Friday

From Credit Crunch to Pure Prosperity Chapter One


Chapter One: The Credit Crunch and the Law of Attraction 

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Franklin D. Roosevelt said these immortal words in 1933 at the time of the Great Depression.

How right he was. Whenever we are told repeatedly that there is a problem, particularly a problem with something that carries as much emotional weight as money, we are bound to feel afraid. It is the human Ego’s natural response to negative outside stimuli. But, in the modern world, fear itself is the root of most of our problems. Fear – or adrenalin – was designed to make us either run away or to attack. Both of these are appropriate reactions if we are faced with an angry grizzly bear. Both are totally inappropriate if we are dealing with intangible matters such as love, happiness – and money.

Money is intangible? Yes indeed. Money only exists in the mind of humanity. It is less “real” today than it ever has been. When we first invented money it was a token of something tangible such as a sheep or a precious metal. Nowadays, mythical amounts of energy pass between bank accounts with the validation of a piece of plastic. Mathematics keeps a score but nothing of true value actually changes hands any more. The value is all in our minds.

One person on BBC radio who was discussing the 2008 credit situation said, “It turns out that all this prosperity we’ve been experiencing is only based on imaginary money!” He sounded really angry. But if the money was imaginary in the first place, then the problems with the money must also be imaginary. If it’s all imagination, then it’s up to us to choose what we want to imagine.

Can it really be that simple? Yes it can. But simple isn’t the same as easy.

First we need to work out why we got to think that it was complicated.

Thanks to the DVD of The Secret, the teachings of Abraham and many other best-selling authors and spiritual mentors, the idea of the Law of Attraction has become widely known. It works on the simple principle of “like attracts like” or “birds of a feather flock together.”

The idea of the Law of Attraction may only recently have become mainstream but it is not a new discovery. It is at the heart of the Hindu principle of karma (what you put out comes back; what goes around comes around) and it is evident throughout great religious texts including the Bible. Deuteronomy chapter 31 verse 19 puts it quite succinctly: “I call Heaven and Earth to record this day on your account, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses; therefore choose life, so that you and what you sow may live.”

Judaeo-Christian mystics have also always taught what we would now call the Law of Attraction as a way of understanding how life works and how to lead a happy and prosperous life; they just didn’t call it by the modern name.

The Law of Attraction is immutable. It means that we attract into our lives the things with which we resonate. All of life is vibration and what you think and feel dictates the level of your personal vibration. When we feel good, we have a high vibration and when we feel bad, we have a low vibration.

It follows that if thinking about having a new home, a good job or a wonderful relationship makes us feel good then we need to maintain that level of vibration to attract what we want. Lowering our vibration with thoughts of lack puts us out of alignment with anything that could bring us joy – and therefore it cannot show up in our experience.

Those of us who focus on love, prosperity and happiness attract exactly what we are thinking about – and those of us who worry, fret and beat ourselves up attract more reasons to become upset.

But how can I be attracting it if I don’t want it?
The Universe, the Source, the Chi, the Creative Force, God, whatever you want to call it does not recognise the word “not” as in “I do not want this.” When we say, “I do not want to be broke,” It only hears the emphasis (and the vibration) on the idea of being broke.

You can test this out for yourself by thinking of how much you don’t want to be in financial trouble or something else that you don’t want that would upset you. If you observe your thoughts, you’ll see that if you dwell the not wanting of a subject for just one minute, more negative and unhappy thoughts start to seep into your mind about the likelihood of exactly what you don’t want coming to pass. You get to feel worse and worse – and your vibrational level drops.

It is the same for happy thoughts too – think happy things and more happy thoughts come. But for reasons that we will examine throughout this book, in the modern world, thoughts of prosperity seem to be harder for we humans to access. Certainly they are harder to find when there is already a negative thought entwined within our mind.

