To see what is true is not the same as being true to what you see, let alone working to embody it. Not yet. It's the beginning of it, because it's the invitation from truth. It touches you. It says, "Will you see this?" And then you either agree to see what the truth has requested you to see or you turn your eyes from it. And may God have mercy on the souls of the individuals who turn their eyes from what truth wants to show them, because when an individual does that, they have decided that they are going to embrace their story as the whole story. And they will continue to have nothing but the misery they have had to that point in their life.
This misery is the evidence of our own lives -- because what we've agreed to be, without knowing it, points to the fact that there is something essentially wrong, a fundamental mistake in the way we look at life. The whole problem is with the misperception of the present one who sees in our life and what it brings in our life as a result.
There can be no freedom for a human being unless we accept all that is given to us. Think about it. How many of you don't want all that is given to you? "I don't want that moment where someone says that cruel thing. I don't want that condition where I'm going to lose something that I've given my life to. I don't want to have to work. I don't want most of what I am given in my life. I want only what I want. I want everything to come to me with very little effort; and what effort I do make, I want people to notice that I've made it. I want perfect health. I want everyone to respect me. I insist that I have all things, at all times, the way that I want them, and anything I don't want -- frankly, it's not right." And you know that's true. At least half of your life is spent not wanting what has come to you, and I'm asking you whether or not a person can be free if half of the time in their life they don't want what life has brought to them?
How many of us have problems accepting what we are given to be? Of course we do! That's why we blame: "I can't accept what I'm given to be when you're negative. When you're negative, I can't accept that at all. In fact, I flat-out don't want you, so stay away from me!" Am I accepting what I'm given to be if I'm around people and they're negative, and I run from them, or I try to figure out how to make lots of money so I can isolate myself from everything irritating? No.
So, how is it possible for me then to accept all that is given to me, and what is given to me to be? How do I accept that which I don't want?
It starts by beginning to see that "what I don't want" isn't the feeling of the moment. What I don't want is the feeling that gets stuck in my mind... like a river stopping in midstream, so that now I'm looking at this one spot that looks bad and I don't want that one spot. I don't want to accept what I'm feeling. I don't want to accept what I'm going through.
Somebody says something you don't like. You're full of feelings you don't like, and you don't accept it. Can you change what has happened to you? No! But you try: change the person, come up with some other way to live, or someone else to be. Nevertheless, you can't change what has happened. What has happened has happened.
The feeling you have felt cannot be changed; it can only be resisted as you are now. Resistance tries to stop the movement of the river so that you can be further defined by how disturbed you are for what you don't want. When you get bugged, when you get frightened, when you get worried, do you know why you stay that way? Because the mind freezes the river. That's what thought does. Thought is a fast-freeze device.
But while you cannot change any moment, you can receive it. And in receiving it, the nature that receives it -- through awareness -- is actually part of the process of change itself. Then your real life, like a real river, is one continuous thing. There's no longer you apart from the movement of life, trying to control the way it goes. You have found inside of yourself that which can be in relationship with the full movement of this perfect life, perfect purity, perfect energy that is working itself out, and you can accept it. The choice is all or nothing -- and "I choose all. I can accept what I'm given to be because by the accepting and seeing of it, by not pushing away the awareness of it, it is changed, and so am I." Then the river removes it as it moves on.
Look how beautiful it is if you can see it. When a person understands the true meaning of "letting go and letting God," they start to realize a completely different order of freedom, one that the mind cannot begin to imagine because the mind -- in order to imagine things -- freezes things, stops things.
Great Intelligence has a great story that is never not telling itself. We can accept the whole of the story, and if we do, we're not apart from it anymore because we're living from a completely different order of ourselves in which the principal concern is not with proving ourselves or changing things according to our ideas, but instead being wide-awake, letting life give us what we are, what we need to be, and what we need to see, in each moment.
In the light of that awareness, we take a natural part in all the necessary change that the rest of the physical world is intended to reflect as it moves through the perfection process. That is the way to a great life and a great world. But the inner work must be done first, and you can do it right now. So, make an aim: I'm going to accept what I'm given to be. If you do that, that will be a first step to transformation, and then you'll see that what you're given to do as a result of that aim will never betray you... or anyone else.
