harmony with love every single moment of your life. However before then there are things that even engaging the principles of free will does for you in terms of helping you reach that condition. So it teaches you how to actually love through this process of engaging your will.

Mary: Because that is the way God has designed for us to understand His whole universe; is by engaging our free will.

So if you look at the mind trying to understand free will, it is a major problem that I see on the planet, where people try to intellectualise and philosophise about what they would do in what particular situation or circumstance, and the problem with doing that is that the soul will do what it does as soon as the circumstance comes. Whether your mind is on a different planet or not is immaterial, the soul will do what it does.

Mary: That is what I'm thinking of as you are talking about this. God has given this gift to my soul and my mind is just an apparatus that my soul uses, so when I am trying to use my mind to regulate this will, it is not going to work very well.

No.

Mary: And I was having a discussion with Robin and Helene on the way here and I was saying that the soul language is the loudest language that we hear, isn't it? So even if I am trying to regulate this will that I can feel is not loving with my mind, you are still going to feel that louder than any verbal language that I have.

That is right. So the key thing to remember with this, is that while I am attempting to use my mind to regulate my free will, I am demonstrating instantly that I do not understand free will. When I understand free will, I will understand that actually all of these actions that I am trying to regulate with my mind actually come from my own soul, and since they come from my soul, it is my soul I need to change, if my will is going to change. [00:13:47.07]

Mary: So if I say, "I feel I have a will to do something unloving," there is no point regulating it with my mind; I will just go and do that. That is not really what we are saying either, is it?

No, definitely not. So we are not suggesting that a person recognises with their mind that their will is in an unloving direction and then they decide to give up their mind and say, "Oh well AJ said that it is pointless doing things with my mind so I might as well just go ahead and do that anyway." We are not suggesting that, we are suggesting that there will be consequences associated with those actions, as you will see in our discussion.

But we are suggesting that the reason why we cannot use our will in harmony with love right at this moment is not because of our mind, it is because of the emotions and the belief systems in our soul that are out of harmony with love that cause us to use our will out of harmony with love.

Mary: And I guess the reason we are talking about this now is that we are going now to talk about a lot of principles of free will, aren't we? And just to keep in mind that this is not a set of rules that we are going to be able to just apply rote based from our mind.

That is the danger of writing it all out, is that we can write out all of the principles of free will and then people will be there going, "Ah, I need to get out that piece of paper to decide on the next thing I am going to do." And the reason why they are doing that is because the actual principles of love, the laws of love, are yet to be in their heart and until the laws of love are in the heart, it won't regulate your soul. And it is very important to understand that; then our will, which comes from our soul, will definitely be used in an unloving manner. [00:15:26.12]

Mary: Unless I deal with the soul.

Until I deal with my heart, until I deal with what is in my soul.

4. God's definition of free will must exist within the soul before it can act appropriately

Mary: Let's now talk about God's definition of free will, needing to exist within our soul before we can act appropriately.

Yes this is the important thing to understand; that it has to be God's definition of the principles of free will that are in our soul, not our own. Most people have a very, very heightened sense of awareness of when their own will is being thwarted in some way. However they do not understand what is God's design or what are God's principles that influence my free will because many people I feel today during this discussion are going to be quite surprised about what God's principles are about the use of their will. And in fact, there is going to be quite a large confrontation inside of their souls in terms of seeing how God expects us to use our will and then how often we are using it on a day-to-day basis. [00:16:36.19]

Mary: And I guess that is a gift; if we can have that level of confrontation because clearly none of us are at-one with God yet; so if we can understand the way God intends for all this to happen, that is what I feel when you say that - okay let's have the confrontation, I want to grow.

So we can have this intellectual conversation now, or this principle conversation based on the principles of free will, but we must always go back to this basic fact and that is until this principle is in my soul, I will not be able to act in harmony with it. Until it is there, it is going to be very hard for me, even in day-to-day decisions, until the principles of how to use my free will are actually inside of me as a feeling. Not as a thought, but as a feeling. Because then what will happen we will have an instant situation appear and because all of the principles are inside of my soul already, I will instantly decide what to do in that particular situation and I won't have to go, "What was that other principle? That's right - this principle. I forgot about that principle." Or they're shaking because there are too many principles or whatever. But it ought to be automatic.

Mary: Yes and so I guess you are also saying it doesn't necessarily even mean that all of the love has to be inside of us but we have to emotionally accept these principles.

Yes.

Mary: So there is quite a difference between that, isn't there?

Yes and it is going to be a process that we are going to have to engage to emotionally accept the principles. On the planet today there is a huge resistance and reluctance to accept God's principles on the use of our will. That's why most people on the planet have total justification about how they use their will, often in complete disharmony with love or truth.

Mary: Yeah and I guess that's why I feel this is such a crucial discussion because we've talked generally about free will in a lot of the discussions we've had before today, and yet there are a lot of feelings on the planet still and sometimes in our group of, "Well I've got free will. That's what God gave me and so I can do what I want," when really that's not the full picture. I can do what I want but it's what's going to happen after that.

4.1. An example of a child treating a gift with disrespect

Yeah I sometimes liken it to a child being given a Christmas gift on Christmas day. You imagine as a parent you're there giving the child the gift and the child takes apart the package and gets out the baseball bat and goes bang, bang, bang with the gift. Of course you'd be then contemplating, "Well I wonder how they're going to use the next gift that I give them?" And then if the child then went and got their siblings, their brother or sister's gift, and put it on the ground and went bang, bang, bang to that, then you'd be really starting to have some problems as a parent in terms of what do you do about that particular situation because obviously this child now is not only abusing its own gift but it's now abusing the gifts of others. [00:19:32.18]

Mary: And if a parent's role is to teach a child love and how to love, just as that's God's role with us, then how would we respond as a parent?

Exactly, obviously we'd have to do something.

Mary: "There you go, son, I gave you the gift of free will. On your way."

And then say to the daughter, "It's a terrible thing he bashed up your gift, isn't it? Yeah, you're just going to have to cry about that." (Mary and AJ laugh) It's not going to work too well in the long run.

Mary: No-one's going to learn love in that situation are they?

That's right.

5. All of our pain and suffering is a result of how we use our free will

We need to understand how to exercise His gift and also understand what are the practical limitations of the gift because there are practical limitations of all gifts.

Mary: Yes and also I suppose in closing our introduction, I guess it is about seeing the consequences upon our soul when we use our will in disharmony or when we use it in harmony with love, and really this is the essence of our whole growth, isn't it? It's understanding the use of our will in harmony with love. When we do that we're going to grow towards God, we're going to reap so many benefits, it's going to be a beautiful experience. But if we misuse will or we don't understand the proper use of will, we're floundering.

Yes. Every little tiny piece of pain and suffering in our life is actually the result of our using our will in a direction that's out of harmony with love. It's not anybody else using their will, but me using my will out of harmony with love. This is something that most people do not understand I feel still on the planet and even in discussions we've had. It is me using my own will out of harmony with love that creates all of my pain and suffering, and if we understood that, then we'd usually take a lot more care about how we use our will. [00:21:28.13]

Mary: Yeah, it's pretty powerful.

Unfortunately because we have this mindset most of the time that it's what everybody else did to me that caused my pain and suffering, we then start blaming everything externally in terms of how our will is used. Once we do that we take away the power to see that it's actually myself that needs a correction on how I'm using my will.

I see this happening all the time where people are finger pointing, finger pointing, finger pointing without actually looking at themselves and going, "How am I using my will here that creates my own unhappiness and my own pain and my own suffering?" And by the way all my own diseases and all my own sicknesses and all my own things that happen to my physical body, and my own old age, my own wrinkles around the eyes, my own wrinkled face and my own decrepit back, all of these things are created by the way I've used my will. [00:22:27.04]

Mary: So this is perhaps the most crucial truth we're going to learn on our journey to God. I just started sweating about - we've going to get this right. (Laughs) I mean we've got it right but I've got to get it right to cover the material.

But even that emotion itself, the fear of getting something right, you're automatically out of harmony with using your own will.

Mary: Yes, exactly. (Laughs)

So this is interesting and this is something that we need to understand too, which we'll discuss later; there are all sorts of emotions that tell us that we are not using our will in a pure loving manner.

Mary: Yeah, absolutely.

And of course fear is one of those emotions.

Mary: Yes that's my intent to inject humour (Laughs). Okay.

You can do it as many times as you like.

6. Loving guidelines for the use of free will

Mary: Let's talk about then the loving guidelines for the use of free will.

Yes so this topic is really - the loving guidelines for the use of free will.

6.1. We can use our free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth without having any negative consequences

Mary: Okay so the first thing that's written down is, I can use my gift of free will in any direction on any matter in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth without having any negative consequence upon my soul, the soul of others or the general environment.

Yes so this first principle is the primary principle about the use of free will, and that is firstly, it acknowledges that it is a gift given to me by God. It also acknowledges that every other person on this planet and every other single person that's ever passed, we've all been given the same gift. Now notice we're not saying using the gift in harmony with natural love or natural truths. The reason why we're not is because actually people who have yet to discover or yet to fully practice Divine Love and Divine Truth have still got limitations in the way they use their will whereas a person who discovers Divine Truth and Divine Love now has the ability to discover the real truth, God's Truth, about all subjects about how they use their will. [00:24:54.01]

So a person who's on the Natural Love Path cannot use their will as freely as a person on the Divine Love Path and we'll discover why later. But the first point is that if I use my will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth, then there will never be any damage, whether other people claim there's damage or not is immaterial; there will never be any damage to my own soul, to the soul of others or to my environment actually. And it's very important for us to understand all three points of how it doesn't damage my own soul, how it doesn't damage the soul of others and how it doesn't damage my environment in which I'm living.

We also need to understand a few basic other principles too, so that's why we've put some notes along aside of that.

Mary: And all of that is from God's perspective isn't it? So someone might feel, "This is hurting me, it must be damaging me," but actually it could be exposing an error within me more.

Yes. So the first thing we need to realise with all of these statements is that it is from God's perspective not our own, that's number one. The second thing we need to understand is that when we examine things from God's perspective there is often a completely different response from when we examine them from our own perspective.

6.1.1. Using free will in harmony with Divine Truth and Divine Love always results in soul growth

So if we give a first example, how does using my free will in harmony with Divine Truth and Divine Love actually look like or how does it actually feel? Well there will be times when I use my will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth and experience pain from it, that's the interesting thing. However we will always experience growth from it.

So there is an opportunity here with the use of our will that if we use it in a positive manner, in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth, it will always result in positive growth to my soul, always, even if I have to go through pain to get that positive result. And in fact, if I use my will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth, if there is any error out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth in my soul, I will experience that as pain while I'm exercising my will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth.

So I'll actually feel like it's the opposite thing that I need to do and if I work my way through that emotionally, I'll clear up a lot of emotions out of harmony with love.

Mary: So it's more than actually not creating a negative consequence, it's always going to create growth.

It always creates growth. There may be pain though, and this is where most people they go, if there's pain that means there's no growth, but that's not true, it's a very false concept.

Mary: At the moment it's the opposite for all of us, isn't it? To grow we're going to have to experience pain.

We have to experience some pain.

Mary: It may not be the same, like some pain might not be helping us grow.

And it's our resistance to pain that causes us to use our free will in a negative direction in many cases. So if we understand that principle number one is really that my soul will always grow if I use my will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth. It will always grow even if it causes me to feel pain during that growth process.

6.1.2. Using free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will confront error in others

Mary: So you're saying it might cause me to feel pain. What about the people around me?

Okay well that's the second point now. The second point is if I exercise my will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth as often I can, or if it matches at all times, then anything that's inside of anybody else's soul out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will automatically be confronted and therefore they may automatically feel pain. So the reality is I can be using my will completely in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth and yet other people are saying they feel pain from what I'm doing. But it's not from what I'm doing; it's because of the disharmony between my condition of love and truth and their condition of being out of harmony with love and truth. [00:28:59.21]

Mary: Yes and so this is where it seems we can really harness the power of the gift if we use it as God intends it, which is in harmony with love, because then we expose our error, and we help other people to expose their error. So it's very powerful.

It's a beautiful gift we give other people at the same time, that's right. It's very important that we understand though, that in the second case, where we're using our gift in harmony with love and truth, we're now also creating positive ways in which the soul of others can grow automatically. So the best way we can help them is to create positive ways for them to grow, even though they might be experiencing pain during that growth, just like we experience pain at times during our growth when we confront our own error with the truth.

Mary: And that reminds me, and I know we don't want to go deeply into examples, but when as a parent we've given the child something over a long period of time that's actually created an addiction within them, when we withdraw that and use our will more in harmony with love, that child's going to experience pain but they're actually going to come out of it with a better understanding of what love is if they use their will to be humble to the pain.

Exactly, and there are also times when I use my will in harmony with love and truth when before I wasn't using my will in that same direction and I feel a feeling of guilt. Well that's the pain - that's associated with the pain that has to come out of me. There should be no guilt associated with using your will in harmony with love and truth. But unfortunately because of our backgrounds and so forth, that's often the case. So what we need to understand is that pain is not a good indicator as to whether we are in harmony with love or out of harmony with love. [00:30:41.27]

And this is also something we must bear in mind in our relationship with others. If I'm experiencing pain because of something you've done, I can't automatically assume that's because you've done the wrong thing because you might have done the right thing and it confronts something that's wrong inside of me, and therefore I'm feeling pain as a result of that confrontation. And so we can't judge pain as something that is out of harmony with love. Often when we're starting just about every direction we can walk is painful and that's because we're out harmony with love in a lot of areas.

Mary: So what do we hold tight to us as our compass then?

Well this is where we have to hold tight to God's principles or God's Truth and God's Love. Now that initially sometimes is quite difficult because we don't understand what God's Truth is and this is why it's so important to learn what are the qualities of God's Truth and what can demonstrate to us God's Truth. And we also need to understand how God exercises love and this is about gathering knowledge about God and how God exercises love and so forth, then we can start doing things in harmony with the way God does them.

Mary: And I guess, also, if we keep in mind that really beautiful point you made before is that when we're not humble to our pain that's when we use our will out of harmony with love, so we can even start with that. If I'm just humble to my pain then I'm going to have more of a discernment of what's a loving way to use my will.

Exactly.

6.1.3. Using free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth is beneficial to the environment

And then the third point that we'd probably like to raise is this area of how our environment is affected. The way God has created the entire universe is that everything in the entire universe is in complete harmony in its natural state with God's Love and God's Truth. So therefore when I exercise my will in complete harmony with God's Love and God's Truth, my environment is automatically positively affected by my actions - automatically. I don't have to even do anything other than that and my environment will automatically improve.

Mary: And so here you mean the natural environment, God's creation?

All of God's creation. So for the spirits who are present with us, I'm talking about the natural environment in the spirit world, I'm also talking about the natural environment in the physical world. All of that changes as we bring our will into harmony with God's Love and God's Truth. [00:33:03.03]

Mary: Beautiful. Okay.

There are also a couple of extra points there.

Mary: Yeah let's go onto them.

6.1.4. Using free will that is not motivated by love will always have painful consequences

Mary: So this is about whether we take the action in harmony with God's Truth and God's Love, but what motivates us? What are the different impacts? So if I have a feeling of love inside of me and I use my will in accordance with that, what happens to my soul?

Alright well let's contrast if we're out of harmony with truth but in harmony with love, because that is possible to a degree. So, for example, I may have a feeling in me of love for a person and if I act in harmony with that feeling and I actually try to assist the person in the way that I believe at that point in time is helping them, the Law of Attraction will demonstrate to me whether I am out of harmony with love or not through the response of the individual generally or through the response of the situation.

There are different levels, if you like, of responsibilities associated with how I use my will. If I use my will in harmony with truth but with no love, that is still taken by God to be using your free will out of harmony with God's Laws.

Mary: Which is a very interesting point isn't it.

And if I use my will in harmony with love but out of truth that is still taken to be out of harmony with God's Laws but to a lesser degree than if I had done it in truth without any love because love has the higher priority. If it were inbuilt in my soul I, of course, would automatically look at every situation in harmony with love and truth, but when I'm progressing towards God that's not possible. So the first question I've really got to ask myself then is what is my real motivation?

Now for a lot of times we're telling the truth to a person and the real motivation isn't to love them, it isn't to give our love to them, it's actually to stop them doing what they're doing, or it's actually to try and correct their behaviour, or it's actually trying to give them some of our anger or punish them or other things and that is out of harmony with the principles of love and truth, which will damage my soul and damage the soul of them, even though I think I'm telling them the truth.

