

### Interview With Jesus:

### Humility

### By

### Jesus (AJ Miller) &

### Mary Magdalene (Mary Luck)

### Sessions 1-5

Published by

Divine Truth, Australia at Smashwords

http://www.divinetruth.com/

Copyright 2014 Divine Truth

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### This ebook is a transcript of five interviews that took place between Jesus (also known as AJ Miller) and Mary Magdalene (also known as Mary Luck) on 14th June 2012 in Bathurst, Australia, and on 30th June 2012, 29th August 2012 and 5th September 2012 in Wondai, Australia on the subject of humility. In these interviews Jesus describes what humility is, what it means to live in humility, how humility is essential for our spiritual progression, and how we resist humility.

### 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.

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### Table of Contents

Part 1 - Humility Session 1 \- Introduction to Humility

1. Introduction

2. The contrast between God's definition of humility and the world's definition of humility

2.1. Humility is the passionate desire to feel and experience all of our emotions

2.2. Humility is to see ourselves as God sees us

2.3. True humility has no self-judgement or self-consciousness

2.4. Humility takes its name from a Greek word meaning "of the earth"

3. What it means to live in humility

3.1. True humility honours God's Love and God's Truth above ourselves

3.1.1. True humility doesn't elevate or deprecate

3.2. A truly humble person always examines themselves before others

3.3. Humility honours God's Laws and God's Gifts

3.4. A truly humble person is not invested in what everyone else is feeling

4. Humility is the cornerstone of our spiritual development

4.1. Humility is essential to establish a relationship with God

4.2. Humility is the doorway to Divine Truth, and Divine Truth is the doorway to Divine Love

4.3. Humility opens us up to change

4.4. Humility does not try to manage or control emotion

4.5. Humility allows us to connect to God

5. The two stages of humility

5.1. Becoming as humble as a child

5.2. Becoming more humble than a child

5.3. Humility is required to love others completely

6. Closing Words

### Part 2 - Humility Session 2 - Humility in Practice I

7. Introduction

8. Receiving Divine Love depends upon our desire to experience all emotion

8.1. Receiving Divine Love indicates we are in a state of humility

8.2. Becoming humble is all we need to do for our spiritual growth

8.2.1. Self judgement takes us further away from humility

8.2.2. Investment in God's opinion of us leads us to humility

9. Humility is a whole hearted desire to feel and experience all of our emotions

9.1. Longing for God's Love above every other experience leads us to humility

9.2. If we honour God's Love above all other things we are not afraid to confront the error surrounding us

9.2.1. If we are truly humble we are willing to look foolish and stupid to others

9.3. If we are truly humble we never attempt to shut down or dampen our emotional experience

9.3.1. If we are truly humble we embrace our terror when it arises

9.4. If we are truly humble we will never get angry or afraid about feeling our emotions

9.5. If we are truly humble we do not feel we're losing things by choosing the Divine Love Path

9.5.1. When we're humble we see which of our relationships have substance

10. Receiving Divine Love depends upon our willingness to take responsibility for and release all error inside of us

10.1. When we're humble we do not seek validation or permission to feel from others

10.2. When we're humble we do not blame others for our pain and suffering

10.3. Taking responsibility involves desiring to experience the Law of Compensation

10.4. Taking responsibility involves desiring to experience causal emotions

10.5. Taking responsibility involves abandoning anger, justifications, minimisations and denial

10.6. Taking responsibility involves desiring to feel our fear about becoming a trusting child again

10.7. Questions to ask ourselves to identify how willing we are to be humble and to take responsibility for our errors

11. Closing Words

### Part 3 - Humility Session 3 - Humility in Practice II

12. Introduction

13. Humility is essential to connect with God and God's Truth

13.1. Humility is a willingness to be overwhelmed by our emotions and by God's emotions

13.2. Humility is a willingness to see ourselves as God sees us

13.3. Humility is a willingness to make mistakes and be open to new ideas

13.4. Humility is a whole hearted desire to feel and experience all emotion

13.5. Humility is a desire to feel ourselves and God above all other things

13.6. Humility is a willingness to take responsibility for, experience and release all error within us

14. Working through emotional blockages to humility

15. Divine Love can only flow when we are willing to be as we truthfully are

15.1. Working through the façade self and discovering the injured and real selves

15.1.1. An example of being humble when we discover anger within ourselves

15.2. Humility encompasses ethics and morality

15.3. Humility is seeing God's perception of ourselves - an illustration from the Bible

16. Humility is a willingness to be taught by God

16.1. An example of the Law of Attraction operating in Western society vs. in poor countries

16.1.1. The Law of Attraction can occur in a loving or harsh way

16.2. God teaches us through other people, spirits and nature

16.3. Being willing to be taught by God involves being emotionally open to God

16.3.1. Going through the process of developing humility

16.4. A humble person immediately puts into practice what they learn

16.5. Becoming open to God teaching us

17. Humility is the ability to receive both direct and indirect council

17.1. Becoming sensitive to the Law of Attraction

17.2. Becoming loving in an unloving environment

18. Closing Words

### Part 4 - Humility Session 4 - Resistance to Humility I

19. Why we find humility difficult

19.1. Reason 1: Self-reliance

19.2. Reason 2: Feeling unable to cope with overwhelming emotion

19.2.1. Not feeling our emotions creates an openness to being manipulated

20. How we resist humility: arrogance

20.1. Arrogance prevents openness to new ideas

20.2. God's Truth about arrogance

20.3. The difficulty of releasing arrogance

21. How we resist humility: the false ego

21.1. Why the false ego state is attractive to maintain

21.2. Reasons for our investment in the façade self

21.2.1. The analogy of our soul lighting fires

21.3. How to break down the façade with courage, integrity and honesty

22. How we resist humility: judgement and criticism

22.1. The example of Divine Truth being labelled a cult by the media

22.2. Reasons that we judge

22.3. Judgement blocks Divine Truth and Divine Love

23. How we resist humility: denial

23.1. The three main types of denial: justification, minimisation and shifting the blame

23.2. Denial of God's Laws

23.2.1. An example of denying the truth about abortion

23.2.2. An example of denying the truth about eating meat

23.3. Resistance to humility creates hypocrisy

23.4. Reasons we are invested in staying in denial

24. How we resist humility: anger with others

24.1. How to release anger

24.1.1. Anger results from pain in the past that we haven't released

25. How we resist humility: hatred and resentment

25.1. Gender differences in the expression of hatred

25.2. How to work through emotions of hatred and resentment

25.3. Hatred can be caused by feelings of superiority in addition to feelings of powerlessness

26. Closing Words

26.1. A lack of humility eventually creates our own death

26.2. The importance of humility

### Part 5 - Humility Session 5 - Resistance to Humility II

27. Introduction

28. How we resist humility: living in fear

28.1. Living in fear prevents desire and happiness

28.2. Living in fear supports the maintenance of false beliefs

28.3. People in a complete state of love never respond in fear

28.4. Fear is not real from God's perspective

28.4.1. An example of a boy who's in a violent situation

28.5. The stages involved in recognising and releasing our fear

28.6. Addictions and false beliefs keep us from feeling our fear

28.7. Taking action challenges our fears

28.7.1. Releasing fear involves softening into fear, rather than conquering it

28.7.2. Desires can draw us through our fear

29. How we resist humility: doubt

29.1. Doubt is created by a lack of humility to fear, and is triggered by taking action

29.1.1. An example of a couple having arguments

29.2. Erroneous societal beliefs about doubt

29.2.1. Children learn rapidly because they are not in a state of doubt

30. How we resist humility: seeking power, position, glory, respect or value

30.1. An example of musicians seeking glory and attention

30.1.1. The effects of seeking power, glory and attention on other people

30.2. How to release injuries surrounding seeking power, glory and attention

30.2.1. An example of family members seeking power, glory and respect

31. How we resist humility: jealousy

31.1. Emotions that drive jealousy

31.2. Acknowledging our jealousy and other dark emotions

31.3. Jealousy can be about our perceptions rather than reality

32. How we resist humility: commiseration

32.1. Commiseration results from not wanting to take personal responsibility for our creations

32.2. Commiseration creates stagnation

32.3. Differences between commiseration and compassion

33. How we resist humility: false humility

33.1. Emotions that drive false humility

33.2. If we're truly humble our lives will change

33.3. True humility feels edgy, uncomfortable and like being alive

33.4. Differences between humility and false humility

34. Closing Words

34.1. AJ describes his personal experiences in becoming humble

34.2. The relationship between humility, truth and love

34.2.1. The importance of humility

### Appendices

Appendix 1: Humility Session 1 Outline

Appendix 2: Humility Session 2 Outline

Appendix 3: Humility Session 3 Outline

Appendix 4: Humility Sessions 4-5 Outline

Part 1 - Humility Session 1 - Introduction to Humility

1. Introduction

Mary: Welcome everyone today. I'm going to be interviewing my beautiful soulmate, Jesus, on the topic of humility. We're in windy Bathurst at the moment for part 1, of what will be a five part series of interviews on humility. I'm quite excited to do this interview. It's a really beautiful topic, and hopefully it's a topic where we can deepen people's understanding about just what is humility, and what it means to live in humility. [00:00:54.06]

AJ: Yeah, I've noticed that a lot the material that is on YouTube about humility doesn't get watched very much, which is interesting in itself, as humility is one of the most important qualities that we can personally develop that will assist us in our relationship with God. [00:01:12.16]

Mary: Yeah, that's something I'd like to talk to you about later on in the interview, just how that happens and why it's so important. I suppose it is something that we talk about a lot. There are one or two specific presentations that you've given about it, but beyond that, you and I both mention being humble or humility quite a lot, and I actually think it's something that's quite poorly understood, in terms of in society, and often this state of humility is ridiculed, isn't it? [00:01:45.08]

AJ: Yes it's viewed as a state of weakness. And unfortunately for people who are attempting to spiritually progress, humility is not very high on their wish list of qualities to develop. But it's the most essential quality to develop in our relationship with God. One of the things that we often comment about in our private life is the need for more humility, in order to experience emotion. The only way to experience emotion, causal emotion, is to be humble to it, to actually have the quality of humility so much that as soon as you feel the emotion, you actually experience it. [00:02:25.12]

2. The contrast between God's definition of humility and the world's definition of humility

Mary: Yeah. Well maybe we can just go back a bit and just talk about the actual definition of humility. I thought initially I would really like to just present some of the world's definitions of humility. They're actually dictionary definitions that I found today, so perhaps if I could go through a few of them and then ask you what your definition is, or what a true definition is. [00:02:48.04]

AJ: Yeah, sure.

Mary: Okay, so the first few that I looked up said that humble is not proud or arrogant, modest, having a feeling of insignificance, low in rank, status or quality, showing deference or submission and being conscious of one's failings. And very often in the synonyms it was related to humiliation. I feel that these kinds of definitions are often what comes up for people when we mention the word humility, or being humble, especially in general society. [00:03:42.10]

AJ: Yeah, if we relook at the first few definitions, where it says not being arrogant, that is very true. That is a part of humility. But then it goes on to low in rank, status and quality, all of those things are not true, they're not a part of being humble, and they're not a part of humility. For that reason I've defined humility quite differently to what the dictionary does. [00:04:14.17]

Mary: Okay so I found another one that I think is a little closer to the mark, so maybe we could hear that one and then hear exactly what you feel it is. So this one was; having a lack of false pride, unpretending, meek, defining characteristic of an unpretentious and modest person. Someone who does not think that he or she is more important than others, and free of illusions of self deception. [00:04:40.20]

AJ: I would agree with all of those. They are all part of humility. So it's interesting how sometimes there are definitions that you can't agree with at all, with regard to humility and then other times there's definitions that you could say, "Yes, all of those qualities are a part of the quality of humility." [00:04:56.12]

2.1. Humility is the passionate desire to feel and experience all of our emotions

AJ: In terms of my definition of it, humility is the passionate desire to feel and experience all of my own emotions, whether they are pleasurable or painful, without blaming or attempting to manipulate or control my environment in any way. We can see in that definition that it encompasses so many things but also, as part of that, we must submit to our own emotions, but we don't necessarily need to submit to everyone else's. So this whole idea of submission to somebody else is not really a part of humility. Another part of humility that is often thought is this whole idea of deprecating oneself, and making other people more important than oneself. That's very, very difficult to do with God's definition of humility, because the way God sees us is, that God sees us as the pinnacle of her creation, and if we are the pinnacle of her creation, then God doesn't want to make us lower than anything else. But, God also wants us to have a very clear understanding of our true state, and not a state that we would love to see ourselves being, which is a state of facade. [00:06:21.10]

2.2. Humility is to see ourselves as God sees us

Mary: So then humility isn't just this desire to really experience all of our emotions, but it's also a desire to see ourselves as God sees us? [00:06:29.22]

AJ: Exactly. To see ourselves as God, our creator sees us right at this moment. And then also to see ourselves as God sees us in terms of the pristine creation that God made, and our potentials and possibilities. So when we're humble we don't have an exalted opinion of ourselves, but we also don't have a terrible opinion of ourselves. In fact, once we become truly humble, it's almost like we don't have an opinion of ourselves at all. [00:07:02.00]

2.3. True humility has no self-judgement or self-consciousness

Mary: Or is it like we don't have a judgement of ourselves there?

AJ: We don't have any judgements of ourselves but we don't think about ourselves very much at all, in the sense of having to think about ourselves in deference or in preference to others. And so we would be out of harmony with humility if we had either of those feelings. So, humility allows us to emotionally be ourselves in the moment without even having to think about ourselves in that moment. [00:07:33.23]

Mary: So why is it that we don't have to think about ourselves in that moment? Because we're open to our feelings, or we're open to the truth that we are brothers and sisters? [00:07:42.19]

AJ: Well, if we have the feeling inside of ourselves that we're already comfortable completely with ourselves and being ourselves, and surrounding other people, then there is no need to even think about ourselves anymore in a relationship with other people. All we do is interact with them based on our feelings and we don't think about those feelings, we just interact. If those feelings are refined and have been brought into harmony with love, then every interaction we have with another person is going to be perfect; it's going to also be perfectly loving, and perfectly honest and truthful, and other people will find us very easy to get along with as a result generally. [00:08:27.17]

Mary: So it's almost like we're in this state of pre-humility now, or for most of us, a long way before humility, where we're filtering every emotion through, "How's everyone going to react to this? What's my personal judgement of this feeling? What kind of person does this make me?" [00:08:47.11]

AJ: "What does this person that I think I am look like to others?" That's a big thing that modifies how humble we become.

Mary: Yeah. Okay.

AJ: So a person who's truly humble doesn't live in their facade. They live as they truthfully are, and they know who they truthfully are as well. So the person who lives in humility knows who they are, and they don't have this feeling of having to maintain a facade of who they are, or to present to others somebody they're not. They are perfectly comfortable with who they are, but they don't have any exalted feelings about who they are either. [00:09:25.15]

Mary: So we're not elevating ourselves, we're not deprecating ourselves, we're just saying, "This is who I am, right now."

AJ: "This is who I am," and in the most loving place that we can be. Who you are is exactly as God created you to be. That place would be once you've released all of your emotional injuries, all of the pride, all of the arrogance, all of the facade; all of those other emotional injuries that all create a lack of humility will be gone. But once that place has been obtained then you can be who you are, without even thinking about who you are, because you know that everything you do will be loving as a result of what you've already refined in your own soul. [00:10:03.21]

Mary: And we can't ever reach that point unless we're first willing to just be this injured person that we are?

AJ: Yeah, let's call it the injured mess, shall we?

Mary: The injured mess! Yep, I feel like that often.

AJ: And as I've presented in many talks how often we go through this state where we're firstly in the facade, and that's a very proud and arrogant place. It's very, very resistive to truth. It has a very deep lack of emotional openness, and often is quite angry and fear based. Then you've got the injured self, which is what we need to progress into. And the injured self, is the person who still has all of these emotional injuries that come from our childhood that we are yet to release, so that we can become more loving, but at we least know those injuries. We at least allow ourselves to feel them without judgement. We at least allow ourselves to be that person; that's the beginning of humility. And then as we work our way through, we learn more and more about humility, and then we get to be our real self, and our real self usually is accomplished by the time we're at one with God. Now we're recognising our real personal self. There's still further development that we can have as a personality, but we now have the foundation, if you like, of our real self, which is obvious to ourselves and also to everyone around us at that point. And so what I see a lot of people doing is they live in their facade, hoping and try to make themselves humble in the facade, but because it's not yet being able to examine the injured self, it's nowhere near humility yet. Once a person starts getting into their injured self and being their injured self, now they have a great deal more humility than they had before. And then as they release the injured self, as they release the emotions that cause their injuries, they now become their real self who is totally capable of being completely humble, while at the same time being the pinnacle of God's creation. [00:12:06.19]

2.4. Humility takes its name from a Greek word meaning "of the earth"

Mary: Yeah, wow. For me, I feel like I've been stuck in facade for a long time and the thought of acknowledging and experiencing this injured self has felt so powerless. Yet now when I touch into that place I feel the power of it, because immediately, like there's just a groundedness and more truth is just flowing as a result. And it was interesting when I looked up these definitions the root of the word humility actually comes from the Greek word humus, which is of the earth, or of the ground. And I thought, "Wow, yeah, I feel that the root really has a lot of meaning." [00:12:55.15]

AJ: Yeah, there's sort of an irony in it, in a way, in the meaning of the word, because the reality is our body is made of the ground, we contain all of the elements that are in the ground. As a result we need to understand where we came from in a way, the fact that we were created and we didn't create ourselves. We didn't make ourselves. Once we understand that, then we can always be humble in our relationship with God. We always defer to God's authority, we always submit to God's authority in that place, because we understand where we came from. [00:13:34.02]

3. What it means to live in humility

Mary: Yeah, and I think that's probably one of the questions that I wanted to ask you about because I often see people around us, or even myself, begin to feel like humility is about feeling our emotions and therefore humility equals an ability to cry. But what I see you reflecting is something really different. It's kind of a quality I see that affects the way you live every day. It's not just about a willingness to feel your emotions, but there's a real respect for God and God's Truth within that. I want to spend the rest of this interview and possibly the next asking about all the aspects of humility, but just if you could give us an overall picture of what is looks like to be humble, all of the time? [00:14:30.19]

AJ: Sure. I mentioned this ability to be yourself at all times without being conscious of yourself very much at all. And so in other words when we're humble, we have no real self consciousness in the sense. We're not worried about ourselves or worried about how we appear to others. We're not worried about how things look to others, or what we're doing, and how it looks to others. [00:15:00.14]

Mary: So is that really an element of pride? When I'm still conscious of how's this person viewing me, that's just an indication I've still got pride within me?

AJ: Yeah, well it's an indication that there are still emotions within where we're being self judgemental, and the only reason why we would be self judgmental is because we want to portray ourselves to be something that we're not. That is one of the things that an arrogant or proud person does. The reality is, that once we are humble we portray ourselves as we truly are, and in fact it's not even a portrayal, in the sense that it's not something we attempt to do, it's just something that naturally happens without thinking about it. So that's one of the main aspects of humility. Secondly, when we're humble we feel everything as we feel it. So our emotions are written on our face in other words. We don't try to mask our face with a whole series of emotions that are not present within our soul, or vice versa, mask our face with a smile when inside of our soul we feel sad, or ashamed, or angry, or bitter or whatever other emotion we feel. We allow the complete reflection of our true emotional condition to come out. It doesn't mean that we'll be obnoxious to everyone, because in fact if we're truly loving we wouldn't be obnoxious, and if we're truly humble we wouldn't try to impose our unloving behaviour upon another person. But we would always be focused on being as we truly are in every situation, in the sense that we wouldn't even worry about what other people would think about us if we were crying in front of them. We wouldn't worry if we have a funny laugh. We wouldn't worry if we felt ashamed or any other emotion that we might feel. All of the emotions we might feel we allow to be present, and any of the emotions that we might feel that might be potentially damaging to another person, if we are humble, we would actually remove ourselves from their company and allow ourselves still to feel those emotions. We wouldn't project those emotions onto another person and cause another person to feel bad, just because of an emotion we have that we're displaying. [00:17:23.18]

AJ: If we're truly humble, we're very sensitive to everyone around us in the sense of sensitive to their feelings, but we don't always respond to their feelings, if their feelings are out of harmony with love. So in other words, we know when a person's angry with us but we don't respond to an angry person out of harmony with love, if we're truly humble. If we're not humble, when a person's angry with us we get angry in return. Or if we're not humble, when a person's angry with us we might feel fear and try to placate them. If we're humble, we will still be who we truly are, even in an environment that is full of pressures and circumstances and situations that would normally tempt the average person to get out of their own truth about themselves. So we would always truthfully reflect our true feelings to others and the more humble we become, the less angrily we would respond to other people's attacks on ourselves. We become less defensive as time goes on. We still have a desire to defend truth, in the sense we always talk about truth and we act in harmony with truth, we talk about love and we act in harmony with love, but it's not because we're trying to defend ourselves, it's because we want to defend or state what the truth is. [00:18:48.18]

3.1. True humility honours God's Love and God's Truth above ourselves

Mary: When you say defend I think of a rigid sort of a stance. Is it more just stand for something to honour something?

AJ: Yeah. It's more the honour of the main qualities that we're trying to honour. Firstly there's Divine Love, God's love. Then there's natural love, human love. Then there's God's Truth, if you like, Divine Truth. And then there's the truth, the absolute truth. These are the things we want to honour the most, more than ourselves. So more than we honour ourselves, we honour those things. And as a result of that, even when we are out of harmony with that, we will state that. And we will freely do so; we won't be worried about what other people think of us, and what judgements they have of us, or any of those kinds of things. In fact, when other people judge us we can observe the judgment, but once we're truly humble, we don't even feel the feeling of responding to the judgement. However, if a truthful issue or a love based issue is involved, then we would respond. In other words we would portray the truth, or portray the love as it truly is, but we would not do it just out of defence of ourselves. [00:20:06.00]

Mary: Yeah. And I think that's one of the qualities that I see in you, which helps me have a deeper understanding or feeling for what I will be like when I'm truly humble - you really honour God's Love and God's Truth above yourself. So you enter situations, even when you might still have emotions, where it's very personally challenging, but you'll honour God's Love and God's Truth, because you have faith or a knowledge that by doing that it will be the best for everyone including yourself. [00:20:42.05]

AJ: Yes. And even if I'm afraid I realise that I have to go and feel my fear. And even if I cry in front of somebody else then I'll just have to just cry in front of somebody else if that's the way it is. And if they laugh at me crying in front of them then so be it. As you know I get a lot of people ridiculing me and trying to humiliate me on a daily basis, and the key is that once you're humble you notice them attempting to do it, but you don't feel any need to respond to those attacks. [00:21:18.09]

3.1.1. True humility doesn't elevate or deprecate

Mary: I really admire that especially when it comes to issues surrounding my own worth. I have a lot of issues with speaking up for the fact that I might be just as worthy as you, or somebody else. And what I'm understanding more at a soul level now that a quality of humility is to recognise myself as of equal value to others. [00:21:41.15]

AJ: And even when you become truly humble you don't even think of yourself in terms of equality with another. There's just an emotional assumption within you that you do feel the same as everybody else and you do feel that they need to feel the same as everybody else too. So you don't even worry about what they feel about what you're saying so much, because you are just focused on saying the truth and doing it in harmony with love. That's all you're really focused on. So it actually simplifies your life greatly. It makes your life so simple because you're not worried about what other people think, you're not judging yourself, you're not trying to look at yourself while you're doing something. In fact, when you're doing something with others you completely forget what you look, like and it's only when somebody takes a photo of you or a picture of you and plays it back to you that you go, "Oh, is that what I look like today?" Because you don't even notice what you look like when you're interacting with another person. [00:22:39.21]

AJ: This is very different to a person who's not humble. A person who's not humble is constantly worried about what they look like, or constantly trying to portray themselves to be something greater than they are. When you're humble, you don't wish to do any of those things. [00:22:54.01]

Mary: Yeah. I see that also in the way that you interact with others, that there is always a firmness for truth, especially truth surrounding what is loving and what is not. There was a memorable event when we were in Greece where there was an issue of love with some people in the group, and how they were treating us came up. For me I was completely self-conscious, completely freaked to actually address this with people. [00:23:28.17]

AJ: Because you didn't feel like you could address it because you were the target of the unloving behaviour.

Mary: It was about me. If it was about somebody else then that would be okay, but there's an injury in me about that.

AJ: Whereas with me I just see myself as exactly the same as you, so myself getting attacked by another is the same as you getting attacked by the other, and my response is going to be the same. [00:23:47.24]

Mary: And that to me is beautiful and I also see in you there's a firmness for issues around love and truth with others, with me, but with yourself equally, and to me that seems like a quality of humility also. [00:24:00.09]

3.2. A truly humble person always examines themselves before others

AJ: Yeah a person who's humble doesn't examine other people first. They always examine themselves first. And so they are always checking themselves against the general principles of truth and love first, and they do that before they address anybody else, because they realise that the fact is, that anytime the person themselves, myself, gets out of harmony with love or truth, it has a Law of Attraction of itself, of its own. And so when other people treat me unlovingly I don't first look at them, I always first look at myself and go, "Okay, there's obviously something in my soul here that's allowing their soul to feel that they can treat me unlovingly." And so that's what I first look at before I address the issue with them. And the only times I do address the issue with them is when they are in my personal space. Quite often, as you know, I'll allow poor treatment of myself in other people's space and only look at myself in those circumstances. That doesn't mean that I will seek out their company later, because obviously they've treated me unlovingly, and if I loved myself I wouldn't seek out the company of people who treat me unlovingly, but I don't feel the need to address their issue when in their space. At the same time I can feel that they don't have any desire to understand what they were doing. [00:25:40.05]

3.3. Humility honours God's Laws and God's Gifts

Mary: Yeah. So humility is not just having a big cry from everything we've just talked about, there's an automatic honouring of God and God's Truth within humility, isn't there? [00:25:55.11]

AJ: And God's Laws and God's Gifts. So you have the gift of free will. If I'm humble I'll honour your gift of free will. I won't try and manipulate it or control it or anything like that. You've been given a lot of other gifts from God, such as the gift of love. Also we're not in a competition with each other. I don't see myself ever as being in a competition with another person and so I'm not always trying to say, "Oh I did this," and the other person goes, "Oh I did that," and we try to compete about what was done. Because there's no need to compete if you're truly humble. You know what you've done, and you also honour what other people have done without restraint, and without feeling bad about yourself with regards to what somebody else has achieved. [00:26:42.09]

Mary: Yeah. You said something beautiful about that recently - just respecting God's Gifts in another person. So when someone else excels, seeing that not just as their achievement, but a reflection of the gift that God has given them in its fullest potential. [00:27:01.01]

AJ: Yeah. I sort of see when other people achieve things or excel, it's like a reflection of God's Gifts in them, and I'm quite often amazed of what people can achieve physically, emotionally and spiritually based purely on desire and personality that God has given them. These are part of the gifts God has given them. So I don't see myself as a person competing with anybody. I'm not in a competition, I'm just doing the things I passionately desire to do, and living my life as I passionately desire to. I don't see that there is any need to compete, there are plenty of resources, and there are also plenty of abilities in each person to make them unique. So I don't see any need for anybody to view me as special, and for that reason I don't treat anybody else as special either. I treat them the same as how I treat myself. [00:28:02.11]

3.4. A truly humble person is not invested in what everyone else is feeling

Mary: And probably the last point that I've found that was really significant in what you just said was, how when I'm humble I can feel everyone else, but I'm not hooked into what everyone else is feeling. So sometimes I see people thinking that when they're feeling their emotions that they're being humble, when very often there's a lot of narcissism in what's happening. There's a lot of self involvement. And I feel that's a really vital point that you've just given us there, because often I suffer in the opposite way, where I'm more attached to what you're feeling or what someone else is feeling, and as soon as I feel that thing I want to go away from what I'm feeling. So my own feelings are equally as important as your own? [00:28:58.12]

AJ: Not only that, once you're truly humble you've made this shift away from examining yourself through everyone else's eyes. You only examine yourself through God's eyes, basically. So what that means is that you're allowed to be yourself, because that's who you currently are, and you don't worry about what anybody else thinks of that. Even when you know they think badly about it, or they have a lot of judgement about it, you still allow yourself to be who you are. The only reason why you would modify yourself in company is, because you're so afraid of somebody else treating you badly as a result of being who you are, or you have a lot of self judgement about being who you are. Both of those positions are positions of arrogance actually, not of humility. I also feel though there's this other aspect of humility, which is our relationship with God. To enter a relationship with God and receive truth from God, you've got to be in a very open humble space emotionally, and I feel that's the essential part of humility. We can discuss all the interactions we have with people, but it's our interactions with God that are actually the true test of our humility. [00:30:15.20]

4. Humility is the cornerstone of our spiritual development

Mary: And this way my next question to you was why is humility so important? Would you call it the cornerstone of our spiritual development?

AJ: Well yes it's the cornerstone of our development as far as it depends upon us. In the sense that God is trying to help us become more humble every single day, but it is our will that we must exercise in order to achieve true humility. So in other words, humility is something that we must choose to develop. It's not something that's automatically present within our soul, and if we go way back to the first human couple, they didn't have humility developed in their soul. They could have developed humility but they did not, and they decided they wanted to be equal to God, and that was the sticking point. That's the first arrogant position that anybody can take, a desire to be equal to God, or to be God himself. And if you look at a lot of New Age teaching today they all teach that you're God. They're all a part of this basic underlying arrogant stance, which is that we are equal to God, or we are gods, or we are a part of God. And I can't agree with any of those things. In fact you cannot establish a relationship with God while you believe such things. [00:31:38.18]

4.1. Humility is essential to establish a relationship with God

AJ: The reason why is because God existed before we did. That being the case, God knows much more than we do. And God will always know much more than we do. No matter how rapidly I grow as a soul, God has already been there before me. God's already been in that knowledge, and in that circumstance, and in that situation, and knows about the intricacies of life in far more detail than I ever will, or ever do. For that reason, my humble place in my relationship with God is essential if I wish to learn. What humility does to me is it opens my soul enough for me to hear God. Without humility we cannot hear God. What we do is we hear ourselves, or we hear others who we respect, but we don't hear God, because to hear God you must be in a very, very humble place. And when I say, "hear God," because God communicates with feelings, I have to be in such a humble place with my emotions in order to hear God, because I'm going to hear God through my feelings. That's how I'm going to hear God. That's also how I transmit my feelings to God, that's how I feel for God, through my feelings, but it's also how I hear God. [00:33:01.10]

AJ: And so if you think about it, all of God's Truths, which are all about hearing knowledge from God, are completely dependent upon my soul being completely in a humble state. And if humility is all about emotions; that means that I must be in an emotionally humble state. It doesn't matter intellectually how humble I think I am, or it doesn't matter how humble I try to be, I must emotionally be in a humble enough place that I can hear God's feelings about every matter. And what I love about that is that God is basically saying to us, "Look, to have a relationship with me," He's saying, "you've got to be humble enough to recognise that I know more than you do." That's what he's really saying to us. And, "That I know in my feelings more than you do."

AJ: And so that means that from God's perspective, I must open up my feelings completely to everything around me and to God Herself. And open up my feelings, in such a way that I'm completely willing to experience everything emotionally that gets projected at me from the universe God has created, so that I can learn. And when I'm in that much of a humble place, I can hear God clearly. Once you can hear God clearly then you have the ability to hear Divine Truth, God's Truth can enter you. Without humility, there is no truth. Truth cannot enter you. You can hear things in your mind through your ears, and into your brain, and into your mind, and it makes no difference whatsoever to your life, because you're not humble. Because when you're humble, you don't hear with your mind or your ears, you hear with your heart, and to do that requires that you are completely open hearted. You've got to be able to hear and be sensitive enough to hear every single thing that God is trying to say, at any given moment to you through your heart, through this transaction with your heart. [00:35:10.06]

4.2. Humility is the doorway to Divine Truth, and Divine Truth is the doorway to Divine Love

AJ: So you could say that humility is the doorway to Divine Truth. Now Divine Truth is the doorway to Divine Love. I cannot receive Divine Love unless I'm in a state of Divine Truth. But humility is the doorway to Divine Truth. So without humility I can never receive Divine Love. Never! Divine Love is the substance of God that changes the soul. So the reality is, I might be able to develop myself in my natural love to a certain point, to say the 6th dimension, the perfect natural man, but I'm never going to develop beyond that without this quality of humility. That needs to be developed. And once the quality of humility is developed, now I have a doorway open into Divine Truth entering my soul. Once Divine Truth has the capability of entering me as emotions, I can feel the truth emotionally, and then I'm in the state where I've opened the door into receiving Divine Love. I can receive Divine Love while I'm in a state of Divine Truth. [00:36:17.21]

AJ: And what I love about what God has done with that is, that God is constantly trying to get us to go into humility. "Go into humility," He's saying to us all the time. And we're often going, "No, no, no, I can't do that, it's too painful, I'll look bad, other people will think it's bad, other people will make fun of me," and all that does is tells us that we don't really value our relationship with God enough to be completely humble to God. [00:36:49.08]

Mary: Yeah, and one of the things that I had written down was, that humility is the part where I use my will in order to establish a relationship with God. God's already using His will. Humility is all I need to do in order to use my will, in order to make the connection.

AJ: Exactly.

Mary: But what I often feel is that I want God more than I want myself, and that can't happen.

AJ: No. Because if you're truly humble you would let yourself receive God's opinion of you, and God's opinion of you far exceeds your own opinion of you generally. God has a very complete opinion of you. He knows what He created. He knows its beauty. He knows it's potential. He knows its potential for change and growth. He knows everything about the personality He created. So He knows better than you do about yourself. If you're truly humble you will let God tell you about yourself through an interaction. If we're not truly humble we try to tell ourselves about ourselves. We try to learn about ourselves but don't engage God in the process. What we're doing there is we're waiting for other people to tell us about ourselves, or the universe to tell us about ourselves, but we're still closed to God telling us about ourselves, which is the most humble position we can have. [00:38:13.22]

Mary: Yeah. And I suppose from what you said, when we're humble we're open to experiencing everything at an emotional level, which is how we learn about God. Not just receiving God's Love, but His Laws, and that's how we actually begin to learn like a child again. [00:38:35.22]

AJ: Yes, well if you see all of God's Laws as God's Truth. So when we start, if we're in a humble place we're open to God's Truth. That means we're open to all of God's Laws. Now God's Laws are the framework of his entire universe, and there are laws pertaining to every single thing we can think of physically, spiritually, emotionally and with regard to the universe physically. Then we look at the spiritual matter. Then we can look at the soul-based matter. There are all these laws affecting all of those things, but without humility I'm never going to understand them. I'm never going to grasp them. I'm never going to be able to hear enough from God to get them. And so when I use the term "God's Truth" I'm lumping all of those laws together. All of that framework that God has made together, that runs the entire universe. In that place of truth, God's Truth, or absolute truth, humility allows me to feel truth. Humility allows me to get to the point where I can receive truth, because if I'm not humble I can't receive truth. You try telling somebody who's arrogant something about themselves that they don't like. They're never going to hear it. And the reason why is because they are not humble to hearing about themselves. [00:39:53.22]

AJ: Now even if we're wrong about the person, a person who's humble won't react negatively about that, because they'll already have a very good opinion of who they are, and so therefore there's no need to react. And there's no emotion inside of them to cause them the reaction. But in our relationship with God, if you think about it, God's got all this love to give; got all this truth to give but none of it can enter us without our first being humble. And so therefore humility becomes a key point about the Divine Truth, about how we respond to Divine Love. If we are not humble, we're going to receive very little Divine Love. It's going to come in dribbles at the times when we're humble, which is when we're behind closed doors in our bedroom perhaps, having a moment of clarity where we see ourselves as we truly are. If that's the only time we're humble, then that's the only time we're going to ever have any truth enter us, and that's the only time we're going to ever receive any Divine Love. If we can be in that state 24 by 7, every single moment of our waking hour and all of our sleep state, then we have the ability to receive Divine Love all of the time. And in fact once we become at-one with God, we will be that humble that we're able to receive Divine Love at any time, because we're able to receive Divine Truth at any time. And that gives us the ability to grow rapidly. If we're not humble, we will grow very slowly. Change will be forced upon us through circumstance, situation and the Law of Attraction. [00:41:35.09]

Mary: Which is really God saying, "Go into humility."

AJ: Yeah, God going, "Be humble here. Be humble here." And you're going, "No, no, no, no, no, no," and then a more severe event occurs, and eventually the severity of the event becomes so strong that you're forced into humility, just that one time. And then you allow yourself to be humble at that one time, and you receive a little bit of truth, and a little bit of love in the process. Then if you still stay resistant you don't develop the quality of humility, you'll have to go through the next thousand years of that until you go, "Oh! I need to be humble there too." And after a while God, through this process, is teaching us that the best course of action is humility. And as you know from your own emotional processing so far, you can say that you're not really yet in that place where humility is the first course of action. [00:42:29.06]

Mary: No.

AJ: And that's what I feel stops most people from progressing rapidly. They do not take humility as their first course of action. It's the last resort when everything else has failed, and that's the time generally when people are humble. [00:42:45.13]

Mary: Yeah, and in our later interviews I want to just spend the entire time talking to you about why we find humility so difficult.

AJ: Sure.

4.3. Humility opens us up to change

Mary: I'm often struck when you hear about people having spiritual realisations, or when they kind of wake up and change their whole life in another direction to one that's more meaningful. Often, when you read people's stories or you hear them talking about it, it comes at a time of crisis when they're forced into humility. Few people seem to recognise it, that it was actually the state of humility that opened them to this huge change. [00:43:28.14]

AJ: Yeah. And also they don't realise that if they actually learnt from that first experience, they'd never have to have another time of crisis. If you're truly humble, you don't need to have a time of crisis ever again. Because when you're truly humble you just feel everything that comes along at the moment that it comes, rather than it building up over a long, long period of time. For most people it's like standing on the edge of a precipice when it comes to feeling their emotions, and looking over and they're going, "Do I have to feel that? I'm going to die if I feel that." If we're truly humble we don't have those feelings anymore. We don't have feelings that we're going to die, if we have to feel an emotion. We automatically embrace the emotion because it is the easiest course of action, and it is the most humble thing to do. The most humble thing to achieve is to actually embrace every emotion as it's triggered, as it occurs, not hold it on for later, hold on for later, hold on for later, and eventually let it build up and build up and build up until we get to a crisis. [00:44:30.16]

AJ: And so this whole concept that people have of, they have to go through a crisis in order to get closer to God, while many people in reality do go through crises to get closer to God. The reality is we don't have to have crisis after crisis to get closer to God, because if we were truly humble we wouldn't even see them as crises. [00:44:54.16]

Mary: Well that's right, and I sort of feel like I lived my whole life in this sense of being where there's a lot of pain in me, but I've learnt a lot of ways to be numb to it. [00:45:04.15]

AJ: Yes.

4.4. Humility does not try to manage or control emotion

Mary: "Be numb, be numb, be numb." And in the last four years things have definitely changed for me and I'm much more sensitive now, and the pain of not feeling becomes unbearable in a much shorter period of time than it used to. I could go for years without crying but now if things are being shaken up in me there's still this initial feeling like, "Oh!" especially when it's fear or shame. [00:45:38.06]

AJ: A feeling of attempting to manage the emotion.

Mary: Absolutely.

AJ: And the reality is when we're truly humble we never manage our emotions ever again.

Mary: Yeah.

AJ: We just feel them. We don't manage them. We don't try to control them. We are very sensitive though too when we're out of harmony with love in the expression of them. So if we're truly humble we would never engage in an unloving expression of our emotion. [00:46:07.00]

Mary: Could you tell us what that would be?

AJ: Well I'll give you two examples of what an unloving expression of our emotion might be. One relates to anger. So let's say something is emotionally triggered inside of myself, an unloving expression of the emotion would be to yell and scream at you about something different, or about the thing that's been triggered, rather than feeling the underlying fears and grief that I have inside of myself. When we're truly humble we will never do that again. We will always firstly go to the emotion inside of ourselves. [00:46:42.23]

AJ: If we had fear, for example, I wouldn't then try to make you, or explain to you why we should live in our fear or justify our fear. Or I wouldn't justify my fear to you. I would just feel my fear. Feel the trembling of my fear, and then if you even made fun of that, I would feel how bad it feels to be made fun of for being so afraid about a particular thing. And I would still engage the feeling. And they're the kinds of things that we would do if we were truly, truly humble. I feel for a lot of people the reason why they find the Divine Love Path so difficult is because they've yet to learn humility. They've yet to learn what it's like to be truly humble. They've yet to learn how important humility is, and in fact that humility isn't humiliation. In fact, if you look at it from God's perspective, when we are humble, that is the first time that we can have a connection with God. [00:47:45.16]

4.5. Humility allows us to connect to God

AJ: So if you look at it from that perspective, God is looking for our humility constantly. Whenever we're humble we now are open to truth, and so therefore we have the ability to receive truth when we're humble. In the first century I said, "The meek will inherit the earth," and, "Keep on seeking and keep on knocking. Keep on asking and it will be given to you." A person who's humble is like that emotionally. What they're doing is they're seeking emotional truth all the time from God. They're wanting to know and they keep knocking because they want to know about themselves truthfully, and that doesn't mean that God sees everything negative. So quite often what we see about ourselves as negative, God sees a lot more positive than we do, and we need to accept that. We need to be humble enough to accept somebody else's opinion of us, even when it differs from our own opinion of ourselves. [00:48:50.09]

AJ: And that's a part of humility and particularly a part of humility in our relationship with God. If we can't do that, we can never become the person God created us to be. Because God, has this beautiful ideal of our potential, the thing that He created us to be. What we are so bound up in, is our own impressions of ourselves and that while we're so bound up in those impressions, it's impossible for us to ever be what God created us to be. To be what God created us to be, we've got to throw out what our perception of ourselves currently is and we've got allow God through this relationship to allow us to see what we truthfully are. Firstly, what we truthfully are with all of our injuries, warts and all, and then what we truthfully are once we've cleared those from us. And then we'll see a very beautiful creature that God created, and we'll be completely humble in that space. [00:49:50.04]

5. The two stages of humility

5.1. Becoming as humble as a child

Mary: Yeah. It's beautiful, and stirs me so much because of this feeling that I have of desiring God. It just feels there's so much pain associated with the definition of myself that I currently hold. Probably the last question I wanted to ask you about before we get on to some of the specifics is; how does God view humility? Did He put humility into us? When we're born are we humble? Is it a part of our nature? Or is it something that every single one of us must use our will to develop? [00:50:35.03]

AJ: Well I would say there's two parts to that. Firstly, by nature God created us relatively humble. When I say relatively humble, God created us to be far more humble than the majority of persons are on Earth today. Because, if you look at a child, a child does feel its emotions the instant that it has them. A child doesn't have really much self concept of itself. It's learning about itself, but it doesn't have a lot of judgement about itself and it doesn't have a lot of criticism of itself. When it's learning how to walk for example, it doesn't get up, fall over, and then go, "Oh I'm a useless person. I'm never going to get up again." The child just gets up, and it's humble enough to take the next fall, and then have a big cry about the next fall. And even if it's a bad one it will get up and try again, and get up and try again, and get up and try again. You see these qualities in the child constantly. [00:51:29.11]

AJ: As time goes on though you see parents sort of browbeat those qualities out of the child, and the environment does browbeat the qualities out of the child. The child becomes less and less humble as a result. Now, what I'm saying though is that we have the ability to even become more humble than we were even originally as a child. But before we become more humble we need to at least become like a child. [00:51:58.11]

Mary: As humble as the child was.

