Group Channelling Johannesburg

This reading was channelled by Angela on the 25th of May 2008. The actual recording is available for download here.

Group relevance

The way that we would prefer to begin here is the way that many celebratory occasions begin. Very often when you are arriving at someone’s home for a dinner, or for another type of celebration, the first exchange that occurs is a giving of flowers, a giving over of a bouquet of flowers that you have chosen for its colour, or the particular type of flower that is represented there, or the smell that the bouquet gives across. And so, in honour of what we are also calling here a celebratory occasion - we would also like to call it an intimate dinner party and we are going to use that analogy quite a lot - we are also going to start with the analogy of a bouquet of flowers. When you choose a bouquet, if you are feeling wealthy that day, and feeling as if you’ve got time and authority, then you would choose exactly which specific flowers form part of it and which don’t. You will say ‘I would like those ten roses and I would like just a little bit of that kind of baby’s breath with that specific kind of fern with that leaf that I like so much. And to add some scent I’d also like two lilies positioned in this way’, and so on and so on. We can suggest to you something of the nature of the group that is here today that is similar in some respects to that process. We are not suggesting that we handpicked you, but we are suggesting that you handpicked you. There are very, very specific reasons why groups gather - the times they do, there is reason for that, and the collection of individuals, there is reason for that also. That’s the same way as when you are feeling rich, you will choose a bouquet that is exactly as you would like it, we would like you to consider that you have done the same here. That also that which is gathered here, and the time and the nature of the day, has been handpicked by you. And why would it be so? What is the function of handpicking, or selecting with great care the kind of environment and the kind of human beings with which to share such a conversation? What is the relevance? Oh we can tell you there is tremendous relevance. Let’s give you some idea of how it works here, of the mechanism of the process of conversing with a group. We only ever, as you well know by now, bring to you what you have given permission for. There is no way for us to access, let alone deliver, anything other than what you have suggested to us already that you want on one level or another. Sometimes not especially consciously, but on levels that are a little bit less accessible to you. Yet it always needs to be from a space of your own permission. So then you can understand the relevance of the people that you are with at any time. Because what you will collectively experience is what you have collectively given permission for and nothing else.

The people are more important than the place

And so this leads us into the first point that we wish to raise here today and it is very signification considering the day that it is and considering the time in general and what is going on in your environment. Our first point today is the understanding that it is the nature of the people that you are with that is far more influential on your environment that necessarily the place itself. We will say that again. You are much more influenced by the people that are around you on a regular basis in terms of what you experience than the environment itself. People are very, very aware of what is said to be so about a certain place. So it’s said to be that this kind of city brings these things, or to live in this country means that specific experience. And we are going to suggest to you that there are millions - and that’s a conservative number, but let’s say for argument’s sake there are millions - of potential experiences within one city, or within one country. It’s not possible to aggregate what it means to live in one place. There are so many collections of energy and intentions in one place, and that means there will also be so many different experiences of the same place. So it is not a useful consideration for you to think about the nature of a place that you will be in, because you can be sure that there are people in that place that do not like being there and wish they were somewhere else. There are people in that place who had accidents, created for themselves disease, bankruptcy, experiences of violence or violation in some way. All experiences can be found in one environment. That’s not to say that it’s irrelevant where you live and with whom you spend your time, not at all. That is why we have begun in the way we have begun today. Suggesting the specificity of the people that are collected here, which allows us to raise certain topics that would not have been raised had the group had a different, even slightly different, composition.

Surround Yourself With People You Respect

And that suggests to you this, that it is the people you are around most of the time, and the intentions that those people hold, that is a bigger determinant or a bigger factor in your experience than the actual name or location in which you find yourself. Which you can take further on to mean this: it is very wise for you to concentrate yourself in experiences, conversations and company that you respect. It is very wise to concentrate yourself, which means focus yourself, attend yourself, if that can mean to say where you put your attention, around people, conversations, and experiences that you respect. We are not saying like. We are not saying like, and we are quite specific about not saying like, because sometimes the people that challenge you most are actually the ones that have a greater impact on you. So we are not saying surround yourself only with people that you like, that make you feel good, or that caress your egos or that support you. It’s not that, we are not talking in that regard at all. That’s why we have used the word respect. It’s very significant for you to concentrate your life, and that means angle yourself, focus yourself, around experiences and people that you can respect. You have got more influence over that than possibly you realise.