Mary: And I feel like what you're saying is quite important for everyone to think about because when we come to know some of God's Truths in our head but it's not yet reached our heart, we have to be very careful about what's going on, don't we?

Very careful.

6.1.5. An example of assisting a gamble

Mary: I was just thinking of an example to try and draw out that point that you've just made. So if you're someone that I know in my sphere who's got a gambling addiction say, and you're down on your luck and you're about to lose your house and all this stuff's happening in your world. Now from what you're saying it sounds like I could actually have a sense of love for you and compassion for you that is sincere, it's an actual real feeling inside of me going, wow AJ I can see what's happened in his life to bring you to this point I can see that he just feels really bad about himself and he's always trying to get out of this and he puts a lot of pressure on him and all of these things.

And perhaps you could see some of the reasons why he's gambling and so forth.

Mary: Yeah, it's his relationship with his dad and then there's pressure from his wife or whatever else is going on. I could notice that and feel a sense of love and compassion. Now from what you're saying I could come to you and say, "Ah, AJ here's a hundred bucks. I want to help you out because I really can feel what's happening..."

Go and buy some food with it.

Mary: Yeah, "... get some groceries for your family." Now that would be an example of me acting in harmony with love but not with truth.

Not necessarily with truth.

Mary: Yeah it depends on how I handle that situation doesn't it?

And also how they do. So if he then grabs that money and runs off and spends it on the next gamble and doesn't go home and buy food with the money and then he comes back and says, "Ah I lost that money, can I have some more?" [00:37:26.10]

Mary: So and if I gave you more?

Now you would not be acting in harmony with love or truth.

Mary: Right, because the loving thing would be to say I can't keep feeding your addiction?

Exactly. The most loving action would be to not feed the person's addiction even though you want to give to them and...

Mary: Because that feeling is inside of you.

Exactly.

Mary: Yes. So I mean I can think of an example where if I came to you and I thought, gee that AJ character is just a slacker you know.

He's a down and out gambler, he's wastes his money, what a stupid idiot...

Mary: These people annoy me so much it reminds me of my own grandfather.

Yeah he wasted all our money.

Mary: Yeah I'm going to tell him the truth. "You're in addiction you've got a lot of pain in your childhood. You've got to feel it or you know or everything's going to go badly."

Yeah and you've just damaged your own soul and the soul of the person.

Mary: Because what's motivating me is this feeling of anger and I'm saying God's Truth to you but it can't really be can it?

Not really. You're saying truth to the person but God would be delivering it with love.

Mary: Exactly.

And you're not, so it's not God's Truth, it's your own delivered to the person with your own understanding of God's Truth, without any love at all, and it's going to damage their soul. [00:38:42.18]

Mary: But I could kid myself that I'm acting in harmony with God's Truth and Love because I'm not giving him money because I know that would be feeding his addiction.

Yeah, so at the same time convincing myself that I'm actually doing something in harmony and I'm not.

Mary: So what I'm unclear on then though is when I'm acting in harmony with love, there's truth in that action isn't there?

When you did the first action certainly there was.

Mary: So I'm really not in disharmony with truth?

Not really - you were offering him the money, the proviso that you offered him was that it was to go and buy some food for his family. Now you're giving him the choice to exercise his free will in a positive manner, actually you're giving him a gift when you think about it. You're saying here's a hundred dollars and you're giving him the gift of being able to choose to use it in a more appropriate manner. [00:39:34.14]

Mary: So in this situation...

That's a loving thing.

Mary: Yeah I'm not causing any negative consequence for anyone. But when I give him money again?

When he's already gone off and he's demonstrated to you that he's going to use the money unwisely and then you offer the money again, now you're assisting him in his process of staying in an unloving addiction.

Mary: So this is the example you were saying where I could be motivated by some sense of love inside of me, but I'm now way out of harmony with truth and so there's a penalty on my soul, but it's not as much as the second example that I gave.

Exactly, it's not as much as if you go up to the person with truth with some anger. There's a fairly large amount of penalty on your soul then, compared to if you go up in love and give them something and then it doesn't work out. And it wouldn't have worked out because you see a lot of times we are not aware, but we are able to sense and feel in our soul, once we're connected, what the person will definitely do with something. So you wouldn't even give to them the first time if you're in that space and you knew they would go and do something with it.

Mary: You might take them groceries?

You might take them some groceries instead, exactly. So you wouldn't give them the money to buy it. You would actually give them the groceries and say this is what you need to be doing with your money. [00:40:54.14]

Mary: Yeah, okay thanks.

But these actions are automatic, they're not thought of and the reason why they're not thought of is because the laws or principles of love are in your heart and so you will definitely use your free will in harmony with those principles every single time.

Mary: Yeah but it seems very important because I feel like sometimes people have spoken to me about the fact that sometimes they're squashing almost these feelings of natural love that they have for people because they want to get it right in God's eyes, and yet they're actually reversing then the process that God's designed for them to learn.

And also reversing their soul condition because the reality is if we have a feeling of love, that should be motivating our choices and decisions anyway so we act upon them. And if it turns out in the process of acting upon love that something comes back at us where we felt like, "Wow that's showing me something's wrong with my love," then you purify your love, you wouldn't then not act, you'd just purify your love and act again.

Mary: And that's the use of will, isn't it, and that's the process God wants us engaged in.

Yes, so what we want to do is purify our love and act again. We get the feedback, and that's showing me that I'm a bit out of harmony with love so I purify my love a bit more act again and act again. And you can see every time I act, I'm purifying my love so as I act I'm changing, my will is helping me change in a positive direction if I do that. [00:42:14.09]

Mary: Yeah and I feel like in this discussion we're definitely getting intellectual talking about intellectual points and it can feel a bit overwhelming like, "Hang on, how does that all work?" But actually if we just stay connected to our heart and ask God to show us through the use of our will to correct us, then we're going to keep going in the right direction.

Yes, mankind on the Earth has huge emotional injuries associated with their will. One of the primary reasons why is because most of us have been brought up in families where our will has been severely squashed or, conversely, you also see this in many families where the will has not been controlled at all in any direction. So people grow up thinking they're allowed to do anything they want.

Mary: That's this entitlement injury that we see often.

Yes and that's just as damaged as feeling like you can do nothing that you want. There are damages in both directions.

6.1.6. Summary

So can we revise the first point then?

Mary: Yeah let's do that. So the first point was I can use my gift of free will.

I can use my gift of free will in any direction on any matter in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth without having any negative consequence upon my soul, the soul of others, or the general environment.

Mary: And what we heard is actually that not only does it not have a negative consequence, it's always going to have a positive consequence upon my soul.

Exactly.

Mary: It's going to benefit the environment and it can potentially have a positive consequence for the soul of other people because it's always going to expose error.

So the statement could actually read - and always have a positive consequence upon my soul, the soul of others and the general environment.

Mary: The amount that is has a positive influence on the soul of others is going to be dependent on their use of their will isn't it once the error is exposed in them?

Yes, but the interesting fact the way that God has created the principles associated with free will is that if I exercise my will in a positive direction in harmony with truth and love, it's like an internal conflict inside of the other person's soul, so it sort of pulls the other person's soul into growth, even though they're not necessarily aware of that particular growth at the time. [00:45:35.19]

Mary: Which is pretty beautiful. And because you say here something about the environment is automatically attracted to God's loving truth, and I suppose our souls are as well. So when you enact something in harmony with God's Love and Truth, my soul starts tugging.

Your soul goes into sort of a rebelling against the error and all sorts of things start happening, and there's all this internal conflict in the soul of the person being confronted. There'll be some pain potentially and so forth, and pain comes out in the sense usually of rage and anger first and then it goes into fear and then it goes into grief, but eventually the soul of the other person will grow, they'd be pulled along by your soul's action in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth.

Mary: Awesome. Alright so then now we're speaking in the converse I suppose.

Yes so this is the second point of understanding about the basic principles associated with using our will.

6.2. We can use our free will in disharmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth but there will be a negative consequence

Mary: I can use my gift of free will in any direction on any matter in disharmony with Divine Truth and Love but there will be a negative consequence upon my soul, the soul of others and the general environment.

Yes so basically it's the flip side of the first point. What we're doing in this statement is we're removing "in harmony" and we're putting in "disharmony", and where is says "without any negative consequence" basically we're making it with full negative consequences upon my soul, the soul of others and the general environment. So [00:47:11.11]

Mary: And basically that's always going to happen?

It's always going to happen.

Mary: No matter what... we can't kind of talk our way around it?

You can't talk your way around it; you can't try and convince God otherwise. "I'm sorry, I tried hard." Or any of those things.

Mary: And within that statement also is the fact that not only can I not avoid it, but I can't avoid affecting negatively the people around me or my environment, which is pretty big.

That's the sad thing about it, because you can't avoid harming others when you choose to act with your free will in a negative direction. You will not be able to avoid harming others. It's impossible to avoid harming others when you do that. So if we look at the three main examples of that again if you like.

Mary: The three categories.

6.2.1. Any action taken out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will cause the soul to degrade

The first example is my own soul, I need to understand that if I feed an addiction inside of myself I am harming my soul; I am making my soul worse. I am using my will to actually harm myself. It might feel good because the addictions getting met, so there's no pain associated there, and yet my soul is degrading. But at some point in the future I will feel the pain of that degradation at some point. [00:48:25.23]

Mary: Because God's going to want me to so that I learn about all of that.

Yeah well it's not just God wanting me to, but all of God's Laws are constructed in such a way that we have to actually finish up reaping what we sow. So if I sow all of these seeds, if I go out to the garden and sow some seeds, let's say they are lettuce seeds and I put them in my garden, I don't expect in two months time to have a cabbage because I sowed a lettuce. I can't expect the cabbage to come when I sowed a lettuce. And it's exactly the same principle with our free will, we can't expect to sow things out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth and get some different result than what we sow. We will always get the result of what we sow.

And the other principle that's important to understand is that sometimes it actually even feels good in exercising my will out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth because of the error that's in me, and yet I am still degrading my soul and eventually at some point I'll feel the pain of it, I'll feel the suffering of it.

And this is how many people finish up getting into disease states on the planet because they're sowing their will out of harmony with love and truth, God's Love and Truth, for such a long period of time while thinking it's in harmony with their own desires. And then eventually they get to have a disease and the disease is telling them you've been sowing out of harmony with God's Love and Truth for such a long time that this is the eventual result. [00:49:58.25]

Mary: What about though people who live to this ripe old age, sometimes they're in serious amounts of using their will in disharmony with love. Sometimes the biggest dictator, like the biggest person who's using their will most out of harmony with love is ruling the country and causing people to suffer.

Well the first point is that such a thing as old age would never occur if we used our will in harmony with God's Love and God's Truth.

Mary: So if I'm ninety and I look ninety?

So if you're ninety and you look ninety well there's an example of how you've used it out of harmony. If you're ninety and you look twenty or twenty five or thirty, without plastic surgery of course, there's a good example of you using it in harmony. So that's the first thing.

Secondly remember I said that you don't always feel the pain because of your addictions? So many people use their will in harmony with their addictions therefore they feel no pain while they're doing that but their soul is degrading in its condition, and as soon as they pass they will see the degradation because it will be written all over their body and also inside of them emotionally. What we need to do is become sensitive to seeing this degradation before we pass so that we can begin fixing it up. [00:51:16.04]

Mary: And it seems to me that, in the beginning you mentioned two of the gifts that God gives automatically to everyone - one is free will and the other is the gift of self-awareness. So it seems as if God's wanting to build this self-awareness in us, so the only way we're going to know if we're using our will in disharmony or in harmony with love is if we want to become aware of ourselves.

Exactly.

Mary: When we get to the spirit world we can't avoid it any longer but it feels to me like God's big hope is that we start to discover it here.

Yeah if I can just sort of refine that a bit. Many people do get to the spirit world and still don't see for a period of time but sooner or later they will, they'll be forced into seeing. Due the degradation of their own condition, the pain and suffering that they're experiencing will get so large that eventually it's like somebody hitting you in the face constantly and eventually you go, "Wow somebody's hitting me in the face all the time," and it's what I've created.

So eventually what happens is we get to the point where we do see the degradation of our own soul. The key is to be as sensitive to that as possible. So rather than waiting until we're in the spirit world to have it shown or demonstrated to us over a period of years, we're far better off trying to look at the degradation of our own soul as soon as we possibly can because then we can see the effects of how we have used our will. And in fact all degradation of the soul is all about how we've used our will, if you think about it. Every single person in the hells is in the hells for one reason, and that is they have used their will out of harmony with love and truth, that's the only reason why they're there. [00:53:02.09]

Mary: Which is why it seems so crucial that we understand these lessons because that's our gift; that's the ticket to joy or our consignment to a low condition.

Exactly, and it's very important to understand too for these people that many of them pass into the spirit world with the same levels of denial that their condition is demonstrating that they are out of harmony. They've used their will out of harmony with love and truth and yet they're still going, "I haven't done that. When did I do that? I can't remember doing that..."

Mary: But that's what everyone did.

That's what everybody does and they have all of these justifications and this is what we're often like on the Earth as well. We have all of these justifications about how we use our will and we believe we're right but our externals and also our soul in particular is demonstrating the truth of the condition.

Mary: Yes, and so it seems to me that self-awareness is this gift that God's giving us but it can be in increments. When we arrive, we're not even aware of ourselves as an individual...

Exactly.

Mary: ... and yet we have the capacity to come to be completely aware of ourselves to the point where we know moment by moment if we're using our will in harmony or disharmony with love, which is sort of what we attain right before at-onement with God. But many of us just go, "Yeah I'm an individual and I've got free will," and that's the end for a long time even after we pass from what you're saying, we can still make that choice to not be more aware.

That's right. "I'm an individual and I've got my free will and I can use my will how I want!" And in the hells of the spirit world they'll still say, "I can use my free will any way I want," and yet their pain of their condition is so great and intense. But they're still doing it, they're using their will in that same direction. [00:54:45.12]

Mary: There's got to be a lot of pain hey too?

And there's got to be a change of heart for anything to change and a desire to change how you exercise your will and a desire to know when your will is exercised out of harmony with love and truth.

Mary: Yeah, okay great.

6.2.2. Any action taken out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will harm others and the environment

Mary: So we talked about the three ways that when we use our will in disharmony with love and truth so it's going to affect us, the people around us and the environment automatically.

So for example even in the environment things will start happening around us that demonstrate how we're using our will. So generally mankind is using its will to eat meat and all these other things, and there's a lot of anger towards animals in the way that we do that. There are a lot of demands that we have for food as a world of humanity and the animals are demonstrating this condition. So the animals are eating one another is a demonstration of the condition.

You see what man does is he looks at everything in isolation and he goes, "Okay what I'm going to do is I will examine nature and whatever nature does I'll allow myself to do." So, "Ah, the lion just ate the zebra. Okay so I'm allowed to go and kill some food and eat it too." So you've just reduced yourself to an animal. And when most people think of that they go, "Okay yes I have just reduced myself to the way the animal is feeling." But on top of that the animal is actually reflecting to me and to humanity generally its condition. The animals are eating animals because of our condition. If we changed our condition there would be a different reflection. [00:56:36.16]

Mary: Because it is only us who has the gift of free will, isn't it?

Exactly.

Mary: The lion doesn't.

The lion doesn't have free will, he is just responding to the free will of humankind, that's all its doing. So that's how we can change the environment by exercising our free will in harmony with love and truth our environment will automatically change.

Mary: Yes so it sounds like we have to want to be aware of how our will is being used and stop making excuses. A big excuse I've heard often is about parenting. "I've done the best I can." Now that actually helps us excuse looking at how we've used our will doesn't it? It just means we can just sort of go, "Well I did my best," and maybe I did do my best with what I had at the time but it also limits us to that level of awareness doesn't it?

Yes you might have done your best with your damaged condition at the time but that doesn't justify your damaged condition.

Mary: And this is where we come to a lot on the planet, where we justify. Even sometimes people have compassion but then they don't take that a step further and say, "I have compassion for you and your gambling condition but let's look at how you can use your will in harmony with love."

Exactly. So if everyone can understand that if I use my gift of free will in any direction in any manner out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth, it will always be with negative consequence upon my soul, the soul of others and the environment. So it's important to understand that. [00:58:17.11]

6.3. Using free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth cannot involve any act of violence

And then there's the third aspect, which is really important.

