Page 4 | theomjournal

Questions 48-58

What is the most important lesson for me to learn in this lifetime?

The most important lesson for you to learn in this lifetime is the lesson of your true identity, the lesson of who dwells within you and what that says about who you truly are.

Early on, you thought of yourself as a poor, sad, inferior soul. Now that is changing. You are coming into your own, so to speak, into the radiant light of acknowledging your own true, holy makeup. You are a woman who strives to improve herself and to act in ways which will win God’s approval. But is that the correct approach? Why not take an easier path, a more direct path, if truth be told, to knowing God, the God who dwells within and already showers you with love and approval, however hard it is for you to feel these benevolent gifts at certain times.

Work to know the God within with the same sense of happy anticipation that you would feel for a rendezvous with a dear friend or a lover who treats you with the care and attention you’ve craved for so long. Why not say, “I am so fortunate because I carry all that I need inside me and I do not have to prove myself to the world, to strangers, to be a beloved of the most holy entity on earth.” Know that this goes for everyone else. Work to spread this glorious news. Spend the rest of your time making contact with the God within you, with the holy chord that sings to you with the love that lights every one of your cells and gives you life and a blessed existence.

Tunnel into your heart, peer deep within yourself during your daily meditations, and see who responds and welcomes these visits. Connect to the God within. Throw open the doors that separate you from the golden Lord and the joy which abounds in full measure.

But know that the search takes time. How long did Stanley look for Livingstone? How long did it take to find the source of the Nile or the most advantageous route to the Americas?

The search for the God within also has its difficulties, its tricky turns and dark corners and rough seas that must be navigated with the greatest care and patience. You are traveling back through time on this voyage. You are tramping past old traumas and lifetimes where you suffered terribly. The trip towards God is filled with moments of indecision and places where trust falls away, exposing lifetimes of doubt and cynicism. Yet what an adventure to embark on! What could be a better use of your time or lead to such a rich and unimaginable end? If you could see that end now and understand the joy that you’ll feel, the ecstasy, the knowledge, the freedom, you would spend your efforts on this worthy mission. You would not let the trivialities of life bring you low in the way that they do now.

You would say to yourself, “Yes, I am worthy and good and pure at my core. What more do I need than to increase my contact with the golden love within me? And then to spread it everywhere I go while I sing God’s praises and worship Om.”

.49

What is the difference between human relationships and our relationship to Om?

Om is the Supreme Being, the supreme and primal sound that brings everything else into existence. It does that so that one can become many. And the many can learn that they are part and parcel of the One. And as such they are more holy than they think they are before they embark upon their search for God. The One wanted to live as many so that relationships could develop. Love would be useful rather than simply a state of being. Love would be the treasure, the lost object, the thing that mortals hunger for. We would start by craving human love and progress to the realization that this love is in truth the holy Lord, and it is limitless.

We practice on each other. We learn to compromise and to fend for each other. We learn in small measures what our heart contains. We see how we feel at moments when our heart opens to others. And we want this happy feeling to be the norm.

It is, or will be once we reconnect with the holy source that dwells within us and loves us on a scale that few on earth can fathom. Human love pales next to what the heart truly contains. It is our life’s work, the work of countless lifetimes, to bring the love we exude up to the level of Om’s joyous load and to see the world as Om does and to love it in kind.

Practice expanding the door to your heart. Do this by learning compassion and tolerance. See others as you wish to be seen, with an insight for the factors that molded you into the woman you are today. Know that everyone carries scars of the past and difficult ways of being that are the result of their early and often faulty methods of trying to cope. Trauma stays with us. Fears cling to our psyches and stop us from living pure, free, giving lives. We must undo our contractions and false ways of seeing that rein in our love and turn us into sad, needy beings who seek to take rather than to give. We must give, knowing where we can tap into the holy supply of love and comfort and trust and assurances that all is truly fine and aglow with God’s holy light.

Until then, to facilitate the process of unlocking the doors to our hearts, we must train our eyes on God and learn to ferret out the truth of every situation and every player in God’s theater, which is life on earth.

Love yourself and your fellow beings to the best of your ability at the present time. Chant, meditate and focus on God. And slowly your heart will open and the impurities that weigh on it will be taken away.