But we are raising it today, we are bringing it to you attention, because of what we can call here the energetic impact of the people with whom you spend the most amount of time. And let’s talk about what that means ‘spending time’. Does walking in a shopping centre amongst a certain collection of people mean you are spending time with them, for example? Does working in an office around a certain collection of people constitute spending time? We are going to give you a way to discern that for yourself. And it depends on the impact on your energies. It’s different for some people, there are some who can walk through a shopping mall and not be affected by the collective energy that is there. They can leave the shopping mall in just the same mood that they entered it. They are able to ward of the energies and emotions of other people and they are entering the shopping mall with their own focus very strong, as just an example. And their own strong focus overrides the intention of other people and, in that example, that doesn’t count as spending time with those folk. But if for you after five hours in a certain collection of people your mood is altered, your body is giving you different signals than it was when you started, if your sense of inspiration has been changed, if you are not that focused on your own reasons for being there, but you have slipped into the collective energy then it does count as having spent time with those people. And if you have spent that time with those people, and you are doing that regularly, then that is the group consciousness that you are also going to be affected by. We understand that there are lots of messages around in the world at the moment that are saying to you, you can control your own destiny if you just think positively enough, and if you hold in you emotions of a certain kind and if you push away emotions of another kind and if you affirm statements over and over. There is truth in that you are much more greatly able to influence your experience than you know, but what is not said in those teaching is the impact of the group environment on your state of being, and therefore on your intent, and therefore on your experience. You are not in this world as individuals. You are not playing an individual game only, where you are setting intentions just for you and where your life is only about your intent and your visualisations and your state of being. Your interesting phenomenon as a human being is that you are living both as an individual and a collective. It’s fascinating. Allowing yourself to manage that dynamic where you are an individual, but you are also part of a collective, is one of the big skills or the big steps of mastery in human existence.

But, considering that you are also part of a group, it suggests to you that what occurs with you, how your life goes, is also to a degree impacted by the group that you are around a lot of the time. There is that factor influencing your experience and your own life that is called the impact of the dominant group consciousness on your experience. The reason we are suggesting this to you is so that you may allow yourself to become selective about the group consciousness that you attach yourself to for any length on time. And it can mean - if that is the way that you play it – the collection of people in a certain shopping centre. It needn’t be, we have illustrated already that only some are affected by that, and if you are affected by the mood in a place, by the general collective, consciousness of the people that are there, it counts as having spent time with those people. And we are alerting you to the fact that there is certainly an impact on your own life, on your own state of being, by the dominant group consciousness that you are part of most of the time. And that in our experience is a more significant factor to consider when contemplating moving geographically at all, or moving also in terms of work and work environments. It’s important to get a sense of what the group feeling is in the space in which you are going to spend a lot of time. It is an arrogance to presume that after years and years you will not somewhat affected by the dominant group consciousness where you spend your most time. You will be affected, it’s part of the nature of being human. You are not existing as an island on your own, you are part of a group at any moment of your life. But what we are alerting you to is that you have permission to consciously work with that.

How to Work With Group Consciousness That You Don't Like

There are two ways of working with it. You can either change, literally change, the kind of people you spend most of your time with to something that you prefer more. In other words you can physically remove yourself in some way. Or, the other option you have, is for making your own focus, your own internal vision, your own drive, your own intention stronger in that environment than you have previously allowed it to be. If you are deeply attuned to your own reason for being in a place, and if that voice is stronger for you, if you are able to hear a stronger voice from inside than you are listening to outside, and if you are able to be in touch with your own joy in an environment and make sure you bring it there, then you will be far less influenced by the consciousness around you.

But we are making - specifically the ones of you here - you aware that if you are unconscious in group environments, then it’s highly likely that you are carrying that group intention and that you will be affected by it. So there are two courses of action to take. If you find that part of your life, a good deal of it, is spent amongst a group of people that you don’t specifically respect, if you realise by paying attention to your life that you spend quite a lot of time around people that you don’t particularly respect, a group consciousness that you don’t particularly feel inspired by, you have two options. The one is to remove yourself, and the other is to become much more attuned to, that’s the word, because it’s about sounds actually, it’s about tone, so it’s to become much more attuned to your own reasons for being there, the joy you are there for, than to be swept away, which happens gradually and often imperceptibly, into the group dynamic. Take careful care, careful care around this aspect. We understand that there are concerns, and at the very least considerations, about existing in the country that you do, and within the city within the country that you do. We are reading these and we are able to address them specifically because of the flowers that are here in this particular bouquet, and that’s why we raise this aspect. It’s not about the place. Within this one city in which you are there are people living lives of desperation and there are people living spectacular lives.

