‘No Means No!’ The Abuse God and Life Never Consented To.
Consent is a big word in our world at the moment. As is the word abuse.
Particularly in my homeland of Australia.
Violating or exploiting something or someone, or treating it/them in a manner by which no person has been given permission to do so, can be considered abuse.
The phrase, ‘No means No!’ is used frequently as an education and awareness tool when it comes to preventing and reducing the incidence of sexual assault and abuse in our world.
When any incident of abuse is reported many people fly into outrage, launching abuse of a different kind at the accused, even before it is proven if abuse — violation without consent — has taken place.
Often, in the case of one person’s word against another’s, evidence must be gathered, and a case tried in order to establish the truth.
But, nonetheless, there will always be a truth, whether unveiled or not.
It is said we live in unprecedented times, which I believe to be, at a minimum, a valid statement. If not completely accurate.
When used, this does not mean unprecedented in a good way.
The world shutting down due to a virus is the main foundation for such a claim.
But we could also throw in the following when we consider using the word unprecedented to describe our world today.
A global mental health crisis.
Intense anger and outrage at the people and things we don’t approve of or disagree with i.e. at the sacred humanity of others.
The devastation and trauma experienced by our earth.
The avalanche of individually centred expression as our boastfulness and desire to promote ourselves reached never before seen heights.
The self-righteous launching expressions of judgement and hate at the easy-to-hate-and-judge.
Far too many children around the world are either hungry, scared or emotionally sick.
And I could go on.
The point being, we can say we live in unprecedented times. But there’s a reason.
It’s because the extent of our physical, energetic and psychological abuse of life is also unprecedented. That’s how things work.
If the level of abuse something experiences reaches unprecedented levels, then so too will its suffering.
This is what humanity has done to life.
Inflicted unprecedented abuse on it, and so it must experience unprecedented pain and anguish.
Which it has!
And, ironically, it is this day and age — where even breathing incorrectly could be considered a crime — that has been most abusive on all three levels.
The worst part?
We have done this in the manner we despise the most.
Without life’s consent.
Life — or what I know to be God — did not give us permission to exploit, abuse or violate it for any reason. No more than you or I would our own child.
Life even made it clear those opportunities would be there, but, through stories such as Adam and Eve and via guidelines such as the Ten Commandments — and more recently the philosophy of conditional expression — we were given very clear instruction on the types of abuse and exploitation life would not permit.
Why?
Because they were the things which would make life suffer.
These were the things which would make our world chaotic and imbalanced.
These were the things that guaranteed our world would experience trauma and suffering.
These instructions, handed down by an identity to which many might attribute the term God, were telling us the things we did not have permission to do — the things he would not consent to — because they would be abusive and harmful to the body of life.
God’s life.
And our sacred earth.
If no means no to a human being, who feels threatened by the possibility of physical, energetic or psychological abuse, then surely it does to the life we all belong to as well.
Shouldn’t God’s — or life’s — cry of ‘NO!’ be considered even more important to honour than our own individual ones?
Or at least as important?
Are we not just small and temporary components of a larger life that has the same needs?
When Jesus — through God’s wisdom — told us one day it would be made clear humanity did not believe in him at all, this is what he meant.
Through his life, and actions, he taught us not to be abusive to life.
He taught that we had the freedom to choose not to be abusive, no matter what type of life others were leading.
And no matter what the rest of the world valued and worshipped.
That’s why he gave up his life. To demonstrate nothing was more important in this world than keeping life sacred and honouring it through who we are.
As the story goes, in the desert, he was even offered the same things the personal development world offered us — fame, wealth and influence…should he sell his soul.
Which meant embracing the behaviours, dreams and desires that would violate and exploit life without its consent.
That’s what Jesus taught.
‘Do not abuse life for any reason.
If you live as I have, without needing the evidence of a traumatised and abused world to convince you my way is the way, then you have demonstrated your faith and belief in me!’
To him belief could not be spoken.
The evidence of belief could only be actioned. Believing in Jesus or declaring one has faith in him but abusing life without its consent would result in only one thing.