See your fellow beings as fellow seekers who want exactly what you do; peace and fellowship and a happy understanding of why life unfolds in the ways that it does. Love others just as you are striving to love yourself and to see past the judgments that harm you so and fill you with angst and self-reproach. Look past a person’s exterior and work to see straight into their heart. Keep track of their good and loving gestures. Excuse the rest as a reaction to past injuries that to their minds are still recurring, although they are not.

See how timid we are, how fragile and also how strong and majestic and giving because of whom we are at the core. The core is what matters. The love of God that resides inside us in such unimaginable abundance is what counts most of all. Let your task on earth be to experience this bounty. Help others to experience their bounty until your time and their time of union with God arrives. Know what is inside us, be it felt or not.

Love Om. Worship Om. Say to yourself, “Om courses through me and through everything else, showering us with love and ecstasy and the means to a future of bliss and holy giving. This is the truth. The rest is illusion. The rest will fall away piece by piece. And God will emerge from us in its full glory.”

How should I see the events of my day in relation to Om?

The world was made by Om, and it is Om. It is Om as a city that is filled with challenges for its inhabitants. You must learn to negotiate your way through crowds and frustrations, through noise and enticements, in a manner that brings your love to the fore, along with the constant realization that everything is made by God and dear to God and must be treated as such.

When you feel that you are up against a wall of frustration and are longing for the riches you see or when you are horrified by a seemingly tragic sight or are frightened by threatening characters, of course you must protect yourself from harm and reach out to those who need your kind ministrations. But always remember that all of this is a play meant for God’s enjoyment and for the growth of God’s creations.

It is never meaningless, never haphazard. Everything that happens does so with God’s knowledge and approval—not that everything that happens pleases God; quite the contrary. But God allows God’s creations to play out their desires and see the results. Karma then comes into play. Mistakes must be corrected. Bills must be paid. No one is truly allowed to get away with murder. The consequences occur in ways that challenge the person and open him to growth and a chance to change his views and take the godly path rather than the demonic.

So see everything as a gift of God to one and all, a ravishing adventure, a play on a monumental scale, with countless players and props and acts that lead to other acts, a play that outdoes the greatest operas.

Enjoy what you see, and remind yourself that God is inside and outside you. You are safe in that the greatest parts of you are eternal. The rest, the parts that fall away, are only adornments and costumes needed for a certain adventure, a certain climb up the mountain. Afterwards it is fine to leave these things behind and step into a new situation and learn from that.

Learn, love and grow closer to God. Look for God inside and outside yourself. And the rest will take care of itself.

The world is here for your pleasure and growth. Be a good student. Learn to be a holy lover, a good servant of God. Nothing is better in this world we inhabit.

If Om is love and makes the world out of love, why do I harbor the smallest slights and hold people to standards that I too can’t meet? I have trouble controlling my anger. How can I accept the worst aspects of myself and be more compassionate?

Om has created this world for a host of reasons. You must embrace all of them if you are to thrive in Om’s universe. Om has made us complicated creatures. It is true that warfare and the impulse to strike back and defend ourselves is part of our nature, as it is to love and share and want to help others. One aspect does not negate the other. But those that cause harm leave a lasting impression that must be rectified if one is to know Om in the fullest sense.

We want to strike back and hurt others because we seek to defend and protect ourselves. The trick is to evaluate what is actually happening with a compassionate eye to all involved. Step back. View the scene in your mind stripped of prejudices and a favorite team, so to speak. Regard the characters, both yourself and others, as though you are not truly involved and are simply watching a drama unfold. See the scene from all perspectives. Put yourself in everyone’s shoes. Feel the burdens others are carrying and their fears and their automatic ways of reacting. Do the same for yourself. See how the event became blown out of proportion. Work to shrink it to its proper size. Feel compassion for all involved.

No one has it easy on earth. We come here to learn and to modify the very behaviors that you rail against. But railing does no good. Sympathy is required, and the ability to roll up one’s sleeves and do what must be done to correct one’s habits and ways of seeing and judging oneself and the rest of the world.

Om does not set impossible standards. We do, without a proper understanding of what can and cannot be achieved at a certain moment given our past impressions and traumas. We set standards and expect results without having a clue about the way our bodies are constructed and our minds work.

Again, we are complicated creatures. Our physiognomies are complicated, as are our brains. We must respect our bodies and not put demands on ourselves that cannot be met within the time we have set.

