The Earthly and the Spiritual

By Dr. Margaret Paul
December 31, 2006

Being disconnected from a spiritual source of love leads us to operate from anger, fear, anxiety and depression. This causes untold individual and planetary stress and pain.

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Spiritual abuse, which is anything in our religious, educational, and child rearing practices that disconnects us from a personal source of spiritual guidance, wreaks havoc within each of us and within our society as a whole. Being disconnected from Spirit leads us to operate from an earthly perspective rather than a spiritual perspective. This causes untold individual and planetary pain. We are operating from an earthly perspective when control over the outcome of events, power over others and greed are our primary motivating factors. We operate from an earthly perspective when protecting ourselves against that which we fear - aloneness, loneliness, helplessness, rejection, being controlled by others - is more important than learning and loving. On the earthly level, our highest priorities are to get love, feel safe and avoid pain, rather than to give love to ourselves and others. Whenever we operate from our false, wounded self, we operate from an earthly perspective.

Most of our major institutions - government, business, education, some religious organizations, many families - operate primarily on the earthly level. As you can see by reading the headlines any day of the week, greed and the desire to gain power over others and avoid pain drive much of what happens in our society. Social problems like crime, violence, racism, substance abuse, child and spousal abuse are all motivated by the desire to avoid the pain of aloneness, loneliness and powerlessness. People achieve this end - or so they think - by attaining wealth and power over others (via crime, racism, physical abuse) or by blocking out the pain (via substance abuse). At the root of all these actions is fear. In fact, fear is both the primary cause and consequence of spiritual abuse.

The earthly level is the material level, the level of the day-to-day struggle for safety and survival. But external safety is an illusion. We can never be totally safe on the earthly level because our bodies can be harmed or killed through disease or injury or accident, and we can never know for sure when this will happen. Our souls, however, are eternal. While they can be wounded, they can never die and are therefore safe from permanent harm. The spiritual level is about creating internal peace and safety through loving, evolving and expressing the soul.

The earthly perspective views situations and events within the context of this lifetime only, while the spiritual perspective views everything on an infinite continuum of eternal consciousness. We all have many challenges on the earthly level, but if we see adversity only on this level, then we can never experience it as an opportunity and a privilege - in fact, a sacred privilege. Difficult events in our lives are here to challenge us to evolve our souls, to become more loving and compassionate to ourselves and others.

We are always being guided toward our highest good in the face of these challenges. If you see painful events such as failures, illness, loss of loved ones or loss of money purely on the earthly level, then you will see life as suffering, a burden to be endured or perhaps ended in a lonely, painful death or suicide. But when you see these extremely difficult experiences as lessons in love and compassion toward yourself and others, you will do what you came here to do - learn to love, express and evolve your soul toward oneness with the love that is God.

You operate from a spiritual perspective when evolving and loving are your primary motivating factors, your highest priorities. When you make the spiritual far more important than the earthly, you experience life on this planet as a sacred privilege.

Love and Power: Earthly vs. Spiritual

What we call "love" on the earthly level is not love at all. "Love" on the earthly level is about getting something for ourselves - approval, security, attention, understanding, sex, affection. Love on the spiritual level is about giving something to ourselves and others - caring, compassion, understanding, attention, affection. Love on the earthly level is about getting our emptiness filled by things, activities, substances and people. Love on the spiritual level is about learning to fill ourselves internally through connecting with our own essence and with God, receiving the energy of love and compassion from God and sharing it others.

Power on the earthly level is about controlling events and people; power on the spiritual level is about personal empowerment - power within. It includes the power to receive love and wisdom from Spirit, realize our creative potential and manifest our dreams. Spiritual power is the power to remain loving and compassionate in the face of fear.

Our beliefs about God are often at the root of our choice to operate primarily from an earthly perspective or a spiritual perspective.
Exploring our False Beliefs About God

Spiritual abuse, which disconnects us from God and causes us to live from an earthly perspective, leads us to many false beliefs about God. What are some of these beliefs?