AJ: As humble as the child was. And so I feel there are two steps in our progression when it comes to humility. The first step is undoing this environmental damage. The emotional injuries that are within us to such an extent that we can be like a child again, when it comes to our humility. So, that we can accept the truth and absorb truth without judgement, without criticism, without laughing at it, and without ridiculing it. We can accept love. We can accept feelings without ridiculing them, without judging them, without attacking them and so forth. This is what a child does, particularly a very, very young child. So our first step in our progression of humility is going back to the time when we were a child. That's number one. [00:52:46.01]

AJ: Now that to me is a place that God created us to be naturally, and if the environment were different we would all already naturally be there. But we have to now make a choice to go back to that state. We can't just think that state is going to come naturally. The reality is we've been covered over with many emotional injuries and lots of those create arrogance and a facade. So we've got to make a positive choice inside of ourselves, take personal responsibility, and actually choose to undo that state and go back to the child. However, once we get back to the child, we still have this beautiful ability to develop even further in our humility. In fact my feelings are now that the closer you get to God, the more humble you become. And the reason why that is the case is because you understand more and more how much you don't know. You understand more and more how much there is yet to learn, and so you become like an everlasting student, rather than a person who feels qualified to teach. So you become a student of everything. [00:54:01.16]

5.2. Becoming more humble than a child

AJ: And this is all a part of having that humble spirit. So you can actually develop humility beyond what was originally given as a part of your nature and personality, and develop such a deep humility that every feeling God has, you allow to enter you. And every truth God has, you allow to enter you. Now I feel that as you progress you get to a point where you're at-one with God in the condition of love, but there are still blockages. When I say blockages, there are still capacities of the soul, the soul has to grow and expand in order to receive the next thing from God, after that point. So Divine Love has the effect on the soul of expanding the soul, and humility has the effect on the soul of allowing it to stay open to new truth. And so the closer I get to God, the larger I become. I become larger, but I also become more humble. And therefore, more absorbent, and spongier, when it comes to receiving God's feelings, and thoughts, and feeling God's Truths. [00:55:13.22]

AJ: And so that allows me then to discover more truth beyond the point of at-onement with God. So we can continue to discover more truths for the rest of our existence and as we discover more truths my feelings are we'll become even more humble. Every new truth that we discover will make us even more humble, and the more love we receive we'll become even more humble. That will be an everlasting process. And that is humility that far exceeds our original design. Our original design is the type of humility that a child has, or even a bit more than that, because most children, by the time they're just born, are already a little resistive because of the parental environmental emotions. [00:56:00.20]

AJ: So if we can imagine a conceived child with no emotional damage, and how humble they would be, we have the ability to become even more humble than that. That is the humility God created in us, but we have the ability to grow the quality as well. So with regards to the stages of humility, the first stage is going back to the child. Most people I see and meet are very resistive to that, even after years and years of discussion about Divine Truth and Divine Love. But that's the first phase. The second phase is once you get to that place, and that place is completed, then the second phase is now expanding with your ability to absorb even more of God's Truths, which means becoming even more humble than that condition. [00:56:51.23]

Mary: So really why humility is so important is that we cannot connect with God without humility? It's just a physical scientific impossibility really. [00:57:07.06]

AJ: Yes you can grow to the 6th dimension of the spirit world with a degree of humility, but you need to have this very childlike humility to get beyond that place, to the 7th dimension of the spirit world. And to become at-one with God you need to be pristine with your childlike humility. So I see and have met many spirits in the 6th dimension of the spirit world who are in varying degrees of arrogance. Some of them are quite humble but still quite resistive to new truths, so therefore yet to learn that real childlike humility. But I also see many 6th sphere spirits or 6th dimensional spirits who are very arrogant and have no concept of God as a result, and no concept of the human soul as a result. They don't understand the basics of God's Truth. They intellectually come up with many complex ideas but with no understanding of it at all, and they can only observe and reflect upon their observations like a scientist who has no feelings. [00:58:08.10]

AJ: And I'm not saying scientists have no feelings, I'm saying imagine a scientist who had no feelings trying to examine truths. It's very, very hard. If you look at even scientists in the world, the ones that are most successful are the ones who are connected with their feelings, because they often respond to the feelings of spirits, to direction from where God is leading them, and as a result they experiment with things that far exceed what their colleagues are willing to experiment. And that's the case with a person who's following the Divine Love Path too. The person who's discovering Divine Truth, the more humble we become, the more rapidly we can absorb new truths, and therefore the more rapidly we get to experience them and experience the joy of them. [00:58:53.17]

5.3. Humility is required to love others completely

Mary: And even if you put God aside in terms of the quality of humility, it feels to me that we can't really develop even personal integrity or an ability to love naturally another person in a complete way without humility. Would you say that is true? [00:59:09.22]

AJ: I agree with that. Yes. I feel there are many people who believe themselves to be the perfect human if you like, and the spirit world is literally littered with people like that. But because they don't have that childlike state, it's very, very, very difficult for them to grow beyond that place of self reliance. The childlike state causes God reliance and so it's very, very hard for a person who's truly humble not to eventually receive Divine Truth and become at one with God. [00:59:47.00]

Mary: So even just that desire to actually have a sense of personal integrity, to treat everyone equally and honestly and to love someone without reserve, or without trying to safeguard myself or think of myself as below or above them, that requires humility, if we really want to engage that? [01:00:08.14]

AJ: It does. But we can maintain that state to a degree intellectually, whereas the child doesn't try to maintain that state. The child is in that state. If you look at a child that hasn't been affected by its environment very much at all, it can go up to a person of another race or another colour and treat that person exactly as it treats itself. It can be generous with it, it can share. You see all this beautiful love being displayed in that place. It doesn't treat a person who knows more than itself with deference or with disrespect. It's a soak of knowledge, you know, it's like a sponge for knowledge. And the child is just beautifully like that. They're automatically like that. It doesn't have to intellectually think about being in that state; it just is in that state. And a person who's truly humble doesn't have to try to maintain a state of humility; they are in a state of humility without trying. [01:01:11.10]

And it's like all of the beautiful things about the Divine Truth. If we truly embrace the Divine Truth as God intended it to be, every change we make in our soul is achieved, and once that change is made we can maintain that change without trying. [01:01:28.11]

Mary: Without effort.

AJ: There's no effort because there is no emotion to prevent us from having those loving feelings coming out of us, or being in a humble place. [01:01:40.11]

6. Closing Words

Mary: Thanks, babe, that's really beautiful. For the next interviews I'd like to go through aspects of humility with you and I'm going to use, as my guide, some writing that you did a few years ago. So basically today I was hoping we'd cover the introduction to what is humility and then begin to discuss the aspects of humility, of which there are about 6, and I feel each is quite in depth. Then I was hoping we could dedicate the last interviews, sessions 4 and 5, to opposition to humility, and why we find humility so difficult. [01:02:33.08]

AJ: Right. So let's stop this interview now as session 1 and that way the audience can view first this first session as an introduction to humility. Then we can go into the more detailed qualities of humility and discuss them in detail in sessions 2 and 3. Thanks, babe. [01:03:35.22]

Mary: Thank you, darling.

Part 2 - Humility Session 2 - Humility in Practice I

7. Introduction

Mary: Hi again everyone. This is the second interview in my series of interviews with my soulmate, Jesus, about humility. Our first interview was basically an introduction to what is humility, and we defined what humility is, and what it isn't. In this session I'd like to focus on practical aspects of humility, what it means to live in a humble way, day to day. What that looks like in our lives. [00:00:59.22]

AJ: That sounds good.

Mary: Yeah. I think this is my favourite bit (Laughs) where we get down to the nitty gritty of what it actually looks like. As I said in the previous interview, I'm going to use the seminar outline that you wrote for the "Humility" seminar you gave in 2009. I feel there's a lot of fantastic content here, and if I perhaps just introduce the different points that you've written here and ask my own questions about that, I feel like we could cover some good material. [00:01:33.08]

AJ: Yeah. That sounds good.

8. Receiving Divine Love depends upon our desire to experience all emotion

Mary: Okay. So the first practical element or aspect of humility that you've written in the seminar outline is, that God's Love flowing into my heart depends upon my whole hearted desire to feel and experience all emotion. So before we talk about this whole hearted desire to feel and experience all emotion, which is an aspect of humility, why have you prefaced it with God's Love flowing into my heart depends upon this? [00:02:04.04]

8.1. Receiving Divine Love indicates we are in a state of humility

AJ: Well, the beauty of God's Love flowing into our heart is that it tells us when we're in a state of humility. So the reason why I've prefaced it like that is, because my feelings are, if you cannot feel God's Love flowing into your heart, it's because you're already out of humility. You're already not being humble. The fact is once we become at-one with God, we will be able to feel God's Love flowing into our heart every time we have a desire for it to flow, without any resistance. And that is a sign that we are truly humble. If we can't feel God's Love flowing into our heart, then that is a sign that we're not humble. That there's more humility we have to develop. If we understand what God's Love flowing into our heart is dependent upon, then we will at least begin to address those particular points of what it's dependent upon. Instead, what I see a lot of people do is they do not feel God's Love flowing into their heart moment by moment, so they go, "Oh that must be something wrong with God because I think I've got everything right now." [00:03:14.14]

Mary: So that's the way we're avoiding the truth that we're not fully in a humble place? [00:03:22.06]

AJ: Exactly. What we're basically doing there is we're saying, "I don't feel God's Love flowing into my heart 24 by 7 but that's because there's something wrong with God. There's nothing wrong with me, I've got everything sorted out." And the reality is that is a very arrogant position. God wants Her Love to flow into our heart all the time. If Her Love isn't flowing into our heart all the time, then it's because we either, A: Do not have a desire for it or, B: We are not humble enough. Now, if we do have moments where we do have a desire and yet the flow isn't occurring, then it's because we're not humble enough. It's because we're resisting true humility and if we understand that, then we can understand the importance of humility in our day to day life, in terms of receiving Divine Love. [00:04:07.02]

8.2. Becoming humble is all we need to do for our spiritual growth

Mary: It seems like if I just dedicated my whole life's work to becoming a humble person that would be all I need to do.

AJ: That's all a person needs to do. Every other truth can come to a person once they're humble, and all of God's Love can come to a person to the point of at-onement with God just by being humble. We don't need to learn anything else, aside from humility. [00:04:29.08]

Mary: For me there's often a sinking feeling of, "I'm not feeling God's Love flowing, so I'm obviously not humble," and I guess that's me not being humble as well by judging myself, if I then get down on myself about that. [00:04:46.03]

8.2.1. Self judgement takes us further away from humility

AJ: Certainly if you get down upon yourself about God's Love not flowing into you, then you're obviously feeling judgemental. Judgement towards oneself is a very counter productive emotion in that it's established through an arrogant condition of the environment. In other words, the environment judges us, so we judge us. It's very rare for a little child to judge itself without somebody in its environment first judging it. And we need to understand if we're going to become like a little child, we have to start removing these judgements from ourselves about ourselves, and the only way we're going to do that, is by starting to confront our environment with their judgements, on us as well. And once we get rid of a lot of those judgements, then we can start having a complete openness and that will help us a lot in our progress towards God, and also our progress towards humility. If we're invested in other people's opinion of us, then we're invested in arrogance, and unfortunately we're not going to progress very far when that happens. [00:05:49.08]

8.2.2. Investment in God's opinion of us leads us to humility

Mary: It's like we can be invested in God's opinion of us that will lead us to humility.

AJ: Always.

Mary: Would you say that being invested in what everyone else feels about us and can only lead us further away from God? [00:06:03.16]

AJ: Well it will at least stagnate us. It can't lead us towards God because in the end, the only way that we can progress towards God is to be completely open to God's opinion. When we're in a state where we're examining the world's opinion, or other people's opinion, or our environment's opinion of ourselves or even what we've learnt to have an opinion about ourselves within ourselves, those opinions have to be given up, and that requires humility to give them up because they're going to be emotional to give them up. [00:06:33.11]

Mary: When I feel about God's feelings about it, I can feel He's not in a state of judgement with me.

AJ: Not at all.

Mary: And yet I'm still enforcing this.

AJ: Exactly. And all God feels is compassion that we have gone so far away from humility; that we don't even recognise it anymore, that we can't even be humble in seeing our own faults anymore, and we're so invested in other people's opinion of us, and our own opinion of ourselves, that we can't just see ourselves as we truthfully are. God just looks upon us with a degree of compassion and goes, "Well when you can learn to see yourself as you truly are then I can connect with you, because I can only connect with you as you truly are. Not with you, the facade, or with you the injured person. It's with you as you truly are that I need to connect with." And if that includes injuries then sure, it will include the injuries, but the facade that we want to live in, which is the reason why we're invested in judgement; we need to give that up completely. [00:07:29.07]

9. Humility is a whole hearted desire to feel and experience all of our emotions

Mary: Okay, thank you. Let's go back then to our first point, our first practical aspect of humility, which is that it is a whole hearted desire to feel and experience all emotion. So what does it look like when I passionately desire to feel all of my emotions? [00:07:49.14]

AJ: Well firstly, you won't have any resistance to feeling any of your emotions. So when you have a whole hearted desire, if you think about the pendulum of desire, there's total resistance, then there's neutrality and then there's whole hearted desire. When it comes to feeling their emotions many people are in this totally resistive place. They don't want to feel any desire, because all they feel is that it's going to be painful, they're afraid of it, they're afraid of what it's going to look like, they're afraid of how they're going to be judged by it, and they are in aggressive resistance to feeling their emotions. Then after we release some of that, we generally go into a state of neutrality with emotion, where we're okay either way, where sometimes we get judged and sometimes we don't. So we're sort of okay either way, but that's still not having a passionate desire to feel our emotion. [00:08:42.15]

AJ: When we have a passionate desire to feel our emotion, it becomes one of the very first things we choose to do in our life. It becomes more important to us than our job; it becomes more important to us than all of our relationships, because we know that all of our relationships are defined by our ability to do it. And it becomes more important than almost all other things in our life, aside from our relationship with God. The whole reason why we do it is because we want that relationship with God. And because we want that relationship with God as our first priority in our life, we want to embrace the process of feeling all of our emotions. We don't go into a place where we're shutting ourselves down all the time, or we're reluctant. [00:09:20.03]

Mary: Or we're reluctant and say, "I've got to feel it."

AJ: We have a passionate burning desire to feel. It doesn't mean that we manufacture feelings, but whenever a feeling comes up, we embrace it, we don't reject it. We don't push it away. We don't control it. We don't try to shut it down for ourselves, in terms of how it looks to ourselves, or because we think we're going crazy or any other reason, and we don't shut it down for the benefit of anybody else either. However, we do experience it in a loving way. We don't project it outwardly in a negative way towards other people. We experience it in a loving way. If that means being alone, we choose to be alone and feel it. We don't feel it an addictive manner. We don't try to have our addictions met through the emotion. We embrace the emotion without addiction. [00:10:10.05]

9.1. Longing for God's Love above every other experience leads us to humility

Mary: And something you've written in the "Humility" seminar outline is, that our longing for God's Love becomes stronger than our longing for any other experience, and this is what leads us into humility. [00:10:18.02]

AJ: Yes.

Mary: This is very powerful, isn't it? When I think about all of the other experiences that we've built into our day to day life. If God's Love, and receiving God's Love was to surpass all of those things emotionally, we might say we want that, but if it was emotionally to happen, it would streamline everything, wouldn't it? [00:10:40.13]

AJ: The thing we need to bear in mind there is that if we definitely emotionally wanted that to occur, we would not be in any place of resistance at all. We would be constantly desirous of feeling absolutely everything, because we know that our very relationship with God, and therefore our entire possibilities for our future, which are dependent on our relationship with God, is all dependent upon our experiencing the emotion right now. And so we won't go into a place of resistance to the emotion, we won't try to avoid the emotion in that particular moment. If you look at it, the only reason why we would attempt to avoid an emotion at any point in time is because we are worried more about our relationship with others, or our relationship with ourselves, than we are about our relationship with God. [00:11:34.08]

AJ: The only reason why we would avoid an emotion, under those circumstances, is because something else has a higher priority in our life other than God. So if God had the true highest priority in our life, we would not choose to avoid our emotions for any reason, including how it might look, including our potential humiliation, including any of those other things that might come up, in terms of how it might seem to others. We're not invested in other people's opinion of us doing it. We're not invested in how they perceive us. We're not even invested in how we perceive ourselves. We're not worried that we're going crazy, because we know that in this place that only by choosing to feel our emotions can we get closer to God; and getting closer to God is our number one priority. And when we're truly humble it is our number one priority. [00:12:32.21]

9.2. If we honour God's Love above all other things we are not afraid to confront the error surrounding us

Mary: So that kind of touches on a few of the other points that you've put in the seminar outline, because you talked about not being invested in our relationships with other people. I suppose inherent in that is if we're honouring God's Love, or the desire for God's Love above other things, then we won't be afraid to confront the error that surrounds us through that process either. And something that you've written here is that if I'm really humble, am I willing to lose family, friends, property, position, power. [00:13:10.08]

AJ: Everything.

Mary: Everything in order to receive God's Love.

AJ: If you're truly humble and God is your number one priority, and your relationship with God is of first importance to you, then everything else takes a dim second place in terms of our priority system. Under those circumstances it's almost unimportant to us that we're going to lose friends. It's almost unimportant to us that we're going to potentially lose family, potentially lose other people's good opinion, potentially lose our business or lose the honour or respect of other people. Because all of those things are nowhere near as important to us, as our relationship with God. And so when we're humble, we have this beautiful ability to truly see our priority system, to understand how important this relationship with God is in our day to day life, and why we're seeking it. And that all other things come to us as a result of it. [00:14:19.04]

Mary: It's having the faith, isn't it, that if I go for this thing then whatever I lose along the way, other things will be added to me? Or that it will only confront the error? [00:14:29.14]

AJ: Well initially you might not even have that faith, but because your relationship with God is your number one priority, that won't even matter. You're not even invested in any of those things anymore. You see the things we place in our priority systems are all to do with our investments. Really, a lot of times they're all to do with our addictions. Our addictions get met through our investments. If we're only invested in our relationship with God, in which there can be no addiction, then it's impossible for us to have a competing investment that's more important than our relationship with God. And so whenever one of those competing investments come up, whatever the addiction is that we have that is coming up emotionally, we'll just naturally embrace it and experience it because... [00:15:20.01]

Mary: We'll just be humble to that experience.

AJ: Because why would we not want to be? We feel that our relationship with God is of supreme importance. This other thing is of next to no importance in comparison, so why would we remain invested in it? Why would we emotionally remain invested in it? A person who's humble doesn't. A person who is humble just feels it. They just feel it without the investment, because they know that the relationship with God is their number one priority. They might not even have any faith at that point that it will bring them anything. It's just that they want to have a relationship with God. It's a bit like if I badly want a relationship with you, I'm not going to let the telly interfere with our relationship. I'm not going to let my children interfere with our relationship. I'm not going to let my friends interfere with the relationship itself. [00:16:15.22]

AJ: I will be completely focused on our relationship in all aspects of my life. I'm not going to let my mates interfere. So if my mates make criticisms or whatever, I'll say, "No. This relationship with this woman is the most important thing to me." Now, if my relationship with God is the most important thing, even my relationship with you is going to be less important than my relationship with God, and therefore I'm going to be humble in my experience with you. Every single moment. Humble all the time. And this is the beauty of embracing it in that priority system. [00:16:53.03]

AJ: So when I have this passionate desire for God's Love, and that passionate desire exceeds my desire for all other things, I will be automatically very, very humble, willing to experience every emotion. Every criticism. Every loss. Anything that could come up. Every shame I have. Every potential shame I have. Every potential fear as well as every fear. I'll be able to act in harmony with that relationship every time, without compromise, because it's the thing of most importance. And I'm humble enough to acknowledge that it is the thing of most importance. [00:17:29.11]

9.2.1. If we are truly humble we are willing to look foolish and stupid to others

Mary: And in summary of a lot of things that you've said, is that we'd be willing to look foolish and stupid in the eyes of those around us. [00:17:40.03]

AJ: Very important.

Mary: But continue to receive God's Love.

AJ: Why would I not? God is the most important thing to me. At times other people in the world think God's a stupid concept. There are people in the world who believe God doesn't exist. They believe that anybody who invests their life in God in any way is stupid. Now I'm going to risk feeling from those people that they will project at me that I'm stupid, but I'll be willing to do that because my priority system is in place. My relationship with God is number one priority and I'm willing to feel that emotion as a result. [00:18:16.04]

Mary: And in fact I think it's quite contentious to put anything above family on the planet at the moment.

AJ: It is. Yes.

Mary: If you put anything above family you're already in the taboo, even if it is a relationship with God. I feel that emotion exists within most people.

AJ: Yeah. That reminds me of that interview we had with David Milligan. Do you remember how he said, "So you're saying that you've come here to break up families?" He never played this part of the interview but I said to him, "But your Jesus said, 'I come to make enemies between mother and son, father and daughter and husband and wife,' and so forth." The reality is that while we didn't come to make enemies, the truth is that there are times when those people will perceive themselves to be our enemy, because their priority system is different to ours. If our priority system is God number one, number two the soulmate union, and number three the family that soulmate union creates, number four all other people, then there are times when the addictions of other people in that priority system get challenged. As a result those people will become upset and potentially angry and even so, I will still be humble enough to feel all of that and still embrace my relationship with God, and still be humble enough to feel every emotion it creates as a result of their attack. [00:19:43.21]

Mary: So that's being willing to feel all the emotions about what I might lose on my path to at-onement with God. [00:19:51.22]

AJ: Because a lot of times we have fears about the future as well, not just about the present. So there are things that are happening in our life right now and then there are the things that potentially might happen if we fully embrace God first. And my suggestion to people is, if you're not fully embracing God first and you say you're on the Divine Love Path, then you're not humble yet, because once you fully embrace God first you'll find all of these other aspects of your life get challenged and that's fantastic. They need to be challenged and they need to be released. And we need to be in a humble place where we allow all that to happen. [00:20:23.07]

Mary: Yeah, absolutely, and a willingness to feel all of the emotions about being alone, being attacked, being belittled just to be ourselves. [00:20:32.22]

AJ: Just to be ourselves. And bearing in mind that when we feel our emotions in a truthful manner we are being ourselves, even if those emotions are injured, we're still being ourselves much more than we were when we were in the facade. [00:20:46.01]

9.3. If we are truly humble we never attempt to shut down or dampen our emotional experience

Mary: Definitely. Okay, there are a few things you've listed in the seminar outline that we would never do if we were in this whole hearted desire to feel and experience everything. So the first one is; that we would never attempt to use methods or techniques that shut down or dampen our emotional experience. [00:21:05.05]

AJ: Yes. I see a lot of people in spiritual persuasions constantly trying to use techniques that are really all about trying to re-program their emotions. They don't want to just feel the emotion that's present. They want to try to transform it into something different, and they use all of these techniques. Some of these techniques are intellectually based, some of them are fear based, and some of them are almost religious belief system-based, in the sense that a belief system is created to manage the emotion. So for example, you see in many forms of religion a belief system that God is an angry God. This belief is created to manage an of, "I feel like I'm going to get punished when I have a relationship with God and I feel like that's what God wants to do, and so I want to believe in a punishing God. I want God to punish other people so therefore I have to believe in a punishing God for that to occur." These are all emotions that I would give up if I actually experienced my own emotions in a humble manner. But instead of doing that I create a whole series of belief systems that support my emotional injury. We would never choose to do that if we were truly humble. [00:22:18.16]

Mary: Yeah and I think of really practical things in my day to day life that I do to dampen down my emotional experience. Sometimes it's having a hot cup of tea. Sometimes when I have tea it's not about that, but often I catch myself trying to sooth myself rather than feel the rawness of my experience. [00:22:39.22]

AJ: To calm oneself down. Quite often it's the times when we get out of control that we get to close to our emotion, and yet you see people trying to get back into control. Also you often see them using food as a main way to get back in control. Or you see them avoiding certain types of people to get things back in control. A person who's humble doesn't do any of those things. A person who's humble just feels the feeling first before any of those things, so they know why they're going for a cup of tea of a cup of coffee. They know why they just walked around that side of the street when they saw the other person coming, they know because they could feel the emotion, they can feel the emotion that they're trying to avoid. [00:23:27.15]

Mary: And I suppose there are stages, isn't there? Like I used to do all those things in automatic, but now I'm aware of the emotion...

AJ: But still doing them.

Mary: Often still doing them but sometimes I go, "No, I'm going to just go for real humility here." So with true humility, I wouldn't even consider them anymore, I would just be fully embracing everything? [00:23:47.17]

AJ: Yes. So you'd see someone who you're afraid of walking down the street towards you and...

Mary: You'd go, "Great!"

AJ: You might still feel fear because that might still be an emotion in you, but you would walk towards them and engage the situation. [00:24:00.05]

Mary: And often I find now it's when things like that happen, I think, "Oh! Here's God answering my prayer to deal with my fear. Thanks, God. Now I feel afraid, this is your gift to me." I kind of have that feeling, but I'm still terrified sometimes. [00:24:16.13]

AJ: And its remarkable how many people are not humble in their prayers, because we often pray for God to show us something, God shows us something or creates a circumstance that shows us something, and we go out of our way to avoid it. And therefore we're going out of our way to be arrogant. If we were truly humble we'd embrace it, we'd go, "Wow, God, you're pretty lovely, you've just sent me another situation to challenge myself and help myself become more humble and feel more of my emotion. If I can embrace this situation, it's going to be wonderful." And it's such a loving God doing that for us all the time, and yet what we do instead oftentimes we go, "My Law of Attraction's really bad now. Why does this Law of Attraction have to be so bad?" We hear people say this all the time, and the reason why they're saying that is because they are still used to managing humility. They're trying to have a facade of humility. If you have to manage your life, then there's a facade of humility. [00:25:19.00]

AJ: A person who's humble doesn't need to manage their life, they just embrace their life fully, they allow everything to get triggered that gets triggered emotionally and they come out of the other side purified.

9.3.1. If we are truly humble we embrace our terror when it arises

Mary: Yeah and as you talk about it, I smell the freedom in it. It just smells life freedom. Just feel everything, be where you are, embrace every experience that's there. Let's say its terror... [00:25:48.03]

AJ: Well one of the first emotions that a person needs to get over with regard to humility is terror. So being humble enough to experience your terror. If you're humble enough to experience your terror, you'll be humble enough to experience most other emotions. But what I see most people doing with their terror is they avoid it or manage it, and so therefore they are not humble enough to experience their terror and as a result of that, they'll only selectively be humble with other emotions. [00:26:16.00]

Mary: Yeah I've been praying for a week about fear saying, "Okay, God, let's do this fear thing," and I've had a couple of opportunities to confront fear. So this morning when I woke up you touched a spot on my back and I was in utter terror, and that's where real humility is tested, because I go, "Okay I want fear but I don't want terror. This is too much; I don't understand how to feel this. This feels out of control. I don't even physically know what it's about; it's just a visceral feeling." [00:26:50.10]

AJ: And if you were passionately humble, what would you do? You'd get up, you'd sit up, and you'd start writing about the terror in your life and the terrifying events in your life about men. You would immediately do that if you were humble. You wouldn't wait for another person to encourage you to do it; you wouldn't wait for me to create the right space for you to do it. You would just automatically embrace that particular process because that is what being humble means. Most people are yet to arrive at that place. Most people who I know or who I've met who claim to be on the path towards God, whether they're on so called, "The Divine Love Path" or any other religious path, have yet to be that humble. I see that happening in day to day life, all the time where an emotion of terror is exposed and for almost every person I've ever met, when it's an emotion of terror is exposed, that's when true humility is tested, and most people do not have the humility to actually go through that emotional terror. So terror is an interesting test of our humility. [00:28:00.22]

9.4. If we are truly humble we will never get angry or afraid about feeling our emotions

Mary: Okay, there are a few other things we would never do. We'd never get angry, resentful or afraid about having to feel our own emotions. [00:28:09.07]

AJ: Yeah. So we wouldn't be rageful at God about the Law of Attraction and what it's brought us today. Really, when you think about it, it's not the Law of Attraction that bought us that particular thing, it's the unhealed soul emotional condition that's brought it, and so it's something inside of ourselves anyway. But we wouldn't have this tendency to blame externally everything. A person who's truly humble looks firstly at themselves, they don't blame the external environmental situation first. They always look at themselves, and a part of looking at themselves is looking at the situation, but they don't avoid the situation or themselves in the process. [00:28:48.03]

Mary: I found some old journals of mine the other day from four years ago, and it's full of resentment and rage at God, this system and...

AJ: At me!

Mary: Yeah. (Laughs)

AJ: There was a lot of it back then, wasn't it? (Laughs) [00:29:05.00]

9.5. If we are truly humble we do not feel we're losing things by choosing the Divine Love Path

Mary: You were presenting me with humility, or with truth. My humility was non-existent so there was a lot of this next point, which is, I was feeling like I'm giving up on things, or losing things because of choosing this path, and when I'm really humble I would never feel either of those things. And four years later I'm happy to say I feel the complete opposite, I feel everything has been gifted to me through this path, but that's been that's developed as my humility has developed, I suppose. [00:29:39.07]

AJ: Yeah. If we look at this whole aspect of feeling that you're losing things. If you look at it truthfully, that means that you believe that you've got things to lose, right? And that to me is a pretty remarkable proposition considering that when we begin our process towards God, we're totally removed from God generally, and yet we believe we've got things. And in my mind, and in my heart, my feelings are it's impossible to have anything without God. So bearing that in mind this whole concept that I'm giving things up such as, " I'm giving up caffeine" or, "I'm giving up alcohol," or, "I'm giving up eating meat, what a sacrifice," and all of these ideas of sacrifice, they're all based around emotional injuries that a humble person would just feel. And actually a truly humble person doesn't feel a resistance to giving things up all the time, because they know that if your relationship with God is the highest priority then what are these other things in comparison? And one of the things we do not understand at that point is that actually if I embrace my relationship with God everything, every beautiful thing, comes to me. My whole life will be enhanced in ways that I, at this point in time, cannot even imagine. And I need to have at least some faith in that concept. [00:31:13.16]

Mary: Yeah and that's what it feels like to me. I was trying to hold onto things that didn't have substance. They're like sand now. [00:31:22.08]

AJ: And they weren't even real, many of them, like holding on to the good opinion of another person when in reality you didn't have the good opinion of the other person.

Mary: I was working for it all the time!

AJ: You were working for it all the time and the reality is if you have the good opinion from another person, you would never lose it through you doing something that challenges them. And in fact doing something wouldn't challenge them, if you had their good opinion. So the reality is we get a lot of things challenged as we get closer to God. [00:31:47.20]

9.5.1. When we're humble we see which of our relationships have substance

Mary: And that's been a beautiful gift for me is because when I've decided to be humble and risk loss, which was my perceived loss, I've seen what wasn't real anyway. I've seen what actually did have substance and I oftentimes wasn't aware of it. Like relationships that actually had some substance. I valued the relationships more when I was in addiction with people. [00:32:19.09]

AJ: Than the relationships that had substance.

Mary: Yes. And when I've just decided to strive and strive to be more myself and go for my relationship with God, a lot of those addictive relationships fell away very rapidly. I was left looking at people who had actually seen something in me that I hadn't even seen, or who respected my difference just as they much as they enjoyed our similarities. [00:32:45.03]

AJ: And really in a way they are the people who saw you more as you truthfully are, than saw the facade. And so therefore they saw more of your real self, and often we reject those people who see more of our real selves because we're not humble enough to accept that self that they see. [00:33:10.00]

Mary: It's so true, isn't it? But this is why I feel like it feels so much like a risk, or a loss, when actually now the beautiful truth is that it's a gift, and now I see things with a totally different perspective.

AJ: People don't understand how hard maintaining a facade actually is.

Mary: It's exhausting.

AJ: I just see people exhausting themselves with their lives. I quite often liken it to juggling nine balls. That's what they're doing in their life, they're juggling, "How does that person see me? How does this person see me? How does my family perceive me? How do my friends see me? Oh I've dropped that ball I better pick that up while I'm still juggling these other 8 balls, and throw them back into the mix." And their whole life is so busy juggling everything, juggling all their work, the work mates and how they perceive them, all their friends and how they perceive them, their family and how they perceive them, their children even and how they perceive them, and how they perceive themselves. They are all in the facade and I just say, "You just need to stop juggling and just drop all the balls." Like that's what humility does. Humility says, "No, you don't have to juggle anything anymore, you just need to feel why you're juggling everything. That's all you need to do." And once you get into that place, you're willing to feel. You're willing to drop all the balls. The only reason why we keep juggling all the balls is because we're unwilling to drop a perception of ourselves that we wish to retain. And we have no hope of accepting God's perception of ourselves in this state. [00:34:43.13]

AJ: To accept God's perception of ourselves we're going to have to drop every perception that we imagine, or feel from our environment or from ourselves. We're going to have to drop all of those perceptions, and a truly humble person's willing to do that. And then just let it all be a mess on the ground and then start seeing which bits are what God created, and which bits are just the facade or the injury that we need to release. [00:35:09.09]

Mary: Yeah, so that's our first point, it was really about God's Love flowing into our heart being dependent on a whole hearted desire to feel and experience everything. All emotions. [00:35:20.24]

AJ: So we're really talking about the whole hearted desire to feel everything. So that's the main point of that section. We need to develop within ourselves a whole hearted desire to feel everything, not a half-hearted, "Oh, I'll do it if I have to," or, "Oh, I suppose I have to. The Law of Attraction's bringing me the event," or being resistive all the time, but rather a passionate desire to do it. [00:35:45.12]

Mary: Which is so beautiful, isn't it, but it does take work to develop that from where we are in our injured state, for most of us doesn't it? [00:35:52.10]

AJ: And it also takes a desire to release every perception we have of ourselves, and every addiction we have of other people perceiving ourselves a certain way. That's why it's so hard to do. It's one of the reasons why humility is difficult, as we'll talk about later. [00:36:10.23]

10. Receiving Divine Love depends upon our willingness to take responsibility for and release all error inside of us

Mary: Okay, so the next point then is that God's Love flowing into my heart depends upon my willingness to take responsibility for, experience and release fully, without reservation, all the error within myself that prevents God's Love from flowing. [00:36:58.03]

AJ: Yeah. I think the reason why I wanted to mention this next is because if you look at the previous point we talked about the fact that if we're humble we will have a passionate desire to feel everything. This point is having a passionate desire to take responsibility for everything. [00:37:18.05]

Mary: Which is different, isn't it?

AJ: Which is different in a way. One is having a passionate desire to feel everything; one is taking responsibility for everything we feel. Quite often I see what a lot of people do with their emotions; they want to blame other people all the time for their experience. Now, while our environment has played a large part in creating all of our emotions, it's impossible for any of those people who even created our emotions to actually release them for us. And this point honours that. A person who is humble knows that only they can actually take responsibility for everything that's in them now, and actually go through the process of desiring to release everything that's inside of them. A person who's truly humble doesn't say, "Oh well that person created my emotion, so I'm going to wait until that person's all sorry about that." At the end of the day the person who's truly humble knows that even if that other person is sorry, and even if the other person has completely repented and they feel terrible about what they've done, unless I take responsibility for the emotion that's in me, it's still going to remain in me. [00:38:36.22]

AJ: And if you're really humble you'll come to realise that it is pointless waiting for anybody else to change, when you are the only person who has the power to change you. So it's pointless waiting. If I'm truly humble I will never wait for somebody else to say they're sorry before I change, before I forgive them. I will never wait for somebody else to have a revelation of truth that causes them to change and treat me better, before I forgive them for how they're already treating me. I will always firstly address my own emotions, because I know that if I'm humble I have to know that only I can actually take responsibility for the feeling of my own feelings, and my own pain, and my own suffering. And in fact all of my own feelings, including my own joy. I often see people who are not very humble wanting other people to share in their joy as well. That's a mark of a lack of humility as well. The reality is we can sit and watch a sunset and feel all this joy without having to share it when we're truly humble, because we're fully engaged in our own experience. We take full responsibility for our own experience. We're not addicted to another person sharing it with us. [00:40:02.17]

10.1. When we're humble we do not seek validation or permission to feel from others

Mary: There's a lot in that, isn't there? For example, often we're waiting for validation, aren't we? Permission to feel.

AJ: Permission to feel, validation, we often cannot feel joy without somebody else feeling joy along with us.

Mary: Which is really about validation as well, isn't it?

AJ: It's really about validation but it's also about their joy heightens our joy, so it's about an addiction to their joy rather than actually feeling the experience itself. So we're addicted to the joy of them feeling the experience rather than just feeling our own experience. So there are a lot of things in that; that is about a lack of humility. When we're truly humble we will feel our own experience without expecting a single other person to share the experience, because we know that only we can feel the feelings of our experience. [00:40:50.20]

10.2. When we're humble we do not blame others for our pain and suffering

Mary: Yeah, and I see that when it comes to personal pain and suffering, things that have happened in our life, I see that people, myself included, can get caught on two sides of this coin. One is where we want to blame, we want the person to change, acknowledge they were wrong and then we'll feel like we will feel, which is a bit of a fallacy, isn't it? [00:41:11.09]

AJ: Very much so, because when you go through all of that you still realise that inside of yourself you still haven't felt it and inside of yourself you're still going to have to go through forgiveness. While it might be a touch easier now that the other person has felt about it, you've now made your entire relationship with God dependent upon this other person changing, which isn't a very humble place with God. Because God's saying, "I want a relationship with you." And you're saying, "I only want a relationship with you, God, when this person's sorry." And God's going, "Why would you wait till then? That might be a 1000 years' time! Why do you want to wait till then before you have a relationship with me? Why not have a relationship with me now?" And we go, "Oh, because I still want that," because we're too arrogant to go through the emotion of forgiveness, where we actually forgive the person for what they've done and we work through our own experiences enough to do so, so that we can have this relationship with God. Then our relationship with God is completely independent of our relationship with anyone else. And if God is number one in our life, shouldn't that be the case? [00:42:17.01]

AJ: So if we were having a relationship, as we are, and I was saying to you, "Oh, I've got to wait till my son Caleb approves of you before we can have a relationship." Now Caleb does, this was just an illustration. "But I have to wait until Caleb approves of you before I have a relationship with you," then what if Caleb spends 25 years rejecting that? Then I'm going to spend 25 years rejecting you. Now that would demonstrate to you that Caleb has more importance to me than you do. [00:42:50.21]

Mary: That's the priority system.

AJ: That's the priority system. And so what we're often demonstrating to God, we often say, "Oh God I want a relationship with you," and at the very same time we're demonstrating to God that we're not really sincere about that, because we actually want the relationship with this person, and that person, and this person more. And that's not a relationship. A relationship with God is not possible under those circumstances.

Mary: Yeah. And that was the other side of the coin I was going to say, we can get caught in blame and demand that they acknowledge things. We want justice, and on the other side of the coin I see that we can get stuck with, "No one else in my family system is acknowledging my pain. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it didn't happen." Even though there's suffering and pain inside of me, I feel like I'm not allowed to feel it or it's wrong to feel it, it's disrespectful to feel it. [00:43:48.22]

AJ: Or maybe it didn't even happen.

Mary: Yeah.

AJ: You've got all these emotions but...

Mary: I second guess myself.

AJ: Yeah. But the reality is if you are humble you would just say, "No, I have these emotions and even if they're totally wrong, I still have them." [00:43:58.13]

Mary: And I need to take responsibility.

AJ: And I need to feel them.

Mary: And that's the thing that I feel as we're talking about this is what we're saying, "Where's God in our priority system?" And then, "Where are ourselves in our priority system?" [00:44:09.00]

AJ: Exactly. Next. So there's God in our priority system and then there's ourselves next, because we have to honour ourselves enough to be humble. This is the beauty of humility. Humility teaches us that we must honour ourselves. That's the beauty of humility. Because when we're truly humble, we will honour our entire experience. We will actually feel our entire experience without resistance. That is honouring ourselves. And so true humility allows us to honour ourselves, whereas, arrogance doesn't allow us to honour ourselves. It allows us to honour the public opinion of ourselves. [00:44:47.04]

Mary: The facade.

AJ: The facade, yes.

Mary: So with regards to this willingness to take responsibility that we're talking about, we've said that it means we want to take full responsibility for all of our actions, to not blame that on anyone else, and to have a longing to feel all of the pain inside of myself that's already there.

AJ: If we look at the actions it's like we would never say, "Oh, but such and such made me do that." Or, "Oh, I did that because..." and come up with some kind of explanatory reason why we acted in an unloving manner. Because a person who's humble will go, "No, I acted in an unloving manner and it was wrong and I need to feel about it." [00:45:35.24]

Mary: Yeah this is interesting because I know a lot of parents who say, "Well, I was doing the best I could with the resources I had at the time." And they use that as a way of dismissing the unloving actions that they've taken. And to me a truly humble person would acknowledge, "That was unloving, I did an unloving thing. I need to take responsibility for it," while at the same time feeling, "I was doing the best I could." [00:46:02.00]

AJ: Yep.

Mary: It's almost that we kind of get rid of the responsibility part and just go for, "Well I was doing the best I could," and that's not really humble, is it?

AJ: No, not at all. We need to take a completely opposite approach when we're humble. When we're humble we look at our actions. It's like when I first saw myself as a parent, I said to my father, and I remember this conversation still, "Dad, I've been a pretty bad parent." And I started to explain the reasons why and my father got very angry with me and said, "No you've been a good father." And I said, "Why do you want to believe I've been a good father when I know that I haven't been? That I've done things that are out of harmony with love that my boys have spent a lot of their emotional time having to work their way through?" And particularly how I treated women. I taught them to treat women in a certain manner and they've now both had to work their way through a lot of emotions about that. And I said, "Dad, why are you so invested in wanting to portray me as a good father?" And he made a comment straight after that which was, if I hadn't been a good father then what does that make him? Because he hadn't done the things I'd done with me, he'd actually been a lot more distant with me than I was with my own children. So he then felt so much judgement by just me saying that I've been a bad father, he felt that that meant that he'd been a worse one. [00:47:40.03]

AJ: Because in his own mind he felt that he was a worse one than I. And so this is what happens a lot. If a person's in a true state of humility, they would allow themselves to feel that. They would allow themselves to feel that emotion. And they'll be honest about it. They won't be self attacking about it, or self critical, or trying to pull themselves down, or trying to get someone's commiseration. They'll be wanting to address the real emotional reasons why. They want to take personal responsibility for their actions and for their unloving behaviour. [00:48:11.03]

10.3. Taking responsibility involves desiring to experience the Law of Compensation

Mary: That probably leads to the next point, which is when we want to take responsibility we desire with all our heart to experience the Law of Compensation for what we've done to others. [00:48:22.18]

AJ: So in other words, if we are truly repentant and sorry for what we've done, we won't be always trying to avoid talking about what we've done. We won't be always trying to avoid any criticism about what we've done. People often get quite stymied when they speak with me because they come up and they say, "You did this and you did that and some of those thing might have been unloving" and I go, "Yes I have done those things." And it sort of almost the opposite of what they were expecting, because what they were expecting is an argument about that. And I say, "Well I have done those things so what does that mean?" And they say, "Well that means that you can't be Jesus," or whatever. And I go, "Well okay you're allowed to have that belief too, if that's what you want to. I know who I am, but you can have that belief if you want to." But the two don't logically meet. It's not a logical supposition coming from that place. [00:49:26.20]

Mary: Applying that as logic is only based in common Christian belief systems.

AJ: Exactly, yeah. And so it's applying their false beliefs as logic, but it is not a logical proposition. [00:49:40.12]

Mary: And what makes me laugh is many of these people aren't Christians.

AJ: Exactly.

Mary: But they're using Christian logic.

AJ: Yes. And this indicates how strongly these entrenched belief systems have affected them in their environment, and how strongly it's caused them to have a group of emotions that they don't want to feel. And if they were truly humble they would want to feel that rather than attacking me. Because I've had to be truly humble about all the things I've done. [00:50:07.04]

Mary: And this idea of desiring to experience the Law of Compensation, that really means that we just don't have a resistance. So every harm that I've done to you, I would not put up any resistance. In fact I would actually want to know what kind of pain that caused you. [00:50:21.17]

AJ: How it felt. Exactly. So we often see parents going to children, "Oh, aren't you over that by now? Yes I did that, but aren't you over that by now?" And that's the mark of a truly arrogant person. A person who attacks another person or hurts another person in their life, and then blames the other person when they're not over it, has yet to be humble, and yet to feel the full effects of the Law of Compensation and their own harm. And the truth is, if we're truly humble we'd be the opposite of that. We'd be going, "I've really hurt you, son or daughter. You know I've really hurt you and I'm happy to hear your feelings about it." [00:51:03.20]

Mary: There would be no time limit, would there, ever?

AJ: No. But if the person's yelling and screaming at you about it then obviously you might go, "Well I don't know if I can handle the yelling and screaming all the time." But even then you'd be mindful of the fact that there's so much hurt in this person that you created, that they're yelling and screaming. That's a lot of hurt and surely you do deserve some of it, because you created some of this hurt in them. [00:51:34.17]

Mary: Well I feel like no it's not even that I deserve it, but if I really want to feel the pain or be aware of the pain in this person, I would just be acknowledging, "Wow this is how much they're hurting." [00:51:50.00]

AJ: "And this is how much hurt I have created for them." And this is where most of us want to avoid. We want to go, "Oh they are hurting," as if their hurt comes from some other source, other than what they're complaining about. And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't, but the reality is, if we're humble we would just allow that experience anyway. We wouldn't be over reacting to it, we wouldn't be attacking in return, and we'd just be humble to the experience. [00:52:24.22]

Mary: I know that this area that we're talking about now is often where people get quite heavy when we talk about it, because these are the emotions almost that we're trained to avoid.

AJ: Well it's only because nobody wants to take personal responsibility.

Mary: Exactly.

AJ: They don't want to take personal responsibility for what they've created. Because of what happened in our childhood and the environment we've grown up in, and then the choices we made, generally the average person's created a lot of unloving events in their life, and some more than others. But the reality is that we've created these unloving events, and how are we ever going to get closer to God if we keep refusing to acknowledge that we've created them? It's impossible. A person who comes to God comes to God with a humble heart. A humble heart is a heart that is also contrite and repentant for what it's done. A humble heart is a person who desires to try to rectify what they've done. And they don't worry about what it appears to be to other people in that process. They'll just be humble in the process. [00:53:37.00]

Mary: This has been a theme coming up for us in book club repeatedly around repentance. Something that I'm really desiring to develop within myself is a contrite heart, because I know that I've caused much pain in my life also. But the reason I brought up that it gets heavy for everyone, is because most of us are very resistive to this state of taking responsibility, and what I notice is a tendency for many of us to go, "Okay I'm going to take responsibility. I'll be repentant," or, "I'll desire to look at the Law of Compensation of things that I've caused," and then very quickly go into a self punishing state which is not humility either, is it? [00:54:21.00]

AJ: No, and in fact self punishment is almost a state of arrogance as well, because we're really saying to ourselves that we have to be punished for things that often have entered us from other sources. Secondly we often want commiseration when we're self punishing, we often want people to come along and go, "Oh you don't have to do that." We're often not willing to take responsibility when we self punish in terms of looking at the actual reason why we did things. And we often do not let ourselves feel the emotions of what we've created in other people because we're so self absorbed feeling our own. [00:54:58.04]

Mary: So we've gone from one form of avoidance right into another.