Yes, change is desirable. We do want to tame our worst impulses and have our better aspects come to the fore instead. And that will happen if we take the time to review the events in our lives and seek a better outcome, at least in our imagination, than actually occurred. See the events with as much love as you can muster at the moment. Have faith that change is occurring at the proper pace, given who you are and what you can actually accomplish within a particular period of time.

Love Om. Look to Om. Pray to Om. Chant to Om. Sing Om’s song to the world. And you will be delighted by how far you go toward being a loving, godly woman who views the world with eyes tempered by compassion and blazing with kindness and the desire to do Om’s work.

How can I open my heart and become more loving, rather than a person who sits in judgment?

Om is eternal and flies through its worlds reaping delight. It is still and yet active, creative and yet able to stand back and let its creations develop at their own pace and in the direction they choose.

Om has no goals other than to watch and listen and add more love to the love it has already given. It is peaceful and full and needs nothing and wants nothing. It creates out of the urge to give and form and build on its past. The past, present and future have no meaning to Om. Om exists in the perfect present, a limitless present that is full and ripe and whole.

We, too, long for that state. We do what we can to experience a sense of perfect, lasting joy. But until a person merges with God and feels that he and God are one and that God is exultant and that he is more God than he is a small fragile being, it is hard to hold onto feelings of peace and ecstasy.

Bliss is fleeting. Anger surges, try as we might to keep it at bay, to shrink it into nonexistence. It does exist. We are fragile, sensitive creatures in certain ways. We must expend a great deal of effort to counteract that fact and our current way of being.

We must constantly seek to know the truth. What is real? What is imagined? How do we feel when we learn the facts about a particular instance and trace the misunderstandings back to an innocent and hopeful beginning that went awry because of our poor communication skills? More times than not, we and others meant no harm. We simply said what was on the tip of our tongue. Or we lost our good state because we felt wronged when that wasn’t the case. And we in turn did try to harm the enemy, and a war of sorts ensued.

Ideally none of this would ever happen. Ideally the walls over our hearts would be transparent, and we would see the love and good intentions of the people we meet. If there was pain or trauma or discomfort, we would see that too and be touched by what the person endured. We would want to help that person as much as we would want to help a small child who looks to us to care for it.

Instead we walk about in armor. We pretend to be other than we truly are. Confusion occurs, and hard feelings result.

Do what you can to rectify these mishaps. If that isn’t possible, pray for the other party, and pray as hard for yourself.

We create our worlds much like Om creates its worlds. But we act more darkly in our creations. Our worlds are filled with enemies and people who live to slight us. But is that really the case? Do people see you as a timid, lost soul who is there to be pummeled or at best ignored? Or have you written the script, painted the sets, and instructed the actors in how to behave?

Recast your life. Work to see it as it truly is, a joyous experience of learning and light, a life that has God at its core, that has God shining through it, that has God as your champion and lover and parent—a life that is meant to lead you to bliss and to knowing how to share this bliss and bring others into God’s radiant light. What more could you want? Concentrate on that, and let the petty mishaps of your daily life fall away. Work to be kind and patient and thoughtful. Work to bring good rather than harm to others. Turn your eyes and your heart toward God.

Love Om. Chant Om. Listen to Om’s holy vibration. Know that this is the truth of your existence, not the dark feelings that you concoct.

If Om is perfect and creates us out of love and continues to shower us with love, why is it so hard for us to love ourselves? Why is it so tempting to compare ourselves unfavorably to others?

Om is perfect and is satisfied at every moment. Om arises from a sense of fullness and calm and joy and peace. Om takes flight to create not out of need but out of the desire to fulfill its capabilities. Om creates world after world. Om spins these worlds into existence with its holy song. Everything that results from Om’s efforts is as perfect as Om is, as still and glorious and complete at its core. But it takes lifetimes of work to understand this and lifetimes more to hear Om sing inside you and to know that you too are bliss and perfection of the highest sort.

The world we live in is full of people of all stripes and leanings. Some are wealthy. Others cannot manage to obtain enough scraps to feed themselves a single daily meal. Their lives are terrifying to behold. That must be rectified if anyone on earth is to know true bliss and pleasure at what God has given the world so freely.

