G: The question as we quote it is, “There is the phrase, ‘winning over the self,’ which is another way of saying, ‘knowing and accepting the self.’ Is there a similar process that occurs to that of the calling? Do those portions of the self that desire love gain power so that the more the call is made, the more the desire is made until [the] square of the resistance within the self is overcome?”

(Carla channeling)

We are known to you as the principle of Q’uo. Greetings in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator, in whose service we come to you this day. Thank you for calling us to your circle of seeking. It is our privilege and our pleasure to respond. We are happy to share our humble thoughts with you. However, as always, we request that you use your discrimination in choosing which thoughts of ours to pick up and which ones to leave behind as you move forward in your own spiritual process. If you will take care to use your discrimination, then we may feel far more free to offer you our thoughts. We thank you for this consideration.

You ask this day concerning the process of knowing yourself and accepting yourself, or, as the one known as G has put it, winning the self over. You wonder if there is a doubling process that takes hold, so that as the process goes on, the energy becomes stronger and the self is gathered into the love and the light of the one infinite Creator ever more quickly.

Certainly, my brother, there is truth in this supposition. Yet, it is not the precise way of the process of gathering the self into the open heart to say that there is a doubling effect as you work more. We shall come back to this idea later because there is, indeed, a doubling effect at work here. It is just somewhat different than your query.

For now, let us look at this process of knowing the self and accepting the self. We would acknowledge that it is impossible to know the self fully. The self is known fully only at the point in the octave of Creation where seventh density is beginning to fade into timelessness and the mind/body/spirit becomes a mind/body/spirit totality. This mind/body/spirit totality offers its mysterious and ever-shifting information to itself in mid-sixth density, allowing that sixth-density version of self to become the higher self, which then, in turn, offers to the third-density incarnate being a source of good information and guidance.

The mind/body/spirit’s gift from the higher self, however, is not of the nature of a definite, finite structure or box of contents. It is full of mystery and paradox, as all entities are, because of the fact that they are in the image of the Infinite Creator, whose nature is rich in mystery and paradox. This is why we cannot say that there is precisely a doubling effect as one gets to know oneself better. Because that work is never done.

Indeed, those of us who speak with you this evening feel inadequate to the challenge of expressing in full the nature of ourselves. We have, however, become content to allow the question of self-definition to inhere in our vibrations, or our essence.

What we have to suggest is a discussion of the cycles that are an inevitable portion of the spiritual seeker, and the dynamic between those cycles and that central essence of self which most decidedly does not have all the pieces of self collected, yet is very, very important to the self. That is the part of the self that has focus.

Perhaps you have noticed that there are variations in the amount of focus with which you seek the love and the light of the one Creator. At some points, there is a plain and clear feeling of utter desire and single-minded seeking to know the truth of the creation and to tabernacle in the presence of the one infinite Creator. At other times, it would be possible to say those same words and yet not to be able to feel the intensity of desire because of the fact that you have lost your focus.

The cycles of which we speak are several. The first is the cycle of the beginner on the path and then the more experienced entity on the path. This cycles in an unpredictable and quite slow way, for it is not known when that first rush of excitement shall fade away, once the seeker has awakened and started on the path of his spiritual evolution.

The initial flush of excitement and that wonderful feeling that you have a treasure of great value may last years, or it may last months, or it may last weeks. Inevitably, however, the honeymoon between yourself and the infinite possibilities of seeking the Creator fade and it begins to be possible simply to give lip service to those ideals which have previously moved you almost to tears.

It is as though at times your energy body were [a stream] rushing forward and, at other times, a dry bed. You look at that place where the torrent flew and frothed above all. And, below the place where all that water flowed, it is dry and cracked, and you are in a season of drought within your own spiritual process.

The seeker who wishes to win the self over has one great resource during those dry times within and that is his will. The will of an entity who knows that he is powerful can overcome any resistance within the self, and that faculty of will is fed by memory; the memory of those times when the self was lifted up and things were very clear.

There are times in every seeker’s life when the Creator is close and the connection is sweet and pure and strong. In dry times it is extremely helpful for the spiritual seeker to remember those times of torrential inundations of the love and the light of the one infinite Creator.