An abused and violated world.
An abused and violated body.
God’s body.
Even a thousand Jesus’ would not make a difference to our world. Only a world living as Jesus did could have maintained the dignity and health of life.
And avoided the unprecedented suffering life experiences today.
What follows are some of the things life did not consent to, because they constituted either physical, energetic or psychological abuse of our world.
I do not point out these things to identify those guilty of abuse. Nor is what follows motivated by a name and shame mentality.
Rather, it serves as a reminder that many of us have been abusive of life in our own way, and that perhaps we should treat others accused of abuse with love, respect and compassion.
As opposed to the stone throwing we see so regularly today.
Abusing the abusive only multiplies the abuse experienced by our world.
We can start with the first commandment.
‘Honour no other gods before me.’
When life says this, it makes it clear.
‘Do not abuse, violate or exploit me for any reason. Not for business and economics. Nor to indulge individually centred notions of success, greatness and potential. And not to satisfy any personal desire for fame and influence.
Not for these or any other gods which may present themselves as a priority over my dignity and health.
You see, to life, abuse is abuse.
What’s real is real. Not what is spun or marketed.
Selling your child to prostitution because you needed the money does not alter or diminish the abuse the child will experience.
Profit was prioritised over care for the sacred being.
Without the being’s consent.
The very same crime that creates intense outrage in so many. Many who have no doubt abused life in their own way, against life’s wishes.
And without its consent.
Our contemporary world makes it very easy to understand what Jesus was getting at when he said, ‘sort out the log in your own eye, before you unleash hate and judgement on the speck of dust you notice in that of another!’
I have said it many times, our world has become a, ‘my abuse of life is okay but yours isn’t’, type of world.
What does this mean to life?
What does this mean to God?
It means far too many are abusive in the first instance, and in the second, our world is then filled with the hate and judgement of the self-righteous who see straight past the log belonging to them, blinded by their outrage at the speck in another.
So, what are some of the abuses and violations of life, that God never consented to? And in fact, specifically said we were not to do.
We have already covered the first and most important one, ‘Don’t do anything harmful or abusive to me, no matter what you might gain from your abuse.’
Here are some others.
But before we go on, I should point out, violations and abuses of life can be physical, psychological and energetic.
So, we move on…
Do not steal.
This is a key instruction in many approaches to spirituality. And with good reason.
Here, life tells us it does not consent to theft of any kind. Not physical objects, not business ideas, not intellectual property and not more than our fair share of the earth’s resources.
You see, theft is theft.
And it leaves its energetic mark on life. Which is a poisonous and ugly one.Theft is not sourced in honour or love. Nor is it sourced in respect, gratitude and abundance.
The competitive nature of business and economics has made theft a valid pathway to success. This is just an example of the contemporary world’s way of justifying abuse.
How do we know stealing is harmful to our world?
Life told us. God told us.
Be sure, though, that such instructions do not relate to right and wrong or good and bad.
They relate to honour and abuse.
In its truest essence this instruction is not about labelling people good or bad. It’s harmful or abusive. Life will feel less healthy as a result of every theft. We can justify it how we want, but it does not change what it is to life. This is the law of revelation.
We are who and what we are.
And some more…
Do not boast of or promote oneself — no matter how great the achievement or act of charity.
Again, not because boasting is good or bad. But because it makes our world sick. It is an impure and toxic expression. Think how damaging our personal brands have been to life. And our obsession with marketing.
Imagine, every “why I’ or ‘how I’ piece of writing, designed to portray someone as inspiring and clever, was harmful to our world.
We can say, ‘I was just trying to help others.’ But the evidence contradicts this thinking. Our world has never been more educated by people who think this way and yet it collapsed under the weight of our abuse.
As God is my witness, such expressions do more harm than good to our energetic world.
Contentment with anonymity is one of the greatest gifts one can offer God and life. It is the gentle tread. The way of the meek. The way of conditional expression.
We were also never given permission to disrupt or manipulate the psychology of others. We were not to make anyone feel inadequate or wasteful in regard to their life.
Or create in them a need for healing.