Some here are famous. Others are afraid to leave their houses and be looked upon. They wish they could recede into the walls and never be noticed. They fear attention while others crave it and feed on it and feel that they cannot exist without it.

This world is one of tremendous extremes, icebergs and deserts where the temperature exceeds one hundred and fifty degrees. Some people are born without legs. Others are brilliant dancers. What are we to make of all this?

Om knows what it is doing. Om never makes a mistake. It is fullness and perfection in action. It is love at a level that we on earth cannot begin to imagine. But still there is suffering on earth. Most of us live lives tainted with pain and with longing for things we do not have: a happy marriage, a healthy child, and so on.

Why is this so? Free will comes into play. Om allows us to impact the world. It wasn’t given to us with a velvet rope stretched across it and a sign that hangs from the rope saying do not touch.

Om wants us to touch, wants us to tend to the world and its creatures, wants us to mend broken fences and heal broken bones.

Om has given us the world with an eye toward it being a holy experiment for us. Do this, and that happens. Act differently, and a different result arises. We see the benefit of one act and the harm of another.

Om wants us to learn. Om allows us to go in every direction and learn all sorts of things. But Om is very strict about consequences. They can’t be avoided or argued out of. Plead with all your might, but the consequence will not be revoked. They might be lessened possibly, and certainly the perpetrator will have a second and third and fourth and fifth chance.

Om never says, “You dug your grave. Now lie in it forever.” Om gives chance after chance. What would be the point if no learning occurred, no climb up out of the pit of misfortune and misunderstanding?

Every story on earth will have a happy ending, although some will be much longer and harder and more tortured than others. Some people will come to God before others. But all will come at one time or another. Om will welcome every soul with abundant love.

It is not up to us to look around and judge the people we see. It is just as inopportune to wish we were prettier or smarter or taller or wealthier.

We are just what we need to be in this present incarnation. Nothing about us is random or chosen in haste without proper thought. Everything we are at this moment, physically and mentally and economically, is what we need to be if our soul is to progress the way it yearns to on earth.

What seems harsh to the ignorant eye is compassionate and wise to one who knows the full truth about a person’s situation, their past actions and the sacrifices they came here to make. Some were willing to live in pain to atone for a crime. Others do so lovingly to help those around them learn vital lessons.

Accept everything about you with a willing heart and the knowledge that you weren’t shortchanged or given a higher position than anyone else. No one is worth more on this earth or constructed out of God to a higher percentage than anyone else. All are worthy and necessary and entitled to learn the lessons we came here to learn.

Glory in all that Om has given you. Thank Om. Worship Om. Sing Om’s holy song. And you will see your value with a clearer eye.

.54

I don’t look forward to meditating. I often see it as a burden or a difficult chore.

Om is a very mysterious entity. Om is a sound that manifests what it wishes to create at will. It has no obstacles to surmount, no traumas to recover from, no guilt or pain or shame to lessen its power. It is absolute freedom in a way that we whose lives are hindered by past impressions cannot conceive of. We will understand Om at some point, but now such unencumbered, all-powerful movement is beyond our grasp.

Yet try to imagine such a state. And try to live it as best as you can. Unlock each fetter with a key that you obtained by turning inward and meeting the Lord within. Go often to the home of the God within, the heart that is so vast and welcoming and nourishing. Go there to learn who you truly are and what you are capable of.

Welcome the chance to meditate. See it as a holy visit, a holy audience with the greatest force that exists. If you were offered the opportunity to have an audience with the Pope or with another great spiritual master, you would relish the chance and approach it with much excitement and reverence. Yet the Lord within sits in its holy chamber at every moment of your life and offers you an open invitation to come and refresh yourself and renew your sense of the divine.

Approach the God within with the same awe and formality, the same reverence and gratitude, that you would have if you were about to meet with a saint.

Don’t take your meditations for granted. Don’t feel that they are a chore to get through before you can resume the mundane activities that offer you an escape from your thoughts and little else.

Rejoice that you have the opportunity to know the God within and contact the love that is meant for you. That is you in the largest sense of who you truly are.

What could be better than to visit the holy Lord within and receive the specific gifts that each particular meditation offers? No one knows you better than Om does, Om as your highest self, Om as the indwelling Lord who lives to please you in ways that are beyond your imagination.