It is as though your will were a candle that you keep burning day and night. Sometimes it is not needed because the world is full of sunlight. During the dark night of the soul, however, there is only the candle of your will. Feel that steel core within you of will and focus and let it blaze as the candle in good seasons and in poor.

Another cycle about which we will speak is the cycle of physical maturation. A lifetime [encompasses] the rising and the falling. During the times of rising, there is a learning curve going on almost all the time concerning the consensus reality that surrounds the seeker and his skill in being able to function within that consensus reality. At those early times of an incarnation it is often the case that the self cannot be known to the self because there is so much to learn and so much to process that there is no mental or emotional leisure for contemplating the self in a non-attached and witness-like focus.

At the apex of the arch of life, there is a period during which the ability to function within consensus reality has been, if not perfected, brought up to acceptable standards for that which the seeker needs to do in his life, and at that point, he becomes free to choose his thoughts and to follow his thoughts where they might go. It is a blessed time in many ways and yet it carries its own challenges.

When the seeker does focus on knowing himself, he acquires a great deal of information, some of which is trustworthy and some of which is not. This is due to the fact that there are many inner voices which like to share their opinions concerning who you are. Some of those voices are parental. Others are the voices of teachers or other authority figures who instructed you in a certain way that penetrated into your personality shell and became thought forms that took root there. And those voices are still heard.

They are not the voices of yourself. They are voices that are as distorted as any carnival mirror. No parent or authority figure knows you. Indeed, you yourself are struggling to know you. The challenge, as you open up to your own thoughts and the processes of conceptualization as you experience day-by-day, is to find your own voice.

As the sun sets upon an incarnation and the physical body functions less well, it would seem as though one would, once again, have little time for spiritual matters, and, indeed, this is the case with some entities whose older years are confused by failing minds. However, in many cases the summer of the seeker’s life may extend right up until the last breath is expelled from the [physical] body that is left at death in order that the spirit may enter again the larger life.

It is well for an entity who is just beginning to be free of the learning process of becoming an adult to realize that there has been a long, slow learning curve that has placed tremendous pressure on the physical organism’s mental complex, and especially the emotions. Therefore, as the seeker wakes up and begins to feel free of the learning of consensus reality, it is well for him to begin to gaze within in a way, which again contains that concept of focus and flame.

When the seeker becomes fully aware that every person about him is a mirror for himself, there is in that realization a feeling of “too much information.” Shall the seeker take, in complete sincerity, every word that is spoken to him and every interaction with another person as being information about himself? If so, the information stacks up exponentially as the years go by. Yet, it is true that the spiritual seeker is in a hall of mirrors. Each mirror is distorted, yet gives some information.

How does one look at one’s self? The eyes look outward. They do not see inward. It is impossible to see yourself as others see you. Consequently, it is very helpful to enter into the game, shall we say, of taking each person as a mirror for yourself, and musing upon what that mirror is telling you.

Some mirrors are difficult to look into. If you are interacting with a murderer, than you must find the murderer within yourself in order for the information that mirror holds to be relevant. Many are the times that you will find yourself avoiding certain situations or certain relationships, and in that avoidance is more information.

This instrument, in describing the green-ray chakra or the heart energy center, wrote that it was like the basilica at St. Peters, that great structure which was the Doge’s Chapel and which now is a cathedral. 1 As great and massive as that structure is, it is dwarfed by the size of the plaza which lies in front of the building. In pictures of this Cathedral of St. Mark, that huge forecourt is always mobbed with thousands of tourists, and pigeons walking among the tourists, pecking at whatever the tourists drop to feed them. This is a fairly accurate image for the parts of yourself that are, to some extent, not yet integrated into your essential self.

And here we may use that phrase of “winning over the self,” for as you stand in that outer courtyard of the open heart, you can deliberately and consciously move into work within yourself, to take up each wandering [portion] of yourself as you find it, and bring it into your heart.

It is easy to love the parts of yourself that conform to your ideals. Yet the tough truth is that there is much more to the self than those idealistic parts of the self that have been polished and cleaned and are on display, shall we say, in the windows of one’s ideas about who one is. All of the rest of the self that lies in the shadows and has not yet been polished, has not yet been picked up, and has certainly not yet been recognized, waits for your attention.