Places of Less Struggle are Also Places of Less Passion

You can understand, possibly intuitively already, that the greater the degree of desperation with which some are living, the greater the degree of magnificence with which others. There is always that universal balance. And what we can also suggest to you is this: in environments where there is no sense of struggle at all, where no one struggles, there is also no real deep passion, or inspiration, or the height of magnificence there. There are societies that have wanted to eliminate struggle. Their social structures tried to eliminate struggle, their political structures eliminate struggle. The society is set up so that if you wanted to you could survive with no struggle. And that has its upsides, but what it also has is the absence of the flip side of struggle, which is passion, determination, courage, inspired living, and extraordinary successes. And here we are talking about success in terms of the human spirit, not just success in terms of worldly acquisition. If you want to live in a society where there are extraordinary successes of the human spirit you will also be living in a society where struggle can exist. And we know there are some who have set themselves up to eliminate struggle as far as possible. There are very good parts about living in such struggle-free environments. And if you wish that, if it will serve you, then that is a wise move to make. We just also alert you to the fact that everything in human existence has got two sides: the part of the aspect that you prefer and the part of the aspect that you don’t. And so too does the notion of struggle. So we recognise that the city and the country in which you are in are characterised by struggle. You even have the word “struggle” as part of the lexicon of your national history. So you can see very clearly that struggle is an aspect of living here, and it also means that the flipside of struggle, which we have called the capacity for passion, determination and extraordinary experiences of the human spirit, is also here. But, within that, within that aspect which characterises the place you are in, there are pockets of experience of real desperation, pockets of experience of mediocrity and pockets of experience of magnificence. So how do you choose where to live then? How do you choose which environment will serve you more, if countries have got - all of them within a certain spectrum - a whole variety of options? It’s about the dominant group consciousness that you will be spending much of your time amongst. So if you were to move to a country, let’s say for example that’s characterised by physical safety, but you go to work in an environment such as a prison, and you are of the type that is quite affected by the people around you, if your sensitivity means that you are moved and affected emotionally by the people around who you spend your time, then, even in the safest country in the world, the energy of violence gets into your electro-magnetic field and you will experience it in one way or another. The degrees of violence can differ, but what we are giving you here is the understanding that it’s the group consciousness that affects you more than the country consciousness.

There is such a thing as a country consciousness, it does exist. And it means that there is a stronger likelihood of a certain energy being experienced in a place than in another place. But within that - as you can see if you are just logical about it - people have got a variety of different lives within one country. It doesn’t mean because you live in one city life will be like this. It also doesn’t mean because you are within one kind of group of people life will be like this. It depends how much you are moved or affected by that group consciousness as we illustrated earlier with the shopping mall. But what we are getting to here is an awareness of the impact on you of the people you spend a lot of time with, and two options for you to rectify that or to raise the standard of that in your own life. It will be wise. You know you are energetic beings, you are energetic beings, as is known and very clearly proven by quantum physics. You all exist in an energetic field, which means you are deeply and intimately connected. All we have done here in our first point is give you an understanding that you are more influenced, that your life is more influenced, by the thought patterns of the people, your own people that you spend a lot of time with, than the actual country in which you find yourselves.

So that has been our first point. We have had some great gratitude in delivering today the aspect of group consciousness and its impact on you. You’ll find it in language by the way. Language as you well know is one of the clearest indicators of consciousness. It’s very easy to tell what kind of belief systems and theories any person holds because it is reflected in the language that they use. And so if you find that you are around people and you start to use their language, then you are affected by the group consciousness of those people. So it’s quite easy for you to tell. You can also tell by your emotional state, as we have said earlier, if you feel differently after you’ve been with a group than you did before, quite naturally you have been affected. And all we are saying is: create opportunities for your state of mind to be improved by the group of people you have been interacting with, rather than diminished. It is a responsibility of yours, it is a responsibility of yours. And so we are happy to have raised that as our first suggestion.

We are going back to the bouquet, we want to draw your attention back to the analogy we have sketched of the dinner party. And we know that conversation about moving and leaving are part of dinner party conversation a lot. And so, that’s why we have given you the analogy of a little dinner party as a good symbol of the kind of conversation that is available for you this afternoon. And so that’s a very common topic at a dinner party these days, questioning and thinking about moving, and that’s why we have also raised that.

