Donna Quesada: You know, I’m glad you brought this up. There is this… in spiritual teachings, on one hand, the idea of abolishing the ego
and on the other hand you hear, oh no the ego can be put to good use. We need that. And the idea isn’t to get rid of the ego. What is the right relationship with the ego?
Leonard Jacobson: First of all, you have to become present. As you become present, you become much more aware of your thoughts as they arise, and your feelings, as they arise. So, you are slowly becoming better and better at recognizing your thoughts. Now, the only way that the ego has any influence on you in any way what so ever is by generating thought with an associated feeling that is designed to take you into the past or into the future. And if you believe in it… if you get involved in it, it’s got you where It wants.
So, I’ll give you an example. The thought of Judgment. A thought arises and it’s judgmental. You want to judge somebody or you are judging yourself. And usually, it comes with a feeling that is a little bit painful. We don’t like to be judged. It’s fairly strong. We are so habituated to be caught in these energies. This thought with this feeling… that it’s very hard to disengage from it in the early stages of awakening. So, you have to go through a process. And I teach people how to deal with it if you can’t disengage from that thought, but also how to disengage. How to free yourself from judgment. And the answer is quite simple. Judging. Blaming.
DONNA: You just sort of catch it.
LEONARD: Thinking… I love you. I see you. Hello judgment. You are okay.
DONNA: It’s like a child, in a way.
LEONARD: Well, it’s child-like in the sense that it’s very innocent. It’s very friendly. You have to be friendly to whatever shows up. Whether it’s a thought, a judgment, a belief… Whatever it is. In presence you are friendly. You are friendly to your thoughts. You are not judging them or trying to get enlightened. That’s not friendly. You are not trying to escape the dream. That’s not friendly. But bring in the energy of Love. I see you, judgment. You’re okay. Judge away. Just don’t ask me to reject you or believe in you. That’s the catch. If I reject you and try to change myself, fix myself to get rid of that judgment, I lose. If I believe in the judgment, I lose, but if I just go, JUDGING! Not for, not against. See, that’s the best position of presence. Neither for or against. I simply am.
DONNA: Just, thank you for sharing.
LEONARD: Pretty much.
DONNA: You know, you said something that really hit me and I found it very simple but profound. We judge ourselves so harshly. You said that one of the ways that we are pulled out of presence is to look to others for love and acceptance. We are giving away our power. To awaken is to return to ourselves and reclaim our power. Free from the need of love and approval. It’s really profound and I wrote that down because I think we are all guilty of that and we look towards relationships to validate us in some sense…to approve of us.
LEONARD: Unquestionably. Let me explain how all that works because it’s a whole system that we get caught up in at the moment of conception for you. For everybody. Because you spend nine months in the womb. How was that endowment? Was your mother peaceful, loving, welcoming? Or was she agitated? Was she having a lot of trouble in her life? That’s the beginning of impressions. And meanwhile, you are in this kind of oneness in your mother’s womb. A recreation of Heaven. Completely connected with oneness in your mother’s womb. you don’t have to do anything. You feel the connection. Nobody explains to you. Nobody can say that the womb is getting a little small for you… you are going to get ejected very soon. Don’t get too scared. You are going to feel very separate… it’s a very profound experience in separation but hopefully you will recover.
So, if someone could have explained that to us, and we understood, then we would have been more relaxed. The experience of birth is the most profound experience of separation we will ever have to undergo. It’s a direct mirror of the original separation from God. We keep repeating it to give ourselves a chance to wake up from the separation dream. Just give me a moment. You see… I don’t go into my mind, so if I stop talking suddenly. I don’t go into my mind. I’m not in my mind as I speak to you. I don’t even know what I’m saying. I’m not channeling, but I’m not thinking in any way about I’m saying. Even now, I don’t know what comes next.
DONNA: I appreciate that. I think we make too much out of little gaps, or delicious pauses. It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable.
LEONARD: Repeat the essence of the question.
DONNA: That beautiful, beautiful quote about how we give our power away in looking for love and acceptance from others.
LEONARD: It begins in the womb. We go through this traumatic experience at birth. The only thing we need is to relax deeply and recover from the trauma of separation that was the birth process. I just need mother and father and doctors and anyone there to welcome me and be very, very present. Because I, as a new baby… I’m very very present. I look out. I need to feel that energy of presence. But it’s not there because our parents didn’t know how to be present. Nobody knew how to be present. Nobody knew how it was. No, not only were they not present. Father was angry. Mother was judgmental or emotionally absent. And it starts to compound the situation and all these limiting beliefs form.
