Special Lessons

Our eyes and ears, thoughts and feelings, empower us to move freely through the extraordinary web of life of which we're a part. But these gifts of perception, as considerable as they may be, are more like a looking glass than they are the keys to that secret kingdom of freedom we seek. With their aid, we can almost see into, and so confirm, that innermost realm where our heart senses we belong.

In one respect, at the heart of our predicament as a species of beings -- because it negatively impacts our possibilities -- is that we do not see the big picture. For most of us, the big picture is our problem, our heavy heart, our irritation with somebody else, or our own sense of inadequacy. The big picture is the weight of our past. And that's not the big picture at all. That is a self-pitying picture. It has nothing to do with what it is that we need to understand.

If our intuition can perceive that the peace we long for is inherent in this perfectly present moment we call the "Now," what is it that keep us from knowing the fulfillment of its promise within us? Let's look.

Whenever our world changes for the better, it does so for only one reason: somewhere, in some place, someone (just like you and me) is suddenly "changed." Like ripples radiating out from the center of a pond into which a stone has been thrown, the force of the awakened new perception -- this realization of what has always been one's higher possibility -- establishes a new reality. Everything is changed, forever.

Occasionally, for all of us, we accidentally enter into the flow of the Now. We could be skiing, skating, doing yoga, playing golf, and suddenly our activity aligns us with the flow of that moment. Emotionally we can enter accidentally into the Now when we look out and see the sun breaking through the clouds or we catch the evening light as it shades trees differently. Intellectually we can enter into the Now when we have an insight and an epiphany comes.

Life, in the broadest sense of it, both spiritually and materially, is an expression of an eternal descending and ascending set of forces: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" -- the principle of expansion and contraction, light and darkness, ascending and descending archetype ideas then brought into physical creation.

Just as a ship lost at sea must make a course correction if it hopes to reach a safe harbor, so must the aspirant be willing to be corrected by life for there to be any hope of sighting heaven's shore. And it isn't really so much that life itself corrects us as it is that it serves to reveal us to ourselves. When it does, the choice is ours whether to be self-correcting or deflect the light of revelation that calls for us to change...

Here's a challenging idea: those who don't know their true identity do not know that they don't know who they are. It's a kind of spiritual amnesia produced by having assumed a false identity without knowing it. How is that possible?

Regardless of when in time, or where on earth, a truth bright with promise appears, its effect is always the same. By its deft touch, "the sleeper awakens" and the meaning of our life takes on a whole new magnitude. The Spirit that called inspired seekers who have gone before us -- that awakened their hearts, and quickened their minds -- so that they might have "eyes to see, and ears to hear" -- is the same spirit calling us...

When you think of a single beautiful flower in springtime -- while it may stand with petals and leaves that look a certain way -- you'll never find a single flower the same as any other flower. Can you understand that the life of that flower is not the life alone that you see coming out of the ground? That flower belongs to a much greater life than the individual expression that you say is beautiful.

Putting our life in God's hands does not mean that we hand Him our wish list for life, but rather that we make His life our wish. When God's will becomes our sole wish in life, then whatever happens to us not only fulfills our wish, but we realize it has always been our wish right from the start.

What would happen to any of us if we knew, without having to take thought, that the universe was set up to help us succeed with becoming fearless because we understand the right attitude to take... no matter what the moment seems to bring?