Considerations About The Cost of Living

Next conversation that is regularly to be found at dinner parties is the cost of living. And so we would also like from our perspective - if you don’t mind us dominating this particular dinner party - some aspects, hopefully some new aspects of consideration, around the notion of expense, around the notion of money and survival and the deeper requirements for survival that seem to be needed of you in current situations. We are aware of this. We are also aware that there are fundamental changes happening to the very systems that govern human experience. We are not meaning to be overly dramatic, but there’s no other way to suggest to you that some of the shifts that are going on are at base level. Some of the most fundamental systems, the ones you take for granted, that you wouldn’t perhaps call a system any more, it’s just what it means to be human, some of those very fundamental aspects of life are being quietly, but swiftly, re-arranged. It’s the way that the tsunami wave occurs on the top of the ocean, but what’s been going on underneath the ocean for a long time are shifts in the plates and the arrangement of the earth that after a while, sometimes without any warning, can cause a dramatic wave on the top, but actually underneath seismic shifts have been ongoing for some time. And that is what is going on. If it seems as if it’s concentrated in this country, it is not. It is not. There are revolutionary changes that are occurring all over the world. The systems by which humanity have lived for a long, long, time are being reconsidered, are being rearranged, are being overhauled at the moment. It is a dramatic time to be alive. It’s not common for us to get very sensationalist in our conversations. We are not of a particular leaning to be that way, we are also always quite conversational and relatively ordinary. But in this particular aspect we are suggesting to you a truth. And the truth is that a lot is being reconsidered.

Global Renovations

But step back, if you will, from your own fears, just for a minute. Step out of your own lives and concerns that might be coming up for you about what that means to the status quo of your existence as it is now. Step back for a minute. Look back at the trajectory of human experience up until now. And ask yourself if you think that the way human beings have arranged the world has worked. Look at the things you would like the world to be like, and whether the systems that exist at the moment actually support the things that you would like. You are likely to find it so, that actually, when you look at it, the way human beings have arranged the world and systematized things, doesn’t actually work for you. And the truth is it doesn’t work for the majority of the people on the planet, and that is why it is being overhauled. We understand the discomfort involved in the overhauling of these systems. But we also suggest to you, that if you were honest with yourself, you don’t really like the way the world works or runs or the fundamentals that govern the world. The results don’t match up to what you would like to see. And if that is the case, there’s no other way to do it but to uproot some of the most basic things and to start again, to re-knit things. It’s like unpicking the part of the scarf you are knitting because you notice there’s a hole there. You can either carry on knitting the scarf, and then you are going to have a scarf with a big hole in it. Or you can go through the painful, irritating process of unpicking the scarf, correcting the whole, and creating something that by the end of it is far more desirable to you than a scarf with a hole in it. And that’s what’s going on. The majority of the people on the planet have indicated, and this is not even mostly subconscious, it is very conscious, the majority indicate again and again that this is not the way that they want things to work. And in response to that (we’ve talked again and again about group consciousness), in things are getting overhauled.

It’s almost like you decide you want to renovate your house because it’s not good enough the way it is. So you get an architect, and you employ a builder, and you buy the materials and then the actual work starts happening, and you start getting very irritated at the building and at the discomforts and at the noise. But you requested it, and you requested it only because you want something better. That’s what’s going on in the world at the moment. Like a huge scale renovation. We know renovations are noisy and unpleasant, and we know that sometimes you sit without your comfortable furniture for a while, and sometimes you have to actually relocate for a bit to deal with the situation with your house being renovated. We recognise that it’s not pleasant and we recognise that it’s not fun. But without the process of renovation you would not be able to create a superior home for yourself to live in, and that is what is going on. But we are suggesting some of the things that you consider, or that are part of your assumptions as fundamental to human existence, may well be changed. It’s quite a big overhaul if we can put it in that way. And some, some, by no means all and certainly not even the biggest part, but some of the renovation is happening in the field of money. In the way human beings have thought about money, in the way you work with money with yourselves and with each other. In the way that money flows and doesn’t flow, in the degree to where you put your money is commensurate with your values. Because mostly, and for us it’s a very comical thing, but mostly, if you ask human beings what they love and value the most, that’s not where their money goes! It’s a very strange anomaly for us, but it is very common. So the system of money is one of the systems that is being allowed to have an overhaul. And it’s not, it’s not by any means, the most active overhaul happening in your own country. Not at all, certainly not in terms of money. There are centres in the world where the systems of money will be much, much more dramatically affected than here. Here you experience the trickledown effect of it, but you are not in the centre of the storm by any, any consideration.