What you see as a burden, an ordeal that forces you to sit still and not give in to your usual train of thoughts, is a gift of such great scope that you can’t begin to repay it. And yet at some point you will. Or at least you will begin the holy process of repayment for all God has given you by doing God’s work on this realm and in other worlds too.

Once you devote yourself to being God’s vehicle, to being a servant, a force for good in this world, then you will truly know why you were born and why your life took the strange and surprising and sometimes difficult and disturbing turns that it did. Your life will make sense to you. You will understand it and applaud what propelled you to do this and that, go here and there, meet one person and then the next, with the happy certainty that nothing better or more beneficial could have taken place.

You will have shed your skins. Your despair will be gone. Fear will be just a memory. All that remains will be the wish and the urge—for no urge is stronger—to do God’s work.

Await that day with great excitement. Do all that you can to insure that it happens in this lifetime. Love Om. Worship Om. Make repeated visits to the Lord within, and joy will replace all of your angst.

Why does Om destroy worlds and other things? Why did Om give us the power to destroy with our words and deeds?

Om is infinite. Om is full and unending and needs nothing to increase its effulgent joy. We are a different matter. We are perfect at our core. Every part of us is infused with God’s light and majesty, and still we are mortal. We are born and we die. We repeat this process innumerable times until the God that waits hidden inside us shines through every one of our pores.

The path to true knowledge and liberation is a long one indeed. A person makes many missteps along the way as Om watches knowing that in time the voyager will learn and all will be well. But in the meantime a great deal of angst and pain ensues. We cannot learn our lessons without the threat of loss. We would become bored and complacent if time stretched endlessly in front of us with no consequence. So what if we erred? We’d have forever to mend our ways, assuming the pain got too great and we were forced to climb out of the pit of pain and wrongs that we’d dug for ourselves. Love would lose its urgency too. Love and loss are bound together in our world. Each gain is tempered by the knowledge that all will end.

Yet it doesn’t. We shed our present body. After a while we are given a new one and a set of circumstances that will place us on a different path from the one we last trod. This new path will have some aspects that are eerily familiar and others that are a complete surprise and wonderment. People will enter our sphere and leave it later. Success might arrive or frustrations of a sort that we’ve never known. All of this is done in the cause of our taking more steps toward knowing the glorious God within.

Om has a great purpose in creating worlds and beings that seemingly exist for a limited time. Nothing is ever truly lost. Nothing truly stops existing. It’s just that matter changes form. Om loves change, loves variety, loves watching the various things it has made dance a dance of love and hate, fierceness and growing compassion.

To Om the world is like a dazzling kaleidoscope with endless possibilities and changes and formations and re-formations occurring at every sacred moment. The colors that spin against each other are a marvelous sight in the true sense of what marvelous means. Things spin and slide against each other and new combinations occur that dazzle the eye.

Om creates, sustains, and destroys for the highest of reasons. Life is a holy play of God’s mind and force. Light grows strong. It appears to dim and then it blazes forth at an even higher pitch.

We too are born. We grow. We age. We die. And all the while our soul increases its knowledge and love of Om.

Om’s sound grows more audible. The soul relaxes into its sweet vibration. And then it blazes forth renewed, its purpose strengthened.

Om has given us the power to create and destroy. With that come the impact of consequences and a mind and emotional makeup that is always affected by what we do.

Om has not made us automatons or angels. We are not windup figures that are limited in the actions we are able to perform.

Om has opened countless doors of possibilities to those who inhabit our earth. Every being with free will is slated to know the sting or the joy of consequence.

No creature is allowed to maraud at will without a lesson in what it has done following behind. At some later time this lesson will unfold, and more chances will come into play. Again, Om will not meddle.

Om watches and waits. Om prepares further lessons, further occurrences that are breathtaking in their scope and creativity. In the end every creature on earth will mature and return to God. Still, it behooves us to temper our actions and master our harmful impulses so that we don’t worsen our lives and those of others. Om has created such munificent love. We are made of love. We come from love. We will return to love and to bliss and the sense of fullness we so crave and do what we can, however foolish and harmful, to enjoy.

Listen to Om. Worship Om. Join in when Om sings its song of love to the world, and your aggressive traits will diminish and tenderness will arise in its place.