Since the advent of New Thought Churches such as Unity, founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore in 1889 and the world-famous The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, first published in 1952, the idea of affirming a positive thought to create a better situation has become a basic principle for those interested in creating a better life for themselves. To affirm good for one’s Self, such as saying, “I am healthy, wealthy and wise,” is intended to re-programme the mind instead of letting it habitually focus on negativity, which leads to a low vibration.

Affirmations work – to a certain extent. They work when they do not oppose any deep inner belief or when the desire to change our life is so powerful that we feel it in the core of our being. When my first husband died and my media career as an expert on China hit the impasse that was Tiananmen Square in 1989, I was desperate enough to engage in the idea of positive thinking for the first time. I tried affirmations and found that they bought great relief. I was in such pain that I was desperately seeking anything that would help so I threw myself into the work of changing my thoughts.

However, once I began feeling a little better, the impulse faded away as my internal opposition set in. I began to think that I probably shouldn’t be too happy as it would be disrespectful to Henry’s memory; it would look as though I wasn’t grieving and I had to grieve if people were to believe that I had loved him. And it would just be preposterous to appear be happy when I was a young widow or when my whole career had gone down the pan. People would think I was crazy! I didn’t have such resistance to the idea of earning a living – after all, my Ego thought, if I was miserable enough I was bound to earn money wasn’t I?
It’s this kind of inner programming which is at the root of our habitual negative thinking and which can so easily scupper efforts to make our lives better. It is known as resistance and it is very powerful. Resistance must never be underestimated or discounted. That way it gets to win. And if it wins, we remain unhappy and broke.

In my case, my unhappiness was such that my subconscious mind felt the situation to be verging on a threat to my survival. If I died, my subconscious would die too. Therefore, it did not put up resistance to something that would rekindle the desire to go on living within me. Once that had been achieved, any more was unnecessary and could make me a target for the derision or even hatred of others. That’s the point where resistance kicked in.

Here’s an example of how our mind works:

“I want to be prosperous and happy.”

I don’t have enough money; I don’t have enough money. I didn’t have enough money when they said everything was economically sound; I’m going to have even less now there’s a crisis. What I have got will be taken away.

“I want to be prosperous and happy.”

I want doesn’t get…I can’t ask to be prosperous when there are people in trouble. Other people would hate me. It’s not fair; I never get what I want. I hate money. Why does it always have to be about money? I’m a good person. I do my best. No one appreciates me. I’ll probably lose my job in this credit crunch. It’s not fair.

“I want to be prosperous and happy.”

I don’t have enough money; you don’t have enough money. It says so in the paper. It says so on the news. We don’t have enough money. I don’t like not having enough money. You don’t like not having enough money. I must listen to the people on the radio who are complaining about them so I won’t feel alone in this. So I won’t have to blame myself.  It’s always “them.” It’s their fault. They did this to me. They did this to us. We must shout against them and make them change things so that it’s better for us. There’s nothing I can do for me but I can shout about them.

By the Law of Attraction we have put out three positive desires of wanting happiness and more than thirty negative desires about lack.

Don’t doubt for one minute that the Law of Attraction will respond to that ratio. It’s not a conscious force that thinks “They don’t really mean all that complaining; all they mean is the good stuff.” It can’t do that. All it can do is give us an exact mirror of what we think and feel and with that ratio of negative to positive thoughts, our vibration cannot be at the level of prosperity.

The so-called credit crunch (I won’t give it capitals because that gives it a proper name and names are very powerful to the human psyche) came about through just such a process. We created it through toxic thinking.

Toxic Fashion

For years, the world’s economy has been expanding with more building, more services, more goods to be purchased. And marketing (the modern-day magic) has thrived through teaching us by repetition that we must have this product or that concept. For example, people in the Western World have spent millions of pounds taking up carpets and laying wooden or laminate floors because they were told that those were the fashionable floors to have. Both kinds of floors work; it’s just marketing. In the same way, we have all recently changed the design of our spectacles to suit the fashion where the previous style worked perfectly well. Fashion creates desire within a tribal society that wants to be seen to be up with the pack leaders.

