Breaking news: This world is utterly convincing! Of course I wrote that tongue-in-cheek, but it is nevertheless true. When we have a bad hair day, we believe that it matters. Or when Putin wages war on Ukraine and when school shootings happen, we are still convinced that this world is real and that so are we.

Nothing could be further from the truth, my friends. It is all a play in consciousness, as Shakespeare pointed out.

Increasingly I forgive myself and others. The big stumbling block for me is seeing America in decline and autocracy rearing its ugly head. To read that Trump and Putin are in alliance and that the division of America can be laid at their feet. How can Americans believe that the Republican Party is anything other than an autocracy? But it is all a play in consciousness.

How does the world manage to convince us to believe in it, because it does.

Why do men and women turn towards darkness rather than light?

I turn to the words of Jesus, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

So where is His Kingdom if not within?

But we also find evil within and thereby hangs the story of the fall of man.

It is up to each individual to heed the words of the Master.

“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

Be aware that the con is on, to quote Vernon Howard. Stop being gullible; stop being duped by yourself.

Stop being convinced of the reality of evil, for in the Higher Kingdom, it does not exist. “I go to prepare a place for you.”

Work on yourself night and day for we “do not know the day when the prince of this world cometh.” And he will be disguised as war and pestilence, of which we are experiencing both.

“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

Vicki Woodyard