Mary: The third point or this one? Yeah this is really important because I think this is where a lot of people's questions come up immediately. So, using one's free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth cannot involve any act of violence towards oneself, any other person nor the environment. So that sounds simple. So that sounds pretty logical until we get onto defining what is an act of violence.

Yes it's very important to define that so we'll proceed and define that. But can we first just cover this aspect of "towards myself". Many people have this belief system that as long as I don't do it to others I'm okay, my soul's okay and that's not true. The reality is if you're doing it to yourself, from God's perspective it's the same negative consequence as if you were doing it to others.

Mary: So for example, and this is an extreme example but this is what comes to mind, if I take my own life that in God's eyes is the same as taking your life.

Exactly.

Mary: Is that right?

Exactly.

Mary: It's pretty massive.

It's pretty intense, you see most people go, "Hang on a sec, rewind that. You're saying if I take my life that's just as bad as if I take your life?" Yes, from God's perspective it's the taking of a life. God gave you the gift of life and you just reneged on the gift of life with yourself, or somebody else, it doesn't matter who; you've just attacked somebody's ability to use their gift of life. In the case of yourself it's yourself, in the case of being a murderer of somebody else you've done it to somebody else. [01:00:45.14]

So this is where it's important to understand that these laws or principles of love that are involved in the use of our will affect ourselves as much as they affect another person.

7. Definition of an act of violence

Mary: Yes okay and this act of violence is very crucial for us to understand if we want to use our will in harmony with love because if we have any violence within us, that's going to affect how we use our will.

Yes so it becomes crucial then how we define this term "act of violence", doesn't it? That's a crucial part of understanding free will and how we use our free will and almost everybody on the planet is going to be very confronted about how I define an "act of violence".

Mary: Well let's do it then. Alright so let me just read the overall overreaching definition but there are a lot of points that we talked about underneath. So an act of violence is defined by God as any thought, word or action based upon or seeded by an emotion coming from the soul which is external in its expression and directed towards another entity that is living that is driven by emotions that are not in harmony with Divine Love that result in the living entity being attacked. So it's something within me, a thought, a word or even an action...

And notice it's even a thought or a word or an action.

Mary: But I notice that you've written here that it is external in its expression so it's coming towards you.

It's aimed towards something.

Mary: Something being a person...

Something that's alive.

Mary: ... even if it's towards me or something that's alive.

Yeah so it could be aimed towards an insect or it could be aimed towards a person, something that's alive. [01:02:54.10]

Mary: And so we're saying that under those circumstances our will is automatically in disharmony with Divine Truth and Divine Love?

We're saying we need some clarification on the issue of what those acts of violence are, certainly, but if we understand the act of violence is defined that way, its defined as a thought, word or action that is out of harmony with Divine Truth and Divine Love and it's seeded by our emotions and it results in the attack of another living organism, or living being if you like.

7.1. Violence includes thoughts, words and actions based on emotions that cause attack

Mary: Alright so let's talk about what violence really is. So we've already said thought, word or action based upon emotions, but what kind of emotions. So here we've written emotions that cause attack.

Yes this is where it gets very refined from God's perspective. An emotion of terror is actually a violent emotion. An emotion of fear is a violent emotion; an emotion of anger is also a violent emotion. But notice fear and terror, which are emotions where we often think, "Ah we can have those; we're allowed to have those towards other". We often believe we can. But we're not understanding that they actually are felt by other people as attack and often they're felt like they've been forced into doing something, like alleviate the fear for example. [01:05:06.26]

So you see this happening in many relationships where the wife might be afraid of something and she's always making the husband pander to the fear. So that's actually attacking him, that's an act of violence actually under God's definition towards the husband.

7.1.1. An example of a fear of snakes

Mary: And I also think about with snakes because I have this big fear of snakes and just the other day we had a snake in our eco tent which was exciting.

We got out of bed and it was right on the floor.

Mary: So God brought me an opportunity. I could literally feel and I said to you I need to own this fear because I can feel it's going to distress him, he's going to feel that like violence towards him.

It is an act of violence towards him.

Mary: Yes. So can you help me then to differentiate? When I sit and own the fear, am I still in an act of violence?

Well that's where I said in our original definition that it was the externalisation of the emotion. So when I project my fear if you like, I don't like using the word so much, but if I feel my fear towards the snake that is very, very different than just sitting and actually shaking and feeling my fear, now I'm actually feeling the fear. The fear is passing through me and because it's now passing through me, it can't pass through something external to me. When I originally hold onto my fear and stop myself from feeling it, now it's coming out of me and it will pass through other people. That's the externalisation.

Mary: And that's the violence.

That's the violence.

Mary: The way that I feel about that, because I know this word projection is very bandied around, so I've been feeling about what that actually means to me. What it feels like to me is when I'm afraid, so I see the snake and I get afraid, it feels like when I'm say projecting or when I have an external expression of that fear, it's like I feel the fear but inherent in that feeling is it's your problem, it's your fault. [01:07:15.19]

The snake's to blame for my fear - that's the feeling.

Mary: Yes that's the feeling I have, it's about you.

And as soon as you feel somebody else is to blame for your fear or something else is to blame for your fear, you are externalising that fear towards that person.

Mary: Whereas when I sat down I could feel that I have fear right now in this situation and it felt like it was no longer the snake's problem and I actually began to feel quite loving towards the snake.

Exactly. So when a person has a feeling or a sensation of fear in them, they can blame the object, so in this case a snake.

Blaming a snake for one's own fear is an act of violence towards the snake

Mary: And so I can still say I'm feeling fear but the feeling coming out of me is really, "This is your fault, snake, this is your fault," and it's actually a violent feeling.

You're not feeling your own fear in that place; you're externally projecting that fear towards the other living organism that you feel is the cause of it. So this is where you feel the cause of your fear is the snake, that's not true. It's an untruth.

Mary: Exactly, it was interesting as I sat down to really feel the fear I got to the cause that had nothing to do with snakes.

Exactly and in fact in many cases the causes have something to do with the parents and how they view snakes and so forth, it's got nothing to do with you a lot of the times.

So when I feel the fear, when I actually feel it and let it pass through me, in this case the emotion of fear which when I was externalising it, it was an act of violence. When I'm now having it now pass through me, now I'm actually owning the actual emotion and the irony is in that moment I actually discover what it's really about and most of the time find it's got nothing to do with what I'm afraid of. [01:09:13.20]

Allowing fear to pass through ourselves is not violent towards others, and enables us to discover the cause of the fear

Mary: Right I just thought it was an important distinction to make because often I feel it's tempting to say, "I'm feeling my fear," when we're actually in this violent blaming state about the issues.

Exactly. Most people I observe who come up to another person and say, "I'm afraid of you," for example, are not in the feeling. They are externalising right in that moment. Why do you even need to go up to somebody and say I'm afraid of you? Why do you even need to do that? Because you want them to know. Why would you want them to know? Because you want them to change their behaviour, you want something from them; you are involved right in that moment in an act of violence towards the person. [01:09:54.02]

Mary: Yes, okay so that covers our first point.

7.1.2. Types of emotions that can cause attack

Mary: We've said violence includes thoughts, words and actions based on emotions that cause attack. For example, thoughts, words or actions based on emotions of terror, fear, rage, anger, resentment, ridicule, condescension.

Are all acts of violence. That's why the person on the receiving end of those kinds of emotions always feels taken from or hurt in some way.

Mary: Attacked.

If you're sitting in an environment of terror and you've yet to become at one with God, so the only time that doesn't work is when you're at-one with God, when you don't feel it anymore, but it's still an act of violence towards the person. But when you're sitting there in amongst a heap of terror you start going, "Oh, what do I do now? Do I make them feel better or...?" You feel this real drawing away from you, and it feels like an attack.

The same applies to condescension or judgement, those two emotions also are emotions associated with an act of violence. If somebody had a hundred people all projecting "you're an idiot", and all saying you're an idiot and all feeling you're an idiot to the person, it feels pretty bad coming at the person. And unless they've got a very good sense of themselves, they're at-one with God, they're going to respond to that emotion, and it's an act of violence whether they respond to the violence or not actually.

7.2. Violence includes acts of physical violence, acts of spiritual or psychic violence, and intentions of violence that are not acted upon

Mary: Okay. So now let's get onto more acts. So we've written here violence includes acts of physical violence, acts of spiritual or psychic violence, which includes the projection of rage, and intentions of violence that are not acted upon.

Yes.

Mary: So that's a desire for the person to be harmed without acting upon the desire.

It's like, "I don't like Karen so I'm going to try and get Igor to hurt Karen and then I'll be innocent." Am I innocent? No and me even just having the thought that I want Karen's life to be damaged is not innocent and I am now using my will as a thought to attack somebody. It's an attack of violence towards Karen, even if she's unaware of it; she might be unaware of my thought. [01:12:20.01]

Mary: Yes and this is where God really sees our soul, doesn't He? Lots of us have a lot going on inside of us that we never act upon but God's drawing us to look at those things - even those things.

You see this a lot with broken relationships where one or the other party is going, "I hope something bad happens to them today." There's this real desire for bad things to happen to other people so that they learn the lesson of how much they have hurt me, and off we go, and we're not understanding that we at that moment are using our will as an act of violence and our soul condition is degrading as we do it.

7.2.1. Consequences of acting on versus thinking about acts of violence

Mary: Okay that's important. Alright so let's then talk about the difference though between if I do act and I think about acting.

Of course there are degrees now, aren't there?

Mary: And that's where God sees everything and His Laws act correspondingly.

Yeah His Laws act correspondingly, and as is often said His Laws are like a very, very fine tooth grinding machine that grinds everything into powder, and that's how it really is. So if I have the thought that I don't act upon it, then that has a different consequence on my soul than if I have the thought and I act upon it. Or if I have the thought and I don't act upon it but I encourage somebody else to act upon it that has a different consequence to my soul. So it just depends on the underlying motivation and the extremeness of the motivation if you like... I don't know if that's a word. (Laughs)

Mary: The degree perhaps.

The degree or the power of the motivation and what it causes me to do and how it involves other people as well, that is all a part of how much degradation occurs to my own soul.

Mary: Which makes logical sense.

Yes so let's say you and I had a relationship and we broke up, and instead of just accepting the breakup inside of myself and going through the emotion of grief or whatever else I felt about the breakup, if I then chose to attack you and tell all of my friends how bad you were, I am now severely degrading my soul while I'm doing this, in comparison to if I just felt grief and allowed myself to work my way through my grief about the breakup of the relationship. The reason why is because I am attempting to change all of these people's opinion about you and whether I am right or wrong is immaterial at that point, you are involved in quite an extreme act of violence because not only are you acting violently towards the other person but you are now trying to involve other people in your act of violence. [01:15:04.05]

Mary: You're trying to incite their will also.

Exactly and a person who tries to incite the will of others towards violence is actually in a very dark condition and becoming darker by the minute.

7.3. There are varying consequences to the soul perpetrating violence towards different levels of living beings

Mary: Okay what about different levels of living things. So if I kick you how is that different to kicking a tree?

Well the tree is still living of course and potentially if it's a little tree it might have some damage or it might even die from your kick, and if your kick is motivated by an unloving emotion then obviously it's an act of violence towards the tree. However, the tree does not have a soul; the tree is a living organism and does not have a soul just like most animals are living organisms, and a tree doesn't even have a spirit body. The tree does have an energy form around it but not a spirit form whereas some animals have a spirit body. So you could say there are levels of sentient existence or levels of types of creation and the higher the level of creation, the act of violence perpetrated draws a higher consequence. So if I engaged in an act of violence towards a tree or towards a chicken, they are two separate levels in the scale of life and if I'm involved in an act of violence towards the chicken that is going to be a much higher consequence than it is towards the tree.

And then if I was involved in an act of violence, say I was a white person and I justified attacking black people because I'm a racist, then that would involve an extreme amount of level of consequence because the black person like myself is a child of God, and so therefore I'm involved now in the most extreme form of violence that I could perpetrate.

Mary: And so when we talk about consequences, my feeling is very strongly that God creates consequences through His Laws so that I always learn more about love.

Exactly.

Mary: So it seems like in that example He's wanting me to honour His highest creation that is human beings the most. He's showing me that another soul deserves the most amount of regard from me.

Yeah and it makes sense logically because obviously if God had spent the most energy, the most time and the most power in creation in creating the biggest and best possible creation that He or She could create, then obviously it would make sense that She wants us to honour that creation as much as She does. [01:17:39.02]

Mary: And more than that, I feel, because as Her highest creations we have free will and our will affects all of the other, if we call them, lower creations. Then if I dishonour or harm someone else with free will that's going to impact upon them for maybe a really long time and then that impact is going to impact everything else.

Everything else, yeah. So this idea of sort of a hierarchy of creation that God has created is important to grasp when you exercise your free will; it's different for lower to higher. Remember I'm not saying here that you can't actually cut down a tree because the act of violence is about whether you're in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth while you do this, and this is all about feelings and not your thoughts. Later on when we come to discussing some of the limitations that can be placed on the free will of others, which legitimately God also does, we will start to see those principles involved as well.

Mary: So it's possible that I can cut down a tree not motivated by fear, anger, lack, all of those things.

Any of those emotions. But based on, I want to plant a different tree in its place that I feel will bring more benefit to the environment and so forth.

Mary: So God sees that.

Exactly, that's the underlying intention. So you see we can't just say right across the board that a certain act is the same because it all gets back to the loving intention or the lack of love involved in the action, and this is where most people start to go into confusion where they go, "How do I know what's loving? How do I know when it's not?" And this is what I'm saying; it has to be in your soul then you'll instantly be able to know. [01:19:36.28]

Mary: Yeah, okay.

7.4. There are varying consequences to the soul perpetrating violence depending upon whether the action is taken, felt, or agreed with

We're down to point four in the seminar outline I think.

Mary: Yeah, but I think we've even covered that. We talked about there's a different consequence for physically attacking another person compared to hoping that someone else physically attacks that person or asking a spirit to physically attack the person or thinking that attack upon the person is justified, even the thought that it's justified we're saying now is an act of violence.

Exactly, if I think that, say somebody else's action towards somebody else was justified because that person had harmed me at some point in the past, then I am now involved in the act of violence perpetrated towards the person, just my own justification is doing that.

This happens a lot by countries, like one country decides to go to war with another one and the countries around about are all happy with that because they've all been harmed by the same country at some point in the past. Well that country bears the responsibility of the action but all the other countries through their justification are also involved in the action and therefore all perpetrate violence. [01:20:38.15]

Mary: And also it makes me think of where there are big legal battles that are very publicised in the media and, whether they've committed the crime or not, there's a large public feeling that this person should be punished or we're feeling justified with whatever they get, and therefore we're all involved in a huge act of violence towards that person.

For example someone like Alan Bond was taken to court for tax evasion and everybody going, "Yeah it's about time someone like that...." well you're all involved in the act of violence, yes. The point wasn't to correct him, it wasn't to give him any love, it wasn't to help him correct his soul condition, it was all based on desire to punish him and desire to make his life worse so that he could pay for what he'd done, and that is an act of violence.

7.5. If we are in fear of violence from others, we are perpetrating violence towards those others, and there is a consequence for such a use of my free will

Mary: Okay the next point is very interesting I feel and so I'll just read it. If I am in fear of violence from another person or group of persons, I am under this definition actually perpetrating violence towards those persons and there is a consequence for such use of my free will.

Yes.

Mary: So that's a big statement. That's saying that if Alan Bond was afraid right then, he's involved in an act of violence.

Yes, exactly. So this is where you see God doesn't let anybody get off the hook with the way love is expressed, and so we need to understand that. If I am actually in a fear-based place towards other people who are perpetrating violence towards me, I am actually perpetrating violence towards them at the same time. [01:22:21.25

Mary: And that makes rational sense because if I've been harmed by a man in my past and then I wander around just projecting fear at men everywhere, then I am actually...

Many of whom don't, if we could use the word "deserve" your fear at all because they weren't involved in the action.

Mary: Yes, then I am actually being violent towards them.

Exactly.

Mary: Now of course with everything that God does, there's different degrees, isn't there? So if somebody has actually harmed me...

And the same person is now going to harm you again...

Mary:... and I'm afraid...

... and you're afraid, well that's a different degree than if somebody else had harmed you and then a different person is coming towards you, that's a different degree. So yes, again, it's based on degrees.

Mary: Okay, yeah and here you've written, "If my fear is imagined, then the damage upon the soul is greater than if the fear is real."

