Question: What does it mean to come into consensus?
John Morton: Consensus is an attitude that we take towards ourselves and towards others, which includes all aspects of life. It involves choosing the attitude to come into agreement and harmony. Agreement isn’t always seeing things the same way as someone else. It’s the willingness to see things the way they are. That willingness helps create agreement.
Consensus often has to do with the context of what we’re relating to. It’s choosing the context of being agreeable versus disagreeable. It’s choosing to be easy to get along with versus difficult to get along with. That attitude is always our choice.
It’s important to decide whether or not you value consensus which means to value agreement and harmony. If you do, then you’re adopting an intention to be agreeable. Sometimes that may not seem to make much sense when you consider choosing to be agreeable with your enemy. It may seem challenging to come into consensus with someone who lies to you, wants to steal from you or in some way wants to harm you. So it’s useful to look at the more difficult aspects of consensus and to consider how to come into agreement with what is disagreeable. However, do not enter into a consensus that involves hurting yourself or others. If there is a sacrifice to be made, then make sure whatever is to be sacrificed is serving the highest good of all concerned.
Consider what you find disagreeable. Maybe someone doesn’t agree with your point of view. Perhaps you experience someone as unpleasant or bothersome. Maybe someone is doing something that you think they should not be doing, and you want to correct them or even punish them. In being a good servant of the Lord, remember that vengeance is not ours to take [Romans 12:19].
When you come into your home, or the place you consider home, you want to be able to relax and let go. Consensus lives in a home. It requires a place to take residence. If it’s something that you want to dwell with you, it’s important that you prepare a place for its residence so that consensus can live with you. For consensus to reside with you, you must value consensus and make it welcome in your home which can be wherever you are.
If you want your home to be a place where people can come whom you like and respect, then certainly you need to create a place for consensus. You need to allow for your home to have agreement and harmony with what’s present. This is the key. Consensus is holding an agreement towards what is present. That means that instead of standing against what is present or choosing into contradiction, you have an agreeableness. You allow what is present to be.
Your awareness can still be, “That’s not my way of doing things, but consensus is a guest here. And in my house, guests are welcome.” You can choose to allow differences. Differences are welcome in your home. You can love them regardless. Choose to love those differences unconditionally. Even more, you can take an attitude of adopting the differences. For example, you may have a guest in your home who likes pork but you can’t stand pork. In honor of your guest, you may choose to serve pork. It’s an honoring of who is present and what is present with who is present. That honoring sets a tone from you of acceptance and harmony.
Can you imagine if you adopted an attitude to give your worst enemy everything they want? To treat them as a guest that’s honored in your home? You prepare for them the best food you can. You attend to them, making sure they are comfortable. Can you imagine what might happen to an enemy who is treated as your guest in that way?
What happens to you when you are being given what you want? Maybe you start enjoying yourself. You relax and have a good time, letting go of concerns that trouble you.
By adopting an attitude of harmony and consensus, you are participating in the transformation with Spirit. Spirit is the one who does the conversion, the transformation from one place or condition to another. The Spirit has the power to convert anyone. It has the power to put the lion with the lamb, to put what seemingly cannot be together, together peacefully and harmoniously.
In consensus, we are putting together what seems incompatible. So in consensus, the lion and lamb lie down together in a pasture even though it’s often the nature of the lion to devour the lamb. Although that’s the natural order here in this world, it’s not in the order of the Spirit.
When we’re confronted with our differences, rather than jump up and reinforce those differences by showing how skilled we are in pointing them out and putting great emphasis on what’s wrong with another’s point of view, you can choose an attitude of adopting it. Let it be what it is. Let the Spirit take reign.
In the order of Spirit, there’s harmony. There is no againstness. This is the attitude that must be adopted if you’re going to come into agreement. It’s smart to realize that you don’t have to go into againstness. You can always choose into agreement and harmony. You can choose peace, which John-Roger has defined as “the cessation of againstness.”
Let go and let the Spirit bring consensus by calling upon and placing the energy of the Spirit into the situation. Remind yourself of what that energy is. It’s an energy of unconditional loving and acceptance. It’s a place where the prodigal son is welcomed home. So the one who went into againstness is welcomed home. Whose love is the love that welcomes home all regardless? That’s the love of God — the highest power of who we are. Always consider whether whatever is involved with consensus is loving for the highest good of all concerned.
Letting go and letting God will always be a process of moving into consensus, which means being in the harmony and oneness that comes forward through agreement. If you looked at the quality of oneness, it’s a quality of tremendous agreement where the diversity of all of God’s creation appears integrated. That appearance is a knowing that there is agreement with God. The disagreement, which appears as separation, is the illusion.
As we adopt the attitude for consensus, we’re adopting an attitude to let go, to give up our point of view to the point of view that is God’s and to the point of view that has oneness and agreement in it. It’s a very important step to take. It’s another way of taking the step of acceptance, which is the first law of Spirit and leads naturally to cooperation and understanding.
Consensus is letting go of how “right” you think you are or how sure you think you know what to do. Consensus is coming into the attitude of, “I will work together with you. I will look at how I can come into agreement with your disagreeableness.” A key into this attitude is relaxing.
Have you ever noticed that when you come into the presence of somebody who’s relaxed, it has a way of helping you relax? If you adopt the attitude of being relaxed, that’s a way to allow the Lord to be about the Lord’s work. It’s giving up to the Lord what is the Lord’s authority.
In the process of letting go and letting God, be open to the timing and gradualness of Spirit. If it happens now, that’s wonderful. If it takes place sometime later, that’s wonderful too. It’s in the Lord’s hands. What’s the blessing in that? We get to go free.
What if the thing you prayed for, wished for and dreamed about all of your life is waiting for you to get passed a situation of disagreement? When you choose into consensus, when you let go and let God, you may become aware of the blessings already present. You may realize, “Oh my God! God’s blessing was waiting for me! If I would have spent more time in disagreement, I might have missed out.” Count your blessings as you let go and let God and choose the attitude of consensus.
Baruch Bashan, which means the blessings already are.
