The question this evening has to do with following our path and learning lessons, dropping old patterns and developing new patterns of behavior, in the overall pursuit of the choices that were made before the incarnation by the soul and Higher Self. How do we accomplish the dropping of old patterns that we have known for so long, that have provided us with a great measure of support, and adopt new patterns of behavior when we feel that there is change that is necessary to acknowledge and to reflect in a new pattern of behavior? How do we find the assurance that the new pattern is truly our path that has congruency with the soul’s choices, and how do we release the old patterns of behavior?

(Carla channeling)

I am Q’uo. Greetings to all of you in the love and the light of the one Creator, infinite, invisible, intelligent, creative and full of glory. Under the influence of these purified emotions, and with the understanding that love and light compose all that there is, we are with you this evening, thanking you for calling us to you. As always, we ask you to listen to that which we give as you would to any friend’s opinion, giving it neither less weight nor more than you would any friend who is a friend in spirit of unconditional love. We always mean well, but truth is subjective and personal, and if what we have to say is not a portion of your truth at this time, we ask you the great favor of allowing us and our thoughts to be moved aside, that we may not become a stumbling block before any, for we are fallible and prone to error, as are all who seek mystery and are not yet the mystery.

We are experimenting with the mixture of the two social memory complexes involved in this contact, and if there are pauses that seem to move to more length than usual we would ask the one known as Jim to squeeze the instrument’s hand. We do not want this instrument to go into trance. But the instrument asks, as it always does, to be better than before, and in this particular case that involves going deeper into the subconscious and allowing more of that which is impersonal and that which is finely tuned to match the fine tuning of this instrument. Therefore, we ask that the one known as Jim be vigilant.

We do not come to you as those who have not changed. We have been where you are. We have been where you were. We have had our choices to make, and we remember the density in which you now dance your dance and make your choices. Stage left, stage right, lights up, lights down, how shall you be? That is perhaps the first thing we would ask of each of you. When you relax, so that you are with yourself in a loving and nurturing way, who and what do you wish to be? This is the density of choice. Not to define one’s choices is to remove from oneself the opportunity of making them. Not to know who you are at this moment is to keep from yourself the ability to choose a specific other way to be. This is not seen to be a large subject, a large challenge, yet it is the beginning of all spiritual work.

We see each of you in part as precisely the same as each other person in third density consciousness upon the surface of your planet. All of you have a God self within. Within each of you is the inestimable, imperishable jewel of the Infinite One. You are children of love, and you are love. In order for you to have been flung out from the heart of the Creator, to pass through so many dimensions and energies, and to choose this particular experience, there needed to be added the first alteration, or means of changing, that love, which is the Creator, and which is precisely the same from before you can ever conceive, now, and forever to come.

Yet, each of you is unique, for each of you is also bound in that love to a portion of free will. Free will is as absolutely various as love is absolutely the same, and free will is expressed in all of the emotions and ways of being possible to imagine, possible to be thought, possible to be attempted. You are the man inebriated and lying in the gutter, you are the thief, you are the murderer. All that is possible is within you, as it is within all. This is not due to any shade or nuance of love. Love is fiery, creative, and absolutely stable. Your choices are made as your free will begins to recognize of its own choice that role which it wishes to play in your own spiritual evolution.

And so we ask each of you to begin to know, truly know, the self. Do not judge the self which you know so well. Say no judgmental or negative thing to yourself about yourself. Recognize your patterns. Discover those things which you wish to encourage and those things which you do not. You yourself are the basic tool, the basic resource with which you have to work. Elements of your free will, which this instrument calls will, and faith, create for you a place—not a geographical place, not a place in space or in time, or in your imagination—let us say, a room, which you answer and close the door behind you, and all alone with the Infinite One, drenched in love, marinated in life, dissolved in light, you are upon holy ground. If this place is within your mind you may take it with you, and wherever you stand is holy ground.

To develop the tools of will and faith, several things are helpful. Firstly, a daily meditation, be it long or short, momentary or part of an intentional praying and fasting, this way you use to listen to the still, small voice, as it has been called in your holy works, within. This intention, this will to seek the truth of the Creator, is your strength and your heart and the motivating factor of that which will occur to you.

Faith is a word which we use, not perhaps as others would use it, for we wish to distinguish between faith and belief. It has seemed to us as observers of your people that rigid belief systems kill faith and destroy being, giving the person instead the choice of behaving instead of being, and holding on dependently to a set of rules in order that from the outside to the inside the redemption and forgiveness and healing of the self may take place. We suggest that all belief systems be examined, and none taken up before it is understood that in each orthodox belief system, some distortions of love are unraveled and made clear, while other distortions or ways of learning about love are confused and difficult to accept for you.