Yes. So if I imagine that somebody is going to harm me when there's not a harmful bone in their entire body, I am projecting at them this terrible amount of fear when there's nothing inside them that would ever even, if we could use the term "deserve"... it's not an appropriate term, but we'd never even attract that particular fear under normal circumstances, then basically I am involved in an act of violence towards that person. And that's greater than if the person had harmed me because I'm imagining something that's not even real, and yet I'm still projecting the fear. [01:23:54.27]

Mary: Yeah and it's a greater degree of arrogance or lack of humility, isn't it?

Yes. Whole wars have been taken in the past on that emotion. In the past there have been many millions of people killed just because one country was afraid another country might act in a certain way. And pre-emptive violence, which is really this emotion, is the underlying cause of pre-emptive violence where you're afraid that somebody might attack you even if they have no intention to. You're afraid they will attack you, and you're actually therefore attacking them first by even projecting the fear. It is an attack on them.

Understand that that fear is what creates the actual action of war towards that person or anger or rage towards that person because the person may not even be thinking of exactly what you're thinking that they will do. Or in a nation's case, a whole nation can be thinking their next door neighbouring nation is going to do something that it has no intention of doing. And of course the projection of the fear is also going to heighten the fear of the other nation because it is an attack upon them and so they may even consider doing what you were projecting, and that's the sad thing.

Mary: We use fear to justify a lot of things, don't we? We don't really follow the news very much but recently I believe there's been a thing in Iran about them launching a rocket that could be nuclear...

It was North Korea I think.

Mary: North Korea was it, yeah, and I was just thinking about the projection of fear upon that nation, it maybe even that they weren't doing anything to do with nuclear weaponry.

And even if they were, now there is a higher likelihood they will because of the projection of fear, which was an act of violence towards them. So now they're going to respond with violence most probably because they're not developed enough to respond any other way.

7.5.1. If another person created the fear within myself, then they also bear some consequence for my violence

Mary: Yeah, fascinating. Okay, just as a final point on that one point, we have also written, "If another person created the fear within myself, such as a parent, then they also bear some consequence for my violence."

Exactly. So let's say a parent during my childhood beat me a lot, or whatever else, and caused me to have a lot of fear inside of my soul and then out of that fear I acted in fear towards another person. While I am responsible for that choice to act in fear towards the other person, because I've not released this emotion inside of my soul that would cause me to become more loving if I had released it, the parent who also assisted in the creation of that emotion bears the responsibility for that emotion being in my soul and also for the affects of how I act upon that emotion.

Mary: Yes, so a new penalty rests then on my soul as well as immediately upon the soul of my parent...

Exactly.

Mary: ...which means a lot when we think about it - how I use my will now affects a lot of people and then whatever they do as a result of that affect that I've had on them forever and ever and ever will always come back to me, there'll always be a consequence.

To give you some examples that are practical in that regard, like if a woman has been raped it is highly likely she will act in a certain way towards her husband, towards other men...

Mary: To her son.

... her sons that will be different than if she had not been raped. Therefore the person who is the rapist not only bears the consequence for the actual rape but bears the consequence to a degree for all of her subsequent reactions as a result of the rape. And this is where penalties add up pretty fast when we start multiplying penalties like that. [01:27:26.28]

So if I damage a hundred people and those people then act in a certain way that damage another hundred people, we've now got ten thousand people being damaged and it's all because of something I did. And this is where if you're a teacher, if you think about it, it is a very, very dangerous job in a lot of ways to your soul.

Mary: I agree that's why I sometimes get pretty sweaty at book group. (Laughs)

Because if you're not teaching the truth, you can teach an untruth to a group of people, they then act upon that untruth and teach other people the same untruth and before you know it you've got thousands of people. And this is how religions have come about where one person taught untruth to a group of people, they all accepted that untruth and then they taught the untruth to another group of people and so forth. Before you know it one person has affected a million, a billion, and half the people on the planet through a certain teaching. And if that group of people then act in a certain act of violence towards others then the person who's generated that flow bears some responsibility for those actions.

Mary: And I guess though the key thing is knowing that truth. Say I'm the woman who's been raped, yes I can know the truth that the rapist will always bear some consequence, but it's not to decry my own use of my own will now and just say to my husband well it's because of the rapist and forget that I can actually use my will in a loving way.

Exactly, and if you can use your will to hold onto the emotion, to resist it, not to grieve, not to deal with the terrible event, then what happens is you are now using your will as well to harm other people in that moment. So the key is even if we get harmed personally in any way, we need to use our will so that we do not harm others. [01:29:13.20]

7.6. If we are afraid, and we avoid acting in harmony with Divine Love and Truth as a result of our fear, we are automatically perpetrating an act of violence

Mary: Yes. Alright, a couple more points on this one. We said here if I'm afraid and I avoid action, that is I avoid acting in harmony with Divine Love and Truth as a result of my fear, I am automatically perpetrating an act of violence.

So in other words if I should do something that's good and right in a certain situation and because of my fear I choose not to, I am actually perpetrating violence towards the people that I've directed that action towards.

Mary: That's a pretty big statement as well. Could you give us a concrete example of that?

Well something that happens quite frequently is that we hear that a lot of times in conversations with people that we know things about us that they personally know are not true but they don't correct them because of their own fear. They do not realise that they are perpetrating an act of violence towards ourselves and also towards the persons they are not correcting.

Mary: I didn't know you were going to go with that example because that's quite interesting (Laughter) because what if I heard an untruth about AJ and I felt angry about the untruth?

Now if I acted in my anger I would also be in an act of violence.

Mary: So this is where we have to be very self-aware, isn't it?

Exactly.

Mary: What's motivating my actions, is it fear, it is anger or is it love?

Is it love? If love motivates my actions obviously I'm pretty safe and that's why all the way through all presentations we've ever done, if you're in a state of love, if you understand, if you're in a state of perfect love, you actually have the most freedom because everything you do is harmonious with the love that you feel and therefore everything you do has no penalty upon your soul. In fact it has this growth effect on your soul...

Mary: Yeah that's beautiful.

Your soul grows and changes and becomes even more perfect than it was before.

Mary: Okay so let's go back to this example though - if I have a fear and I choose not to act because just recalling what you said earlier - often enacting in harmony using our will in harmony with Divine Truth and Divine Love causes the error to be triggered with us, doesn't it? So when we are in fear and we choose not to act, we avoid the opportunity for that thing to be triggered.

Yes it's a selfish action, it's a selfish action taken because I do not want to address my own fear and because it's a selfish action, a selfish motivation based on fear, it is not going to have a positive consequence on my soul. It's going to always be negative. And unfortunately it will also be negative on others as well because obviously every time I act in harmony with my fear, I'm not allowing or giving others the opportunity to change with the expression of their will either. So I am actually supporting the fear on the planet, which is an act of violence towards the planet and everybody on it. [01:32:14.02]

Mary: Yes, good point.

7.7. Any act of violence taken towards oneself bears the same soul consequences as the identical kind of act of violence towards another

Mary: Okay, the next one was any act of violence taken towards oneself bears the same soul consequences as the identical kind of act of violence towards another. So we talked about this earlier, didn't we?

Yes. So you can actually perpetrate acts of violence towards yourself and they will bear similar consequence to the acts of violence you perpetrate towards others, with the exception of one thing. The act of violence that you perpetrate towards another involves the free will of two people, yourself and the other, whereas the act of violence you perpetrate towards yourself involves yourself, so one person. So therefore it has a bit of a lesser consequence than the other, where we do it towards other people, but it still is of a similar nature in terms of intensity.

Mary: Because would you say that every time we act in violence and we now have a pretty good understanding of what that means, we're actually trying to impact upon another person's free will...

Definitely.

Mary: We're trying to incite them to use their will...

In a direction, and usually a very selfish direction.

Mary: Yeah, it's usually in disharmony with love.

7.8. An example of a mother's actions towards a child who takes drugs

Mary: But if I'm a mother and I'm very afraid of my child addicted to drugs, taking drugs, and I think this is an interesting scenario, how do I use my will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth in that situation? Because if I'm motivated by fear of what's going to happen to them...

Then I'm already out of harmony with love and therefore my will, if I act upon that fear that I have, I am automatically degrading my own condition.

Mary: And also my child will feel that as a horrible sensation of 'take away my fear'

Exactly. So let's say I decided to commit my child into some kind of reform or rehab without my child's will being engaged and I'm doing it out of fear, then I am automatically damaging my own soul even more than it's already damaged, and the soul of my child.

Mary: So then that's acting in my fear as a mother, but what would it look like if I act in harmony with Divine Truth and Divine Love in order to trigger my fear as a mother and assist my child? Can I do that?

Of course you can and that brings us to a whole series of points that we want to discuss in the future of this discussion, which are how can we limit the free will of another while still being in complete harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth? Because you actually can stay in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth yourself while you limit the will of another person. God does that all the time actually. [01:34:50.11]

Mary: Yeah so that's a good segue that I...

Yes I think the last point too, though, is important before we get onto those.

7.9. Threatening physical violence is also considered as violence

Mary: Yes so that is that threatened physical violence is also considered as violence. We covered that a little bit earlier, but the last point we had is that if I perform an act of violence there will be a painful consequence upon my soul and upon any living entity that receives the action with the exception of a person who is at-one with God.

7.10. A person at-one with God cannot be damaged by acts of violence

Yes so once you become at-one with God you're obviously at-one with all of God's emotions and all of God's feelings, and as a result of that somebody else can perpetrate an act of violence towards you and you can automatically forgive them as they're doing it. And since you're automatically forgiving them as they're doing it, and remember forgiveness is not an intellectual thought, it's an emotional process of loving the individual during their act of violence perpetrated towards yourself, as that happens, no emotion enters you so therefore no damage can actually occur. So a person who becomes at-one with God is not in danger of being damaged by any other person who perpetrates an act of violence.

Mary: However the person who perpetrates the act will still have the consequence upon their soul?

Yes, and also the person who has the act perpetrated upon them may die but they're still not in danger. So in my case in the first century, for example, I was tortured to death and during that process I did not have any damage to my soul and I did not feel any unloving emotions towards anybody else during the process. So when you become at-one with God that's the state you can be in. You may still die but to you death isn't a change anyway, so that doesn't even become a consideration either.

7.11. Summary about acts of violence

So basically what we've been talking about is this section of defining an act of violence and the definition of an act of violence is much tighter than the definition of an act of violence in any law on the planet today. The definition of an act of violence involves our thoughts, our words, our actions and our emotions.

Mary: Well they're all driven by our emotions.

They're all driven by our emotions so of course they involve our emotions and they're also about our intentions as well. We need to understand that our intentions and motivations are called into question when it comes to acts of violence.

So if many in the audience thought about that now, you would realise that during the course of a day you're perpetrating acts of violence sometimes hundreds of times, and quite frequently hundreds of times in the course of one day. So it's a bit hard for a soul to grow while its perpetrating acts of violence and this is where we need to come to understand that's it's imperative that we release the underlying emotions that cause us to perpetrate violence towards another because if we don't do that, we will sometimes grow in love and then perpetrate all these acts of violence during the course of a day, which degrades our condition. And before we know it at the end of the day we're often in the same or worse condition. We've received some love but we've also perpetrated violence and so at the end of the day we're in the same condition or worse condition than when we started, and this is not going to be helpful for our spiritual progress.

We need to stop perpetrating acts of violence and use our will to do this. So our free will that we've been given as a gift from our Father, can be utilised to stop perpetrating acts of violence. And of course we start with the physical ones we do, but we need to end up with the thoughts even. We need to examine even the thoughts that are violent and look at the underlying emotions that cause them. And once we release those underlying emotions, we won't even think of a bad thing towards another, we won't even think condescendingly or think negatively towards them, it will just be automatic that we can love everybody and therefore not produce acts of violence in our day-to-day life.

Now when we become at-one with God we're obviously no longer producing acts of violence ever again and it's important that between now and then we understand we are sometimes doing it. But if we're observant, self-aware, which is another gift that God has given us, to be self aware, then we'll want to know when we have and we'll want to do something about it and remove from our hearts the things that cause us to do those things. [01:39:24.04]

Mary: Yeah and we're talking about violence as something that comes out of us externally, so it seems to me in this process if we deal with a couple of key issues, key emotional beliefs within us, which are things like my anger is justified, I'm entitled to avoid my fear, people should make me feel safe, and feelings of injustice...

The emotions of demand, expectation, judgement those kinds of demands, if we can address those kinds of emotions, then we're going to remove a lot of our acts of violence out of our life automatically.

Mary: Even if I still have fear and grief and all kinds of other emotions within me because it's not going to come out of me.

Exactly, so you can actually be in fear without perpetrating any violence. You can actually be in anger even without perpetrating any violence. But if you don't own it, it's very, very hard to do it after that.

Mary: How's everyone going out there? The new format, it's alright? Yeah?

How's the soul feeling? Bit challenged? Challenged. The key with any of these discussions is understand it's sort of pointless to be attacking of yourself once you've realised these particular things, because just the attack of yourself is another example of using your free will (Laughs) in a negative direction and therefore in a damaging direction. So the key is to be open to the truth even though the truth is very challenging. [01:41:30.14]

So whenever in the spirit world we discuss free will, generally the truth of free will is very challenging to people in the spirit world as well as on Earth and we have so many justifications associated with how we utilise our free will. So what we need to do is really understand that it's very important, in fact it's imperative to your life and your growth, your long term growth, to understand how to use your will. It's such an important part of your life. So the key is to be open enough to absorb the information without going into this highly self-critical state because the self critical state in itself is also an attack of yourself, which is is an act of violence to yourself and out of harmony with the correct use, if you like, of your own free will.

Mary: And if you think about it, if you can be a good soul student to this material, it's going to stay with you forever and it's going to help you so much forever. So give yourself the chance to absorb it well. Allow the emotions of fear and everything to get triggered but the more you do that...

There are people in the sixth sphere of the spirit world who've been there for literally tens of thousands of years who still don't know this material. This material by the way has never been presented on Earth before in the format we're doing today. It has never been presented on Earth. So you're learning things that have never been presented on Earth, and of course it's going to be challenging to learn those particular things.

8. Limiting the free will of others

Mary: Alright, so let's start our first point on limiting the free will of others. So we said it may be in harmony with God's Love and Truth to take actions that limit the expression of free will in other individuals or groups of people. That's a big one.

Yes, that's a pretty big one for most people. You see we even see this happening a lot even with parents with children, they go, "Hasn't my child got free will?" Yes, the child does have free will and why aren't you limiting it? "Because I thought I had to just let my child do exactly what it wanted to do whenever it wanted." No, does God do that with you?

Mary: Some people think yes.

Some people think yes, but no God does not do that with you, ever, in fact. And so we have a responsibility, in fact, as parents to limit the free will and how our children use their free will, and more to do with teaching our children to use their free will in harmony with love and truth.

Mary: Well that's how I think about it in terms of how is God trying to teach me, then as a parent how can I teach my child? So not in a punitive way, not in a way that feeds my own addictions but in a loving way that's going to teach them about the universe through their experience of growing with me.

Yes.

8.1. It may be in harmony with God's Love and Truth to take actions that limit the expression of free will in others

So if we get back to the main point, the main point is that we are allowed to limit the free will of other people. However, there are certain requirements that we need to put into place...

Mary: ... for us to remain in harmony with God's Truth and Love.

... for us to remain in harmony with God's Truth and Love, and for our own soul not to be damaged. And in fact we can grow from the experience of limiting the free will of others if it's expressed in harmony with love and truth, which is a very hard concept for most people to get around when they first hear it.

8.1.1. God limits free will by establishing the spheres of the spirit world

Mary: Okay well let's just talk about some of the minor points about how does God do this with us, how does God limit free will?

Well firstly if you think about the spheres of the spirit world, they are limitations on the expression of free will of people in the spirit world. So a person in a low sphere can't go to a higher sphere unless they're in a certain condition of love, where they can enter that particular sphere. So if you like, the laws that constrain that from occurring are a demonstration of God's limitation that God has placed upon the expression of free will in the spirit world. [01:45:34.09]

God doesn't do it because he's afraid of people going into anarchy. Can you imagine God up there sitting up there, "Yes, I'm terrified of Peter, Peter just terrifies me. If I let him get away with it he'll ruin the whole universe"? No God has created a universe that can't be limited in that way and can't be harmed in fact because the Laws of God mean there is no anarchy. There might be the illusion of anarchy at times on different planets or whatever, but there is no anarchy in the entire universe.

And so God has limitations placed upon the soul. The fact that our soul degrades in its condition the instant we act out of harmony with love is a limitation placed upon our free will, where instantly our soul shrinks and therefore has less power, it has less capacity to carry out its will.