But in the four or five years before the economy did its downturn, people were starting to say, “This can’t go on. Houses are too expensive. I can’t afford to buy. My job isn’t paying enough for me to buy all the things that I want to buy. I will feel better if I have a Luis Vuitton bag but I can’t afford one. Oh, never mind, I’ll get it on a credit card. Now I can’t pay my credit card off. It’s not fair. Look at all those wealthy celebrities. They can afford Luis Vuitton and I can’t. I can’t pay my bills; I don’t have enough money to keep up. I must keep up. My friends all have designer handbags so I need my Louis Vuitton. In fact, I need a Chanel bag now because Felicity has three designer bags. I can’t afford it; it’s too much.”

And at the same time, the politicians and the economists have been saying, “The bubble has to burst; it’s all going to end in tears; the expansion’s too much” and journalists have been looking (as journalists do) for the negative stories.

In 1993, British newscaster,  Martyn Lewis launched a "good news" campaign suggesting that the constant diet of crime and catastrophe that the News feeds to us was unhealthy and should be counterbalanced by positive stories,of happy outcomes. The press – and much of the public - heaped scorn upon him and Lewis lost a lot of work. The simple truth is that good news is no news because our Egos are more comfortable with the bad.

Nowadays, with extraordinary levels of complaint, criticism and toxic gossip skidding across the internet and a culture of blame, we are harnessing the Law of Attraction magnificently. The trouble is that we are activating it in a way that cannot help us to thrive.

Luckily, the natural state of this Universe is abundant; it is predicated towards good. It that were not the case, we would have imploded with the advent of television soap operas. But enough is enough.

How We Create “Truth”

We create everything in our own lives and the irony is that we create nearly all of it by default; simply by reading or listening to the views of others and believing them.
Strangely enough, it is belief that creates truth not the other way around. So if a number of people believe something, it becomes a truth. Enough people locked into the idea that there was a financial problem for it to come into being. But the good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Each one of us can create or resolve a financial issue completely on our own. 

Yes, of course, it’s easier if everyone else goes along with us but prosperity is a very personal thing. As long as you can raise your vibrationary level and work at the level of the Soul, not the Ego, then the outside world’s affairs don’t have to affect you at all.

Then, if you prosper, you can teach others how to do it too.

At the moment, I am more prosperous than I have ever been despite what would seem to be an outside problem. But I have had two great credit crunches of my own in the past, one of which was in line with the outside world’s thinking (the dot-com crash) and the other of which was entirely personal.

In fact I’ve used the knowledge and techniques in this book to bring me back to prosperity from widowhood, divorce, business crashes, a failed emigration attempt, loss of home, career and the beliefs that I was stupid, inadequate and unworthy of love, happiness and money.
I’m still learning – this is a life’s work. But hopefully, by using this book as one of your guides in creating a happier life, you can take a few more short-cuts than I did.

You don’t have to be affected by the outside world; it is all about you. Your choices, your vibration and your energy. And not choosing is just as much a choice making a conscious decision. Those who don’t choose, rise or fall with the state of the world because they are working from the Ego state. Those who do choose are coming from the level of the Soul. It is the Soul which has the ability to step up and over everyday conditions. But in the secular world, we barely know let alone understand the difference between Ego and Soul.

If you’re not comfortable with the idea of Soul – the immortal, totally human aspect of each of us – you can substitute the idea of consciousness or Self. What is important is not the terminology but the ability to think and act consciously. It is perfectly possible to live a prosperous and comfortable life no matter what the outside circumstances might be. And that is not a selfish thing to do. Those who prosper inspire others and by learning how to live an abundant life you can teach others to do the same.

After all, no one will ever come up to you and say, “Do tell me, please – what is the secret of your failure?”