AJ: Which is also a position of arrogance. So we've gone from one form of arrogance to another form of arrogance without actually dealing with the emotion. [00:55:09.23]

10.4. Taking responsibility involves desiring to experience causal emotions

Mary: And the next point about taking responsibility in this humble place; is about desiring with all our heart to experience the causal emotions of what happened to me in the past, which are very often the reasons why we've caused harm to other people. [00:55:27.11]

AJ: Always the reasons. It's the avoidance, the choices we've made in avoiding the causal emotions that always results in us harming another. So when we're truly humble we'll want to find the reason. If the reasons shameful, we'll want to feel our shame, and if the reason is hurtful or painful, we'll want to feel the pain, because we don't want to create the pain in another person. So we are so humble that we're willing to feel our own pain and we're willing to feel the reasons why we've created pains in other people, so that we never do that again. [00:56:03.15]

Mary: I have just touched into this at times, and it's so beautiful and so powerful. Yet at other times I find this thing happening, where I'll want to connect to the harm that I've caused you, or to somebody else, and then I come upon an emotion where I've been harmed, and I get to this space where I think, "Oh that person's harmed me in just such a similar way to how I've harmed this other person." And I almost stop myself from feeling the harm that's been done to me, because I feel like, "Well I've done it, I need to feel about how I've done it to someone else," and in the end I end up not feeling repentant, and not feeling the causal emotions. [00:56:48.03]

AJ: And so repeating the behaviour.

Mary: I see it happening in other people as well, and in the end it just enables me to keep harming the other person and keep carrying this causal pain. [00:56:56.02]

AJ: Exactly.

Mary: And the irony is, if I just felt the causal pain, it's probably very likely the thing I was avoiding when I harmed you, and the other persons, and so if I would just have the courage to feel this causal emotion... [00:57:07.23]

AJ: Or the humility. You see a person who's humble doesn't really need courage, do they? Courage is an important quality to develop but I feel that humility itself is much more important to develop because when you're truly humble you don't need courage, you'll just go ahead and feel anyway. [00:57:34.02]

10.5. Taking responsibility involves abandoning anger, justifications, minimisations and denial

Mary: Okay. So the next point on this willingness to take responsibility is that in this place I'll desire with all my heart to abandon all of my anger, my justifications, my minimisations and my denial. So care to elaborate? (Laughs) [00:57:59.09]

AJ: Well, if you think about it, all of those things, anger, justification, minimisation and denial are all surrounding our addictions. Our addictions are all the things that we do to get certain emotions satisfied. So even if they're physical addictions, for example, they might be drugs or drinking or food or just a hot cup of tea three times a day, or whatever our addictions are that are regular, they're all embraced to avoid something or to get a feeling of some kind. And all of those feelings that they're trying to get are all related to an addiction. They're all related to something that we don't want to feel that's underneath it, or that we do want to feel that we haven't felt in the past, such as a loss of the thing that we need to feel. If we are truly humble we will let ourselves feel the loss, and if we're truly humble we will let ourselves feel the fear that creates the addiction. We won't always go for the addiction. So if in our day to day lives we're constantly going for the addiction all the time, so, for example, we feel cold so we go and get a hot drink, that's the addiction, instead of drinking some cold water and then feeling how cold that made us feel, and feeling the fear that it brings up. That's a physical addiction.

AJ: Let's look at an emotional one. We might go along into an audience and we'll be afraid to put our hand up because we're afraid of what everyone will think of our silly question. So that's another addiction. We leave our hand down and that way we get to avoid that addiction, we get to avoid the fact that we might potentially feel bad from other people attacking us for asking a question that they felt was menial or stupid. [00:59:49.01]

Mary: Often then we can get very angry over time because we feel like no one wants to hear from us.

AJ: Exactly. We often manufacture many angers on top of this addiction as a result. But what I'm getting at is that if we are humble enough to feel our addictions, which are either the avoidance of some pain or the desire for some pleasure that we never had, so in other words, it's an avoidance of some loss that we never had it in the past. If we are humble to feel that, then we'll never get into the state of anger. We'll never get into a state of denial. We'll never be preventing our emotions through any physical, emotional or spiritual addiction. We will just feel. We will just feel what we need to feel. And so we have the capacity to grow very rapidly in that state. What most people do is the opposite to that, because they're not humble enough to notice their own addictions, and not humble enough to feel their own pain, and they're not humble enough to take responsibility for the fact that they are the only person who can release this pain either. And so in the end they finish up feeding their addictions, and if we're feeding our addictions then it's a great indication that we've yet to learn humility. [01:01:07.04]

10.6. Taking responsibility involves desiring to feel our fear about becoming a trusting child again

Mary: So the next one on the list is probably my favourite in this place where we want to take responsibility; I will desire with all my heart to experience my fear about becoming a trusting child again.

AJ: You see there are so many damaging things that happen to us as a child, that the thought of becoming a child again for most people is one of the scariest thoughts they could maintain. And a person who's humble is okay about feeling their terror. So a person who's humble would be willing to embrace the terror of becoming a child again in a world that seems to be very adult, attacking and harsh. The irony is that if you embrace that process you will release a lot of emotions and the world will become a lot more nurturing because your Law of Attraction will change. Everything will become a lot more nurturing and eventually, if we become at-one with God in that process, then at least we'll be completely nurtured by the one being in the universe that has the capacity to do so. And we will no longer feel any terror about being a child in that place. So what we need to do is embrace the process but because of the emotional injuries of our childhood, generally for most people they're so terrified about embracing that humble position that they resist humility. They take active opposition against humility as a result. [01:02:41.00]

AJ: They do not ever want to be humble again in their entire life. And unfortunately the resistance to humility is what finishes up creating a very harsh Law of Attraction. Because the soul resisting humility is now projecting out onto its environment all of these unloving emotions, which as a result it now must attract in order to correct, and so life becomes more and more difficult. This is why people become harder and harder and harsher because they're not softening down to the child again. They're putting a layer upon another layer upon another layer of hardness every time something unpleasant happens to them that their own soul is now attracting, because they're unwilling to become a child again. And I find that's a very sad process that I observe and many people who are aged have got so many layers of hardness around them, that they're like tapping on a rock when it comes to their heart. And the reality is humility takes the opposite direction to that. [01:03:46.16]

AJ: A lack of humility creates this hardening of oneself. Hardening oneself with another layer. Hardening it again with another layer, with another layer, with another layer of hardness and harshness. That's where we go when we don't have humility. When we have humility we strip off the harshness. We strip off the layers. We break down every barrier to the soft heart, and to me that's where most people go wrong. Most people are still trying to establish hardness, establish a barrier when they need to be ripping off the barrier. They need to be getting rid of the barrier and becoming soft. They need to let themselves be soft and let themselves be sensitive to the hurt that they feel. [01:04:35.17]

Mary: Yeah, I had that experience when we were overseas at the start of the year of recognising how afraid I was, and how angry I was at myself for being afraid, and how much I was judging this fearful little person inside of me. And I realised I had these feelings of feeling alone and powerless and sexually terrified and basically violated, and it just felt like the worst thing in the world to actually go to those feelings. I thought this is going to be terrible, alone. Eventually I prayed and prayed and a series of Laws of Attraction happened, and I found myself just in this shaking petrified place on my bed. Suddenly my guides were there in this completely loving presence. It was almost like I was feeling petrified, but I was feeling loved at the same time and I was saying to them, "Hang on I'm supposed to be experiencing all this terror and aloneness and what's happening?" And they were saying to me, "Can't you see that when you're resisting humility we can't be with you? When you just allow this process we can be here with you, and actually it's going to be less traumatic than you are living your whole life at the moment." [01:05:57.03]

AJ: Exactly. I just feel that when we have barrier after barrier we don't realise that nobody can really help us. When we open ourselves up and become humble when we become soft again, now everybody who is loving can help us. So when we have barrier after barrier after barrier, not even a single loving person can penetrate those barriers and so we're going to feel very alone, and we're going to be very harsh with everyone else as well. But we're also going to be very alone. And we're also going to feel alone, we're going to feel like nobody loves us or cares about us, because the reality is we can't feel love in that place. To feel love you're going to have to be humble and sensitive and soft. So when you're humble and sensitive and soft you've got the ability to have a lot of helpers with you, both on Earth and in the spirit world who are humble and soft to what you're going through, and you'll feel loved. But most people never experience that, because they just don't want to have the humility to go through their belief systems that are false to get to that point, because they believe they're going to be humiliated rather than loved. [01:07:06.10]

Mary: And I recognise that a lot in myself. They are things that I'm still working through that are blocking me just experiencing my terror, wherever I am.

AJ: Yeah.

10.7. Questions to ask ourselves to identify how willing we are to be humble and to take responsibility for our errors

Mary: Okay. So just to round out this point, you've listed some questions in the seminar outline that we could ask ourselves if we're considering whether we're truly humble in this aspect of a willingness to take responsibility for, and experience and release all of the error within ourselves. So the first question we could ask ourselves is, "Do I have a tendency to justify my anger or fear to God, others or myself?" [01:07:43.20]

AJ: So if we're always justifying, minimising our anger and rage then that's an indication that we don't want to have our addictions challenged, so we're unwilling to take responsibility for our addictions. Only we can release our addictions, because we are the ones that have them. And sure other people may have created them but we now have them so only we can release them. So whenever we're angry it's a great sign that we're out of harmony with love, so we can go, "Okay I've got another addiction going on here, what is that?" [01:08:15.01]

Mary: "Do I have a strong resistance about feeling my personal fears?"

AJ: The addictions are the layer above the fears, so if I have a big resistance to feeling my fears then of course I'm going to want my addictions met. And of course I'm to going to want to stay away from my fears and justify why I have them, and explain to everybody in the world, and God, why I should retain them. "God doesn't understand, and nobody else understands." [01:08:43.10]

Mary: "I'm a special case."

AJ: "I'm a special case, I'm unique." And all of those are demonstrating a lack of humility because if we have humility we'd be going, "No, we're not a special case. Every fear I have is a false expectation appearing real to me. Every fear I have, once I release it, it won't exist, and therefore I won't treat it as if it's real. I won't justify, it or anything like that." [01:09:07.20]

Mary: Another questions we have here is, "Do I use my intellect to tell myself I'm over that now?" when all indications are otherwise. [01:09:17.15]

AJ: Yes, when we have discussions, as you know, quite often people ask me a question about their Law of Attraction and I go, "Well that's an indication you haven't dealt with this particular emotion." They say, "Oh no, I'm quite sure I've dealt with that emotion," and I say to them, "Well, no, your Law of Attraction is showing that you haven't dealt with that emotion." "No, no, that's other people. Other people are doing that to me. That must be their problem." And I go, "No, no, it's your Law of Attraction so therefore you mustn't have dealt with that emotion." "Oh no, no, I can't agree with that." So this is again a person not being humble, a person who's not being humble to the fact that God makes perfects laws, and if God makes perfect laws that mean everything that I attract to myself is attracted through something inside of me. And if there's pain involved in me as a result of it, and if I intellectualise myself out of it, I'm just intellectualising myself away from humility. [01:10:12.23]

Mary: Okay, another question: "Do I resist seeing the damage I have done to others and refuse to take full responsibility for the effects?" This is something you spoke about earlier. [01:10:24.07]

AJ: Yeah, not wanting to take responsibility for the effects is a major problem, and I see this in particular with parents with children. Most parents do not wish to take responsibility for the effects of what they've perpetrated towards their children. They want to blame their children for their children's reaction to the unloving demands of their parents. And when they pass in the spirit world most parents have quite a lot of work to do in that regard, because they're not willing to be humble enough to the fact that they weren't as a good a parent as they believed they were. And I feel a person who's truly humble takes responsibility for every creation and if you think about it, our children are one of our primary creations. They're the most living of all of our creations, and therefore they are going to reflect the most damage that we've created. If we're truly humble we'll see that. [01:11:18.16]

Mary: And I see that in your relationship with your sons. Obviously when you had your sons you were in quite a different condition than you are now.

AJ: Yeah.

Mary: And I see you reflecting on your relationship with them or their lives, even still, and recognising where your injuries are still being played out by them. You certainly take responsibility for that, you feel about that, you acknowledge that to them. But also you don't allow error. How can I say this? You are firm for love and truth within. So part of being firm for love and truth is saying, "Son, you're having this problem because I've put that in you, and this is what I've had to look at and how can I help you look at that? You know I'm always there for you if you need to talk about it." [01:12:04.08]

AJ: Yep. But also respect that they don't have to take that either.

Mary: Exactly. You don't force them to do it. And not that your sons do this, but I just feel that you would not allow, if your child were to then use that humility as an excuse for them to be bad themselves, in a unrelated way...

AJ: I wouldn't be permissive about that either.

Mary: Yeah. You're still firm for love and truth in everything. Because I see that part of being a parent is actually teaching a child that their use of will in an unloving way will have consequences for them. That's part of taking responsibility for the personal pain inside of them. [01:12:55.16]

AJ: Yeah. So if a person's truly humble, they'll be completely willing to take responsibility for everything they've created. And I suppose the main point there with the children is, that children are a main part of your creation when you're a parent. So therefore, you would be willing to see what you've truthfully created in your children, rather than blaming your children for what's being created, and blaming your children for their inability to forgive you for what's been created as well. That's all about your lack of repentance as a parent, and a parent who's truly humble has very few problems with their children. Most parents find themselves with a lot of problems with their children, and so therefore are not in very a humble place with their children. They want to believe that they're their children too, not God's children, which is also an arrogant position and not very humble. [01:13:44.11]

AJ: So I just feel that taking personal responsibility is a huge part of humility. That's why I've given talks about taking personal responsibility. I see taking personal responsibility as one of the main problems most people face in their lives. They don't want to take personal responsibility. They want somebody to come along and rescue them. In fact, whole religions have been based around somebody rescuing somebody. The whole Christian religion is about Jesus, me, rescuing everybody who's a believer from the results of their own actions. And a God who's a just God would not ever conceive that idea. Let alone allow it to occur. The reality is, there is no way that one person can take responsibility for another person's unloving behaviour and actions. So taking personal responsibility is a key part of our development in humility. [01:14:41.11]

Mary: Yeah. Beautiful. Just a couple of other small points on that one, which are, that we would see our own body shape, our body pains and our illnesses also as an indication. [01:14:51.10]

AJ: Exactly. If your body has flaws you are reminded every day. You look in the mirror, you see can what's going on. When I look at my body in the mirror I can see where I've got my problems. A lot people believe I can't, and that's why they email me incessantly with little messages telling me all of my problems. And I also know the underlying emotions that are still present that I'm not humble enough to experience, and that I need to work on humility to be more humble to experience those particular emotions so that those body things can be corrected. And once I am, those body things will be corrected, and in the end perfection in body, mind and spirit is all a result. And it all comes from perfection at the soul level. But it's unobtainable without humility. [01:15:39.19]

Mary: Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. I think we've really covered that point about taking responsibility.

11. Closing Words

Mary: Do you want to do one more point? We've finished off after that.

AJ: I think it's probably gone long enough now for this session, and maybe we can cover some more points in the next sessions regarding humility and the practical aspects of doing it in practice. What humility looks like. Just to round this out a little, I feel that for the majority of people a discussion about humility is still pretty confronting. The reality is, if you look at even the basic points we're raising, most people who believe themselves to be following the path of Divine Truth, if you like, still struggle to a large degree with these basic principles of humility. If you bear in mind that humility opens the door to truth, then there's not much truth able to enter the soul when the soul is in a lot of resistance to humility. And therefore there's very little Divine Love that can enter the soul. For that reason many people want to believe they've received Divine Love, when they often haven't, because they're yet to receive truth. And they're yet to receive truth, because they're yet to get themselves into a greater state of humility. And so I feel of all qualities we could develop, humility is one of the best qualities we can ever develop in ourselves. [01:17:08.17]

Mary: Yeah. Absolutely. As I said before, if it was just to be my life's work, it seems like that would be a life well spent.

AJ: Yes. And I actually believe that of all qualities to develop, if we develop humility almost all other qualities will eventuate because if you look at the chain of events, if we develop humility, Divine Truth can come to us and we acknowledge it emotionally. As Divine Truth comes to us we develop a longing for God and a longing for a relationship with God, Divine Love comes to us. Once Divine Love comes to us our soul gets transformed, we have the ability to live in a place of kindness, compassion, understanding, love, and we're no longer motivated by unloving emotions and demands or addictions inside of ourselves. A lot of those things dissipate automatically. So if you look at the doorway to all growth, in a way the doorway to all growth is the first part, which is humility. Without humility, the rest cannot happen and for that reason I believe that humility has to occur before truth can enter and truth must enter before love can flow. [01:18:26.12]

AJ: And if we remember that, then we will see just how important it is to be humble in our lives and how important it is to give up the world's definition of what's good and to start absorbing God's definition of what is good. [01:18:45.06]

Mary: Beautiful. Thank you.

AJ: Thanks for the interview today, babe.

Part 3 - Humility Session 3 - Humility in Practice II

12. Introduction

Mary: Thank you, darling, for joining me for our third in the series of interviews on humility. [00:00:34.00]

AJ: It's my pleasure, babe. (Laughs)

Mary: This is session 3, which is about humility in practice, but I thought before we start perhaps we could just recap what we talked about in the previous interviews? [00:00:49.03]

AJ: Sure.

Mary: So the first interview was really about what is humility and what it isn't, and I just wondered if you'd mind just giving us an overview of that? [00:00:59.08]

AJ: Well in terms of the loose definition I've been giving to audiences, it's that complete emotional openness to every single thing that you actually experience, without transferring any of those emotions onto another person or being or creature or material. So what that means then is that you're fully choosing to experience every single one of your own emotions. But as we've discussed, it's a lot more complicated than that, in the sense that it also is about seeing things a different way. Instead of holding on to your own opinions and what you believe is your own truth, you're wanting to discover God's Truth, which means that there's going to be the potential that everything that you currently know could be wrong. And also that you may gain more knowledge, but then as you progress you might have to even discard that knowledge as being wrong, at some point in the future. And so you have to be prepared to make mistakes and have an emotional openness to the making of mistakes as well. [00:02:06.24]

AJ: In addition, there has to be this place inside of you where you're willing to go through and experience all of your emotions, no matter what everybody else around you thinks of you. That's a very, very difficult thing for most people. Most people are highly invested in what other people think of them, and as a result of that find it very, very difficult to be humble in most circumstances that involve other people. [00:02:34.11]

13. Humility is essential to connect with God and God's Truth

Mary: You mentioned within that, that there's really a requirement, if we're going to connect with God through humility, to be open to God's Truth. Is that right?

AJ: Well it's really the quality of humility that makes you open to God's Truth and that's why I feel humility is like the doorway into God's Truth. Without humility you're not going to be able to absorb God's Truth very well at all unless it already agrees with your own truth. And then you'll of course accept it, and you'd go, "Oh yeah, I can accept that particular truth." The big difficulty, as you know from your involvement with me over the last four or five years, is that when we talk to audiences it's the truths that are presented to them that they do not agree with that are the most difficult for them to accept, and this is also a statement of an audience's concept of humility. [00:03:31.02]

AJ: Oftentimes we've spent many, many years investigating different things and coming to a conclusion, often flawed conclusions, and as a result those flawed conclusions have now entered as a certainty or we believe them to be a certainty. Then somebody comes along and confronts that flawed conclusion with a combination of logic and emotional logic and at the end of the day we get so confronted emotionally that we start getting angry and upset and all of those kind of emotions start coming up, which is a proof of their lack of humility. [00:04:03.04]

AJ: If we were truly humble we would not hold on to these concepts that we have about life and the universe and everything. We would be willing to grow through this process and we're willing to make mistakes. We're also willing to let go of concepts that are obviously false when proven to be false rather than hold onto them for dear life and defend them. Unfortunately if you look at what's happened with religion on the planet, the cause of most religious wars have been the result of somebody wanting to hold onto a flawed concept about God, or about love, or about the world around them, and then impose that concept on another person who obviously cannot agree with that flawed concept. And that's why many wars have occurred in the name of religion. And so it's a lack of humility that has caused many of these things to occur on the planet. [00:05:01.05]

13.1. Humility is a willingness to be overwhelmed by our emotions and by God's emotions

Mary: Okay. There was a few other follow up questions I had just around that concept of humility. Once we engage this process of allowing our false beliefs to be challenged, would you say that humility involves a desire or an allowance to be overwhelmed by our own emotions? But does that ultimately lead me to a willingness to be overwhelmed by God? Is that a part of humility? [00:05:35.08]

AJ: Yes. If you can't allow yourself to be overwhelmed by your own emotions then God's emotions, which are infinitely more powerful than our own, are going to find it very, very difficult to enter us while we are so resistive to feeling even our own limited emotions. So the way God is teaching us is that God's basically saying to us, "You need to open your heart firstly to yourself and to your own emotional experience, because if you don't do that, how are you ever going to absorb one of my emotions that I have for you, when you're not even allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by one of your own emotions that you have for anything externally?" And so I feel quite strongly that this is why we spend a lot of time teaching people that they need to open up emotionally because without opening up emotionally they are staying closed to their own emotions. While they stay closed to their own emotions, how can they ever experience the emotion of another person entering them? And if that other person is God, an infinitely loving person who has an infinitely powerful set of emotions, how can we ever expect to actually receive those emotions if we're already shut down to our own limited set of emotions? It's going to be very, very difficult. [00:06:56.23]

AJ: So for the majority of people who want to really connect to God, I feel they need to understand that this emotional openness is essential. The beauty of having a longing for God's Love is that it starts to open you emotionally, but if you're not humble you'll close that down very rapidly. And this is why the quality of humility is an essential part; its part of the three essential core things regarding our relationship with God, because without humility truth can never be absorbed. Without truth ever being absorbed we can never enter a state of love. And also can never receive God's Love to the complete degree that we could. [00:07:44.10]

AJ: And so therefore we are limiting our own growth. So it's very counter-productive to actually not demonstrate humility. It's far more productive to work on the quality of humility as one of the most important and essential qualities you can ever develop. [00:08:01.04]

Mary: It seems like a good design feature that's God's placed in our soul, because it means we get the gift of knowing ourselves as we come to know God, doesn't it?

AJ: Yeah it's beautiful. And I feel that's one of the reasons why God created it that way because God's basically saying, "Look, unless you're willing to know yourself as I've created you, and unless you're willing to experience yourself as I've created you to experience yourself, then it's going to be very difficult for you and I to have a relationship." This is what God is saying. For God to actually have a relationship with you when you're so limited in experiencing yourself even, let alone an infinitely more powerful being who wants to connect to you. Whereas this way we have the ability to begin to experience ourselves, and know ourselves, and fully experience our own emotions. And as a result of fully experiencing them, that we now have the capacity to grow into also experiencing God's emotions for us. [00:09:02.14]

13.2. Humility is a willingness to see ourselves as God sees us

Mary: Thank you. Did you want to just briefly highlight anything about what humility is not? Because there are a lot of misconceptions.

AJ: Well I think we're probably going to cover that in our next interview, all the things that humility is not. There are so many things that are misinterpreted. I suppose the biggest one that probably we need to mention at the outset though, is that it is not a false sense of being lower than somebody else. It's not that at all. And I feel this is one of the main misconceptions that so-called holy people impose, in that they create a sense of fake humility and modesty that does not gel with God at all, because it's also not real, and so I feel that's an essential thing to give up if you really want to connect with God. [00:09:55.16]

Mary: So it's not false modesty, but it is an ownership of what is in error inside of us, isn't it? Would you say it's coming to see yourself as God sees you?

AJ: Totally, it's a willingness to come to see yourself as God sees you. Initially it's very difficult to do that and it's also very hard to do that instantly. So it's a process that you're going to go through, but to do that you're going to have to see eventually that pretty much everything that you've conceived is probably wrong, and needs to be adjusted in some positive direction towards God's concept of the universe. And what I feel happens most of the time is people are so invested in holding on to what they believe is right, that they are totally unwilling to conceive that actually no, God knows everything that's right, and all we are is just discovering those things. And people do not allow the discovery. Humility allows discovery. The beauty of humility is it opens up your heart enough to conceive that you need to change your mind, and you need to change your heart on different things. [00:11:03.05]

AJ: And once you do that, you are looking at the universe completely differently. Instead of looking at the universe trying to make the universe conform to your idea of it, you're looking at the universe from a position of, "I want to discover everything in the universe." And not just one set of things, like the physical things or something like that, but rather everything becomes open to discovery when you're truly humble. When a person's resistive in any direction, then their discovery in that particular direction is completely closed down. So for that reason you see people who are musicians totally closed to science. If they were truly humble they'd be open to both things. You see scientists totally closed to art. But if they were truly humble they'd be open to both things. [00:11:48.20]

AJ: When we're humble we're willing to investigate every area that God has created. There will be favourites, but there won't just be one area to the resistance of all others. And this is part of humility; once you become more and more humble you become more and more open to everything God's done. Not just a few limited things that God's done. [00:12:11.05]

13.3. Humility is a willingness to make mistakes and be open to new ideas

Mary: And I suppose that opens you to how it's all connected and how it can all give to each other and the synergy of it.

AJ: Well that's the other beauty of having humility. You start seeing how the entire universe interblends and operates, whereas if you're not humble there are all these pieces that are missing all the time, because you're so resistive to receiving truth about certain pieces. And I see this happening a lot in the medical industry, and you see it happening a lot in the economic platforms that are on the planet. You also see it happening a lot even in technology where people are very, very limited to certain forms of investigation and as a result of that, nothing can be developed and nothing can be discovered. And it's only when somebody's completely open to changing their mind and being wrong, that things will change. But on the planet as you know there's a huge condemnation of anybody who's wrong. [00:13:05.17]

AJ: So in my life I've made very few mistakes because of the portion of my life that I've been at-one with God. But before I became at-one with God in the first century I had to make mistakes in order to learn the truth, to discover new things. And I had to get into this concept that it's okay for me to investigate something and then turn out to be wrong, once I've investigated it. So I don't have a hang up about that. A lot of people have hang ups about it, because they email me condemning me about being wrong about some kind of subject that they feel that I was wrong about, and often I wasn't wrong about. But there are some subjects of course that you finish up being wrong about and you will be, through this process of investigation. But while you condemn another, what you're doing is you're demonstrating that you have, within yourself, a lack of humility to being open to making mistakes. [00:14:04.21]

AJ: And this is all a part of the need for the planet to get out of the arrogant state, which is a very self-reliant state, and into the humble state which is a very God-reliant state. [00:14:17.18]

Mary: One of the notes that I wrote after our last interview was that humility is giving up things on my terms, or under my control, but really from what you're saying, anytime I encounter a subject or a new idea that I find myself very rigid, resistive and hard about, immediately I have a signal to say there's a lack of humility going on here. I may not agree or may not share in it, but I would be soft to this situation if I were in humility. [00:14:49.11]

AJ: Exactly, yeah. Humility is understanding of all situations. It doesn't necessarily agree with the situations but it is emotionally understanding, in the sense that it still feels its own emotions, it doesn't impose its own emotions or its own hardness, back onto something. And so what I see happening a lot, where two different religious groups get together, they finish up attacking each other and yelling and screaming at each other, and even finish up maybe throwing things and maybe even killing each other, which has happened historically many times. The main reason why is because both sides lack humility. If they had humility they'd understand where the other person is coming from, why they're coming from that direction. They might not agree with them, but they'd understand. [00:15:34.06]

AJ: Also, if the other person disagrees with them, they wouldn't try to impose what they feel upon the other person. They'd say, "Okay, you're allowed to have your disagreement and at some point in the future you might change. And at some point in the future I might change, and if we're both sincere in working towards God, sooner or later we both will be willing to change. And the fact that we're not willing to change and we're even not willing to treat each other lovingly in this exchange, means that we lack humility." [00:16:05.06]

13.4. Humility is a whole hearted desire to feel and experience all emotion

Mary: Thank you. In the second interview we started to talk about what is humility in practice. And if I just mention the two points we've already covered. That humility is a whole hearted desire to feel and experience all emotion, and you've touched on that again this morning. [00:16:27.08]

AJ: Yeah. And it's a desire, not a reluctance. This is a very important point. Most people I see talk about humility and they think they're humble when they're still very reluctant to experience their emotion. It's a begrudging, "Do I have to?" type of feeling. And that's not humility. Once we're in a truly humble place we desire it. We passionately want to experience all of our own emotion, because we know it's the only way that we can get closer to ourselves and expand, and also get closer to God through the process. Because we know that if we experience all of our own emotions, we'll at least have the courage to go through a lot of our emotions then, and have the ability to feel our own emotions. Then when God gives me some of God's emotions I'm going to be able to be sensitive and open to it. I'm going to let myself be overwhelmed by it. I'm not going to be resisting it. I'm not going to be attacking it or shutting it down. I'm going to be completely open in my expression of emotion towards God and also in my ability to receive it, if I desire it. [00:17:35.09]

13.5. Humility is a desire to feel ourselves and God above all other things

Mary: And you talked about the strength of desire being above all other things. This desire to feel myself and know God would surpass desire for any other thing, which was pretty radical. [00:17:50.04]

AJ: Yeah. I feel that a lot of people don't appreciate the benefits of desiring the relationship with God first. There are automatic benefits to yourself personally because you then know yourself as a result. You finish up knowing the other half of yourself, your soulmate, in the process, but all other things come from this relationship with God. So if you're completely shut down and you're not humble to your own emotional experience, you're shutting down the ability to receive all these beautiful gifts from God, because all of them come via the relationship. And without the relationship being established you have no hope of having any of those gifts given to you. And so you walk around the Earth thinking that you know truth and thinking that you know how everything works, but it's all just an intellectual idea or concept. It has no meaning in your day to day life and also has no change in your heart, so therefore the way you interact with other people is not affected. [00:18:47.13]

AJ: In addition to that, it's very, very difficult for you to understand anything beyond what your concept is. And so you finish up attacking somebody else's idea, and you finish up having all these blocked viewpoints to everything that you could discover, because you're just so shut down to experiencing any of your own fears and other painful emotions. [00:19:12.05]

Mary: And it is our soul that's the eternal thing, isn't it? Not this mind or this spirit? It's the soul that carries the wisdom ultimately, isn't it?

AJ: Yes. And even discovering that truth requires humility, because our mind wants to desperately hold onto this intellectual concept of ourselves that usually our environment has created. We desperately hold onto it, not wanting to give it up only because we don't want to discover what's in our soul, what's really there. What our true nature, true personality and all those kind of things are. And I feel that's why a lot of psychologists call it the subconscious, because it has been so suppressed over millennia that now for the majority of people, it's only a thing that subconsciously drives them, their soul, rather than something that they're consciously connected to. And the main reason why is, because they don't have any humility to actually feel what's really going on inside of themselves. [00:20:11.14]

13.6. Humility is a willingness to take responsibility for, experience and release all error within us

Mary: Thank you. Okay, the second point we talked about was that God's Love flowing into our heart depends on these qualities of humility and humility, in practice would look like a willingness to take responsibility for, experience and release fully, without reservation, all the error within myself that prevents God's Love from flowing. [00:20:37.19]

AJ: Yes, and in particular we focused on the point of taking responsibility. A lot of other people have done damage to us in the world in which we live. We can't avoid that unfortunately as a truth, because when you or I get into a state of unloving behaviour, we automatically affect another person unlovingly. So that person then receives emotional damage and other damage, which is painful for them to experience. And as a result of that, they have pain in them that wasn't there of their own creation. That they weren't the cause of it been inside of themselves and yet it is now in them. And we all have this kind of pain, pain that's now in us that we did not personally cause but our environment caused it in some way and yet it's now in us. [00:21:28.02]

AJ: And when we take personal responsibility we understand one basic truth and that is, only we can let go of things that are now in us. Nobody else can do it for us. So all of those lovely people who harmed us, who we don't think are so lovely, those people, no matter what they do, they could become perfect people and they could be absolutely repentant and sorrowful about the things they've done to us, but even then we will still not release the hurt unless we take responsibility for what's inside of us. A person who's truly humble always takes responsibility for what's inside of them. It doesn't mean that they accept that they are the cause of it, but they do accept that they are the only person now who can release it. They're the only person who can choose to grow from the situation. [00:22:20.13]

AJ: And they have a choice; they have a choice to grow and release these unhealed emotional baggage that control their life, or they have a choice to act upon them and cause more pain to other people and themselves through that process of action. A truly humble person would never choose the second course of action, ever. A humble person always would choose the first course of action, to fully embrace their own emotional experience no matter who created it. No matter who external to themselves caused their pain. [00:22:54.23]

14. Working through emotional blockages to humility

Mary: And I suppose that practically that means humility is a choice we have on a moment by moment basis and it doesn't just involve going away and having a big cry, but rather I'm faced with that choice at every moment. [00:23:13.13]

AJ: True but in addition to that, you could also say there are certain emotions that affect us being humble, which influence our humility as well. So for example, if I'm afraid of humiliation all the time, then I'm not going to be very humble, because I'm constantly fearful of somebody humiliating me when I acknowledge the truth of a situation. If I am in a constantly fearful place, it's going to be very difficult for me to be humble. If I'm invested in other people's opinion of me, it's going to be very difficult to be humble, because sometimes I'm going to be wrong and they're going to laugh at me. And if they laugh at me and I feel bad about that and I don't want to feel bad about that, then I'll try to prevent them from laughing at me. This means I won't be open and truthful about what is really going on inside of me, and what's really going in my relationships. [00:24:05.17]

AJ: So there are certain emotions that are all about humility and so my suggestion to anyone who's progressing towards God is to try to address and deal with the emotions that are about humility first. If we do not address those particular emotions then we'll never open to truth, and emotional truth can never enter us then. So I see it as humility is a state of which we can get to, a complete state and we don't have to be perfect to get to it, but there are so many different emotions involved in creating a state of humility. [00:24:52.18]

AJ: And those emotions include things like we've just mentioned; being humiliated as a feeling and resisting that feeling, wanting other people to have a good opinion of us, feeling nice feelings from other people all the time. These will all prevent us from being in a state of humility. [00:25:10.00]

Mary: So practically, what would we do if we're such a person and we've recognised, "I've got all these issues that prevent me just living in a state of humility." Practically what does it mean if we work on those emotions? [00:25:23.21]

AJ: Well God's Law of Attraction will automatically be operating in the universe around us based on our soul. So our soul will be attracting events already that cause our lack of humility to be triggered or exposed. And in that moment we have a choice. We have a choice to either fully experience and feel and be open to every thing that we're feeling without damaging another person. The choice that most people take is they then damage the other person that seemingly created this attraction that we're now experiencing. If we were truly humble, we'd be saying, "No this Law of Attraction that God has made is a beautiful gift to me. It's a gift to me because it's showing me every area in my life where I'm not humble. And if it's showing me these areas in my life where I'm not humble, then I have the ability to be open to them and just experience the underlying emotions. That's going to make me softer and softer to everything, which will make me more humble to everything." [00:26:25.13]

AJ: So I don't really have to go out and choose them, but there are certain things that I might be able to do right now. So the average person might be able to say right now, "I can list a whole list of different emotions that are affecting my humility," and my suggestion is to list them and to start working through them and noticing them in your life and everything. But the reality is, God is always trying to connect to us and the Law of Attraction that God has made is there purposefully to help us address our lack of humility in our lives, to get us into this really, really humble state so that God can communicate with us better and give us more truth as well. [00:27:04.04]

AJ: Now, if I'm completely open to this beautiful gift that God's giving me constantly, which my own soul is creating through the law, then I would notice every single event that occurred in my life that is exposing to me that I don't have enough humility in that particular area. I'd be praying about that, I'd also be wanting to work through the underlying emotions about that. I'd be wanting to find out about those particular things. I won't be resisting it all the time or fighting where these things are coming from. Instead I'll be embracing them, and working my way through them, so that eventually I get to the point where I am completely humble and able to absorb as much truth as possible from God. [00:27:49.23]

15. Divine Love can only flow when we are willing to be as we truthfully are

Mary: Thank you. Let's go onto the next point, which is that God's Love can only flow into my heart when I'm willing to be as I truthfully am. So humility is practically being as I truthfully am. So my question is what does being as I truthfully am encompass? [00:28:22.14]

15.1. Working through the façade self and discovering the injured and real selves

AJ: Well firstly it involves giving up the facade. The facade has been created for quite a few different reasons. You could say from a soul perspective, we have our real soul, our true feelings, and then we have our next set of emotions, which is the damaged self. The damaged self or the damaged soul is all of these really harsh emotions that have been imposed upon us by our environment through the different painful experiences generally that we've experienced, throughout our life. And you could call that our damaged self. That's not our real self yet, that's just the real self with a lot of emotional baggage on it, created by an environment that's a painful environment to live in. [00:29:14.10]

AJ: This is also created too, to a large degree, by our own choices that we've made as a result of living in this harsh environment. Because the reality is, we can live in a harsh environment and make no unloving choices. So we have that ability. [00:29:29.05]

Mary: Does that refer to what you just spoke of, in that when we have the choice to act on the damage, that's when we create more damage.

AJ: Exactly.

Mary: Or we could be humble in that moment.

AJ: If we were truly humble we would never create more damage in the world in which we live. If we were truly humble. Then there's the third self, if you like, which is the facade self. The facade self is the person who we want to believe we are. And that person generally is very much linked with the persons that our parents wanted us to be, or our environment wanted us to be. And so the facade self has to be given up completely. Completely. And if we don't give up the facade self completely, then we will never ever learn to be our real self. Now, when we give up our facade self, the facade self is saying, "I've got everything under control. I know everything. I know what's going down here with our relationship. You're the person who's to blame," and all those kind of things. That's what our facade self does. [00:30:30.05]

AJ: Our real self is going, "No, I can feel my own damage. I can feel my own problems. I can feel how I feel in this," and it's willing to be that person in public. The facade self is usually present very much in public but in private generally we're a bit more into the damaged self in private. If we're truly humble we'd be willing to be this damaged individual in public. We're willing to expose ourselves to the universe completely. And that doesn't mean we act upon the damage, because a person who's truly humble would never act upon the damage and damage another person. But we need to actually feel what we feel and express what we feel honestly, and that means we wouldn't be involved in lying to people, we wouldn't be involved in helping people believe things about us that we know are not true. [00:31:34.09]

AJ: We wouldn't be involved in creating facades about ourselves. We wouldn't be living in a facade even where we've created an entire life to support our facade. We'd never do any of those things if we were truly humble, because a truly humble person is just themselves, warts and all, as the saying goes. [00:31:51.15]

Mary: If I dissolve my facade miraculously...

AJ: Which is an emotional process because there are emotional reasons why you want to hold onto facade.

15.1.1. An example of being humble when we discover anger within ourselves

Mary: Sure. But what if I dissolve my façade and I discover that I'm an angry person. And I think, "Well humility's just being the real me, I'm just going to be angry with you."

AJ: But that is a definite misquoting of what I've just said, isn't it? Because the reality is, that if I was truly humble in that place I'd go, "Wow I'm a very angry person. What am I going to do about that? Where does this anger come from? What's its underlying cause? What's inside of me that causes me to just fly off the handle all the time?" And instead of flying off the handle all the time, I'd withdraw from situations where I fly off the handle, and I would try to feel instead the emotion I feel that is under the anger. So I'd let myself feel the anger, but not express it to another person, and I'd go deeper and actually find out what is the underlying fear that I have that drives this addiction that causes my anger. [00:33:09.03]

AJ: So I'd be willing to feel the addiction that's not being met, if I was truly humble. I'd be willing to go, "Wow, that's a big addiction I have that everybody likes me, because I get angry when nobody seems to like me. So I want everybody to like me, that's a big addiction." The reality of that ever happening is fairly low, but not only that, even in a perfect world I still have the addiction. It's not a very nice addiction to impose on others that they have to like you, before they even know you. And so that's an unloving expectation, and I'd feel the addiction. And when you feel it, it feels quite sickly inside of yourself because you feel like, "Wow, there's something really wrong inside of myself," and then you go, "What fear is driving this?" And oftentimes it's the opposite. [00:34:04.10]

AJ: So the fear driving it might be in this case, for example a fear of, "I'll never be loved by somebody for who I truly am, and I'm going to have to completely modify myself to be loved." And there's a lot of grief under that because if you've got that fear, then usually in your childhood there's a huge amount of grief associated with the fact that you weren't loved for who you truly were. And you have to go through that emotionally as well. So you would be willing to embrace that entire process if you are humble, you wouldn't be projecting it outwards, you wouldn't be using it as an excuse to rage upon somebody else, or an excuse to make somebody else have the same fear as you do, or an excuse for somebody else to share in your grief about it, because all of those things would be a lack of humility. [00:34:50.07]

AJ: You'd be completely owning your own emotions, every single moment. And so if you think about it, you would never use as an excuse that, "Oh, I'm an angry person so I'm just going to be angry." You'd never say that if you were a humble person. Now we meet many persons who are not humble obviously, who have said that to us many times. They have this feeling that as soon as you talk about emotions they have this belief system that says, "Oh that means I can go and express any emotion I have without any limit whatsoever." They are very wrong when it comes to the quality of humility. There is really no humility in them at all, if they do that. [00:35:32.24]

AJ: And so my suggestion to those people is, "No." Be a bit more self reflective and understand that every time you make a choice to act in harmony with your unloving emotions, you are going to create more pain not only just for yourself, but for other people. Now where did all your pain come from? If it came from your environment, and you're not happy about it. Well how would you like then if other people created more pain for you? It wouldn't be very pleasant. So then choose to stop doing the same with other people. Have some ethics. Have some emotional ethics where you stop doing things to other people that you do not want them to do to you. [00:36:12.05]

Mary: Sure. Thanks for answering my cheeky question (laughs). I just see that sometimes this real self, being my real self can often be misunderstood or misused.

AJ: Totally. Because if you look at the real self, the real self is purely loving. That's the self God created; a purely loving, purely connected individual with the environment around it. If they're being their damaged self, that is better than being their facade self, but if you're being your damaged self you will not be projecting your damage upon your environment, if you're a humble person. So I see a lot of people still in their facade really when they say, "I'm being myself!" and they're being angry. Well that's actually your facade. That's what you do to manipulate other people into acceding or agreeing to your emotional addictions. That's what you do. That's your facade. If you get out of your facade and go into this damaged self, you'd never agree ethically that it's good to have another person give you anything that you're not prepared to earn for yourself, to have for yourself. And so I would never go, "I want you to love me," while at the same time going, "I don't love myself." It's unrealistic and also unethical for me to demand love from you, when I'm not willing to love myself. [00:37:34.10]

15.2. Humility encompasses ethics and morality

Mary: So are you saying that humility encompasses ethics?

AJ: Definitely, yeah. In fact I feel humility is the pinnacle of ethics but it's also the pinnacle of morality. If you listen to that talk, or read the book of that talk that I had recently in Melbourne, "The Human Soul - Ethics and Morality," you will find that one is to do with how we interact with other people on an equal basis, while the other one is about accepting God's principles and laws. Humility involves both of those things; ethics and morality. [00:38:08.19]

Mary: Humility is so much bigger than just crying, isn't it?

AJ: Yeah. I give a definition in basic presentations that if people can connect to that definition they'll understand all of these other things. The reality is it does encompass many, many things to get to a point where you're completely humble and able to experience God in a perfect manner. You're going to have to work through many things to get to that place. [00:38:42.07]

15.3. Humility is seeing God's perception of ourselves - an illustration from the Bible

Mary: In the seminar outline that you wrote for the "Relationship with God - Humility" seminar in 2009, under this point about the willingness to be as I truthfully am, you've quoted James 1:23-24 from the Bible. And I just wondered if you would explain what this means, and how it relates to humility? The quotation is, "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, this one is like a man looking at his natural face in the mirror. For he look at himself and off he goes and immediately forgets what sort of man he is." So what does this mean? [00:39:30.10]

AJ: You could say the mirror is God's perception of us. So when we look in this mirror we see ourselves, blemishes and all, and most people when we initially see all the blemishes that we have, become quite frightened because we feel that nobody will ever love us, and nobody will ever care for us with all these blemishes that we have. And so what we do is we have a tendency to try to ignore them and hope they all go away somehow by themselves, which of course never happens. Instead of doing that, what humility recommends is that we always remember the condition we're in at any point in time. And instead of being self attacking about the condition, we just remember it. We know where we're at. [00:40:23.16]

AJ: So the man who's very angry knows he's very angry. The man who's very sad knows he's very sad. The woman who feels sexually ashamed knows she feels sexually ashamed. She doesn't walk away from that mirror in her relationship with God and go, "Oh no, that's not true, I can just ignore that." Or she or he doesn't go away going, "Yeah that is true I've got that problem but I've got to get on with day to day life." They see these issues and problems as the most important thing they must address in their entire life, because of course it's the thing that's limiting their connection with God and their connection with self. [00:41:03.13]

AJ: So of course it's got to be the most important thing that they address in their entire life. And they have this attitude that they're not going to walk away from this mirror, when God puts a reflector up through the Law of Attraction and your soul automatically has an exposed condition, they don't go, "Oh, okay," and then walk away and forget that entire thing. They go, "Wow, this is a great opportunity for me to know exactly who I am and to know exactly what's in me." And they don't avoid those things. They don't avoid them by running away or putting some make up on and making the situation look all prettier, putting the facade on and walking away. They don't do that at all. [00:41:46.05]

AJ: And I feel that quote from James, my brother, made from the first century about something that I did say, reminds people that we want to see ourselves as God truly sees us, because if we don't we can never change. If we hold onto this concept that we're already great without actually looking at the way God feels or God sees us, the blemishes that we have on us... and it's not that God doesn't feel we're great. God knows that our real self creation, that everything He created was perfect. But we do have this damaged self and we need to be honest about it. If we're not honest about it, we will never get into a state where we'll change it. And if we don't change it we can never expand, and therefore we can never be able to absorb more of God's feelings about us. And if we can't do that then we're never going to absorb more truth, and we're never going to become at-one with God. [00:42:45.20]

16. Humility is a willingness to be taught by God

Mary: Thank you. The next point that we have here about humility in practice is that I must be willing to be taught by God. So what does this mean and what are the ways that God is trying to teach us? [00:43:04.23]

AJ: Well, I've mentioned one of the ways already, the Law of Attraction; what we attract into our lives. God has created this law specifically to shine a torch, if you like, upon us as individuals so that we can be self reflective about, "Wow there's a lot going on in my life, and I'm wondering why I'm attracting all of these particular events." And eventually we'll come to understand that it's something in our soul that's attracting it. In other words there's something emotionally, belief system-wise, out of harmony with love inside of myself that attracts an event that is painful coming towards me from the outside world. And so instead of going, "Oh that's their fault and that's their fault and that's his fault and that's her fault and it's your problem," as we often see occurring around the world, what we do instead is we go, "My soul obviously has a certain set of conditions that I wish to believe are great, but which God is showing me are not through this law." And we can sort of choose almost any example. So you could just have no money for example in your life. And if that's the case and you're attracting more and more of those kind of events then there's a feeling or a belief system inside of your soul that's creating this. [00:44:27.23]

AJ: Particularly when you're in a society that has money available. So if you're living in a society, such as a Western society where there's money available that is quite freely exchanged between people, but you don't seem to ever have any, then it's quite obvious that there's something going on inside of yourself. Now you can blame everybody else and blame the government and blame the financial institution, blame the work situation, blame unemployment, blame all of these other things, which a lot of people of course do, which is a total lack of humility. Your own soul has brought this event to you that you need to work your way through. Now I'm not saying that this justifies other people treating you badly. I'm just saying that every single event that occurs to you individually is a message from God to you, that something's in your soul attracting it. If you go through the process humbly, with God, you'll release that thing in your soul and you won't attract it anymore. That's the basic simple premise that we're presenting.