And this is not something that is a linear process. This is something that is like housework. You keep going back to that plaza of the self and recognizing a new portion of yourself from that shadow side. Then it is time to win that heart of the self over, to express your feelings of honor and respect for it, and to ask it to integrate itself into you so that its darkness becomes your strength rather than your weakness. This quest for the self shall never end.

In counterpoint to that truth is the truth that you are already a perfected being. You are already a mind/body/spirit totality. That flame at the very heart of your being is the same flame that burns throughout all densities in the octave of Creation that you now experience. Consequently, in counterpoint to the attempts of the rational mind to know itself, there lies the dynamic of the perfect self, the perfected self, the self that lies within you, undiscovered, for the most part unknown and unexplored.

This is why meditation is so very helpful.

In meditation, you have accepted that intellectually you do not know your essence or your nature.

In meditation, you rest in unknowing.

In meditation, you are not trying to figure anything out.

In meditation, you are no longer talking to yourself, or talking to the Creator, or talking at all.

In this stoppage of the intellectual mind lies a great aid to the seeker who wishes to remain focused. For that flame that burns within you burns within all. There is one flame, one consciousness, one great and utter love. It is a tremendous balm and relief to escape from your personality and all that you think you know, and rest, wrapped in the blanket of warmth that the tabernacle of the open heart offers, cuddled upon the lap of the Almighty with nothing to do except be.

We said earlier that we would move back to the idea of a doubling effect and so we do now. What is doubled has nothing to do with the parts of yourself that you are attempting to know and accept. It has to do with your faith. For that you do not need to reach or strive. You do not need to do anything. For you already are a being created by the infinite One, full of power and beauty.

It is difficult to keep the faith when it is new. It is difficult in the face of one’s personal shortcomings, as perceived by the self, to know that all is well. There is so much temptation to reject the self, or parts of the self, in most entities that it is almost irresistible. Yet, having grasped faith, you hold to it and you know that at the depths of your being, you are good in that biblical sense where man was created, and God saw that it was good, and it was very good. 2

Faith stabilizes you among the chaos of perceptions. Outer perceptions shall always bring conflict. The truth shall always be elusive. Yet as you have faith in yourself and in the innate goodness of your design, you come through the crisis of not liking aspects of yourself and you find yourself still standing after the storm has passed. The next time there is heavy weather within your heart and mind and soul, you find it easier to maintain faith regardless of the outer picture. And each time thereafter, you find it exponentially easier to remain stable and faithful and serene.

It is a tremendous faculty that is innate within all third-density entities, this faculty of faith. And we encourage contemplation of the word itself, for in it lie untold mysteries and infinite light. It is often a great help when developing the faculty of faith to have something to which to cling, whether it be a person, an ideal, or some image or icon that has special meaning to you.

We would encourage exploring those persons, images, icons and symbols which call you. If you can find one or two that are particularly resonant to you, [then] find ways to have those images in your field of vision as you work and as you play, as you eat and as you sleep. For they shall remind you of who you are and make it ever easier for you to regain that stance of the spiritual seeker which is centered in faith.

We come back to the word “focus,” my brother. It is easy to feel the self as a vast collection of somewhat related, but not necessarily coordinated, parts. We ask you to dive deep beneath the surface of that perception into the center of yourself—that center which has never been apart from the one infinite Creator. Dive deep. Dive with love. Dive with absolute surety and faith.

[Side one of tape ends.]

(Carla channeling)

Again and again, may your excursions of faith be filled with light. May you have fair horizons for your travel.

We would at this time ask if there are other queries in this group. We are those of Q’uo.

Would you discuss the spiritual principles for converting excess emotion into mental and emotional clarity?

We are Q’uo, and are aware of your query, my brother. The emotions are often given far less respect than they deserve, and this is because they are not seen for the deep, running rivers that they are, but rather are seen as somewhat troublesome hindrances to a calm and orderly life.

We would use the analogy of cooking here and compare the way most entities allow their emotions to run to “fast food.” It is easy to get, it is easily eaten, and there is not much nourishment in the food. And so it is with surface emotions. Like rain on hardpan, it is difficult for the emotions to offer any good information or go anywhere. They just hit the consciousness and bounce off and, indeed, do seem quite excessive sometimes.

