What Are We, Really?

2021 Gathering, Part Six

Just as the interference of our life energy can cause problems, so does the disruption of the emotional energies. The person with healthy emotions will be the person who is honest and will communicate with actual emotional feeling. But one thing I didn’t say about the emotions that’s an important point. It’s not necessarily a sign of a highly evolved person to be unemotional. The highly evolved person actually has emotions that are stronger than the lesser evolved person. It’s just that he has more control over them.

As you evolve, your seven basic centers light up. Your first center is at the base of the spine, and it controls the flow of life through all the other centers. It’s like a candle that lights up.

The next one is the sacral center governing physical creation and the sexual energy.

The next one is around the area of the naval. It’s actually located in the back of the spine. You’ll often hear about yogis focusing on their navel, and that’s the solar plexus and that governs lower emotions.

And then the next one up is the heart. It governs the higher emotions. The energies that govern the heart are the energies of love/wisdom. It’s not only love, but also wisdom. It governs the higher feelings. So, you have the lower feelings in this area (pointing to the navel area) and the higher feelings in the heart, and the higher intelligence in the heart.

Then you have the throat that governs the creative energies. For instance, when people have problems in their throat area, that’s often caused by their creative energies being suppressed. In other words, they’re supposed to be . . . your soul tells you you’re supposed to be more creative, and you’re not fulfilling your creative destiny.

You’ll get physical problems in areas in which you’re supposed to improve. People that have heart problems often are people who need to generate the love energies.

The next one up is the center between the eyebrows, often called the third eye. Technically it’s called the ajna center. And that governs ideas. You get ideas from the higher mind, and it’s centered in this third eye. When this is open, you’re able to see greater light and understanding. The third eye is an eye of higher vision.

The final one is the crown, and the crown has approximately a thousand petals, symbolizing about a thousand lifetimes that it takes to overcome and master all things. And its focus is around the correct use of power.

So all of these centers light up, and they unfold. And when they unfold, an increase of energy is sent to the person. As the person evolves, he may find that his solar plexus, which governs the emotions, may be sixty percent unfolded. But he may have a lot of trouble handling his emotions, because he hasn’t developed the self-control. Now as the person evolves, and the heart begins to open, the emotional center, the solar plexus center opens an additional amount. So as the person evolves, the lower centers open up more and function in greater perfection.

You take the average person, and his emotional center may only be open like sixty percent. But then the more advanced person, it may be close to a hundred percent, which means that when he feels the emotions he feels it with more intensity. But because he has evolved more and learned to master them, you can insult him, and he will not react because he has control of the emotions. So even though his emotions are stronger, he has more control.

So it’s interesting that people out there who are totally out of control emotionally, don’t know what full emotions feel like, because they have not had their emotional centers completely unfolded yet. So as a person evolves, his passions will be very strong.

I think Adam realizes that. He’s a passionate guy. (laughter) What do you think of that, Adam?

Adam: What do I think about passion? (laughter)

JJ: Yeah, you’re a pretty evolved person, I would say. But I would say you’re a passionate person, right?

Adam: Oh yeah.

JJ: Can you guys identify with that? Most people here are above average in spiritual evolution or else you wouldn’t try to be making something of your spiritual life. Is there anybody here that feels they are not a passionate person? How about you Shawn? Do you feel you’re a milquetoast kind of guy, or what? (laughter)  

Shawn: Yeah, I’m passionate.

JJ: How about you Phil?

Phillip: Depends on who you ask. (laughter)

JJ: Now Rebecca, she sounds passionate. She says she gives you a piece of her mind once in a while.

Phillip: She is the most passionate person I know.

JJ: Yeah, so as a person evolves, the feeling nature actually becomes stronger. But it’s like a weightlifter. A weightlifter that really practices can lift a hundred pounds more easily than a non-weightlifter can lift the same amount. It might break the guys back if he’s not in good shape. But a weightlifter that exercises those muscles can lift a hundred pounds like it’s a feather.

And this is the way it is with the emotions. As you progress along the path, you’re given more emotional energy, but you have more control over it. This is one of the things that a lot of spiritual teachers get wrong. A lot of them teach that we’re supposed to negate our feelings and our passions. Whereas there’s really nothing wrong with letting our passions and feelings just be whatever they are. Recognize them but control them. They become easier to control as we continue to work on them.

Once somebody insults you once . . . say they come and insult your mother, you may react strongly the first time, and then the second time somebody does that you think, “I don’t have to respond this way.” Eventually, people can insult you all they want, and you don’t have to respond. You still feel really passionate about your mother, but you realize this is just a wayward person that doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about. So there’s always a way to neutralize the negative attacks that people experience.

This is an interesting thing to realize that we are not our emotions. We’re not our minds. We’re not even our higher minds, though our higher minds are probably the highest part of our self that we use as a vehicle of expression. And we’re not even spirit. But we use spirit, and spirit is a part of us. But what are we?

Anybody read the first two books? (laughter) Okay, well who can tell us what we are? Somebody raise your hand. I’ll pick on somebody. Phil?

Phillip:
I remember – decision.

JJ: Okay, but that is not correct. I figured anybody would answer that.

Asaph: That’s the key word.

JJ: Right. That’s the key word. It only directs you to what you are. What are you really?

Joshua: The power of decision.

JJ: Right. The power of decision. You’re the power that makes decision. And decision is the key word, because it’s the closest we can get to what you are. But you are the power that can decide . . . that can make a decision.

Think of that for a moment. You are the power of decision. What is the power of decision?

Susan: Will.

JJ: Will. Yeah. But it’s something that we can’t really put in words. The closest word that comes to describe it is the key word of decision. Contemplate when you make any decision in life. And that power that makes that decision is the closest you can get to your pure essence. It’s closer than saying you are a body, you are emotion, you are mind, you are spirit, you are gods . . . but you are the power that can make a decision.

The Parable of Decision Video is played for the group. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MTKif7w3rM

So we are that power that makes decisions, and decisions can create reality. Just like Dave there . . . he went to hell.