We know this is what is talked about at dinner parties, and that’s just a small silly analogy for us to say that we know this is on your hearts and we are responding to it. We are addressing the people who are here. And when we talk about an overhaul of money, we are firstly acknowledging that we are feeling it, we are acknowledging that we can see it. But consider it, consider it or think about it, adopt the attitude that we have given you here today. Think about it like a renovation. Yes there are things you have to go without, maybe, during a renovation. And there are changes you have to make, and you might have to live in a smaller space during your renovation than you ever thought you could possibly squeeze into. And you might have to do very creative things when you are busy renovating because you don’t have access to what you normally had access to. But that is all part of a plan for allowing you an existence after the renovations that you deeply prefer, not superficially prefer. The changes that are afoot in the world at the moment are not superficial changes. That’s why we talked about them being seismic. We’ve talked about the changes being fundamental. All those words we have used to indicate to you that the world’s isn’t just rearranging itself in a small way. It’s not just that you are redoing the decoration in your house. You are renovating it. You are building new foundations in certain places. We are deeply amazed that humanity has given permission for this and that it’s going ahead so fast. It’s for us a phenomenal, a phenomenal phenomenon, if we can put it in that way. It would assist you greatly if you used the time of discomfort to overhaul your own lives. It is one of the opportunities available to you in a time that we can call unstable.

The Benefits of Instability

The time you are living in is unstable. That’s all it is. That’s not a negative word or a positive word. It’s not an overly dramatic or life threatening word. But it is a reality. The word that we use for the times you are living in, the word that we use is unstable. But there are moments in life when it is very good for you to be unstable. Consider yourself as a small baby. If you weren’t prepared to encounter a little bit of wobbliness, you’d never move from crawling to walking. If you weren’t prepared to be a little bit unsure, or unstable, you would never get on top of the jungle gym and slide down the slide. So some of the greatest fun to be had and some the greatest evolutionary or developmental steps, require you to be a little bit unstable first. Human beings want to grow by sitting still, knowing exactly what’s coming moment by moment, everything in its place, everything running according to plan, everything being incredibly reliable and dependable. You can’t grow always in that way. There are some ways of growing like that, you are not required to be always unstable in your life, not at all. But moments of instability, you have needed them, just look at your own lives. You have needed moments of un-sureness before you took a big step. Literally in terms of taking your first step, but also figuratively in terms of taking other big steps in your life. Look at the big events in your life, and look at the periods of unstableness that you went through just before some of those big steps. It is a part of the journey. For us unstableness hasn’t got an emotional ringtone. It isn’t negative and it isn’t positive, it’s just a particular condition that exists at a certain time. And for us, from our perspective, instability happens just before a major step.

Internal Renovation

And so it is a time of life that is unstable. What you can do in a period where the environment around you is unstable, you can do two things. You can either resist that instability and try to circumvent it, try to get out of it, try to bed yourself down and cling onto things that will make it stable. Or you can go with it and embrace the instability and in fact take it on even more! And that, of course, is the option that we would recommend. The environment around you is unstable anyway. So during that time, and you can’t influence that totally, you can’t make it go away necessarily, it’s part of your collective decision, and an individual will cannot go against a collective will, the energies just don’t add up. So you can accept that it is an unstable time and, as we have said, it is unstable everywhere. Different kinds of instability are hitting different places in the world. But everywhere is unstable. So in that you are going to feel unstable anyway. Why not use the opportunity to spring clean your own existence, to renovate internally? The renovations are going on outside you anyway. There’s going to be noise and discomfort anyway. Seeing as that’s happening, why don’t you renovate internally at the same time? Why don’t you embrace instability in you? Why don’t you do an internal overhaul while this is going on? It’s a very good time of it, instead of trying to resist the instability in your lives by clinging onto things and making sure this doesn’t change and that doesn’t move and this investment must be sure and so on, why don’t you go with the flow as it were and embrace instability for all it can give you? What we mean by an internal renovation or an internal overhaul is this: why not use the time, why not use the current environment which is unstable to let yourself question the most fundamental assumptions about yourself that you have always carried? It’s very hard to do that by the way. Usually in order to get a human being to question the most fundamental assumptions about themselves, the bottom ones that they’ve always held onto, usually in order to do that life has to bring a very big event to you in one way or another often an event that comes with some kind of pain or shock. That is often the kind of event that if you haven’t willingly looked at some of your fundamental assumptions in a while, usually life will bring you an event that wakes you up to that. It’s not a punishment, it’s an opportunity. Nothing is a punishment. Oh, we so wish humans beings could deeply, internally get that. You are not being punished when you get cancer. You are not being punished when you are hijacked. You are not being punished when you have an accident. Those are called opportunities. Sometimes it’s rude to say that. And we are aware that with a different bouquet of flowers in the room we would not have the opportunity to call some of those events opportunities. But considering who’s at dinner this afternoon we know what we can and can’t say that will be offensive or not.