1. God Doesn't Exist

When parents (or other caregivers) do not consistently bring God's love through to children because they give children disapproval or conditional approval instead and call it love, children may conclude that God doesn't exist. This is especially true in homes where there is no religious or spiritual training.

Even if children are taught about God, they are often told that God is all-powerful. "But if God is all-powerful, why does God let bad things happen to me?" an abused child may ask. Even adults may ask, "Why does God allow all the bad things on the planet - the Holocaust, starvation, AIDS?"

The concept of an all-powerful God can be misleading. It is essential to understand that the Creator gave all souls free will. This means that you get to decide your own purpose in life, your deepest desires, your way of being. You decide whether you are going to be loving or unloving, responsible for your own feelings and behavior or putting the blame on others. You decide if you are going to be open to learning about your pain or avoid it with your various anesthetics - your addictions. You decide if your deepest motivation is to love yourself and others or to maintain "safety" by protecting yourself against loneliness, rejection and failure.

When your deepest desire is to be safe rather than loving, you close your heart to avoid feeling your pain. When you close your heart, you cannot feel God - God can only enter through an open heart. Free will means that God has chosen to relinquish power over your will. Even God cannot control your intent - that is, your deepest desire in any given moment - because God has given us all free will.
When parents protect against feeling their pain and take their woundedness out on their children, there is no doorway through which God can enter the parents' hearts. God is an all-powerful energy that you can open to and invite into your heart, but God cannot enter your heart unbidden. Once you shift your intent and ask God to help heal your wounds and teach you to be loving to yourself and others, then the Spirit of love, compassion and wisdom that is God will always be there for you. But it is you who must decide to open or close your heart.

When our hearts are closed to ourselves, we are also closed to the suffering of others and can cause them untold pain. Because we each have free will, God cannot force an abusive parent or a Hitler to open his or her heart. No force outside of yourself, not even an all-powerful force, can open your heart to God.

2. God Exists, But Not for Me

When parents consistently bring through Divine Love to their children, the children learn that God is there for them. When parents and other adults are trustworthy - as opposed to abandoning, smothering or controlling - then children experience God as trustworthy. But when children are taught in church or temple that God exists, yet they have no experience (through their parents or other caregivers) of God being there for them, they may come to believe that God exists but not for them. This is not unusual. Children are likely to believe that if they are not good enough to be loved by their parents or other adults around them, they are not good enough to be loved by God. Most children project their parents' or other caregivers' feelings and behavior onto God.

3. God is a Controlling, Judgmental Man Whose Love is Conditional. In Order to be Loved by God, I Have to Change Who I Am, Give Up My Freedom and be Who God Wants Me to Be.

When our parents' approval and attention was conditional upon our acting the "right" way, we had to give ourselves up to be "loved" by them. Thus we learned to confuse approval with love. And, since most children project their parents' feelings and behavior onto God, we may have formed the false belief that we have to be a certain way to be "loved" by God. Children who are raised by stern, judgmental and punishing parents tend to see God as being the same way.

In addition, many children are told that God is a judgmental old man who will punish them if they are bad. Instead of a force of love, God was a force to be reckoned with, a Supreme Being whom we must please - or else. This, of course, is just a way that parents control their children and religious institutions control their followers.

4. I Won't Ever Be Good Enough to Please God

Many people grew up with parents who were never pleased with them, no matter how well they did. If they got a B in school, it should have been an A. If they received an A it should have been an A+. Their flaws were constantly pointed out. Attention was always on what they didn't do rather than on what they did do. It's no wonder so many of us grew up feeling inadequate.

If you projected your parents' negative feelings onto God, you may believe there is nothing you can ever do that will please God. You may believe that God sees you as inherently flawed, "born into sin," and there is nothing you can do to change this. You might believe that no matter how hard you try, in the end you will be punished for sin: God will never forgive you for being human. But if you are "created in the image of God," meaning that you have the same love within you that is God, then it is not possible for you to be inherently flawed. That would mean you were created imperfect. And God doesn't do substandard work. Nor is God unforgiving. Unconditional love is, by definition, forgiving.