Ours is a human experience. What’s good for one may not be good for another.
And what is good for one may not be good for life.
Think of the damage influencers have done to our world by inspiring and influencing others to abuse life in the same manner they have. Never have we striven so hard, or desired so intensely to be seen as world changers, and never has our world been sicker.
Here, it is the need to be seen that is the problem. We were encouraged to be anonymous with great acts for this reason.
Love doesn’t pursue a reputation. Nor does it need to impress.
Love is in the act. Ego and selfishness is in the need for recognition and validation. It is this need — or want — which corrupts the act.
To be and trust is a critical component of our contemporary instruction from God.
Be who you are, putting life first in the process, and trust that this is what life needs from you. Without shame or guilt or any other feelings of inadequacy.
We were also told not to be individually excessive in our use of the earth’s resources. The earth is designed to provide for us all. Which means it wants to provide for love, not cater to — and be abused by — greed.
If we have been excessive in your demands and taken more than our fair share we have done so without life’s blessing or consent.
We are complicit in our world’s great imbalances.
Others must go without. And our earth must experience trauma.
Again, this is not about right or wrong, nor guilt or shame. But about understanding why our world shut down, and how this collapse relates to the way it has been treated throughout the history of its life and whether it consented to this treatment.
We were never given consent to hate and judge the flaws and imperfections in another. Our humanity is sacred. It is our reason to love.
Every time we hate or judge another, we can only defile ourselves and life.
Not the other person.
It is one of life’s great ironies that our abuse of another is only an abuse of ourselves, and the life we belong to.
We were not given permission to use energetic tools of manipulation such as the law of attraction, visualisations and vision boarding. Or any other such forms of abuse that disrupt the balance and health of our energetic world
These are no more than an assault on the energetic system we all belong to. God’s energetic system. Here we say, ‘your energetic health and balance is not as important as my desire to create the individual life of my dreams.’
Meaning, ‘it will not be your will that is done God…but mine!’
We were also told to honour and keep holy a day of rest. The Sabbath.
Why?
Because we belong to a physical, energetic and psychological system. And it needs to stop and recharge. It needs a break to avoid burnout.
As does the earth that strives to sustain that life.
It cannot meet and manage our non-stop demands.
To expect it to, and to inflict such demands on it is both exploitative and abusive.
Life told us it needed rest.
And we brushed its requests aside and put our world to the sword.
We were not to turn our temples into marketplaces.
This we have done to each and every temple in our world.
Our earth.
Our children.
Our humanity — with the inception of the personal brand we formally completed the selling of the human soul.
Our religious and spiritual pathways.
Nothing was left out when it came to the violation and exploitation of all things sacred by our economic and individually centred approach to life.
This takes us full circle.
Right back to the first commandment. ‘Honour no other gods before me!’
Not even the gods of business and economics.
Fact: Life — or God — did not give consent for any form of abuse or exploitation to be inflicted on their physical, emotional and energetic systems.
Life knew if such abuses occurred then it would end up exactly where it is today.
So, is consent really important when it comes to how we treat the things we should be honouring as sacred?
Or just when it suits us?
For what we have done to life itself is no different to what any abuser might do to the body of another, against their wishes, in order to satisfy personal wants and desires.
Or, perhaps, what an emotionally abusive person might do to another.
In truth, this is who we are and who we have been.
And the life we belong to — God — has suffered unimaginably, because countless numbers of us chose to do the thing that disgust us most.
Abused life’s body and energetic system so we could profit personally and professionally.
Life was never going to work for life itself, and its dignity and health was never going to be preserved without us putting conditions on our expression and demands.
Only by living with conditional expression can who we are genuinely honour life and avoid being be abusive.
It’s why life has given us this instruction.
Life told us the things we weren’t to do.
But we went ahead and did them anyway.
And here we are!
And here Life is.
Battered, sick and abused.
And so it is!
Amen.
Tim
To visit the Conditional Expression website click here
For the full Conditional Expression Philosophy click here
For the Chapter on ‘Be and Trust -God’s Contemporary Instruction For Humanity’ click here