Thank you for reading!
You can purchase From Credit Crunch to Pure Prosperity by clicking on this link: Amazon.com in book or Kindle format. Or in an e-pub from my website.

Thursday

HeartWork - Are You Ready To Commit?


This is the time for inspired businesses; for spiritual companies; for working from our soul level.

I’ve been blessed enough to follow my heart’s desire as a career for the last 20 years, writing and teaching on the Spiritual Laws of Prosperity, Kabbalah and Soul Wisdom.

However, along the way I’ve fallen flat on my face many times mostly because I didn’t have companions in the Work to help and advise me where I was going off-course. The advice I got was from people in conventional businesses who didn’t ‘get’ my purpose. As the poet Rumi says: "When setting out on a journey do not consult someone who has never left home.”

Sometimes I was too proud to ask for help or was too busy trying to help other people to give myself time to receive. I’ve been too arrogant to go to workshops which could have helped me; I’ve been resentful when things didn’t work out instead of being grateful for the guidance that I was going in the wrong direction.

And I see others doing just the same as I used to do while covering it over with a layer of pretty pink fluff, and saying ‘I’m going with the flow’ or ‘it wasn’t meant to be’ and pretending that all is well when what should be a thriving holistic business is failing. So often the issue is just about being half-an-inch out of line with your true path — but that half-an-inch makes all the difference.

If we simply go with the flow we are subject to the vagaries of the river and can get smashed into rocks. One of my great spiritual teachers, Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, taught me that it is vital to row one mile an hour faster than the current. That way, you can see the rocks coming and navigate round them. All this means is to stay awake and see the patterns forming in your business so that you can make the appropriate changes that will enable you to thrive.

Among the many things I have learnt is that you need commitment to prosper in your own work. Commitment involves discipline and it’s likely that many of us desired to start our own business or work in complementary therapy because we wanted to get away from the traditional ‘You must do this or that in the way the company dictates’ idea.

It can be hard to discipline ourselves to do daily meditation; to continue to grow so that we can serve our clients better; to understand what our own blocks to abundance may be. But the problem with saying, “I’ll do that one of these days” is that one of these days never comes.

Another big source of resistance is about receiving. We give and do without realising that by constantly taking charge and pushing, we block off the Universe’s ability to give to us.

To transform this, we need companions on the journey who will hold us accountable.  That’s why the Mastermind group idea is so useful. This was made popular by Napoleon Hill in his classic Think and Grow Rich back in the early 1900s. In a Mastermind group, participants support and challenge each other to create and carry out goals, brainstorm ideas, treating each other with honesty, respect and compassion. If we work together to create and thrive in our spiritual business then we draw the Universal Mind in to help us as well.

Your peers give you feedback, help you brainstorm new possibilities, and set up accountability structures that keep you focused and on track.

The only trouble with a Mastermind group is that often people just get into ‘cosy chat’ mode and much of the potential benefit is lost. That’s why, together with the Tree of Life Magazine, I’m setting up the HeartWork Group. Our aim is to light a pure flame underneath our local holistic businesses; to be authentic, to hold each other accountable and to strengthen and develop our purpose and our prosperity.

We’ll be holding regular weekly meetings in Moseley, Birmingham, all aimed at helping you to thrive in the work you love. Each one will include regular and spiritual marketing ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ talks and visualizations as well as a Mastermind session. The first meeting, on Wednesday 1st February is FREE. 


The course will also include:

  • Learning what is unique about your business: to succeed in the plethora of Holistic businesses, it is vital to specialise.
  • Why it doesn't matter if you are not fully healed; it may help clients relate to you.
  • How to state clearly who you are and what you do
  • How to ask for what you want.
  • The levels within you that will inspire or resist your goals

Come and join us and together we can build our passion into successful businesses that will help the world to prosper as well as ourselves. Booking is essential so please email me on mw@treeoflifepublishing.co.uk or call 0121 449 0344 to book your place.