AJ: And so a person who is truly humble knows that that is one way God speaks to them, particularly when God can't actually transmit a feeling to them. So if God can't transmit a feeling to you individually because you're so closed down, and you're so resistive, and you're so closed up with your own emotions that you don't want to experience, God's got to then try some external methods of bringing to you an openness emotionally. And that is through this law, this Law of Attraction that brings you events based on your condition of your soul. [00:46:12.11]

16.1. An example of the Law of Attraction operating in Western society vs. in poor countries

Mary: You used the example of a person in a Western society who doesn't have money. Now in the West we're very geared to what we don't have, and what we think we should have and all of those kind of things. But if we look at the way that God might be trying to teach someone in a war torn country, or someone who's living in a lot of poverty, how is God teaching those people through the Law of Attraction? [00:46:37.24]

AJ: Well every single event that the person is attracting is still related to their condition of their soul, and also collectively to the condition of the soul. So we've got to understand that there are individual situations and collective situations. And a person who's humble will see both. So for example, a person who is in a Western country, who has enough money, would see the poverty of another country and do something about it. And if the whole country were in a state of humility they would never hold onto their funds while another country is starving. They would never do that. They would give away or bring those people to them, one of the two, so that they both could share with what they have. [00:47:27.02]

AJ: The problem is that most people in Western countries are not very humble because they want what they want, but they're not willing to share it. And in fact many Western countries have raped the poorer countries to get those particular things, which is not a humble thing to do either. A person who's humble would work with the resources they have in their current location. They wouldn't go raping other locations to get the resources, because they'd be willing to connect to their own emotions about not having those particular resources. So if we're in a truly humble and loving state, we're not only seeing our own condition and what it creates individually, but we're seeing also collectively the condition and what it creates. [00:48:10.13]

AJ: And we would also be attempting to address that and do something about that. So on the side of the Western country, we'd be looking at what ways can we actually improve this situation where we can share our resources with these people, not continue to rape them of resources, which is what we've been doing. We would also stop individually our own things that we personally do that rape the resources from those particular countries. One of the things that we could stop doing straight away would be stop eating meat. That would be a great way, because the eating of meat causes the rape of a lot of resources in different countries. [00:48:55.13]

AJ: So we'd stop doing that, as an emotional, ethically perspective, as a decision that's moral because of the effect it's having on other people. We wouldn't go, "I've got the right to eat meat. I've got the right to do this, I've got the right do to that," because we'd be looking at the effects of everything that we do and we'd be going, "No, these effects are unacceptable." Now on the other side of the poorer country, the person who's living in the poorer country would have to work their way through why they keep attracting this oppression. There's got to be emotions within them individually and collectively that causes them to keep attracting this oppression from rich countries. [00:49:41.04]

AJ: And a lot of that ironically is the flip side of the same emotion in many cases. So often it's the flip side of the emotion of greediness. So in other words, one country is greedy, they take action, get all the resources of another country that causes that country to become poor, now that country feels the lack. And then they want to get that back and they feel antagonistic towards the other country. Now they're willing to engage in even perhaps war or some kind of violence towards the oppressing country. Now we've got a kick back. There's a whole set of emotions in there. Why are they willing to engage in war? [00:50:26.16]

AJ: So the poorer countries also have a group of emotions they have to work their way through as well, if we truly want to have a society in the end that is completely loving with each other. However, the one who is the abuser of the situation first, in the example I've given the richer country, needs to get into a state of humility before the poorer country, if we're truly going to have any change. However, it's usually the person who does the abusing, or the country that does the abusing that is more resistive collectively to getting into a humble state. So what this also says is that there are far more arrogant people in Western society, and far more lack of humility in Western society, than there is in other societies. Otherwise they would never consider raping the other countries of their resources. [00:51:25.02]

Mary: Often, because of the way we've been brought up, it feels that God tries to teach us in ways that are quite severe, which is why I brought up that example. [00:51:41.24]

16.1.1. The Law of Attraction can occur in a loving or harsh way

AJ: Can I point out this about humility and the Law of Attraction? It's really a combination thing. Because there are very few truly loving people on the Earth, almost every event that our soul attracts will probably come from an unloving person, and so therefore it's highly unlikely that the event is going to be a loving event. If there were more loving people on the Earth, any events that we attracted from those people would always be loving as a Law of Attraction, to confront our unhealed emotion. And so every event would be loving that they create. The way God created this law was that we have the ability, through this law, to learn in a very easy way by all of us engaging love through this law, or in a very hard way by none of us engaging love through this law. [00:52:45.12]

AJ: And it is the personal choice of mankind that determines which direction we've been going. Now up until this point in time, we have chosen, through our lack of humility, to engage this law in a very harsh manner. For example, if I notice an openness in you to being manipulated some way, if I engage the law harshly I'll be drawn into manipulating you. If I engaged the law lovingly I'd say, "Mary, you've got this openness in you towards being controlled. I'd like to help you heal that without manipulating you." Can you see the difference? Both can help you recover the unloving position that you've been in, or the unhealed or damaged emotion that you've been in, but one of them is my choice to love and the other one is my choice to harm. [00:53:45.24]

AJ: And unfortunately on the planet the majority of people do not make the choice to love, because they have a lack of humility themselves. And as a result of that, they don't want to feel all of their own emotional condition, and they don't want to feel all of their emotional pain, and so then they want to impose their pain upon another and take advantage of the other. Unfortunately under those circumstances it's going to feel like what I've attracted is harsh, but it's only harsh because of the unloving choice of the environment that I'm in. If my environment had made a different choice, then I could have had a much more loving event occur, which would then trigger the same emotion. [00:54:27.16]

Mary: What comes up for me is that God's trying to teach us through this law He's created, but the variable is our own will and how we choose to engage that. It's always going to be in operation with the potential to be loving or not. [00:54:45.18]

AJ: Exactly. And the majority of people, because of their resistance, because of their lack of humility, choose unloving choices, and as a result of that, there can only be unloving events occur from those unloving choices that then affect other people unlovingly. And unfortunately the world then appears like everything's harsh. But it's only harsh because of our original unloving choice. It's only harsh because we've chosen to be hard. We've chosen to be harsh. If we'd chosen a different route all together then we'd all perceive the world to be completely different. We'd all go, "Wow, what a lovely world this is to live in. I've got this unhealed emotion and then someone comes up and they just say the right thing to me and it's always loving, and off I go and have a big cry about the fact that somebody at last gets me." All of a sudden it's all healed because I've released the emotion. [00:55:37.24]

AJ: That could be our path, but unfortunately because of this lack of humility that exists on the planet, it's not the path. And unfortunately the lack of humility is what is causing the majority of pain on the planet. It's not even a misunderstanding of love. It's the lack of humility. The reality is if you are humble you would learn love, but if you're not humble you can't learn love. So it's not actually a lack of love on the planet that causing our problems. It's a lack of humility on the planet that's causing our problems. We're never going to learn love while we're so arrogant. [00:56:20.01]

16.2. God teaches us through other people, spirits and nature

Mary: So is the Law of Attraction the only way that God is trying to teach us?

AJ: No, God's also attempting to teach us through other people. We are surrounded by spirits who are in a favourable condition with God, in other words they're at-one with God, and they want to teach us in a loving manner. They're constantly trying to influence our thoughts and our actions towards love. They're constantly trying to show us what's wrong inside of ourselves that's causing the attraction. So we have all of these helpers that surround us constantly that God's given us as a gift. God has also given us the animals and birds and plants and all of those living organisms as a reflection as well. So that they are all giving us gifts, all of these different things God's created are constantly giving us messages. So when God can't communicate with us directly, which is not always possible for God when we're so closed to God, and God doesn't want to interfere with our will, but God's constantly trying to influence our will to go, "We would like to try and connect to God at some point." And God uses every one of Her creations available to Her to influence us in a direction where we become open and humble. [00:57:33.01]

AJ: God's constantly doing that. And so every single thing that God has created other than the human soul and even other human souls are included, other than your specific human soul, has been created specifically in God's attempt to encourage your will to be open enough to begin a relationship with God. [00:58:01.03]

16.3. Being willing to be taught by God involves being emotionally open to God

Mary: It's a lot of support. So what would my emotional state be like when I'm truthfully willing to be taught by God?

AJ: Well once you get to that emotional state then God can actually, through a transmission of feelings, tell you directly everything you need to know. So once you've worked your way through all of the emotional resistance, and all of the emotional reluctance, and all of this resistance that is there and present within each person generally towards God, and towards their own emotions, now there's an openness emotionally, now God can communicate through a direct one on one communication from God to you, through emotional communication. It's not going to be a voice in your head or anything like that, it's going be a feeling that comes over you that you know is from outside of yourself and comes from God. Those feelings will confirm truth to you or discard error. You'll be able to do both. And so once you are truly open to God you can confirm truth, discard error, confirm truth, without having to even go through the process of any other forms of discovery, but it has to be a burning desire to do it that is driving it. [00:59:10.13]

Mary: And it means giving up self reliance.

AJ: Totally, yeah. Giving up self reliance and also giving up what that looks like to everyone else. On this planet we are hugely invested with what everything looks like to other people and unfortunately that causes a huge resistance to God. If you think about it, God's way is far more perfect than man's ways. As a result of that, God is trying to transmit these perfect ways to man and man's trying to resist God's perfect ways. And so God's trying to use all of the creation around about the man to help the man come to a position of change. And the man, if he were open, he would go through the process of getting all that external help and eventually he would not need any of that external help because now he's in a one on one connection with God. Now he's at-one with God, he can work through any issue emotionally now with God and find out every truth. He doesn't need anybody else to help him anymore. He is completely independent of everyone else other than God. But he's also in this position with God where God can transmit all truth to him, if he has a desire to receive it, if he uses his will to receive. And that's all it is.

AJ: Now as we grow towards God there's a whole class of things that we don't use our will to understand, because we don't know they exist. And so of course a part of the process is we will come to see they exist or potentially exist and then we'll use our will to understand, and once we're in that place God will be able to teach us the truth. But it won't be this big resistance to that process anymore. So once we're at-one with God we still have a whole heap of things we've yet to discover that we didn't even know exist, and still don't know exist. And we'll have to go through a process of firstly engaging the concept of them potentially existing, and then secondly engaging our will to know the truth about them, and then God will tell us. [01:01:17.10]

AJ: But we won't have all this resistance and anger and rage and addiction and all these other emotions that we had before then, because all of those things have been gone. [01:01:27.17]

Mary: So what you're saying is that emotionally we'll be so open when we're willing to be taught by God. What would our actions look like when we're willing to be taught by God? [01:01:40.19]

AJ: Well our actions right now are always a reflection of our emotions. They're always a reflection of our beliefs and our emotions. So if the emotions become more loving and more pure, more perfect and all of the unlovingness and injured state within us disappears emotionally, then of course every action is a reflection of those emotions. So every action we take is now completely in harmony with truth, completely in harmony with love. In fact we can't even take an action that's out of harmony. It's impossible for us to even contemplate an action out of harmony, and you'll get to the point where you don't even think about the action whether it's in harmony or out of harmony. All of the reasons inside of yourself for them all being out of harmony have all gone, and so there's only reasons inside of you to do things in harmony with love. And as a result of that, you don't even have to try to work out whether something is loving or not anymore. You'll just automatically do the loving thing. And in amongst that there might literally be thousands of potential activities you could engage, but every single one of those potential activities will be loving because you can't engage any other unloving behaviour. [01:02:56.16]

16.3.1. Going through the process of developing humility

Mary: What about if I'm practicing humility, but I'm not yet at one with God. How would I act in order to live humility? [01:03:13.11]

AJ: Well the reality is you can't fake humility either.

Mary: No.

AJ: So if we are truly living in the damaged self area where we're seeing ourselves warts and all, we would also see where we lack humility. We would also see our lack of humility and one of the first things that we would do potentially would be to address why. In other words, our life until the point of at-onement with God would all be about finding every area where we lack humility in our lives, then addressing the emotional reason or belief system inside of ourselves that's out of harmony with love that causes us to have that feeling which then causes us to have a lack of humility. That would be our primary focus in all of our activities in every single thing we do, in every single thing we engage in our lives. We'd be focused only firstly on working through every thing that causes us to have a lack of humility. [01:04:14.21]

AJ: Once we get into the condition where we've worked through that we're ironically at the same time growing in love, and growing in truth, because every emotion we release that causes our lack of humility automatically unblocks us to truth. And therefore we're automatically going to receive truth once we've unblocked. So if we think of each thing as a doorway. So we've got humility being the doorway to truth. If I am now working through humility every single time, so I'm not worried what the truth is about. What I do is I work through my block to truth. So that's what humility does, it causes us to work through our blocks to truth. That opens me up to any truth. Now all the truths that God wants to tell me can all just come to me. And that means because I'm humble I will receive them and accept them as truth. [01:05:09.01]

AJ: And then because I've done that, that opens me to love. And God's Love will just flow naturally into my soul as a result, and I'll grow, and I'll grow in my understanding and my capacity to understand further things which grow as a result of my growth. So the way I see it is that humility is like an opening valve to the truth. I don't have to work on receiving truth or discovering truth, I have to work on being humble. When I work on being humble the truth automatically comes. The truth opens me to receiving love. When I receive love my soul transforms. When my soul transforms now I have a greater capacity to do everything. Any thing that I wish I have a greater capacity to do. And I will do it in harmony with the love automatically.

AJ: So I feel the process of humility in terms of how it looks is more about looking at why I am resistive to being humble. What emotions and belief systems inside of me do I have that cause me to be like a tight ball when it comes to humility, cause me to want to resist, to want to be arrogant? Because all I have to do to receive truth is to open up my humility. I don't have to actually go and find the truth. The truth's just there in my universe around me just waiting to enter me. God has created a universe of truth waiting to enter me, just like God has created a universe based on love that is also waiting to enter me. And if I'm humble, I've got the doorway to it all. [01:06:49.05]

AJ: If I'm not humble now I'm going to have to work on being humble. And I don't feel a person can really work on being humble. They can only release the emotional reasons why they're not humble. [01:07:04.06]

16.4. A humble person immediately puts into practice what they learn

Mary: I was thinking about the things that you already know where you act in harmony with the truth. You immediately put into practice things that you learn if you are humble. [01:07:14.17]

AJ: Of course a humble person would. Yeah. So to use a very, very basic situation as an example, let's say a person learned that somebody that they know had lied to somebody else that they know. Now a person who's humble would not make the choice for all of those people to cover over this whole thing. He wouldn't do that. Because a person who's humble would go, "I'm open to my own emotions. I'm open to being attacked by every one of my friends disagreeing with my action. I have some ethics" and, "I have morality and ethics from my humility, that's what that allows me to have." And so I'd go up and tell the persons what's happened here. Now both of them may finish up being upset with you and never want to see you again. Well that's their lack of humility. [01:08:02.14]

AJ: Because the reality is, if I'm truly humble I won't even want a facade. I will want everything exposed and out in the open. The beauty of the humble person is that they will act always in this way, in every opportunity that they have. [01:08:17.00]

16.5. Becoming open to God teaching us

Mary: We might have already covered this, but how do I approach life in a way that enables God to teach me the most?

AJ: Well I feel I've probably explained that already, in the sense that the entire universe has been constructed by God to give all of God's children this opportunity to see the effects of how they utilise their will. And a truly humble person sees the effects, so he goes, "Wow, I'm living in a country that oppresses other countries. I am often oppressing other people. I've damaged my own children. I've done this, I've done that." A truly humble person sees what they do and allows this Law of Attraction that God's created, if they can't communicate with God directly, to address these problems automatically. And they engage the process with God actively. [01:09:24.07]

Mary: Yeah and inherent in that is not putting ourselves above God. We can't reach that state without having a total respect for what God has created in order to teach us.

AJ: Yes. Of course there are a lot of people who are raging about God's Laws but that's not a very humble condition obviously, because in the end you're just raging against the most loving laws in the universe. If you're going to rage against anything, and I don't recommend raging against anything because it's an addiction, but if you're going to, surely it would more wise to rage against the laws that are unloving rather than ones that are loving. [01:10:00.09]

Mary: (Laughing) Yeah, for sure. Thank you, darling.

17. Humility is the ability to receive both direct and indirect council

Mary: The last point on our humility in practice section is about the ability, and I suppose the desire to receive both direct and indirect emotional assistance and council. [01:10:18.00]

AJ: Yes you see this in action a lot when you're dealing with people. You've even had the experience with people that come up to you and said, "Can you give me one bit of advice?" and you give them one bit of advice, usually it's the bit of advice that they least want to hear, and as a result of that they go, "Oh no I don't agree with that," and they walk off. And you've had that happen to you many times, and I've had that happen to myself many times as well, and that's an indication of their lack of humility. The reality is even when they asked for it, they still couldn't receive it, which is interesting in itself. But even more difficult is when we don't ask for it and we receive it. And the mark of a truly humble person is a person who doesn't ask for feedback but still receives it with humility and love. Without addiction, without rage, and anger or shame or any other of those emotions.

AJ: And I feel if we're truly going to be humble, we need to learn to have both actually. It's great to engage a person, and say, "Can you tell me what's wrong? What you observe that's wrong here so that I can fix it inside of myself? What do you notice about the emotions I have?" A truly humble person will notice those things. They won't necessarily agree of course because God may be telling them a different thing, and if God's telling them a different thing they won't agree with the person. I've had many experiences where people have come up and told me all sorts of things about myself that are completely untrue, and I know they're untrue but I don't have to react angrily to the person telling them. I just say, "No, that's not true, you obviously don't know me. Or you're imposing your own beliefs upon me about what you think; you think that I am what you are actually." [01:12:19.23]

AJ: Now a person who's truly humble is open firstly to God but also open to all these other forms of information. For example, a person would be totally open to their spirit guides under those circumstances. So if their spirit guides are saying, "You've got a bit of arrogance here and you've got a bit of a problem here and you've got a bit of a problem there," the person would hear them straight away. They'd go, "Wow, yeah, I do. What can I do about this?" and have a dialogue with them. For a person who doesn't want to hear them, it's like their guides are whispering, and the person's going, "What? What?" because they don't want to hear any information from their guides. [01:13:00.17]

AJ: So a key part of humility is developing a longing for feedback. But developing a longing for feedback from loving persons. So you can observe in the world around you who appears to act in a more loving way to other people, and then you could go up to such a person and then say, "Look, I've noticed you're pretty loving with everybody around you. Would you like to give me some feedback over time?" because you can't just expect it there and then. "Would you like to give me feedback over time as to what's going on for me? Because I feel that I'm not as loving as that." And so that is a wonderful thing you can do for your own soul. The second, but more difficult thing is to actually allow people to come up to you and tell you all sorts of things, even in error, and see what your response is. [01:13:58.12]

AJ: So the response might be that you might have a bit of anger in you about what they've just said; that's showing you the lack of humility that's on that subject for some reason, and the reason might not be the reason that the person's giving. The person might be coming up and actually attacking you and then you're angry. Well why are you angry? Because you're afraid of attack and you have addictions about attack. You want everyone to love you that might be one of the addictions. And so when someone comes up and attacks you, you just feel angry with them because they don't love you. A person who's humble wouldn't do that. A person who's humble would still love them, even though they're being attacking. [01:14:38.16]

Mary: But they would see it as a gift to learn more about themselves.

AJ: Exactly. They would see this as an impromptu gift given by a person who doesn't understand love; to actually work through an issue inside of themselves that would cause them to become more loving. And so they would see every one of these events, whether they are painful or pleasurable as an opportunity to become more loving themselves. And so they'd always embrace the circumstance without attacking the other person and without resisting the other person. [01:15:15.08]

17.1. Becoming sensitive to the Law of Attraction

Mary: You're talking about direct council there as people verbally saying things and indirect council as perhaps council you haven't invited. Is it always verbal or are there other ways we receive indirect council?

AJ: Not always. The Law of Attraction works perfectly so that all Law of Attraction is really council that God's giving us. But also our environment is a reflection as well if we're very, very sensitive to our environment that we live in, and even our bedroom is a great attraction. So if it's very messy then that tells us some things inside of our soul about our soul. If it's very disorganised that tells us something about our soul. Our house is the same, and our environment that we're growing up in is the same. The place where we live, the location we live, all of it is a reflection of our own condition at some point. If I'm watching something on telly tonight and it happens to be somebody being attacked in Iraq, and then I watch something on telly tomorrow night and it happens to be somebody being attacked in Africa. And then I watch something on telly the next night and the same thing happens then if I'm really humble I'd be going, "Hmm, three attacks, three nights in a row, and I've turned on the telly just to watch them. There's something going on for me here. Maybe I have this righteous justice type of feeling that I need to release." [01:16:44.22]

AJ: But there's something inside of me that I've attracted the knowledge of these events to actually address, and if I'm really, really humble I'd be open to addressing those particular issues rather than going, "Oh, the telly's been pretty bad the last three nights." I wouldn't do that because I would see it as a personal attraction, something that my soul has attracted to work through. [01:17:07.23]

Mary: Yeah and I often look at things like animals, children, even the people I encounter over a number of days.

AJ: Phone calls. Emails.

Mary: Yeah and I ask, "What are the emotions in these people, what's that showing me about me?" Rather than looking at it just being about them. So it seems that, as you said before, everything that God's created is geared through these beautiful laws to highlight things. It's like God's big highlighter marker, isn't it? [01:17:37.18]

AJ: I'm often asked the question why it appears that there's still a lot of negative things happening around me. And my feeling is this - God is refining me through these negative events. There are things inside of my soul that I need to release out of harmony with love that these events are exposing. They got there through no cause of my own, but they're now there. And these events are exposing them. That's why I have millions of spirits surrounding me and attacking me at different times. I have a lot of people attacking me at different times. They're all just exposing specific things that I need to work through. Once I work through them, they will not bother me anymore. They won't have any emotional impact upon me anymore. [01:18:20.17]

AJ: So I see them all as a way for me to rapidly work through the last parts of my emotions to get closer to God. And I feel that if everybody saw it the same way, they'd be far less attacking, far less resistive, far less blocking of all of these events. They'd be focused primarily on their relationship with God and what this particular event is allowing them to work through to get closer to God. Because in the end if we have that viewpoint, we will not worry about all these negative events happening, we will see them all as potential gifts, understanding that the world is not in a very loving place. There are very few people in the world that are able to give us a positive attraction event, an event that's loving that will cause us to heal something inside of us. [01:19:19.16]

AJ: Now obviously once the first person gets into at-onement with God, then that person will be able to give loving events to other people. And once two or three or five or ten do, then those people will be able to share loving events with other people to help them work through their stuff. But the reality is right at the moment, there is no one at-one with God on the planet, so there's a high likelihood that most of the events that are refining us are going to be unloving unfortunately. Now that's not God's fault, it's just the way that man has chosen to act. And we need to understand that. And if we can understand that, and work our way through it emotionally, we can become amongst the first people to become loving, and therefore have a loving effect on the planet with regard to what we give to others. [01:20:08.21]

17.2. Becoming loving in an unloving environment

Mary: It feels to me like that hardness that we have around a willingness to be refined is really the sticking point, isn't it? Because even in that process you were describing, if we just embrace refinement, this process of becoming humble as a way of refining us, even our interaction with those unloving things will no longer be painful. [01:20:33.21]

AJ: Exactly. And this is why in the Bible people like Paul used the illustration of, "Gold being refined by fire". It's not God's intention that our soul is refined by fire in the sense. That we have negative painful events all the time refining our soul. God's intention was that we have loving events refining our soul, and once we become at-one with God that's exactly what actually happens, we have just loving events refining our soul. And we learn more and more information as a result. But the problem is the world is in an unloving condition. There is no one on the planet who is in an at-onement condition with God. As a result of that, a lot of what we attract is going to be unloving based events to help our soul refine. If we're humble we'll accept that process and go through the process without feeling that it's unfair. [01:21:30.03]

AJ: And the reality is that it is fair, because we have often created a lot of very unloving events for others that they now are going to have to also release, through this process. So we need to understand that it's important that all of us understand how linked we are together, and it just takes one humble person to change things on the planet. But the reality is it just takes one lack of humble person, or arrogant person, to create a lot of pain on the planet. And we need to understand the relationship between those choices. [01:22:07.18]

Mary: And I suppose also I see the love inherent in what God has created. He said, "Even when everyone else chooses unlovingness, you're never disempowered. My love has created a law that will allow you to grow, even if every single other person around you has chosen not to grow, this law will still operate on your soul and you can grow." [01:22:35.23]

AJ: Yes and I feel even more importantly is that if we understand that all of the universe is governed by laws of love, then instead of making the choice that's unloving, if I act in the choice that's loving, all of God's Laws support me. If I act in the choices that are unloving, none of God's Laws support me. And so if I can see it that way, that if I'm truly humble and I choose to act in a loving manner, every single time, then I get the support of God, all of God's Laws, all of the people who are also in harmony with God's Laws, all will support me, sooner or later. Now that's a very powerful positive direction to take. If I go down this other track where I take the course of action where none of God's Laws support me, every single one of God's Laws is working against me. [01:23:37.02]

AJ: That already, even before you look at the people, is a bad enough situation. All of God's Laws are now not supporting me; they're all actually trying to get me to change. They're trying to get me to go back to the law-based place and in addition to that, everything I create is going to attract unloving events, which will affect myself and other people as well. So now there's a good chance that while I might have some support, I will also have quite a lot of people opposing me. And I don't mean violently opposing me, because God's Laws are not violent in opposition, they just work the way they do. They're laws, after all. [01:24:21.18]

Mary: They're constant.

AJ: They're constants. And I feel when you're faced with that choice, it's pretty obvious that the humble course of action would be to go into the loving direction, and then to try to remove from within yourself every single reason inside of yourself why you can't be humble; why you can't be humble to that direction. And I feel that's probably where our next interview session will go; to what are all the reasons why we choose to not go in the direction of humility. [01:24:59.11]

18. Closing Words

Mary: Maybe that's a great place to finish for today. Next time we'll talk about the resistance to humility and the ways we resist it.

Part 4 - Humility Session 4 - Resistance to Humility I

19. Why we find humility difficult

**Mary** : Welcome everyone. Today I'm interviewing Jesus and this is the fourth in our series of interviews about humility. So thanks, babe, for joining me again.

**AJ** : It's my pleasure, darling.

**Mary** : We've spent a few interviews talking about humility and what humility truly is. And I suppose the first question I have for you today is: "Why is it that we, as these beautiful souls created by God, seem to find humility, this beautiful state, so difficult?" [00:01:16.01]

19.1. Reason 1: Self-reliance

**AJ** : Well I think it relates to the primary underlying emotional injury that the whole human race has, and that is this injury of wanting to be self-reliant. As soon as we embrace self-reliance, we go into this state where we desire to do what we wish to do. And if what we wish to do can't be achieved, we then usually start to act in an angry or fear-based manner. Unfortunately that's the underlying main trigger to the reason why we don't have a great deal of humility.

**AJ** : If you look at this injury, it has been around since Amon and Aman were first on the Earth, so it's been with the whole of humanity for tens of thousands of years, and as a result of that it's firmly embedded inside of humankind's nature as an emotional injury. It's the very first emotional injury that's ever been placed inside of another person. And when Amon and Aman had children they had them with this emotional injury, and it's gotten passed down through the generations and built more strongly over that period of time. While that injury is in play, there is a very strong desire to deny any emotion, particularly any emotion that will result from us feeling that we don't have control of our own lives. [00:02:55.02]

**Mary** : Is it a feeling of entitlement to be self-reliant that then causes us to resist?

**AJ** : Yeah. When we focus on self-reliance so much, we become very resistive to humility. And the fact is that the majority of people on the planet are very resistive to any form of humility now as a result. I feel that's the primary reason why.

19.2. Reason 2: Feeling unable to cope with overwhelming emotion

**AJ** : The second reason is that we have these underlying emotions that we can't deal with; there's a feeling in us that we cannot deal with overwhelming emotion. In particular, any time we become overwhelmed by an emotion that's negative we have a tendency to shut down. And this desire has also been with the human race for quite some time because it's related to the issue of self-reliance.

**AJ** : Whenever we become self-reliant and then we do not get what we want, then there are often overwhelming emotions, particularly if we don't get any pleasure and we receive pain. But unfortunately we don't want to feel them. We choose not to feel them because we don't believe that we can cope with overwhelming emotions by ourselves. The reality is that all of humanity can cope with overwhelming emotions, even without God. But the majority of humanity chooses not to and because we choose to not deal with anything that's overwhelming we then shut that down, and that's also a great creator of the lack of humility on the planet.

**AJ** : So it's the combination of what happened with regard to self-reliance and then what happened to our belief systems with regard to whether we can cope with emotion. And as you know, if you look at it even today, every time we speak to a group about emotion, the majority of times, particularly if it's a new group, there's a deep underlying resistance to even addressing the issue. And then if you look at the majority of the criticisms we receive through the media or through public opinion, the majority of criticism is about, "Oh, they're triggering another emotion in a person and this is very damaging and dangerous," as if feeling emotion is actually a dangerous thing. [00:05:22.17]

19.2.1. Not feeling our emotions creates an openness to being manipulated

**Mary** : And it implies a vulnerability in a person to harm or manipulation.

**AJ** : Exactly, which I find ironic in a way because I actually believe that if you don't release your underlying emotional injuries, that is when you are highly able to be manipulated. In fact you open yourself completely to manipulation when you try to deny an emotion such as fear for example. Also when you deny emotions such as grief you become highly manipulated, you are very much involved in addictions. As long as somebody can meet your addictions then you're very satisfied and it's so easy to manipulate a person in that state. So the reality is that what mankind fears is actually the thing that they need in order to become less manipulated and controlled by their environment, and particularly by others. And so I find it very ironic in some ways that the very thing that they're afraid of is what will free them from any kind of addictive manipulation. [00:06:24.15]

**Mary** : Yeah. Could you just give a brief example of how when we avoid our emotion we're most open to manipulation?

**AJ** : Let's say we avoid our emotion of being lonely. This is a big emotion that many people have, a fear of being alone, a fear of being lonely. When we avoid that emotion we then need people to be with us. And we need them to be with us so much that if they were going to reject our opinion we would then not state our opinion in order to maintain the relationship with the person. So we have to deny our own opinion for the sake of someone staying with us and therefore helping us to keep feeling like we're not lonely anymore.

**AJ** : If we could just go through the loneliness feeling and come out the other end of it not feeling lonely, even when we are alone, then anybody who's with us would always get our true opinions and we would be our complete self. But the reality is that most people on the planet are not their complete self because they are very afraid of somebody or even a whole group of people eventually rejecting them, or attacking them, and then they'll end up feeling alone, and they feel they can't cope with that feeling. So they finish up shutting themselves down in order to maintain contact with the people that they feel they would like to have contact with.

**AJ** : Now, any person in their environment can manipulate them with this 'lonely' threat. If I have an opinion that you don't agree with and I also have a feeling of loneliness that I'm so frightened of feeling, then you can manipulate me quite easily by just threatening to leave me. I will not let myself have my own opinion when I'm with you if I am very afraid of you leaving me. This then opens me completely to manipulation by you. And this is where the irony of self-reliance is. I become more self-reliant and in the process in the end I become more dependent upon other people for the substitute of these emotions.

**AJ** : Many of the things we'll talk about today are about addictions really. I feel it's the addictions that are in play and that cause so much trouble in terms of our own future development with regard to being ourselves. We're so afraid of expressing ourselves emotionally, which is what humility is really all about, being real emotionally, along with other things of course. Being the real emotional self; everything that we feel on display. If we're so afraid of what another person believes or feels about our real emotional self, then of course we're going to shut that down automatically. This creates an internal resistance. We can't really say that other people around us are creating the resistance; we are creating the resistance by not allowing ourselves to feel overwhelmed by the emotion that would be caused if I was just myself.

20. How we resist humility: arrogance

**Mary** : Okay, and that is the purpose of our discussion today, to talk about the resistance to humility. We talked a lot about what it really is, but now I'd like to really delve into how we resist humility. What are some of the ways we resist humility? Because obviously most of us are walking around in a state that isn't humble.

**AJ** : Yes. I suppose the one that first comes to mind is what you could say is the opposite to humility, which is the feeling of arrogance. I feel that we could probably start with that one.

**Mary** : Great. So what is arrogance?

**AJ** : Well, arrogance is a feeling that exists inside of a person that they are better than another person, that they are superior to the other person, that they know more than the other person. That their value, their personal value or worth, is greater than the other person's. And of course this comes out in lots of different ways. If somebody feels that skin colour is related to how good or bad they are, then of course it turns into what we call racism. That's just an arrogance towards a person of a particular race because, "I believe I'm white and therefore I believe I'm better than a person who's black." But it also comes in other forms in life.

**AJ** : If we look at religion, sometimes a person who gains a specific religion then has an arrogance towards a person of another type of religion. And I even see this developing amongst the so-called Divine Love community, where they have an arrogance because they now know God's Truth about things, and that then automatically makes them better than somebody else. It actually does not make them better. In fact in a lot of ways it can make them worse, particularly if they do not follow the principles of the teachings of love. They can display a lack of love towards others through their arrogance and actually degrade their condition, even though they know the truth. [00:11:59.11]

**AJ** : So the emotion of arrogance can come out in all sorts of areas; religiously, politically, socially, environmentally, and racially. And we see arrogance in our society in almost every area or walk of life. The religious people are arrogant towards the scientists and the scientists feel arrogant towards the religious people. And some religions feel more arrogant towards one type of religion than another. You also get the same kind of arrogance occurring in the family, where parents generally have a large degree of arrogance towards their children. They have a feeling of ownership over their children, that they are superior to their children. And this arrogance causes them to act in all sorts of unloving ways towards even their own children. So arrogance is a big block towards humility. [00:12:49.05]

**Mary** : I know you've just said that arrogance is really like the opposite of humility but a lot of people feel that it's right to have an opinion and to believe in that opinion. How does that relate to arrogance?

**AJ** : Well I do feel that it is right to have an opinion. There's nothing wrong with having an opinion that you believe you have gathered over a period of your life and that you've come to a certain acknowledgment of. It's when these opinions make you believe that you are better than another person that it turns into arrogance. So it's one thing to have an opinion but it's quite another to believe that that opinion makes you a better person than another. And remember I said that with arrogance, and in fact everything we'll discuss today, they're all feelings, they're not just words; they're actually feelings that we have inside of us that are projected towards the other.

**AJ** : So I can have an arrogant feeling towards yourself, even though I might know more. Let's say I know more about electronics than you do, which is true, and you know more about the occupational health industry than I do. That's the reality. If I believe, because I know more about electronics than you do, that that makes me better than you are, now I'm having a feeling inside of me of superiority over you and that feeling is the feeling of arrogance that we're speaking of. That feeling is the damaging feeling because it is actually an attack on the other person. It's a projection of condescension and other emotions towards the other person. You're actually telling the other person through your soul-based feeling interaction with them that they are less than you are.

**AJ** : It is very damaging to your soul personally when you do that but it's also very damaging to the soul who receives that arrogance, particularly if they're very young, because they will come to believe they are less than you are. This is very damaging to them. We know that the issue of self-worth on the planet is very bad and causes so much trouble. The reason why it does is that there's so much arrogance projected at people when they're very, very young, so they grow up feeling like they don't have any worth. And then they wonder why they act like they don't have any worth. Of course they're going to act like they don't have any worth because that's the feeling they have inside of them.

**AJ** : We must remember with all these things we've described, it's a feeling of arrogance that we have towards the other person, a feeling of superiority, a feeling of condescension, a feeling that I am better than the other person just because of what I know, or just because of what I have learned, or just because I am older, or just because I am a different colour. We could make a long list of reasons that cause this underlying emotion. It's very damaging to our soul and in fact causes a lot of people to arrive in the spirit world in a lot of darkness, this emotion of arrogance. In addition the problem with the emotion of arrogance is that it causes people to stay in their condition because they believe themselves to be right, not knowing that they're actually wrong or even being open to the idea that they might be wrong. [00:16:16.13]

20.1. Arrogance prevents openness to new ideas

**Mary** : And that's what I was about to ask you about; how does it affect our openness to new ideas? I'm supposing it closes us completely.

**AJ** : Completely. Every time a new idea is presented to us, if it's something that would make us feel small or something that would make us feel like we have to give up something that we have as a strongly held opinion about, then we will refuse to do it. We will just straight-out refuse. And I've seen people be very illogical in their arrogance. It is one of the most illogical emotions you can imagine, where people hold onto an opinion. Many people would know this from the opinions of racism, for example. The reality is that we are all people. That is very obvious. The reality is that we can procreate with each other, people of different races, so that would make us all the same. And the arrogant position that one race is better than another is so illogical. Just the illogicality of it renders the idea or concept of racism stupid.

**AJ** : And yet how many people are racist? There are literally millions of people on this planet who are still racist, holding on to this concept that is obviously false but they have some kind of emotional baggage that causes them to hold onto the concept, a desire to feel superior or greater than another.

**AJ** : I feel a lot of the different movies have indicated these kinds of things. Remember the movie "American Beauty" where the next door neighbour, who was arrogant towards any homosexual, ended up feeling homosexual feelings himself? And yet he was so afraid of them, and so overwhelmed by them that he eventually desired to murder his neighbour, because of the fear of the emotion. This is the kind of thing that happens on the planet with arrogance.

**AJ** : In the first century and all throughout our life in the last 2000 years, we've both seen that almost everything that has been damaging on the planet has this underlying emotion of arrogance as a part of it. [00:18:33.07]

20.2. God's Truth about arrogance

**Mary** : Yeah, certainly. Okay. Well the next set of questions is about God and arrogance. So how does our viewpoint of ourselves when we're arrogant conflict with God's viewpoint or God's Truth?

**AJ** : If we think about it with arrogance, we're setting ourselves up above God. This is the issue of self-reliance too; we're basically setting ourselves up above God. We're basically wanting the universe to conform to everything we want it to do and in our self-reliance we are completely happy to have anything in the universe do exactly what we want. But we don't understand the principle that actually God's Laws are greater than we ourselves are. In fact God's Laws govern us, and we become lawless when we're arrogant. We believe that we are beyond a law. If you look at almost all forms of arrogance, whether it's racism, or some other kind of arrogance, you always see that a person who is a racist believes they are above the law, even above the law of other humankind, let alone God's Laws. [00:19:46.05]

**Mary** : Yeah, I can see that in myself with issues of authority. In the past I felt, and I see it now as an arrogance, that because of baggage I have with authority that I can defy authority or that rules don't apply to me; the rules of the world, the common law on the planet, that's it's okay to bend that rule. And that's a form of arrogance really.

**AJ** : It is, yeah. This whole concept that we should be able to bend all of the laws to suit ourselves comes from this underlying arrogance. Even when we decide that we can speed when the speed limit is a certain speed, that is also an arrogant position. We're making the decision above what the law has made or a group of people in common have made. Now if we are going to take that position we're going to need to make sure that we're really in harmony with God's Laws if we're not going to damage our soul. Unfortunately most of the time we're not in harmony with God's Laws, and as a result of that our condition rapidly gets worse. [00:20:56.22]

20.3. The difficulty of releasing arrogance

**Mary** : How difficult is arrogance to release from ourselves, from our soul, if it's a very common injury?

**AJ** : I feel it's a very hard emotion to release from the soul. It comes from a lot of very deep fear relating to our own sense of worth, and how we are challenged by other people around us and other situations around us with regard to our sense of worth. Any emotion that has as its core an underlying feeling of a lack of worth is going to be quite difficult to release. Of course we only become arrogant when we are resistive to that underlying emotion. The reality is that while we maintain arrogance, we almost have this underlying feeling of justification of our position. And that is the hard thing to get rid of, justifying our own unloving position, in particular when we believe we're right. That is a very, very difficult thing to then get rid of, when we actually believe that our own unloving position is correct.

**AJ** : Perhaps I can give an example. Most people on the planet would say that if somebody killed your son or daughter, then you should have the right to kill their son or daughter. Now this is a position of what they believe to be justice, and it comes from the underlying principle of an eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. Now most people would argue that it is fine to actually have this viewpoint; "They shouldn't have killed my son in the first place and so now I should be able to take the action of killing theirs." [00:22:47.12]

**Mary** : Their son or them.

**AJ** : Yeah, or them. And the reality is that this is not a very logical belief because if I kill your son and then you kill my son in the end we've both lost a son and we're still both tremendously unhappy about losing our sons. Killing yours hasn't made the loss of my son go away. So it's a very illogical belief but I am taking it because I have this arrogant position that justice is demanded. Now when I start to see that justice is not actually a loving position, I become very challenged. I want to argue that justice is a loving position and once I release the emotion of arrogance that I believe justice is the loving position, I come to see how illogical this sense of justice is and therefore how unloving it must be. But until that point in time I don't see it.

**AJ** : And so I sort of see the hard parts of arrogance are that you're holding on to a concept within yourself that you believe to be right and you have some very, very large emotional investments in it being right. Any person who's a racist, for example, has a very large emotional reason inside of themselves, or is denying an emotion inside of themselves, as to why they want to hold on to that position. Releasing the emotion requires a lot of sincerity, and a lot of desire for love, a lot of desire for truth, and a lot of desire to actually get to the underlying core emotion. [00:24:32.24]

**Mary** : Is that why arrogance would develop in a person? Because of resistance to an underlying emotion?

**AJ** : Always. You know every one of these resistances that we talk about with humility all relate to our desire to get away from an actual emotion that we are carrying around inside of our soul, and we're afraid of being overwhelmed by that emotion. That's the only reason we then develop qualities like arrogance or pride or many of these other qualities we'll discuss.

**Mary** : Okay. And you mentioned that it's something that darkens our souls quite a bit.

**AJ** : Yes because the problem with arrogance is that it's aimed towards another person. There are some resistances to humility that we have inside of us that are more aimed towards ourselves. For example, a lack of self worth is a resistance to humility but it's aimed towards ourselves. We feel bad, we deprecate our self, we treat ourselves badly, but we're not actually harming another person on top of that generally, or oftentimes we're not harming them as much. The degradation to our own soul is only related to our own treatment of ourselves rather than both to our treatment of ourselves and to another. We are not creating a huge amount of harm to others generally, as much as we would be if we were, say, in an arrogant position.

**AJ** : This then means that there are certain groups of emotions that are resistances to humility that actually double our damage up because we're damaging ourselves and another person or the environment around us. There are other emotions that we're holding on to that are just to do with ourselves, and therefore we're only damaging ourselves and therefore it has less of a negative impact upon our soul. Arrogance is one of those emotions that causes a huge amount of darkness in the soul. [00:26:28.16]

21. How we resist humility: the false ego

**Mary** : Alright, well perhaps something a little bit more about ourselves; this issue of the ego or the false ego. Is that a resistance to humility?