Telling a New Story

So what we are suggesting is, instead of waiting for life to bring to you a kind of event to give you permission or an isolated time to relook at your fundamental values and self, why don’t you do it now anyway? What a crazy thought! What a crazy thought for a human being to willing do an internal renovation. To willingly overhaul their internal selves before life makes them do it. But that’s what’s available, that’s what’s available now. In practical terms what that means is that while things are so unsure around you, have a look at some of the things you have always presumed are true about you. Have a look at what you’ve always thought about yourself. Things like: Well, I need a lot of order around me. Or I want to make a lot of money. Or I want to life in a big and comfortable house that I own myself. Or I want my children to have a certain kind of education. Or I’m a healer. Or I’m very feminine. Or I don’t do that kind of thing. Or this isn’t me. Or I couldn’t live a life like that. Or I need a certain amount of money so that I’m just okay. All of those stories that you tell yourself day, after day, after day are just that, they are stories. Some of them have worked very well for you until now, but some of them are past their sell-by date. Some of them are ready to go and to be replaced by stories about who you are that are much more exciting than that. Have a look at the presumptions that you hold about yourself. Have a look at the way that you regularly describe yourself and the things you often say about who you are. Do they excite you? Is it nice for you to be like that? Is that a thrilling kind of existence? Are you inspired by the presumptions that you have about yourself? The things that you say, that you always are, or always will be or never will be? Do those delight you? If they do then by no means is there a need to rebuild the foundations at all. But if they don’t then it’s a wonderful time to use the external renovation and upheaval and instability just to have the opportunity to engage with some internal instability. It is a very frightening, and at the very least uncomfortable, process to question every single thought about yourself that you’ve ever had or that other people have told you you should have. It’s not easy to do that. It requires a lot of investment, the same as renovating a house. We have used our analogies today very carefully so they are not just throwaway examples. They are relevant on lots of levels. And just the same as it requires a big investment to renovate a house, it requires time, for one, that’s the biggest thing, it requires you to be uncomfortable, it requires an investment of money and of energy and of planning. Plus before you renovate a house you have to know what you want. You can’t renovate without knowing what’s wrong and what you would prefer that isn’t there. Exactly the same is true of what we are calling here internal renovation. It’s a chance to look at yourself internally, the way you would look at the house you are living in…you know I have actually never liked that bathroom. I’d actually love a bathroom that looks like this, wouldn’t that be fun? Your external lives are just mirrors for your internal lives. Why not renovate your own heart? Why not shift through your stories of who you are and look at them objectively, the way you would look through your house. You are not ashamed to look at your house and say: Oh, that kitchen must go, I definitely have to have a new kitchen. You don’t have an emotional attachment to that. Just the same way, you can walk through your own heart and say: You know, this timidity of mine about my sexually, that must go. I really would like something a little more flamboyant. That’s the kind of thing we are talking about. We’re not trivialising this, by no means, there’s nothing trivial about a renovation, either externally or internally. We know it takes guts, we know it takes time, we know it takes energy and we know it takes investment of all other types. So just the throwaway example we are using is not an attempt to minimize the work that is required. But let yourselves, or give yourselves permission to, overhaul the stories you have told yourself about you. The same way you would give yourself permission to overhaul a house. Your country is being overhauled, the world is being overhauled. You can resist that and get more rigid, oh, and most people are doing that, most people are getting more stuck in their stories now, because the external world is unstable. That’s a lot of what is happening. People are more adamant about things, more insistent about what should be and about how society must work, and mustn’t work. You are welcome to be insistent about things if you deeply respect and are inspired by what you are insisting. There’s nothing wrong with being adamant, or insistent, or making sure things go a certain way. All we are saying is most of the time human beings are being insistent on stories, or ideas or opinions they’ve had forever. And those opinions are probably not that inspiring to them anymore.

So, our second suggestion to you here today, a very big one, is around the instability of the environment you are in, we recognise it. And either going against that, or using it to become even more unstable. Oh, we often give very strange suggestions in these conversations. We know we are counter-intuitive. We know that what we give here sounds exactly the opposite of what a sensible person would do. But it’s not at all. It’s much more sensible not fighting the dominant energy, you will get exhausted. That’s why we have said it’s important for you to take care, to select the group you spend most time in, because it’s too exhausting trying to fight the dominant consciousness of a group you are in all day, all day. And so in exactly the same way we are suggesting that there is a consciousness, or an energy, of instability around. Some of it is most focused in your country, but some of it is much more focused and much more intense in other places. It’s unavoidable this instability. And you can either go deeper into it and use the opportunity to do a double renovation as it were, and come out with an internal house that you like a lot better, or you can resist it, and that is up to you. But the only reason in this company that we can give you those two options is because we have an understanding that it’s available for each of you here to choose the option of going with. It’s available to you, or we would not have raised it. But we just make it today for you very apparent.