Oh! Curtis! When did you show up?

Curtis: We’ve been here a while.

Ed: We’ve been here all night. (laughter)

JJ: Yeah, we were watching, and you were one of the stars of the show there. Did you see part of it?

Curtis: I’m glad I got out of hell? (laughter)

JJ: Yeah. So the rest of your trip went okay?

Curtis: Yeah, we just had a little breakdown. Had to replace a starting motor.

JJ: Yeah.

Curtis: No big deal. (laughter)

JJ: (laughter) Well, we’re glad you guys are safe.

So anyway, the power of decision is the first key. Decision itself is the key word. But the power that is within us . . . and you could sense this when you were watching this, that Dave recognized that power within him. He went to hell, and everybody there thought that they were in hell, and there was no way out.

And why did they think that? Because apparently, they were sent there by somebody, some force. And everybody just felt that’s the way it is. And it was groupthink. Groupthink is one of the worst plagues that our society is presented with. And it’s getting stronger all the time.

We have group think about what to think about the virus. What to do about global warming. What to do about people we don’t like. About what speech we don’t like. And there’s all kinds of group think out there that doesn’t have to be what we think. We have power over our thoughts. We have power over our decisions.

Now what’s interesting about decision, is that the closer we get to spirit and to the higher mind, the easier decisions become. There are decisions that are so easy, it’s almost a non-decision. If you find yourself driving over a cliff or toward a cliff – so it looks like you’re going to go over it if you don’t change your course . . . is the decision to go over the cliff even a decision?

It’s so obvious that it’s the wrong thing to do that it’s a no-brainer. So in the higher spheres, decision is very easy, because we can see the correct knowledge. We have the correct knowledge and so the correct  decisions are as easy as deciding to not go over a cliff.

But then we have the story of a war in heaven. And the war in heaven has all kinds of explanations behind it. One explanation is that people were dissatisfied with the peace that was in heaven. It was always very peaceful, and there was unity, and there weren’t even any games because we were in a place that was beyond duality, where there was changelessness and complete peace.

So a group wanted to get together and play some games. And the only way to play games is to create a world where there is duality where there are winners and losers. In this world where there’s duality, we can play games. We can have competition. Competition is fun. Look how much time is spent playing games and watching games.

What would humanity do if we did not have games to play? We watch football, basketball, baseball . . . all these games we get involved in. We have fun watching them, but there are always winners and losers. And in the perfect world, there are no winners or losers. Everybody is a winner.

So one story is – and this is taught strongly in A Course in Miracles – is that there were people dissatisfied with the idea that they could not play games. And so they came down here to this world to play games. There’s probably a certain amount of truth to that because people love to play games – not only regular games that we watch on TV, but we play games with each other.

Think of the time when you were single and trying to find a mate. You kind of play games with each other and see who can win. And you see what you can do to impress the other person. There are even movies about love being a game. So we play games with each other.

The other theory about the separation in the beginning was that the war was about the principle of freedom. One side believes that people have the right to make their own decisions. And even though by making your own decisions you’ll make a lot of mistakes, eventually you will grow much faster spiritually. And in the end, you will eventually come to the truth.

The other side didn’t trust people to make their own decisions. And so they came to the conclusion that we need to create a system that controls and forces humanity to do good and to make the right choices, whether they want to or not. This is the basic teaching in the regular scriptures, that there was this dichotomy between control and freedom.

Whether that explanation is right or wrong, it’s certainly playing out in the world today. We see it playing out with one side wanting individual freedom to the max, and the other side wanting to control, and making everything right through control.

So, it all boils down to how much individual power of decision is available. Because we are decision, and because we are the power that makes decision, we don’t want anything to interfere with that. We should always have maximum power to make decisions and to follow our decisions no matter where we are.

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The Higher and Lower Mind

2021 Gathering, Part Five

There’s no way to go through life just having everything be sunshine and roses. There are many outward events that we cannot change. But one thing we can change is how we look at them.

Two people can be approached and insulted, and one may react strongly and attack back, and produce negativity, and maybe create other attacks, and create a chain reaction – like two neighbors arguing over where a fence needs to be. Like Rand Paul was recently attacked by his neighbor who didn’t like him. Different things like this happen.

There are many ways we may be attacked, but we can avoid how we interpret it, or we can change how we interpret it. So if two people get attacked, one can look at the attack and react and create a chain reaction. The other can look at the attack and think it’s not worth bothering with, and let it go through him.

It’s not that he’s in denial of anything and that’s the key. Put yourself in a state to where you can just say this just doesn’t matter. You don’t have to deny it. You may feel some feelings within you, and you acknowledge those feelings, and mentally you tell yourself that there’s a different way of looking at this. Suppose my neighbor had a bunch of his leaves blow on my yard. That’s kind of irritating. Now I have to clean up his leaves, but it’s not a big deal. It’s not worth making a fuss over.

So changing your attitude about how you look at a situation or an attack or something that can be emotional, is something that’s within the realm of our decision making.

The third thing that we are not is our minds. There’s something that we can call the higher mind and the lower mind. What is the difference? Lower mind is what is often called the ego. It is that which sees us as being a separate self. Our emotions are separate. Our body is separate, and we communicate in separateness.

Asaph lives in Israel. He had to come thousands of miles to associate with the rest of us because he is living as a separate individual a long way away. So to associate with us he had to actually come here in the physical. And we’re really glad he made that effort.

But it’s interesting that this is all a part of the lower mind, and the lower mind has to function as a separate entity. The higher mind is connected with what I call the spiritual internet. Think of our communication now compared to fifty years ago. Fifty years ago there was no internet, and if you wanted to communicate with somebody, you had to make an individual phone call. If you wanted to get some information you had to go to the library or look at an Encyclopedia Britannica or check out a book.

But now, all you have to do is Google something and ask a question and you can get an answer to almost anything that you want. It’s not always accurate (laughter) but can get an answer to almost anything. If you want to know, for instance, when the next full moon is . . . if you want to know how far it is from Boise, Idaho to here, and how long the driving time is, just Google it and you can have that readily available.