**AJ** : Let's define true ego versus false ego, shall we? I feel that people use the term ego on Earth to mean something that is a facade that we carry around with us, a false facade. But the reality is that if you look at the origin of the word it just means soul, the real self. If we look at true ego, that is to have a concept of your true self, there's no damage in doing that. That's exactly what God wants you to do. But if we look at this false ego, which is the ego terminology that most people on the planet use today, we're now referring to the desire to create and maintain a facade, to not be real with other people around us. I would say that the ego is the facade self, if you like, under that definition. The false ego is equal to what we've discussed with people before - the facade self, the facade self being the person that we create, that has been created so that we can deny the real self and deny the hurt or injured self that our parents created. To me that is the false ego of a person, and maintaining that can cause a huge number of problems with humility. [00:28:09.07]

**Mary** : Why does it create problems with humility?

**AJ** : There are probably many reasons why it creates problems with humility. If you define being humble as being your real self emotionally at all times, in other words being truthful to your real self emotionally at all times, then of course if we're maintaining a facade at all times, or most of the time, then most of the time we're not being humble at all and therefore it's impossible for us to get to any causal emotion. We're blocking God, we're blocking the truth, and we're blocking love from entering our soul because God's Love can only enter our soul when we are in a state of truth. And we're only going to be in a state of truth when we walk away from our facade and we start getting into the real person that we are. What do we really feel? So it's a huge impediment to our relationship with God, and our relationship with ourselves even. But it's also a huge impediment to our relationship with everyone else because everyone else starts interacting with the facade. And the problem with them interacting with the facade is that they never get to see our real self and really they're reacting with a person who doesn't exist. At some point in the future they'll come to realise that the person they were reacting with wasn't even the person that they believed them to be, and so sooner or later everybody, including ourselves, is going to be very disappointed with the outcome when we're living in this false ego-based facade. [00:29:48.19]

21.1. Why the false ego state is attractive to maintain

**Mary** : Then why is this state so attractive to so many of us?

**AJ** : There are some very basic and important reasons why it's attractive. The first thing is that when we're in a facade, we do not have to confront society. In other words we don't have to act differently to what other people want us to be. And of course this is a way to prevent all forms of attack; it's a way to prevent all forms of grief. It's a way to prevent projections coming at us personally that we are not good enough or not what everyone wants us to be. It has huge motivations when you think about it. We're basically trying to become what the people who we associate mostly with in society view as the acceptable person.

**AJ** : If I associate with a whole group of New Agers, then the society-based facade will be my becoming the ideal New Age person. If I'm associating with a group of born-again Christians, then my facade is going to be that I'm going to become the ideal born-again Christian. While I am that, I will be accepted by that particular group of people. If I'm living in a ghetto somewhere in one of the countries that have many of these, and almost every country has them, and then my facade will be tough. If I'm a male I'm a tough guy who's not afraid to get into a fight here and there; that's my facade.

**AJ** : My facade, what is acceptable, is going to be very, very dependent upon my immediate environment. The irony is that society as a whole may reject my facade but as long as I'm getting my addictions met through my immediate society, my immediate associations, then I'll maintain a facade for as long as I want to maintain it because it doesn't confront any of those people. And you look at what happens when we try to get out of our facade in that environment, you get attacked immensely by the people in your immediate environment. Even though other people in the world may agree with your changes, you're going to get attacked as a result because your immediate society want you to maintain this facade because that's the facade they're also maintaining.

**AJ** : If you look at that, there's the society-based confrontation, then there's the family-based confrontation. Now most of our facade comes from family in some way. So if I begin confronting and breaking down my facade, I'm really confronting and breaking down all of the family-based belief systems. Of course if my family is not able to be confronted with any emotion, they are going to react very negatively to that. They're going to become very strongly opposed to my breaking down not only my own facade but really by breaking down my facade I'm also breaking down theirs. And many of them feel that that's happening without their choice. Obviously they can choose to ignore it but they don't feel that way because they feel it as a personal attack upon their way of life. And now you're going to have huge amounts of rejection emotions being projected at you from your family; you'll probably end up feeling alone in your family once you continue doing this.

**AJ** : If you look at the dynamic, what's really going on with regard to the false ego is that we are maintaining this false ego-based facade so that society is not confronted, so that the family is not confronted, and so that I am not confronted by society and family by choosing to be my real self. There's a huge amount of emotional investment in maintaining a facade. [00:34:01.08]

21.2. Reasons for our investment in the façade self

**Mary** : In the last interview we discussed how humility involves being the real self, and you're saying the facade is what's covering our real self. Are my blocks to being real just the addictions I have to other people's good opinion of me, this investment in avoiding the confrontation that you just mentioned? Is there more?

**AJ** : That's the top layer of the problem; the underneath layer is that I'm invested in what you think of me because if you don't think well of me I will have certain emotions to feel, and they're the emotions I want to avoid. So then I have a lot of selfish reasons for trying to get your good opinion. My selfish reasons for attempting to get your good opinion (and by maintaining a facade I might get that good opinion) is that I get to avoid what it would feel like if you attacked me. So I have a personal emotional investment in not being attacked, right, that's my personal emotional investment.

**AJ** : And it's not just about gaining the good opinion of others; that's the top layer. The underneath layer is how much I want to avoid the bad opinion because of how it makes me feel and because I'm afraid to feel those feelings. If I were not afraid to feel those feelings then I would have no investment. But the reality is that because I'm afraid to feel those feelings I'm now very focused on getting those feelings met and avoiding the feelings that are actually inside of me. I'm still carrying them around; they're still in me. I carry them around wherever I go. Ironically God's Law of Attraction, based upon my soul condition, is going to attract certain events where people do treat me badly and then I'll obviously react in some way. A lot of times I'll react with arrogance or anger, the previous emotion, because I'm trying to avoid the confrontation of those particular emotions.

21.2.1. The analogy of our soul lighting fires

**AJ** : Ironically though, my soul is going around creating all these fires; it's creating all the fires because of the emotions in me. Then I go running around putting them out by conciliatory actions, being what everybody around me wants, even if it means completely shutting myself down or acting in a manner that's completely out of harmony with my own ideals, and I do all of that because I want to avoid the feelings that are being triggered inside of me, not because I want to avoid the feelings that are inside of you. [00:36:47.00]

**AJ** : Through my action I'm avoiding the feelings that are inside of me that have been created by you attacking those particular feelings or positions. I need to start seeing these problems not as somebody else's problem. They are my problems. My willingness to have a lack of integrity is all about my problem. It's not about somebody else's problem. You could have a hundred people attacking you; if you have integrity you will allow a hundred people to attack you and just feel your feelings. And if you look historically at all of the people who are respected on the planet generally, at some stage they were people who have been attacked and yet remained firm about their position of love without being arrogant. [00:37:39.03]

**Mary** : For sure. And just rewinding a little, you said, "We're going around making fires and then trying to put them out." This dynamic of making the fire and then putting it out, is it our real self that's making the fire? What is the dynamic that's happening there?

**AJ** : It's a combination of our hurt self and our facade that is creating these fires, and in fact our soul is going to continue creating these fires because that's the way God created the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction is such that our soul, when it's out of harmony with love, will create negative events or circumstances or situations which will then bring to us those events or situations so that we can see what our true condition is like. So our soul's going to continue creating all these fires and then we take actions to put them out. And ironically we don't deal with the emotion that created them.

**AJ** : It's almost like somebody's going around with a match lighting all these fires, which is us really in our soul, and then somebody deciding that the best way to stop that from happening is to go around after them with a watering can, rather than the take the box of matches off of them. And the reality is that we do this with ourselves constantly where we're around lighting the fires, not stopping and thinking, "Well hang on a sec, the matches are in my hand; the lighter is in my hand. Maybe I need to put down the matches and work on the underlying reason why I've picked up the matches and started lighting these fires."

**AJ** : And really that's what we're doing by maintaining the false facade. We're trying to make ourselves look good to the environment, and remember every environment's got a different requirement so it's going to be pretty hard to make ourselves look good to everyone. In addition, our soul is going to be creating the fires because if we want to make ourselves look good it's because we have some injuries about ourselves and those underlying injuries will be creating the fire. And then we run around putting them all out, just in terms of taking actions to put them out, not understanding that the whole thing is very uneconomical. The best approach is to take the box of matches off ourselves, stop lighting the fires and look at the underlying soul causal reasons inside of ourselves that have caused our souls to create these fires.

**AJ** : Now that's what we would do if we weren't so interested in the ego. We would automatically do that. But when we're interested in this false ego, we don't do that. We decide to run around putting out the fires because we want to continue maintaining this false ego for a number of reasons. We want to look good to other people but we also want to look good to ourselves, make out that we're something different to what we are. In addition we get to avoid the painful emotions that are inside of us as well; we have so many investments in keeping it. [00:40:51.10]

**Mary** : It just strikes me as you're speaking, that it's like God is operating on the soul and those two things are lighting fires and then this facade part of us is just trying to work against the whole process, which I suppose is the definition of a lack of humility isn't it?

**AJ** : Well it's also the definition of stupidity really, if you think about it! What's the point of doing that? And the irony is that because most people don't understand the soul, they don't understand what's creating all these fires. But if they had a look at what was inside of their soul they could easily see the correlation between what their soul actually feels and why the person is responding in the manner that they are. [00:41:36.14]

**Mary** : It sounds like every time there's a fire in my life I need to stop trying to damp down the flames and really see what is being presented to me here.

**AJ** : Yes. Very important. In fact if I had any sense of myself I would want to do that. I wouldn't want to try and make out that it didn't happen. As you know we've often talked in groups where somebody says to us, "No, I know all of that." And I say to them, "Well, you say you know all of that but what happened to you last week?" Because often I know what happened to them last week; they had this terrible traumatic thing happen. "Oh but that was because everybody else..." you know, "...that's because what everybody else did," not understanding that their own soul has created fires.

**AJ** : So when they come and tell me then that they already know everything that I'm talking about, I'm saying, "I'm sorry, you think you know, which is actually an arrogant position, and on top of that you are maintaining a facade because the reality is that your soul is creating these fires that you're not even acknowledging." (Laughs) It's like, light the fire, "Oh, there's no fire!" Light another fire, "Oh there's no fire." (Laughs) "No fire, no fire!" And this is how in our own arrogance and sense of ego we have this way of ignoring everything as a result. And then we tell somebody who comes along and speaks to us about it, "Oh, I know everything you're talking about." And I would say to the person, "Well if you knew everything I was talking about not only would you be at-one with God right now but your soul wouldn't be creating fires every single day of the week either." [00:43:11.20]

21.3. How to break down the façade with courage, integrity and honesty

**Mary** : That really leads to my next question, which was if I, or we, discover, "Okay I'm in this facade," how do I begin to get closer to my real self? How do I begin to work through this issue?

**AJ** : Well again this is a very difficult thing for most people because to actually be self-reflective it requires some level of honesty at the beginning. We need to start asking ourselves questions about ourselves, to ask, "What is the truth of my life? Am I truly happy? Is my body feeling good? Am I getting younger? Am I getting wiser? Am I acting in harmony with love in all of my interactions with people? Is my life happier?" These are all questions we need to ask ourselves. And if they are not, if it's not happening then it's because there is something that we are blocking. It's something that is going on inside of ourselves.

**AJ** : We need to stop presenting ourselves to the world in the manner that we want the world to see and we need to start presenting ourselves to everyone as we truly are. That requires a lot of qualities that the majority of us don't have initially, which are courage, integrity, honesty. These are qualities that are often spoken of but very few people actually have when it comes to living in their facade. My suggestion is to pray about gaining qualities of integrity, courage, honesty, truthfulness, pray to God about developing a desire within ourselves to develop these qualities, even if nobody on the planet develops them other than ourselves. [00:45:03.10]

**AJ** : Engage that process of developing these qualities so that we can at least have an honest examination of ourselves. That's what I feel needs to happen with regard to that. Obviously as we go through that we will start exposing some underlying fears and addictions that we have that cause us to maintain that facade. But we won't be able to do that if we're completely ignorant of our own condition and what we're actually attracting in our own life.

**Mary** : So it sounds like we have to begin to want to look honestly at ourselves. From what you said, look at the evidence already around us in terms of what is in our life right now.

**AJ** : Yes.

**Mary** : And what that tells me about me, rather than about other people.

**AJ** : Yes. If we took it as a global problem, which it is, then we would reason like this. The world has a lot of very, very dark problems at the moment. We go to war, there are murders, there are rapes, there are very dark things happening on the Earth all the time. There are people starving to death. There are millions of people starving to death every single year. These are all global problems. Now if I am self-reflective, I will begin to see how I myself and emotions inside of me create these global problems. The fact that these global problems exist means that we haven't got everything sorted out.

**AJ** : Now if everybody other than me is the problem then that would mean that there's seven billion people on the planet all thinking that it's somebody else that causes the problem. The reality is, it's got to be the seven billion people on the planet who are causing the problem. If we examine that from a global perspective then, yes, the seven billion people on the planet are causing these problems, therefore we haven't got everything sorted out and therefore our facade is pretty useless, it's not actually working, and while we're in denial of these problems we're not going to fix anything.

**AJ** : Now let's shrink that down to our personal life. The same applies to an even greater degree in our personal life. If our personal life has a huge group of issues and problems and our own body has problems with it, then there is even a higher correlation between our own unhealed emotions and our own belief systems and our own desires and our own actions creating our life; we are the person who's the centre of our own life. It would then make sense from a logical perspective that if our life is a bit of a mess then we are the person at the centre of it who's creating it. And we need to see that, particularly in an environment like in most places in the West. In other countries we have Western countries imposing things upon them and often a person's life gets a bit out of their own control because of the imposition. In comparison, in Western countries most of us don't have a huge group of impositions and so the reality is that if we're in the West and we believe that we're all healed emotionally and we've all got everything sorted out, then it is a gross, gross lie that we're telling ourselves if in addition we're not going to examine our own life.

**AJ** : Remember the discussion we had when we were in the USA about "The Human Soul - Denial & Addictions?" We went out to dinner with a group of people and they were in a great deal of denial about their own emotions and how their own emotions create a lot of the decisions that the government was taking, and once we started talking about it how challenged everybody was, like, "Whoa!" There were heavy emotions after that. This is the kind of self-examination that we're going to need if we're in a facade. [00:49:04.05]

**Mary** : Thank you. Alright, so far we've talked about arrogance and facade. What would be next on your list?

**AJ** : Well, there's so many, isn't there?

**Mary** : Yes. I have one on the list that we can bring up, judgement and criticism, which I think is an interesting one that perhaps we don't always associate with a lack of humility.

22. How we resist humility: judgement and criticism

**AJ** : Yeah. Judgement and criticism. These are actually very similar to arrogance in a lot of ways.

**Mary** : How would you define judgement for us?

**AJ** : Well again, judgement is an emotion that's coming out of me. It's not anything to do with what I am saying. I can be telling the truth in a loving way or I can tell the truth in a judgemental way. If it's a judgemental way, I have an emotion coming out of me towards the other person that I am superior to them, that I know better than they do and so forth. In fact a judgement is a lot about my opinion of the other person's worth. When I am in a state where I am judging, I have a strong opinion inside of myself that I am more worthy than the other person. It might be a particular issue but it could be on a whole group of issues. Sometimes it's on a group of issues where I believe that everything to do with my being is more worthy than somebody else's.

**AJ** : Now that's an emotion which is quite a damaging projection at the other person. It's belittling, condescending. It's causes us to have an obnoxious viewpoint towards other people. It's creates a sense in them that they are lesser or it attempts to create a sense in another person that they are lesser than I am. And it allows me to maintain a sense of personal superiority. In other words, by judging you I can maintain a sense that I am better than you. And of course judgement has huge problems when it comes to humility of course.

**AJ** : Criticism is closely aligned and again, we've got to be careful; criticism is an emotion. It's not a statement. You see I can make a statement of truth, and the statement of truth can be, for example, "Do you like these flowers?" (AJ motions to a vase of flowers on the interview table) And my feeling is, "Yeah I love those flowers. A lot of them look like Australian natives, and many of them appeal to me colour-wise and everything." "Are they dying?" "Yes. They are dying. They've been cut and they're dying." And to be frank I don't understand why people want to cut flowers because they immediately begin dying. Honestly. I'd much rather see them alive for a longer period of time. [00:52:52.10]

**AJ** : Now, my statement that they're dying is not a judgement or a criticism, it is just a statement of truth. They are dying. But somebody could take that to be a statement of judgement or criticism. In other words if they gave me the flowers, and they were a nice bright bunch and I said, "You've given me a heap of dying things now," which is a statement of truth, they might take that as a rejection of their gift, which they've now taken as a criticism, even though I don't mean it to be such. It's just a statement of truth.

**AJ** : So it depends upon the giver, and this is where it's very, very difficult for most people to determine judgement and criticism because most people feel criticised or judged even when you're just stating the truth. This is not what I'm speaking of. I'm not speaking of when we're just stating the truth without any emotional intention behind it. What I'm speaking of with judgement and criticism is a desire to make the other person feel something as a result of the statement, which is a very different condition.

**AJ** : If I'm saying, "They're dying," and it's just a statement of truth, well that's a statement of truth. But if I'm saying, "I'm pointing out to you that they're dying because I want to criticise that you cut them," and I want to actually make you feel bad about cutting them, rather than just examine the truth about why you cut them, then I'm straight away now involved in a feeling of judgement from myself. It's a feeling that comes out of me. And unfortunately most people are not very sensitive to feelings and so they don't know when the feeling is coming out of the person when they're just stating the truth. So this sort of muddies the waters a bit when it comes to this emotion. [00:54:49.15]

**Mary** : It does, doesn't it? And sometimes it feels like you can have what appears to be a subtle exchange with someone that can be laden with judgements, can't it? It can be overt or it can be very underhanded, but in both cases I'm assuming you're talking about the emotion that's coming out?

**AJ** : Yes. We see the underhanded judgements very much occurring in families but also in society. For example, we've had many things written about us now and one of the judgements is that we're a cult. Now it's not a statement of truth. You and I don't lead anything. We live in our own property. We don't have anybody living with us. We don't monitor anybody's life to see whether they're practicing the principles of Divine Truth that we teach. We don't attack them if they aren't. We don't give them all of these lovely feelings when they are. [00:55:52.00]

**Mary** : We don't threaten them.

**AJ** : We don't threaten with the removal of our love. The only times that we remove ourselves from spending time with a person is when they've been unloving to us. We have no levels of control whatsoever. And pretty much anybody who comes and visits us sees that.

22.1. The example of Divine Truth being labelled a cult by the media

**AJ** : But if you look at what the media does, the word "cult" has a connotation. It's not just a statement of truth for the media, it's actually a way to give an impression to a reader. It's a purposeful manipulation of truth to inflame an emotion in the reader, in this case.

**AJ** : For example, in many newspaper articles I'm referred to as "Miller. In other words I don't even have enough of the respect of the person who's the writing the article for them to use my first name. I'm rarely called "Mr Miller", or "Mr Alan John Miller", but rather I'm just called "Miller," and this is another judgement coming out of them. The statement of my name is just a statement of truth; my last name happens to be Miller, but the attitude coming out of them is that I do not deserve any form of respect, which is how they feel. And that's how they treat me when they interview me.

**AJ** : The emotion coming out of them is an emotion of judgement. It helps a person maintain their own arrogance, their own position. It helps them maintain the feeling that they are superior, so they then feel the right to pull down another. People that we've met in the media thus far (and I'm not saying that all people in the media are potentially like that, but we haven't met anybody that isn't at this point) have this strong desire to pull down all the time. In fact we see this happening with other people all the time. They write these big articles pulling down something, but when they're proven to be false and they've been sued or something like that for being false, they write this little tiny correction in the 28th page of the paper that nobody can see, when they spent the whole front page pulling down the person. This is an indication of their underlying desire; their underlying desire is to judge, but not to tell the truth. A person who has a desire to tell the truth would tell the truth whether they were happy about the truth or not. [00:58:32.07]

**AJ** : If a person came and examined our lives they'd see that we don't rip people off; we don't impose our feelings upon them. We don't do any of those things. And while they might personally be unhappy about that because it makes their story a lot less flamboyant and a lot less inflammatory, they would still be happy to tell the truth. That's what judgement does; judgement helps us avoid the truth. Judgement is a great way to step away from truth, to get away with actions that are very, very damaging to society and individuals just because we want to maintain a position of falsehood most of the time.

22.2. Reasons that we judge

**Mary** : My next question is, "What makes us judge? Not just judge others but judge ourselves. I see many people have an issue with judgement and criticism of self, so what drives us to this injury?"

**AJ** : Well, as for all of these injuries, most of them began in our childhood in some way. There can be a combination of things gathered in our childhood that has caused us to begin to judge others. Sometimes a family has this perception that their family is the best family, and then, because they maintain this perception with their children, they actually inculcate into their children this concept that, "Our family is better than any other family. Our beliefs are better than anybody else's beliefs. The way we live our life is better than the way anybody else lives their life. That's makes us better people." There's this underlying feeling that is present. Now this underlying feeling builds in the child and they then begin to act upon this underlying feeling that they are better than other people. And of course they will not avoid judging other people as a result.

**AJ** : The other thing that causes judgement is almost the entire opposite set of circumstances in our childhood, which is where other people have judged us and criticised us and pulled us down and denigrated us and treated us badly in our childhood, and this then causes us to have this rebellious attitude towards their judgement by judging them in return, by having a kick-back reaction to their judgement. As a result we grow up actually judging the things that are inside of ourselves.

**AJ** : In addition in our childhood we were often judged whenever we expressed an emotion. Whenever we expressed an emotion that was out of harmony with the family or society viewpoint that was surrounding us at the time, we were immediately attacked. And so judgement actually comes from a large degree of fear inside of us about personal attack upon ourselves. When we are attacking another, we get away from being attacked ourselves. And if we, as a group, attack another, we have a large degree of acceptance in the group towards ourselves not being attacked. Often judgement actually comes from a deep underlying fear of our own attack, our own lack of safety, and our own lack of security.

**AJ** : You see this happening all the time in the world too, where eventually judgement turns into war. For example, all through the Dark Ages judgement turned into religious persecution because eventually they turned around to this viewpoint, "Because I judged you, I could now condemn you." I could now mete out justice, what I believe was my form of justice towards you. If you happened to be speaking to spirits, and I heard you, and I was a religious persecutor at the time, I would have condemned you as a witch and given you one way to test it, and the way would end up in your death if you were innocent, and if you weren't innocent you'd be killed anyway. Not very much of a choice but that would be the judgement that I mete out. [01:03:06.06]

**AJ** : Once we get involved in judging another, we actually also get involved in condemning another. And it's not very far from that before we'll begin murdering others, where we'll be involved in physically harming other people. [01:03:21.00]

**Mary** : It's quite sobering.

**AJ** : Yeah. I suppose what we need to do is look at how it relates to humility. The whole reason we're doing this is to avoid our own feelings about others attacking us. And we're avoiding our own feelings of superiority that we have over other people. In the end we're avoiding our own feelings of how much less we feel, our own sense of worth. There are many emotions that we're avoiding and getting away with just by judging somebody. [01:03:55.20]

22.3. Judgement blocks Divine Truth and Divine Love

**Mary** : How does judgement relate to our seeing and speaking truth?

**AJ** : Well fear and truth are complete polar opposites. Fear is false expectations masquerading as truth, or you could say, false expectations appearing real; they are masquerading as truth. And truth is completely the opposite. Truth is Divine Truth, absolute, unable to be modified. Now judgement is a fear-based emotion. While I'm in a state of maintaining a fear-based emotion, it's impossible for me to see truth. This is what judgement also causes us to do. It causes us to not be able to see truth. So it's very, very damaging.

**AJ** : If we think about our relationship with God, we've got humility as the foundation of our relationship with God. Humility opens the door to truth. If we're judging, we're closing the door to truth. We might be praying to God like, "Please give me more love," but while I'm judging my fellow man, as I said in the first century, "You might as well grab a noose and put it around your neck and attach it to a great big heavy weight and throw it in the sea," because that's really what you're doing. You're killing yourself in terms of your own relationship with God. That's what you're doing by judging another person. You are actually causing the other person harm but in addition you're causing your own soul to close to any truth. And when you cause your own soul to close to any truth, how can love ever enter?

**AJ** : So if humility is the doorway to truth and truth is the doorway to love, then we are not even getting to the point of the truth when we're in a state of judgement. We're already telling ourselves the lie. And it's impossible for new truth to enter us and impossible for God's Love to enter us while we're judging our fellow man, and woman, of course. Judgement helps us avoid our own fear, it helps us stay away from the truth about how we feel, and it helps us avoid personal responsibility for own emotional response to what is happening. It helps us avoid all of those things. It's anti-humility, this judgement.

**AJ** : We notice, as you and I talk about frequently, many people who think they're on the Divine Love Path judging other people so much. They have these terrible feelings towards people in the community or in the environment, and this is an indication of how much they do not understand the principles of humility. If they understood the principles of humility, they'd be looking at themselves and going, "Wow, I just judged another person. Wow, I just judged another person. Wow, every time I'm judging these other persons, I am completely shut down to the truth. Completely." [01:07:00.08]

**Mary** : And I see many people supposedly speaking truth and yet they're in a state of judgement.

**AJ** : Exactly. They're totally shut down to truth.

**Mary** : That pathway is completely closed.

**AJ** : Exactly.

**Mary** : What I find so sobering about judgement is, as you pointed out, the quick progression into violence that can happen from judgement. [01:07:21.07]

**AJ** : Yes. In the first century life many of the so-called friends that we had, because of their judgement of you, treated you very badly, both while I was alive but even more so when I passed. And many of those people acted like they were all loving. But immediately you put them in a negative situation, they resorted to violence, so much violence that they were prepared to even kill a person generally, or rape them and lots of other very unloving acts that came from this underlying condition of judgement.

**AJ** : For instance, men who judge women as being a slut or a whore will often revert to the rape of the same kind of a woman, just because their emotion of judgement causes them to eventually revert to violence. [01:08:08.18]

**Mary** : To justify that.

**AJ** : To justify it, yes.

23. How we resist humility: denial

**Mary** : Okay, thanks, babe. Next on my list is denial. I've written, "Intellectual and emotional denial of unloving thoughts, words and actions as a resistance to humility."

**AJ** : Can we say both with the intellect and emotions.

23.1. The three main types of denial: justification, minimisation and shifting the blame

**Mary** : What are the ways that we commonly use to live in denial?

**AJ** : Well we could list hundreds of them probably, but there are three primary ones that I feel are so popular and common that you could refer to them all the time. The first one is a feeling of justification of our own behaviour, where we justify the behaviour, usually because somebody else did it to us. For example, "You hurt me so that gives me the right to hurt you. You damaged me, or you damaged some of my property, so that gives me the right to damage yours. You stole from me so that gives me the right to steal from you." [01:09:28.05]

**Mary** : Yeah, or I can think of some amongst women like, "She had an abortion. I had an abortion. Everyone does it."

**AJ** : "Everyone does it."

**Mary** : nd we are denying the emotions.

**AJ** : Yeah, justification is a large way of denying emotions. And intellectual justifications cause emotional denial. Minimisation is another thing that we do. When I say minimising, we say, "Oh it wasn't that bad." We often do this with our childhood; we say, "Yeah mum and dad weren't always loving but it wasn't that bad," while we're carrying around mountains of emotional baggage. "But it wasn't that bad. They were fine." In fact when we minimise we can never get to the underlying causal emotion. It's obvious when we justify that we're never going to get there, because we're actually justifying unloving behaviour, but when we minimise the unloving behaviour, we're also never going to get to casual emotion to the depth that we need to in order to clear it.

**AJ** : For the majority of people, they go into this place of minimising what has happened to them, minimising what they have done as well, explaining to themselves, "Yeah it wasn't that bad. It was only a little thing." You see this a lot when people steal; "Oh it was only from the government. I wouldn't steal from you! But I'll falsify my tax return." There's this underlying viewpoint that some things are acceptable.

**AJ** : And then the third one that we use I feel just as often as that, is shifting the blame. For example you often see this when a person's in a discussion with another person about something that's gone wrong in a relationship. You'll say, "But you did this," but most of the time the "but you did this" is completely unrelated to the discussion. But we try to pull the focus of attention from ourselves and onto another thing. And we use that as a way to avoid what's really going on in ourselves.

**AJ** : Justification, minimisation, and shifting the blame are great tools that we use, and I feel that's all a part of denial. These are all the methods we use to remain in complete denial of any unloving behaviour. Any unloving thoughts, any unloving words, and any unloving behaviour that we have are all maintained by this denial of it by justifying, minimising and shifting the blame. We maintain this position so that we don't have to come face to face with ourselves. But humility is all about coming face to face with yourself. While you're in this state of denial, shifting the blame, you are never going to come face to face with yourself.

23.2. Denial of God's Laws

**Mary** : So that's denying ourselves. What about when we deny God and God's Laws? Does this indicate a lack of humility?

**AJ** : Of course! An even greater lack of humility in a lot of ways. Imagine if there is a God, and God has all of these laws in place in the universe, and I am walking through this universe in complete denial of them all, then obviously my life is going to illustrate the denial of them in a lot of ways. Things that are happening in my life will show me that I am denying it. My soul will be creating all of these fires of course that I'll be running around madly trying to put out. But I am also in a state of arrogance. I'm in a state of saying, "I'm lawless. I don't need God's Laws," in fact not honouring any of God's Laws in any way. And this is an underlying denial of a certain emotion. It is an emotion of rebellion. Wanting to rebel against the very person who created us is a strong anger-based desire. While I'm in denial of everything, that's what I'm doing; I'm really in this state of rage towards all of God's Laws and God's Principles. And of course that's never going to have a very good outcome. [01:13:50.09]

**Mary** : What is the outcome? How does it affect us when we deny God and God's Laws?

**AJ** : Well I suppose you could say it affects the outcome in a very basic way. For example, while I'm denying all of God's Laws and denying God Herself, I am also in a state where I'm never going to live in harmony with love. We've talked to many people who love to hear what we're saying to them but they don't want to act upon it, and the main reason why they don't want to act is they say to us, "Unless you can prove that you're Jesus, I'm not going to do any of this." And I go, "Well that's a very strange position. What you're basically telling me is that unless I can prove well enough to you that I'm Jesus, you're not going to act in a more loving way." Now that seems to me to be a very illogical thing to do; to actually decide to not act in a more loving way just because you don't know whether somebody is who they're saying they are. It's a very illogical viewpoint. [01:15:03.01]

**AJ** : In addition, it gives them a justification for not acting lovingly. Now why would you want a justification for not acting lovingly? There's got to be some pretty dark emotions in a person who's willing to justify, using one reason such as, "Can you prove you're Jesus?" "No." "So therefore I'm not going to become more loving." That seems to me to be a preposterous supposition, that you're now going to say that just because I can't prove my identity at this point it means that you've got the right to be unloving. And this is where I feel denial has a huge impact upon people on the planet, where they can't even reason logically anymore that the thing they're in denial of is not logical to stay in denial of. It's not logical from any perspective on this planet; it's not logical to resist becoming more loving. It's not logical.

**AJ** : It's not logical to resist more truth. It's just not logical. And it's not logical to place whether you're going to do something in the hands of another person. That's not logical either. And yet people do that all the time because they're in denial. They don't want to have to take some kind of physical action in order to become more loving themselves. The reality is that they don't want to come face to face with the fact that they're being unloving; they're in complete denial of that. They'd rather come up with a hundred excuses as to why they should remain unloving. And one of those excuses can be, "Oh but you're not Jesus," or, "You haven't proved that you're Jesus." So what? There's still a good reason for you to be loving. There's still a good reason for you to discover more truth, whether I'm Jesus or not. And it makes no logical sense for a person to take a position of denial, except that they wish to remain unloving. They wish to get away with treating other people badly.

23.2.1. An example of denying the truth about abortion

**AJ** : And so I feel denial is a very strong thing going on, on the planet. You know that discussion that we had, "The Human Soul - Denial & Addictions", with the people in the USA recently? When I started listing the different issues and problems, one that came up was that I started listing the abortion statistics from our spirit world perspective. Of course I didn't say that in the presentation. Many of the people went home and started looking up the statistics about abortion and then I got this whole list of emails saying how I was incorrect about the statistics on abortion and so forth. And to be frank I was not.

**AJ** : Their statistics on abortion are taken only from the recorded abortions in developed societies. In addition, they do not include any abortive forms of contraception. When you add all of the abortive forms of contraception and all of the desires of parents to not have children, and all of the abortions that do actually occur, there are actually more than 500 million pregnancies on this planet every single year. Not 144 million, which is the childbirth rate, on the planet every year.

**AJ** : So what happened to the rest of those children? They all died from abortions and miscarriages. Whether we call them abortions or miscarriages or not, they all died from that. And so when I'm speaking with our spirit friends I'm saying, "How many people pass in the spirit world every single year from an act from their parents that was abortive in nature?" They say, "250 million." When we look at the statistics on the planet of how many abortions actually occur every single year, it's 45 million. Very different figures.

**AJ** : But then why are we even justifying 45 million children dying from abortion every year? We're meant to be in societies that love children, but before the child exits the womb, we're perfectly happy to kill it. Is there something wrong here? Of course there is. That's the point. There is something wrong here. And this is the underlying problem; most of us are in complete denial that most of us in Western societies do approve, or many people do approve, of abortion, which is actually approving of a murder, without seeing the results in the spirit world of what actually occurs for these children. We're actually approving of something because we want to maintain our denial. Why do we want to maintain our denial? Because by maintaining our denial we get to have the right to have an abortion. That's why we want to do it. [01:20:10.06]

**Mary** : Which is about avoiding a fear in the end?

**AJ** : Which is about avoiding a fear. All sorts of fears, if you list them all. I think in the interview on abortion that I did with Barbara recently, I listed some of those fears that we have that cause us to go ahead with an abortion. But the reality is that none of us want to face those fears and so why do we finish up doing it? We finish up going into complete denial that the unborn child is a child and then we start having to make a choice. Is it three months that it's a child? Or six months of pregnancy it's a child? When can we allow an abortion and not allow an abortion? And all of these choices are made because we're in complete denial of the fact that this is a child. We're in complete denial of the fact of the truth. We don't have to face the truth. And we don't have to face the truth of how many abortions are actually occurring. We don't have to face the truth of our own unloving behaviour. And yet, when the child is born, what lengths do we go through to save the child if it's sick? Extreme lengths. Something's wrong here! Logically something's wrong. [01:21:18.16]

**Mary** : Yeah. If you take that issue for example, are we denying something that we inherently feel inside of ourselves? Or is the world itself in a state of denial, that it doesn't actually allow enough truth to come to us about these sorts of issues?

**AJ** : Well in the end all of these things are personally attributable to our own emotional condition. But we must understand that our own emotional condition is often a result of the environment in which we're living. If the world itself believes that a child is not a child until it's born, then of course I'm going to grow up having that same belief, which will then cause me to have a certain set of justifications. However any mother who has been pregnant and who has then lost a child through a miscarriage often feels they've lost a child. And yet when they've lost a child through abortion, they don't believe the child is a child.

**AJ** : And this in itself is the level of denial that we have. We are willing to explain one condition, and yet explain a completely opposite condition and be in complete denial that we're talking about exactly the same thing almost at the same time. And this is an indication of how much our intellectual denial causes us to avoid emotional causes within us. The reality is, yes, society does collectively have certain conditions which are completely against the acknowledgement of truth on a particular issue. [01:23:00.18]

**Mary** : We're speaking a lot about abortion but I suppose this counts for very many other issues that we don't even see. Abortion is an issue that is brought up as a moral issue on the planet but I suppose there are many issues that we don't even question because the whole world is in a global sense of denial about it.

23.2.2. An example of denying the truth about eating meat

**AJ** : Well let's look at another, the eating of meat. That is more of a global issue. The majority of people on the planet are completely for the eating of meat. Most in the medical profession promote the eating of it, they believe for health reasons. If you look at almost any society on the planet we're willing to greatly destroy our environment for the sake of eating meat. We have ten times the amount of destruction occurring to the planet and also economic resources required to produce this meat than if everybody was vegetarian on the planet. And yet we are all in denial of all of that. And why are we all in denial of that? Because many of us like to eat meat. That's the main reason we're in denial of it all.

**AJ** : From a society perspective we can maintain this denial. Many people who have listened to the Divine Truth for years have still not dealt with this moral issue because they are in complete denial of the fact that they're being unloving. They're being unloving to the animals themselves, but they're also being unloving to the Earth. They're being unloving to the rainforests, which are being destroyed at phenomenal rates just for the sake of beef production. They're being unloving to the Earth itself and the Earth's resources because we can be using a tenth of the resources for food production that we're currently using. And all the while they're complaining about how the Earth is being destroyed.

**AJ** : What hypocrisy is there? If a person is complaining about how the Earth is being destroyed and yet at the same time eating meat, they are a hypocrite. Quite simple. And that is not a judgement; that is just a statement of truth. They are a hypocrite because on the one hand they are destroying the Earth and on the other hand they're complaining about other people doing it, and that's hypocrisy. That's the statement of hypocrisy. The key is for us to work through the emotional reason why we want to maintain that denial, and a lot of that's to do with our family. Because, as you know, as soon as you go vegetarian, who's the first people who complain? [01:25:26.21]

**Mary** : Well my family didn't because they were vegetarian when I was a kid but for many people it is the mother...

**AJ** : My mother still complains!

**Mary** : "How can you eat? How can you survive? How can you get enough sustenance?"

**AJ** : When I first became vegetarian I went through a period of having to deal with lots of emotion, so I lost a lot of weight and my mother thought, "You're too skinny; it's because you're a vegetarian." Now that I've put the weight back on, is that because I'm a vegetarian? I'm still not eating meat; I'm a vegan actually. I'm still not eating meat nor any animal products. And so have I put the weight back because I am a vegan? No, it was because of an emotion. In the end, our denial of the unloving act, eating meat, causes us to deny that a person who's vegan can actually be completely healthy. And this is where I feel denial is such a powerful tool that we use on this planet to manipulate and control and direct the opinions of the entire world. [01:26:31.14]

23.3. Resistance to humility creates hypocrisy

**Mary** : And also from what you're saying, it helps us become hypocrites. Looking at your list of things we've already got so far and it seems like all of these resistances to humility actually breed hypocrisy.

**AJ** : They do, yes. If you look at arrogance: when I have a viewpoint, for example, that my race is better than yours, I'm a hypocrite because I'm not looking at truth. The reality is that I can procreate with your race, so that makes us both the same. If we make love, we can have a child; we're from different races but we're both the same. So there's the proof of my arrogance but it's also the proof of my hypocrisy in terms of my belief systems.

**AJ** : It's the same with all of these different resistances to humility; they all create hypocrisy. That's why we gave that talk recently in London to that small group of people about "Love in Action: Sincerity or Hypocrisy?" Which one are we going to choose? There are so many people who believe they're hearing Divine Truth, they believe they're following it, but it's not actually transforming their life. To be frank they still find it difficult to feel an emotion and the reason is that they still want to maintain these façade-based hypocritical actions. [01:27:44.17]

23.4. Reasons we are invested in staying in denial

**Mary** : Yeah. On the subject of denial, my last observation is that most of us, when we embark on this endeavour to know ourselves and to know God, we seem to realise we're all in bucket-loads of denial. And we've talked a little bit about our investment in denial but my last question for you was, do you think the world is invested in us staying in denial?

**AJ** : Yeah, certainly. If you look at politics, it's invested in the denial of what it's doing. Religion is invested in the denial of what it's doing. If we look at almost any other area of endeavour; the medical profession, all these other areas, there are huge amounts of denial in all of it. A lot of it is to create a seeming idea of prosperity, which obviously isn't the case because many people in the world don't have any prosperity at all. We've just been to Brazil where there are favelas everywhere. While some people have improved in their condition, there are huge amounts of denial about what's happening to the environment, just for the sake of improvement in economic prosperity.

**AJ** : There are these huge layers of denial in every aspect of life. Even our own involvement with the media has been interesting because we often get people emailing us saying, "The media always tells the truth," and we go, "What?! There's not been a single instance where the media's told the truth about us." How can they believe that the media tells the truth? [01:29:28.00]

**Mary** : The poor media's lost all credibility with me now (laughs) because I know how many lies they've told about us. I look at anything and I think, "I really can't believe what's being said."

**AJ** : Yeah. Can you see that if I maintain the denial that the media is not lying to me, or the government is not lying to me, or religion is not lying to me, or whatever it is is not lying to me, then I don't have to feel anything? I don't have to feel the disappointment, the lack of trust, and the other emotions that I do not want to feel. And so what do I do? I choose to believe what is being touted as the mainstream viewpoint, and I choose to believe it because I want to avoid a whole group of emotions about it. [01:30:10.05]

**Mary** : So you're really saying that even though, yes, the world is invested in us remaining in denial, individuals are creating that investment.

**AJ** : Exactly. It's got nothing to do with the world. The world is not some kind of inanimate object over which we have no bearing. It is completely responding in the way that it is because the majority of individuals in the world want to maintain a position of denial. The majority of individuals in the world do not want to believe that their politicians are lying to them. They don't want to believe that their religions are telling them untruth. They don't want to believe that in all these other areas, the economic areas and other areas of our life, are all just a figment of somebody's imagination or somebody's very highly malevolent control issues. They don't want to believe all of those things. They'd much rather believe that everything's fine. And if I can believe that everything's fine then I don't have to feel anything bad.

**AJ** : Now if everyone in the world feels like, "We just want to believe everything's fine," then of course the politicians and the religious leaders and all these other people just say, "Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's fine." And we go, "Oh yeah, everything's fine. Isn't this wonderful," when it's not fine. The irony is that if we look around the world today we can see everything's not fine and yet we still want to believe everything's fine. This is like the old saying about the ostrich burying its head in the sand; we want to believe everything's fine when it's not. And we do that because we don't want to come face to face with our own emotions. That's the only reason why we're doing it. It's not because we're not capable of changing, because we are. It's not because we're not capable of bringing our life into more harmony with love, because we are. It's because we do not want to face our own negative emotions that we need to face before we do those things. It's all about facing our own pain; we want to avoid our own pain, which is a very selfish, self-oriented perspective of our life.

**Mary** : And it's where we lose integrity, isn't it?

**AJ** : We lose everything - courage, integrity, any sense of love, truth, everything. We lose any quality that is good in human nature when we stay in denial and when we want to avoid our own emotional condition, and our own emotional pain. And remember, being humble is about accepting your own emotional condition, accepting your own emotional pain, accepting how you feel; that's what humility is all about.

24. How we resist humility: anger with others

**Mary** : Okay, so on to our next point of resistance to humility, anger with others. My first question about anger is, if humility is actually about feeling all of our emotions, how can our anger with others indicate a lack of humility? [01:33:41.19]

**AJ** : Yes, a lot of people believe that they have the right to experience their anger, and of course they do. But the reality is that we can be angry and not sin, as the Bible says. The way we do that is by actually owning the anger as an emotion inside of ourselves that we refuse to direct at another person. Most people use anger as a tool to direct at other people though, and as a result they are nowhere near experiencing any emotion, they're in a state of abusing the state of anger and actually using their anger to destroy things around them, including other people.

**AJ** : The way a child experiences anger, if we go over that again, is that it just has a little tantrum, lying on the ground, kicking and screaming and usually crying along with it. When the child is in a pure state of anger, it doesn't expect anything from its environment. It doesn't go up and hit anybody, for example. If the child is going up to hit somebody, then it's now not experiencing its anger, it's now actually acting upon its anger and abusing other people. And that's very, very different to experiencing anger. When a child is in a pure place of experiencing anger, like I said, it just jumps up and down and feels the anger inside of itself.

**AJ** : Now, the majority of people who are angry are not doing that. The majority of people who are in anger are actually projecting their anger, forcing their anger upon other people. This is an indication that they have addictions that are not being met. And addictions cover over fears and cover over grief. Now if we're in a state of anger this is telling us that we are in a state far removed from our actual emotional condition. That means that we're far removed from humility. When we get angry as an adult we are generally far removed from humility. It's when we experience a childlike sense of anger that is contained within us and not expressed outwardly to other people in the environment, that is when we're in a pure state of feeling some causal anger.

The rest of the time when we're angry, we are just in an effect of wanting our addictions met and them not being met. We are in the effect of our maintaining our own addictions and then wanting the world to actually give us the addictions, to give us what we want. [01:36:44.07]

**Mary** : Would you make a distinction then between anger and anger with others? Is it when I'm angry with you that I'm not humble? But when I'm experiencing my anger, I would be humble? Or is that simplifying it too much?

**AJ** : Well, no, I think it's a nice simple way of looking at it, but when the majority of people hear that they won't understand the difference. The majority of times when people on the planet experience anger it is experienced towards another person, or towards a situation that involves other persons. And as a result of that it's an indication that their addictions are not getting met. It's got nothing to do with underlying causal emotions. Now I'm not saying "Don't feel it," what I'm saying is "Don't act upon it. Don't act upon your rage and use your rage as a justification for harming another person."

**AJ** : For example, even going up to another person and saying, "I was angry with you," you've got to question the reason why a person would do that. Why do they have to tell you that they were angry with you? If they were truly experiencing their anger they wouldn't need to do that. The fact that they are doing it is because they want some level of control over you. They want to make you feel like they've been angry with you. And why would they want that? They want that because they want to make you feel something about their anger. They feel that you are to blame for it.

**AJ** : The reality is that anger directed externally is always the result of an addiction not being met. It's always the result of an underlying emotional condition that we're in denial of because if we weren't in denial of it, we wouldn't be getting angry with the other person. So it's always out of harmony with humility and therefore out of harmony with truth and therefore in that state we can't expect to receive God's Love. [01:38:50.08]

**Mary** : Okay. So what does it show us about our emotional condition? You've touched on that but is there anything...?

**AJ** : Our anger is an indication of our justification that other people are to blame for any personal pain that we experience. In other words, what we're really saying is that we are not capable of experiencing our own personal pain without causing personal pain in another. That's really what we're doing when we get angry. We're telling the world around us, and ourselves, that other people deserve to have pain if we are in pain. And this is a very, very damaging action. In fact almost every single negative thing that happens on this planet is caused by this underlying justification that if I am in personal pain then I have the right to also create personal pain for you.

