Sometimes the touch of Grace is sweet; sometimes it seems bitter, hard to bear; yet, whatever its measure, this much is true: it always strengthens those who will agree to stand in its Living Light, allowing it to reveal, and release them from what they've yet to realize is true about themselves.
We don't know what is true about ourselves because something is always telling us, "This is what is true about you." Try to see this with me. We have been so thoroughly conditioned. This level of consciousness, this lower level that we are all brought into, is like an ocean of conditioned thoughts, suppositions, ideals, beliefs - and we are inculcated to fear what we don't understand. It's part of our present consciousness to fear what we don't understand.
What do you think racism is? What do you think war is about? Anything we don't understand - meaning that it doesn't match what our consciousness calls real and good and true - is seen as an enemy. This inculcation to fear what we don't understand goes before us, across the board, and nowhere is that conditioning more true than when it comes to seeing things about ourselves that we don't understand. Rather than realize in the moment that we don't understand something about ourselves - and then bear what it would take to enter into that momentary light that reveals that - we just instantaneously identify with these thoughts and feelings that tell us what it is that we're seeing, and how we need to avoid it.
As astounding as it is - and I hope it's astounding to you - we tend to look at fear as proof that we understand the reasons why we have it. Think about that: we believe that fear proves that we understand why we have to live in that fear and why there must be excuses for living in that fear.
Fear basically - as part of an unconscious nature that has no understanding of itself, but believes that it understands itself - tells me, "You know, you really need to be afraid of this moment. The reason you need to be afraid of this moment is because if it doesn't go the way you want it to go, then all of these bad things are going to happen. So it's excusable for you to live in fear. It's excusable for you to blame people, because you fear that they may have some authority over you."
All of these weaknesses that we are not intended to be the instruments of are turned into what we believe are strengths. We believe that a good excuse for a fear, or a worry, or being anxious is the same as having power over it. Try to see this immense contradiction with me. It started early - I don't know if you remember this, but I do - do you remember mom or dad turning to you when you got into trouble at school or something and they would say to you, "You know, you have no one to blame for this but yourself." Remember that? In spite of the fact that they would speak the words, but then act entirely differently. When we were in their presence as they were talking with their friends, or on the phone, or in meetings, what we would hear all the time was them making excuses for why they were angry or frightened, or why they were drinking, or whatever it was that was causing the dysfunction in them. They always had good excuses.
We grew up excusing ourselves. Try to see this. We literally grew up believing that an excuse was a form of defense. "That's how I defend myself, is by excusing myself." Now, you ask yourself: when I have to defend myself, am I defending a strength? If I have to think through and rationalize why I said or did something and then come up with a justification, is the justification a strength? Or are these excuses and justifications, these explanations, are they not an act of weakness hiding itself through some kind of seemingly valid reason why I had to give up my life in that moment to something that was giving me over to a level of consciousness that could never change.
Things like blame and all of our excuses for worries, fears, anxieties - you fill in the blank - we learned all of that as we were growing up as a way to basically say, "It's not my fault he or she did what they did. I'm not responsible because I wouldn't have done that if they weren't this way." This is the mindset of humanity today. We grew into and came into that level, and became absorbed in it; it became the basis, the matrix of how we see life.
But the only thing that grew - individually and collectively - was the sophistication of our excuses. I've become incredibly sophisticated at finding reasons why I'm angry, I have incredibly clever reasons to explain the conflict that I feel that's based on something not happening the way I want it to. I'm never ever truly with that consciousness. Were it not for its constant comparison to what it wants or expects, we would not be caught up in these excuses for the pain, the fear, and the anxiety that visit us all the time.
You know the idea that when the student is ready, the teacher appears? As we are now, when the student is ready, the teacher is this part of us that "defends" our weaknesses, that "defends" my violence, my conflict. So the student is ready, the teacher appears, and by the grace of God, the teacher keeps appearing whether the student is ready or not, until at last something starts to take place where - and I hope you've reached this in your spiritual life - it becomes stunning to see how effortless it is for us to find excuses for our pain. It's instantaneous, it's just like that.
There's always something that's talking to us and justifying our character. Why would I listen to anything in me justify a character that, when it acted, hurt someone that I love? I'm impatient and I lash out; you've done something that disturbs me and I drop the bomb on you; you trigger something in me and suddenly I'm throwing grenades at you. How in the name of God did humanity get to the place where we believe it is justified to hurt another human being? That isn't human!
We are forever listening to something excuse our way out of being aware of the consciousness that is acting in our stead. We do this all the time; we hurt each other, we say cruel things, we're impatient, we're brooding. But at least a human being can start to understand that that is not the way that I am meant to be. I'm not meant to be someone who walks around with his face all twisted up and angry, or depressed and sullen and falling down. You look at the people on the street, or go into the places where people are high-end shopping, you'll see tension all over their faces.
We cannot excuse our way into peace of mind. It is impossible to excuse our way into having peace. Excuses are antithetical to the discovery that the strength that reveals these weaknesses to us awaits within us. If we let an excuse, or a justification, or an explanation become our guide in the moment we do something unkind, then we will never enter into this new level of being where the strength that we seek, and long to participate in, awaits us. That strength is part of another order of awareness of that consciousness that in its intelligence will not let that consciousness bring us into its conflict.
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