So our evolution is to evolve more toward the higher mind and away from the lower mind. And the higher mind doesn’t see everything as being separate. It sees us all linked together. And there’s only one mind. Think of the mind itself, the mind of God as a flowing ocean. And we are in that ocean. And we are a part of this mind. We are partaking of the mind of God.

Now, if you just see yourself as a fish in the ocean, then you are separate from the ocean. But even if you’re separate from the ocean, you have that water flowing around you, giving you life. And so, the mind of God . . . there’s one mind in the Universe, and this is like a flowing stream that flows through all of us. And we can connect to that mind. And when we connect to that mind, it’s like a spiritual internet, and all things become available to us.

When using the lower mind, we rely on our brain. With the higher mind, our attention goes to the pure spirit of the mind of God, so to speak. With the lower mind, our attention focuses on what the brain can do for us. Those are the two distinctions. When we focus on the brain, we see ourselves as lone individuals, not really connected to anything else. But when we focus on the higher mind, then we have a sense of unity with all living things.

Now when you look at all living things, for instance when we were outside looking at those cute little chickens . . . weren’t those cut little chickens . . . when you look at them, if you look at them correctly, it’s like even those chickens out there or the grass or the trees, if you have a sense of the higher mind, you’ll have a sense of the connectedness with all life in the Universe. Because all life in the Universe is connected. There’s really only One Life in the Universe – which is the life of that which we call God.

All Masters, whether they be people who have overcome death and are gods as far as we’re concerned, the gods, the Elohim, they are people that are one with the One Mind of God. And so, they can identify with being Gods. That’s why in the Bible the word Gods or Elohim is plural. It really says, “In the beginning, Gods created the heavens and the earth.” It’s actually written this way, “In the beginning, the Gods create the heavens and the earth.” It’s used with a singular verb, which is interesting.

So a word which is fitting of “the Gods,” which is plural, yet used with a singular verb would be a council or a group. A group of Gods created the heavens and the earth, so to speak. That’s kind of an interesting thought.

We’re a combination, all of us, of our lower and higher minds. Everyone has a sense of the higher mind, but we don’t use it that much. Everyone has a sense of the lower mind, and we use this quite a bit, but the lower mind is not you. Neither mind is you, but we use mind. Mind is a vehicle, a vehicle that we use to accomplish things.

Similarly, if you’re going to descend below the ocean, you can descend a few feet and be okay, but if you get too far down for too long, you’ll suffocate because you can only stay down there so long. So, you take a breathing apparatus with you, but you still can only go so far before the pressure becomes too great. So, you can put on an armored suit, and you can go much deeper. But you can only go so deep.

James Cameron a while back, made a vehicle and went about five or ten miles down . . . I can’t remember exactly, but it broke a record. But he went down in a vehicle and was able to go very deep into the ocean and was able to endure that great pressure.

Now in the beginning, we decided, being beings of pure spirit, we decided to jump into matter. And to jump into matter, it’s almost like jumping in the ocean and going deeper and deeper. The deeper you go, the more vehicles you need to endure the pressure.

And so, we jumped into matter, and we gathered around ourselves a lower mind. And then we gathered around ourselves the emotional/astral body. And then finally the physical body, and it enabled us to jump into this pressurized system of the material universe, and to be able to be in this material universe and go through experiences, we had to have all these vehicles to protect us, so to speak, so we could go through the experience of physical reality.

Unfortunately, having all these vehicles that we work with, also put distance between us and our true reality. And so this distance between us and our true selves, needs to be bridged. And we need to be able to become masters of our vehicles to the extent that they do not keep us trapped in the lower realms.

So the key to finding out what we are is to first find out what we are not. We are not our bodies. We tend to identify too much with our bodies. This creates all kinds of problems for us.

When we realize we are not our bodies, then we pay less attention to them. When we pay the wrong kind of attention to our bodies, we interfere with the flow of energy going through them creating perfect health.

We want to maintain good health, so we don’t want to interfere with the flow of energies. If you’ve got to perform, and you place a whole bunch of attention on it, you may really blow your performance because you were just too nervous. And this happens with our bodies because if we pay too much attention to it in the wrong way, it interferes with the flow.

The best way to deal with your body is to view it as if it doesn’t exist. And then all the energies in the body will circulate correctly. They’ll take care of themselves. But we interfere with the circulation of energy in our body by our wrong thinking, and much of our thinking is wrong.

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Dealing with Negative Emotions

2021 Gathering, Part Four

Your body is not the real you. Your brain is not the real you. Your brain is not your intelligence. Your brain is just your computer system. So think of using your computer, and your computer is like the physical brain. It is not intelligence. It is something intelligence uses. It is used by your mind. It’s a physical thing, just like your computer is a physical thing. But it’s a very sophisticated computer that we use.

Same thing with our emotional body. Our emotional body is not us, but it is something that we use.

Now they’ve come up with an interesting measure of intelligence, sometime ago, called emotional intelligence.

Regular intelligence is highly associated with the physical brain as well as the mind. But a lot of what they call intelligence these days on intelligence tests and taking tests is associated with having a good functioning brain. You can take a very intelligent person and give him an older computer and he can do amazing things with it. You can take a person that’s kind of backward and give him a sophisticated computer and he can’t do anything with it.

What we can do with our brains is determined a lot by intelligence that goes beyond the brain. So, with our intelligence, we use the brain and many people that have a really good functioning brain, that have really good power of memory, and they do really well in school, and are good at taking tests because they can remember stuff . . . but they may not be that bright.

I remember when I was twenty years old and was on a mission for the LDS Church, I had this companion who had a 4.0 and a perfect score in college. Now my graded point in college was about average. He had a 4.0, but I’ll tell you, that guy was about one of the densest guys I have ever worked with. His real intelligence level was like a child almost.

