The Songs of the Angels

I know there have always been messages of love and life (and not just the sexy stuff) in the rock and pop worlds, even though I was a bit young for the sixties scene. But now, today, even in the middle of the scanty clothing and the writhing bodies, there is just as much a message of Divine love coming through to us as there always has been. Spirit will always get through somewhere — and given the British riots of August it’s wonderful to know that.

It’s not just in songs of course, it’s movies and books like J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and Terry Pratchett’s incredible work. I recommend Terry’s Small Gods, and Nation to anyone who wants to know the nature of religion and how it affects us.

But back to the music — the angels of God are singing loud and clear to us and to our children. Yes, there’s lots of pain and grief and anger in the hits too but listen carefully and you will hear the music of the spheres. And often, it’s the video that transforms the song from something secular to the work of the Divine.

There’s an article here on my blog about Lady Gaga’s “Judas” and how it perfectly defines the pull of our animal soul (the Nefesh) and the human soul (Neshamah). “Jesus is my virtue, but Judas is the demon I cling to,” she sings wishing she were not continuously drawn to the ‘wrong’ man. The Jesus figure in the video is beautiful, passive and loving but Judas is an animal man of passion.

Like Lady Gaga, we long to embrace the love and truth represented by Jesus in the video but our lower nature is drawn to the excitement, the ‘hit’ and the sexuality of the bad boy, Judas. Here’s the article – the YouTube link for all the songs is at the bottom of this piece.

http://totallylookedafter.blogspot.com/2011/07/still-in-love-with-judas.html

Another song of spirit of 2011 is Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’ about the light’s being within us all and ready to shine as soon as we allow it. But the third song of this summer is the miracle one for me. It’s James Morrison’s ‘I won’t let you go.’

The key is in watching the video and both hearing and seeing the singer not as friend, boyfriend or lover but as God calling to us while we are lost in despair. I beg those of you who are literary to forget the triteness of the poetry and read the message.

And if you feel the fading of the light

And you’re too weak to carry on the fight

And all your friends that you care for have disappeared

I’ll be here, not gone, forever holding on.

The God figure seeks out the girl, who is in despair. She is lying, hopeless and careless of her life, in the middle of a road. As she lies there, alone and lost, she is slowly surrounded by humans (angels) who don’t know what she wants or whether to step forward or step back. They can’t impose on her free will and she is giving no sign. God, in human form (yes, you could say Christ) approaches her, asks nothing of her and lies down with her. All God wants is just to be there to hold her hand so that she can turn to It if she chooses to.

And because of God’s love, the angels can also respond.

Take a look (below).

And so the message this month is to watch for, and appreciate, the love of the Holy One in movies, in songs, in overheard phrases on the street; in the X Factor (truly!) and wherever there is a space for the angels to sing.

And if there is nothing there; no spark, no inspirational light, you know what? There’s you. And that’s exactly why you’re there. God is waiting to speak, move or sing through you, just as It has through James Morrison.

James Morrison I won’t let you go.

Katy Perry Firework.

Lady Gaga Judas.

The Four Faces of Jesus

One of the great theological debates about the New Testament is ‘why four gospels?’ We know that many more were written, including the famous Nag Hammadi scripts with writings by the disciples Philip and Thomas and even one accredited to Mary Magdalene. These were Gnostic gospels which had a very different ‘take’ on the world – believing in the idea of ‘external evil’ as opposed to the ‘all creation is good’ teachings of Genesis and of Jesus’ time.

However, there were other non-Gnostic gospels that were also rejected including The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of the Egyptians and the Gospel of the Hebrews.

It is very unlikely that the four Gospels selected for the New Testament were picked at random. There had to be a rhyme and reason – and something that would be useful for us to understand today.

Irenaeus writes in Adversus Haereses:

The Gospels could not possibly be either more or less in number than they are. Since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is spread over all the earth, and the pillar and foundation of the Church is the gospel, and the Spirit of life, it fittingly has four pillars, everywhere breathing out incorruption and revivifying men. From this it is clear that the Word, the artificer of all things, being manifested to men gave us the gospel, fourfold in form but held together by one Spirit. As David said, when asking for his coming, 'O sitter upon the cherubim, show yourself '. For the cherubim have four faces, and their faces are images of the activity of the Son of God. For the first living creature, it says, was like a lion, signifying his active and princely and royal character; the second was like an ox, showing his sacrificial and priestly order; the third had the face of a man, indicating very clearly his coming in human guise; and the fourth was like a flying eagle, making plain the giving of the Spirit who broods over the Church. Now the Gospels, in which Christ is enthroned, are like these

This idea four aspects or four worlds in prominent in the Jewish mystical tradition. Nowadays, we’ve all heard of Madonna’s studies into Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. But Madonna’s Kabbalah is a 16^th century re-write of a very old tradition which, in Jesus’ time, was known as Merkabah.

Merkabah means ‘chariot’ and the name comes from the book of Ezekiel. The tradition itself dates back to Abraham.

One of the beliefs in the Merkabah tradition was that we humans exist at four levels – physical, psychological (or soul), spiritual and Divine. Each of those levels is represented by an element – Earth, Water, Air and Fire – and we draw on all of them at different times according to how we are feeling.

If the Gospel writers knew of the Merkabah tradition, then choosing four Gospels could be a way in which Jesus’ story could be told at these four different levels – literally, allegorically, spiritually and mystically.