Mary: Yeah it makes perfect sense.

8.1.2. God desires that we learn to express our free will in the same manner He does

Mary: So then God desires that we learn to express our free will in the same manner He does?

Yes, always. So what God is teaching us, like all good parents, is how to become good parents ourselves, and how to become like people that She designed us to be. Free will is an essential part of that, we need to be free in the expression of our will, but it's no good thinking that this free will then means that I can damage your will by my expression of my own because now you don't have will. So as soon as I damage your will through the expression of my own will, I am demonstrating that I don't understand the principles of free will.

Mary: Yes however you might limit my free will...

To help you grow into...

Mary: ... and still be in harmony.

And still be harmony with God's Laws, yes. So I might limit your will if your free will is being used in a negative direction so that I can help you see there is a consequence to free will being used in a negative direction. That will help your soul to grow if you come to understand that consequence. [01:47:33.14]

8.1.3. God's definition of Love and Truth are used as the basis for lovingly limiting free will

Mary: So what should form the basis of my decisions to do that?

Yes obviously we're not talking about our own opinions. This is unfortunately what most people do on Earth. They might be of a religious persuasion or they might be of some political persuasion or some other kind of thing and so what they believe is that their beliefs are right and everybody else who doesn't believe that particular thing is wrong. That's not what we're talking about here. You can't limit other people's free will based on that opinion.

You can only limit other people's free will based on the opinions of God not the opinions of your own. This is where most people do the limiting of free will in a very incorrect direction because they do it based on their own opinion rather than what they know to be God's. [01:48:22.13]

Mary: And so it seems like to me if I was to now synthesise a few of the things that we've said, if I'm to limit someone else's free will, I have to do it in accordance with God's Truth and God's Love but also within myself there must exist a condition in harmony with those things.

So a condition of love has to exist within yourself. So as soon as I try to limit your free will because I'm angry with you, I'm straight away out of harmony with all of those conditions.

Mary: So even with a child, even if I'm trying to show them there's a consequence to using their will in disharmony with love...

Yeah so let's say they took my most precious vase on the top of my ceiling...

Mary: You have so many vases (Laughs).

I don't actually have any vase, that's why it's a bit of a joke, but they climb up and get my most precious vase. It might be made of diamonds even, made thousands of years ago some kind of precious thing, and they climb up the chair and they climb up the ladder and they eventually grab hold of the vase and they throw it on the mantelpiece and it breaks into a thousand pieces...

Mary: That wouldn't work if it was diamonds.

... well yeah (Laughs). So it breaks into a thousand pieces and what's our response as a parent? Now if it's anger, anything I do now to limit the child's free will is out of harmony with love.

Mary: Yes, but it I want to love my child. I've got to want to teach them something about it, so this is where I'd have to look at how much I really want to love them if I remain angry wouldn't it?

Exactly, and we'll talk more of details about that because there are a lot of principles, there are three or four principles we need to understand about this limiting free will.

8.1.4. Under some circumstances, limiting free will of another may be necessary for us to remain in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth

Mary: So the last thing we had there was \- under some circumstances action to limit free will of others may be necessary for me to take if I wish to remain in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth myself.

Yes let's choose an extreme example of this. Let's say you saw a woman being raped, you were walking down the street late at night and you saw a woman being raped in the side alley. If you decided to keep walking, you've done a very, very dangerous thing to your own soul. You need to limit the free will of the rapist somehow. If you were in a state of love you would choose to limit the free will of the rapist in that situation. [01:50:46.10]

Mary: Yes, that's clear.

8.2. What governs how we may limit the free will of others

Mary: Okay so what governs how we may limit the free will of others?

Well the beautiful thing is the laws that govern the usage of free will, which are all based on love and truth that God has are exactly the same laws that should govern our usage of the limiting of free will of others. So once we're at-one with God, we're going to limit other people's free will in exactly the same manner that God does, exactly the same manner, we won't be any different in the way God does.

8.3. We can remain in complete harmony with God's Laws while restricting the free will of others, as long as such restrictions are taken in harmony with the principles of Divine Love and Divine Truth

Mary: Okay so then we've got a big point here about that.

Okay.

Mary: So we said organisations, parents or any other person can remain in complete harmony with God's Laws while restricting the free will of others as long as such restrictions of free will are taken in harmony with the principles of Divine Love and Divine Truth and include an emotion of love coming from the organisation or individual who's attempting the restriction and does not include any act of violence.

Right, that's a pretty complicated statement and the reason why we've written down a lot of these statements, is so that people can download the PDF document and read them again and try to understand them at least intellectually. And as I say once you release all the emotions, you automatically start having an understanding of these principles. [01:52:11.11]

Mary: Well it makes sense with the extreme example you gave before, if someone's being raped by a gang of men in the alley, if I have enough connection with God or have released enough of my fear, some people don't even have to have a connection with God sometimes to naturally act in that situation.

Exactly.

Mary: However if I'm dominated by fear or false beliefs, I might not act at all.

Exactly. Yes, so if we look at this particular restriction, if you like, placed upon limiting the free will of others, firstly it has to be done in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth, so we have to know what God's ideas on the matter are and not our own personally, so that's quite complex in terms of any idea.

Secondly, if has to be in harmony with an emotion inside of us of love, and this is a very important part of this point, is that if I have any other emotion other than love while I'm trying to restrict somebody else's free will, I am automatically going to damage my soul and theirs and potentially also the environment.

Mary: Because I'm in violence then anyway.

I'm in violence then, yes. And so it also can't include an act of violence of any kind. So whenever I'm in fear, whenever I'm in anger and restricting the free will of another person, I am automatically out of harmony with love, therefore automatically my soul is degrading in its condition.

Mary: Yes, okay.

8.3.1. An action of restricting the free will of another may actually be demanded of us if we wish to remain in harmony with Divine Love or Divine Truth

Mary: So we just had a few notes underneath that. One we've covered pretty well, which is an action of restricting the free will of another may actually be demanded of us if we wished to remain in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth.

Yeah, maybe if you could say a little more about that because it's quite important to understand that there are times as parents, in particular, where parents choose to not restrict the free will of their children under certain circumstances and conditions, not realising that actually they're involved in perpetrating and allowing the child to perpetrate acts of violence towards others. And this is a very, very damaging part for the parent's soul, the parent allowing this behaviour is actually damaging their own soul and the soul of their child. And so it's very important to understand that there are some times when you have to act to limit the free will of others. In fact if you want to remain at-one with God you're going to have to act. It's not like, "Can I act? Can't I act?" There are going to be some situations where if you do not act you will not be able to maintain that condition.

8.3.2. An example of the importance of limiting the free will of children

Mary: And I guess perhaps it's easier for some of us to see in the extreme example of the rape, but when you think about the male child who is allowed to get away with many, many, many things who may actually grow into the rapist as a result of different things that they were allowed to do in their childhood, or were not corrected through the restriction of their will, then this is where a lot of us fall down isn't it?

So a lot of times rapes are directly attributable to the way the mother treated the son and so therefore when the son is raping he's damaging his own soul condition. But unfortunately the mother's soul condition is also being degraded because of her choice of what she did to the son before he became a rapist. [01:55:32.21]

Mary: Yeah and also many of us wouldn't hesitate to call the police when we see the rape, but how many of us as mothers think very closely about how am I teaching my child about the use of their will in their day-to-day life? And what is the consequence upon my soul? Or how does God see this situation?

Yes and one modern way of bringing up children is almost to give them no rules at all, and many of the people I notice who have that believe they're going to bring up lovely children. In the most part they'll bring up sociopaths because at the end of the day there's not going to be any limitation placed upon their will and therefore the child is not going to learn how to actually act in harmony with love and truth in any given circumstance or situation.

Mary: Because when there's a family situation, it's almost like we create an environment where we can act in harmony with God's Laws of Love or we can almost create a bubble where God's Laws of Love can't reach.

Exactly.

Mary: So it's only when the child reaches society that they become more in contact sometimes with the way that God is acting upon the world that we live in. So I can see from what you're saying how damaging that can be. If we're actually isolating a child from these laws then wow, yeah.

Yes it's a very, very damaging thing to do to a child. We've met many children in our travels as you know, where I've said to the parents you're creating a psychopath by what you're doing with this child, and when I say that I mean it actually. By the time these children, some of them will be twenty years of age and they'll be raping and murdering if the parents are not careful and they don't change the way they limit the free will of the child. [01:57:23.12]

Mary: But of course many times people parent like that because they've experienced a limitation on their will that was without any love and was very punitive.

Yes and then on top of that they have not grieved that emotion.

Mary: Obviously, yeah.

They haven't grieved, so what they do when they bring up their child, is they do the exact opposite of what their parent, did and unfortunately the exact opposite will create the exact opposite type of person. So let's say a person created by the first parent is severely limited in their free will, they feel quite tight and suppressed, they're going to be quite controlled, and then they decide they're going to not do the same with their own child because they haven't grieved how they've acted with what's happened to them with their parent. So what they then do is they give their child complete latitude to do anything they want, they can go smack any kid, they can go and smack even the parent, they can hit people, they can do anything, they can scream, they can go anywhere they want, they can...

Mary: Leave their toys everywhere.

... leave their toys everywhere, they can create messes that mum cleans up after and all those kinds of things. And in that process they are actually creating exactly the opposite type of the person who has no concept of how their free will can damage another person, and all they are is just selfishly engaged in meeting their own desires and demands, most of which are out of harmony with love. So how can that person not grow up to become a psychopath? [01:58:48.16]

Mary: Yeah and it's interesting because the person who hasn't grieved this very punitive restrictive childhood really a lot of their parenting is driven because they can't even bear to have an emotion of sadness reflected at them from their child, due to some restriction, because they're so afraid of that feeling within themselves.

That's correct. And perhaps tomorrow when we give examples we can come up with examples of how to parent correctly in terms of correcting a child in terms of limiting their free will in a loving manner that will have a huge benefit to the child and the spirits that are around the child and so forth.

Mary: I have a feeling that will be a hot topic for people who are parenting.

Yeah but there are other hot topics too, such as how do we limit the free will of a rapist or a murderer? How we go about addressing those particular issues? How do we limit the free will of a person who steals or lies all the time or speeds all the time? All of these things that are damaging to society in some way. How do we limit the free will of a person who gets drunk all the time and so forth? These are all questions we must resolve as a society and there are answers to every single question if we apply these principles to every single situation.

Mary: It's really learning to love as God loves isn't it?

Yes.

8.3.3. Organisations have a loving purpose when they are established for the benefit of people as long as they are in harmony with Divine Love and Truth

Mary: Okay well let's talk a bit broader then about organisations. So organisations have a loving purpose when they're established for the benefit of groups of people or individuals as long as they are in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth.

Yes. So if any organisation on Earth is established, if it's in complete harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth then that organisation is always going to benefit every single person that it comes into contact with. Now you notice is has to be in harmony with Divine Truth, not natural love and natural truth. Of course if it's in harmony with natural love and natural truth it does have some benefit, but unfortunately there are many organisations on the planet that are in harmony with natural love and natural truth, and many religions fall under this category. But they are completely in disharmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth, some of them at the same time on many, many issues, and therefore they are still causing degradation to the planet. [02:01:07.05]

Mary: And so you're saying under those circumstances it may be loving for that organisation to restrict the will of another person?

In what regard?

Mary: Well you're talking about...

If the organisation is an organisation that's in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth, then yes this organisation has a responsibility to act the way God would act. By setting itself up as an organisation it now has a responsibility to act the way God would act so that there's no damage and only growth resulting to the souls connected with the organisation.

Mary: Within the organisation yeah, and in fact given some of the things we talked about earlier, they might have to limit the free will of others if they are to remain in harmony with God's Love and Truth.

Exactly. So you can have a "Divine Love" police force, it's possible. You can have a "Divine Love" political system, that's possible. You can have a "Divine Love" economic system, you can have a "Divine Love" religious system but it has to involve these principles of free will.

Mary: And a lot of soul growth for everyone involved in it, yeah.

And of course getting the current Earth situation to a new situation is going to require change and you can't expect everything to happen perfectly, but of course you have to start somewhere. We can start with the principles.

Mary: And it's good to know the principles because that's where you know where we're headed. It's very revolutionary, isn't it? And I'm sure the more we start to grow, it's possible to have this revolution of love, isn't it? [02:02:47.22]

Yes, definitely.

8.3.4. Organisations that have an unloving purpose are automatically out of harmony with God's Love and Truth

Mary: Okay, alright. However, we've said organisations that have an unloving purpose are automatically out of harmony with God's Love and Truth.

Yes. So let's say an organisation has a desire to produce arms manufacturers well they're automatically out of harmony with God's Love and Truth and therefore what do you do with such an organisation? Well perhaps you need to turn it into an implement manufacturer, like a farm implement manufacturing place, where it has some harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth. Some organisations on the planet have been purposefully designed to be out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth, and those kinds of organisations do need to make the most changes on the planet. They are also severely responsible for the free will of others using their tools or equipment in a negative and damaging manner. So arms manufacturers for example bear a very large responsibility for wars and a very large responsibility for murdering people so therefore...

Mary: It's mind-blowing really isn't it?

Yeah, en masse, and so therefore when the arms manufacturers pass into the spirit world they are even darker than the murderers who used their arms to destroy other people.

Mary: So the owner of the factory could be a God fearing man who goes to church every Sunday.

Who goes to church every Sunday, and this is often the case in this. Well the five biggest arms manufacturers in the world are also the five that are on the Security Council in the United Nations, and every one of those arms manufacturers, they're all countries, bare a large responsibility for the way arms are used on the planet. Therefore they are worse than the person who use their arms to murder other people. And this is what I was saying earlier, when I take an action that affects thousands of people then my soul condition is going to degrade very rapidly if the action I take is out of harmony with love and truth. If I take an action that affects millions of people, then imagine how rapidly my soul condition degrades if that action is out of harmony with love and truth. It's going to degrade very rapidly.

Mary: And this is why we find many past religious leaders in the spirit world who've come to a point of actually having the courage to see what they've created, entered a process of repentance, but now their entire life's work is surrounding correcting the error that they've created on Earth.

Attempting to correct the error on Earth but they're also trying to correct the error with every single person that's been influenced by those decisions that pass into the spirit world as well. So you can imagine they often have a very large task ahead of them. They feel love about now but they feel very, very passionate about that task and they want to address that task before they do anything else that involves their will generally.

Mary: Naturally.

Naturally.

8.3.5. Being a parent is a gift from God to allow parents to become involved in teaching God's children about God's Love and Truth

Mary: Okay and the last point of this overall point, which is that organisations, parents or people can actually limit free will and be in harmony with Divine Truth and Divine Love, we've kind of covered. It is being a parent is a gift from God to allow parents to become involved in teaching God's children in their care about God's Love and Truth.

Yes and this concept of parenthood needs to change on the planet. You don't own them. You don't own your children, you are a caretaker, a custodian of the children, and only a temporary one at that, and as a result of that you bear a significant degree of responsibility for what your child is taught in terms of how it utilizes its own will. [02:06:38.28]

Mary: It's almost more than a custodian, it's a guardian, it's a teacher, it's similar to our guide and our guardian, who are with us constantly. This is almost the role we take with these little beings to help them. They've just arrived and have no concept of themselves as an individual or God or anything, and so it's a big task.

Yeah it's a big task, and it's very important to understand free will if we're going to be a parent. It's very important to understand how we limit free will if we're going to be a parent because we're going to need to do both of those things with our children if we're truly going to teach them God's Truth.

Mary: And we're going to have to want to love them so much that we're willing to be humble so that we're not acting in violence towards them all the time.

Exactly. And remember those acts of violence, I know that many of the parents who are here listening to this discussion, you think about it, as a parent many of the times in a course of a day you act in violence towards your child under the definition we've given. So we need to first realise we're doing that and once we've realised we're doing that, we can then change it. [02:07:53.18]

8.4. Ways in which to limit free will without any negative consequences

8.4.1. With the emotion of love being present within myself towards the other

Mary: Okay so let's talk about the next point, which is that I may limit the will of another without having any negative consequence upon my soul or the soul of the other as long as limiting their will is done with the emotion of love being present within myself towards the other.

So we have to have the emotion of love inside of myself towards the other. It has to be an actual feeling of love. It can't be going, "I think I love them," it has to be a feeling of love. It's not I want to love them either; it's a feeling of love.