When he had to give a lesson, he had to review it every time and I never had to review at all. I guess he could read and write and memorize, and was good at taking tests, and had a 4.0 grade point and almost doubled mine. (laughter) But he couldn’t do the stuff that I could do.

So it’s very interesting that if you have a good physical brain, you may be judged to be much more intelligent than you really are. There are people who are highly intelligent, who are born with brains that don’t function very well, or have good memory, or that good of ability take tests and so on. So intelligence is much more than just the brain.

Now getting back to the feelings, we identify very powerfully with our feelings, it’s amazing. And like I said, you meet anybody who’s enlightened, or go to group of people who are enlightened, or go to a convention or something where enlightened people are arguing with other enlightened people, and you’ll find that they identify just as much with their emotions as the man on the street. It’s amazing.

It’s amazing how difficult it is for people to really get control of their emotions to the point that they can be insulted and act as if the insult does not exist.

How about you, Tyler, can people insult you and can you overlook that? How would you grade yourself on that? Or do you get insulted? You’re such a nice guy, you may not get insulted.

Tyler: Usually my kids insult me. (laughter)

I’m getting better at not being insulted. I have to determine if it’s true or not. If they tell me something that’s true, you know, maybe I’ll take it one way. But if it’s not, then . . .

JJ: Yeah, that’s a good point. If people point out something that’s kind of hurtful that’s also true, there are different ways to approach that. If somebody’s overweight and you say, “boy, you’re fat as a pig. You ought to go on a diet.” Well, that’s a lot different than saying, “you know I’ve got this book here that tells you how to lose weight and get in shape.” The approach can be a lot different. (laughter)

Honesty is good, but it also has to be tempered with intelligence. Because you might be putting your life in danger if you tell the wrong female that her body is not perfect. (laughter)

Guys really enter a danger zone there. We’ve got to be really careful.

I made some jokes about that a while back where if you get the wrong question from your spouse, about her body, you may be putting your life in danger . . .  (laughter) if you answer incorrectly. And sometimes there’s no correct answer. No way out.

So ideas of the difference of the sexes is a fascinating subject in itself. We definitely react different from each other, on the average, but here are always exceptions.

How do we escape this tie we have to our emotional body? It is so powerful that people do everything they can to escape, including denial.

And we were talking about denial and what produces the denial. We figured out that people want to pretend that they are better than that. And what does denial produce? Now suppression produces a blockage within the system. So you have a blockage of energy, and blockages of energy produce all kinds of physical problems.

But denial is a little different. It doesn’t block energy in the same way that suppression does. Suppression takes this energy, and it’s like a tea kettle. You turn on the tea kettle and the steam increases the pressure until the lid pops off. When you suppress again and again, then pretty soon, the energy becomes so strong you have to let it loose.

An example of this happening is the person that, say, you hurt your spouse’s feelings, and they say, “no, you didn’t hurt my feelings, everything is cool.” Then you hurt them a week or so later and everything is still cool. And they’re suppressing a little bit more each time. And maybe about the tenth time that you hurt their feelings, everything is so bottled up to the point that they can’t take it anymore, and you say some very small thing that hurts their feelings, but they blow up big time. Because it has accumulated over a period of time. And the guy will think, “wow, why is she reacting this strong over this small thing that I just said?” That’s because it builds up.

But denial is different. What denial does is, it’s a form of dishonesty. And the dishonesty creates a suppression of spiritual energy. So it creates like a cloud between the person and his own soul. He’s unable to achieve the soul contact that he needs because of the denial. Anything that you do that is dishonest, in any way, increases the barrier between you and the spirit. And so total honesty is always called for, and the easiest place to be dishonest is our own feelings.

Because we do not like to think of ourselves as a person who’s inferior in any way. All of us want to think of ourselves as being at the top of our game. And none of us want to think of ourselves as being too emotional or too controlled by emotions. So this causes many people to go into denial.

And if they’re denying an emotion that they actually feel, they will go into a mode where it’s almost hypnotic, where they’re hypnotizing themself saying, “no, I do not feel jealousy over this incident.” So they will be in denial to the extent that the jealousy will be there, but they will not acknowledge it to the extent that it’s almost like it’s not there. And so they’re deceiving themself into thinking that it’s not there. And this deception produces a dark cloud between them and their own soul.

So it’s important that we acknowledge our feelings, and deal with them in as harmless way as possible. And like I’ve said, dealing with them harmlessly takes a lot of ability and takes a lot of thought to be able to release these emotions in such a way that they will be as harmless as possible.

But as far as harmlessness goes, look at Jesus. Jesus was perhaps the greatest example of harmlessness, yet he still made people angry. And you can make people angry if you’re following the most harmless, honest path possible.

People just pick up things. Sometimes, if a person is very negative and you’re positive, they will pick up the difference. They will be more comfortable being around negative people. And if you’re a positive person, focused on spirit and honesty, they may pick up a difference and they may feel they want to bring you down because of it.

And sometimes there’s just no escape from dealing with some negativity in the world. Again, we look at the life of Jesus and the prophets and the great teachers and they all had negative things to deal with. And to deal with them in the most intelligent way possible is about all we can do.

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Suppression and Denial

2021 Gathering, Part Three

There are two things you can do to mismanage your emotions. You can deny them, or you can suppress them. Both approaches are harmful and they create psychological problems and physical problems. So, what do you think is the difference between denying an emotion and suppressing an emotion? Has anyone got a comment?

Joshua: They’re similar but denial is where you pretend you don’t even have the emotion. And suppression is sort of . . . you acknowledge it, but you push it down and don’t let it manifest.

JJ: Okay. That’s a good answer. What is it that makes a person deny rather than suppress? There are causes behind the denial and the suppression. People deny their emotions because they feel that being emotional is for the lesser evolved and they’re above that. “I’m above being jealous; therefore, I can’t be jealous because I’m above that. I’m an evolved spiritual being and therefore can’t be jealous.”

When their mate or romantic partner flirts with somebody else, and they still feel that twinge of jealousy, but they will deny it. “Wait! I can’t be jealous because I’m above that.” So, he denies that feeling of jealousy.

