Special Lessons

Have you ever heard within you, not necessarily in words, something to the effect of "Oh no, not this again!"? Perhaps we're looking at the latest flame of our heart and we see a fire in his or her eyes, but it's not because they are looking at us. In that moment we no longer see the moment unfold as it is, but rather we stand there transfixed -- experiencing the moment as we are; and we are not really present!

Our present experience of life, its happiness or sorrow, is nothing more or less than what certain unconscious parts of us tell us it is. Before we can hope to change our life experience, we must stop trying to re-write the Book of Life and work instead to awaken ourselves from the dreams of the unseen storyteller within us.

How many times in your life have you acted not just against yourself, but perhaps against others because your actions were uninformed, and you were moved prematurely into a conclusion? Too many times to count really. And most of these premature conclusions had some negative taint to them -- judging somebody, arriving at some insistence based on incomplete information.

For the majority of us, what we call being renewed has nothing to do with what is real renewal. Mostly what we feel as renewal is when some idea or a hope that we have gets fulfilled, filling us in turn with a sense of excitement; and then, in that feeling of being full of ourselves, comes a certain kind of pleasure that we take as being the same as self-renewal in this life.

Question: In this time of economic downturn, is there anything to say to those of us who have experienced losing a job or a home? I don't know what to say to my friends and coworkers who are suffering. It's easy to tell them that the universe will provide and that something better will come along when I'm not the one in their position. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.

Most of us carry, buried in the depths of ourselves, untold amounts of unconscious woe. Regardless of our religion, skin color, social position, or cultural conditioning, psychological pain plays no favorites... and we all pay the price of the ensuing blame game.

Imagine for a moment you're driving home from work, or wherever, and that you've just come from having a pretty rough day. As you drive along, your eyes see the road before you, but your mind is in the past. It's very busy re-running all of the day's unpleasant events.

We've all had moments where, by a glimpse of conscience, we suddenly recognize, "I am being prodded; pushed to respond with a reaction in the same way I've always been... but I have experienced the outcome, the karma of expressing that negativity, and God help me, I know I cannot do it again!"

Have you ever noticed how the more negative you get, the more difficult everything about your life becomes, including being able to do the simplest things? It's like suddenly sinking into dark molasses, where not only can't you move, but everything you don't want seems stuck to you!...

Wouldn't it be a real relief to get outside the limitations of negative reactions? But how do we get there? How can we be certain we're headed in the right direction?" Here is a great secret known only by those who have made the journey before us: Walk away from the mental "how" into the spiritual Now. And here is one of the keys to this special instruction: The journey outside of yourself doesn't...

Our present level of Self -- with its accumulated fears, compulsions, and doubts -- knows only one way to deal with the disturbances that upset its precarious balance. It thinks about them. It calls on the body of its collected past experiences, compares them to its current situation, and then concludes both the nature of the problem and what must be done to "deal" with it...

The universe is a work being continually perfected; though unseen, it is justice, compassion in action. Those who resist and resent what comes their way -- who fight with its unending waves that rock their contrived sense of reality -- are actually the ones who live without real choice. They must serve their struggle to resolve the sense of loss that comes each time the world changes without first having consulted them.