It begins with I’m alone. I’m abandoned. There’s no one here for me. I’m not safe. That’s the foundational layer that forms our dream. The foundation of the dream is that there is no one here. I’m all alone. I might die. Then on top of that. Okay, I’m all alone. Or here for me as I need them to be. In the way I need. So, mother and father will you at least unconditionally accept me? I’ll feel a little safer. I’ll feel okay if I’m unconditionally accepted.
We never got that because they didn’t know how. They didn’t get that. So, how can they give it to us? That doesn’t work. Well, will you at least unconditionally love me? Accept me? Or, at the very least, think I’m special? These are what I call the substitute needs. The true and original need is, Donna, I just need you to be present with me. If you are here, I can be here. If you are present, then I get the whole package. You don’t have to love me. If you are here and I’m here, I am love. I don’t need you to love me. I’m the energy of acceptance. I don’t need you to accept me.
DONNA: We don’t approach relationships like that, at all.
LEONARD: No!
DONNA: We want to be liked.
LEONARD: No. We want them to fill in the missing spaces. If you don’t feel loved. You want someone to love you. To heal that wound. At a deeper level, you don’t feel loved. We could spend our whole lives… which we do to get love from others… trying to gain acceptance or inclusion. We are trying to prove we are worthwhile. Or trying to prove we are special. The trouble is that even if a hundred people are loving you in this moment. You are not going to feel it. You are not going to let it in because on a deeper level, there is this limiting belief that you are unloved. You can’t wipe over it. You can’t cover it up. You’ve got to bring that feeling I’m unloved up to consciousness… with all the pain associated with it… all the feelings.
You know it’s from the past, so it’s okay. It has nothing to do with that moment. You bring it all up and that leads to a healing and a release of that part of your past. And slowly, slowly, gently, lovingly, bring everything that’s unhealed up to consciousness. And you go through a healing and a release, which actually releases you into deeper levels of presence, which is where the real solution is. The real sanctuary. That’s the whole point of our existence. God is waiting for every one of us to emerge from the dream and say God, it is accomplished, at last; I’m here.
DONNA: WOW.
LEONARD: I am here now.
DONNA: That was one of my questions. What is the purpose of our existence? It’s to achieve that level of presence? And to make sure I understand… That deep level of presence is love. You become love? So, you don’t need to look for it on the outside anymore?
LEONARD: And you are acceptance. There’s no judgment in you. So, if somebody judged you, it wouldn’t touch you because there is no judgment in you. I like to say to people, “Nobody can make you angry, ever.” You can have anger repressed within you from your past.
DONNA: That is worth pausing on. No one can make you angry unless you already have that anger repressed within you…
LEONARD: From your past. Mostly from your childhood. No one can hurt you. It’s not possible unless you have hurt repressed within you from the past. No one can judge you in a way that can hurt unless you are already judging yourself.
DONNA: That is unbelievably profound. For someone who is just trying to process that, why is that the case? Why is my own anger making me project it onto someone else? Then they are the one making me angry?
LEONARD: Because we don’t want to take responsibility for ourselves. We are so deep in blame… which is a sign of abandoning responsibility. If you blame me, I’m guilty. If I blame you, you’re guilty. If I have an expectation of you that you did not meet, I will resent you. Even if I didn’t even share with you what my expectation was. We are just lost in this world of total abandonment of our responsibilities. And we are living with consequences. That’s the bottom line. And those consequences are heading in a pretty dangerous direction unless humanity begins to awaken, as a species, quickly.
DONNA: You say that almost all of humanity is operating at a very limited level of consciousness?
LEONARD: 99.92 percent.
DONNA: Is there hope for us?
LEONARD: Probably not. And I will explain that to you. Most people won’t even contemplate the possibility of coming out of the dream and opening into something that is unknown to them. The unknown. The unknowable. Everybody’s afraid of the unknown. People would rather stay in a dream. No matter how miserable it is. However uncomfortable… than enter into the unknown. No matter how beautiful it might be. Because we need to stay with what we are familiar with. The ego has figured out how to deal with it. We’ve got it all covered even through we don’t really. We don’t want to come out of the dream. So, we stay in it trying to fix the dream. That’s what everybody is doing. Trying to fix the dream. Trying to get by in the dream.