Now on the other hand, there’s suppression. And suppression happens most commonly with the emotion of anger. The person feels angry, but he realizes that anger is not good. So, what he does is suppress that anger. Then, if somebody hurts his feelings, and it makes him angry, he thinks, “well I shouldn’t really be angry because this creates problems. And because this creates problems, I’ll just pretend that nothing happened.”

Now this often happens with hurt feelings. Somebody will say something, and the guy goes a little quiet, and so you say, “is everything okay?” And the guy says, “yeah, I’m fine. No, no, no problem. None at all.”

But there is a problem. The problem was his feelings were hurt. He would like to say something, but he feels that he shouldn’t say something because that’s negative and he’s not a negative guy. So he suppresses that feeling. What happens when you suppress for so long?

Joshua: Cancer.

JJ: Yeah, cancer is one. It affects you physically, and suppression is a major cause of cancer. You notice, it’s amazing how many people that have cancer are really nice people. Almost everybody that dies of cancer, at their funeral, it’ll be talked about how wonderful they were and how nice and always pleasant they were. And they were always pleasant because when people hurt their feelings, when people said negative things toward them, and they felt like slapping them in the face, but they didn’t!

They held their temper, and they suppressed it. So that’s one reason people of die of cancer, one of the causes of which is suppression. These are considered very nice people because they never over-reacted, when they were attacked by somebody. They were always trying to be pleasant.

Now why would that be considered a fault by our higher self, to suppress our anger? Why would that be a problem?

Tyler: We’re denying a part of who we are.

JJ: Right. And this is a key to overcoming all of the obstacles on the spiritual path, is total honesty. In other words, if you’re feeling anger and you’re pretending that the anger is not there, it’s a deception. And all deception hinders the person on the spiritual path. It’s very difficult to be completely honest. So when someone makes you angry and you feel anger inside, what should you do? How can you express this harmlessly without creating a problem?

Darren: Acknowledge it and have compassion for it.

JJ: Yeah. Acknowledge it and have compassion. Let’s see. Let’s pick a couple together. Phil –  now you and Rebecca seem like such nice people. It’s hard to imagine you two getting angry or upset with each other.

Audience: Inaudible remark (laughter)

JJ: Rebecca, have you ever gotten upset with Phil? He’s such a nice guy. It’s hard to imagine. But have you ever gotten upset with him?

Rebecca: I have.

JJ: Okay, what do you do when you get upset with him?

Rebecca: Yell at him.

JJ: (laughter) Okay. Well, that’s actually a lot healthier than holding it in.. . . My sister died of cancer. Wonderful woman. My brother-in-law I would guess was a little hard to live with at times. But my sister, she just acted like everything was cool all the time. Yet she died of cancer. So she probably had suppressed feelings; things that she did not express.

But you do express things, right? Does she let her feelings be known (speaking to Phil)?

Rebecca and Phil: They both acknowledge she does.

JJ: (laughter) Well that’s why you two have a glow about you. You’re honest with each other when you do have negative feelings. When he doesn’t put his socks away or whatever he does wrong, do you try to correct him in a harmless way where it doesn’t create total damage?

Rebecca: Yeah, I do. But I don’t do a very good job of that all the time. (laughter)

JJ: Yeah, it’s hard to do, isn’t it? Okay, when somebody makes you angry, there are three things you can do:

[1] One, you can attack them and choke them to death. In this case, you’ll be arrested and go to jail, so that’s not a good plan.

[2] The second thing you can do is suppress it. And that’s really bad for your health because it creates blockages of energy within your body. And these blockages of energy can create cancer, or other problems. All kinds of things can surface because of these blockages of energy.

[3] And the third thing you can do is communicate your feelings. And then what you do is communicate them as harmlessly as possible.

So if your mate or your friend or anybody says something to make you angry, you can approach them like this. You say, “hey, you said this to me, and that really hurt my feelings. Do you understand how that bothered me? And he may say, “yeah, I didn’t know that hurt your feelings at all. I’m sorry about that. And if he says that, that will diffuse the whole situation and make it go away.

Now, sometimes when you honestly communicate feelings the opposite will happen. The guy will get angry himself. You will release your feelings, and the guy will say, “well, what’s your problem? You shouldn’t get angry over that.

And then, what will happen is the negative energy that was hovering over the person that communicated his hurt feelings, the cloud, will be removed because he communicated his feelings honestly, for when he communicates, it just dissipates.

But if the other person doesn’t cooperate in the communication, and turns negative the cloud rests over him. And now, he’s feeling really put out. He’s angry because he feels that he’s attacked unjustly even though no attack was intended. This often happens sometimes, but it’s a chance you have to take.

If you feel anger and need to express it, and you do it honestly and the other guy reacts negatively, that’s just something you may have to deal with, but now you’re free. But the other guy now has the problem, and you might have to avoid him for a while, (laughter) because he’s going to go around with a cloud over him for a few days.

We identify so strongly with our feelings that it’s hard to disassociate ourselves from that identification, because when we feel something what do we say? We say, “I feel this.” It’s almost like, if I feel anger, it’s like saying, “I am anger,” or “I am jealous,” or “I am this.” Whereas you are not. You’re just using a vehicle. And your vehicle is responding to this emotion. It’s not the real you.

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You Are Not Your Feelings

Part Two of the 2021 Gathering

The second thing that people identify with . . . and in this age, people identify very strongly with the second part of our mechanisms that we use. And what’s the second part?

Asaph: Emotions.

JJ: Right, emotion. Your feelings. People really identify with their feelings, even people that realize they are not their body, that it’s just a vehicle. They still identify strongly with their feelings.

I’ve had interplay with a lot of people who think they are really evolved, and if you say anything that crosses them in the wrong way, they’ll still have their feelings hurt because they will identify too strongly with their feelings.

Even people who are into esoteric teachings, thinking they are way beyond the astral and way beyond the feeling nature, but just step on their toes a little and all of the sudden you will see a reaction that tells you that this person isn’t beyond identifying with his feelings after all.