Mary: Okay and remembering my example with the snake, and I'm not free of my fear of snakes, but all that it took was my desiring to own that and I could feel this fear is in me, I can love that snake.

Exactly and you look at them and you can see the beauty of the snake and so forth and when you get to the point where you can just go and pick him up and take him outside or whatever, then you know there's a lot more love coming from you.

Mary: Which is what you did (Laughs).

8.4.2. With the motivation of giving the gift of my love to the other

Okay, I have the motivation of giving the gift of my love to the other. So there's the motivation of love and can you just see there's love, love has to exist within you but there also has to be a motive of giving the gift. You think that it's a gift; you're giving a gift to the other, so that's the important part of this.

8.4.3. With the motivation of helping and assisting the other soul to grow

Mary: ... that I have the motivation of helping and assisting the other soul to grow.

Okay so again, it's another motive of causing growth. Most of the time when we try to limit the free will of others it's with the motive of degrading them as much as we possibly can, if we're honest. [02:09:58.20]

Mary: Or preventing them from doing something.

Or preventing them from growing, and so we need to make sure that it's a part of it.

Mary: So all this is true as long as the action of limiting their will is still in harmony with God's Truth and God's Love.

8.4.4. In harmony with God's Truth and God's Love

Okay so it still has to be harmonious with God's Truth, not our own truth, and the way God would express love.

Mary: Well let's talk about the points.

Yeah I just feel that with all of those things, you see love is not an emotion that you can easily manufacture. It's not an emotion that you can intellectually generate. A lot of people believe this and it astounds me sometimes how many religious people believe this, that you can actually generate love in your mind. You can assist the generation of love that comes from your soul by using your mind certainly, so I'm not saying that that's not possible, but the feeling has to come out of your heart for it to be present. So you have to do with your heart involved. If it's just your mind involved, it's very little difference to that and not really acting at all. [02:11:24.29]

Mary: So with all of the definitions, you're talking about if I had none of those things that would have a consequence, but if I had some of those things but not all of them, that would be different.

That would be better, that would be much better of course. We can't expect ourselves to be perfect when we begin this process so all we can do is go with what we are but we've got to stop using what we are as an excuse. Many people do that with us, I often get emails from people saying, "I'm angry with you," so they're angry with me and they say, "I know that's wrong but I just wanted to tell you."

Mary: Or, "I'm doing the best I can with it."

Or they say, "You must realise that I'm a work in progress," well yes I do, but you've just justified damaging me even further. The reality is a person who has a sincere desire to love doesn't use it as an excuse for badness and so we need to stop making this decision that many of us have of saying to ourselves, "I am just a work in progress go easy on me." No, all of God's Laws are operating on you right now to the full extent. Any moment you're out of harmony with those laws there is an instant reaction in your soul to the disharmony. So why do you want me to act differently to God when God's already doing this with you, and God is the most the loving being in the universe, which is what we're all aspiring to do? So why would we ever justify where we are at currently in order to get away with becoming more loving? So we need to address that.

Mary: And it just comes again and again back to once we desire to enter this relationship with God, the potential is so much more because we really want to be ourselves as God views us, and to view our actions in the way God views us. Some of us are punitive on ourselves when God isn't and some of us let ourselves off the hook when God doesn't, and so if we really go for this God relationship that it really helps...

Well it will bring us out of all of our imbalances into the balanced position, which is that God isn't punishing, angry, nasty to us or any of those things, and God doesn't want us to be angry or nasty to ourselves or any of those kinds of things. But God wants us to have a good opinion of ourselves, not a bad opinion of ourselves, but of course it's very hard to have a good opinion of yourself if you know that you're doing things out of harmony with love all the time and you're perfectly happy to go ahead and do it. Of course you're not going to have a very good opinion of yourself after you choose to do that. [02:14:16.04]

8.4.5. Loving restriction of free will always bear positive growth results for my own soul

Mary: Okay so any action taken in this manner will always bear a positive result for my own soul.

Always. So if we look at the affect of our own soul, if I act limiting the will of another person, and this is, remember, in the context we're talking about limiting the will of another person, if I act limiting the will of another person because I love them and because I have a motive of giving them a gift, and because my motive is causing growth and because I know for certain that my actions are in harmony with God's Laws and Love and Truth, then my own soul will automatically grow through the process. So that's the point that we want to make.

Mary: However, if I have error inside of me...

8.5. An example of restricting a violent child

I may feel some pain doing it. So for example an appropriate way of handling a child who comes up and hits somebody is quite simple. Most people don't do it but it is a very, very simple way to restrict the will of a child who's hitting somebody. What you do is you have a feeling of love, the motive of giving the child the gift of understanding that the way they've just used their will is out of harmony with love, you've got a motive of wanting to cause the child to grow, and you know that hitting a person is definitely not God's Truth so you know that you need to correct something. So what you would do is you would just hold the arms and the legs of the child and you would just hold it and at the same time tell it that what it just did was out of harmony with love and truth, and so you are going to restrict its will. And then you just keep holding it, and keep holding it and keep holding it and keep holding it and keep holding it. [02:16:10.29]

Ten minutes later you're still holding it, fifteen minutes later you're still holding it. What do you think the child's going to do by this stage? The child will be beside itself in rage most probably if it's the very first time you've done this with the child.

Mary: And it's a longstanding issue for the child.

And it's a longstanding issue for the child. If the child is willing to hit another person, if this is a longstanding issue for the child, so you hold it and you hold it and you hold it eventually the child goes into its rage and its kicking, screaming, trying to bite you and you still hold it. You're still feeling love for the child and its kicking, screaming, carrying on, kicking, screaming, carrying on and you might have to hold if for an hour and a half like that.

If you're a parent with a husband or wife you may have to take it in shifts initially and you hold it and hold it and hold it and eventually it breaks through out of the rage and into real grief and then instead of holding it like in a restrictive manner, you can hold it in a nurturing manner, and just allow the child to go through the grief, all the while reminding the child that the reason why you've done this is because its actions were out of harmony with love.

Mary: And so as a parent if you have some error within you, what's that experience going to be like?

You'll feel guilty, you'll feel like everybody will be looking at you and you'll feel like a bad parent. You'll feel all sorts of things while the child's screaming and raging bloody murder as the saying goes but you will still hold the child if you love them. [02:17:46.29]

Mary: So if you love them and you want to maintain this love and give them the gift of growth, then you'll be humble to those feelings as they arrive.

Every single one of those feelings.

Mary: And so you might be crying with them for part of the time.

You might be.

Mary: Then you might be like hot with shame for part of the time, all these things might be happening.

You might be. And obviously if you're in a crowded space you'd take them to a private place somewhere but you'd continue holding them, continue holding them, and continue holding them. You wouldn't want to impose this rage of the child onto other people of course, so you take them to somewhere where everyone's able to not have to listen to the child in a rage, but you would continue holding them.

Now with the parents that we've recommended that to do, within three days their children have changed totally in their behaviour, within three days. [02:18:36.14]

Mary: And also that pain that the parent has had in them, if they fully engage this process, would begin to leave them.

Now in a really strong case with a child you may have to do that for twenty one days or longer. So imagine doing that every single time the child takes an action out of harmony with love. Every single time you restrict the child. Imagine how much time of your day might be taken up doing that. You have to be a really present parent to do that but...

Mary: Because you can't do it if you're not present either can you?

No you can't. As soon as you go away from yourself, you're now out of harmony with love, you're not feeling these emotions towards the child, and you're now acting in violence towards the child. You can't do that.

Mary: But also I mean you're saying it might take twenty one days but it seems to me that if a parent is really stepping up in terms of desire to love, be present and be present with their child while this is going on, it would have to be very extreme to take twenty one days.

Very extreme.

Mary: Because that child is also going to now respond... a lot of the reason why this error has entered them is because they didn't feel love coming towards them for a long time.

Exactly, and in a way if the parent has a feeling of love coming towards the child at the same time, then at least the child will eventually start feeling that mummy and daddy love me here, they're just trying to teach me, they're trying to cause my own growth. And a very young child, two years of age, can understand this very rapidly. Much more rapidly than the average adult can actually. [02:20:03.25]

Mary: Well we get restricted for five minutes in the grocery line and we're like...

Yeah that's right the average adult gets restricted and then they go into a violent rage, which is very hard to control, and you need five people to hold them down. With a child it's very different - you can do it with one person and the younger you do it obviously the easier it is.

Mary: And I imagine for a lot of children this would be almost like a time when they feel more connected to their parent than they ever have. Like here's a parent who's willing to stop everything and...

... and look after this particular teaching point with their child. The other benefit too is that any spirits that the child has due to the unrestricted use of their will. You see often what happens when children are brought with an unrestricted use of their will there are a lot of spirits in the spirit world that go, "Yippee, we've now got an unrestricted use of our will if we connect to this child and over-cloak this child." So they all dive into the child and the child goes and does this and the next moment is doing that and there's havoc following him wherever he goes, and it's a full time job for the mother and father to even tidy up after him let alone correct them. And this is because of spirit influence a lot of the time. But if you restrict the will of this child the spirits are going, "Hang on a sec I'm getting restricted from doing what I want as well." So the spirits with them also learn that an unrestricted use of their will is not in harmony with love and truth. [02:21:22.25]

Mary: And I was just thinking about that child who has a lot of spirits with them, they're not even present then and so they're not even getting to learn very much or understand themselves as an individual, and if that happens from a very young age it can be very damaging I would imagine. The older they get then they're then accustomed to spirit over-cloaking.

And this is also why for many murderers who are now in jail, like eighty to ninety percent of them I think, say they usually heard a voice telling them to do it or whatever and they went along with that voice. And this is because many of them were brought up with an unrestricted use of their will. Many of them were brought up by mothers without fathers...

Mary: Who didn't have a lot of time with them.

... and their mothers had no idea how to restrict the child's will. As a result of that they're brought up with deep injuries that they can use their will in any direction they see fit, and as a result of that they then take actions influenced by spirits who are also influencing because they enjoy the fact that the person was brought up with no restriction on their will. So very complex problems can be resolved very simply through our actions in restricting another person.

8.6. Ways in which to limit free will without any negative consequences (continued)

Mary: It's almost like we get this whole understanding of all these other things and we can understand the intricacies of what's happening spiritually, what's happening emotionally and all of these things, but if we don't understand this key loving use of free will, it still doesn't really mean anything anyway does is it, in terms of our growth?

Not really, no.

8.6.1. Actions taken to limit free will in harmony with God's Love and Truth result in soul growth, while actions taken in disharmony with God's Love and Truth result in soul degradation

Our soul growth is directly dependent upon how we use our will. If we use our will in a loving truthful manner in harmony with God's Love and Truth, our soul has to grow. It cannot not grow, it's going to grow. If we use our soul in a negative direction and in disharmony with God's Love and Truth, our soul will degenerate. It cannot not degenerate; it has to degenerate when we use our will in that direction. So this is why it's so important to understand that the will and how we express it is of supreme importance to the rest of our life and of supreme importance to even coming to know who we are and becoming self-aware. [02:23:35.05]

Mary: Sometimes I feel quite emotional just about the simplicity and the beauty of what God's created.

Yeah it's beautiful.

Mary: Yeah if we really live in ourselves, if we desire this awareness and desire to have an awareness of God's Love and how that operates, then really everything is laid out ahead of us and we just have to stay true to those things, understand our will and understand God, how God is teaching me.

Yeah, it's very important. Okay so that was the first point that we may use our will to limit the will of other people as long as we have these underlying loving motivations and feelings that are coming from our soul.

8.6.2. Actions taken to limit free will in harmony with God's Love and Truth may expose error and trigger pain

Mary: Yes and we talked about how acting in that way might trigger the pain for the person taking the action because they might have error and also it may trigger pain in the person who's having their will restricted.

In the other person. So like in the example of the little child who's getting his will restricted at this moment, he's screaming his head off and having a great big fit. So you know obviously he's feeling some pain, but the pain is not the result of truth it's the result of the truth confronting the error that's already within him.

Mary: And the pain will cease once the error has left.

Once the error leaves the child, the pain for the child will cease and the child will from that moment on automatically begin acting in a loving manner. [02:24:59.03]

8.6.3. Actions taken to limit free will in harmony with God's Love and Truth will always be beneficial to the environment

Mary: Okay and then the last point, if we're thinking then about the three aspects we've been discussing, for the person taking the action, the person who's limited in their free will and then the environment, obviously these kinds of actions to limit will are going to always be positive for the environment.

They are always positive for the environment. If we can go back to the parent example, a lot of parents worry, "Well isn't the child just reflecting my behaviour?" Yes totally, they are and if you have to restrict the will of the child during this physical process, you are going to find out why you didn't restrict their will in the past and therefore confront the emotion that caused you to be so tolerant of their unruly behaviour.

Mary: Because we were talking earlier about the parent who has all the grief about the punitive childhood, they have anger capping that and so often the child is expressing that anger of that, as soon as they limit the will of the child, that anger and that sadness is going to get triggered for the parent.

Exactly.

Mary: If they really desire it.

If they're open to doing it, yeah.

So that's our first point about limiting the free will of others, which was all to do with yes you can but it has to be under certain circumstances. Let's add to the circumstances. [02:26:19.23]

8.7. Limiting the free will of others out of harmony with Divine Love and Truth has painful consequences

Mary: Yes, if I limit the free will of others and take such actions because I believe such actions to be in harmony with God's Truth and Love, but the actions are not actually in harmony with God's Truth and Love, then there will be a painful consequence upon my soul and upon the soul of those I am attempting to limit.

8.7.1. Actions taken to limit free will that are out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will be harmful to our souls

Yes and the reason why I wanted to discuss this with you is because many people on Earth believe they know God's Truth on a certain issue, particularly many religious people. They feel they know God's Truth on a certain issue and then they feel they can take an action to limit the will of others based on that.

Well firstly, many of them take a violent action, which is an indication that they do not know God's Truth on the issue for a start. But secondly, they impose their own ideas of God's Truth on others rather than what is God's Truth on others and we have to be very, very careful that we do not enter this arrogant state. The arrogant state is when I believe I know God's Truth on a matter but I actually do not and this is not a very good state for your soul condition actually because what it will do is it will cause you to take actions believing them to be right but they are actually wrong and therefore damaging your own soul.

Now there are many people from religious organisations that have entered the spirit world who thought they would arrive in the spirit world and be with Jesus in the heavens and so forth and actually they go to the hells of the spirit world because of this one point. They believe that they can attack other people, have acts of violence towards other people, because of the difference in opinion about a truth and the reason why they believe that is they believe that what they personally believe is God's Truth and they feel that is the justification. [02:28:22.04]

Mary: And so is it true then that there's a penalty because of their action but also because of their arrogance?

There are two penalties. There is the penalty because of the unloving action itself, because the unloving action usually involves an act of violence. But even if it doesn't, it still is usually taken with the wrong motive, for example a motive of arrogance or judgement towards the other. Remember a motive of judgement is always an act of violence, so therefore it's taken with the wrong motive, but secondly the action it builds their own arrogance. So what it does is that every single time that they act thinking they're doing it for God, they are actually building their own arrogance in resistance to truth, which makes it even more difficult for them to come to terms with what is truth and so there are many spirits in the hells of the spirit world who have yet to recognise what God's Truth is and they still believe that their version of it is the truth.

Mary: And what about us as students of this path? How do we safeguard against things like this?

Well we need to be very careful here too because a real change at the soul level can only occur in the heart. The problem with hearing all of these truths that have never been presented really on Earth in the way that we're presenting them now, and actually thinking you understand them, is that you then think you get them before you actually get them in your heart, and this is a very dangerous condition, getting something in your head and thinking you've got it before it's actually in your heart. It can only enter your heart when all of the untruth, the opposite belief systems and so forth, leave your heart, and that is a process as you know that is involved. This is why even in our own involvement with each other you've had times when we've talked about an issue and then three years later you go, "Whoa!" Like you've gone through all of these emotions and...

Mary: Then I run and go, "Hey you know that thing, it's like that thing!" And he's like, "Yeah I told you." "Oh my God but I get it now." Because I get it emotionally and not intellectually.

Because you get it emotionally rather than get it intellectually, and when you get things emotionally things then change rapidly in your life. So that's another way of measuring - if something isn't changing very rapidly in your life, then there's a high likelihood that you're not getting it emotionally. [02:30:47.26]

So many people are worried have they met their soulmates and those kinds of issues, as an example. Well if your soulmate hasn't been attracted into your life by now then it means you're not getting it emotionally and so you need to come to terms with that; you don't understand the principles involving the attraction of soulmates emotionally. You might think you do but you don't because if you did emotionally things will change.