We are not those who preach. We are not those who evangelize. But this we will say: if you wish to increase, or accelerate the intensity of your spiritual path of evolution, living a life in faith, day by day by day, and using its tools of discipline, and service, and conceptualizations is all important. We speak to you of the way that we believe that the universe works. We can only tell you that you are at the crux of what is often called the density of choice, the choice between loving the Creator by serving others, and loving the Creator by serving the self, these paths often being called the path of service to others and the path of service to self.

Many times it is indeed a stumbling block in the way of those who wish to be of service to others that they must needs spend so much time working upon themselves. Yet, we say to you, that if you do not have your roots deeply spread, if you do not know what those roots are, if you do not live as you have faith to live, if you do not express and manifest that which you know, you shall be, this instrument would say, stuck in the gravitational well, spiritually speaking, of basic indifference.

Until you have found your passion, and we mean this on all levels, not ignoring the lower energy centers, sexual passion, the passions of friendship, the love of the work that you do, the love of your society and your world and all its people, you shall be holding back from the center of spiritual love the energy that that center needs. We speak of the heart energy center. This is not a job that you can do for yourself once and have it done. Again and again you shall turn from the truth, and do those things which you would not wish to do, or regret, or do not do, something you wish you had done. Should you chastise yourself? Please, my friends, if you wish to attain the goal of which you spoke this evening, never chastise the self, but form all internal dialogue positively. Instead of saying, “Oh, 2 plus 2 does not equal 5,” say “Oh, I have learned something, 2 plus 2 equals 4.” That is the nature of mistakes, all errors, all of what this instrument would call sin. It is like an error in arithmetical calculation, simply seen, and slowly and carefully replaced by the truth, by the correct summing, by the correct grasp of the situation.

Most entities have a great deal of difficulty doing this, because their opinion of themselves, though they love other people, is harsh. The voices of childhood parents and authority figures still ring in the heart’s ear with negative expressions and warning and judgments. Many of the most difficult portions of your lives are difficult because you are still listening to these voices. When you hear them, say instead the positive affirmation of that criticism which has for so long been unfair. When you were small, when you were a child, you could not defend yourself, but you can defend yourself now. You can live a life of faith in which old voices need have no power over you, indeed, in which no voice on the Earth, over or under the Earth, no discarnate voice, none whatsoever, need have power over you.

You are made of precisely the same infinite intelligence and free will as every spirit in the infinite universe, and, speaking metaphysically, you are a portion of utter, complete and final democracy of spirits. There is none better than you, and there is none worse. You are a portion of the Creator, which is everything. Thus, the choices are yours. They do not have to be handed to you by society, by friends, or parents, or spouses, or the ubiquitous “they.” “They” say you should do so and so. “They” are not a pleasant breed with which to deal. Remove “them” from those voices you wish to grow with, to attend to, to identify yourself with in terms of ambition.

Your life in faith is a life without words, for there are no words to express faith. Faith is a basic attitude that one finds, because one wills it or wishes it to be so, but because as a result of willing to know the truth it comes to you, and the prodigal son and daughter have come home. Faith is simply faith that the Creator that made all that there is, including you, is a Creator of infinite and intelligent love, that it loved you as part of Itself, as a child to nurture, as a personality from which to learn about itself, as all parents learned from their children. Aiming toward living a life in faith is nothing more than releasing fear, and allowing that which is to be, to be.

Oftentimes, that help which you have with you personally at all times, whether you call it spirit, or guidance, or the Higher Self, will give you hints and warnings. Do not ignore them. Ask for help in visions and dreams, and listen to them. Go into meditation, not simply to listen, but with a question asked, expecting not to awaken with one answer, but expecting and knowing that you will eventually know the answer for yourself to your own satisfaction. A great deal of faith is patience. A great deal of will is persistence. We are well aware that these are not the same as the mountain top experiences offered to you by those so-called seers or prophets which make the choosing of a live lived in love seem so very, very easy.

Were it easy, there would be no reason to work through so much of pain and limitation and change, for choice is change, make no mistake. Each choice that you make will change you, and you will feel pain and discomfort, because it is painful to change, and as you meditate, and seek, and live a life in faith, you will change, and change, and change again. Some truths will remain the same forever for you. Some truths will be outgrown, and must be let go.

Against this backdrop which we have attempted to paint, let us look at the way of encouraging ourselves to release from ourselves old, and undoubtedly unneeded, and certainly negative, habits. Again, most of what we have to offer you is a tool called forgiveness. We do not prefer one method of achieving redemption over another. All myths contain within them redemption and forgiveness, no matter how great the error. You may choose your path of faith, or you may create your own personal myth, but be sure it contains a rock solid foundation of redemption and self-forgiveness.