**AJ** : This is not true and it is also grossly unloving. In addition it is a demonstration of our own lack of humility. In other words, it is a demonstration of our lack of desire to actually feel our own pain without harming another person. Why is it that we have to harm another person when we're in pain? It's because we are in denial of our own pain and we believe we are justified in creating pain for others when we have pain. And we are not justified in doing so. [01:40:26.00]

24.1. How to release anger

**Mary** : So, say I'm an angry person and I hear you saying these things, and I say to myself, "Okay I'm justifying these things." What are the steps I would take? What do I need to let go of in order to let go of anger?

**AJ** : Well it's a process, obviously. Firstly we have to see the addictions we are in. We then need to feel these addictions as errors, not as things that we want satisfied, but we have to see them as errors, things that are creating our own unhappiness actually, in the long run. Secondly we have to see that every single addiction that we have that creates our anger when it's not met actually covers over the fear that we have inside of ourselves that we're in denial of. And we need to allow ourselves at some point to get to a state of allowing ourselves to see the fears that we are in denial of.

**AJ** : Once we go through that phase, as a feeling phase, then we'll get to the stage of what has grieved us in the past, and it is usually what has grieved us in the past that causes us to act out of anger in the future or in the present. We need to understand that we are just avoiding terrible emotions of grief that we need to allow ourselves to feel without damaging other people.

**AJ** : Now if we're prepared to go through those phases, then we'll very quickly get out of a state of anger and into a state of fear. But as you know from your own experience, it's not always that easy because we have huge addictions involved in our rage. We want to be angry, we want to justify. We generally have all this arrogance about it as well. We're in denial of the fact that it's an emotion inside of ourselves. We always believe somebody else has made us angry, or the situation has caused us to be angry, not understanding that these are all things that are going on inside of ourselves.

**AJ** : And the reality is that there are some circumstances where we are attacked and we feel that is unfair and as a result of our feeling that it's unfair and our denial of our own grief of the unfairness, we then go on the attack ourselves. And so it's often our resistance to feeling the grief of unfair actions perpetrated towards ourselves that then cause us to maintain a rage towards others.

**AJ** : So you see this happening a lot in relationships where a woman might have been treated badly in the past in her relationships. She now has this viewpoint of men that all men are bastards, and there's not a good one on the planet. Now this is an untruth but besides being an untruth it's a maintenance of her own rage. She doesn't want to feel the pain of these unfulfilled and unhappy past relationships; rather she's now projecting the past onto her present and future. She's now actually determining that all people are the same as the people she's already met and this, besides being illogical, is another thing that always happens when we're in denial of the true emotions. It's also very unloving because we're projecting upon other people things that may not exist inside of them. We're not giving them the opportunity to demonstrate the truth at all.

**AJ** : People do this with you and me all the time, as you know. They automatically assume because I'm saying I'm Jesus that I'm saying that I'm better than them, for example. It's not a valid assumption. It's not what I feel but it's what they assume. And they then automatically get angry about that. Sometimes we receive very nasty emails from people who are not even religious condemning me for saying that I'm Jesus. They don't even believe in Jesus, many of them, and they're condemning me for saying I'm Jesus because they feel that by saying I'm Jesus I'm saying that I'm better than them and they feel very angry about that, which means that they actually feel that they are worse than Jesus and they're unwilling to feel the extent of how bad they actually feel about themselves.

**AJ** : It's got nothing to do with my feelings about them because my feelings are that I love them and that's the whole reason why I give the truth the way we do; it's because we love them. So it's not our feelings but it's misinterpreted. And this is the problem with our rage; we're often interpreting the present based on past experience and we are way out of harmony when we do this with love. [01:45:05.07]

24.1.1. Anger results from pain in the past that we haven't released

**Mary** : Yeah, it was a very important and beautiful thing you said I think just a little while ago that often it's the pain that we haven't felt from the past that causes us to justify the anger in the present and the future. That seems to be a crucial kind of truth to allow to enter us, that, "Wow I'm angry and it must be because there's stuff there in my past that I'm not humble to."

**AJ** : From the past. Anger does not get created in an individual when there is stuff that has all been felt in the past. For example, if a child has been harmed in its past and then it was allowed to grieve all of that harm, it would no longer be angry. The reality is that if I am angry as a person, or even just occasionally angry or frustrated as a person, it has to do with something that has occurred in my past. And the present circumstance or situation that we believe has made us angry is just a Law of Attraction event based on our condition to help us expose the emotion from the past that has caused me to be in this state.

**AJ** : The only reason why I am angry is that I am in denial of that emotion from the past. And usually that emotion is fear and grief; huge amounts of grief generally. I'm in fear of the grief and that's what creates my anger. I suppose you could say that there are two primary creators of my rage. The first primary creator is my desire to have my addiction met and when the addiction is not met and I expect it to be met, then I get angry. That's number one.

**AJ** : Secondly the addiction is present because of a denial of fear and grief and if I allow myself to go to this fear and grief, if I were truly humble and didn't have this resistance of anger towards humility, I would allow myself to go into this feeling of grief, which would allow me then to release the underlying reason why I created the addiction in the first place. And once those addictions have gone and the grief is gone, then I will not get angry about the same situation ever again. [01:47:23.10]

**Mary** : It's probably difficult for people to recognise that as a truth but I certainly see that in yourself and I'm beginning to see that happen for myself, which is exciting.

**AJ** : Yeah. Well you've seen me treated unjustly many times and I just allow myself, most of the time, to go into my grief about that. As a result of that I don't feel angry towards the people who've treated me badly at all. And so you can see that if a person allows themselves to go into a state of grief about the situation rather than getting into a rage and justifying their rage, then it makes the person a much softer individual, much more loving individual and in every circumstance, even in the harshest of circumstances a person in that state can always be kind and considerate and loving.

**Mary** : What about people who say that anger is a healthy emotion because it causes change; it causes us to stand up for ourselves? How do you relate this anger that we're talking about to what they're talking about? Are they speaking about anger? I'm asking too many questions. (Laughs) [01:48:42.00]

**AJ** : Well, yeah. All anger is healthy in the sense that if we feel our anger then we'll be healthy. (Laughs) We need to feel all of our emotions to be healthy. However, projected at other people it is not healthy. As you well know and as everybody well knows, it creates a lot of dynamics in the world that are very, very dangerous and damaging, including wars, in fact, which are created by this underlying feeling of societal anger from one country to another. This kind of rage is not healthy at all. It has caused huge amounts of damage.

**AJ** : I do not believe that change motivated by rage is ever going to have a permanent benefit. Change motivated by love, humility and truth will always have a permanent benefit. Now it is true that when we come to see the truth on a certain issue we are often instantly angry and this anger is an indication of how much falsehood has been present before then that we need to grieve. Once we grieve the fact that we were told things that were wrong, we will actually find ourselves acting in a very different manner as a result of accessing the grief and we will no longer find ourselves getting into a rage about things.

**AJ** : But often we do not access the grief until we feel the layers above. Now the layer of anger is the layer of feelings above the addiction. The feelings of the addiction are the layer of feelings above the fear. If a person's in total denial then of course they are going to have to get angry in order to heal. How they express this anger in their day-to-day life will determine whether it's going to be damaging or not. If they express it to other people and act out their anger towards other people it is going to further damage their soul and only leave them with more anger to feel. That's all it's going to do. It will not actually have a healing effect on them.

**AJ** : For it to have a healing effect they have to feel through the anger, they have to feel the anger without harming other persons, and just feel how angry they are. You can feel anger without projecting it at others. And once you feel this kind of anger, now you can get into what the addiction is and also get into the underlying fear and grief, when you allow yourself to go into it in that manner. In that way it can be a very healing process, if you allow yourself to feel it without projecting it upon others.

**AJ** : If you are projecting it upon others, which the majority of people do, then you are no longer in this state where you're actually healing through your anger, you are now in a state of resistance to healing. You are justifying yourself not being humble and resisting the process of healing. And this of course is going to be very damaging to you and your future life and any relationships around you. [01:51:46.18]

**AJ** : I feel there's a big difference between those two states. For the majority of people on the planet they need to assume that most of their anger is addictive in nature rather than childlike experience. When you see a person experiencing anger as a childlike experience, you feel completely safe. When you feel the anger of people around you who are not in a childlike experience, you feel completely unsafe. It's very easy to tell whether a person is safe or unsafe when experiencing their anger. If you feel safe when they're experiencing their anger, then it means they are not projecting it outwards. If you feel unsafe or criticised or harmed by them experiencing their anger, now that's an indication that they are now blaming others and they are affecting others and they are damaging the souls of others and themselves. And the reality is that the majority of the planet falls into the second category. [01:52:44.08]

25. How we resist humility: hatred and resentment

**Mary** : Okay, well the next on my list is another heavy topic. There are a lot! (Laughs) The last one for today is hatred towards others. I've written hatred towards others but could we just define it as hatred? Because we can hate ourselves as well, can't we?

**AJ** : Yes, and hatred towards yourself can be as damaging to your own progression in terms of love as hatred towards another can be.

**Mary** : Can you define hatred for us?

**AJ** : Hatred or resentment is usually a build-up of rage or anger to the extent that we wish to harm another or ourselves. Now we may be causing this harm emotionally, or physically or intellectually. In other words if we're willing to harm emotionally, physically, intellectually, sexually in any way, ourselves or another person, that is an indication that we are full of hatred.

**AJ** : Now many people have this level of hatred towards themselves where they're actually willing to harm themselves. And many also have a similar level of hatred towards others, where they're willing to harm another. It's a very, very damaging emotion, obviously. It causes the degradation of the human soul very rapidly and unfortunately it harms other people as well as ourselves. It's going to cause a lot of damage to the other person's soul as well as our own. [01:54:43.02]

**Mary** : Certainly I see it played out all around the world and probably in my own life towards myself at certain times. What leads us to hate?

**AJ** : Well again, it always comes from an underlying desire to avoid specific emotions, usually our own emotions. Unfortunately this desire to avoid has become so strong that we're willing to destroy things in order to avoid. We're willing to destroy others or destroy ourselves or destroy our environment because of the level of hatred that we have. This is an extreme emotion that many of us have in certain areas, based around severe avoidance of our own underlying feelings, usually towards another or towards ourselves.

**AJ** : It's a very, very damaging emotion to our soul progression. It is a very damaging emotion in our relationship with God. It's very interesting because again you and I have often received huge amounts of hatred from people who say they're on the Divine Love Path. These are people who say they're receiving God's Love and God's Truth, and at the same time they're projecting huge amounts of viciousness towards us, not understanding the underlying principles about love. If we can't love our enemies then we are no better than a murderer or a thief because they love their friends, but they just don't love their enemies, right? If we can't love our enemies then we are no better than they are, really, in the end. And when I say better, we're in no more of a loving condition than a murderer or a thief if we cannot love our enemies. Hatred causes us to have enemies. Hatred is all about enemies. We usually have enemies when we're in a state of hatred, where we just can't stand the sight a person. We would love to see them die.

25.1. Gender differences in the expression of hatred

**AJ** : For many women there is a feeling that they'd love to see them tortured to death. Many men have hatred that's explosive and very brief. Many women have hatred that has developed over years and years of resentment and is a very, very long standing emotion that causes them to desire to completely destroy somebody from an emotional perspective. Both forms of hatred are very, very damaging to the soul. [01:57:35.20]

**Mary** : So men often have an explosive kind of hatred whereas with women, as the saying goes, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." This kind of hatred controls the lives of women for long periods of time. Can we deduce something about the nature of hatred through that?

**AJ** : Sure. Society is more allowing of men being in a state of anger. In fact, up until very recently women weren't allowed to go to war because of the expression of anger that was required to go to war, the expression of masculine violence that is needed. And so for those reasons there is a lot more society allowance of anger inside of men and therefore brief explosions of hatred. There is also a lot more allowance generally because the man is generally physically larger in nature than women, and physically stronger, and because of these two underlying factors a man generally feels more able to engage his anger in a hateful way towards another and physically harm them.

**AJ** : It's even promoted, in a way, to have a bit of a dust up with another guy, so you get all your frustrations out. And often that is true; they do finish up getting many of their frustrations out. And oftentimes the person they've had a good dust up and fisticuffs with turns out to be a great friend afterwards as a result of the release of emotion. [01:59:22.05]

**Mary** : Are you saying that as women we just need to have a few more dust ups?

**AJ** : No, no, I'm not saying that at all. (Laughter) But what happens with women is that many women have felt powerless for huge amounts of their life. This ongoing powerless feeling that has occurred over long periods of time in their lives has caused resentment, which is like long-term feelings of hatred, to build up inside of the soul, again because there's no desire to release the grief of it. You see, to avoid resentment you have to leave a situation. For example, if you were being attacked as a woman in any way, whether it was verbally or physically or whatever, the only way to avoid resenting the person who commits the attack is to leave the situation. If you left the situation you would grieve the emotion, you'd grieve the attack, what has happened to you, and then you would have forgiven the person. You wouldn't want to be with them anymore, but you've forgiven them and you would have moved on with your life quite easily.

**AJ** : Most women stay in unloving situations for very long periods of time though, because they have huge issues with security and safety and other types of things, other emotions, which they don't allow themselves to feel in reality. So they live in a situation that's very damaging with the anger initially turning into hatred, and then the hatred turning into resentment. And once the hatred turns into resentment then we have this emotion that's inside of us where we want to plan the destruction of an individual. We're not happy with them dying, because if they died it would be too fast. We want to plan the actual emotional destruction of the individual and laugh while we're doing it. This is the kind of resentment that exists in many women towards men in particular, and sometimes also towards other women. And this level or layer of resentment can be huge.

**AJ** : Now women have it more than men because they have been suppressed more than men. Many men have been allowed to experience their anger or brief explosions of anger, both from a society perspective and from their own physical condition and from their own physical nature, they're allowed to experience these particular things. But a woman is looked down upon when she has any of those kinds of emotions and so she then suppresses those emotions much more readily and therefore experiences more of a feeling of resentment over a longer period of time. [02:02:11.14]

**Mary** : From what you're saying, it relates to a sense of powerlessness that is suppressed.

**AJ** : Yes.

**Mary** : And so for men they might equally have a sense of powerlessness but they use anger to feel powerful.

**AJ** : Yes. But women generally don't use anger to feel powerful, although that's changing. You see that changing rapidly in Western societies now where women are using anger to feel powerful. But historically they haven't been able to do that without being harmed. [02:02:41.21]

**Mary** : It sounds like what you're saying is that hatred is created when there's a powerless feeling, whether it's in a man or a woman, and when we're not humble to that, or we can't leave a powerless situation?

**AJ** : Well the reality is that most people in Western society can leave a powerless situation but they choose not to for other reasons. Most women choose to not leave the powerless situation because they're feeling a fear of their own safety or security, or financial security.

**Mary** : Yeah, I'm thinking here more of children who are abused in a lot of situations.

**AJ** : Yeah that's very different, obviously; they can't leave a situation. Persons who have been abused often have large levels of hatred and resentment, and it's understandable that these emotions exist but they need to allow themselves to go through these emotions without harming other people. [02:03:28.17]

25.2. How to work through emotions of hatred and resentment

**Mary** : So there's powerlessness, and if we can't escape that sense of powerlessness we often become angry.

**AJ** : Very much so.

**Mary** : And if that's suppressed or disallowed then we become resentful and hateful. For someone who finds themselves in a state of hate, is it essentially peeling back those layers?

**AJ** : Yes.

**Mary** : Is that's what's going to have to happen for them?

**AJ** : It's going to have to happen but they need to do it in a state where they're not attacking other people all the time. They need to realise that these are emotions inside of themselves that, due to the unfortunate circumstances of their life, they have to feel and they are the only persons that can feel it. Nobody else can feel it for them, and every time they attempt to harm another person as a result of these emotions, they are actually creating more damage to their own soul. There's going to be more for them to feel if they keep doing that. [02:04:19.18]

**Mary** : Yeah, and I feel it's unfortunate because often people who have been very harmed, in a very powerless state for a long time, and I'm thinking now more of people who've been abused for many years, have had their anger suppressed and then they reach a state of hatred, and often it becomes globalised. There's very little compassion for people in this state, isn't there?

**AJ** : Yes.

**Mary** : And it seems that that's what they need the most.

**AJ** : Well, yeah, they do need compassion; however we cannot support their unloving behaviour. See, if society was well versed in handling these particular situations, they'd have places of recovery, which would be supported by a large group of people, so that one person doesn't feel the full brunt of this hatred or anger coming from the individual. And at these places of recovery the person who has been harmed or abused in the past can go through a process of firstly exposing their hatred and rage, getting into feeling it without projecting it onto others, and then slowly going down into their grief.

**AJ** : Unfortunately because most people who've been abused do have high levels of grief to experience, there is a large layer of denial that most of them have to go through, where they have huge amounts of rage or anger or fear associated with their grief. If as a society we were caring about those particular issues, we would create environments where they can safely go through these levels of grief; firstly levels of hatred, rage, then seeing the addictions that they have as well and into their fears and grief. And we'd have places that support that process where they could do this. They will be confronting places. They need to be confronting places to actually confront many of the emotions that are inside the person.

**AJ** : But they'd also need to be supportive. This is a process of healing, and you can't heal without going through these particular emotional experiences. If we did that, the person wouldn't be as afraid of feeling their own emotion. One of the reasons why these people who've been abused feel so angry is that society generally judges the level of their rage or their anger or hatred, and therefore doesn't even allow them to experience those emotions. And if we created a different environment then these people could easily go through those emotions, or much more rapidly than they currently can do.

**AJ** : In fact what we generally do with those people is we medicate them. We actually suppress their emotions, we give them anti-depressants or some other form of medication, which heavily suppresses the emotional condition, and this just causes them further problems. They don't feel like they have a happy life or a contented life, and now there's all sorts of other problems and issues that come across. The level of suppressed rage causes them to suicide at much higher rates, and so forth. Society's fear of these kinds of emotions is so great that the people who have experienced these kinds of events are not assisted at all to heal from them. [02:07:52.07]

25.3. Hatred can be caused by feelings of superiority in addition to feelings of powerlessness

**Mary** : Just one last question; I know we're running out of time, but we just talked about the example of someone ending up in a place of hatred, starting really at the root cause of feeling powerless. This week in book group we're studying "Through the Mists" and we're up to chapter 9 and it's called "The Harvest of Jealousy". In that chapter we hear this story of a woman who grew up with a sense of entitlement; she was very wealthy. And then a certain set of situations happened where she couldn't get her own way. She became very angry but she suppressed that and then she ended up in a state of hatred. Now we're seeing a different root cause there, aren't we? We're seeing someone who's being challenged on an addiction, but suppressing the anger that comes from that? Is that the case? [02:08:42.02]

**AJ** : Yes. In the end a lot of times when we've grown up in an environment where we believe we are superior in some way we then have a large number of addictions in maintaining that superiority. And whenever we cannot maintain the feeling of superiority these addictions then cause us to revert to anger-based emotions. And if that anger is suppressed then certainly we'll revert to hatred.

**AJ** : But in the end the underlying emotion is still present. The emotion, "I am superior to another," is created from this underlying feeling that perhaps we're not superior, perhaps we're the opposite of that. In the end these polar opposites of emotions often cause the same outcome in an individual. So a person who's treated very badly as a child can grow up feeling a sense of rage towards the world, but a person who's treated very well as a child, when I say "well", I use that term very loosely in the sense that they're given everything they want (and I don't believe that is treating a child well), but a parent who gives the child everything they want also causes the child to have the same kind of addictions.

**AJ** : It's the addictions that cause the anger, and it's the suppressed anger that causes the hatred and resentment. The anger that's suppressed causing the hatred and resentment finishes up causing violent actions. The woman that you mentioned took violent actions both while she was on Earth and after she passed, and these actions were taken in an effort to suppress her underlying emotions. If you get down to the underlying cause, it is a lack of humility in the individual that caused all of these problems.

26. Closing Words

26.1. A lack of humility eventually creates our own death

**AJ** : I think that's one of the things we probably need to say in closing, and by the time we get to the end of the discussion for people to understand; a lack of humility actually causes our own death. That's how strong the lack of humility is. If you think of a lack of humility as an inability to experience all and every one of our own emotions as they occur without harming another, and always being in a place of love when we experience our emotions, if we had done that we would not grow old. We would not get sick and therefore we would never die.

**AJ** : The reality is that a lack of humility is what causes our death, not a lack of love. That's a very interesting thought. If people understood that their own death is being created by their lack of humility, maybe they would have a much greater desire to look at this issue of humility than they currently do. [02:11:36.00]

**Mary** : It's sad that it has to be the threat of death that would motivate us though, don't you think?

**AJ** : Exactly. And even after a person dies their lack of humility in the spirit world causes all of their pain.

**Mary** : Yeah.

**AJ** : You know, it's such an unfortunate thing that on this planet we believe that we can maintain an arrogant position. We've looked at these things so far, and there's a lot more to look at obviously, which we'll talk about later. But if you look at the arrogance, the facade, the judgment, the denial, the anger and hatred, we believe we should be able to maintain all of these particular things, and yet we do not understand that each one of these things play a part in the creation of our own death. And so it makes no logical sense for us stop this process of becoming more humble.

**AJ** : God is constantly desiring us to understand humility more than anything else because God understands that once we're in a state of humility, the door of truth is open. Once the door of truth is open, the door of love is open. In fact without humility nothing positive can happen in our life. And most of us know that. When we're in an arrogant position with another, we know there's no resolution, there's no happiness. When we're in judgment of another there's no resolution, there's no happiness. When we deny that anything bad happened, there's no resolution, there's no happiness. We know all of that, and yet we still hold on to all of these things because we want to deny our own pain, which is all a lack of humility. [02:13:10.20]

**Mary** : Yeah. It's fantastic, babe, and thank you. As you know, I'm so passionate about this subject. I think I said in one of the other interviews I feel that this is all I have to do. God already wants to know me and love me and give me truth, if only I want to know and feel myself and exercise that desire for those things.

26.2. The importance of humility

**AJ** : Yeah. But I also feel there's probably one thing we should finish with and that is this thought: Love is something that comes from God, truth is something that comes from God, but humility is not something that comes from God.

**Mary** : That's my feeling, yeah.

**AJ** : Humility is something that I must choose to develop for myself. And so if you think about humility, if I make it become a part of my nature, if I actually embrace it as a quality, then I am now giving a chance for God to do His work upon my soul. Without humility God can do no work upon the soul. There's nothing that God can do for our soul while we lack humility. And so it becomes the most important quality that we can develop. The other things can come from God, but we can't get humility from God. God is constantly, through this Law of Attraction that God's created, and other things, trying to get us to a point where we desire humility. [02:14:40.12]

**Mary** : To help us, yeah.

**AJ** : To help us, but it is a quality that we must develop ourselves. We must work our way through the issues ourselves to become truly humble. For that reason I feel it is one of the most important things we need to understand about the Way to God, God's Path, "The Way". Of course there are other things that I feel are just as important. Forgiveness and repentance are very important aspects too. Truth is a very important aspect. But it all begins with humility. The reality is that we're never going to forgive another person unless we're humble. We're never going to be repentant unless we're humble. We're never to accept truth unless we're humble. We're never even going to accept love unless we're humble. A lot depends upon this quality being developed in our soul. And if we avoid the development of this quality in our soul then it's highly unlikely other qualities will develop. [02:15:39.10]

**Mary** : Yeah, I could go on and on. I feel that God has already shown me His power and beauty everywhere in creation and humility is the only thing that I must develop. I just have to bring that to the table. He's going to provide everything else.

**AJ** : And I think it's important to recognise too that from God's perspective humility is beautiful. Humility is one of the most beautiful traits an individual can possess.

**Mary** : Thanks, darling.

**AJ** : No worries, babe. Thank you.

Part 5 - Humility Session 5 - Resistance to Humility II

27. Introduction

**Mary:** Okay, well today's my fifth in the series of interviews. Last week we started talking about the resistances to humility. So today's interview is just wrapping up the resistances that we have to humility.

**AJ:** Yeah if everyone remembers, last week we mentioned six resistances to humility, and today we'll probably cover another five or six resistances to humility. But I don't feel they're the only resistances that we have. [00:01:06.13]

**Mary:** How would you describe the list that we're covering in these interviews?

**AJ:** Well, they're the common problems that people have with regard to becoming humble, but I don't feel that they're the only problems that we have. In the interview we've tried to generalise a little about the underlying issues, and to give people enough feedback so that they can understand where their resistances are when it comes to their own humility. [00:01:38.00]

**Mary:** Yeah, and my feeling for the interview series has been that I'd love to really help people understand what humility is from both sides. We spent a few interviews just describing the quality of humility and how it impacts on our life and I also feel that by understanding the common resistances we have to humility, we'll begin to see when we're not being humble. So hopefully we're giving people some really practical tips and information about how to live in more humility.

**AJ:** Yeah, and if people remember that the point of these discussions is that humility opens up this doorway into truth. Without humility you cannot emotionally absorb more truth in your soul. Even though you might be listening to truth, and listening to more truth, listening to more truth, it's impossible to actually absorb it while the soul remains in this state of having a lack of humility. As soon as the soul opens up to humility, now the listening is translated into beginning to feel the truth. And once you begin to feel the truth then that opens up the gateway to receiving love.

**AJ:** So without this feeling of humility, rather than a facade of humility, or without going through this process of opening up completely to truth, it's impossible to actually absorb new truth. And I find it interesting how people spend a lot of their day-to-day life trying to discover truth, while at the same time they spend a lot of their day-to-day life suppressing the emotions that they have, which cause them to be closed towards receiving new truth. It's like many of them are intellectually working directly against the emotions that are present in the soul. [00:03:31.05]

**Mary:** Setting up a battle internally.

**AJ:** Yeah, and that's why people can come along and hear truth after truth after truth after truth but it never really touches their life. It's only going to touch our life when we become humble and actually get rid of the resistances to the truth, and allow this truth to become absorbed in the soul. It is only when the truth is absorbed in the soul that we will act upon it. Before then we will talk about it, and we'll listen about it, we might be fascinated by it, but at the end of the day we're never going to act upon it. And if we don't act upon it, our life will never change. It's only by acting upon it that our life changes. The drive to act upon truth comes from the underlying development of this quality of humility. [00:04:25.11]

28. How we resist humility: living in fear

**Mary:** Okay well, in terms of resistances to humility so far I think we've discussed arrogance, anger towards others, hatred, and the facade, or the ego. So to start off today I wanted to ask you about fear, and specifically this idea of living in fear.

**AJ:** Yes, I feel fear is one of the most difficult emotions that people have to process, and also one of the biggest resistances that a person has to being humble. Today it's taken as a negative if you feel afraid about anything, and yet the world and people in it are full of fear about everything. But we continuously try to satisfy this fear by creating safety, or security, which is really a way of making out that the fear is not there. And as soon as the safety or security is taken away the fear is exposed.

**AJ:** If persons looked at that, what we're really doing is living in fear. We're not actually feeling the emotion of fear, we're honouring our fear, holding it within us, and then asking the environment to pander to the fear that we have inside of ourselves. If we truly want to be free, and also truly want to be humble, we need to actually go through the process of feeling the fear rather than living in the fear.

**AJ:** And this is very, very difficult if we are justifying to ourselves that the fear exists, or we're minimising to ourselves, "Ah, yes, I have some fear but it doesn't really have a large impact on my life." Or we're shifting the blame of our fear, "You caused my fear all the time," or "You made me afraid and so now I can be angry with you," or "Now I can just reject you from my life because you've made me afraid." And these kinds of attitudes towards our fear cause us to deny our fear. One of the points we generally covered last week was denial, and now we're seeing that if we deny our fear we will live in it. We will actually create a life where all of our fears, or as many of them as possible, are satisfied by some kind of safety or security thing that we need to go through.

**AJ:** For example, on the Earth today you've got people who are afraid of financial insecurity, so they create a financial buffer. In the Western world many people are very interested in not living week to week anymore because they feel they need this financial buffer. And so they save up money and they place that money in the bank, and of course this allows our funds to be misused in all sorts of ways, but it is all driven by this underlying fear. And if you take the money away from them, out of the bank, it's a major disaster in their life, which means that the fear itself hasn't actually gone, it's still present. In fact we finish up attracting events to trigger the presence of the fear inside of ourselves because God wants us to release it. God wants us to have no fear inside of our soul.

**AJ:** But while we have this fear, and we're living in it and justifying it and minimising it and shifting the blame of it onto other people, we are in reality placing our fear as our god. Instead of God being the God, and all of God's Laws being important, our fear becomes the most important thing. And we're willing to do anything else in our life until our fear is exposed. And as soon as our fear is exposed, our fear becomes god, and whatever integrity we had just flew out the window, whatever courage we had just flew out the window, and whatever of these other very beautiful qualities that we have, love, kindness, compassion and all these other qualities, all of them fly out the window as well while we're living in this place. In the end we're just living honouring our own fear rather than actually feeling the fear itself and going through the process of releasing it by experiencing it properly. [00:09:02.12]

28.1. Living in fear prevents desire and happiness

**Mary:** It sounds like you're saying that when I live in fear I allow the avoidance of my fear, or the prevention of my fear, to guide and direct just about everything. And it's only when I've done that enough that fear is absent, that then my higher ideals might come into play; my desire for God, my desire to love or be good, or to give.

**AJ:** Yeah. I think that it's good to say at this point that when we live in our fear, desire is also suppressed. And this is a very important thing because desire is the source of most of our happiness. If we're suppressing our desire because we're afraid, then of course we're also suppressing the potential of our own happiness because we're afraid.

**AJ:** For example, if a person's living in a relationship that they're not happy with, but they're afraid to leave it because of financial or physical security reasons, then they're going to be a very unhappy, suppressed individual while they remain in that particular relationship, unless the source of their unhappiness changes. In other words unless the other person in the relationship changes what they do, they are going to remain very unhappy. They've now made their life entirely dependent upon the other person's choice to be loving, which is not a very wise thing to do in the long run. They've also made their own happiness almost impossible because they're suppressing their fear of the financial insecurity, of the physical insecurity; they're suppressing this fear by staying. But when you suppress one emotion, like fear, you are also going to suppress desire. Fear itself actually suppresses desire.

**AJ:** While I am so afraid, I am not going to feel any desire. This is one reason why many women in their relationships do not feel sexual desire; because they have a lot of deep underlying fears that they're suppressing through the relationship, such as financial and physical security issues. They're using the relationship to suppress those particular things, but while their fear is being suppressed their desire, even their sexual desire, will also be suppressed.

**AJ:** So living in fear and using the external environment to suppress the feeling of fear, rather than just going through and experiencing the feeling of fear is a source of much unhappiness on the planet. It's also a major impediment to a person being humble to receiving any truth because they want to justify the retaining of their own fear every single time. You think of how many conversations we've had where you've wanted to justify why you should be afraid and why I should honour that fear that you have. [00:11:58.01]

**Mary:** Absolutely.

**AJ:** And the majority of people that we meet are very similar; they want to justify why they shouldn't have to be loving in certain circumstances. They want to justify why they shouldn't have to do certain things. Even things that are blatantly unloving, they will justify because their fear has become their god.

**Mary:** Yes, certainly I relate to that from my own experience. You mentioned that so many people are unhappy and something that surprises me as I go on and I am beginning to face more fears is how much I really equated happiness with feeling comfortable and safe. I was actually quite unhappy but I understood this feeling to be happiness. And it's only as I begin to challenge more fears and strive for humility that I find, "Oh no, there's joy in happiness. There's this other quality that was missing in my life. I feel more alive." And many people I observe are just walking through life thinking, "Oh this is happiness," and it's almost like they've settled for something less than a life because they just equate safety with happiness. [00:13:09.20]

**AJ:** Yes, and also fear is a great excuse for not acting. A lot of our joy comes from our actions, from what we decide to do with our life and what we finish up creating. And when we are in a process of not feeling our fear but living in our fear, we finish up suppressing this desire to act. We finish up having a life where we are very stagnant, where we do the same things every day, and it's quite boring. We only do what's safe. We don't extend ourselves in any way. We aren't able to grow. And if we do not grow we can't be happy either.

28.2. Living in fear supports the maintenance of false beliefs

**AJ:** In addition there's this other problem, that fear prevents us from accepting truth because fear tells us that the false belief is true. And it doesn't matter what fear we have; whenever we have this feeling of fear it is telling us that the false belief is true. What I often see is that people are constantly justifying to themselves that their fear is true. They're telling themselves that their fear is the truth. Most women tell themselves that they should be afraid of men, as if that is a truth. And they act like that's a truth.

**AJ:** Now many of these same women who are afraid have never been harmed by men. There are some women who are afraid because they have actually been harmed by a man, and of course all the other women look at that and then they go, "Ah, they've been harmed so I could be harmed," not understanding how harm is actually created or any of those kinds of things. And in the process of doing that they decide that their fear is justified; "It's important to be afraid of men; you must hold on this fear of men."

**AJ:** And many men do the same thing with women of course, with different beliefs, but they're just based on fear. Many men who have an attractive woman as a wife or a partner are afraid that she will go off with somebody else. Underlying all of that is their own fear that they don't actually have the worth to keep the woman that they're with, and the suppression of this fear causes them to live in a state of jealousy. We see these kinds of things happening all the time. This is because the fear itself causes us to be totally blocked to truth because we're actually believing a "different truth" than what is God's Truth. And I put the "different truth" in quotation marks because it's not really a truth.

**AJ:** Even right down to the fear of death; we believe that death is a traumatic experience. Many people are afraid because they do not believe there is any such thing as a life after death, and they see death as the termination of their complete existence. And the other people, who do not believe that, have no determined or clear viewpoint of what their life after death would be like, and so they are very afraid of it. As a result of that we fear death so much we'll do almost anything to avoid death. The majority of people will do anything to avoid death, even if it means allowing themselves to be raped or lying or stealing or cheating or all of these other things, if they're faced with death, they'll do it most of the time. And if they won't do it when faced with their own death, they will certainly do it when faced with the death of someone they love.

**AJ:** This is all an indication of a false belief that they're living in, every single day. People who live in fear, who live in false beliefs every day, are easily manipulated. An external person or a society can manipulate that individual into doing whatever the society or external person wants them to do. So it's not a state of freedom either. It's a state where you're allowing manipulation because you're afraid. All a person has to do is trigger that fear or expose that fear, and all of a sudden you'll act a certain way.

**AJ:** You and I have noticed recently how many adverts there are on television for cleaners that clean 99.99% of the germs. Like, there's still 0.01% of the germs, and it only takes one germ to get into your body and at the end of the day you're still going to get something! (Laughs) But there's this feeling in people of fear, so what's the fear? The fear of being sick, the fear of having your life interrupted through sickness of whatever, not understanding the truth that all sickness is created through something's that's going on with denial of the soul. Not understanding that truth they then decide, "Oh that's the product I have to buy because that's going to give me the greatest feeling of security," not realising in that moment they're buying a product that is only to avoid their fear of becoming sick. [00:18:21.06]

28.3. People in a complete state of love never respond in fear

**Mary:** Can we rewind a little bit to some of things you've just mentioned? When you say that fear is not real and then at another point you talked about people justifying their fear, are you saying that when we understand truth nothing adverse will happen in our life?

**AJ:** No, I'm not saying that. If we are in a state of complete love, a state of at-onement with God, that means we are also in a state of understanding the truth about a lot of things. It's not understanding the truth about everything at that point because there are still many truths to learn, but once we're in a state of complete love, fear itself does not exist to us. It doesn't mean that we won't attract events because of other people and what they choose to do. Events might come to us that the average person would be afraid of but we will just not feel afraid of them. And therefore we will attract fewer events. We may still have events happening to us that other people would be afraid of, but the reality is that we would not feel afraid in exactly the same circumstances.

**AJ:** If there's a spirit-influenced person in a rage with us, with a knife in their hand and looking like they're going to do something with that knife, we won't feel afraid in that state. We'll know exactly the things that we need to say or do to ensure that the situation remains safe. And if we can't maintain the safety we're not afraid of our death. We're not afraid of being hurt because we can heal ourselves, but we're also not afraid of dying because we know there's no such thing as dying, and we're not afraid of the pain either because we know we can manage pain in that state.

**AJ:** So there is literally nothing to be afraid of in that state. We're not afraid of violence anymore. Someone can threaten us with violence but it has no effect on us. If we're living in fear it's completely different. In the same situation if we're living in fear we'd go, "He's got a knife. I need something to protect myself. I need to run or I need to attack," and often this is what does cause us to attack. If I've got a gun I'll pull it out and shoot him because he was going to attack me. These are all actions based around our fear of our own death, our fear of being harmed or someone we love being harmed, and these fears are now driving our actions. [00:20:52.01]

**Mary:** Basically from what you're saying, when we justify fear we will never reach the state that you're describing now because we will never enter into a process of feeling it; we will live in it.

**AJ:** Yeah.

28.4. Fear is not real from God's perspective

**Mary:** Is that what you mean when you say fear is not real? Because certainly it's an emotion that exists, isn't it?

**AJ:** Yes. Please understand when I say that fear is not real, I'm not saying that it's not an emotion that exists within the person, because it certainly is an emotion that exists in the person. It's just not real from God's perspective. The emotion was created by a false belief or a lack of love some time in their history. From God's perspective the emotion of fear was created by a false belief perpetrated against the child, or an emotion of a lack of love perpetrated towards the child that causes the child to now believe that its fear is real. From God's perspective the fear is not real. It's not the truth. There's nothing the child actually needs to be afraid of. Nothing at all, in fact. But the child is going to feel afraid while it's had these unloving and untruthful things perpetrated against it until it releases it.

**AJ:** So the fear exists in reality inside the individual, but from God's perspective it is not the truth about the situation. However the person believes that it's the truth about the situation. [00:22:18.06]

**Mary:** Yeah, I see that there's an error in perception, can we call it that? I really want to hone in on this issue.

**AJ:** Well, one of the reasons why is that you're still emotionally going through this process of coming to accept that the fear is not real.

**Mary:** And I see it reflected around me also. So we can move on from there...

**AJ:** No, no, it's an important question because most people believe the fear is real. Therefore they act upon it, they live in it. They do not do anything about experiencing it. They don't go through the emotional experience of feeling it. [00:22:54.20]

28.4.1. An example of a boy who's in a violent situation

**Mary:** You could give the example of the small boy who is in a situation where there's a lack of love, perhaps there's violence in his parents around him. You mentioned that from God's perspective he has nothing to fear.

**AJ:** No.

**Mary:** Okay. What is happening in that situation?

**AJ:** If the boy is harmed in any way, then most of the time his spirit friends will help him go out of his body while he's being harmed, so there'll be very little physical pain associated with the harm. Secondly, God is always trying to help the individual themselves, even if they are a child, to avoid the pain of being harmed by others. That's something that God will support the spirits who are guiding the child in doing. In addition if the child does pass, he will be in a very loving place in the spirit world. The child has nothing to fear about its future. He has no need to fear that he's not going to be loved. Unfortunately the child believes he's not going to be loved because he's been told he's not going to be loved by the parents. And because of the parents' belief systems that there is no afterlife or there is no future, of course the child also feels that as a truth.

**AJ:** And so the child is afraid in a violent situation because he has already been taught the truth, soul to soul, from the parents to him. Naturally he is now afraid of the situation. If the child had no emotional injuries in the situation, if he did not have this belief that if he died he was going to be dead forever, if he did not have the belief that he would be unloved, then the child would not actually feel afraid in the situation of violence. That's the reality. The reason why the child does feel afraid is that he already has all of these beliefs inside of him that he obtained from the parents from the moment of conception onwards. All of these beliefs colour the child's perspective of what is real.

**AJ:** What the child sees as real is not what God sees as real. There's usually nothing the child can do about it as a child, but there are certainly many things we can do about it as an adult. As an adult we can choose to experience the fears that have been placed upon us by our parents and our environment during the time we were growing up, we can choose to experience them and release them, and not live in them anymore. That will give us this sense of complete freedom and help us to absorb the truth. And the truth will set us free. The truth will set us free from any of these feelings that cause us to feel like we are constrained in any way. It will also allow us to follow our desires and passions without restriction, because fear places a restriction.

**AJ:** And we even need to allow ourselves to see that the only reason the child is afraid in any situation is that it already has the same societal and parental false beliefs that the parents and society have within themselves. These false beliefs have also now entered the child, and that is the reason why the child is afraid. If we could as adults release these fear-based emotions, the next generation of children would have less fear, and eventually we'd get to a generation of children that had no fear whatsoever; even if somebody was angry or upset, they'd still not be afraid. They would not even expect anybody to ever attack them and as a result of that, there'd be fewer people who would attack them as well.

**AJ:** They would be in this complete state of freedom. That's the gift we can give to the next generation if we choose to experience our fear rather than live in it. When we live in it, we have no way to give a gift to the next generation. In fact we're giving the next generation the same impediment that we ourselves have been given by the previous generation. [00:27:09.21]

28.5. The stages involved in recognising and releasing our fear

**Mary:** Okay, well obviously from what we've discussed many people are living in fear and many of us, such as myself, were living in a lot of fear and not even recognising that the avoidance of fear was guiding everything in my life. What are some clues or tips? If I'm such a person and I hear Jesus talking about living in fear, how would I come to recognise that I might be living in fear?

**AJ:** Well, with all emotions that exist within us, we have to go through a process of realisation of what's within us. Now the only way that we can really do that is firstly intellectually accepting that there is probably some fear within us. If at the beginning we believe there is no fear within us, I feel that that is a state of complete delusion, and many people on the planet are living in that state of complete delusion. But once we allow even just the intellectual thought that perhaps there is fear within us, the way that God's Laws work is that our soul then starts to attract, through the law, events that show us what our fears actually are, at least at an intellectual level. [00:28:31.20]

**AJ:** Once our fears are exposed at an intellectual level, we can now at least be conscious that we have them. And once we start looking at the fact that we have them, we can now start allowing ourselves to feel about having them and allow ourselves to have the experience of having them. The problem there unfortunately is that, because of society and our parents denying their own fears as well, we've been taught from a very young age that the important thing in life is to deny that you have any fear. And so once we start feeling or experiencing the fear that we actually have, we are probably going to go through a process of being attacked by the world around us and our parental system, even as an adult. Because they will say, "No, you shouldn't go down that track. That's a dangerous place to go," and so forth.

**AJ:** But the reality is that we need to go there if we're going to experience our fear. We have to go through this whole process of reducing all of these impediments to feeling our own fear, and these impediments are all a series of false beliefs that we have imbibed from society and the world around us that are now a part of us, false beliefs such as, "I'm not able to feel all of my fear. My fear will completely overwhelm me and I'll be so emotionally distraught that I'll feel like I'm going crazy." A fear of going nuts is also going to cause us to not allow ourselves to feel our fear.

**AJ:** Then there are also a lot of emotions about being humiliated when we're in a state of fear, and often people do choose to humiliate us when we feel fear. In addition, our body is generally shaking when we feel fear and most people around us who are terrified of feeling their own fear, look at a person whose body is shaking and go, "If you haven't got some kind of disease then there's something wrong with you." They want to associate it with some kind of motor neuron disease rather than actually go, "No, you're actually having a feeling of fear," People get very stressed out around you and you've got to go through all of those impediments of all the people and what they think about your feeling of your fear.

**AJ:** Once you've done all of that, then you'll probably get to your fear. And that is a process, and it's a very different process for each individual because each individual has had a different history. Each individual has had a different home life, and a different society life, and it depends on which country we are in as to our viewpoints, what we suppressed and what is allowed and so forth. It just depends upon the environment that we've grown up in as to how we get to that point. But it will go through those processes that I've mentioned. [00:31:23.01]

28.6. Addictions and false beliefs keep us from feeling our fear

**Mary:** You've just described all of the different resistances we might have to experiencing fear; essentially other fears of what would happen.

**AJ:** Yeah. Many of them will be beliefs as well, which have entered us as an emotional belief. We believe it so strongly that we have an emotional reaction when somebody challenges that belief.

**Mary:** All of those beliefs that we have around fear, are they the things that cause us to justify fear or live in fear?

**AJ:** Yes. Our false belief systems around our fear are the things that cause our fear to be completely locked down. And so instead of experiencing the fear we then choose to live in it. What I mean by that is that the fear is really the underlying emotion that needs to be felt and then on top of that we have created a whole series of addictions so that we don't have to face these fears. And these addictions can be anything from substances right the way through to emotions, and relationships even, an entire life to avoid the fear.

**AJ:** In fact most people when they first realise this have actually created an entire life in addiction to avoid their fears. And once you start going through and breaking all of that down of course your life has to change, and most people are terrified of that as well because some people like their life as it is because it helps them avoid all of their fears! (Laughter) [00:32:52.14]

**Mary:** They think it's happy when really they just feel comfortable and safe.

**AJ:** Yeah, that's right, it's all about safety and security. If you ask the average woman in a relationship what's the primary reason why she's in a relationship, then for many women it would be a feeling of safety and security.

**Mary:** If we were all that honest, perhaps.

**AJ:** If we're all honest, yeah. The problem with fear of course is that very few people are honest about it. And they'll justify all sorts of things. We had a discussion last night where a person was shutting themselves down completely, shutting down every desire, and they're telling themselves they don't know why they feel numb. The reason they feel numb is that they are unwilling to feel their fear. They know all this fear is in there now, and now they're trying to shut it all down. And so they suppress their fear, and that shuts down everything; it shuts down desire, and now they feel numb. They're just going through life in a bit of a daze, and it's even a very angry state surrounding their fear; not wanting to go into the fear and then going, "Oh, you know, everything is pretty hard to see." And then you start developing doubts as well because this is what fear does. You start saying, "I don't know if it's the truth anymore. I don't know if it's the right thing to do." And off we go down this track.