Tips to help your holistic business thrive:


  • ·      Discover your Unique Selling Point. What is it about you that infuses your work? Clarifying that to the Universe will help it to support you.
  • ·      Start each day with an affirmation that you and your work will be inspired and inspirational.
  • ·      Continue to learn. The willingness to refresh your knowledge shines through you.
  • ·      Understand your prosperity issues. There is a free one-hour MP3 on the Spiritual Laws of Prosperity on Maggy’s website.
  • ·      Bless every phone call that comes in before you answer.
  • ·      Appreciate each and every client.
  • ·      Add value: put your clients’ names up on Silent Unity for extra help and support or put them on your own regular healing list.
  • ·      Meditate. Not only is it relaxing, it tells the universe that you are willing to receive.


Details of the HeartWork Course:

HeartWork: Helping you make a success of the work you love.

A five-week course on practical inspiration in holistic business with teaching and discussion. Facilitator: Maggy Whitehouse author of From Credit Crunch to Pure Prosperity.

Includes Mastermind sessions.

Introductory evening: Wednesday 14th September. 7.30pm.  (FREE).

Venue: Moseley, Birmingham.
Course dates: Wednesdays 28th September, 12th and 26th October, 2nd and 16th November.

Cost: £95.

Please book your place in advance. Email: mw@treeoflifepublishing.co.uk or call 0121 449 0344.

Why Everybody Else is More Important Than You.

I’ll own up immediately. I think I’m pretty important. Certainly more important than the guy who’s on the phone trying to sell me something I don’t want and didn’t ask for.

And so do you. You almost certainly think (in secret at least) that you are more important than me. Your views matter and are probably better than mine. You know exactly how important you are and sometimes it’s really annoying that other people don’t.

But here’s the biggest secret to doing good business. You have to know that everybody else is more important than you.

It’s no good trying to sell them what you want them to have; you have to find out what they want and how best to get it to them. Then they’ll buy happily because they feel loved, special and looked after.

But even more than that, to succeed in your own business, you have to be sincere. It’s not about flattering with your teeth gritted, it’s about finding something genuinely to appreciate or admire in the other.

Greet them with pleasure, smile, even if you’re on the telephone. Let them know that it has made your day that they got in contact. If they’re in front of you, hold out your hand; if you like what they are wearing, say so. But don’t automatically assume that they want you to hug them. When you auto-hug you are doing what you want and saying that the other person’s view is not important.

If they’re cross or upset, it’s about acknowledging their feelings and telling them that they are perfectly justified instead of just defending your position. If you can’t actually apologise, you can tell them that you are sorry to see them so upset because then, at least they’ll have been heard.

If you’re sincere in your appreciation of the importance of others. Then they will appreciate you.  And your self-importance will like that.

Here’s an example: I recently facilitated at the wedding of two dear friends. They wanted a particular service format which I thought was ... um ... well, let’s just say it wasn’t “me.” But look, there’s me being important again! It was their wedding. My opinion had nothing to do with it.

So I had a think and wondered exactly what it was about that service that I was resisting and how I could turn that around in service to them so I could be the priest with integrity that they wanted me to be. And the answer was simple: it was a generic service. No matter how beautiful it was, it wasn’t about them.

So, what I did do was help them to make the wedding unique to them — I gave them some examples of how to draw their own differing religious heritages into their chosen service; some actions they could do and some sacred texts they could honour and they were thrilled. They felt (quite rightly) important. Together we melded the service they wanted into something even more special that made them feel acknowledged, unique and special.

So remember, everyone thinks they are more important than you. And if you want to serve them, you have to admit that they are right. And if you can do that, it will turn out perfect for you too.

Still in Love with Judas...


God can surprise you from the strangest places. I’m a bit too middle-aged to be on the Lady Gaga bandwagon but one day I turn on the TV and there she is, still in love with Judas. But this a new take on Judas: a hard-riding bruiser of a hell’s angel on a Harley.