Enjoying Our Children Instead of Managing Them

The third aspect that we would like to raise and it also comes up at dinner parties quite often, much to the irritation and boredom of people in the room that don’t have children, is the subject of children. So we raise it very briefly here, very briefly. It’s not an aspect that we want to spend much time on, but it is something that we find around in the space. And even though we recognise, such as at a dinner party, that the conversation is quite boring for some, and perhaps a little inexplicable, we raise it anyway, because that is also what we are reading here. We’d like to give you permission to enjoy your children instead of managing them. It’s a tough ask, especially when they are very young and when it seems to you that their very survival is dependent on you; that if you don’t feed them and make sure that they wash their ears that those kinds of things won’t happen at all. In that kind of space, it’s very normal, and it happens most of the time, that you slip into the consciousness of management in terms of your children, rather than enjoyment. There’s nothing wrong with that and people have raised children - very conscientious, lovely children by the way - from a consciousness of management, rather than a consciousness of enjoyment, and that is fine. We are not talking about this for the sake of your children, we are talking about this for the sake of you, and for the sake of how you would look back upon these years with young children. And how you can have the opportunity to have used, not just parenting of your own children, but being around children per se, how you can have used that to be adding what’s missing in your life, rather than to be adding something to your life that you’d rather not have. But in order for that to be so, there’s a deep grand permission you have to give yourselves first. And it’s permission to enjoy them. It’s a funny thing, because obviously it would seem so clear that you’d rather enjoy yourself than not, but there’s something still - this is part of the overhaul that we hope happens on the planet - very fundamental in the way human beings parent, that suggests that it’s more important the children exhibit a certain set of behaviours and habits, than that their life is about bringing you joy. If that were not so for parents, the experience of being with small children (also for people who haven’t got their own small children but might encounter them) would be very different. As always, the stories you are telling yourself about who you have to be are determining how the experience is for you. And for a lot of parents the stories are coming from what other people are thinking, and what other people expect of them to do, and what society thinks that young children should be doing, and eating, and saying, and experiencing and so on. It’s a tremendous area of life where people are governed by the opinions of others more strongly than they are by their own hearts’ desires. And that leads to identifying with parenting as a system of management, and of something that’s basically unmanageable, rather than that the purpose of being with a young child is about your own enjoyment. Oh, but many parents wouldn’t allow themselves the luxury, the decadence, the irresponsibility of parenting being about joy. No, that’s not allowed, that would be wrong, that’s irresponsible, we’ll never raise proper adults, conscientious citizens, people with clean ears, if that’s the way we go about parenting.

We suggest to you this. We suggest to you that to your child, your sense of enjoyment has got a bigger influence on them than any of the things you are trying to teach them, any of the habits you are supposed to instil, any of the disciplinary techniques you are trying to use, the nutritional wisdom you are trying to pass across, those are very unimportant to your child at this stage. It changes a little as they start getting older and they start making different requests, but at this stage, if would be for every single child we have ever encountered, it would be more important, that the caregiver, is having fun, than anything else, than anything else. Having fun does not mean drinking to obliterate yourself, or ignoring your children, because it’s not fun to do either of those things. But it can mean that for you, in order for you to have fun, you need a certain number of hours with your child and a certain number of hours without, and that is allowed. Or it can mean that when you are with your child there are certain kinds of activities that you encourage doing. Not the ones that the experts say you must do, but ones that actually are fun for you. It’s a very strange, very strange thing from our perspective that when you have got young children around you, that suddenly your own desires get pushed aside entirely. There’s no other place in adult existence that happens. But in terms of young children the story you tell yourselves about what you are supposed to be for them is a strong story, it’s a cultural story, and it’s weighing you down, it’s weighing you down. So all we are saying today, we promised it would be brief, we know about those dinner parties where people talk about children for hours and hours, it’s very boring, so in order to be brief, all we are suggesting here, choose a story about being around small children that allows you to have fun. It’s permissible, it’s liberating, and it will lighten everyone in the home, not only you.

We have a short amount of energy left for any questions that you may want to bring forward for us.

“Is there any indication of this shift you are talking about that is happening in the world, is that happening in our lifetime, or is it a long term sort of thing?”

