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 It’s difficult to generalize about spirit guides – each is different, as people are different.  They will speak to us in a manner we are capable of understanding:  they address us according to where we are coming from, in terms we are capable of receiving.  If there’s something we just don’t want to hear, it’s easy enough to block it, just as we tend to block out what we don’t want to hear from other people.    Sometimes my own guides have had to wait until I was in a particularly relaxed or unguarded frame of mind to sock something to me that I didn’t want to hear.  And at times I’ve remonstrated, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”; to which their usual rejoinder is, “We were telling you all along, but you refused to listen!”

Once you’ve got the technique of automatic writing down pat, you can use it to channel any spirits, not just your personal guides.  This means nature spirits, recently deceased people, even Jesus, Mary, Krishna, Buddha, saints, etc.  God can’t be channeled this way, however, because God doesn’t “talk”.  If you get a message purporting to come from God, it’s some wise-guy spirit putting you on.   Automatic writing can also be used as part of Active Imagination (a technique devised by Carl Jung for conversing with your own thought forms – see my book Thought Forms for details). 

You may wonder how you can tell if you’re channeling evil spirits.  All I can say is that all of the evil spirits which I’ve run across in my channeling made no bones about who they were or what they were up to.  Evil spirits seek willing accomplices – they need a decision on your part to commit evil, they can’t trick you against your will.  However, they can come up with some pretty tempting offers sometimes.  I would say, though, that if the messages you are channeling are full of fulsome praise at how marvelous you are, and pity at how misunderstood you are, and how much you have to suffer, then probably you’re channeling demons.   Real spirit guides will buck you up when you are feeling low; but they’ll also kick you in the butt if you indulge in self-pity.  Their actual goal is to get you to a place where you have your own true feelings working, so that you don’t need them anymore.

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              Note that when a person channels for the first time, the answers tend to come out sort of inchoate and constipated.  Don’t worry – just push it right on out and don’t worry about whether it makes sense or not.  Usually in automatic writing a few words or phrases spring into your mind at a time, a little faster than you can write them down, though sometimes you might get whole blocks or paragraphs at once.  You might also see memory pictures pop up before your mind’s eye, or get flashes of dream-like scenes as you write.  Record all of this because it’s all relevant.  Something might not make sense at the moment, but it will eventually if you keep a written record of it.

            If nothing comes to mind in response to your entreaties; or if all that comes to mind is gibberish; then you are blocking.  Your conscious mind might say, “This isn’t working.  I’m not doing it right.”  or  “There must be some trick to this!”  in its effort to subvert the process.  Don’t fall for that ploy!  Keep trying, keep on writing, even if all you get is gibberish.  Only trust can open you enough to write automatically; otherwise you tangle yourself with doubt.  Doubt is the enemy of all magic, and it can completely tear down automatic writing at the outset.  Faith is the key to success here, as elsewhere, and a strong curiosity is a valuable asset as well.  Bear in mind that your spirit guides will be thrilled to open this channel of communication with you, and they will do everything they can, from their side, to assist you. .  If you find yourself blocking, try switching to your non-dominant hand.  Keep on writing, and at some moment your conscious mind will relax its grip and you’ll start writing automatically.  Then, simply write down what your spirit guides tell you, asking any questions you like along the way. 

Ask your guides what their names are, and if they have specific messages for you.  Some people “see” their spirit guides in their mind’s eye;  though I’ve never seen my guides in this manner, I have met them in dreams.  In automatic writing (as opposed to trance channeling) there is a lot of medium thrown in with the message.  One of my spirit guides is also channeled by several other people, and while you can tell that it’s the same entity coming through, she sounds different through each of us.  For one thing, she speaks in English to those whose native language is English, and in Spanish to those of Spanish tongue.  Beyond that, her diction, outlook, interests, etc. mirror those of the person channeling her.  What is invariant from channel to channel is her feeling – the sense of her presence – and the tenor and direction of her thinking.  But her relationships with her various channels are as diverse as the channels are.