And so we tend to think we are our feelings. And some people have had teachings where they are told that they are not their feelings. And like I said, some of these people still are somewhat in denial, and they haven’t really been able to leave their feelings behind, as far as identification.

Then there are others that do identify strongly with their feelings, and a lot of standard religious people do this. They connect their feelings to their spirit, and they think that’s all part of their eternal nature. But their feelings are temporary. And it’s part of what they call the astral body.

The astral body is a vehicle, just like the physical body, and this is an important thing to realize. The astral body is a vehicle.

After death, when you go to the world of the soul, you will leave behind a lot of the feelings associated with the astral body. Your feeling nature will be quite different because there are lower feelings and higher feelings. And in the spiritual spheres, there are just the higher feelings. And so we leave the lower feelings behind.

But in this physical existence, we have these lower feelings that are very powerful. And we identify with them.

So let’s go through all these lower feelings that people identify with. What’s the most common one?

Asaph: Desire.

JJ: Desire. Okay, that’s kind of a summary of all of them put together.

Audience: Fear.

JJ: Fear. That’s a lower one. What’s one of the main things that causes fear?

Joshua: Uncertainty.

JJ: Yeah. Have you ever thought of this? If your body was completely invulnerable so no one could do any harm to it, would you have anything to fear? What else is there to fear?

Audience: Inaudible.

JJ: Now we fear, for instance, breaking the law because authorities can put us in jail. But if you had complete mastery, like say Jesus after the resurrection, where they couldn’t put you in jail because you could disappear and appear wherever you wanted. Nobody could do anything to your body that you didn’t want done to your body. Would there be anything to fear?

Some people might fear God throwing them into hell or something like that, but concerning the things we know for sure, that cause us fear, what are they?

Like, right now everyone’s afraid of getting Covid, aren’t they? That’s about half the fear that’s generated around the world right now. And it’s all associated with the body. If the body were invulnerable, we wouldn’t have any fear about the virus or any disease or anything like that. So, think of all the fear that is associated with physical health.

Also associated with the body is the threat of people attacking it. Say, going through a rough part of New York right now or Los Angeles. People are afraid of getting attacked, stabbed, or shot. Okay, and that’s all centered around the body.

So think, if you were able to overcome death and become a master of your physical body, your physical vehicle, what would there be to fear?

Susan: Ridicule.

JJ: Yeah.

Michael: There’s fear of loss if you’re really attached to something.

JJ: Right. That’s a good point. Okay, that’s connected with the emotional body, isn’t it? So with the physical body, if we could neutralize all harm done to the physical body it would be amazing. Almost everything that average people fear would be neutralized.

Then Susan made a good point. There are fears connected with the emotions. People are afraid of failure. They’re afraid of ridicule, of emotional attack. Now some people aren’t afraid at all on the emotional level. But others are.

My friend Wayne, who’s passed on, God bless his soul . . . he was a funny one about fears. He had no fear at all on the physical plane. But he was terrified about an emotional attack. And that’s the opposite of a lot of people.

A policeman would stop him, and he often drove with no driver license because he believed in being his own guy. (laughter) He was a funny guy that way, and when a policeman stopped him, he’d say, “why don’t you go out and get a real job? Don’t you have anything better to do than go around persecuting innocent citizens?” (laughter)  

And then when he was hauled into court, he would refuse to stand for the judge. And he was just completely fearless on the physical level. I’ve never met anybody like him.

One time we were in a restaurant, and somebody was talking pretty loud a couple of booths down. And I said, “boy those guys are loud.” And Wayne said, “yeah, they are. I’m going to go do something about it.” (laughter)

And so he was gone for about five minutes and comes back and they were really quiet afterwards. And I asked what happened. And he said, “well I gave them a piece of my mind and they said they’d quiet down.”

And I said, “well, it’s a good thing that whoever you were talking to wasn’t a football player or something.” And he said, “well, one of them was a football player.” (laughter) Anyway, he was a funny guy that way.

But then, he had this big crew that he managed that was called (inaudible name), and they did yardwork, tree service, spraying, and all kinds of things. And his guys, when they needed help, they would ask him for extra money, and they would appeal to him on an emotional level, and he could not say no. He would grumble about it, but he just could not say no.

And if somebody told him about another person having their feelings hurt about something, he would really identify with the feeling nature of people. And he did not want to offend anyone’s feelings that he was close to.

Joshua: Except the judge . . .  (laughter)

JJ:  Yeah, except for the judge. That was more of a physical level of confrontation. He didn’t look on the judge like a person. But people that he was friends with, and who he saw as a friendly individual, he was amazing. He was very sensitive. And if I were to say to him, “we need to talk to so and so about this because he’s creating a problem.” And I would bring Wayne in, and he wouldn’t want to talk about it. He would just want to talk about positive stuff.

So he was a funny guy. Completely fearless on the physical level. I’ve never met anyone that was fearless on the physical level outside of him. But he was terrified about hurting somebody’s feelings, somebody that he was close to, somebody that he considered a friend.

He was very trusting too. He would leave his keys in his car all the time. And he would tell people where he stashed money. And they would steal it from him. I’ll tell just one little story about him. It’s kind of funny.

He had this big dump truck that a lot of people wanted to borrow because he was the only one in the area with one. And he always left the key in it. And I told him one day, “you shouldn’t do that. People could run off with your truck.”

He said, “well, I believe in trusting people.” And Curtis’s brother and my nephew, Bill, needed to borrow and he went there, and Wayne wasn’t in. And he noticed the key in the dump truck. So he thought Wayne wouldn’t mind if he borrowed it. So he took off with it, but one thing he didn’t know was that Wayne was changing the oil and he had all the oil drained out. And he drove it a few blocks and the engine blew up. And to Bill’s credit, he bought him a new engine. (laughter)

But after he finally got that new engine in there, I drove up to his place and saw that dump truck there and I wondered if he still had that key in there. And I looked in and there was the key still in there. (laughter) And I said, “Wayne, you still have the key in the dump truck. Somebody’s going to do that again.