And its' very, very similar with this particular point, that we need to understand that it's God's viewpoint of the matter that matters. Now if I don't know God's viewpoint, I am in a very dangerous position if I start limiting the will of others.

Mary: And it's not know intellectually, it's know emotionally. And sometimes I reflect upon yourself because I feel like you're the ultimate student of this path because you've also engaged it with your soul from the very beginning. For the rest of us you've taught us a lot of things and we've engaged it intellectually from the beginning...

Yes and I can see that as a bit of a problem for most because for me I've only been able to engage these truths after I've gone through a process. So I can write down this stuff about free will and all the laws and principles involved in free will, but they're not coming from my mind they're coming from a soul that's let go of all of this free will-based damage, or a lot at least by now, enough to actually write down the principles without having it to come from my mind. And so therefore it's an automatic process for me to engage in this process.

So sometimes people come up to me and I will literally grab them by the shoulders and turn them around and send them off and I have limited their free will in complete harmony with the feeling that's present out of what I've described there. If another person did exactly the same thing without the same feeling... [02:32:44.12]

Mary: That would be violence.

Well it might be an act of violence.

Mary: And I think that's why just on that point about the way you've approached this path, which right from the first century has been about engaging your soul and learning through that process, I think that's why I really love the last talk you gave at the end of last year "Relationship with God - The Way" because it was really teaching all of us that that is The Way and this is how we really engage this. And it's great to have this as a framework, in fact it's an immense gift, but unless we engage...

But it can also be a problem.

Mary: Yeah that's what I see now and I see that sometimes around us that unless we engage the soul process it's all useless and it can become damaging, we can become arrogant, which is why I probably brought up this point of how do we safeguard against this arrogance?

Exactly. This is why this is such an important point because if we do not safeguard against the arrogance in our own process, then what happens is we start imposing our own belief systems upon other people rather than actually limiting people's will based on God's feelings and principles and based on those primary underlying motivations of love.

So limiting a person's free will is a dangerous proposition if all of this is just in our head and we think we're acting in harmony with it.

Mary: Yeah and it almost seems like this is not a small thing that we're talking about. This path is not a mild kind of hobby (Laughs); it's something that affects everything about everything we do from what we do in every moment of the day.

And not only everything that we do but everything we do that affects other people that they then do.

Mary: Yeah and it's kind of like with knowledge comes responsibility, that's what it feels like to me, and almost sometimes it feels like unless I'm willing to fully embrace this, it could get dangerous because...

Because I think I know it.

Mary: I can apply knowledge and engage my soul. I see that now. I can take what I've learnt in my head and use that in an act of faith to engage something into my soul process, and I can grow through the experience. But if I just engage my head, it's sort of the soul is going to be doing all kinds of other things and it's going to affect what happens.

And most of the time we're in denial of what it's doing as well, which is a problem. The beauty of this particular principle is that we need to understand that while I remain humble, I will always be asking myself the question, 'What would God do here?' not what would I do here. [02:35:28.29]

So if somebody treats us badly quite often what we'd do is go, "Ah, you know, f... this," carry on about them and say, "I don't want to see them anymore." Does God do that? Obviously not, so straight away we know we're out of harmony with God's Truth. And then if I try to limit the person's free will while I'm in that space I'm probably damaging my own soul and I'm probably going to damage theirs as well, right? It's quite easy for us actually to determine when we're going to damage another person's soul if we're humble.

Mary: Yeah, once our hearts engaged a lot of this becomes easier. It's the terror that we have of engaging our hearts sometimes that limits everything, isn't it?

Yeah but I feel it's more the humility than even engaging the heart.

Mary: Well I suppose that's what I mean by humility.

Yeah, because if you look at it, if I'm humble in this process, always asking myself what would God do in these situations. You know what does God do in these situations because God is already acting in a lot of these situations. So if I ask myself these questions I wouldn't just arrogantly assume that my current belief is God's Belief on the situation. I would never arrogantly assume that and I in particular would not arrogantly assume that if I did act in one example and I found there was a negative result I would certainly not go to the second time and do the same thing, again if I were humble.

And so this is the problem that many religions on the planet have. They act in a form of arrogance about their understanding of truth and unfortunately their arrogance is actually their own worst enemy. It actually rapidly degrades their own condition beyond that point and sometimes beyond the point where they can be redeemed very easily at all, and usually there's now a long process of self-discovery that has to occur before they'll even be redeemed from their unloving actions. [02:37:22.18]

Mary: Which sadly I kind of feel as a human race at the moment we're all in a high state of arrogance, aren't we? There's going to be a lot of self-reflection that's needed because we've acted in self-reliance for such a long time.

Yeah and this is what I like about you doing the book study group at the moment because what it does is it helps everybody who engages that process sincerely to actually be far more self-reflective, and self-reflective is a part of being self-aware. And once we're self-aware we can use our will in harmony with love much more easily if we're aware of what's in our soul and coming out of it at all times.

8.7.2. Actions taken to limit free will that are out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will be harmful to the souls of others

Mary: Yeah, thanks, babe. Okay so we're still on the points on when I believe my actions are in harmony with truth and love and they're not. So we said that would be harmful to my soul for two reasons and then any action taken in this manner will also be harmful to the soul of others affected or involved in the action and cause their souls to degenerate.

Definitely. Well you imagine you're imposing untruth, which you believe as truth upon them, and there's a chance that they will either receive it as truth and then act in the same way you are, which is a terrible thing that they could do with what's being perpetrated towards them. Or there's a chance that they'll go into violence themselves and repel and either way they're now out of harmony and they'll harm their soul. [02:38:49.06]

Mary: Yeah and that's what you've said here - it will bear a painful consequence upon their soul whether they are conscious of the immediate pain at the time or not and whether they desire the person to take that action because of their addictions.

Exactly so sometimes people want you to take an action that is out of harmony with love because of their own addictions. They desperately want you to do things, like for example a lot of people want you to desperately tell them that they're a nice person, just because they don't feel they are inside of themselves yet. They want you to say it to them and to feed them with that addiction would not necessarily be a loving act and therefore could be quite damaging to them.

Mary: If we talk about it in terms of limiting my will, what would that be like?

In what regard?

Mary: Well why would I addictively want you to limit my will?

Here's an example. A lot of people come up to me and say, "What are my passions?" How do I go with that question? That's an interesting question. While I might know what your passions are, you're actually asking me to limit your will because part of your will needs to be engaged in finding them for yourself, so you're actually asking me to help you limit your own will.

Mary: It's almost like, "Hi I'm Mary. Can you tell me who I am?"

Yeah exactly.

Mary: "Can you tell me what to do?"

And we often get that as well (Laughs). And we often get, "Can you tell me what my desires are?" Interesting, yes. Any desire you would like to have in the universe is yours (Laughs).

Mary: Still goes back to what you want, yeah (Laughs).

And what do you want? The problem is that many people want you to limit their will for a lot of reasons that are based upon fear. They don't want to engage their own will because they're afraid if they do they might give it in the wrong direction and therefore have negative consequences. So that's all about me wanting me to placate this feeling inside of them that they'll have someone to blame if they do what I say. [02:40:58.27]

Mary: Yeah and there's the addiction, they don't want to take responsibility.

There's the addiction, they don't want to take personal responsibility for their own life, they want somebody else to take responsibility for their own life. And if I fall into the pattern of feeding that, then I'm falling into the pattern of helping them avoid their own responsibilities. It would be much more loving for me to say, "Sorry you're wanting me to help you avoid your own responsibility." It would be much more loving to say that, if I knew that to be true of course, than it would be for me to engage the addiction.

8.7.3. Actions taken to limit free will that are out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will be potentially painful to the physical and spiritual bodies of others unless they are at-one with God

Mary: Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. So this is when we're limiting free will and we're not in harmony with God's Truth and God's Love it will also be potentially painful to the physical and spiritual bodies of the person we're restricting, and this will happen unless their soul is at-one with God.

Yes. So let's say I'm a member of a police force and I've learnt what an act of violence is, then I could still use a gun to shoot a person.

Mary: How would that work?

Now that went down like a lead balloon for our audience. (Laughter) Well I could have a thing called a tazer gun, which immobilises a person. I could use that gun with a feeling of love, with a motive of giving, a motive of causing growth and in harmony with God's Love and God's Truth and without any personal fear. I could use that gun to shoot the person and immobilise them so that I can stop them from taking action which would harm others. And I could do that in perfect harmony with all of God's Laws. [02:42:42.04]

Mary: Now that to me seems completely logical and rational and loving. I guess the issue I feel that society has now is that they kid themselves that they do these things with these kinds of motivations when really there's a lot of fear, a lot of arrogance, there's a lot of wanting to punish, and anger, and I suppose God's seeing all of that anyway.

Well all of God's Laws automatically go to correct those things. Obviously the degradation of the soul is all based upon God's Laws being the reaping of what you've sown and so we don't need to worry too much about that, we need to just understand the process. But we need to understand that we can actually limit a person's free will by what might be classified today as an act of violence, which is not an act of violence. An act of violence is the definition we've given, which is all about the motive and motivation coming from the heart. So do you think you would ever shoot the guy in the head with a bullet if you were trying to do it in harmony with God's Love? Of course not.

Mary: Well you'd be trying to take life, which is one of the biggest gifts.

Exactly and you wouldn't be aiming at his head if you had a totally different motive.

Mary: Yeah, exactly.

8.7.4. Actions taken to limit free will that are out of harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth will be harmful to the environment

Mary: Okay and then the third point on that was just that when we limit people's actions and we're not in harmony with God's will and God's Love, then it's also going to be harmful to the whole environment and even you drew the example of affecting how animals treat one another.

Animals, insects everything in the environment is acting towards other living creatures based on our own feelings. So even the way insects attack different trees is all based on our own feelings. It's the trees that insects often attack are the ones we love the most. There are all sorts of partialities that we have that we impose... [02:44:32.22]

Mary: That reflects our own partiality in terms of God's Creation.

That's right, and as a result of that, the environment is perfectly reflecting everything that we do that's out of harmony with the proper use of will.

Mary: Beautiful. Okay well we've only got a couple more points to cover.

No worries.

8.8. Limiting the free will of others without having a feeling of love that is in harmony with Divine Love will create painful consequences

Mary: So the second to last one. If I limit the free will of others and take such actions without having a feeling of love that is in harmony with Divine Love for the individuals that I'm attempting to limit, then there will be a painful consequence upon my soul and upon the soul of those I'm attempting to limit. So we've covered this in a little way but let's talk about some of the finer points. So the feeling or emotion of love must be in harmony with the way God would express love and not based upon my own definition of love.

Yes this is a tricky issue for many people because a lot of times people are feeling guilt when they say they're feeling love. Guilt is a fear-based emotion, it's not a love-based emotion, and so oftentimes they assume that they feel love towards a certain person but the reality is a lot of times the emotion they are feeling is not anything to do with love.

Mary: Yeah and I was talking to the girls this morning about how sometimes when a partner has taken away all of my fear, I felt what I believe to be a huge feeling of love for them, which now I know was just total addiction being met feeling, but I could have sworn it was love, I desire them.

Totally. So it's so nice for another person to take away my fears and you feel like you're free of fear and so you can love them but the reality is the fear is still inside of you and the other person is just addictively feeding your demand of taking away fear. So that's not an act of love, and we've got to go by God's definition of love not by our own. So there has to be an actual feeling of love as God would define love to be coming from our soul if we're going to limit the free will of another person without damaging our soul. [02:46:36.26]

Mary: Yes okay and when we do this we're going to cause negative consequences for our soul, and we're going to cause harm to the soul affected by our action and that will cause their soul to degenerate similar to the way you previously expressed. And same thing, they will have pain whether they feel it immediately or later because it's delayed by addictive things.

Exactly. It will create pain even if right at the moment they have pleasure from your actions. So they would have pleasure from your action if you fed their addiction, but you actually degrade their soul and therefore cause more pain later. Feeding another person's addiction always causes more long-term pain and suffering.

Mary: And lastly of course it can be harmful to the environment again.

Of course.

9. Embracing the concept of "what we sow we reap"

So you can see how the underlying principle of my soul, the other person's soul, and the environment pervades every principle involved with the use of will, and that's understandable when you think about it. When you look at the use of will, we can use our will in any way right across the board. And so if we can use it in any way right across the board, it makes sense that we're going to have an affect on ourselves, other people and the environment right across the board whenever we do something.

Mary: Definitely.

And a lot of times these effects multiply. So I've affected your will then you make choices based on the affect of how I've affected you, you then go and affect somebody else. They then make choices from your will and so forth and I bear a degree of responsibility for every one of those courses of action. Now you think about it in a positive direction. I let you know the truth about how to use your will and I affect your will in a positive direction, you then affect somebody else's will in a positive direction, I bear some of the pleasure of the fact that... [02:48:30.18]

Mary: The reward.

... or the reward of the fact that they used their will in a positive direction because that also came from, in a roundabout way, from myself.

Mary: So you're going to reap what you sow.

So you're going to reap what you sow in a positive direction as well as a negative one. Too many of us are going, "I'll reap what I sow, I'll reap what I sow, I'll reap what I sow. This all sounds very, very heavy." The reality is we could be reaping what we sow in a good way. So I'm sure when you sow a lettuce and a lettuce grows up you don't go, "Ah this is terrible!"

Mary: Salad for dinner!

You know you go, "You beauty a lettuce has come up. That's what I planted that's what I expected to come up." We're using our will. Just planting the lettuce we've sown something, we've used our will to look after it, it's grown into something that we can utilise, then we receive joy from that. We need to understand that when we use our will in a positive direction we cannot but help to have joyous results from the use of our will in that direction. [02:49:26.27]

Mary: Yeah and it's interesting because we talked about the Parable of the Talents in book group this week and quite a few people had a lot of fear about feeling like, "I've got to use what I've been given, I've got to act, I've got to do things," because there's all this fear in us when actually we see that if we use our will in harmony with love and are humble to the fear, it's only going to work out better than where we were.

Yes so in the Parable of the Talents for example the guy who got ten would have gone, "You beauty! I've got ten, I can work with that." And the beauty of the guy who got one says, "You beauty I got one I can turn that into two, I can do things with that." And this is the attitude what we need to have about our use of our will. Instead of hearing all of this material and going, "Oh it's just so heavy. Now every single day it's like hundreds of times I've committed acts of violence. Argh." Instead of going into this terrible shut down place where you generally decide to sit at home in a fetal position (Laughter) hoping that somebody else will feed you, water you and so forth just so you can act in a loving manner.

Mary: But hang on was that hope an act of violence? (Laughs)

Exactly but when you realise there's this whole positive aspect to what we're discussing today which is, "Wow if I use my will in a harmonious and positive manner I can have an awesome life and create so many powerful things that will come back to me in joy and reap these beautiful rewards of taking these actions that God has automatically built into the system."

So instead of looking at it from a perspective of fear, "I don't want to act, I don't want to act" where we become so afraid and we're sitting at home in this fetal position going, "I wish I'd never been told the truth. I wish AJ was never in my life and I'd never heard the truth before." The reason why we feel that way is because we're not prepared to see the positive side of the usage of all of these particular principles. If we could see the positive side and we actually engaged the positive side most of our life, we would be constantly receiving the rewards of that and so therefore not stressed out about what all of these principles mean.

Mary: And further to that I feel, God really loves us and He has given us this gift of free will. He's given us the gift of self-awareness; He reckons we can handle it.

Exactly.

Mary: He has faith in us that we can do great things. He built in the potential in us for great things with those gifts and He believes in us. So if we trust that He really loves us and everything that we're hearing this afternoon is that He sees our heart, He sees our intention, He always sees that above anything else.

And isn't that fantastic?

Mary: That is the best thing because if we really work on our heart and our intention in the knowledge that God reckons I can handle this, then we're going to launch into something beautiful actually.

And I just feel now a lot of people are so afraid of their hearts being seen now. Most people have these big facades covering over them; they have layers of facade over facade covering over their heart. You can see the reason why most people do that - because when they were young of course their hearts weren't very much considered generally. As a result of that their only consideration was what was coming out of their mind in terms of their words and what was also their actions but there was no consideration of motivation even. And quite often we were punished when we were young for having a pure motivation but something that finished up destroying something of our parents or something like that and then feeling lots of rage and anger and so forth from different ones. [02:53:27.02]

So my feelings are if we address this negative viewpoint we have of finding out truth, this is a problem in our life. We find out more truth and then we go, "Oh no I feel heavier," when actually finding out the truth should create more lightness if we had the attitude that we need to have. And the attitude we need to have is we can live in love, we can live in harmony with these principles of free will every single moment of our life, and in fact why wouldn't we want to?