Now, some people do really well in the dream. Some people are very successful. They are very happy. Their relationships are great. No problem. Maybe they came out of the dream in their past life. Maybe it took them a lifetime to come out of the dream. But most people will only come out of the dream when they are suffering. And Eckhart is an example of that. But there are many people that won’t even contemplate coming out of the dream into truth. Unless their suffering becomes so painful that it’s either suicide or wake up out of the dream. I can tell you which one I recommend.
But what if we do that at the collective level? What if we take ourselves right to the very edge as a species living on planet earth? In terms of climate change, global warming, wars, inequality, injustice. You know, we could start seeing social unrest at a level we haven’t seen in centuries. We don’t know what is coming because of human unconsciousness. So, let’s wake up before we take ourselves to the edge, and start to recognize the truth of who we are. The truth of where we are.
When we all awaken collectively as a species, we are going to look around and say, My God, what have we done? What have we created here? It’s completely out of alignment with God and God’s creation. Compare our creation to God’s creation. Just compare the two. What humans have created. Now, sometimes we have created beautiful… I’m not denying that. But overall, most of what we have created is completely out of alignment with the natural world.
DONNA: And so, even those who might be happy in the dream… The problem with it is that we continue to live on a planet in an unconscious way. And unknowingly commit harm…
LEONARD: You know, the worst words that were ever uttered and written down ever is “We shall have dominion over Planet Earth.” Those are the most horrible, horrific, disgusting words. At the very best it should have been “We humans, sacred and divine caretakers on Planet Earth (which simply meant we take care of everything)… we take time not to harm, not to hurt, not to damage… We just take care because we are in recognition of the oneness.” How can you harm the Amazon forest when you notice that we are all one? Or a Dolphin or a horse? Any of it? How can you do it? I was watching on YouTube about the Chinese eating dogs. That’s horrible.
DONNA: It’s the pain of my heart. It really is.
LEONARD: So, the real key… The real solution is the awakening of consciousness. Now, when I did Liberating Jesus, I was really afraid to talk about these revelations about who Jesus was, what were his true teachings. I couldn’t speak about it for many years. Maybe 20 years or more. Because I didn’t want to cause a stir. I didn’t want to upset people. I know it’s going to upset people if I start sharing it. Then I saw Mel Gibson being interviewed on TV about his film, The Passion of the Christ. And I just couldn’t take it. I’ve got to do what God asked me to.
So, I wrote all the revelations that I experienced in that second awakening. I thought it was a nice palatable way to write it in the form of a play. What would Jesus say if he came back? It’s a one man play. Jesus is on stage, played by my good self… playing the role of Jesus returned. What would Jesus say? That is the play.
DONNA: How has it been received so far?
LEONARD: Well, I’m very overwhelmed by the positive responses. People emailing. Joining our mailing list. Liberating Jesus.There is a real hunger and an interest in the truth. If you have a very open mind and you can get past your Christian dogma and indoctrination… I actually think that I’ve positioned Jesus at a higher level then the Christians have. But you would have to really give up your Christian beliefs in order to understand what I’m really saying. And the irony is that I’m not against religion. I’m saying, Okay, if you want to be a religion then be an enlightened religion. Go beyond your religious beliefs and into the truth. Then you can continue to be a Christian church or a Catholic church or a Jewish synagogue. As long as you are awake in the truth and know truly who God is and you stop misleading everybody to satisfy your own needs and ends. So, I’m not against religion, I’m just against the ignorance of the world of belief. Not one belief anyone has about anything has been true.
DONNA: You can only know by the experience of God within…
LEONARD: Truth cannot penetrate into the world of belief. Belief must surrender of its own accord before the truth will enter. Truth won’t penetrate. It won’t interfere. Belief has to recognize its own dilemma.
DONNA: Belief actually gets in the way. It’s an impediment and yet that is the language we use. Do you believe in God? But that’s the wrong question.
LEONARD: Well, let me tell you… To believe in God is an obstacle to knowing God. You can believe in God or you can know God. One is an illusion. One is a direct experience from your own experience. It’s not what someone has told you or explained to you… told you to believe this or that. The terrible tragedy is that what I am describing is so available to anyone. It’s not complex. It’s not difficult. It’s challenging. It involves confronting yourself on every level. It involves a very deep level of honesty and willingness to be honest. One of the lines in my books simply reads like this. Your gift to God is honesty. God’s gift to you is truth.