5. God Uses Me to Help Others, but Does Not Come to Me Just for Me

When we do believe in God but feel ourselves unlovable and unworthy, we may believe that we can be instruments of God's love for others but not for ourselves. Sometimes children are taught that they are nothing, that their only worth is in helping others. Their goal becomes to give God's love to others so others will give love to them. This belief system fosters the giving-to-get behavior of codependent relationships. This is rampant in the helping professions. Over and over I encounter therapists and healers who tell me that they feel totally connected when helping and loving others but not when it comes to loving themselves. They can access profound truth and compassion for others but none for themselves.

6. God Has Favorite People and Showers Them with Blessings

If you grew up deprived of love and you see others who were given love as children, you may conclude that God has chosen certain people who deserve to be blessed, while ignoring others, who do not deserve it. This conclusion, as with many of the other false beliefs about God, comes from seeing God as an unloving, judgmental, vengeful person rather than as an unconditionally loving Spirit or Supreme Being. People have favorite people. God doesn't. People think some people are more deserving than others. God doesn't. But when you believe God is a judgmental person, you may project your beliefs and experiences of people onto God.

7. God Made Me Come Here

I often hear people say "I didn't ask to be born," or "I didn't ask to be in this family with these parents." When you believe that God is a person or that God is demanding, controlling and judgmental, then you may believe that God made you come here and put you into an unloving or abusive family either as punishment (because you are inherently bad) or because God doesn't love you. This false belief relieves you of the responsibility of choosing to heal, regardless of how difficult your past, in order to evolve your soul. When you remember that you came here to evolve in lovingness, you will no longer say, "I didn't ask to be here," or ask "Why wasn't I born into a happy family?" Then you understand that being alive is truly a sacred opportunity, a sacred privilege.

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IB's Agent for Notice of claims of copyright or other intellectual property infringement can be reached as follows: By mail: Copyright Agent c/o Inner Bonding Educational Technologies, Inc. PMB #42, 2531 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064-3124 By phone: (310) 459-1700 By Fax: (310) 459-1727 By email: innerbonding@innerbonding.com 24. GENERAL INFORMATION The TOS constitute the entire agreement between you and IB and govern your use of the Service, superceding any prior agreements between you and IB. You also may be subject to additional terms and conditions that may apply when you use affiliate services, third-party content or third-party software. The TOS and the relationship between you and IB shall be governed by the laws of the State of California without regard to its conflict of law provisions. You and IB agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located within the county of Los Angeles, California. The failure of IB to exercise or enforce any right or provision of the TOS shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any provision of the TOS is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the TOS remain in full force and effect. You agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to use of the Service or the TOS must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred. The section titles in the TOS are for convenience only and have no legal or contractual effect. 25. VIOLATIONS Please report any violations of the TOS to our Customer Support group. 26. CANCELLATION OF MEMBERSHIP You pay for membership monthly. We can automatically charge you for each month, if that is what you want. 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A Testimonial

"At the workshop I learned a great deal about the process and how to apply it in every day life. My experience with Spirit has been a close connection in times of trauma but this weekend I was reminded how to deeply connect with Spirit in times of Joy! The very next day, after packing all my things, I took a big risk [Stephani is disabled and confined to a wheelchair] and moved to Utah. I was driving by myself in the car (for 14 hours) and I began thinking about the workshop and this new process. I felt empowered by the process eough to make this life change. It was a huge deal to me to commit to driving that long by myself, not knowing what wheelchair access nightmares I might encounter. My cellular phone gave a sense of security. I knew as I drove along, that if any problem arose I could just call for help. Soon after driving through Las Vegas, I noticed the PacBell icon had disappeared from the LCD on my phone. Curious, I tried calling someone. The phone was out of service. For the next couple of hours my insurance policy was gone! This is very scary for a woman traveling alone. It then occurred to me that I was not alone. I called on Spirit and my Guides to be with me in the car. We dialogued about all the fears that were triggered and about my feeling of helplessness in taking care of myself in an emergency. I made it safely to Utah, feeling a lot stronger and more self-assured that I could handle it. I am handling it and I don't have to handle it alone!"

Stephani Victor,Actress, Inspirational Speaker
Los Angeles,California