Question: Is faith an illusion?

Does it really matter?

From one perspective, everything is illusion. Our minds are just like laser beams, focusing on the hologram. Of all the possibilities, they manifest whatever they focus on. We humans, like our Creator, create.

The more important question is what does each of us choose to believe in, choose to focus on, choose to create: Hate or love? Despair or Joy? Resentment or gratitude? What does each of us want to manifest? What can we create together? Can we create a peaceful, powerful, prosperous world?

Question: Have you ever had the feeling/ experience of feeling self righteous in any way?

Absolutely!  I am very self righteous in the sense of always trusting my own perceptions, emotions, and experiences.  At the same time I consciously try to stay open to and hear the expressed perceptions, emotions, and experiences of others.  The form these take may be quite different from my own, but they always provide information about where, mentally and emotionally, the other person is and about the relationship between us.  A short way of saying this is that I am always right for myself at any given moment in time.  I am never right for anyone else.  If the relationship continues, it is because both of us move toward tolerance, respect, and a fuller understanding of one another.  If it doesn't, it's because one of the two people believes their own perceptions, emotions, and experiences are the only valid ones.  That, to me, is the kind of self-righteousness condemned by religion.

"Define "word sculpt" … .sounds…cool… .

Word sculpting is taking raw energy, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, and structuring the energy, through words or symbols, into helpful tools, constructive directions, and win/win solutions. If we're speaking of emotional energy, the raw emotion is always bringing a message that something needs to change. The question is what and how. That's where learning to ask the right questions is effective. If you're asking the wrong questions, you're not going to get answers.

With word sculpting, you work on yourself, which is where your power is, and change others indirectly by changing yourself directly.

Question: "What if my heart and mind just WON'T forgive? Should I fake it??"

No. Faking it is emotional dishonesty. Better to be authentically unforgiving than self-righteously forgiving. But once you recognize this ugly feeling that is part of you, the question becomes: what are you going to do with it?

One thing you can do is give it a little love. Forgive yourself for your unforgiveness. You can ask yourself what it is in your actions or relationships that you need to change so that you don't have to feel this emotion again.

Forgiving yourself increases the forgiveness in the world and makes it easier for you to forgive others. However, if you don't also change your actions which contributed to your feelings of unforgiveness, you're going to simmer in unforgiveness forever. What an ugly thought! Changing your actions may require setting boundaries and that has nothing to do with lack of love. In fact, setting boundaries is love.

Question: Do you resist evil 100%? Does the impulse come to resist, and what do you do with the impulse?

I have to ask you first, what do you mean by the word "evil"?

Personally, I don't much like that word. It smacks of judgment, and judgment is not my job. Discernment, however, is.

Discernment is just noticing and making choices about how I am going to respond to behavior I prefer to call "dysfunctional." Dysfunctional behavior is behavior that is win/lose. Functional behavior is win/win. That means doing the best I know how to bring harmony into a conflicted relationship or situation. Sometimes, I just have to walk away. That, in itself, often leads to harmony, as well as a lesson to the person who is stuck in win/lose thinking. You can also see my blog at http://janetsmithwarfield.com for more about conflict.

As far as impulses go, I always notice them and listen to them, but I rarely act out on them. Instead, I make choices about them. It's called "being the witness." Impulses and emotions are generally bringing me a message I need to hear, decipher, and understand. Once I understand what I need to change in my own life to restore peace and harmony, I can make a conscious choice about the appropriate action to take. It is never about taking action against another. It may be about protecting myself from dysfunctional people and situations.

By making choices about how I am going to change, I put my power back where it belongs - in my own hands.

Question: Why do people need to socialize with one another?

This is one of those questions that truly can't be answered in its present form. There is no general answer. Some people need to socialize. Others don't. You may need to socialize sometimes and not others.

One of my workshop topics is "Ask the Right Questions to Get the Answers You Need." Isn't that the bottom line? Getting an answer you need?

The questions I'd ask are:

1.  What do I get out of socializing with other people?

2.  What do I get out of being alone?

3.  When do I need to be alone?

4.  What kinds of people do I enjoy socializing with?

5.  What kinds of people drain my energy?

6.  Do I need to socialize with someone else now or do I need to be alone?

7. If I need to socialize with someone else now, who will lift my spirits and meet my needs?

Those are questions each of us can answer for ourselves at any given moment.

Socializing with positive, creative thinkers can be hugely supportive to your goals and visions. Choose wisely the people you socialize with.