Oh yes, oh yes, within your lifetimes, undoubtedly, undoubtedly. It won’t end in your lifetimes, but it will certainly be very visible. What we also can see happening is this, it’s not a smooth linear progression. So it’s not as if the change happens and it goes ahead smoothly, and there’s a plan and things get built, and then the next thing gets built, and then the next thing. Rather like the projects around your new football stadia, what happens is there’s a start, and there’s a stop and then there’s a regression, and we go back and we haven’t got more money and we change our minds and then we start again, and then we stop, and then there’s a strike, and…. There is progress, but it’s not linear, step by step, there’s a little bit of going backwards first, and then moving two steps forward, and then to the side. So it’s not going to look to you on the outside as if we are busy building a brand new society and we done this, tick, now we’ve done that, tick. For those of you who’ve done renovation, you know very well it doesn’t go like that anyway. Things don’t go according to the way you think they should on time, on budget, and everything just going step by step. So it won’t be that we can say to you in ten years time you will have a completely brand new society with brand new education systems, brand new health systems, a brand new idea about how money should and shouldn’t work and so on. You are getting there, but it’s messy. Renovation is messy. Building those football stadia is messy. What we mean by messy is not only the physical mess, but also the process. It’s not smooth, there will be things that look like regressive steps, so we go a bit forward, and then we just go totally back into fighting and conflict, and then we have a peace resolution, and there’s two steps forward and then we break it again. Humanity has shown again and again that that is the way things progress, not in a smooth straight line, but with lots of stops and starts. And steps that look like they’re going in the wrong direction, but eventually all is needed to be part of getting there. But whether you will be see some major overhauls in your lifetimes, undoubtedly, undoubtedly.

“May I ask one question?” Yes. “What message is there about this kind of xenophobia?”

Yes, thank you.

Our understanding of it is a little more fundamental at that. The aspect of colour against colour, or race against race, or culture against culture, or language against language, is the same as the symptom of a disease, it’s the same as one of the symptoms of flu. So if one of the symptoms of flu, let’s say, is a cough, then there is something else that’s caused that, such as a virus for example, or a bacterial infection, or whatever it may be. The xenophobia is a cough. It does exist, we are not suggesting that it’s imaginary, it does exist like a cough exists, but it’s a symptom of something else in the system that is imbalanced, the same as a cough is symptom of something in the body that is imbalanced. And you can look at it of course on a number of levels. But in this particular community the imbalance that is like the virus to the cough, is a question of disparity, a question of the tremendous gap between what some have and what some don’t. When we talk about it as being a virus, we are talking about it as being endemic. It’s part of the very structure of the society. It’s part of the architecture in this country, that some live here, and then there are geographical and physical divides and the other live here. It’s endemic of the society. The xenophobia, in other words the hatred of a foreign aspect is just the cough, and there are other parts of this disease. There’s also a runny nose and muscle ache, so there are other symptoms of the same virus that we have called the virus of disparity. But as you well know there’s a reason why one particular body will attract a virus, and another body that’s also been in the same room and getting the same germs, won’t attract that virus, or won’t invite it to take residence. So there’s an even deeper aspect underneath the virus. In other words, underneath the issue of disparity, or the question of imbalance between what people have and can choose, and what others don’t have and can’t choose, underneath that there’s something more. And that something more underneath that is a fundamental aspect or character or energy of this particular region of the world, it’s not this country of the world, it’s this region. In this region of the world is the sense of what we are calling dominance and submission. Cultures of dominance and submission have always existed in the Sub-Saharan African environment. We can’t really work very well in our conversations with the borders of countries, because the borders of countries don’t align with the borders of energy as we see it. So we are talking more about this region of Africa, and the aspect of dominance and submission. That consciousness of dominance and submission has been a deep part of this area of the world for a long time. And so those who become dominant fight and work and work to stay dominant, and those who are submissive are submissive until the tipping point, when the ones who have had to be submissive fight back. But in fighting back, all they do is they get dominant again and so the cycle continues. To break the Sub-Saharan cycle of dominance and submission will require for people - initially internally, and then as groups - not to accept either dominance or submission. That’s the only way to break the cycle. So it’s not about letting another political party come in, even though they may have integral leaders, and wonderful policies, and letting that party dominate because the cycle of dominance and submission just goes over and over again. So it will require the kind of people who, even when dominance is available, say: No thank you, I wouldn’t like to be dominant. I would like to take the ones who in this situation - and you can apply it to your own lives, with your own children for example – who are submissive on board. Even in this situation where I have the right to be dominant, I’m not going to. I’m bringing on board who, in this situation, would be submissive or who would be forced to be submissive, I’m bringing them on board so that we move together with no dominance and submission going on. That is the way to break the Sub-Saharan African cycle of dominance and submission. That has caused the virus of disparity and that has caused the cough of xenophobia. Does that explain it to you? “Yes, thank you.” Thank you.

Thank you, then we are going to stack the dishes, and take away the wine glasses, and extinguish the fire, and kiss you all good night, and ensure that the conversation can happen again. Thank you.

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Angela Deutschmann

Experience Truth