However, if a chef with great love for the food takes the same ingredients that are in fast food and prepares them carefully and with love, those same ingredients yield much more nourishment. And so it is with emotions. Surface emotions are usually quite impure. However, when one can abide with one’s feelings and observe them as though they were guests coming to tea, offering them hospitality and courtesy, sitting with them and listening to them, then the emotions have found respect and honor. And this allows them to go deeper, interconnecting the [surface] self with the deepest part of the roots of consciousness. For this is what emotions eventually become if they are allowed to go through the process of purification.

There is a beauty to each emotion when it has been purified and it is pure feeling with no distortion. Thus, we would say that instead of looking at emotions as something to work around, the one who seeks clarity needs to spend time honoring the emotions that seem so inconvenient and excessive. Physically taking the time to process emotions is very helpful. Emotions call to you and when you can answer by sitting with these guests that are speaking to you in certain colors, then those colors gradually lose the muddy characteristics of surface emotions and become more and more clear.

May we answer you further, my brother? We are those of Q’uo.

Yes. Would Q’uo discuss the spiritual principles behind the connection drawn between the theory in non-violent communication that positive emotions indicate that a universal human need has been met and that negative emotions indicate that a universal human need has not been met?

We are those of Q’uo, and we believe we understand your query. We would have no quarrel with the statement that positive emotions indicate that a universal need has been met and negative emotions indicate that a universal need has not been met. We agree completely that the needs and desires of third density entities are universal for, indeed, all is one.

The only reservation that we would have concerning this statement is that there are layers upon layers to emotion and layers upon layers to human need. So, some positive emotions ring false, as do some negative emotions, thereby not offering [truth] to the seeker.

In the sense of attempting to understand one’s feelings, it certainly is helpful to compare the concept of emotion with the concept of universal needs, for it seems to give a psychological validation to one’s needs so that emotion then is not a thing about which to be embarrassed, but is rather a needed signal for that which is occurring within the personality. Perhaps the spiritual principle that would apply here is that all is one and that just as the baby’s cry indicates that it is hungry, that emotion stems from that cry of hunger.

The other spiritual principle that we would invoke is that balancing principle which expresses the infinity and the mystery of human emotion and human nature in general. There are paths that move into mountain upon mountain upon mountain, raising the quality and the purity of human emotion many times for the entity who is willing to penetrate every emotion with his utter attention and respect.

We are those of Q’uo, [and] would ask if there is a final query at this time.

Yes, would Q’uo discuss the spiritual principles behind love at first sight, such as in Romeo and Juliet?

We are those of Q’uo, and are aware of your query, my brother. But in this case there does not seem to be a spiritual principle to bring to bear on love at first sight. The classic Romeo and Juliet’s love at first sight is a story of entities who were in their early teens. This is a time [of life] when it is unlikely that there is a bleed-through memory of a past life or something of that nature which would create a spiritual nexus within which one might gaze at that attraction.

However, it is so that there is a network which an entity has of souls with whom he has worked in past experiences—past, of course, being a linear term that does not hold in time/space. In that circular time/space where everything is occurring simultaneously, the web of relationships is amazingly extensive. And there are times when one entity meets another and a resonance is set up that is undeniable and is far deeper and more penetrating than the circumstances would normally suggest.

In those cases, it is quite likely that entities who have planned to work together on some service or some incarnational lesson together within an incarnation have found each other. And that is a very hopeful and positive thing for an entity who wishes to do spiritual work. It is greatly helpful to have companions with whom to share one’s gifts and with whom to explore one’s challenges.

We might note in this regard that there has been a tendency within this group through decades of questions to visit the phenomenon of love at first sight or star-crossed lovers or soul mates. And we would suggest that, in fact, before the Creation has wound to its fullest spiritual gravity and returns to the one infinite Creator, each shall be a soul mate to each.

We would, at this time relinquish this instrument and this contact, for the instrument is growing weary. May we say what a delight and privilege it has been to share this meditation with you and be part of your session of working. We thank you once again for asking for our thoughts. We leave you in the love and the light of the one infinite Creator. We are known to you as the principle of Q’uo. Adonai. Adonai.


  1. This material is in her book, Living the Law of One – 101: The Choice: Louisville, Kentucky, L/L Research, [c2008]. 

  2. Holy Bible, Genesis 1:31: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”