And he said, “well, what good is life if you can’t trust people?”

And I said, “some people you just cannot trust, or you can trust them to do the wrong thing.”

And you know what he died of? He died of a big heart. An overgrown heart. So, I guess his soul was trying to straighten him out. Because the soul gives us messages to correct the mistakes we’re making in life. And his soul tried to tell him by giving him a big physical heart, and problems connected with it. But he just didn’t listen.

So he was an interesting character in the fact that faults were really overgrown virtues in a way.

But anyway, we are not our bodies. But the interesting thing is we are not our emotions. Now how is it that people identify so strongly with their emotions, because in a way we just about feel that we are.

I identified strongly with my emotions yesterday. And it takes a lot for me to get emotional. But yesterday, in the car . . . Artie was driving, and I took a nap and after I took my nap, my glasses were gone. And my glasses weren’t in my pocket. We looked all over for my glasses. Couldn’t find them. And so I was somewhat irritated over that.

And then after we got here, Artie took another look and she finally found them under the seat. How they got there, I don’t know. But anyway, that solved that problem. And then after we got here . . . we have this key to our new car, and it costs five hundred dollars if you have to get a new one. And Artie wanted me to change my pants, and in between changing my pants from here to over there, the key disappeared. And I thought, what the devil! (laughter)

And thank goodness Artie had a second key, but that was somewhat annoying because I just couldn’t figure out how I lost the key within ten feet. And as it turns out, Artie found it under that couch. And how it got there I don’t know. (laughter) But it was almost like someone was trying to test me to see if they could get me irritated yesterday.

So all of us have emotions and the key is not to identify with them but become the observer. Not identify with the body but observe what is happening with the body. The more we detach ourselves from our vehicles, the more control we have over them. Because if we identify too strongly with our vehicles, then what happens? Then there is corruption. There’s disease. And there are all kinds of disease connected with the emotions.

One of the problems with the emotions is the suppression that comes, because people tend to want to feel like they’re in charge of their emotions. If you tell somebody they’re being too emotional . . . they don’t want to be called emotional. That’s like an insult. Even though they are being very emotional, they don’t want to recognize that they are being emotional.

But people tend to identify too strongly with their emotions. And many people realize that it’s not good to identify too strongly. So what they start doing when they realize that being too emotional is not the way to be, they will often deny or suppress their emotions.

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Introduction To the Twelve Keys of Knowledge

Part One of the 2021 Gathering – Transcription By Adam Clayton

This is kind of a special group because you’ve come despite the virus and everybody’s nervous about catching something. So I thought people may need a little extra incentive to come here. Some came here with quite a bit of sacrifice so I’ve decided to go through all twelve Keys during this gathering.

Now so far, I’ve given out seven of the Keys. Four of them are given out in the books. Three others I’ve given out at various gatherings. But at this one, we will go through those seven, plus five additional ones that I haven’t identified yet as The Keys of Knowledge.

I’m seventy-six years old. Who knows how knows how much longer I’m going to be here, so I might as well get them out so they’re in the public arena. Hopefully, I can live to be a hundred or so.

Asaph: Two hundred and fifty.

JJ: Two hundred and fifty? That would be nice.

Yeah, I’ve got to figure out the key to regenerating my physical body. Artie and I have several keys of personal things we’ve found to try and stay healthy and that certainly helps. But we have aged just like everybody else. And so we haven’t quite overcome the physical pull toward death yet. And that is something that we’re looking forward to gaining.

That usually doesn’t happen until the fifth initiation. At the fifth initiation, the entity becomes what they call a Master of Wisdom, and he has power to regenerate. He’s not really an immortal, but he has power to regenerate until he no longer needs his physical body.

Now when attaining this power, some Masters go on to higher spiritual levels and do other work, and others stay behind. There are seven different paths that are taken by the various Masters. And one of the paths is called the Path of Earth Service. And in the Path of Earth Service, those who attain the higher initiations, stay behind in order to help us mortals that haven’t crossed over the barrier yet.

But when I wrote the first book, I introduced the idea of the Keys of Knowledge – that there are Twelve Keys of Knowledge, Twelve Keys of Understanding, and Twelve Keys of Eternal Life. I probably won’t get any further than the Twelve Keys of Knowledge in this lifetime. But you never know. It depends on if we eventually establish the Molecular Relationship, and then anything is possible.

Joshua: On these Keys, what’s the difference between these gradations? There are these three sets of keys. There are the Keys of Knowledge and . . . I forget the names of the others. What’s the distinction between those?

JJ: Well, I don’t have all the keys yet, so I can’t clearly tell you the distinction. But we’ll present the Keys of Knowledge, and you can see that the Keys of Knowledge really open up the disciple to more knowledge and understanding of principles that will further them along the path.

And the Keys of Understanding are like the Keys of Knowledge, but they are more related to understanding than increasing knowledge. And the Keys of Eternal Life will be keys that once they are in place, we will understand how to rejuvenate our physical bodies, which I do not have yet.

And if I did have them, I wouldn’t be able to give them out yet, because there isn’t a group ready to receive those final keys. The Keys of Knowledge are something that everyone can understand, and it will increase their ability to discover new knowledge, knowledge that is accurate and true.

Any other questions before we move on?

Key One:  Decision – The Essence Behind Decision

So in the book, we’re hit with the idea as to “Who or what are you?” That is the question that many people have dealt with. Many philosophers have dealt with throughout the centuries and millennia. And what is the main answer that most people give?

Now, there are a lot of teachers teaching “who or what are you.” And they give various answers. But most of their answers are very similar. What do most people say that we are?

Joshua: Souls.

JJ: Souls, yeah. Then you say, “what is a soul?” What else do people say that we are?

Asaph: Gods.

JJ: Gods. Okay, well what does that mean?

Asaph: Essentially, that we are eternal.