Here's the video from YouTube.

Now I’ve been writing about Judas — as bad guy, good guy, misunderstood guy, essential-part-of-the-story guy — since 1994. And suddenly a 25-year-old pop superstar blows my socks off by supplying a link that had been missing in all those years.

“Jesus is my virtue but Judas is the demon I cling to...” Those words might be truer than most of us might like to admit.

Judas is the metaphor for the bad guy — we all know that — the one who held the disciples’ purse; the one called the thief, the one who took 30 pieces of silver in return for leading the guards to Jesus; the one who betrayed his friend and master with a kiss.

He’s our resistance to spiritual growth, to financial prosperity, to following our truth. He’s the one who makes it easy for us to help others as an excuse not to have time to honour our own spiritual path (that’s theft from ourselves). He’s the one who makes us think that we’re not good enough to do our own life’s work and helps us negate others who are trying to do theirs ... He’s the one who often keeps us poor because we’re ‘too good’ to have to sell our work to others.

Perceptions over Judas and money are some of the biggest obstacles that a spiritual teacher raised in a Christian society has to face and overcome if they want to make a good living from healing, teaching or developing an holistic business. I’ve been teaching the Spiritual Laws of Prosperity for 16 years now and 
Judas is right in there as a powerful subconscious spiritual reason why money is seen as negative; hard to ask for; somehow not kosher. You don’t want to seem greedy after all — aren’t you here to help people not charge them...?

This is what Charles Fillmore, founder of Unity Church, says about Judas in his Twelve Powers of Man:

“Judas governs the life consciousness in the body, and without his wise co-operation the organism loses its essential substance, and dies. Judas is selfish; greed is his "devil." Judas governs the most subtle of the "beasts of the field" — sensation; but Judas can be redeemed. The Judas function generates the life of the body. We need life, but life must be guided in divine ways. There must be a righteous expression of life. Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, must in the end be cleansed of the devil, selfishness; having been cleansed, he will allow the life force to flow to every part of the organism. Instead of being a thief (drawing to the sex center the vital forces necessary to the substance of the whole man) Judas will become a supplier; he will give his life to every faculty. In the prevailing race consciousness Judas drains the whole man, and the body dies as a result of his selfish thievery.”

In the Judaic mystical tradition of Kabbalah ‘life force’ refers to the Sefira or circle called Nezach or “Victory.” Nezach is the source of our creativity, sexuality, activity — and of our addictions. Negative Nezach seeks the “hit” of another coffee, chocolate, drug, sexual partner, gossip or episode of our favorite soap opera.  Positive Nezach keeps us powered until we achieve our goal and stand up in our truth.

I knew all this — but it wasn’t until the Lady Gaga video that I recognised this negative other side of the ‘life force’ in Judas. The character in her Judas video is a fighter, a drinker, a womanizer but still horribly attractive as only the bad boy can be.

This Judas aspect, when healthy, is the part of us that forces us to step up and out into the light. The one that makes us show up in our true glory. We need positive Judas. We need that power and animal force. Without Judas, we wouldn’t have the resurrection and perhaps no Christianity at all.

I’m not convinced that Judas was the bad guy. Apart from his name being just a little too convenient (meaning “of the tribe of Judah” or “Jew”) and the fact that the betrayal isn’t mentioned once in St. Paul’s writings, which are the earliest we have, there is a possibility that he could be an added-in character. There’s no evidence of a crucifixions in Jerusalem of anyone called Jesus anywhere near the Biblical time and there are no contemporary written references to Jesus at all. Until 1961 when a tablet was found in Caesarea, there was no historical evidence for the existence of Pontius Pilate either. And here are no legal records of his administration — no papyri, no rolls, no tablets.

So, to make the story stick and to send this glorious message of hope around the world, the story-teller in me thinks we might need some back-up — and what better than a good old-fashioned baddie who gives us someone to blame at the same time as making the story believable?