Love Om. Worship Om. Sing to Om as Om sings to you, and joy, rather than shame and regret, will be yours.

When I meditate I can feel God inside me. But a wall seems to separate us, and I feel the same longing for God that I feel for my father who died when I was thirteen. Will the distance between me and God ever shrink?

Om has created a world that takes work to understand. Om is present and yet hidden, available and yet hard to contact unless one sets out to travel the road that will lessen the barriers until all are gone and bliss is the final result.

You cannot blast away at this wall as though it were concrete and at the mercy of your might and will. Om is the one who sets the pace and engineers the holy reunion. You also play a great part, a necessary and vital part. Without your efforts, you will live at a standstill, with no inkling of what is available to you on the highest plain. You must pursue God by engaging in spiritual practices, by working to temper your more harmful traits and by serving the Lord. The Lord gives with an open, willing, loving hand. If you are to truly mirror God, you must give in return as fully as possible for you at the moment.

The world is yours. Om gave it to you to care for and heal. The world awaits your dear ministrations. At the same time, Om awaits your knock on the door to Om’s holy abode. Knock gently and patiently, certain that the door will swing open at the proper pace.

If you see God in God’s full glory too soon, you will not be able to take in the sight. It will play with your mind and sense of yourself to your detriment. The awareness of the indwelling Lord and your relationship to this holy entity must come in fits and starts to allow you to adjust to the change in your reality. Just the message that God dwelt within you as you unnerved you at first. Imagine if all the barriers suddenly fell away and you merged with the light and realized that the parts of you that you see as your true identity have disappeared in a flash. Om knows how long each person’s journey must take. Some are better prepared from lifetimes of past effort. Others must be coddled and coached and their sense of urgency tempered. Some will know God fully in this lifetime, but most will not. And that is all for the good. Rest assured that you are making an ample effort at present. Your heart is opening and your dedication to Om is growing in kind.

Yearning can be a positive force in one’s life. It does not have to signify frustration and imprisonment in a loveless world where a better place can be glimpsed but not reached.

The wall you feel is porous and in fact is made from the same love that awaits you behind it. See it as such. Love it as such, as a bumper that a caring parent places in a newborn’s crib to protect it.

The wall between you and the indwelling Lord is alive and will lessen as time goes by and you are ready to lose more parts of yourself that do you no good. Every layer that falls away from your soul lessens the distance you have to travel to merge with the entity that loves you so.

Love the journey as well as you will love the final moment when God and you will dance a dance of reunion with full ecstasy and abandonment. Every moment is precious. Love it as such, and do not worry about barriers. They are breaking down at just the right pace for you and all involved.

Love Om. Trust Om. Sing Om’s praises as you go about your days. Om loves you. Work to love yourself.

I can understand that Om gives us free will so that we can make our own choices and experience the consequences these choices bring and that this teaching is necessary if we’re to realize our true identity. But the plan seems cruel in some ways because it is very difficult to change negative tendencies. Is there more love and happiness in this world than I’m conscious of?

Yes, at first glance Om’s method seems cruel. Poverty abounds on this earth, and many hearts are heavy with grief. Still love abounds on this planet, as does beauty and hope. Even in the worst of places, mothers suckle their children and pray for them to have a happy healthy future. It is not up to you to decide whether their pain prevents them from marveling at life just as you do and from enjoying the sunrise and the glorious colors of the sunset.

Rest assured that Om doesn’t tilt the scale toward failure and pain. Doom is not Om’s purpose. Om doesn’t tempt people with earthly treasures with the thought that they will fail and endure lifetimes of suffering to pay for a moment of faulty judgment.

The joy comes when we have moved up a peg and understand what really matters on earth. We learn which pleasures are pure and lasting and which won’t take us very far at all.

This takes time. The earthly enticements are truly tempting, as is the longing we feel inside us and the ignorance we have at first when it comes to satisfying the need we feel to merge and become whole.

But what seems like lifetimes to our mind passes like a dream. It is a play that has a golden core of light and love at its center. And this core will prevail. So do not worry or fear that Om is merciless and enjoys watching its creations suffer and die. It does no such thing. It roots for its creatures to succeed. It is the most loving of parents. It does let them go close to the stove and hold out a finger, but at the same time it whispers a word of warning. It shows through example what happens when someone strays too close to the wrong flame or runs toward it as some do in their greed.