JJ: Yeah. Okay. There’s certainly truth to that because we came from a sphere where we were one with God. And we’re reflections of God, so there’s a lot of truth in that. But what is God? And what is any life form? What is the essence of who we are?

Let’s say Asaph here is God. And he doesn’t even know he’s a God because he’s forgotten who he is. But who is he? What is his essence? What’s an answer that a lot of people give?

Joshua: Spirit.

JJ: Spirit. That’s the most common one. Okay, our essence is spirit. All right, well what is spirit? It’s higher than matter, right? But what does that tell you? It doesn’t really tell you anything, does it?

There’s spirit and matter. We kind of have an idea of what matter is. There’s stuff that we can see. And we can build houses out of it and build cars out of it. And our physical body is built with it. But then a lot of the teachings teach that everything that we see is built on the principle of illusion. So we don’t even know what matter is for sure.

Scientists are trying to figure it out. And they look at smaller and smaller particles and all they can find is wavelengths. And then when they get down to the smallest particles, they find out that when we look at it, it’s a particle, and when we are not measuring it, it turns into a wave. And so it goes back and forth depending on whether we’re looking at it or not.

And this has really baffled scientists. It even baffled Einstein. Einstein couldn’t figure it out. It didn’t make much sense to him. He said there had to be something missing in the explanation here.

Some people have even come up with theories from the quantum reality, that science is finding, that they think the whole Universe is produced by some type of hologram. We’re living in some type of video game, and the video game is not composed of real matter that can be touched. But in the game, the actors can touch each other and have experience.

And a lot of people, because of the quantum studies they’ve done where they showed that matter is not solid, and can be either a particle or a wave, a lot of theories are surfacing that our whole life is like a video game that is being played out. This is quite interesting. But that still doesn’t tell us who we are.

Now let’s consider two different teachings. One says we’re in a real universe with real matter and God created it, and I’m in a body. Okay, well what is in the body?

Now the same thing occurs if life is a video game. You’re still in the avatar. We all saw the movie ‘Avatar.’ The guy was in his physical body, but his consciousness was projected to an avatar. The avatar wasn’t real, but it was like it was real. He still had an essence that was real. Even though he wasn’t his avatar, and maybe he wasn’t his body, he was still something. What is that something?

And this is what people have been asking for centuries. And that is what the first Key is centered around.

So the question is “who or what are you?” And first, the seeker has to find out what he is not. The first thing we have to realize is that we are not our bodies. It’s kind of sad that many hard-core scientists believe we are our bodies. They believe we are a machine, and our physical brain has produced our consciousness.

It’s kind of odd though that consciousness, according to science, came from something that was not conscious. Does that make any sense? Does that make sense that your consciousness evolved from something with no consciousness? Doesn’t make sense, does it?

There are so many things that do not make sense regarding the idea that we are our bodies. For instance, consider how complicated one cell in your body is, and how complicated the DNA within that cell is. It has all the knowledge within it to duplicate your entire body. Those small strands of DNA are more complex than any computer we’ve been able to manufacture so far. As a matter of fact, it’s so complicated that it took a tremendous amount of computer energy and technology to decipher it and merely map its configuration.

So figuring that something that has no consciousness . . . just materialized and put things together to produce less than one trillionth of your body, which would be a cell, and in that cell the DNA . . .  to figure that one thing alone was produced by just random effects is harder to believe than like walking through a forest and tripping over a computer, and thinking, “oh, this computer just materialized through the elements all combined together to make this computer work.

Now, just think of a lightbulb, for instance, how complicated it would be for random energies and random events to put together something with threads that could screw into a socket with matching threads. So you screw in a lightbulb, and it works because everything matches.

Within the cells in your body, there are all kinds of linkages like that going on, where you have things matching to other things, just within the cell. Just that alone isn’t something that would just show up for a trillion years, anywhere. And if it did show up once, the winds would blow it away and it wouldn’t go anywhere.

I often think when these atheist scientists die, and they find out that they still have consciousness, and they find out that everything was not created by chance, I think they’re going to hit themselves on the head and think, “boy, was I stupid! Why didn’t I figure that out? Here I was projecting myself as the smartest of the smart, and I did not see this really simple thing that consciousness cannot be created by unconsciousness. How can something with no consciousness create something with consciousness? How can something with no intelligence create something with intelligence?”

I think these scientists, when they find out, when they’re on the other side, they’re just going to slap themselves. Because, you know how you feel when something dawns on you and you think, “well, I should have known that, darn it.” How often has that happened to you? You know, every once in a while, it happens in life.

But you can imagine what an atheist, especially a scientist, who is supposed to be a seeker of truth, how they will feel when they see how obvious it should have been. It should have been completely obvious that we are not our bodies. But even a lot of people who are religious, and believe that within the body is a spirit, they’re still very attached to being a body. They identify with it very strongly.

A sign that we identify too strongly with the body, is the fact that we get ill, that the body breaks down. Since energy follows thought then if we identify too strongly with the body then in the process the thought will be distorted. We are not our bodies. But our body is a vehicle.

Now sometimes, like for instance, if you have a really good car . . . we had a neighbor that had this ’57 Chevy that was in prime shape. He just loved driving that around showing it off. And he had a couple of classic cars, but this particular one he almost identified with, like it was an extension of him. But he’s not his car. His car was a vehicle, but he liked his car so much that it was part of his identity.

Same thing if someone gets a Lamborghini and invests everything in it, or any type of car that someone is really proud of . . . it’s a vehicle. And the tendency of many people is to identify too strongly with the vehicle as if they and the vehicle are one.

Asaph here is a good-looking guy. But it would be a mistake to identify with his body, that he and his body are one. So we have to look on our bodies as a vehicle, a vehicle that we use. And a vehicle can be used for good or evil. You can use a car to help somebody out, to get somebody where they’re going. Or you can use a car to rob a bank.

You can use your body for service and love and helping people, or you can use it to hurt people and do destructive things. So whatever you have, whatever you identify with can be used for good or evil. But the first lesson is to learn that we are not our bodies.

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