The Secret Path to the Summit of Ourselves (Remastered Classic Talk)

The Secret Path to the Summit of Ourselves

As we should already know — assuming we sincerely aspire to a higher level of being — our present nature wants little to do with seeing its own limitations. Instead of being self-investigating (as we're created to be), interested in discovering the truth of ourselves, our first inclination is in the direction of being self-deceiving. So that rather than doing the self-transforming interior work of honest self-observation — whose Light alone has the power to first reveal, and then release us from all that wants to keep us from knowing the truth of ourselves — we make peace with these parts of us that live to bring us down into their dark world.

What we have to ask — that is, if we ever want to be truly, inwardly free is...how on earth did things get to be this way?

The truth is simple: We have come to believe, through a host of social and cultural mandates, that whatever we suspect is wrong with us — whatever character faults we suspect may be lurking in heart and mind — must not only be hidden from the world around us, but kept from ourselves as well. Any such unconscious conclusion is a prescription for sickness by sickness.

Here is the real medicine: We are made to be self-correcting. Each real correction made in us is the same as elevating ourselves above the unknown nature whose dark influence we had lived under. Like moving from a hot desert climate to a cool mountain retreat, each discovery of what darkens our path through life is the same as walking in the Light towards a Higher, happier Ground.

There are many parts in all of us that do not want us to know the following: The entire universe is working to help each of us become whole and "perfect in Heaven." The conditions that we run from, wherein we feel as though our own weaknesses will overcome us, are themselves unique creations of a Great Intelligence that wants us to learn of its Timeless Strength.

Yet, simply to state these truths, as bright and liberating as they are, is not enough. To be transformed by any Truth we must see the living truth of it. In this instance, as it concerns the recurring stress and sorrow that runs through our relationships like the veins of a leaf, we need some new ideas. Here is one such insight to help open our eyes to the healing that awaits us:

At present, what little awareness we have of what's wrong with us feels to us as though life is trying to punish us for what we are. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our awareness of those aspects of ourselves, where we know we miss the mark, is not life condemning us. Rather, what's actually "punishing" us in these moments is our own limited understanding of the Goodness of Life...of how its Light appears only to reveal, and then heal whatever may be those punishing parts that are still hiding, unreconciled, in the dark of us. The real source of our pain in these moments is the negative effect of the knee-jerk resistance our lower nature feels any time one of its limitations is exposed.

Each time we catch a glimpse of a character shortfall in us, we do so by the grace of a Living Light. And it invites us, asks us — in the only form of a "dialogue" that we can share for now with this force for our perfection — to see ourselves in its light. So it is not negative to see the negative since it is the Perfectly Positive that makes this kind of seeing into ourselves possible.

All this compassionate Intelligence asks is that we accept its corrective Presence in us, and then to stand there, as conscious as we can be, within Its Light within ourselves. If we will receive what it reveals we are released from that former darkness. The Light transforms it and we are equally changed in that moment.