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It’s best to tackle automatic writing when you have some pressing personal question to ask, or when you are moved by a burning curiosity to communicate with your spirit guides.  Idle curiosity may not have enough oomph behind it to forge a clear communications link.  The reason some people block conscious channeling (or reject  the idea altogether) is that they don’t want to face up to the fact that they are not solid, continuing, individual beings, but rather are a flux of thought forms (images, opinions, beliefs, and expectations learned from parents and society) being urged this way and that by spirit forces.

In other words, to open to channel means to lay aside a lot of common assumptions about the nature of personal existence; and some people find this frightening.  If you find yourself blocking, just set the project aside until you have a dire need to question your guides – that need will be sufficient motivation to break the block.  Like everything else in life, channeling comes more easily to some people than to others; but anyone can do it if they just keep plugging away at it.

Choose a time when you are relaxed, alert, calm, and will not be interrupted.  If you are into astrology, you can use a lunar planetary hour; however this is merely a help, not a necessity.  Lie down or sit, as you prefer, with a pen and notebook in hand (although channeling can also be done on a typewriter or word processor).  Writing down both your questions and the replies as they come in the form of a dialogue, ask your guides to please talk to you.  For example, you might start this way:

Me:  “My spirit guides, could you please come and talk to me?  I am really trying to be open right now, and I want to hear what you have to say to me.  I have this problem that I need an answer to; won’t you please come and talk to me about it.  Etc. etc.”

This is just an example – you should ask your guides to talk to you using your own words and sentiments.  Keep writing, keep on coaxing them, until you begin to feel an answer forming in your mind, and then write it down.  The trick to making this work is to not stop writing.  That’s the purpose of the writing – to focus your attention on the act of writing, like when you’re taking notes in a classroom, so that there’s less room for doubt, hesitation, fear, etc.  Keep on writing, even if you’re just writing the same plea over and over again.  Do make it heartfelt –  not just done mechanically – and eventually you’ll start getting an answer.  It really is so simple and straightforward you won’t believe it – “Look, ma, I’m channeling!”

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Although both thought forms and spirit guides can be channeled in the same ways (as can other spirits:  Jesus and Mary, Krishna, nature spirits, demons, recently deceased people, etc.), thought forms and spirit guides are completely different kinds of entities.  Thought forms are created by us:  they stand in the same relation to us that we stand to God.  Guides, on the other hand, are a bit above us in the sense of being wiser, possessing broader viewpoints and more loving hearts, but they aren’t that far above us.

Many spirit guides have had human incarnations. Sometimes deceased friends, relatives, ancestors, or even aborted fetuses become one’s spirit guides; and one of my own guides has told me that there are lives / realities in which I am her spirit guide.  I presume that similar relationships between people and their guides obtain for everyone. 

Up until recently in human history (last few thousand years) magical knowledge – the practical application of intuition – was handed down from generation to generation, as agricultural or mathematical knowledge is.  However, because of the nature of the times, most of that knowledge was lost as skilled practitioners died off without leaving heirs.  In the interim, the White Brotherhood, the “guild” of spirit guides, came in to fill the gap – to steer humanity in more or less the right direction during its sleep-walking (rationalist-materialist) phase. 

There’s a great network spread out across the world now, a linking up of groups of spirits and human channels, sending out filaments of light around the earth to love it and heal it.  To learn to consciously channel your spirit guides is to join this fraternity of light.  As long as there is light, no evil can overcome the earth.

Now we will describe how to channel spirit guides by automatic writing.  But it must be pointed out that automatic writing is just a way of making channeling deliberate or special, of endowing it with an aura of mystery.  By distinguishing the process of channeling in this way it is easier to understand and learn – to learn in the sense of separating it out of normal thinking and feeling, and to understand when “our” thoughts and feelings indeed arise within ourselves, and when they are being passed to us by a spirit.  Channeling can be done via normal thinking and feeling; in trance; in dreams; and by automatic writing.  Automatic writing, albeit not as clear as trance channeling (more admixture of the person channeling in the final product),  has the advantage of providing a written record of a spirit’s messages – something which is often useful for future reference.  A lot of things spirits say to us make more sense in retrospect.