We are walking lessons to others. They see our actions and learn how good and bad behaviors impact our lives. They feel calmed by our kindness and alarmed by untoward anger and greed. Lust pales after a time. It is an empty cause, and we see that in others and question ourselves. We say, “What is the best way to live?” And others teach us the answer.

Om did not put us here to suffer, to make wrong choices and gloat over our faulty reasoning and inability to control our worst impulses. Om lives inside us and pumps us with love. This love tempers us and tips the balance toward success of the highest sort and growth. We do progress. We learn and each positive experience lightens the load we carry and takes us closer to knowing the Lord within.

Even at our darkest moments, we cry out and are heard. Om responds. It behooves us to be alert to its response and to know that it will come.

Om is our loving parent and maker, our hope and our refuge. It is important for us to know this if we want to find peace in this lifetime. Peace awaits you. Joy wants to be found. Seek them. They call out to you at every moment, even on the darkest days. Listen and answer, “Yes, I am coming. I trust and I love. This is what matters and why I was born.”

I feel frightened when I think of merging with God. I’m afraid that I will glom on to a giant force of light and disappear into it. Nothing will be left of me.

Which parts of me are immortal?

This is what I want you to know about your fears. They are unfounded to a certain extent and true in other ways. It takes great courage and strength to merge with God. It will not happen until you are fully prepared and eager for what is to come. In the meantime you are shedding the layers of weight that keep your holy light from beaming out to others at all times. The process is necessarily slow and painstaking. You cannot change your identity without a great deal of forethought and preparation. You must come to terms with who you truly are and rejoice at that identity, rather than at the notion of yourself as a mortal woman with a set of particular traits, both physical and emotional, a certain personality, a certain way of looking at things. The you who talks in your head, who you think of as you and at the same time as your dearest friend, a voice you are loathe to lose because your sense of yourself will fly away with her, leaving you in a dark, silent, lonely void—that is not a true vision of who you actually are.

Yes, you have certain characteristics and foibles, quirks that you and others appreciate, your humor, your insights, your kindness, etc. But is that the sum of your parts and the sole of your existence? What about the indwelling Lord and the light and love that shines in every one of your cells? That too is you, and that is eternal.

It is possible to merge with God while one is still alive and walking this earth. Saints are souls who have done this and live to help others obtain their holy state. They keep their physical characteristics and karma of the body. They speak with their old voice but watch the world with God’s eyes and are fully God’s instrument. The bliss they feel is far greater than any pain they might feel for their sacrifice. God is the focus of their lives, and they feel God’s presence with great and joyful intensity. To be a person like that is a great honor indeed. No honor is greater. The saints exist on the highest plane that a person can be on this earth. When they leave it, they continue to help those on earth. They support those who want to know God with every ounce of their holy being. They appear on earth when it is needed and send blessings all the time. Their teachings live on, and these teachings are alive with God’s glory and wisdom.

As for those who don’t obtain this state during their lifetime, they go on to other abodes and other teachers and learn the lessons they need to help them shed the final stubborn layers that blocked their view of union. Once those blockages are gone, God’s light floods their vision and they are happy indeed.

Do not worry today about that sacred moment. It will happen in slow stages to give you time to adjust to the new, lighter, more joyful person that you are becoming. It will not be a shock to the system when that holy day arrives with a flourish and auspicious announcements and support from the entire universe and from realms above.

You will meet God at the exact right moment for you. Your fear will be gone, and you will step toward God with utter willingness, relief and joy.

The parts of you that are stripped away are best gone and forgotten. You are in this process now. It is not easy, as you know. Yet nothing is more fulfilling and necessary to the soul. The soul hungers for that which you fear. In time you and your soul will come into alignment and bliss with reign instead of apprehension.

Keep your eyes in the present. Work to do what you can in the present. Let the rest, the best, take care of itself. Love and light are your destiny, and you are moving closer to them with every good effort you make.

Relax. Don’t worry. There is truly nothing to fear. You will be happier than you can imagine right now. Trust Om. Love Om. Glory in the slow, unfolding process. Your holy day will come. It is already here if you open your eyes and your mind to it. God blazes inside you. Glory in that warmth, light and love, and do not stray off the path.

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THE OM JOURNAL

Questions 48-58