Oh, it is easy to forgive others, is it not? For you love them anyway, and you are sure that whatever they said amiss was not said meanly. But to love the enemy in yourself, or outside of yourself, ah, my friends, that is more difficult, and we assure you that each of you sees some part of yourself as your own enemy. This is the attitude we would suggest that you tackle first, for you are not your own enemy, you are simply being offered choices. Each time that you choose to be of service to another you recreate the strength of your polarity.

But let us remind you of a particularly apt teaching from the known as Jesus. In two sentences, he tossed the ten commandments, with all of the damage that they have done, away, and gave a new covenant, or promise, as he would use the language. “Love the Lord your God,” he said, “and your neighbor as yourself.” This is why you must begin by forgiving yourself. How can you love your neighbor in utter and open forgiveness if you have not forgiven yourself? We do not deny that you are imperfect in a personally valid way. We only remind you that this is an illusion, and that all things, including your body, your intellect, and the artifacts which you make, a part of an illusion, a local habitation for the spirit within you.

This illusion was created not to promote happiness, although the writer of your Constitution seems to think so, much to the confusion of those who seek spiritually, for you do not seek happiness, you seek the truth, you seek to be mature, and ripe, and ready for harvest, and this involves a great deal of choice. Firstly the choice to forgive yourself, first, for all those things of which you may think you have done wrong in the past. Sometimes it is helpful, as a tool, to take one person with whom you have a high level of trust, high enough for confidentiality to be no question, and state, simply and directly and thoroughly, each and every mistake you feel you have made. Speak this to another entity, for this entity is also the Creator, and this entity’s forgiveness is as true, and real, and honest, as that entity is true, and real, and honest.

We are trying to move the mind from behavior to being. It is not behavior which you wish to correct, for behavior is the manifestation of your being. It is that which is held inside as a portion of yourself and of your identity upon which you wish to work. There are teachers everywhere. The creation of the Father teaches a thousand lessons in a minute, if you can but stay in talking to them. Each of your comrades is a Christed being, to some extent or another unaware of its true nature. But as it holds its hand out to you, the Creator is holding its hand out to you. As it expresses friendship and love, so does the Creator. Look beneath behavior for your healing of those things which have harmed you in the past, and which you now see as useless.

The physics of this process is easily comparable to that called the physics of inertia. Many, many years before now you set into motion, by choice, patterns of behavior and thinking that were not helpful to you, and that you now see as not only unnecessary, or unproductive, but hurtful and harming, and you wish to heal. Forgiveness is that which stops what this instrument calls the wheel of karma. Karma may in this sense be defined as inertia, an action put into effect and never forgiven.

Now, can you forgive another and have that power to cease the inertia of karma for another? Not at all. When you forgive another, you do not affect the other, unless he chooses to observe the difference in your attitude. You are working upon the only thing in this universe which you can work on: yourself. Part of forgiveness is forgiving others. The further part is forgiving all the situations which created this pattern. Some of you are more aware of past lives than others, and for those of you who trace the pattern that is unhelpful to what you would call the karma of a past life, know that there is no karma or inertia which is not braked completely and stopped forever by unconditional forgiveness, of the other, of the situations, and of yourself.

You cannot make yourself change. You can only put yourself in tabernacle of the most high, and tune yourself in silence to the most loving and peaceful and light-filled state which you are able to hold upon a steady basis. You do not want to do these things without being extremely careful that you have opened your lower energy centers, thereby allowing that prana, or love/light which strengthens each and gives life to each, to move into the heart chakra where it can be called on by those doing work in consciousness, which is largely at the brow chakra, although instruments such as this one will use the energy center of the throat, often called the blue chakra, in order that it may communicate. Others may choose to stay with the green, open heart, that it may heal others in that way.

But to do work upon yourself, you must move through the green, and blue, into the brow chakra, the indigo center in which all work in consciousness is done. In your sessions, prepare yourself for them, and when they are over, release the power which you have gained by this working, for you deal, in dealing with your metaphysical self, with a magic, if we may use that over-used word, that is very dangerous to attempt to hold in a steady state.

Thus, we urge you to recognize and respect the changes you have wrought in yourself during each meditation, and in some way give that glory, that energy, that peace, that love, or that irritation of the self because the meditation seemed subjectively not good, back to the Creator. During the rest of the day, touch in to the consciousness of eternity. Live in eternity. Then the illusion becomes more and more transparent.