Good deal! That’s a pretty good deal. I’ll tell you another one of my favorite little sayings. The price of awakening is everything, and in return you get nothing. Who’s signing up for that deal? Now you can see the dilemma of this teaching.
DONNA: I wonder if your fellow Aussie, Mel Gibson, has seen your play?
LEONARD: I would love him to see the play. He would definitely declare me the Anti-Christ but I would love him…
DONNA: And the book it’s based on is Liberating Jesus.
LEONARD: Well, the play is called Liberating Jesus, which I performed in Los Angeles for six weeks. Pretty good attendance, including a few Hollywood people. It was very interesting. I didn’t know they were in the audience. I was told later, but a six-week run… and it went very well. And then we had a number of Christians attending and they’d put their hand up and share and say “I love this play.” I performed the play in Kansas City. At the Unity Village in Kansas City, in front of about 500 Unity ministers.
DONNA: Wow.
LEONARD: And they all loved it. You see the Unity Church is much more evolved than many others. It doesn’t mean that it’s completely free, but they are much closer. So, it’s been quite a journey and the response has been very positive. But so far, the Born Agains and the Evangelicals haven’t discovered it. I’m a little concerned when they discover it.
DONNA: Is there anything else that you would like to leave our listeners with, in our final moment together?
LEONARD: Just an invitation into presence. Read the books. Watch the videos. And you will start to recognize how simple it is. It’s not complicated. It just requires you to be very committed to your own awakening. It requires you to be compassionate towards yourself and anything that shows up that you have had difficulty with in the past. It requires you to be in the right relationship with your ego, the inner child, the limiting beliefs, the repressed feelings and the energy of judgment. You’ve got to come into right relationship with it all, but it’s not that difficult. It doesn’t have to take a long time. It takes as long as you want it to take… Or as long as you need for it to take. And I’m very aware that when the student is ready than the teacher appears. Really, I think that is the great mystery, and I’ve been doing this for 40 years. That’s a long time.
DONNA: Yes.
LEONARD: And for me… It’s all about, how do I find you, or how do you find me, if we are meant to find each other and awaken through this teaching? How do I find you? How do you find me? And when I find you, they’ll know. When they find me, they know. It’s a match. And that doesn’t mean that you are entitled to me. Or locked into me. You stay with me, and when you are ready to move on, you move. I’m in no way holding on to anyone or anything like that. I’m not interested in playing the role of guru. I’m just a teacher of the way. A revealer of the way. Do with it whatever you like.
DONNA: Well, I wish I had marked my favorite poem in your book, Words from Silence. They are poems, aren’t they? Did you call the poems?
LEONARD: They are poems, but I don’t call them poems. I don’t know what you call them. They are utterances.
DONNA: I marked so many and I’ll have to paraphrase. The one… It’s like a healing experience that says something to the effect of Don’t try to fix yourself. Simply ask, how can you get back to presence when you have fallen astray. It’s like instant therapy and I read it before bed. I can’t recommend this book enough.
LEONARD: The reason, see… The Trilogy, which is Words from Silence, Journey into Now, Embracing the Present… those are the first books. They kind of go together… Complement each other, even though I didn’t realize it.
DONNA: I’ll have to get those other two.
LEONARD: Yes. But they are really written for someone who is already awake. So, the fact that you take to that book in such a deep way is an indication and a reflection on your consciousness. That’s really what it’s about. Journey into Now is a little bit different. I am really explaining the teachings and revealing the teachings. Step by step, in detail. That’s the one you should start with. And then, when you have some level of presence and you are starting to get what this teaching is about, then you go into the other books. When you have read those… Now, you are ready for Liberating Jesus, which is going to blow everyone out of the water because it’s the truth. And as Jesus said, “The Truth Shall Set You Free.”
DONNA: With that, I’ll thank you, Leonard… deeply, for your time today… for sharing Liberating Jesus with the world and for spending this time with us.
LEONARD: Well, it’s been my pleasure. I enjoyed it. And hopefully we will meet again.
DONNA: Thank you.
LEONARD: Thank you, Donna.
Read and watch Part 1 Here: Awaken Interviews Leonard Jacobson – Pt 1 – Awaken Into the World of Now and Oneness
Read and Watch Part 2 Here: Awaken Interviews Leonard Jacobson – Pt 2 – Don’t Be A Christian, Be A Christ