**AJ:** And before we know it we've convinced ourselves to take a completely different course of action in our life other than a passionate course of action, to have a passionate life. And the main reason we've done that has got nothing to do with the fact that we like it. It's got everything to do with the fact of how terrified we are and what we want to avoid. [00:34:28.08]

28.7. Taking action challenges our fears

**Mary:** From what you're saying, if I were to launch into not living my life in fear but dealing with fear, I would be looking at these addictions but I would be taking action. Is that another way that we can start to challenge ourselves to experience fear rather than live in it?

**AJ:** Yeah. I feel it's one of the best ways of experiencing fear actually; to write down a list of everything that you intellectually know you're afraid of, and to be frank, the majority of the list, if we're honest with ourselves, will turn out to be emotions rather than actual events or circumstances or situations. Most of our fears actually revolve around certain emotions that we are afraid of experiencing that we feel we cannot experience, that we will be overwhelmed or we won't be able to cope with the underlying feeling. The majority of our fears are all about emotions in the end.

**AJ:** We could write down all of our fears about situations that we're afraid of, and then choose every single day to have one of those situations occur, particularly when these situations are not what I would classify to be damaging to us. If you're afraid of rape I'm not suggesting that you go and get yourself raped just so that you can feel the fear of being raped. But if you're afraid of opening your heart to a person, then I would definitely suggest that you choose a person who you feel attracted to and start developing a relationship and let yourself open your heart and see where it takes you. [00:36:11.17]

**AJ:** We obviously have fears where it would be unwise to attract the situation to confront the fear, but there are literally hundreds of fears that we have where we can completely attract the situation. And it would be positive for us to attract the situation and actually desire the situation so that we worked through the potential fear.

28.7.1. Releasing fear involves softening into fear, rather than conquering it

**AJ:** But we shouldn't go through it in a way of, "I'm going to conquer this fear," feeling. This is the way people often go through it. They have a situation and it's all about conquering fear. No, it's not. It's all about experiencing the fear, which is a softening to the fear, not a feeling of anger towards the fear and that you're going control it, survive and suppress it.

**AJ:** If we go into this process of confronting our fears with the other attitude, this angry attitude of conquering the fear, then in the end it won't benefit us at all. We'll still have all the fears inside of us after we've finished all of the events we've had on our list.

**AJ:** Even if we're just afraid of something like speaking up in a situation with men or women, then when the situation comes up where I have a different opinion and there's a group of men or women there, I'd speak up and let what happens happen, and go, "Ah, that's the reason why I'm so afraid of this particular event, because I got attacked there and I was condescended to there and I don't want to feel those feelings."

**AJ:** And we can literally make a list of hundreds of our fears if we wanted to and actually go through the process of creating situations or being conscious of situations we are already creating, because that's usually the case anyway, and allowing ourselves to actually feel and experience the fear and the reason why we have it in those particular situations. And that's very, very different than going into it with an attitude, "I'm going to conquer this fear so I'm going to become a public speaker. I'm afraid of public speaking, I'm going to become a public speaker no matter how hard it is." That kind of feeling is not softening to the experience of your fear.

**AJ:** Once you experience your fear of public speaking, for example, you will realise what it's all about. And most of the time it is about people thinking you're an idiot, the way people look at you, how they're condescend towards you as you're speaking, all those other things; they're all to do with people's perception and opinion of you. Once you release those fears you'll be able to get up in front of an audience who are throwing eggs at you and you'll still be able to say what you want to say without having any fear. [00:38:47.10]

**Mary:** I suppose, as you're speaking about these things, that I'm reflecting on my own experience even in the last four years, and my own attitudes to fear and my living in fear. It very much feels like when I recognised even intellectually that I had so much fear in me, I did go into this place knowing, "Okay I've got to deal with it," and it was almost an anger about having fear, and a bullying of myself to get through experiences. And I got through some experiences and I didn't grow at all and I've had to have many more experiences of the same type in order to really soften into the experience. And now I feel like I'm even less afraid of experiences and events, it's like a peeling back. I'm getting through some of those fears and now I'm left with this very raw terror of actual emotions inside of me.

**AJ:** Yeah. And when we confront our fears, that's what it's going to be like. In the end we'll go through this angry place probably where we want to control and confront them that way. And then we'll realise that we never released anything. And then we'll get to the point where we soften to them and allow ourselves to be out of control, and then we allow ourself to experience it. [00:40:09.14]

**Mary:** It's about remaining present during the experience.

**AJ:** Yeah. I feel that's where most people will go in the same direction eventually. I see a lot of people who believe they have no fear at all, they're in complete denial of it, or they acknowledge their fears without having any desire to actually feel their way through them. Both of those places are a complete lack of humility, and they're also living in the fear. So every single day your life will be creating things to actually begin to expose this fear to yourself or you've actually created an entire life to prevent anything from being exposed to yourself.

28.7.2. Desires can draw us through our fear

**Mary:** And this final question on fear, obviously it's a big theme for me, but you mentioned the magic kind of relationship between fear and desire. And when we live in fear we're basically desire-less. But something that I'd love your input on, which I'm recognising lately, is that when I'm led by desire into experiences then my fear is released from me more naturally. If I decide, for example with public speaking, "I'm afraid of public speaking so I'm just going to go and do it," and get up there and do it, nothing much seems to happen. But if I feel in my heart and I think, "You know I'd really love to share Divine Truth with people..." [00:41:35.11]

**AJ:** Or, "I'd really love to share the subject of cooking with people."

**Mary:** Yeah, or whatever it is.

**AJ:** Bike riding, or how to make a car, or whatever the subject is.

**Mary:** "And I've got this idea of how to do that. It's going to involve public speaking," but if I go into it, led by a desire that's more loving, my fear seems to exit me more naturally.

**AJ:** That is only the case under one circumstance though, and that is when the desire is greater than the fear. If our fear is greater than our desire, our desires will be completely suppressed by the fear. We will not act upon them. What we need to do is grow our desires enough and, through understanding the truth about fear, lessen our fear enough so that our desire exceeds our fear. Once our desire exceeds our fear, we will definitely go ahead and do something that we're afraid of. And our fear is no longer our god. What we desire becomes more important to us than what we fear. [00:42:38.05]

**Mary:** That's the magic sliding scale, isn't it, because many people are frozen with desire under fear?

**AJ:** That's correct.

**Mary:** Is the answer to grow desire?

**AJ:** Well, it's to do both. It's always to do both. Grow the desire so that you feel your desire, you feel passionate about your desire, you see how important your desire is, you see what it might give you, in other words you're going to have to have some faith about the future and where your desire will take you, and you're going to have some trust in that, so you develop these qualities that help support your desire. And then at the same time you start chipping away at the untruth related to your fear. You need to chip away at it to the extent that your fear starts going down and your desire starts going up.

**AJ:** Once they pass that equilibrium point and the desire exceeds the fear, now you will act. And it will be a natural action. It won't be something you've been pushing yourself into doing, trying hard to do, but it will be a natural action that can be taken. [00:43:48.04]

**Mary:** Thank you.

**AJ:** Fear is a big, big block to humility. In fact if you look at many of the other things we've discussed, like anger, for example, that all comes from fear anyway. If you look at hatred; that all comes from fear. Many of these blocks to humility are actually fear-based in nature. I think the next one you're going to raise is fear-based in nature as well.

29. How we resist humility: doubt

**Mary:** Well yes, that's what I was going to raise related to fear. This is doubt, which often we don't necessarily associate with a fearful experience. So my question is, what is doubt?

**AJ:** I don't know whether doubt is a feeling. I feel more like doubt is a state that we place ourselves in, or to be more specific, that our fear places us in, in order to prevent us from taking actions. In other words we often doubt when we're in a situation where we don't know what to do, we don't know what action to take, and most of the time we're in that place because there is seemingly no good outcome from any of the possible actions. A situation or circumstance appears where we're faced with a choice or decision, there appears to be no choice that will end up with a happy or joyful outcome for us, and so we do not want to make any choice. We go into a state of inaction. We don't want to take a decision just in case that decision may cause our situation to become even worse.

**AJ:** And when we do not see any potential positive for any of our choices or decisions, we then decide to support the state of inaction. And doubt causes us to be able to support the state of inaction. We don't have to act upon anything when we're in the state of doubt and we don't have to get ourselves out of the state of doubt. In fact we will have all sorts of justifications to ourselves in the state of doubt. We will say to ourselves, "Ah, it's impossible to know the truth about that," or, "No, it's impossible to act upon that because no matter what happens it's going to turn out bad." We don't see any light at the end of the tunnel, if you like. In fact doubt is closely related to the emotion of hope in the sense that if we feel hopeless we will often create many doubts to support our hopelessness. When we have hope, it actually causes us to have a desire to act in one direction. But when there is no hope, we often have no idea what to do then, no idea what actions we can take. [00:46:32.22]

**Mary:** Would you say that hope is related to faith?

**AJ:** Certainly. Faith, hope, love are all very, very closely related to each other, along with courage, integrity and other emotions. All of what the human race views as these positive emotions are very closely related to each other in that they support each other. Doubt is one of these emotions that supports our fear and so it causes us to be indecisive and we finish up being unable to make choices that will produce positive, or actually any outcomes in our life.

**Mary:** From what you're saying it sounds like doubt is a place we go to when we want to avoid any emotional experience.

**AJ:** And avoid any action. In that place of doubt we attract other people who have the same doubts. I don't know if anybody's ever noticed that but that's normally what happens. When you start expressing and feeling the doubts that you actually have, all of a sudden there's heaps of spirits and people on Earth who just gather around you and say, "Yeah, it is like that, isn't it?" And, "Yeah, that's how I feel too." So now we have a support group for our doubt, which is a support group for us to have no action. I often see many groups that have been created on Earth that are actually supporting each other to have no action; to remain in a state of doubt, just to talk and talk and talk and talk without doing anything. [00:48:04.23]

29.1. Doubt is created by a lack of humility to fear, and is triggered by taking action

**Mary:** Are you saying that when we're in a state of doubt we can't ever reach a resolution? Is that inherent in this state?

**AJ:** Well, I feel that the fastest way to trigger doubt is to act. Taking an action will actually help us with our doubt. However we need to understand what the underlying cause of our doubt is. The underlying cause of our doubt is our resistance, a lack of humility towards our own fear. That's the underlying cause of doubt. It's a resistance or a lack of humility towards taking action in our life, to being responsible for our personal life.

**AJ:** Now God is trying to teach us constantly to take responsibility for our personal life and we're often in this state where we feel like, "Oh if I do that then this will happen, and I don't like that outcome. If I do that, this will happen, and I don't like that outcome. If I do that this will happen and I don't like that outcome either. So it's better for me just to go, 'I don't know what to do,'" and then I don't have to choose any of those potential outcomes.

29.1.1. An example of a couple having arguments

**AJ:** I can give a more practical situation. You might be in a relationship where you're having lots of fights and arguments. Fights and arguments are always caused by at least one of the persons in the relationship not wanting to be humble, not wanting to look at the actual emotion that exists within themselves. And so in this relationship we fight, we fight and we fight. Obviously we like fighting. [00:49:38.04]

**Mary:** Or we wouldn't do it?

**AJ:** Or we wouldn't do it. And one of the reasons we like fighting is that fighting gets us out of acting differently. We don't have to do something different. It's something that we're comfortable with, and we don't have to do anything different. We don't have to come to a resolution of why we are fighting. And doubt causes us to avoid the underlying reasons as to why we're fighting. Unfortunately, many people in a relationship focus on the problem being the fight and the subject of the fight rather than seeing that actually it's all about the avoidance of specific emotions inside of themselves that they're in fear of feeling. Their inability to make a different choice is due to their doubt. They don't know what different choice they can make only because they don't like the potential outcomes of the different choices.

**AJ:** For example, you're fighting and if you choose differently you could choose to walk away. Why don't you walk away? There's got to be a reason. It will turn out to be uncomfortable for you. So what do you choose to do? You could sit there and take the other person's rage and feel how bad that feels. But why don't you want to do that? "Oh, because that means that I'll be humiliated or somebody will be harming me, and I want to defend myself, I want to be rebellious to that." I don't like that outcome.

**AJ:** And I could choose to separate from the person. "Oh, but then all my emotional insecurities and all my financial insecurities are all triggered; that doesn't seem like a very good outcome." So what am I left with? Fighting. And I'll stay fighting for as long as it takes for me to realise that I have another choice. But I don't want to take any of those choices. I'd rather doubt that those choices will ever lead anywhere. So I say, "Oh that won't work. That won't work. That won't work. That won't work," and I'm left with fighting. And I like that. [00:51:41.01]

**Mary:** So you're really saying perpetual fighting is being in a state of doubt?

**AJ:** Well it's about resistance to taking another action. The only reason we would resist taking another action is that we're afraid. The only reason we don't want to act is that we're afraid, and in between the two feelings, the fear and the fighting, is our doubt that any other action will actually fix the problem.

**Mary:** I see.

**AJ:** We don't believe the actual problem will be fixed. We have a feeling of hopelessness associated with the problem actually being repaired, and we keep doing the same thing over and over - the definition of stupidity: doing the same thing over and over again. We keep doing it because we do not wish to take another action, and therefore we lack humility. [00:52:32.11]

29.2. Erroneous societal beliefs about doubt

**Mary:** Okay. A couple more questions about doubt. In this post-modernist world I've heard it said that doubt is actually a good thing.

**AJ:** (Laughs) Yeah, doubt has become an attractive, bohemian lifestyle attribute, basically.

**Mary:** A mark of your intellect.

**AJ:** A mark of a person's intellectual prowess and philosophical state. And the reality is, no, it has just masked a whole heap of fears that the majority of those people do not want to face. They don't want to face that they don't know the answers. Or they don't want to face that the answers are not very pleasant, for example. We can then go into a state of, "Oh, maybe this is true, maybe that's true, but I don't know." When I don't know I don't have to make any decision. I don't have to make any choice. I don't actually have to do something to fix the problem. I can just keep remaining in this place for as long as it takes. For as long as it takes is often our entire life, unfortunately.

**AJ:** And this is how the world stays in a state of very little change, because the majority of people love to feel that there is no solution because a solution requires them to change, and they don't want to change. They're afraid of change. Why are they afraid of change? Because they're afraid of all the emotions involved in change. And so they then go into a state of, "I doubt that there's any solution. Now I can live in this state of hopelessness and justify it completely to myself as a state of inaction and therefore nothing around me will change, the world won't change either in that state." And I could talk about it, philosophise about how the world is and isn't it terrible how it is, and yet I am a primary contributor by remaining in my fear to taking action and by justifying my doubt to myself. [00:54:27.00]

**Mary:** Yeah. I often see that the idea of having a firm belief is considered to be naive and that doubt is somehow seen to be synonymous with questioning. And from what you're saying, questioning and doubt are two very different things?

**AJ:** Yeah, doubt is a place where you've already made up your mind. It's not a questioning attitude. You've already made up your mind there is no good outcome. There is no outcome that isn't going to trigger a fear that you have inside of yourself, and so you've already made up your mind as to what the truth is, and that there is no truth on the particular issue. That's what you've actually decided inside of yourself when you're in a state of doubt. You've already decided there is no truth and you're just trying to look for some justification of that being true. (Laughter)

**Mary:** So it's the opposite of asking a question really.

**AJ:** It's the opposite of asking a question.

29.2.1. Children learn rapidly because they are not in a state of doubt

**AJ:** Look at how a child learns. The reason a child learns so rapidly is that a child has no doubt to fight with through the process of learning. Generally it has very little fear associated with learning and therefore it creates no doubt. It creates no desire to not act. It's going to act upon what it learns. A child knows that. Every single day it acts on what it learns from the moment it gets up.

**AJ:** Look at how a child learns to walk. It gets up, wiggles, wobbles, wobbles, wiggles, and wobbles, bang! Hits its head, cries, feels the emotion; it's not afraid of being hurt. It's not afraid of falling down the stairs; even though it can't walk it's still not afraid of falling down the stairs. And it falls down the stairs and it bumps and bounces. It's got all these injuries and bruises but it gets up again every single time because it's just released the emotion associated with it and it still has no fear. [00:56:20.14]

**Mary:** It doesn't sit there and say, "I doubt whether I was created to walk." (Laughs)

**AJ:** Yeah. "I doubt whether I was created to walk because I'm having so many injuries while it's happening." It doesn't say that at all. It doesn't use any intellectual process like that. Instead it allows itself to go through a process. It stands, wobbles, falls over, gets hurt, and even when it gets hurt it doesn't hold onto the hurt. It just has a big cry, usually mum or dad gives it a hug as well, and gets a bit of love in the process. And five minutes later where is it again? In the same situation standing up again, often in the same dangerous situation standing up again, and having the same dangerous effect. It processes its hurt every single time and eventually it learns how to walk. Once it learns how to walk it's got confidence and usually this happens within a period of three months or less for the average child. In three months, its life has changed.

**AJ:** Now if, as adults, we had the same action as that, we would learn very rapidly and if we had that attitude we would also do very many more powerful things than we are currently doing. The problem is that the majority of us don't do that. We are so afraid of being hurt and the child isn't. The child gets a hurt, bang, hurts itself, has a big cry, it's all gone. The hurt's even gone. It can go and play and laugh after it's been hurt and after it's had that cry, because it has released the fear associated with it. And once it's done that, it then acts again, acts again, acts again. It continually acts. And we grow up thinking we're now adults and we're all bohemian and... [00:58:07.10]

**Mary:** Worldly.

**AJ:** Worldly, and we've got all of these lovely qualities and one of them is our philosophical doubt and we hold on to this as if it's some kind of sign of development of our maturity and sometimes a sign of our growth. But the reality is that it's a sign that we're in a state where we do not want to act and we do not want to make a decision. That's the sign. [00:58:31.22]

**Mary:** And no growth ever happens...

**AJ:** Growth cannot happen. In this state of doubt, we lack humility to every other emotion in that state. We even lack the humility to feeling our emotions of a lack of hope, for example. A feeling of "No matter what I do, I'll fail. No matter what I do, I will be unhappy." Now these are very strong feelings of grief that exist within the average person that we get to not feel because we can stay in this state of doubt and philosophise about our state of doubt in order to avoid those emotions.

**Mary:** If I found myself in a state of doubt, I would need to recognise that I'm actually just avoiding some other emotion that I'm afraid of?

**AJ:** Doubt is an addiction covering our fear. We need to see it as such. It's something that we're addicted to so that we do not have to act. It allows us to remain in two or three or five or ten or fifteen or twenty or a hundred minds (Laughs) and never make a final choice or decision. Many of us are totally afraid of making final choices and decisions. When we made decisions when young, oftentimes if it was the wrong decision in terms of society's viewpoint or our parent's viewpoint, we got severely punished, many times violently. So we have a lot of fear of violence associated with our desire to doubt. [01:00:00.10]

30. How we resist humility: seeking power, position, glory, respect or value

**Mary:** Okay. The next topic is also fairly meaty (Laughs).

**AJ:** As they all are, generally. We have what we believe are good reasons for not being humble usually. (Laughs)

**Mary:** Yes, absolutely. (Laughs) And I can feel the resistance; even as you're answering some of the questions it brings things up in me and I think, "Oh, yes, there's my resistance to humility, right there!" Well the next one I wanted to talk to you about was a group of things; it's about seeking power, seeking position, glory, respect or value. It seems to me that many of us are taught by society or our families that we should seek at least one of those things, if not all of them. [01:01:02.19]

**AJ:** Yeah. I think the problem is deeper than that though, babe. I feel that the problem really comes from most of those things not being present in our life, particularly during our childhood. For example, when we're children we're often taught that because the parent is bigger than us they have power over us. And the parent wants the child to do its will, the parent's will, because the parent generally does not respect the free will of the child.

**AJ:** And so the child feels a feeling of powerlessness. In addition the parent in that state is already in a state of powerlessness themselves and that emotion has also entered the child. So the child's got two problems. Firstly it's got the emotion that the parent has, that it's powerless, which probably came from its parents and the environment that they grew up in. In addition to that, the parent takes power over the child, which further exacerbates this particular problem inside of them emotionally.

**AJ:** And so the child is feeling powerless, and a child who's feeling powerless will seek power elsewhere. If they're powerless with a parent, they will seek power elsewhere. If they did not have respect of the parent, they will seek respect elsewhere. If they did not have the feeling of worth from the parent, they will seek worth elsewhere. If the parent was jealous of them, they will seek positive emotions elsewhere. All of these particular things, our seeking power, glory, position, wealth and so forth, all of these seeking emotions that people have that they believe drives their desires are not pure because they're driven by the underlying lack-based emotion, the opposite emotion that exists within the individual. These emotions drive so much unloving behaviour on this planet because we're unwilling to feel the hurt of the deeper emotion, the grief associated with the deeper emotion.

**AJ:** We have a grief associated with powerlessness, we're afraid to feel that grief, so we have a layer of fear over the top of that grief, and then we enter the addiction of seeking power so that we don't have to feel the fear associated with a lack of power, for example. All of those emotions you mentioned, they all have the same relationship. [01:03:31.04]

**Mary:** When we seek power, glory, value, respect outside of ourselves, is that always a resistance to humility?

**AJ:** Yes. Always.

**Mary:** We never do that in a pure state?

**AJ:** No. A person who's truly humble never seeks any of these things. Those things might come to that person, but the person doesn't seek them. There's a difference between seeking them or desiring them than their coming through a natural process. For example, if you are passionate in a certain field of endeavour and you are so passionate that you finish up discovering new things that the world has never seen before, then it's highly likely that you will finish up gaining the respect and the honour and other emotions from other people because they honour your achievement, but not because you were driven to get it. A person who's truly humble and in a state of true desire and love will actually not be doing it because they want to get that power or position, rather they'll be doing it because it's their love; it's what they love doing. And because they love doing it, it happens. Now that is a state of humility. A state of a lack of humility is seeking prominence, power, glory, attention, approval and so forth, by taking specific actions in order to get those particular things.

30.1. An example of musicians seeking glory and attention

**AJ:** We see this happening with a lot of people who want to be musical or professional singers, who want that kind of glory and attention. They are driven by very, very dark unhealed emotions associated with a lack of respect, a lack of attention, a lack of approval. Instead of feeling those emotions, they are driven to get the attention that they desire. And some of them we know are willing to sacrifice anything for it. They'll sacrifice their own sexual integrity, they'll sacrifice their relationships, they'll sacrifice their personal self in terms of their looking after themselves physically and emotionally. They'll take drugs if the people they want the approval from are taking drugs. They'll do anything that their environment dictates if they want to be successful.

**AJ:** This is how much people are willing to sacrifice inside of themselves in order to seek these particular emotions, which indicates how high the level of grief associated with not having these particular feelings comes from their childhood that they're unwilling to feel, that they don't have any humility towards. [01:06:14.20]

**Mary:** So that's the relationship with humility; we would be avoiding it. Through taking these actions, we're avoiding quite a lot of emotion.

**AJ:** Yes. Every one of these actions is an addiction to help us avoid our fear associated with the grief, the deep grief that every one of these emotions and desires are being driven by. It's our desire to not feel powerless that causes us to seek the power. It's our desire to not feel the lack of glory or honour in our life that most probably occurred in our childhood that causes us now to seek glory and honour.

**AJ:** A person who's humble doesn't seek those things, they just engage their desire for love, they love what they do and if glory comes along, it comes along. But if it doesn't come along, they're not disappointed because they're motivated by their desire to do what their love is.

**Mary:** It occurs to me that we might see two people leading seemingly very similar lives in terms of the respect or the power or the value they have in people's eyes, and yet one could be in a very humble state and another in a complete state of addiction and a lack of humility. [01:07:36.08]

**AJ:** Yes. You see this a lot in the music industry, where sometimes you meet very humble people who just love their music; they love just producing it. They love creating it, they just enjoy playing it. Even if they're not getting paid they still play it, they just love doing it, and that's the way it is. They're often very humble people, they're not trying to prove anything, they're not trying to sell anything. They're not trying to make money out of it, they're not trying to get attention or approval or glory from it and they're just such beautiful people to be around while they're playing their music. They're not into drugs and they're not into some kind of support of the profession in terms of getting spirit help through some kind of addiction. And these are rare people but when you do see them, you can feel that they are in that place.

**AJ:** Then you often meet others who maybe have the same amount of glory, the same amount of attention, the same amount of approval, but they are driven totally by lust for those particular things. And it's a terrible thing to be with those kinds of persons generally. [01:08:42.14]

**Mary:** You say that it's a terrible thing to be with those kinds of persons, but they are receiving a lot of attention from people. Why do we see this phenomenon, when someone who's very humble might gain success and someone who has a complete lack of humility might also gain success? What is the phenomenon that's occurring there?

**AJ:** Well, the person who lacks humility is gaining success through the unhealed addictions of the people who support their success. Many of the people who support the person who wants glory, for example, are looking for glory themselves and they want to honour a person in that regard. They want glory themselves, they realise they can't do it, so they attach themselves to somebody who they personally feel will do it. They honour that person, give that person their funds, attention and time and honour them in order to avoid their own emotions.

**AJ:** This is a very common thing, as you know. In addition the person who's in, say, the music industry, will often have a lot of quite dark emotions of anger, rage, grief and all those kind of emotions, which they express through their music. And these kinds of emotions attract people with the same kinds of emotions to listen to their particular music. And often the people who are supporting the musician feel, "Oh they must know me because that's exactly how I feel." They have all these emotional longings towards the individual, which feeds the addiction for power or glory or attention or approval in the person.

**AJ:** That's very different to the humble person because the humble person's not worried about any of those things. A humble person's not creating his music so that everybody can listen to it; he's creating his music because he loves creating his music. He's not doing it because of the desire of attention and approval he gets, he likes the fact that people want to listen to his music, but he doesn't view that as a sense of his own worth. In other words he has worth even if nobody listens to his music. And the people who listen to his music are generally of a much wider audience. Instead of having specific emotional addictions they have a wide variety of emotional addictions, but they're not all honed in one or two or three places. [01:11:06.15]

**Mary:** They're not necessarily having their emotional addiction satisfied through their association with the singer, for example.

**AJ:** They might have their emotional addictions satisfied through the music he creates, but not through the singer himself. Not through some kind of strange personal relationship with the individual that they don't even know, as they would with a person who lacks humility.

30.1.1. The effects of seeking power, glory and attention on other people

**Mary:** Sure. So then for this person who's not humble, who's seeking to avoid a lot of things through getting glory and attention, what effects can it have on the people that they are interacting with? You mentioned that this addictive relationship can form but, say with children or other people in their environment, what kind of things does it create? [01:11:53.10]

**AJ:** Well generally the people seeking these kind of emotions are very narcissistic. They lead a very self-absorbed life. If they have children, for example, the children will feel very neglected and not very honoured, and they will often grow up with exactly the same emotion of course that the parent has been seeking all of its life. The sad thing about it is that these kinds of people generally can't hold relationships well, they can't hold friendships well; everything in their life, aside from the glory or attention or approval they get, is pretty much a mess. And this is why many people who have very public lives have very messy private lives; because there is a whole heap of addictions supporting their public life that they don't get met in private.

**AJ:** Oftentimes there's a lot of unhappiness in their life, which then causes them to seek these things even more. And oftentimes they eventually finish up, by the time they pass, feeling very alone because the reality is that very few people can emotionally support them throughout their life. It's common for a narcissistic person to continue getting friends; they get new friends, new friends, new friends; they're chewing up friends like they're going out of fashion, and sooner or later they end up with very, very few friends as a result, or people who are just friends because of some addiction that is met. [01:13:25.20]

**Mary:** Yeah, sure. You mentioned earlier about the example of the narcissistic singer and you were saying those kinds of people are quite unpleasant to be around. And it occurred to me that that's because you don't want to enter an addictive relationship with them, so you feel it as a demand or an oppressive feeling to be around them. [01:13:45.14]

**AJ:** Whereas their fans would love to be around them because there would be a co-dependent addiction that gets met inside of the fans by having some kind of association with that person. Their fans would actually feel very different to what I feel about being with the same person.

**Mary:** And that led me to think about a child of that sort of a person. They obviously don't enter the world seeking an addictive relationship, so they must also feel quite similar.

**AJ:** They will feel very similar. The child will find it very difficult to have a relationship with that person. Yeah. Very difficult to have a fulfilling relationship.

**Mary:** And I imagine feel quite oppressed.

**AJ:** They would feel oppressed, and also neglected, unloved, unwanted, uncared for, many, many different emotions. And this is why many of the children of people who have been wealthy, powerful, or popular have a lot of deep grief to go through before they can become stable emotionally. [01:14:45.09]

**Mary:** Yeah. Is that also why we often see substance abuse in those kinds of situations?

**AJ:** Yes. Substance abuse is another layer of adding physical addictions to the process, besides the emotional addictions.

**Mary:** And avoiding the oppression of the parent or the abuse situation.

**AJ:** Yeah. In trying to avoid the oppression of the parent, you want something that helps you avoid the emotion of how unloved you feel, how unwanted you feel, how pushed around and powerless you feel in the relationship. [01:15:23.19]

**Mary:** Okay. It sounds like in this set of resistances to humility that we only give of ourselves under very specific conditions, if we were in that state. Is that true?

**AJ:** Yes. A person who's seeking power, glory, attention, position, approval, is only ever going to give in a situation where they'll get those particular things. In other words, it's an emotional bartering system that they enter with every single individual. If you're not prepared to enter the barter with them, you'll never be their friend. That's the reality. They cannot love you; they do not love anybody actually. They only love the feeling of power, position, glory, attention, approval. That's what they love.

**AJ:** Similar to how a person who's living in fear has made fear their god, a person who's living in these things has made these things, glory, attention, and approval, their god. And they'll do anything to get that glory, attention and approval. It's impossible to have a relationship with integrity with such a person because they will always sacrifice the relationship for some kind of attention or approval or power. It's impossible to have a fulfilling, long-term relationship with the individual unless you're totally willing to do exactly what their addiction demands. [01:16:46.01]

30.2. How to release injuries surrounding seeking power, glory and attention

**Mary:** Yeah. So if I had this set of injuries, what would I need to do in order to reach a state of humility?

**AJ:** Well again, they're very difficult injuries to release, to get to a state of humility, because with these particular problems the addictions are usually firmly in place by the time the person's become an adult. Their world around them is trying to loosen up this problem and help them to feel it, but unfortunately the addiction is demanding, "No, I only want to create a life that will give me these particular results." It requires a lot of sincerity on the part of a person who's living this kind of a life to actually break down through the addiction and into the layer of fear that they have about feeling the underlying grief, the fear about feeling the grief of powerlessness, the fear about feeling the grief of being unwanted, the fear about feeling the grief that "Nobody notices me," these kinds of powerful grief from our childhood.

**AJ:** Of course they're also positions of untruth, in the sense that the irony of life is that when we feel a sense of internal worth, we won't seek the worth externally. When we feel a sense of internal power, we won't seek the power externally. When we feel a sense of internal glory, where we honour ourselves, we won't seek honour and glory externally. In the end there is this emotionally healed position that we have to reach where we have a feeling or a sense of internal power, a sense of internal worth, and these particular feelings only come when we release the opposite feeling that created this driving desire for these particular emotions to be fulfilled. [01:18:39.18]

**Mary:** So it's really acknowledging a lot of truth, from what you're saying. We need to at least open up to the fact that there's a different truth.

**AJ:** Yeah, and unfortunately most people who are in such a condition don't open up to the truth until they've created a life that's been quite damaged. And then they come to recognise some of the truth about how they created this damaged life. They then have some kind of self-reflection, some kind of therapy or some kind of psychological help, which helps them see the reason why they had such a desire for glory, for example, and the sacrifices that they were willing to make of their own self, and others, to reach this pinnacle of glory.

**AJ:** Once they start seeing that they start seeing the emotion as a drug rather than just seeing the emotion as something that's good to have. They start seeing the emotion as a problem that has caused the majority of their underlying problems that have been caused through this addiction. And then they start working their way through it emotionally.

**AJ:** It's rare for a person to consciously see, "Oh! I'm seeking power," and then consciously work their way through their fear and into their grief of how powerless they feel, without there being some kind of negative external effect in their life first. [01:20:05.07]

30.2.1. An example of family members seeking power, glory and respect

**Mary:** Yeah. We've given the example of someone seeking fame and glory in the big wide world, but I also see that many people set themselves up in positions of power, glory, respect and value in terms of their own family. They're the head of the household; they're the father, the mother, the wise old grandparent who has really created many of these things in a way that perhaps gives them less feedback about their true condition.

**AJ:** Yes. We were in Brazil recently and both of us noticed the power of the mother there; the matriarchal system where the mother believes everyone in the family eventually has to basically just do what she says or do what she wants. And she's glorified as this beautiful woman as a result of that. The reason why is that she has inculcated into her children this very, very strong desire to please her. Generally nobody in her immediate environment confronts the desire because they all know that if they confront the desire mum's going to be an angry ogre who might finish up ex-communicating them from the family if they're not careful. And so they always get themselves back into line.

**AJ:** Now such a person has no consciousness or awareness of what they are seeking through those addictive relationships. They need to come to some personal awareness that such behaviour is actually unloving and uncalled for in a family. And then they need to go through this process of opening or becoming more aware that these emotions are driving them and what the underlying reason for the emotions driving them are.

**AJ:** Now of course a person's already got to be fairly humble before they can actually go and do something like that. They have to have some degree of humility to look at themselves. And it's rare for such a person to do that. When we were in Brazil we talked to some spirits who had passed into the spirit world and I asked them where their families were, and they couldn't find them. And so they adopted another family on Earth so they could do the same thing to it, not asking themselves the question, "Why has my family deserted me? They've all passed, why have my family deserted me?" Well, don't you think it's got something to do with how oppressive you are? (Laughs) And once we started talking about that with that group of spirits, and taking them through the process of what was actually happening, there was initially a lot of resistance, just like there would be with people on the Earth in the same condition. [01:22:43.16]

**Mary:** And so really the family is a place where we might breed these kinds of addictions in ourselves or in our children. I'm thinking now of the favoured child, the golden child, or the long-wanted child. Suddenly they're born and they're already given a lot of power, attention, and glory.

**AJ:** Many of these "golden children" grow up being very narcissistic, doing some very damaging things. Some even turn to rape and murder and other very damaging actions as a result of being treated with this favouritism that has developed within them.

**Mary:** So it's going to take a lot of humility for someone to really begin to look at themselves and look at, "What is the attention that others are giving me? Does it give me a sense of feeling glorified or superior?" Or if I've had a family, I suppose, "What are the results in my family? Do I have children who do substance abuse or are finding it difficult to live in their life?" They may be some of the indicators I would look for, shall we say? [01:23:48.12]

**AJ:** Yeah. But also, I feel a person who is truly humble feels whether they're being honoured for something they have actually done or whether they're being honoured in a worshipful way. There is very, very big difference between this worshipful honouring or glory or attention or power to being honoured for what you have actually achieved. A person who's humble will accept being honoured for what they have actually achieved but they would reject being honoured for things they have not achieved. They would actually not agree with or enter into the co-dependent emotional addiction for things that they have not achieved. And they'd also recognise the holes or the problems that they have in their own life or their own family or whatever it is as well.

**AJ:** When we're truly humble, we may receive honour but it will be for what we've actually done, not for what everyone imagines we've done, and not for what everybody thinks we have done without any assistance. We'll also honour the assistance we've received if we're truly humble. There are ways to see whether the honour or the glory or attention or approval we're receiving is actually based around a real emotion or whether it's based around some kind of addiction.

**AJ:** When we become truly sensitive and humble, we'll actually feel the dishonourable addiction as a very sleazy feeling that we're being drawn from or taken from in the interaction, and we will find it very difficult to engage. [01:25:45.01]

31. How we resist humility: jealousy

**Mary:** Okay. Great. Let's move on to jealousy. Can you describe jealousy for us?

**AJ:** Well again, jealousy is the result of us not being humble to certain emotions. Jealousy is when we are in a rage or feeling angry or unhappy or hurt through some external event that we had generally no control over, and it's usually related to a person, place, individual or some kind of action. For example, we can be jealous that somebody else has a big house. We can be jealous about our partner and what they're doing with their life. We can be jealous for our partner in the sense that I feel like my partner is mine and anytime she shows anybody else any level of respect or attention then I'm jealous of her.

**AJ:** There are also other forms of jealousy related to when we feel our worth is being attacked. This often happens in a partnership where if a partner shows some sexual attention to another person and we feel a large amount of jealousy because we feel our own sexual worth is now being attacked by her giving her attention to another. And the reality is, it is being attacked but the reaction of jealousy is a denial of the underlying grief. [01:27:50.17]

**AJ:** These emotions of jealousy can come up from many different situations and they involve things that include feelings that are related to jealousy, such as coveting a person.

**Mary:** What's coveting?

**AJ:** Coveting is when we feel jealous that another person has a thing that we do not have, and so then we want that thing. And often we want that thing from that person as well. There's a lot of rage in the covetous desire, if you like. Covetous is an old word, I suppose, that you don't hear very often lately because it has biblical connotations. But the reality is that it's an emotion of jealousy where we want something from another that we usually don't have ourselves and that we feel that we're missing. And when we covet it, we're actually willing to take action to get it as well. We take the extra step not only of just being jealous but taking an action that gets the feeling satisfied, which is often very destructive. And people have murdered for that emotion. People have stolen for that emotion. People have raped for that emotion. There are all sorts of very heavy emotions involved in those particular aspects of jealousy. [01:29:14.06]

31.1. Emotions that drive jealousy

**Mary:** Would you say there's a group of key emotions that we would be avoiding when we become jealous?

**AJ:** Yes. Most of the emotions we avoid are about ourselves. The emotions that we are avoiding are always related to ourselves and our own lack of worth. It could be related to our own lack of sexual worth that we're unwilling to feel, or our own lack of physical worth, or financial worth. It's often related to security, but with regard to our personal worth with the security. We're not worth being safe. We're not worth being secure, and so forth. And so because these emotions have deep feelings associated with worth, they're often very prevalent in society as a result. [01:30:01.14]

**Mary:** I'm thinking here now of things like shame and feeling dirty; that's all related to our worth, isn't it, and very icky kinds of emotions to actually connect to?

**AJ:** Yes, and so jealousy is the rage associated with our addiction not getting met, whatever the addiction is. The addiction might be, "You give me a sense of sexual worth. If you don't give me a sense of sexual worth then I attack you." That's an act of jealousy towards you. If you share your sexual feeling with somebody else, then I no longer feel any sexual worth, so now I desire to attack you. In that rageful place I am now exhibiting my jealous emotions, which is a denial of humility. Because the reality is that if I were humble I would feel hurt at how you don't feel I'm sexually worth staying with, and that is a very different emotion; that is a grieving-based emotion. When we're afraid of feeling that level of grief-based emotion, we go to the jealous rageful-based emotion.

31.2. Acknowledging our jealousy and other dark emotions

**Mary:** I feel that this is a really murky area: jealousy and the emotions we avoid that create jealousy. It seems to me that a lot of us have issues just acknowledging that we're jealous. It's even such an unpleasant emotion for ourselves, that's why I hesitated when I was going to ask you the question about what the emotions lying underneath it are, because often I feel the real work we have to do is to acknowledge that we have it.

**AJ:** That we feel that way, yes. I agree. The biggest problem with many of these emotions is acknowledging that we have them. It's the same with fear, same with anger, same with wanting to feel powerful and all of what people call these seven deadly sins or something. Many of those emotions listed there are the emotions where everybody feels a bit sleazy inside of themselves when they feel they have them. It's the level of discomfort and judgement that we have about these particular emotions that causes us to not face what's underneath them. Unless I acknowledge that I am jealous I am never going to get to the emotion underneath it. Unless I acknowledge that I'm afraid, I will never get to the emotion underneath it.

**AJ:** So part of humility is acknowledging that the emotion exists; it is present and alive within us, and it is dictating our life to us. That is a very strong part of what we need to do if we're going to become humble to these emotions.

**AJ:** We need to admit to ourselves how dark we are before we can become lighter. This is what I would call a process, and it's the beginning of a process of repentance actually; to admit to ourselves what things we actually have inside of us is a very important part of actually growing out of those things and becoming different. You can't change something you cannot see or feel. In particular, you cannot change what you cannot feel. If you're denying to yourself that you have a feeling of jealousy, this dark emotion of jealousy that could maybe even turn into rage, anger and murder in the end; if you're denying it, you're never going to actually change it. You're never going to release it. And you're never going to find what the underlying cause of it is. [01:33:31.16]

**Mary:** And as we talked about in the fear section, then we actually give it more power in our lives.

**AJ:** Of course, and unfortunately the power is unconscious as well. Not only have we given the emotion, let's say it's the emotion of jealousy, more power by not acknowledging its existence, but also, because we do not acknowledge its existence, it will dictate our life to us. We'll live in the emotion of jealousy most of our life and we will not even realise what negative things it's creating because we'll be justifying to ourselves retaining the emotion of jealousy under certain circumstances.

**AJ:** So the man who feels that it's right for him to go into a rage with his girl who has just sexually interacted or flirted with another person is already justifying rage to himself, a very unloving act towards another, for the sake of the denial of his own grief about what it meant for him, sexually inside of himself, that he was now being treated as something that's of lesser value. And so he is automatically in great denial of the deeper grief that he doesn't want to choose to feel. [01:34:44.07]

31.3. Jealousy can be about our perceptions rather than reality

**Mary** : Okay, just finally about jealousy. Are we always jealous of things that people actually have or can we perceive...?

**AJ:** That's the sad thing, isn't it? We're often jealous of what we imagine they have but a lot of times it's not even real. We were talking to someone recently where they were jealous of another person because they were young (laughs) and had a pretty face or whatever. Even those things are not real in the sense that the person's not acting in a manner that would cause them to be jealous, they're just jealous of something. Jealousy is always driven by a feeling inside of ourselves that is generally related to this big emotion of worth, and a lack of worth. It might be a lack of sexual worth, physical worth, emotional worth and it can even be related to spiritual worth. Often jealousy creates many imaginings inside of the human mind. Often it imagines things that are not even happening. (Laughs)

**Mary:** Yep, but from what you're saying it's created by avoiding certain of these worthless feelings.

**AJ:** We'd prefer to imagine the damaging situation that never occurred, than feel our grief about it potentially occurring. Isn't that amazing? We'd rather have the rage about it never having happened but believing that it has, than we would feel the grief that it might happen, or has happened in the past, and that's a sad thing about such emotions. Such emotions always demonstrate a lack of humility, because they're the addiction associated with the fear associated with the actual emotion that we need to feel. So it's three or four layers removed from feeling the actual emotion. [01:36:59.16]

**Mary:** And it seems that most of us operate in that top layer most of our life unless we really do this work.

**AJ:** Yes. Hence psychologists have come up with this concept that we live in our subconscious because these things, which could be conscious, are actually subconscious in most people. Most people are not consciously aware they have underlying grief-based emotions which trigger these kinds of addictions. So instead of feeling the grief-based emotions, which are the creator of all of these things, they are living their life in addiction, not even really knowing or understanding why. The reality is that we're all capable of understanding why, we're all pretty intelligent as humans, certainly much more intelligent than the average monkey, and so we have capacity to understand why it's all happening, but we have high levels of denying why it's happening. [01:37:56.05]

32. How we resist humility: commiseration

**Mary:** Let's move on to commiseration. What is commiseration and how does it prevent humility?

**AJ:** Well, commiseration is the underlying desire that another person supports my belief or emotional state. It could be supporting anything, actually; supporting something that gives me some kind of validation. Commiseration usually means in the end that we start to grumble for attention, we want approval, we complain how bad everything is so that everyone will tell us that it can be better and so forth. We want others to agree with our own assessment of things, just because it makes us feel like our assessment had some value. And we want others to make us feel good about ourselves by agreeing with us all the time; even when they feel it's impossible to agree with us, we still want them to agree with us. And even when we're wrong, we still want them to agree with us. We want them to commiserate with our state, our life, what we've created.

**AJ:** The main reason why we wish to do all of this is that we don't want to take personal responsibility for anything that we've created. We want some kind of global acceptance of our own creation, and everybody we accept into our life should agree "What else would we have created, given the circumstances?" [01:39:18.10]

32.1. Commiseration results from not wanting to take personal responsibility for our creations

**Mary:** (Laughs) Yep, well that was my next question I suppose. Why would we become addicted to commiseration? And you've probably just answered that.

**AJ:** Yeah, it's because we're refusing to take responsibility for our own creations. We're refusing to be humble to our own emotions of what we have created. We are refusing to see that our own assessments of things are actually flawed or are based in error. We're refusing to see our own denial. We want everybody else around us to support our condition of denial. In reality we're wanting everyone around us to support our own lack of growth, our own stagnation, our own life. We're basically saying, "Here's my life, you all need to agree that it's good." Even when it's bad you need to agree it's good. Even when it's untruthful, we all need to agree it's good. And that way the person feels, "Ah, I'm good now," and we can avoid a lot of emotions in that place.

**Mary:** Can it work in the opposite way? Can I want everyone around me to agree that it's bad?

**AJ:** Totally! Like Hanrahan, in the Australian poem: "We'll all be ruined," said Hanrahan. As it progressed, when there was no rain coming: "We'll all be ruined. We'll all be ruined." And then when the rain comes, "We'll still all be ruined"! Because he basically just had a pessimistic attitude about the whole of life and he wanted everybody to agree with him. Many people are like that. They get some emotional support from this level of personal agreement that others have with them. It's actually a very unpleasant emotion to be around in a lot of ways because you get pulled into the web of the person. The person is only going to give you any love or attention or approval if you agree with them and if you support their life.

