Holiday Festivities

J: Why do you feel discomfort?

M: Why? Well, I have no interest in this holiday socializing.

J: Then what is your interest?

M: I don’t know. Anything but this, I suppose. Obviously, I’ve certainly participated in holiday revelry in the past and I’m no stranger to social activities. However, since talking with you I have found little satisfaction with past activities.

J: Yes, and to some degree you feel that my message is at fault and that I am cause of your dissatisfaction. This reveals your tendency to seek for blame and I assure you that what the ego seeks, YOU will find, as that fulfills its purpose. If you look closely you will see that the purpose is to absolve YOU of all guilt while at the same time requiring YOU remain guilty. This premise for "living" is clearly insane, yet you continue to "live" by it.

An ego without a purpose cannot continue to function adequately and YOU do desire adequate functioning. In your chaotic, relative world, you have determined that adequate functioning is the best you can hope for and this you have defined as in your "best interests."

M: Ok, so what would you have me do in this situation?

J: You need do nothing. However, you have heard me state this quite frequently and, although you are listening, you have determined that this is inadequate to your best interests. Indeed, in the current situation you believe that you are attempting to “do nothing.” However, I notice that in this situation you are actually doing very much against your own best interests by not attending to OUR purpose

M: How can that be? I’m sitting here doing nothing. I have not actively engaged in anything with anyone.

J: Although you feel that you are not “actively engaged,” the judging properties of your mind are fully engaged in your world. If you could measure the degree of DOING you are engaged with in order to actualize this, as you say, “sitting here doing nothing,” you would be surprised at how much you are actually “doing” in your present resistance to "parts" of your world. Notice that, to your mind, DOING involves bodily manipulations and spatial changes that are actually a misinterpretation of the concept “do nothing.”

M: You’re saying that my failure to engage in the social activities is resulting in actually my “doing” something? How can that be? I’m not really acting in any way with external events.

J: Contrary to your present thinking, there is nothing “external.” Therefore, the mind’s engagement for, or against, what you believe as external to you, is active negotiation with delusional thought.

Of course, this makes no sense, for how could you negotiate with what is not real. Nevertheless, this is what is occurring by your own choice and you do very much believe in your choices.

Nevertheless, I have no investment in your choices and do not interpret them as real and therefore, since I am aware of truth, I can aid you in negotiating with what is not true.

Unfortunately, you have NOT considered OUR purpose, only YOUR purpose in your current decision. This is based on a previous decision as to what is “real” and whether engagement was worthy or unworthy to you in the past. Either way, you will remain dissatisfied and you always have.

M: Then what does this “do nothing” mean in relation to what is happening right now.

J: You have no idea what is happening right “now” and if you really adhered to "doing nothing" you just might achieve greater insight. Nevertheless, you have always chosen to "do something,” whether it is resistance or engagement, or any number of active negotiations completely unnatural to you. To your mind, there must be a purpose. In doing nothing, you would arrive at OUR purpose, which is always and only, available to you NOW.

Nevertheless, in this moment you do not avail yourself of NOW, and thus, continue to base your decision, as to your current purpose, on the past. All your purposes are based on this bundle of misinterpretations of the “previous” and the “before” and other strange ideas of what once worked for you. You actually worship past decisions and therefore, you worship your "self" and continue to perpetuate that as the final arbiter of all that is "known." I teach that you “know” nothing as long as you continue to base decisions on your "self."

M: So in my attempt to do nothing I’m actually doing something since all “doing” as you teach is of the mind. Thus, you teach that I must think with you. But what would your thinking be in this very moment, since clearly, as you point out, I’m not thinking with you?

J: The only thoughts that are of benefit to you in the moment is that you have no benefit to be attained in the moment. You have no idea of your best interests and you know not what should be “done.”

Nothing that you have ever “thought” and nothing you could ever “think” can benefit you in any way. You have no plans and need not consider purposes, since you know of none that has ever aided in alleviating your suffering or the suffering of the world you perceive as “out there.”

You need make no decisions and thus, can easily free your mind of all judgment as to what should occur. When nothing need occur, all will be available to the mind that NEEDS nothing since nothing is lacking. To this mind, nothing NEED be done.

M: This still does not help me in this moment or at this time. I’m here in this place and occurrences will impinge upon me and I will be forced in some way to respond or to act. So how will I experience myself when forced to act?

J: Nothing can be forced upon you without your decision that it be so. The problem you seek to answer is why you provide yourself with experiences against your liking. Yet, as I have previously stated, you have no idea of your best interests, so how would you assess what is to your liking? What you give yourself merely reflects what you believe should be experienced and this changes from moment to moment.

Therefore, it is easy to understand the opposing impressions, which seem to be your experience. In your world, everything must have an opposite for you to experience your “self” since the self demands opposition to accentuate itself as separate from others, the world and God.

You consistently resist a convergence of opposites and never the two shall meet as ONE. As such, you delude yourself into a belief that happiness is your purpose. But, how can this be when happiness means simply no conflict and thus, no opposition. I would suggest you redefine your happiness as “peace,” since this is essentially means the end of all opposition. Perfect peace is of God and this, and not happiness, is OUR goal.

Therefore, in your present circumstances, you should no longer seek for "happiness" since all your concepts of happiness are muddled, confused and chiefly based on your odd and conflicting sense of being a separate “self.”

Yet in seeking peace, you DO have a conceptual understanding of the experience of peace, although in the past you minimized this as an aspect of inadequate functioning and thus pressed ever onward in “pursuit of happiness.”

In every situation you find yourself ask in the moment of experience, is peace present. If not then clearly, your ego goals of “happiness” have infringed on peace and thus, we are NOT working together. I do not teach happiness, only peace. “Happiness” has always been your decision and thus your delusion. Peace is the only rational goal of a mind in conflict in which opposites are perceived as that which holds the world together, yet, in "reality," only serves to keep the world apart.