Mary: And I don't believe God would have given us these gifts if He didn't think we could.

Exactly.

Mary: So you know it comes down to how much I really honour God in that space I feel.

Yes, very much so.

10. Limiting the free will of others (continued)

10.1. If we are involved in an organisation that limits the use of the free will of others, we can remain in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth as long as the organisation itself remains in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth

Mary: Yes, okay let's got onto our last point. So this is just about organisations. If I'm involved in an organisation, institution or group that limits the use of free will of others, I can remain in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth as long as the organisation itself remains in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth.

Yes, so this is a very important point. Let's say we become a member of an organisation of any type and some of the people here are members of the God's Way of Love Organisation. So let's use that as an example. While the God's Way of Love Organisation remains as an organisation doing things in harmony with love and truth in the manner we've just described so far with regard to this free will. Organisations have the ability to use the collective free will of each individual in the organisation, and while that remains in harmony with love and truth then I remain in harmony with love and truth when I'm a member of it acting in the same manner. But if I myself act out of harmony with the way the organisation acts, then I will actually bear the penalty or the consequence in my soul of those unloving actions that I take - that's number one. [02:55:29.22]

And then number two - if the organisation takes actions that are out of harmony with love and I do not take action to correct it, I am automatically also out of harmony with love.

Mary: So this is where it's always about our own soul. So even if the organisation is acting in harmony with Divine Truth and Divine Love and using their will in that way and I'm following along in acting some of that will, but my heart is dead towards this issue in terms of love and the motive of giving and these things, then God sees that and there's a consequence on my soul.

Yes. So if I can give you an example. Let's say in the organisation we have an environment team. In the environment team sometimes we have to dig up different plants to plant other plants in its place. I'm in the environment team but I don't have a feeling of love towards the plant that I'm digging up, I am actually committing now an act of violence that's damaging my soul, even though the organisation has asked me to do it. The organisation and the people who are leading the organisation might have an act of love towards it and so therefore it doesn't damage their soul but it will damage mine. And so this is where we have to be focussed on ourselves and our own feelings about what's happening at any point in time.

Mary: And equally the other point you shared about how even if the organisation is saying, "We're in harmony with God's Love, we're in harmony with God's Truth, this is how we're using our will," but I as an individual within that organisation go, "Uh oh hang on I don't feel that," then I have a responsibility to speak up about that or to use my will...

To leave.

Mary: ... to leave because equally I can't just rest in the organisation and say, "Ah well the organisation has got it all figured out I'll just follow along," because God's desiring this self-awareness in me, this self-responsibility, so there'll still be a consequence.

That's right. So you can see that inaction is actually not an option. In almost all the cases we've given, inaction is not an option, and this is where a lot of people like to remain ignorant. It's chosen ignorance and in fact there is an area of the hells in the spirit world for people who have chosen ignorance and chosen inaction. [02:57:50.28]

Mary: We've been talking about this in book group as well, I call it willful ignorance.

Exactly and willful ignorance and willful inaction is actually also out of harmony with love. The only reason why a person would take willful ignorance or a position of willful ignorance or willful inaction is either because they're angry or they're afraid, and both are acts of violence. So in the end they are both out of harmony with love.

Mary: Yes, very powerful.

10.2. Limiting another's free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth cannot involve an act of violence

Mary: Okay well that's just about the end. We ended on the point that limiting another's free will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth cannot involve an act of violence towards oneself, the person being limited, nor the environment.

Right so this is the flip side of acting in harmony with your free will. When you act in harmony with your free will it can't involve an act of violence, and if you limit a person's free will it can't involve an act of violence either, and these are very, very important points that we need to understand. So I feel part of the crux of this discussion in a way is our coming to understand what an act of violence actually is at the soul level because once we understand at a soul level we won't be able to perpetrate such violence towards others in any way or in any action we take.

Mary: And I suppose we've been given a lot of definitions that we can intellectually perceive about what an act of violence is and now it's a matter of sensitising our soul again, or our awareness again, to when we're acting in violence.

11. Closing words

Yeah. So we'll conclude this part of the discussion. The next part of discussion we'll look at more practical examples of how each of these principles apply to practical situations. One thing we do want to address tomorrow is how these principles affect every aspect of our life and every aspect of society as well. How would society look if each person in society was acting in harmony with these underlying principles of love that govern the use of our will?

The reality is the principles of free will and the gift of free will that each of us has individually been given hugely affects every single thing around us to such a degree that if we all change the way we used our will only, every one of these organisations would have to change and become more harmonious with love, if we became more harmonious with love with the way we use our will individually. [03:01:18.18]

So this is why it's impossible to force a change on an organisation that we ourselves have yet to embrace individually. If we use our will and embrace the principles of truth and love inside of ourselves, now we have the potential of affecting organisations that we belong to or people that surround us or groups that we're in quite easily and simply just by living the principles of free will in the day-to-day life and using love as the underlying basis of the way we use that will.

So we'd like to thank you guys for listening in on our conversation with each other and hopefully that's given you a bit more of a closer understanding of the principles regarding the gift that you have been given of free will. Many of you would probably be surprised at some of the things that we've discussed today and I feel some of you are quite happy about some of those things that we've discussed today because they will help you in your day-to-day life to be able to engage your free will even further and also help in terms of affecting other people in their engagement of their own free will as well.

Thank you for your time today...

Mary: Thanks everyone.

... and thank you for your donations. Thank you. (Applause)

Appendix: The Human Soul – The Gift Of Free Will Seminar Outline

### Session 1

### Introduction

God's Gifts That Are Automatically Given To Everyone

God has given us many gifts, which include:

The Gift of Life

The Gift of Free Will

The Gift of Self-Awareness

The Gift of Sexuality

Etc.

None of these gifts are rights

God's Gifts That We Must Use Our Will To Accept

The Gift of Divine Love (activated by exercising a conscious soul desire to receive Divine Love)

The Gift of Forgiveness (activated by a conscious soul desire to repent and change)

Etc.

Free Will Is A Gift Given To Every Human Soul

There is no law of Free Will

There is no right to use my own Free Will

Free Will is a gift not given to any other creation of God

God devised a universe that teaches us how to use our Free Will harmonious with Love

### Please Note With This Entire Discussion

Understanding Free Will cannot be achieved with the mind alone

Free Will is used by the Human Soul, therefore cannot be governed by the mind alone

Free Will is motivated by the emotions within the Soul

For Free Will to become harmonious with Divine Love, the Soul must change (not the mind)

The mind is not capable of making soul-based decisions

There is always a possibility of using Free Will out of harmony with Divine Love when the soul is not completely at-one with God.

God's definition of Free Will must exist within the soul before it can act appropriately

The soul can only instantly act in Love when the soul understands the definition

If the soul understands, then instant action can be taken without the mind questioning the act

If the mind needs to question the situation, then this indicates the soul is yet to understand

### Loving Guidelines For The Use Of Free Will

I can use my Gift of Free Will in any direction on any matter in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth without having any negative consequences upon my soul, the soul of others or the general environment.

Please Note:

1. Any action taken in this manner will always bear positive growth results for my soul. However, if I have within myself any soul-based error that is out of harmony with Divine Love or Divine Truth, since my action taken in harmony with Divine Truth or Divine Love will confront this error, I may also experience some pain. This pain will cease once I have released the error.

2. Any action taken in this manner will also always bear positive growth results for the soul of others involved in the action. However, if those people have within themselves any soul-based error that is out of harmony with Divine Truth or Divine Love, since my action taken in harmony with Divine Truth or Divine Love will confront this error, others may also experience some pain. This pain will cease once they release the error.

3. Any action taken in this manner will also always be beneficial to the environment (since the environment is automatically attracted to God's Love and Truth).

4. Any action taken without being motivated by a feeling of Love, whether the action is harmonious with Divine Truth or not, it will always have a painful consequence on both the person acting and those whom the action effects.

5. Any action taken out of harmony with Divine Truth, but with a feeling of Love in harmony with Divine Love, bears less consequence than an action taken in harmony with Divine Truth but out of harmony with Divine Love.

I can use my Gift of Free Will in any direction on any matter in disharmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth but there will be a negative consequence upon my own soul, the souls of others, and the general environment.

Please Note:

1. Any action taken in this manner will always be harmful to my soul and cause my soul to degenerate. It will always bear a painful consequence upon my soul, whether I am conscious of the immediate pain at the time or not.

2. Any action taken in this manner will always be harmful to the soul of others affected or involved in the action and cause their souls to degenerate. It will always bear a painful consequence upon their soul, whether they are conscious of the immediate pain at the time or not and whether they desired me to take that action (because of their addictions) or not. This will happen unless their soul is at-one with God.

3. Any action taken in this manner will also always be harmful to the environment (since the environment is automatically attracted to God's Love and Truth, and therefore damaged by any action taken out of harmony with God's Love or Truth).

Using one's Free Will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth cannot involve any act of violence towards oneself, any other person, nor the environment

### Definition Of An Act Of Violence

An "act of violence" is defined by God as any thought, word, or action based upon or seeded by an emotion coming from the soul which is external in it's expression and directed towards another entity that is living, that is driven by emotions that are not in harmony with Divine Love, that result in the living entity being attacked.

Please Note:

1. Violence includes thoughts, words and actions based on emotions that cause attack. For example thoughts, words or actions based on emotions of terror, fear, rage, anger, resentment, ridicule, condescension etc, are all included in the definition of violence.

2. Violence includes acts of physical violence, acts of spiritual or psychic violence (which include rage, anger, resentment, fear projected towards another), and intentions of violence that are not acted upon (a desire for the person to be harmed without acting upon the desire).

3. There are varying consequences to the soul perpetrating violence towards different levels of living beings. For example there is a different consequence for attacking a tree compared to a human being.

4. There are varying consequences to the soul perpetrating violence depending upon whether the action is taken, felt, or agreed with. For example there is a different consequence for physically attacking another person compared to hoping that someone else physically attacks the person, or asking a spirit to physically attack the person, or thinking that the attack upon the person was justified.

5. If I am in fear of violence from another person or group of persons, I am, under this definition, actually perpetrating violence towards those persons, and there is a consequence for such a use of my Free Will. There are varying degrees of how this fear affects the soul and is defined as violent. If my fear is imagined, then the damage upon the soul is greater than if the fear is real. If another person created the fear within myself (such as a parent), then they also bear some consequence for my violence.

6. If I am afraid, and I avoid action (I avoid acting in harmony with Divine Love and Truth) as a result of my fear, I am automatically perpetrating an act of violence.

7. Any act of violence taken towards oneself bears the same soul consequences as the identical kind of act of violence towards another.

8. Threatening physical violence is also considered as violence.

If I perform an act of violence there will be a painful consequence upon my soul, and upon any living entity that receives the action (with the exception of a person who is at-one with God)

### Limiting the Free Will Of Others

It may be in harmony with God's Love and Truth to take actions that limit the expression of Free Will in other individuals or groups of people

God does this by establishing the spheres of probation (spheres 1 to 7 of the spirit world)

God desires that we learn to express our Free Will in the same manner He does

God's definition of Love and Truth are used as the basis for these limiting actions

Under some circumstances, action to limit Free Will of another may be necessary for me to take if I wish to remain in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth myself

What Governs How We May Limit The Free Will Of Others

The principles that govern our ability to limit the Free Will of others are exactly the same principles that govern the Laws that God uses to limit our own Free Will

Organisations, parents, or any other person can remain in complete harmony with God's Laws while restricting the Free Will of others, as long as such restrictions of Free Will are taken in harmony with the principles of Divine Love and Divine Truth, and include an emotion of Love coming from the Organisation or individual who is attempting the restriction, and does not include any act of violence.

Please Note:

1. An action of restricting the Free Will of another may actually be demanded of us if we wish to remain in harmony with Divine Love or Divine Truth.

2. Organisations have a Loving purpose when they are established for the benefit of groups of people or individuals as long as they are in harmony with Divine Love and Truth.

3. Organisations that have an unloving purpose are automatically out of harmony with God's Love and Truth.

4. Being a parent is a gift from God to allow parents to become involved in teaching God's children in their care about God's Love and Truth.

I may limit the Will of another without having any negative consequence upon my own soul or the soul of the other, as long as limiting their Will is done with:

The emotion of Love being present within myself towards the other, and; I have the motivation of giving the gift of my Love to the other, and; I have the motivation of helping and assisting the other's soul to grow; and as long as the action of limiting their Will is in harmony with God's Truth and God's Love.

Please Note:

1. Any action taken in this manner will always bear positive growth results for my own soul. However, if I have within myself any soul-based error that is out of harmony with Divine Love or Divine Truth, since my action taken in harmony with Divine Truth or Divine Love will confront this error, I may also experience some pain. This pain will cease once I have released the error.

2. Any action taken in this manner will also always bear positive growth results for the soul of others involved in the action. However, if those people have within themselves any soul-based error that is out of harmony with Divine Truth or Divine Love, since my action taken in harmony with Divine Truth or Divine Love will confront this error, others may also experience some pain. This pain will cease once they release the error.

3. Any action taken in this manner will also always be beneficial to the environment (since the environment is automatically attracted to God's Love and Truth).

If I limit the Free Will of others and take such actions because I believe such actions to be in harmony with God's Truth and God's Love, but the actions are NOT actually in harmony with God's Truth and Love, then there will be a painful consequence upon my soul and upon the soul of those I am attempting to limit.

Please Note:

1. Any action taken in this manner will always be harmful to my soul and cause my soul to degenerate. It will always bear a painful consequence upon my soul, whether I am conscious of the immediate pain at the time or not. This action is also the result of arrogance, which has its own soul-based consequences.

2. Any action taken in this manner will always be harmful to the soul of others affected or involved in the action and cause their souls to degenerate. It will always bear a painful consequence upon their soul, whether they are conscious of the immediate pain at the time or not and whether they desired me to take that action (because of their addictions) or not. It will also feel potentially painful to the spiritual and physical bodies. This will happen unless their soul is at-one with God.

3. Any action taken in this manner will also always be harmful to the environment (since the environment is automatically attracted to God's Love and Truth, and therefore damaged by any action taken out of harmony with God's Love or Truth). For example animals may copy my own behaviour by attacking other animals.

If I limit the Free Will of others and take such actions without having a feeling of Love that is in Harmony with Divine Love for the individuals that I am attempting to limit then there will be a painful consequence upon my soul and upon the soul of those I am attempting to limit.

Please Note:

1. The feeling or emotion of Love must be in harmony with the way God would express Love, and not based upon my own definition of Love.

2. Any action taken in this manner will always be harmful to my soul and cause my soul to degenerate. It will always bear a painful consequence upon my soul, whether I am conscious of the immediate pain at the time or not.

3. Any action taken in this manner will always be harmful to the soul of others affected or involved in the action and cause their souls to degenerate. It will always bear a painful consequence upon their soul, whether they are conscious of the immediate pain at the time or not and whether they desired me to take that action (because of their addictions) or not. This will happen unless their soul is at-one with God.

4. Any action taken in this manner will also always be harmful to the environment (since the environment is automatically attracted to God's Love and Truth, and therefore damaged by any action taken out of harmony with God's Love or Truth).

If I am involved in an Organisation, institution or group that limits the use of the Free Will of others, I can remain in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth as long as the Organisation itself remains in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth.

Please Note:

1. If the organisation, institution or group is out of harmony with Divine Love or Divine Truth while taking actions that limit others Free Will, or while using it's own will, then as a member of the group, I must take action to remedy the situation if I wish to remain innocent of the damages caused by the group.

2. If the organisation, institution or group is in harmony with Divine Love or Divine Truth while taking actions that limit others Free Will, or while using it's own will, but I am not in harmony with Divine Love or Truth myself while taking similar actions, then I will still bear the responsibility of using my own will in an unloving manner.

Limiting another's Free Will in harmony with Divine Love and Divine Truth cannot involve an act of violence towards oneself, the person(s) being limited, nor the environment

### References, Music and Movies

Movies:

"Ghandi" (1982) Ben Kingsley.

"Goodbye Bafana" (2007) Joseph Fiennes, Dennis Haysbert.

"Amazing Grace" (2006) Ioan Gruffudd, Ramola Garai, Albert Finney.

Reference:

Divine Love "The True Gospel" Padgett Messages. All Volumes.