For those who were happy with the overview of the story, then all the Gospels could be woven together in one narrative – as in a Nativity play with both the shepherds and the Magi appearing in the same story or in a Passion Play with Jesus saying ‘My God, why has Thou forsaken me?’ and ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do,’ in the same scene.

But for those who were looking for a deeper significance, or who were familiar with the esoteric tradition of the time, the four Gospels would provide a feast of different interpretations – and a much deeper knowledge of our own selves at the same time.

As metaphors for human development, Matthew represents the physical Jesus, Mark the psychological (soul) Jesus, Luke the spiritual Jesus and John the Divine Jesus.

Matthew represents the Earth world of ‘reality.’ Matthew writes of earthly power, tribe  and leadership, including the importance of the right ‘bloodline’ in the family.  He also highlights the physical concerns and challenges of everyday life on earth and refers to Jesus’ physical kingship as Messiah. Jesus’ birth is told with the emphasis is on Joseph’s genealogy and Joseph’s views, on the visit of the wise men with their physical gifts and King Herod’s fears over the birth of a physical King of the Jews and the consequent slaughter.

Here, the temptations before Jesus in the desert are all physical: turn stones into food, put his life in danger to prove that God would save him and the offer of the kingship of the world.

Mark represents the psychological world – the soul’s world. This element of Water demonstrates how fluid our thoughts and feelings are. It is at this soul level that we can choose whether or not to be separate from animals (the ‘wild beasts’ in Mark’s Temptation story) in that we can become aware of free will. It is through the soul that we decide to act for good or for evil.  Jesus’ temptation in Mark is a choice between his baser self and a higher level of consciousness where he may be in touch with angels.

Luke writes of the Spiritual world represented by the element of Air. Luke is a very feminine account of Jesus’ life that strongly features his mother and his female friends. It contains nineteen stories about women as compared to four or five in all the other Gospels. Doing so emphasises that this is the Spiritual perception of life – women’s place in the physical and tribal worlds were deemed unimportant in the Jewish, Roman and Greek worlds of Jesus’ time but, at the spiritual level, the feminine in Judaism was deeply respected. The Shekhinah or Presence was the name given to the feminine aspect of God and it was believed to be present in all married women. In fact, without a wife to light the candles, a Jewish man could not perform the sacred Sabbath Eve service in his home on a Friday night. (In the Midrash – a commentary on the first five books of the Bible – it says that when Isaac married Rebekah ‘The light came back into Abraham’s tent for the first time since Sarah died.’

Luke’s Gospel focuses on Mary’s visit to Elizabeth; on how Mary feels; how she wraps her baby in swaddling clothes and lays him in a manger.

The emphasis is on family, marriage, communication and it works in tandem with Matthew’s tribal aspects, balancing masculine with feminine. For Jesus’ temptation in the desert, it offers the same challenges as in Matthew, but in a different order which is very relevant. Jesus is told to command stone to be turned into bread; given the opportunity to rule the world and ordered to challenge God to save him by throwing himself off the Temple in Jerusalem.

In Matthew, he replies with answers from the written (physical) law and in Luke he takes a different stance, replying with God’s own authority at the Spiritual level.

John’s Gospel does not tell of any temptation; at the level of development he is writing about, humanity would have transcended worldly needs. This Gospel is the Divine World represented by the element of Fire. It tells of direct experience of God. There are no parables, similes or allegories: it is Jesus telling us straight.

The Passion

For Matthew and Mark the crucifixion is full of anguish. Luke and John are focused on the mystery and the importance of a Divinely inspired right of passage.

The Synoptic Gospels write that the ‘veil of the Temple was rent’ when Jesus died. In an ordinary death, Jewish mystics taught that the veils of the two lower worlds (Matthew and Mark) are opened to let the soul though to the spiritual world. In the case of a Messiah, all three lower veils (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are opened to give direct access to the Divine.

In Matthew, the earth quakes, the rocks are rent and bodies rise from the graves; in Mark, darkness comes down during the crucifixion and in Luke the Sun is darkened.

In John there is no physical reaction to Christ’s death but there is immediate emphasis that the next day is the Sabbath – the holy day of the Jews – and that Jesus’ body must be taken down because that is a day of Divine contemplation and sacred rest.

In the lower worlds of his body and psyche, as represented in Matthew and Mark, Jesus is depicted as crying out at his betrayal – his physical and psychological bodies reacting as any ordinary man would. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

In Luke, Jesus is able to see his crucifixion as impersonal. There is no judgement of it or other people’s behaviour. Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do …, into thy hands I commend my spirit.

In John, the crucifixion is represented simply as a necessary evil on the way to new life. Without Jesus’ acceptance and acknowledgement of death, resurrection cannot occur. Jesus gives completion to his mother by giving her into John’s care and gives himself willingly to death purely as the next stage of his development as a Divine being. It is finished.

Looking at the Gospels at these four levels teaches me that I react to life at different levels myself and that comfort and happiness come from focus on the spiritual and Divine thoughts, not the daily grind of pattern and habit. The four levels of passion are also useful as tools for forgiveness. They teach me that as long as I focus on the physical or emotional pain, the harder the process is. To see the wider picture and to realise that other people probably had no idea of the level of pain they were causing with their actions is the greatest step to healing as it takes the issue out of the personal. Finally, to accept that the task is all done and dusted – whatever happened is over and in the past and it is my choice whether to call it up again and again or to let it go, once and for all –  simply to die to the problem. To die to the problem means that resurrection to a new life truly will happen – even if it’s only in my mind.

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.

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.