Annette to Diane:

Thank you for your question about credit card debt which appeared in the June 11 Heavenletters, for it gives me the courage to ask the one below, which is about a more extreme situation.

Annette to God:

Dear God, how can we break the vicious cycle of desire, expenditure, and debt? What can we do to deserve the abundance we desire? Enjoy now and pay later just doesn't work for us.

My husband wants me to either get a better paying job or learn to be satisfied with what we already have. But I want neither. I'm not realistic. I would like to enjoy life now. I don't want to work just to pay off bills, but neither do I want that for my husband.

I do plan to go back to college in the fall so that someday I can get some skills to qualify for a better-paying and more satisfying job, but in the meantime I'll be incurring educational debts. I don't want to think about the debts.

And why did an astrologer tell us we will never have much material wealth because our expenditures will always be so high? Is our situation really that hopeless, God? I can hardly believe so!

God to Annette:

Your real question is: "How can my dear husband and I have so much of You, dear God, on all the levels we do, including all the wonderful choices in the relative that You present, and, at the same time, yet not really or fully have the money to pay for them ahead of time, always feeling the need to pay later, and always having more to pay later and ever more things that we want. With credit cards, You have given us the means to have what we want when we want it, but then paying back the credit card companies is a weight on us. How do we gain enough money to pay debts off so it does not feel like a heavy weight around our necks? How do I make paying off credit cards a joyful thing to do? How do we gain more income so we don't have to go into debt in the first place? Why don't we have more money, dear God? Why isn't the joy of money more accessible in our lives?"

Annette, I cannot tell you all the relative answers to what you are asking. You know those already. Earn more money or spend less are the relative answers, and the relative answers are not appealing to you, any of them. What you really want is to think of what you want and not have to think about the means of payment for what you want, is that true?

Most of your debts are from spiritual searches for Me, are they not? I wonder what a relief it will be to you to know that you do not have to spend more money to acquire more of Me. Let that sink in. You do not need to have more expenditure of money to have Me or more of Me. God is free.

Know now that You have Me and will continue to have Me without having to accrue greater debt to earn Me. Look not to those things outside you to bring Me to you. With each "purchase" of Me, you are putting faith in someone or something else. I absolve you from that. Turn your faith to yourselves and to Me.

Seek Me, seek Me, not from schools but from your hearts. Do not listen so much to others. Do not crave so much what others crave. All you need is Me. Seeking is different from chasing. Chasing God is running after promises and inducements of Him. Seeking God is staying still and approaching Him.

No need to earn Me. I am yours. You do not have to work hard to gain Me. Not at all. Let go of your control of having to purchase Me. Have Me right now.

Now, financial debt is a hammer hitting you on your head. You understand that it is energy. To work to pay for debt is hard. It feels like slavery or imprisonment. It is not the way you want to live, and yet, here you are, faced with debt that keeps growing interest. It is like a monster you have to feed who keeps wanting more and more.

Turn your sense of debt into a pet you want to take care of. Turn your agony into love. Love this debt that is yours to pay.

But yet, do not turn the whole direction of your life to the care and feeding of that pet. You do not work to pay off debt. That is not motivation. That is servitude.

You and your husband have not put your attention in the direction of wealth or earning wealth. Your foremost attention has been on reaching Me (not Me, My dears, but on reaching Me). Put more of your attention on the joy of earning wealth. Work is to be enjoyed. By all means, find work that you enjoy. Earning money can be great joy. It can give you great energy. And certainly having a sufficient income will give you great energy. Money is energy. You have expended much energy. Now feel this energy returning to you.

So long as you feel that earning money is punishment or torture, you will avoid it. So long as you feel that you are without, you will feel deprived. So long as you feel burdened, you will be burdened.

Consider work to earn money as a field of flowers. You pick a daisy, and you leave something in its place. You give something for that daisy. That is all.

You can look at repaying the credit card companies in that same light. You picked a flower, and now you replace it.

There is something else here that needs to be mentioned. Live not so much in the future. You and your husband live two ways in the future — that you will have enlightenment in the future and someday you will be able to pay for it.

Everything is here right now.

Choose to make money, and you will. Choose not to, and you won't. Nothing is foisted on you. You have simply thought you had either/or choices to make. You simply didn't see enough choices.

By all means, go to school, Annette, if that furthers your heart. But be honest with yourself and with Me. Your reason for going back to school is not that you believe it will one day bring you better work and income. That is the way you try to justify it. But you do not have to justify it. If you were truly going back to school to increase your income potential, you would study accounting or computer science. You are going back to school as a reprieve. It is not your all-consuming desire. And that is all right too. See where going back to school takes your heart. Find fulfillment for your heart. That is your course, Annette.

Know that with Me all is possible. Keep your eye on Me, not on what a mere astrologer says. He is not God. I am.