The fact that we always want something from the moment -- even if it's to not want what it offers or has otherwise come to reveal -- blinds us to the fact that every moment is always giving us... showering us... with the Light of a Life that wants for nothing.
So our minds are forever fastened on what we've imagined or otherwise believe is necessary to complete us. And for us, the idea of being complete includes the idea of being free from the visitation of unwanted moments where a pain appears in our life again. In that unwanted visitation of something that makes us feel like a victim in this world, we only know to do one thing: give our attention over to something that has appeared in the same moment of the stress, the strain, the pain, that is pointing to what we must do, have, and be in order to escape our condition.
But our solutions don't work, which is the last thing we want to hear. People accuse the speaker of being negative for telling the truth. The truth is, you have solved your pain a bazillion times, and a bazillion times there is something inside of you that is set off and returns you to the suffering that seems to be new because the condition seems different. But the fact is, the suffering is the same, and it's the same for every human being on the planet.
When I'm negative and I'm trying to figure out what to do to get rid of you, blame the situation, change it, control it -- I don't think I'm acting against myself. Do you? When you're negative, do you think to yourself, "Boy, this is really good. I'm going to sow the seeds right now for a suffering that will last for two years!" No one would do that, and yet we all do that, do we not? That's called karma, and karma is what happens after you believe you've helped yourself.
Our negativity is over the fact that something is out of order. It's as simple as, "I'm in pain, and I object! I'm going to fix the problem because I believe it is responsible for my pain." What we can't see is that the pain isn't because of the condition our eyes see. The pain is because something in us believes it knows what order is, how people should be, and what should happen under all circumstances.
The fact that you now see in your mind's eye what you believe will restore you to some modicum of peace, blinds you to the fact that what you are disturbed by isn't the moment at all, but a precious belief of yours: "Things aren't supposed to happen that I don't think are supposed to happen!" And when they happen (because they do, and you can't stop them from happening), your answer is to hate what has happened because you believe it is out of place. You believe you're above whatever that condition has come to show you about your level of consciousness. And you don't want to be shown that your consciousness is out of order, that your nature sits in a little world of its own making.
We are essentially raised in a world that, without understanding it, has inculcated us with a series of beliefs that have finally become self-fulfilling in the way they break us down. Because if I believe you're supposed to be a certain way, and then you don't act that way, it validates my belief that you're at fault. And the more my belief is validated by resisting what happens, the stronger I am identified with a nature that has been defined by a host of social, psychopathic beliefs that have no place in the real order of things. These beliefs, established in us by our culture to create order, are outside of order. These beliefs upset true order.
And so we have religious people hating one another; so-called spiritual aspirants judging one another. How is it possible that such a thing as war could happen? Not just at an individual level when opinions are challenged, but in the world around us where you see enmity spilling over, sickening and killing all the innocent human beings who, in one respect, have nothing to do with it, but who, if they had their chance, would have been inculcated with the exact same beliefs. How do you explain that? We are out of order.
Real life is in perfect order and is constantly bringing into this world -- through the will of heaven -- the continual revelation and eventual perfection of everything that it touches. So when somebody challenges some esteemed opinion we have of ourselves, we are being asked to see that our negative reaction is out of order.
What would happen inside of us if by the grace of God we were to see in the moment the negativity starts to surface, that the only thing that needs to be done is to return ourselves into order? What we would have is a moment where we would be consciously suffering the nature that is out of order and that uses its unconscious suffering to prove it knows what order is.
When you are touched by the moment, you are touched by the grace of that which has come to show you a belief, a certainty, a demand that lives in this psychological body that was never yours to begin with but that was inculcated in you. Now, by the grace of that moment, you're given the observation of a part of yourself that's out of order with the moment. It has come from the past into the present, and now the present is trying to reveal it to you so that it can be released. But what's your reaction? "No, that's wrong. I object! This is out of order."
Now is it you saying, "No. that's wrong," or is it the incorrect, the undeveloped state pointing to the moment to keep itself in place and intact in you? What's out of order? In any moment that involves you being sure that someone or something else is wrong (not that they may not be), your certainty blinds you to the moment of order that is revealing to you that the reason you're negative about the moment is because the moment is revealing to you a part of yourself you don't want to see.
Our hope is to understand the moment isn't out of order. Yes, the world is going to hell in a hand basket; there's no doubt about it. But what has that to do with my soul and my wish to be aligned with the will of the Divine? Because whether we see it or not, there's no way that anything can ever be actually corrected until the underlying issue is revealed. And what we don't want is the revelation that this nature is out of order. So it conceals itself, and we identify with whatever it points to as the problem.
Here is an exercise, if you wish. Any time you find yourself talking to yourself about a situation, you are not only out of the moment, but you're in the hands of a nature that is disorder itself. To be able to see the fact that here you are, and you're stone negative right now -- "I wish they would just leave me alone. Why can't they be polite like me? They have no consideration for other people" -- and at the same time see that you're a monster, to see that the state and that nature are out of order is the beginning of understanding that you've been framed in the literal sense of being put inside of a dream, a picture, a world where -- according to the level of self that lives in it now -- your beliefs are the proof that what "they" did caused you pain. They didn't cause you that pain. Your beliefs that this moment should be other than it is cause you this pain.
You can't change the order of the way things unfold, because the way things unfold is God trying to restore order to what is out of order. That's how things unfold... harmonizing what has become unharmonized, bringing the possibility of seeing that your insistence that someone else is responsible for your pain will never change another, and it will never change you. You change when at last you understand that your insistence that anyone be what you want them to be is out of order, and that you should be grateful for the way they and this moment are because they are bringing you into a momentary order where, for its existence, you can see what has remained out of order in you.
To begin to understand that there is something in me that believes it is establishing order by the strength of its negative reaction, and to understand that no negative reaction can restore order, but rather has been born out of disorder, is the beginning of dismissing that moment of resistance by entering into it.
Those negative reactions aren't trying to tell you something is out of order outside of you. They are trying to wake you up to a nature that was disordered within you, and that God has come to show you His presence in you so that you can be perfected and transcend yourself. Use the moments where things feel like they're out of order to put yourself in an order where you can see the real source of the disorder.