**AJ:** Now obviously if the Earth is in so much error that means people are in a lot of error. If people are in a lot of error, then somebody's going to have to disagree with the error before people are going to change. And if we're addicted to commiseration, that means we're going to be addicted to everybody staying the same. We're going to be addicted to everybody having the same opinions. Things are not going to change if everybody has the same opinions. The world itself, if we look at it honestly, has a lot of problems. And if all of us have the same opinions about it, and all of us commiserate with each other about it, none of us are going to get out of the problem and experience a different life here on Earth.

32.2. Commiseration creates stagnation

**AJ:** Commiseration is, I believe, a very weak emotion and it causes so much damage to this planet. It causes so much damage to individual relationships as well because nobody ever challenges the status quo. And look at what happens to the person who does challenge it; every time you don't agree with something you get attacked, because people are addicted to this commiseration emotion. Everybody wants you to commiserate with them, everybody wants you to agree with their opinion. And it's very difficult to agree with opinions that are wrong, but they still want you to! (Laughter)

**AJ:** Imagine it from God's perspective. God knows the Absolute Truth of everything, and God's looking at the Earth going, "Yeah, pretty much everything you're doing is wrong." (Laughs) Now, consider at some point if God commiserated with it all and said, "Yeah, you're doing everything wrong but that's okay." It's not okay! The reality is that it's not okay. While God allows it to occur because we have the gift of free will, God's not up there going, "Oh yeah, I agree with that choice. I agree with that choice." Obviously there is a truth that we can change. And the problem with commiseration is it causes us to be completely blind to the truth. We even desire blindness to the truth. [01:43:18.20]

**Mary:** Obviously in our life we're fairly committed to speaking truth with people. What I observe is that firstly many of us start out in this state of wanting to be blind to the truth that we can change and wanting commiseration for that, and then perhaps you point out that there is a truth that they can change, and then there's a desire for commiseration that it's too hard to change.

**AJ:** Exactly! Now they want me to say, "Ah, it's good that you didn't know that you were wrong. And it's good that now it's too hard to change." No it's not good! How can you say those things? It's not. None of those things can be commiserated with. And there's a very strong one that seems to be prevalent, "Oh, but I had a bad childhood, surely you can realise that this choice that I've just made that's unloving came from my bad childhood." Well, no, it didn't come from your bad childhood. I've seen many people who have had a terrible childhood still make loving choices. So it didn't come from your childhood, it came from your willingness to justify not dealing with the emotion from your childhood, that's what it came from. It's very difficult to commiserate with people under those circumstances and in fact impossible if you love them. It's impossible to commiserate if you love somebody. [01:44:33.14]

32.3. Differences between commiseration and compassion

**Mary:** Could you then contrast for us commiseration and compassion?

**AJ:** Well compassion understands the truth associated with the condition. Commiseration is not interested in the truth associated with the condition; it wants to deny the truth associated with the condition. They are completely different emotions. When I have true compassion for what a person is going through, I understand the truth completely about why they're going through what they're going through. If I am commiserating with them, I don't understand the truth completely and I support their error. And that's a very unloving action to take.

**Mary:** How would there be a difference in my behaviour between the two states? Or my feelings?

**AJ:** When we have compassion, it's a feeling of love for the person. The feeling of love is a feeling based on complete understanding of what's going on. Commiseration is not interested in understanding; it's interested only in giving them a feeling of approval. It's an addictive bartering system to give the person a sense that they're right. Compassion in a situation where somebody is wrong would still be compassionate, but they would tell them that they're wrong. Commiseration in a situation when somebody is wrong would have a facade of compassion and tell them that they're right. [01:46:08.05]

**Mary:** Even if it's just emotionally.

**AJ:** That's correct.

**Mary:** The feeling coming from them is...

**AJ:** "Ah, you're right to have that. Yeah, it's okay for you to be so angry. It's okay for you to be so upset. It's okay for you to be so afraid." It's not okay; these are all error-based emotions that need to leave. We need to feel them but it's not okay that they're there. We need to understand why they're there.

**Mary:** Whereas if we are compassionate, we're accepting that they're there.

**AJ:** We accept they're there, we have compassion for how it got there, but we do not agree with them being there. We do not support the person retaining them, which is a very different state to commiseration. In fact we confront the person who wants to retain them, and we can still be compassionate doing that. A truly humble person wants to feel everything. A truly humble person wants to know the truth about every situation. A truly humble person is willing to feel the truth about every situation, not avoid it. A person who wants commiseration, they don't want to do any of those things, so they're definitely not humble. They can act humble, "Oh, my life's so terrible," and they act all downtrodden and meek and mild but the reality is that they're not humble at all. [01:47:23.07]

**Mary:** So when we're truly humble, how would we respond to others wanting to commiserate with us or our problems?

**AJ:** We would never commiserate with an individual when we're truly humble because we understand that the danger of doing so causes them to retain the emotion that's suppressing their true healing. So we would never commiserate with them. We would have compassion for them, but we would disagree with them. We would have a feeling of compassion for them, but we would still disagree with their untruth.

**Mary:** And what about if someone attempts to commiserate with me?

**AJ:** If we were truly humble we would also feel that to be a very sleazy emotion. And we would not engage it. We would probably ask the person to go away rather than to project such emotions at us. Also we would question them as to why they're commiserating when we're trying to feel something that is actually to do with a healing-based emotion. Why are they trying to commiserate with me? Because it's an attempt to shut me down. When we commiserate with other people we are shutting down the expression of their causal emotion. So it's actually damaging on the giving and receiving end, as are many of these emotions, yes.

33. How we resist humility: false humility

**Mary:** Yes, so we've seen. Okay, well the final point I wanted to speak to you about today is something that I've just labelled as false humility. I suppose that you've been teaching for some time now, and there are large numbers of people listening. You emphasise the importance of humility, which is essentially about having a willingness and a desire to feel ourselves and our own emotions. Something I observe happening is that people get into a tear tally. (Laughs)

**AJ:** Which is an indication of a lack of humility, (laughs) that they're tallying it, for example.

**Mary:** Perhaps that's my joking way of saying it. But there's a feeling that we must cry all the time at any moment and that any expression of emotion is an expression of humility.

**AJ:** Which is very false, isn't it?

**Mary:** Yes, I believe that this is a false expression of humility.

**AJ:** It's a facade of humility without the substance and often invites spirit influence as well. For example, a person who's seeking glory and attention on the Divine Love Path wants to have everybody else on the path... and I don't know why they call it "The Divine Love Path", it's probably "The Way that God encourages us to connect to God." It's all about our relationship with God in reality. But a person who's seeking attention in that process will go, "Oh yes, I cried five times today, and four times yesterday. And I cried about this and I cried about that," and it's just another way of seeking attention and approval. It's got nothing to do with reality. And oftentimes they open themselves up to spirits as well; they often feel the emotion of a spirit just so that they can say they had an emotion. And it's very damaging to them, very damaging. [01:50:46.09]

33.1. Emotions that drive false humility

**Mary:** What are the emotions that are driving this kind of behaviour?

**AJ:** Well all false sense of humility comes from some of these other emotions we've already mentioned. It comes from a rage about having to feel your own emotions. It comes from a desire to have commiseration. It comes from a desire for glory, attention or approval, just in a different way, so in the end it's still the suppression of the same. Any time we have a facade of humility, we still have exactly the same levels of resistance that we're already discussed. We're just being less honest about it.

**Mary:** Exactly. And to me that's even more concerning. That's actually creating a facade upon a facade at times.

**AJ:** Of course. It's like a layer of facade upon another layer of facade. It's just another layer we're going to have to deconstruct at some point and look at why we are deciding that fake is actually preferable to real. The reality is that for many people fake is preferable to real. The way to see whether we're actually progressing towards God is to look at our life over the last two or three years. If we've done a lot of crying and there's little change in our life, then all of that crying was a facade. All of it. It was all a lack of humility, the whole lot of it.

**AJ:** Humility is not crying. If people believe humility is crying, they are very, very mistaken. Humility is feeling all of the emotions that are present. For many people the emotions that are initially present are addictions and they need to feel those. And above that often there's anger. Above that there's often denial. All of those need to be felt. And you're not going to be crying when you're feeling those. You're going to be feeling angry and upset and rageful and uncomfortable, all these other types of feelings.

**AJ:** And then they've got to get into their fear, and fear is another level of emotion. And you need to feel your fears. But you can't justify it to yourself or commiserate with everyone with, "Ah, I felt this fear the other day, isn't this wonderful how I felt that fear the other day." My question is, "Well, has your life changed in that direction? If it hasn't changed then you didn't feel anything." And this is what I find quite strange with people. It's just creating another way of life, similar to a religion, in a way. What many people are doing with the "Divine Love Path", what we've been trying to teach, is they're going to themselves, "Yeah I'm on the Divine Love Path." In other words it's sort of like saying, "I'm a Catholic now." It's exactly the same thing. "I go to church every weekend." "Oh, I go to the meetings all the time." So there's the comparison. And, "I pray every day." "Ah, I talk to God every day." [01:53:35.00]

**Mary:** "I cry every day."

33.2. If we're truly humble our lives will change

**AJ:** Yeah, and then, "Ah, and I treat everybody nicely", and there are all these comparisons but in the end it's all facade. The whole lot's facade, for many of them. They have not made a substantial change in their entire life for the last period of time that they've been following the "religion." Let's say it's a religion, any religion. If a person hasn't made substantial changes in the way in which they live their life in the last five years with any religion, then the religion is not benefiting them. It's not bringing them into more harmony with love, more harmony with truth, more growth, more humility, more anything.

**AJ:** Now the same applies to any person who's listened to the Divine Truth. If it hasn't substantially changed their life in the last two, three, four or five years that they've been associated with it, then they haven't done anything. They haven't made any sincere changes. Their soul's not growing, so nothing's changed. What's the difference being in that way of life to being like any other religious or any other thing that we could actually pursue? None. None whatsoever.

**AJ:** We need to understand that when we get into this truthfully, we're going to be going through some very real experiences. And to be honest, to talk about them demeans them. The majority of people do not realise that the reason why I do not share my emotions with people except in a teaching environment is that I find to talk about my emotions, even in a teaching environment, demeans the experience. The actual experience was often far more powerful than what I can describe, and far more life-changing than what I can describe, and had a far bigger effect on the rest of my life than what I can describe. All I'm attempting to do is describe it so that people can understand that that's what it's going to look like, there's going to be change. [01:55:32.15]

**Mary:** It's trying to contain a sunset into two sentences.

**AJ:** Yes. You know it's like last night in our interview, when you were asked what's been your life since you met me, and you were expected to give an answer in one minute. It's impossible really, it's an impossibility because the reality is that these are very huge experiences emotionally that cause your whole life to change. If you are truly progressing on any path, scientific, religious, or otherwise, you will have changed in the last few years. And if you have not changed, then you are not sincerely doing it. Or the path itself is not actually working, it doesn't work. It's one of those two things.

**AJ:** Now, I know from my personal experience that the path works. And that's why I'm teaching it. But I have not seen many people make sincere changes on the path. There's not a large number of people on the planet making sincere changes and the reason why is that they're not being sincere about their true feelings. In other words they are not being humble, that's the problem.

33.3. True humility feels edgy, uncomfortable and like being alive

**Mary:** Yeah. I suppose I feel that in the times when I'm experiencing humility, life feels edgy. You know, I'm on the edge of my comfort zone all of the time.

**AJ:** All the time.

**Mary:** And that's what humility really feels like.

**AJ:** But it's also good - you get used to that after a while almost, and it's like everything's always edgy after that.

**Mary:** And the feedback is so profound.

**AJ:** And instant.

**Mary:** And instant. You know, you operate on the edge of your comfort zone. You face something and you know you're different forever.

**AJ:** And your world changes. Everything changes around you instantly too. Like within a day everything's changed. Yeah.

**Mary:** And there's freedom and more joy but then if you're really humble and sincere you'll be on the edge again.

**AJ:** Yeah, with another issue.

**Mary:** Something else.

**AJ:** Yeah. And the reality is that if you're truly humble and you become at-one with God, you're still going to be in the same place; on the edge all the time discovering new things. You're in your passion now, there are not all these really harsh negative emotions associated with the discovery of new things, but you're still feeling this passion of life. Like, you know you can't avoid it. If you're truly humble you will not be in a state where you go, "Oh, life's a bit ho hum today." (Laughs) [01:58:19.04]

**Mary:** And to me it does feel like the contrast between living and being in a coma.

**AJ:** Yes.

**Mary:** And the difference is this humility factor. If I'm humble I'm alive.

**AJ:** I think the reason why there are so many zombie movies today is that most people are in a coma. (Laughs) And the zombie feeling sort of appeals. (Laughs)

**Mary:** (Laughs) Yeah.

**AJ:** It's exciting when they run around with a knife. (Laughs) But it's a sad statement of humanity's condition really, in that the average person who's in passionate desire with their life is often criticised, looked down upon, condescended to. If we've got a childlike passion in any area or endeavour it's often beaten out of us in this world that we live in. And that's because generally in the world there is this terrible lack of humility. The reason we've got so many problems in the world is that we lack the humility to see that we created them. That's the main reason why.

33.4. Differences between humility and false humility

**AJ:** And I said at the beginning of this series of interviews with you, a lack of humility causes our own death. The reality is that if we're all completely humble, none of us would ever die because we'd feel all emotion. Any negative experience we had would all be gone from us; it would not create any physical problem within us. We'd be humble in our relationship with other people so we'd never attack them, we'd never harm them. We'd be humble in terms of what we notice happening around us. We'd understand science, we'd understand the world around us, we'd understand the Earth's systems and how they all work. We'd understand when it's going to be a bit damaging and it's good to get out of its way. We'd understand all of those things automatically because we're humble, and so there's no real chance of us even dying under those circumstances.

**AJ:** So in reality, a lack of humility causes our own death. If people understood it, that's how strong the lack of humility is, the power that the lack of humility has to create our own death. The power of humility is that it can create your own eternal life; even here on Earth it can create your eternal life, along with all of your happiness and everything else humility can create. But mankind has just such a terrible viewpoint of it, and ridicules it, and can't accept it; it can't accept that state of fully feeling, experiencing everything within themselves, and remaining humble to the entire experience, and having a feeling inside of yourself of an accurate position of your own condition in relation to everything. I know that I am equal to you. Not higher than you, not lower than you; equal to you. And humility creates that. Humility accepts truth. It accepts it without resistance. It's just a beautiful quality. [02:01:39.11]

**Mary:** With regard to false humility, this phenomenon we're talking about now, it feels to me like there's an inertia on the planet surrounding the resistance to truth, resistance to humility, that even when you come forth and present a teaching that is based on humility, it takes such an effort to overcome this inertia that people end up actually sliding back into it and creating a false humility rather than actual humility.

**AJ:** Yeah, an arrogance really. How many people who believe they're on the path go around saying, "I'm on the Divine Love Path"?

**Mary:** "I know the truth."

**AJ:** "And I know the truth now," when in their heart they know hardly anything really. They're yet to have a real physical change and heartfelt change. It's because of their own arrogance; it's not humility for a person to do that. It's arrogance to go, "Oh I know the truth now. I heard the truth from Jesus and I know it." What's the difference between that and a person who's a Christian saying, "The Bible's the truth," or a Muslim saying, "Oh, the Koran's the truth and I know it now"? There's no difference, and one of the reasons why we have so much conflict between each one of these religions is because they're all going, "I know the truth now, aren't I good?" And, no, you're not good. Often you've just come to your senses for the first time. [02:03:02.05]

**Mary:** If we're still living in a state of arrogance, we haven't even begun, have we?

**AJ:** No, not at all. We have no idea or clear concept of our true position in life or our true position in the universe when we have a lack of humility, and our own condition in relationship to God and relationship to the power of the universe that God's created. We have no concept of it if we lack humility. We can't actually learn anything if we lack humility. We can intellectually absorb, but we can't actually emotionally learn it.

34. Closing Words

**Mary:** Which probably brings me towards the end of the interview. Really, you are the most humble person I know and have ever known.

**AJ:** Thanks, babe. (Laughs)

**Mary:** I observe you in our life, you cop a lot of criticism, anger, people justifying their rage at you and their ridicule towards you. Their cynicism gets projected at you; all of their insecurities and fears become projected at you. I observe this happening a lot and I observe you being very humble to it. You don't place resistance, you don't get angry back. You very much grieve if that's what those experiences bring up for you. But I also see that you've been so humble that even now you can receive these things and a lot of those emotions have left you and you're able to just be in a state of love with everyone around us. That is a beautiful example, and one I feel very honoured to share with you in your life. (Mary starts crying) [02:04:48.16]

**AJ:** Thanks, darling.

**Mary:** I see you are someone who has overcome that inertia which seems so great on the planet. But I do know that you have overcome it. You weren't born in this state and you have developed humility and to me this is one of the most inspiring things about our discussion. It's not that you are just telling me a bunch of facts, but you are telling me things from your lived experience. I know that if I were to interview you about that in detail perhaps it would be a whole other interview. But would you mind sharing with us something of that journey or some of the things that you've had to deal with in order to be humble? [02:05:36.21]

34.1. AJ describes his personal experiences in becoming humble

**AJ:** Well the reality is that I've probably had to deal with almost everything we've listed over the last five sessions really (laughs). I've had every one of those emotions at some point. I've had to go through the experience of finding out why, and even desire to find out why, even though everyone around me doesn't want me to. And I've also had to choose to do it alone, a lot of times, without support because on the planet most of the support is in the opposite direction. And I've had to do it with lots of criticism, under lots of pressure and usually under fire.

**AJ:** Because of that though I've learnt the importance of my relationship with God, and that my relationship to God gives me the truth that will get me through everything. As a result of that, I gave up relying on everyone around me. I gave up relying on somebody supporting me or helping me through the process. I just focused entirely on my relationship with God about that. I feel that's what most people are neglecting in this drive for truth; they still want somebody holding their hand, not realising they've got the master of the universe, God, holding their hand. If they accept the hand of God; they'll have God holding their hand.

**AJ:** I also feel that God loves to hold the hand of a humble person. I believe that there's this quality in God, that God can see a person who is truly humble because the person's starting to see themselves as God sees them. Because of that linkage, there's a deep connection between God and yourself when you're truly humble. You don't have to be at-one with God yet to have a connection with God when you're truly humble. When you're truly humble you feel God more and of course God can feel you more now. God always feels us but there's all this addiction and other crap that we project at God generally, and we don't feel ourselves very well. But once we are humble, we're starting to feel ourselves, we're feeling ourselves as God feels us, and I feel it's what most people neglect here. Most people who are seeking false humility are actually entirely neglecting their true relationship with God and still wanting addictions met through their environment.

**AJ:** So I've had to give all that up. Part of the issue of teaching something that's new, and different, is that you're never going to get acceptance right at the beginning. In fact it can be many centuries or even millennia later that acceptance comes. And you have to be humble to everything that happens in between as well if you really want to maintain that relationship with God and stay in connection with God.

**AJ:** I've had to learn to give up all of these things, all of these resistances. I've even had to give up somebody supporting me in the process. I've had to give that up. And I still don't feel that I've completely given some of that up in the sense that emotionally I can still feel that there are a few more emotions for me to work through with stuff like that. At first you often get criticised, judged, condemned, in every possible way, and if your desire for God is strong enough and your desire to be humble with God is strong enough, you'll go through all of those things and still stay humble.

**AJ:** I also feel that most people don't recognise that humility is a choice. It is an emotional choice but it's a choice. We can be in any situation and choose humility over any other position, including arrogance. We can choose to actually feel what's really going on rather than avoid what's really going on. We can choose to see our life as it truly is. I see the faults in my body as they truly are, right now. I know what they are. I find it interesting when somebody else comes and tells me about them and I say, "Well are there any others?" and they don't know of any others, and I can list them all. I'm actually more humble to my own condition than other people, who can come to tell me things, are. That's a part of it too, to actually see yourself truthfully and to not need other people to see you truthfully. [02:10:37.13]

**Mary:** I also observe that you're very conscious of yourself and if there is an issue or something's not working or something's not resolved, you're always asking for more truth about it.

**AJ:** Always.

**Mary:** I see people somehow have a perception of you that you are not seeking more truth and I observe you daily seeking more truth and recognising God, the sovereignty of God, I suppose; that God has the knowledge and that you are the person seeking it.

**AJ:** Yes.

**Mary:** And receiving it because of this humble state you have surrounding it.

**AJ:** Yeah, and if we can remind everyone that humility is not an intellectual decision. It's an emotional state. It's a state of being able to absorb new truth and give up what you believe is true. People often say to me, "This Divine Truth of yours..." and I go, "I'm sorry, it's not mine." I see myself as being like a scientist discovering truth about a specific subject. Let's say I'm a scientist discovering truth about the atom, I'd have to be open to any possibility, and I feel with regard to God and the universe, and all those things where I'm passionate about discovering new truth, I am open to any new possibility. If somebody can prove that what I'm saying is wrong, I'm perfectly able to accept that it's wrong if it's able to be proven. Perfectly able. I have no emotional investment in being right at all, although many people think I do. I do not have any emotional investment in being right.

**AJ:** I do have a deep emotional investment in desiring truth from God. I have a very, very strong desire to know what the truth is from God. It's not my truth, it's never going to be my truth in a sense because universal truth existed before I existed; if I ever pass away it will exist. I don't think I'll ever pass away now because of being in the condition of receiving God's Love, and if I passed away then God would have to pass away too. But I do know for certain that as long as I exist there'll be more universal truth to discover and the way I see it right now is that I know very little of it. I know a lot more in comparison to many people on the planet, and that is a statement of truth, but it also is a statement of humility in the sense that it's not mine. It's not mine. I've only learnt it. And I've only learnt it because of this quality. It's not because of having any greater intellectual power than somebody else or having any greater imagination or receiving more help from spirits, because I have not received help from spirits discovering any of this truth. It's all about the fact that I've been humble enough to accept when I'm wrong and to accept something new from God. And that's really what humility does for you; it allows truth to be absorbed. [02:14:01.03]

34.2. The relationship between humility, truth and love

**Mary:** Yes. I wanted to round out the interview I suppose, by asking you about how humility relates to truth and I think you've just mentioned that. Also I see that you have a commitment to speaking truth to others but you don't view it as your own truth.

**AJ:** No. Speaking truth to others is also a state of humility. I know many times that if I speak the truth they will not believe me, they'll be condescending towards me, they'll disagree with me, they'll attack me. They might even harm me physically. They'll attempt to harm me emotionally in almost every case, and yet if I'm humble I will accept all of that as emotional projections that I just need to feel if I have any more feeling associated with them. But I still need to tell the truth because once I'm in a state of humility, I recognise the importance of God's Truth. It's more important than I am. It's far important than my life, it's more important than my welfare, it's more important than my security. It's not more important than my happiness because it will always create my happiness. And it's not more important than love because it will always create more love in my life. But it's more important than many other things that most other people place importance in. And the fact that I honour that is a state of humility; that I honour the importance of God's Truth, Divine Truth. [02:15:28.01]

**Mary:** Just finally, what's the relationship between love and humility then?

**AJ:** Well, as I've said in many discussions already, and I think it's a great place to finish off this interview, humility is the only doorway to truth. Without humility you will never be able to discover new truth, ever, in any field of endeavour. And it's the truth that creates freedom. Once we know the truth, fear disappears, all these other things start to disappear. But the truth also creates something even more powerful than that, and that is the ability to connect to God and receive love.

**AJ:** Truth is the doorway to Divine Love. That being the case, you could say Truth is God's, Love is God's, but humility is mine. Humility is the only quality that I can personally develop that helps me develop my relationship with God and my relationship with the universe. If I develop humility, then truth will come to me, and I'll be able to absorb it. And if I develop humility, and absorb this truth, love will come to me, and I'll be able to absorb it. The Love is not mine, it's from God. And the Truth is not mine, it's from God. But the humility is mine. It is the quality that exists within me that enables these particular things to occur.

34.2.1. The importance of humility

**AJ:** In that regard you can be happy that there is one area where your relationship with God is dependent upon yourself, and that is the humble exercise of your own will. The development of this quality of humility will have the largest effect on your life imaginable, more than any other quality, more than any other thing that can be developed inside of yourself, by yourself. I personally don't believe that love can be really developed by yourself. If you're ever truly going to become loving, you're going to need to receive God's Love. If you're ever truly going to know the truth, you're going to have to receive God's Truth. These things are God's, not mine. But humility is something I can develop. It is the thing inside of me upon which everything else is dependent, and that's why it's so important. [02:18:04.18]

**Mary:** Would you call it the way that we offer ourselves to God? Or the way that we submit to God's process is just humility?

**AJ:** Yes. Well, I feel humility is "The Way." The actual way to God is this process of becoming completely humble. That is The Way. And once you become humble you start feeling it and accepting the truth in you. You'll acknowledge the truth that God exists; you'll acknowledge the truth that God has Love to give. You will then desire that love even. Once you're humble, all of those truths can come to you. Humility is the primary foundation of the way to God. Without this quality being developed it is impossible to get to know God, and it's impossible to become at-one with God without it. Humility is the cause of our being born again. And so, yeah, I just feel that if everybody understood that better, then humility would be a far more important topic of conversation on the planet than what it currently is. [02:19:06.00]

**Mary:** Yes. Thank you, my love.

**AJ:** Thanks, darling.

Appendix 1: Interview with Jesus by Mary Magdalene – Humility Session 1 Outline

### Introduction to Humility

The contrast between the definition of humility according to the dictionary and God's definition of humility

Humility is the passionate longing and desire to feel and experience all of our emotions whether they are pleasurable or painful, without blaming or attempting to manipulate or control our environment in any way.

True humility is to see ourselves as God sees us.

True humility involves a lack of self-judgement and self-consciousness in our relationships with others.

Humility takes its name from the Greek word "humus", meaning "of the earth" or "ground".

To reach true humility and our true self, we need to work through the façade self and injured self

Experiencing the injured self is a more powerful place compared to the façade self.

Humility is a quality that involves a respect for God and for God's truth at all times

Humility is not merely an ability to cry privately.

True humility is an honouring of God's Love and God's Truth above ourselves.

Humility demonstrates a firmness for Truth about unloving behaviour towards others and ourselves.

Humility honours God's laws and God's gifts.

True humility doesn't elevate or deprecate

True humility recognises ourselves as of equal value to all others.

A truly humble person always examines themselves before others

A truly humble person can feel everyone else but is not invested in what everyone else is feeling.

A truly humble person is not self involved.

A humble person's feelings are of equal value to others' feelings.

Humility is the cornerstone of our spiritual development

Humility is essential to establish a relationship with God.

Humility is the doorway to Divine Truth, and Divine Truth is the doorway to Divine Love.

Humility is the way we use our will to form a relationship with God.

We require humility to learn about and understand God's laws and God's Truth.

Humility opens us up to change.

To be humble we need to enter a child like state

In our spiritual growth we have the ability to become more humble than a child.

We need humility to be able to love others completely

We need humility to develop personal integrity.

### Reference:

Video presentation

Relationship with God: Humility (14th November 2009, Buderim, Australia)

Relationship with God: The Way (18th December 2011, Murgon, Australia)

Appendix 2: Interview with Jesus by Mary Magdalene – Humility Session 2 Outline

### Humility in Practice - Part 1

Practical aspects of humility; what it means to live in a humble way.

God's love flowing into our hearts depends upon our whole hearted desire to feel and experience all emotion.

God's love flowing into our heart indicates that we are in a state of humility.

Dedicating our life to becoming a humble person is all we need to do for our spiritual growth.

Judging ourselves for not receiving Divine Love and for not being humble takes us further away from humility.

Investment in God's opinion of us will lead to humility.

Investment in others' opinions of us will stagnate us.

Humility is a whole hearted desire to feel and experience all of our emotions

It involves no resistance to feeling our emotions.

Our longing for God's love becoming stronger than our longing for any other experience leads us into humility

Having this as our priority system simplifies our lives.

If we honour God's Love above all other things, we are not afraid to confront the error that surrounds us

If we are truly humble, we are willing to lose family, friends, position, property and/or power in order to receive God's love.

If we long for and receive Divine Love all other things will be added to us.

If we are truly humble, we are willing to look foolish and stupid in the eyes of those around us.

If we are truly humble, we are willing to feel all of the emotions about being alone, being attacked and being belittled in order to be ourselves.

If we are truly humble, we will never attempt to use methods or techniques that shut down or dampen our emotional experience

If we are truly humble we don't even consider using techniques to manage our emotions.

Embracing every experience and emotion creates freedom.

If we are truly humble we embrace our terror when it arises.

If we are truly humble, we will never get angry, resentful or afraid about having to feel our emotions

If we are truly humble, we do not feel that we're giving up on things or losing things because of choosing the Divine Love Path

We come to acknowledge that everything around us is a gift.

We learn to see which of our relationships have substance and which are based on addictions and our façade.

God's love flowing into our hearts depends upon our willingness to take responsibility for, experience and release fully, without reservation, all of the error within ourselves that prevents God's love from flowing.

We do not seek validation or permission to feel from others.

We do not blame others for our personal pain and suffering.

We do not require others to acknowledge their unloving behaviour towards us.

We place God first in our priority system and ourselves next.

When we take responsibility we desire with all our heart to experience the law of compensation for what we've done to others

We acknowledge the unloving behaviour that we have perpetrated towards others.

We desire to know and feel the pain we have caused to others.

We do not enter a state of self punishment about the pain we have caused to others.

When we take responsibility we desire with all our heart to experience the causal emotions of what happened to us in the past

Our causal emotions are the cause of our unloving behaviour towards others and releasing them prevents us from repeating the same unloving behaviour.

When we take responsibility we desire with all our heart to abandon all of our anger, our justifications, our minimisations and our denial

When we take responsibility we desire with all our heart to experience our fear and become a trusting child again

We are willing to experience our childhood terror.

We can be supported by our guides when we are humble.

Questions we can ask ourselves to see if we're truly humble to taking responsibility for, and experience and releasing, all the error within ourselves

Do I have a tendency to justify my anger or fear to God, others or myself?

Do I have a strong resistance about feeling my personal fears?

Do I use my intellect to tell myself I'm over that now?

Do I resist seeing the damage I have done to others and refuse to take full responsibility for the effects?

We would see our own body shape, our body pains and our illnesses also as an indication.

### Reference:

Video presentation

Relationship with God: Humility (14th November 2009, Buderim, Australia)

Relationship with God: The Way (18th December 2011, Murgon, Australia)

Appendix 3: Interview with Jesus by Mary Magdalene – Humility Session 3

### Humility in Practice – Part 2

Practical aspects of humility; what it means to live in a humble way.

What humility is and what humility is not.

To connect with God and God's truth we need humility

Humility allows us to have our false beliefs challenged.

Humility is a willingness to be overwhelmed our own emotions.

Humility is a willingness to be overwhelmed by God.

Humility is not false modesty

Humility is an ownership of what is inside of us.

Humility is a willingness to see ourselves as God sees us.

Humility is a willingness to give up control and be open to new ideas

If we are resistive to a new idea it is a sign of our lack of humility.

Humility is a whole hearted desire to feel and experience all emotion

A humble person has no reluctance to feeling their emotions.

A truly humble person desires to feel themselves and God above all other things

God's love flowing into our heart requires humility

Humility is a willingness to take responsibility for, experience and release fully without reservation, all of the error within ourselves that present's God's love from flowing

Humility is a choice we have on a moment by moment basis to be loving.

Humility is not about just processing emotions in private.

God's love can only flow into our heart when I'm willing to be as I truthfully am

Humility in practice is being as I truthfully am.

Humility in practice is being the real me.

James 1:23-24 "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, this one is like a man looking at his natural face in the mirror. For he looks at himself and off he goes and immediately forgets what sort of man he is."

Humility encompasses ethics and morality

Humility is a willingness to be taught by God

For example through the law of attraction in Western vs. poverty stricken countries.

It involves giving up self reliance.

It involves being emotionally open to God.

A humble person immediately puts into practice what they have learned.

We require a total respect for God and what God has created in order to be taught by God.

Humility is the ability to receive both direct and indirect council

A person who's humble views all feedback – even attacking feedback - as a gift.

A humble person will see all events that refine their souls – even unloving events \- as no longer painful.

God has created laws that enable us to always grow, even if everyone around us chooses unlovingness.

### Reference:

Video presentation

Relationship with God: Humility (14th November 2009, Buderim, Australia)

Relationship with God: The Way (18th December 2011, Murgon, Australia)

Appendix 4: Interview With Jesus by Mary Magdalene - Humility Sessions 4 & 5 Outline

### RESISTANCE TO HUMILITY - Why We Find Humility Difficult

Q. We've spent a few interviews now discussing true humility. So, could you give us an overview of why, as souls made by God, we collectively seem to find this truly humble state so difficult?

What are some of the ways we resist humility?

### Arrogance

Q. What is arrogance?

Arrogance comes from a basic untruthful emotion that I feel I am better than others: Arrogance; an offensive display of superiority or self-importance, overbearing pride I am automatically judging others as lesser than myself

Q. How does God view arrogance? How does our viewpoint of ourselves when we are arrogant conflict with God's Truth?

I am setting myself up as having authority over others, usurping God's position

I am blasphemous & treating God's children as lesser than myself

Q. How difficult is arrogance to release from ourselves?

Releasing arrogance is VERY difficult emotionally, & arrogance betrays a VERY dark condition

Arrogance is therefore an indication that I am not being humble

Q. What are some of the reasons we develop this injury?

Mostly it is done to avoid the experience of personally painful emotions

When we put others down we get to feel better about ourselves

Q. How much does this emotion darken our souls?

Since arrogance involves the denigration of another, it damages others besides ourselves Therefore it rapidly darkens the condition of our soul with regard to love Every time we are arrogant, we are generally being unloving to others

### False Ego

Q. How would you define 'false ego' for the purposes of this discussion?

It is the Façade, the Image of Yourself that you want to hold onto (parent created)

Q. Are there other words you have used to describe this state? True Ego is the centre of self that God created within you False Ego is the centre you have within yourself that you have personally created to avoid the hurt that society (parents, environment) has created within you:

Ego is the false impression of myself created by my environment

Both my environment & I wish to retain ego so I do not have to feel myself as I truly am

Q. Why is this state so attractive to so many of us?

We do not have to confront society We do not have to confront our parents with truth We get the approval of others agreement

Q. What do I 'gain' or how do I feel 'good' when I live in this state?

I am unwilling to see myself as God sees me, & retain a view only as society or I see myself I become addicted to feeling good by doing what others want, or avoiding what others ridicule Ego causes us to become addicted to admiration from others, & may even cause "false" humility

Q. I am reminded here of the section in the last interview where we discussed humility involving a willingness to be as I am truthfully am. Are my blocks to simply being 'real', simply the addictions to others good opinion of me, or is there more to it than this?

We have severe emotional investments to avoid our own emotional pain Our false ego helps us to maintain our denial and experience of painful emotions, to avoid the painful truth of our life, and helps us to get pleasure from our environment

How could I make concrete steps to challenge my façade and be my true self?

Always openly tell the truth Let yourself see what your soul condition is attracting through the Law of Attraction Examine your own disease, and be humble to the fact that something within creates it

### Judgment & Criticism

Q. What is judgement?

More has been said on this subject in the talk "The Human Soul - Emotions, Truth & Judgement" The Judgment being discussed here is not:

Discernment; noticing the truth & then acting on that truth in a loving manner I must openly state emotional Truth to all people who I interact with The statement of Truth about situations or people is a requirement to remain at-one with God e.g. I can state you are not being loving, that may be a Divine Truth, and is not judgmental

Judgment is the emotion of feeling someone else is lesser than or better than me: It is the emotional treatment of someone as more lowly than myself (or higher than myself) It is the emotional treatment of myself as if I am superior to others (or lower than others) It is being belittling, condescending, snobbish, denigrating, patronizing

Q. What causes us to judge another or ourselves?

We have been trained to judge others by our environment Anything that seems outside of our societies viewpoint of normal is judged Judgement is a method of control, manipulation, of avoiding the fear of something different So it's basic underlying cause is the emotion of FEAR

Q. How does judgment relate to our seeing and speaking truth?

Fear and Truth are opposites. Truth always exposes our fears. Judgement helps us to avoid our fear, and also helps us to deny the truth about how we feel Judgement also helps us to avoid personal responsibility for our own emotional response

Q. Why are judgement and criticism such big blocks our humility?

While I am busy judging and criticising others, I am unable to see myself as I truly am I will not feel my own emotions, nor will I be able to see the Truth

### Intellectual & Emotional Denial Of Unloving Thoughts, Words & Actions

Q. What are the ways we commonly use to live in denial?

More has been said on this subject in the talk "The Human Soul – Denial Of The Soul" Intellectual & emotional denial of my own unloving thoughts, words & actions causes me to:

Justify; "I know that happened, but everybody does it" Minimize; "I know that happened, but it's wasn't really that bad" Shifting The Blame; "I thought/said/did what I did because of you"

Q. How does the denial of God & Gods Laws indicate a lack of humility?

Deny God's Laws; basically explaining to myself that I don't have to follow God's Laws at all

Deny God; my own opinion of what is right is more important to me that God's Truth

Q. How does this impact upon us?

It is the pinnacle of arrogance to think, feel and act as if God's Laws do not matter Denial of the laws allows us to avoid developing a desire to live in harmony with Love It also sets us up, in our own mind, as being God's ourselves, which was the first human error This underlying emotion creates almost all pain on the earth, and within ourselves

Q. Denial seems to be the place where many of us start when we begin any kind of endeavour to discover ourselves and God. Is the world invested in us remaining in a state of denial?

Certainly there are huge investments in denial, and self-reliance is the underlying goal of denial We wish to believe that we do not need God, and can live a life without listening to God's Laws

### Anger With Others

Q. If humility is about feeling all of our emotions, how can our anger (with others) indicate a lack of humility?

More has been said on this subject in the talk "The Human Soul – Anger Is Your Guide" Anger projected towards others is usually:

The result of the denial of my own fear or sadness, The result of personal expectations or desires I feel others should satisfy for me, The result of my addictions not being met

Q. So what does anger indicate about our emotional state?

An indication that I wish to blame others for my own painful emotions

An indication that I wish to blame others for my own personal desires not being met by others

Q. If I am angry, what must I let go of in order to reach a state of humility?

We must be prepared to see, acknowledge, and feel how unloving our addictions are We need to be prepared to give up our unloving addictions in order for the anger to subside

### Hatred Towards Others

Q. Can you describe the emotion of hatred?

Hatred or resentment towards others is usually: A severe feeling of blame aimed towards others to help me avoid my own painful emotions A desire to destroy what I believe is the source of my own unhappiness or pain A desire to cause as much pain to another person that I believe they caused to me A very strong emotion resisting Love (either from God or from others) from entering us

Q. Hatred feels to be such a strong emotion and yet one we often see played out in our world and personal relationships? What leads us to hate?

I hate because I feel others must fix my own severe emotional pain I hate because I wish to deny the experience of my own emotional pain I hate because I do not wish to forgive

Q. What would be required to shift from a state of hatred to one of humility?

When we are humble, we wish to forgive others rather than hold onto hatred of them When we forgive, we also benefit ourselves, since we no longer feel terrible emotions To forgive, we must release the cause of hatred, which is a desire to avoid our own fear and grief

Living In Fear & Doubt

Q. How would you describe the state of 'living in fear'?

Very different to feeling and experiencing fear

Living in fear is when we justify the fear to ourselves, and then live pandering to the fear

Q. How does this cause us not to be humble?

More has been said on this subject in the talk "The Human Soul – Fear Is Your Friend" Living in terror or fear usually:

Is an excuse I use to prevent myself from feeling deeper much more painful emotions Is holding onto a belief that the false is True & resisting the emotional release of the false Is projecting damage to all living things around us & therefore not taking emotional responsibility Is making the people around me pander to and support my fears Is working around my fears rather than confronting them physically and emotionally

Q. I know that many of us find fear to be a difficult emotion. Do you have any tips on how to recognise we are living in fear rather than confronting or releasing it?

When we are modifying our life to suit our fears, then we are living in fear We must recognize that we are justifying our fear Then we must confront the fear with the Truth, God's Truth We must not look to others to support our fear, or agree with us holding onto fear

Q. When we stop living in fear do we then automatically begin the process of releasing it?

In fact experiencing and releasing our fear can only begin when we no longer live in it

Q. Can you describe doubt? Is doubt a real emotion?

Doubt is basically a state, rather than an emotion Living in doubt, rather than allowing the emotions (fears) under the doubt to surface:

I seek other people who are in doubt in order to support my own condition of doubt I seek to cause other people to doubt to avoid my own fear of action Doubt prevents us from living the Truth by giving us an excuse to avoid action

Q. So it sounds like doubt is something that helps us avoid our true feelings? Is this true?

Yes, doubt helps us avoid our fears, and helps us get away with inaction Doubt is a state that allows for inactivity Doubt is a justification to avoid any action because of fear But, because we do not face our fear, we choose doubt as our denial of fear Doubt prevents us from acting on Truth we already feel in our own heart Doubt is both a lack of humility, and a lack of courage

### Seeking Power, Position, Glory, Respect or Value

Q. It seems that many of us are taught by society or our families to seek some, if not all, of these things. How does seeking these things prevent our humility?

Giving of yourself to others only for a feeling of glory, being noticed, respected, valued: Often our motives for so-called "loving" action are totally selfish & self-focused Rather than "acts of love" our actions are often addictions disguised as love We take these actions because we actually want something, and outcome of some kind Whenever we act in an addiction, we are automatically lacking humility

Q. What am I avoiding when I seek these things?

I seek emotions from others in order to feed my false ego, feed my false opinion of self I seek emotions from others to avoid my own deeper causal emotional experience I am avoiding the emotion of powerlessness, or being alone, no-one noticing me I am avoiding the pain of feeling deeper emotions or facing the real truth

Q. What kinds of effects can we have on those around us, especially our children, when we project these emotions?

This is a major emotional cause for our children to seek addictive substances It is oppressive emotionally for others to always be required to emotionally support us If others wish to be in our company, they are forced to pander to the emotions we are seeking When we do not get these emotions satisfied, we are hurt or angry

Q. It sounds like in this state we only give of ourselves under very specific conditions. Is this true? What are those conditions?

Giving of self only to get something emotionally in return is not a position of humility

It is, instead, an emotional addiction

Q. So how would we reach a state of humility if we had this injury?

When we seek these things, it is because of deep emotional hurt from childhood We can choose to accept and experience the emotional hurt, rather than satisfy the addiction

### Jealousy

Q. Can you describe jealousy for us?

Being unhappy, angry, resentful or in a rage that others are (seemingly) happy: I project anger or needy emotions at others when others have things that I do not have I am unwilling to experience the deeper emotions within myself about myself I do not desire the best for others, but rather feel upset when others have success or joy I feel that others should not be successful or joyous unless we also can be the same

Jealousy is an indication that we are not being humble

Q. What causes jealousy?

Jealousy is created when we avoid or resist deeper emotional feelings of; Being less than others, being shameful or dirty, feeling powerless

Q. Can we be jealous not just of things that others truly have, but things we perceive that they have?

Of course, most of our emotions are about our perspective, rather than reality

Q. How could a person let go of jealousy?

We must be more humble, and allow ourselves to feel the deeper emotions of being less than others, being shameful or dirty, feeling powerless, rather than trying to make other people lesser than ourselves, or change the actions of others through our anger

### Commiseration

Q. What is commiseration and how does it prevent humility?

When we want others to commiserate with, agree with, or support our emotional state: We grumble for the sake of attention We complain about how "hard" everything is We want others to agree with our own assessment of things

We want others to make us feel good about ourselves by agreeing with us Commiseration is not taking responsibility for our own emotions & therefore not a state of humility

Q. Why might we have become addicted to commiseration? (What emotions might I be preventing by living in a state of always wanting commiseration?)

When we get agreement from others, we feel justified in our own course of action When others disagree with us, then we may feel condemned and lack courage

Q. When we are truly humble how would we respond to others desiring to commiserate with us and our problems?

When truly humble, we want to feel all of our own real emotions When truly humble, we accept Divine Truth even when others may disagree with it When truly humble, we are willing to be alone on an issue of Truth When truly humble, we want to feel everything that is actually within us, rather than avoid it

Q. So when we are all humble will there ever be a place for agreement with how others feel? How does commiseration differ from compassion?

We can never agree with emotion that is out of harmony with love We can always feel compassionate that someone has emotions out of harmony with love We can always understand how these emotions were created But we would never agree with them holding onto these emotions for any reason

### How Do I Know I Am Being Humble?

If I let go of all of these resistances (that we have discussed today) will I automatically be humble?

Obviously it will help a great deal When we let go of the resistance to humility, it becomes almost automatic to feel the real emotion We also become more open to Divine Truth, in fact we desire it rather than resisting it

How will I know I am humble, living a humble life?

I will feel a passionate desire to feel & experience all of my own emotion without damaging others I will feel a passionate desire to take responsibility emotionally for everything happening in my life I will have a passionate desire to be as I really am with everyone around me I will have a deep desire for God to teach me everything I need to know

I will have a deep desire to see myself as God sees me I will receive direct and indirect counsel, criticism & assistance without resistance I will enjoy being childlike even when those around me judge me or treat me condescendingly Divine Truth's will enter me easily without a struggle

How does humility relate to truth? What is the relationship between love and humility?

Without humility, Divine Truth cannot enter the soul emotionally Without Divine Truth entering the soul, Divine Love cannot enter, and we remain resistant to God's Love A lack of humility creates all human suffering, including our own death Humility brings us to life, happiness, Truth and Love