Question: Can a relationship work when there is a spiritual disparity in understanding. Cannot communicate at all.

That is such a tough question. It has many ramifications. Let's see if we can break it down.

At what level do you want your relationships to "work"?

A car with a bad muffler "works" in the sense that it runs, but it doesn't "work" as well as a car with a good muffler.

A relationship with a spiritual disparity may "work" on some levels. For example, perhaps the partners have children together. Both love their children and are working together to support them. The man earns money to pay the mortgage and buy food. The woman cooks, cleans, washes dirty diapers, and educates the children. Neither is abusive, so on the physical level, the relationship "works." This is a "working" that is not to be discounted.

However, on other levels, the relationship isn't working. In the sexual area, the man wants an orgasm. The woman is frigid, because her needs for mental and emotional communication aren't met. The man spends his free time with his male friends, bragging about how many orgasms he had in a single night. The woman feels deserted and relegated to the role of a convenient babysitter, cook, and cleaning lady.

Perhaps the woman tries to express her feelings and needs to the man. He never learned how to deal with emotions, so he doesn't know what to do with them. After all. He's been taught that real men don't cry, right? God forbid that his buddies should find out he's a weakling. Better to avoid the subject altogether, crack a joke, and move on to an area where he's comfortable and doesn't have to look at what he doesn't understand and doesn't know how to deal with.

This may not be your situation, but I think it's one that occurs entirely too often.

So what does the partner with the more expanded spiritual consciousness do? Not an easy choice. The answer is entirely individual. I can promise you it means you have to change. The change you make in yourself will affect both your partner and your relationship. Will the relationship hold together? I don't know. It will either become stronger and more satisfactory to both partners or there will be too much of a disparity and the partners will go separate ways.

Regardless of what happens to the relationship, I can promise that you will become stronger and wiser in the process and will expand your own spiritual consciousness.

Is God Real?

What a fascinating question! What does this question mean? 

What does the word “God” mean? Are we talking about an old man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud with a thunderbolt in his hand waiting to punish sinners? Are we talking about a king sitting on a throne? Are we talking about something we’ve been told is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, but something that remains a mystery? Are we talking about nature: the chatter of a squirrel, a gorgeous rainbow, a babbling brook, a magnificent sunset? Are we talking about an energy, like electricity, that we can’t see but somehow know is there because we can see the results - the lights go on?

Getting clear on what we mean by the word “God” allows each of us to clarify for ourselves our own answer to the question “Is God real?

Maybe it’s more useful to ask, “In what sense is God real or unreal to me?” You may decide that sunsets and babbling brooks are real, but an old man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud with a thunderbolt in his hand is not.

A friend of mine who was struggling over a similar question suddenly realized she could believe in God when she substituted the word “good” for the word “God.” She somehow knew what good was, even though she didn’t know what God was.

What do we mean by the word “real”? Is it what everyone agrees to call real? Or is it what feels real and makes sense to each of us?

If you and I are both looking at, smelling and touching a daffodil, we would probably agree that the daffodil is real. On the other hand, in the fourteenth century, most human beings agreed that the earth was flat. Was the earth really flat, just because everybody thought it was?

So what does it mean to say that something is real? 

I would encourage you to explore this question in a way that seems appropriate to you and come up with your own answers. You might try setting aside some focused time to journal. The answers you come up with for you are the ones that you will be comfortable with and the ones that will work for you. You might even be able to say with authority, “This is what I believe.”

My answer? From an intellectual perspective, I don’t know. I certainly can’t prove there is or isn’t a God.

However, I have chosen to believe that there is some energy or power greater than myself that somehow supports me and directs my life in miraculous ways that I could never figure out on our own. I have chosen to believe because it has been the only way I can cope with terror. My choice to believe has come from a place of sheer desperation, from hitting such a low spot that I’ve known I simply can’t cope by myself. I’ve had to let go and ask for help, and I wasn’t going to ask other humans.  They were the ones who betrayed me.

I know from observation that when I choose to believe, my life suddenly becomes more harmonious and centered and I can deal with life’s challenges more courageously. Is this really real? I don’t know. It surely feels real.

Sometimes, “making the connection” feels like turning the dial of a radio. At first, I get nothing but static. Then, suddenly, I’m tuned into a crystal clear channel that guides my actions easily and effortlessly. Do I know where I’m going? No. I simply trust that there is much more to this wonderful life we’ve been given than any of us can begin to fathom.