I’ve personally taught some hundred people to channel their spirit guides, and of that number only half a dozen or so have blocked so badly that they couldn’t do it.  But nobody needs a teacher to learn something as easy and basic as channeling.  The only function my presence as a teacher serves is to prop up my students’ faith, to put their noses down to it:  I have a rather overbearing personality that expects and assumes that people will channel successfully – which doesn’t offer my students much margin for doubt or failure.  But this is just a didactic device – I’m convinced that anyone who wants to channel can channel, with no need for a teacher.

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To ask these sorts of questions (and pay attention to the answers) is called Active Imagination, and it is a more functional form of channeling thought forms than is normal thinking.  In Active Imagination we interact with our thought forms, whereas in normal thinking we just snap to and salute whenever a thought form barks a command at us.  Active Imagination is facilitated by automatic writing (which we shall learn how to do presently); i.e. automatic writing is a refinement of the technique of Active Imagination, but it’s by no means the only way to do it.  Thoughtful, introspective people are doing Active Imagination all the time without calling it that or giving any special attention to it; but, in fact, Active Imagination is a wholly different form of channeling thought forms than is normal thinking.

So thought forms – habitual patterns of thought picked up from our parents and society –  account for most of what we consider “our” thoughts and feelings; and spirits – both good and evil –  account for most of what’s left.  The chief difference between thought forms and spirits is that thought forms are within us, created by us, a part of us; whereas spirits are outside of us.  When we channel (e.g. by automatic writing) we run across a whole menagerie of entities – both thought forms and different kinds of spirits – so it’s helpful to know the differences between these various kinds of  beings.

There are lots of different kinds of spirits in the world.  We are spirits, for that matter.  Some spirits are entirely useless to humans – we cannot even communicate with such entities.  Others are nasty little things which are best avoided altogether.  And still others can be quite helpful to humans, for a multitude of purposes.

The use of nature spirits, such as water spirits, to wash away our self-importance and help us tune in to our true feelings of joy and peace with the world, will be described in a later essay.

There are also spirits which oversee particular human activities such as agriculture, art, construction, cooking, healing, mathematics, mining, etc. etc.  Every human endeavor has a cadre of spirits proper to it, which guides individual practitioners and also helps humanity as a whole expand its knowledge of the various arts, crafts, and sciences.  A competent, inspired professional in any field is constantly receiving inspiration and new ideas from the spirits who oversee his or her field.  However, as is the case also with thought forms, most people believe that any inspiration they receive in this fashion is “their” idea, when in fact it’s being passed to them by spirits.  To be a competent professional in any field is to be a clear channel for the spirits who oversee that field.

Finally, we come to personal spirit guides – what some people call angels.   These are spirits who are assigned to individual human beings, who tend them as wards.  Everybody has at least one personal spirit guide at any one time, but most people have several or lots of them, which may come and go in the course of a lifetime.

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In fact, our existence is multidimensional.  We not only exist in an infinite number of past and future lives, but we are also infinitely ramified in all the probable realities which branch off from this present lifetime.  Every time we make a decision – big or little – we create a probable reality in which that decision was made, and another or other probable realities in which that decision wasn’t made.  For example, that person whom you wistfully smiled at from afar once but never spoke to nor saw again, is your spouse in another probable reality in which you did go over and strike up a conversation.

Thus, not only does the totality of who “we” are encompass infinite lifetimes in other worlds and realities, it also encompasses infinite probable realities within this present lifetime as well as all those others.  Not only that, but within the confines of a single probable reality of a single lifetime, which is all we normally pay attention to or consider to be “ourselves”, we are still multiple personalities.  That is to say, we are not the same person from moment to moment, but in fact shift from one to another subpersonalities or thought forms in response to this or that changing stimulus.  The only difference between an Eve, Sybil, or Truddi and the rest of us is that their slips are showing:  they’re acting out the multiple personality role openly, whereas the rest of us are marching around with our dress uniforms – our fear of going crazy – buttoned down tight.

Most of what we consider to be “ourselves” – that is, the thoughts, feelings and perceptions which occupy our conscious minds most of the time we are awake; our sense that there is a continuing “us” there – is just a collection of habits and predilections learned from our parents and society.  Each of our habitual thoughts, moods, beliefs, etc. is a thought form – a learned behavior which is a being in its own right.  Most of what we think we think, believe, or perceive is actually just what our parents and society think, believe, or perceive; and these thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions have an awareness, a sense of selfhood, and a will to live all their own.  We create them with our decisions and we breathe the breath of life into them with our attention.