For a resurrection story to have credibility, back in those days as well as in ours, there has to be evidence that somebody died first. And there’s enough speculation nowadays about Jesus not actually dying on the cross but bolting to India or Glastonbury (or somewhere equally unlikely) to demonstrate that people are looking for the Occam’s Razor in any scenario. “It would make more sense for him to have been still alive than to resurrect.” Of course it would, but great stories — and even great myths — are not about common sense. They’re about miracles!

For anyone to believe that Jesus was resurrected, in first century Judea, his death had to be public and undeniable at that time. How easy would it have been for those who hated him to have stabbed him in a back street or poisoned him while he ate with friends? Then any claim of a miracle could have been pooh-poohed with ease.

The killing had to be carried out in public at a time when people were in Jerusalem to witness it and Passover was the one festival that everyone attended. You could get away with missing out some of the sacred times in Jerusalem but, unless you were sick, pregnant or the one deputed to stay home to mind the flocks for the village, you went to Jerusalem for Pesach.

We do have reason to believe from the Gospels that Jesus knew full well what was going to happen; he tells Judas to hurry with his mission and waited around in the Garden of Gethsemane when he could easily have vanished quietly. He also asks the disciples to stay awake and watch with him but they sleep. If they had stayed awake psychologically they might have seen that the kiss, which is seen as the final insult, might have been a genuine greeting between friends with a sad but important mission.

Pilate gives Jesus as many chances as he can to be acquitted but Christ won’t take them. He’s determined to fulfil his destiny.

Paradidomi, the word translated in the New Testament as ‘betrayed,’ is just as accurately translated as ‘handed over.’ There is a distinct difference in energy between the two meanings. Paradidomi would be just as accurate if the text made it clear that Judas was under orders to do what he did.

I know I’m not the first to suggest this. Ironically, in Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ, his scenario of Judas as the good guy who did Jesus’ will in handing him over was drowned out by the furore over sex and Mary Magdalene but it’s not a new theory by any means.

In my first novel, The Book of Deborah, I made the heroine Jesus’ cousin and Judas’s wife; someone who loved Judas deeply and understood his motivation. In my latest, The Miracle Man, I made Judas a female PR guru believing entirely that her X Factor judge Messianic client would resurrect and organising an on-air assassination at the Super Bowl in order to demonstrate his divinity.

In Lady Gaga’s Judas video, Jesus is beautiful but sad and passive; Judas is active, aggressive and sexual. We yearn to love and comfort Jesus but we are drawn to the lower beast that feeds our senses. Most actors will tell you that they would rather play the bad guy; they are just so much more interesting.

In Kabbalah, Jesus represents the Neshamah, the human soul; Judas, as the Nezachian life-force, is the Nefesh, the animal soul which can support or corrupt the Neshamah according to its level of health.
So what is Judas to us? The scapegoat for a start. The scapegoat in Judaism is a goat laden with the sins of the people which is driven out into the wilderness. The sins have all gone; good-oh. We can get on with our lives then.

This animal Judas is the inner voice that says “You’re right and the others are wrong.” He’s the “It wasn’t my fault; they made me do it.” He’s the “another drink won’t hurt.”  He’s also the “hit” of going to workshop after workshop and reading book after book without actually applying any of the principles so you live life on a rollercoaster of hope and despair. He is very clever, very subtle and every betrayal of self that there is. Judas did not betray Jesus; Jesus chose to die and to resurrect. Judas betrayed himself — whichever of the scenarios you follow.

And that’s the greatest truth that Judas can teach us. No one betrays you except yourself. No matter what the other does to us, it is our acceptance of their blame or accusation that hurts us. It’s our choice whether we apply the self-discipline to become the person we were truly meant to be or run with the excuses and betray our soul.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.”

 Gospel of Thomas.


Time For Some Not Fake Food.