If you have those with whom you are constantly in contact—spouses, mates, friends—inform them of that which you wish to accomplish, and ask them to be mirrors for you. If they are good friends to you, they will not please you by ignoring those things which you have asked them to help you with. They will instead choose to seem harsh, because you have asked this, you have asked for a mirror which you can count on, which is as objective as the other entity can be, and this mirror gives to you its point of view on what it considers you to be doing, to encourage or to discourage unwanted ways of being.

You are a wonderful resource for yourself, but so are those with whom you walk this path. Rich indeed is the pilgrim who has many companions along the way. You come together in love and in service, not to be sweet and dear and darling to each other, but to serve. Sometimes the most difficult thing for a friend to do is to choose service over pleasing a friend. See yourself, therefore, as a resource for others, and be careful in your spiritual communications with them, respecting them as equals. There are no teachers, there are no pupils. There are points of view, there are those who have more experience than others, but we are no more enlightened than you, for in our deepest selves we are one with you.

We have spoken to you now, as much as we can within this time period, of the healing of the self by forgiveness and by the choosing of the path of service. In short, the path of service consists of doing that which is before your vision at this time with as much love as you can. Most paths of service are anything but dramatic, and all paths of service are equal. The quieting of a crying child, the smile to a stranger upon the street, the sharing of the self, of food, of shelter, of listening, the doing of a job which seems to lack an opportunity for service, with faith that indeed it is of service that you have not yet penetrated, these attitudes will keep you in a positive and loving relationship to yourself. Each needs a path of service. Each needs a high self-esteem. These are gifts you give to yourself in will, in faith, and in constant self-forgiveness.

May you love yourself infinitely, for you are a child of God. Your mother, your father, is the universe, love itself. Rest, and have peace and confidence in who you really are. See the illusion for what it is, as much as you can. And when you fail and fail and fail again, as you will inevitably think that you do, never chide yourself, but with patience and care and love grasp once again your desire, your hope, your dreams and your ideals, and go forward on this path of mystery.

We would at this time transfer this contact to the one known as Jim. We are pleased with the newer adjustments we have made in our combining of energies to this channel, and we thank this channel for being open to the adjustments we have made. We are known to you as Q’uo, and in love and light we transfer to the one known as Jim.

(Jim channeling)

I am Q’uo, and greet each again in love and light through this instrument. We realize that we have spoken overly long once again this evening, and we apologize for our lengthy speaking, but those queries and concerns which you posed for us are of such a deep level of meaning to each that we felt it was appropriate to speak at some length. At this time we would offer ourself to any further queries which may remain within any mind present. Is there a query at this time?

Well, before [inaudible] I have one question that’s been on my mind for [inaudible] also, as we deal with the cost of a new publication, a new publisher that seems to be much more [inaudible] of us. We will, however, be making a quality product and charging for it, such an expense that we ourselves have to change our policy. The change that we have come up with seems to preserve the freedom of people to purchase our work with any cost that is comfortable to them. The addition is only information, that is, the cost to us of each item. In no way do we wish to suggest that people pay that, that is simply information. Is there a flaw in such an attitude toward invoking the spiritual Law of Plenty?

I am Q’uo, and am aware of your query, my sister. We would suggest that the course of action which you have set for yourselves is one which you have invested with your desire to be of service in a manner which allows you to continue that service within the framework of trade and exchange that is utilized by almost all of the entities within your culture. That you have found it important in your previous experience to deviate in a significant fashion from this stated means of exchange, that is, the setting of prices upon one’s goods and services that is fixed for all, illustrates your desire to offer that which is of your service in as free a manner as is possible within this framework. Your current decision and refinement of this decision is also within the boundaries that you have set previously, that is, to offer information in a free manner while seeking to preserve the continuity of this service.

We would suggest that the intention that propels any decision upon this policy is the governing factor, shall we say, that determines the purity of the principle that one honors. We are aware that your desires are within the proper degree of purity, and would not recommend any addition to this decision at this time.

Is there a further query, my sister?

No, thank you.

I am Q’uo, and we thank you, my sister. Is there another query?

[Pause]

I am Q’uo, and we feel that we have, at this time, spoken at sufficient length for this particular gathering, and we would thank each most heartily for inviting us to do so and to share that which is our opinion upon this topic which is of such great interest to each, as each pursues in a diligent manner the path of the pilgrim, the seeking, the learning, the serving. We commend each upon this path, and we thank you for making a place upon your journey that we may walk with you. We are greatly honored that you would invite our presence.

At this time we shall take our leave of this group, leaving each as always in the love and in the light of the infinite Creator. We are know to you as those of Q’uo. Adonai, my friends. Adonai.