Basically, every time we think a thought we are channeling a thought form.  However, this is an unskillful way of channeling because it’s mindless.  Thought forms grab our attention and say, “Think this!  Think that!  Think the other!  In response to this, do that!  Remember this!  Desire that!  Blah blah blah!” all day long every day.  Thought forms are our automatic pilot – although we ourselves create them, we are subject to their control thereafter.  We go along and just think whatever our thought forms want us to think.  It rarely occurs to us to stop and ask, “Why?  Why am I thinking this thought?  Is entertaining this thought going to benefit me?  From whence does this thought arise?  At what point in my life did I first begin entertaining this thought?  When did I make it a part of my inventory of habitual thoughts?  Etc.”

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                        Glendower:  “I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”

                        Hotspur:      “Why, so can I, or so can any man;

                                               But will they come when you do call for them?”

                                                                       – Henry IV, Part I

                 Like that character from Moliere who was delighted to learn that he’d been speaking prose all along and never knew it, each and every one of us is channeling all the time; and the only difference between ”professional” psychics and mediums and the rest of us is that the psychics are aware of what they’re doing – they make a special point of (call special attention to) a completely natural process that everybody already knows how to do.  Everyone has spirit guides who talk to them constantly; however, most people don’t listen to these messages, any more than they listen to what other people, such as their parents, spouse, or children, are trying to tell them.  When a thought or feeling prompted by a spirit guide pops up in their consciousness, they just pass over it or reject it.  In this essay we will discuss thought forms, spirit guides, and other beings which can be channeled, together with a simple technique for consciously channeling them.

In order to get an idea of what spirits are, it is first necessary to get a handle on what we are.  Contrary to popular opinion, we are not solid, abiding objects that have individual self-existence.  Although it certainly appears that the world is “real” and consists of solid, discrete objects, in fact our world is more like a movie screen, hooked up to other people’s movie screens, on which we’re all projecting what we’re feeling inside outwards as symbols – solid objects in a physical world.

To ask Heidegger’s question, “Why are there things rather than nothing?” is like asking, “Why can’t soccer players use their hands?  Why did God so construct the universe that soccer players can’t use their hands?”  In the same way, our perception of the universe as a world of solid, discrete objects is a wholly man-made restriction on our senses.  Plants and animals don’t perceive the world in this fashion, and neither, for that matter, do infants and lunatics.  They still use their “hands” (their feelings rather than their minds) to play the game of perception.  As a result, they don’t “play soccer” very well, but they still have the free use of their hands –their intuition – which most people have learned to repress.  The belief that we are discrete entities in a world of solid objects is just that – a belief – that makes the world of concepts, of thinking, possible.

Admittedly, the belief that we are discrete, abiding entities in a world of solid objects certainly seems to be true most of the time we are awake – it’s a pretty convincing belief.  But that’s only because we have the door tightly shut on any evidence that contradicts this belief.  That door is called “fear of going crazy or of being thought crazy.”  Keeping our sanity is equivalent to screening out lots of information about ourselves and the world around us which would be available if we could just loosen up a bit and drop the pretense that we exist as solid objects.

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  So now we come down to the question of how we can change our luck.  Astrology (propitious times to act or not act), charms, talismans, etc. can help us to focus our energy on our intent to become lucky.  They work to the extent that we have faith in them and believe that they work.  They are vehicles of intent, not the important thing, although they can be useful, just as a car can be useful to take us to our destination once we decide where we want to go.  But the important thing is the decision, the irrevocable decision, to change our luck – not the vehicle we use to implement it. 

            Changing our luck basically involves two things:  visualization and appreciation.  Much has been written about visualization (see e.g. Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization), so only a few points will be mentioned here.  Visualization is similar to normal daydreaming, except the latter is done with thinking, and the former is done with feeling.  Daydreaming is done in the third person and the future tense, whereas visualization is done in the first person and the present tense.  In visualization you imagine yourself to be actually in the middle of the scene as if it were unfolding around you here and now; and you let yourself feel all the joy you would feel if that scene were actually happening.  The secret of visualization is to convince yourself that what you are wishing for is already true, and to allow yourself to feel the feelings you would feel if that were in fact the case.   When we are depressed, our tendency is to dwell upon our unhappiness, and to play that tape over and over in our heads all day long.  The idea of creative visualization is to create a space for happiness to exist in the midst of our suffering; to dethrone the preeminence our self-pity; and then to slowly expand that feeling until it becomes dominant. 

Also, visualization should not be overly specific.  For example, “winning the lottery” is a silly thing to wish for or to visualize.  It’s too specific, too confining to the Spirit – as if one were trying to dictate to it.  “Wealth” or better yet, “Freedom from money worries” is a better thing to visualize because it gives the Spirit more free play, more liberty to send us suggestions on how to achieve wealth.  Similarly, to wish that Mary or John would fall in love with us is too specific, and verges on black magic.  It’s better to just visualize love from some unnamed person, since if all we want specifically is John’s love or Mary’s love, then we’ll reject Sam’s love or Judy’s love when it is offered to us – perfectly good love, but not our specific image of what we thought we wanted.  In other words, the chief difference between normal daydreaming and visualization is that the former is pegged to specific expectations, whereas the latter is pinned to a feeling of general happiness and well-being. 

Luck means letting the Spirit bring us what we want in its own way, in its own time.  This doesn’t mean we sit on our hands and vegetate; it just means keeping open to different possibilities as they arise, rather than clinging to some specific payoff (image of what we think it is we want). 

The other thing we need to change our luck is appreciation, which means appreciating what we already have – considering ourselves to be already lucky, rather than already unlucky.  This isn’t too hard to do:  we live in a beautiful world, in a wealthy country, in a time of relative peace and prosperity; we have enough to eat, we are educated and have millions of opportunities at hand.  If we don’t already consider ourselves to be damned lucky, then we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

What we are aiming for in both visualization and in appreciating what we already have is a joyous, optimistic, expectant attitude.  Although it takes a good attitude to have a good attitude, it doesn’t necessarily take a good attitude to want a good attitude.  When our desire to have a good attitude, no matter what is happening to us, exceeds our desire for some certain thing to happen, THEN our luck will start to change.

            If we just keep plugging away, at a certain point we come to realize that what we really want isn’t health or wealth or love from other people, but rather happiness, contentment in our own hearts.  We come to understand that the health or wealth or love is only a symbol for what we really want, which is to be joyous unto ourselves for no particular reason at all.  The health or wealth or love we visualized so intensely for so long doesn’t have anything to do with it except as sort of a mnemonic device, like the beads on a rosary.  We find we can be joyous in our visualizations and in our appreciation of what we already have – we don’t even need the visualizations to come true in order to be happy.  It’s at this point that our luck will start to change, and the visualizations will come true.

(excerpted from Magical Living.  Copyright © 2001 by Bob Makransky.   All rights reserved.)

  More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at:  www.dearbrutus.com  

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     Luck and doubt work inversely – each one serves to vanquish the other.  The absence of doubt is responsible for the phenomenon known as “beginner’s luck”.  Beginners don’t have doubts about what they are doing – it looks easy, so they try it and find that it is easy.  They don’t know enough to grasp all the pitfalls and complexities in what they are doing instinctively (by intuition).

            Therefore, to increase luck, it is necessary to banish doubt.  The hard part is, that just as it takes money to make money, it takes luck to believe that we are lucky.  That’s what makes it so hard to break out of a bad luck streak.  The reason why people get into bad luck streaks in the first place is because our society encourages doubt, not luck.  Society wants people to believe that their best chance for luck is to play the game by society’s rules, rather than to follow their own dreams and feelings and hunches.  Those who try to strike on their own are met with great resistance and doubt by their fellows:  by banks, government and business institutions, their own family and friends.  Therefore, a truly lucky attitude also requires being close-mouthed about oneself and one’s affairs, so as not to become a target for other people’s jealousy, which is the same thing as their doubt, which they can hurl to arouse one’s own doubt.

            What unlucky people are really striving for – which unlucky people must learn to see within themselves if they are to change their luck – is self-pity.  And unlucky people get it.  They are as lucky at getting what they want (excuses to pity themselves) as lucky people are at getting what they want.  Self-pity is a drain on the energy needed to bring luck.  We each have only a finite amount of energy, which we can spend on either luck or self-pity, but not both.  It is our society which teaches us to pity ourselves – which stands to gain from our collective self-pity and “helplessness”.

            Changing from an unlucky to a lucky attitude is hard to do – no bones about it.  Although there is indeed a Law of Abundance, to make that one work requires the utmost will and discipline. To arbitrarily adopt an attitude of carefree abundance when we’re flat broke and being pressed by creditors; or an attitude of radiant good health when we’re dying of AIDS; isn’t easy to do.  The only motivation we have is that there is no choice – it’s either change, or self-pity.  It’s a true triumph of the will to be able to arrive at an attitude of being nourished and protected even though nothing is going right.   True luck is being able to maintain our equanimity, our cool, our belief that we’re in good shape, even in the midst of a maelstrom.

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               Magic can be defined as the intentional manipulation of the force which most people term “luck”, by means of the deliberate cultivation of the faculty which most people term “intuition”.  Luck is not a subjective state, but rather is a force out there in the world at large.  As is the case also with vitality and physical strength, some people are just born with lots of luck (make the choice to be lucky in this incarnation), whereas others are born with very little luck.  However, there are things we can do to increase our luck, since ultimately luck – albeit an outside force – is controlled by our attitude.

            Luck has nothing to do with morality, or how nice we are.  If a selfish, nasty, manipulative S.O.B. believes that he is lucky, he’ll be lucky.  It’s the belief that we are lucky that makes us lucky, not how virtuous we are. If we expect luck to happen, it will tend to happen; whereas if we expect failure, that’s what we’ll get.  People who tend to be lucky also tend to expect luck to happen; and the reverse.  So the state of being lucky or unlucky tends to perpetuate itself.

            Luck is not the same thing as getting what we think we want.  How often has it happened that there was something that we desperately wanted; and we didn’t get it and were disappointed; and later on we discovered that it was a darn good thing we didn’t get it – it was lucky we didn’t get it – because if we had gotten it we would have been sorry, or else we wouldn’t have gotten this better thing instead; but at the time of our disappointment we considered ourselves unlucky.

            What luck is, is the sense that the world is sustaining, protecting, and nourishing us.  It’s the feeling that we are being taken care of and provided for, that the impersonal forces of the universe are watching out for us and helping us.  Although luck is not the same thing as getting what we think we want, it nonetheless leads to it:  getting what we want is a byproduct of the attitude that we are being helped and cared for; that we are deserving and worthy of happiness.

             Luck operates as quick little flashes every now and again.  Lucky people (those with a lucky attitude) are attuned to their lucky chances when they occur.  They have the patience to wait before acting until the moment is ripe; and then, when a lucky chance pops up, they see it and grab it.  Conversely, when a lucky chance pops up before unlucky people, they reject it automatically.  They don’t see or understand that that opportunity was their lucky chance, so either they don’t notice it at all, or else they notice it but reject it.

Thus there’s the same amount of luck going on for everybody all the time, but lucky people, by their attitude, are positioned to make use of it, whereas unlucky people aren’t.  They are too hung up in their own preconceived expectations of what they think they want; they’re like spoiled children trying to order the Spirit around.  Instead of receiving gratefully what the Spirit chooses to give them, they angrily reject the Spirit’s gifts because they don’t conform to their precise images of what they think they want.  As an example, more than once I’ve seen the Spirit bring a person a true soul mate when they were on the rebound from a break-up, and still too filled with self-pity to see that this person they met “accidentally” was the one they were praying for all along.  How many times have I seen the Spirit bring someone their true heart’s desire on a silver platter, yet the person rejected it because they still had too much self-hatred to permit themselves to feel happiness.   What keeps us from seeing and grasping the Spirit’s gifts is our own self-pity, which blinds us to everything except how much we’re suffering

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