Have you ever gone through a crisis of some kind, and after 20 or 30 years of the same lesson coming back, you realize you have been walking along the same dark road? I know that it gets tough sometimes, but those of us who have any love whatsoever for what is true, good, and Divine should be encouraged. Because you have no idea what's on our side, how much is trying to be given to us at all times. But we can't see what's being extended to us, because we're too busy trying to get our mitts on what we think we have to have to make things work!
Things work when you get out of the way. That's when they work. How do you know that's true? Because the only thing that's in the way is you! Haven't you ever noticed that you get rid of one person who causes that terrible pain in your life and you get somebody just like them? But see, you didn't get somebody just like them. You got you again! That's the lesson, isn't it?
So what happens? Here you are, fighting with enabling somebody. Fighting with your past. Revisiting and revisiting, trying to get over what happened -- how you were abused. Or somebody broke your heart. Whatever it may be, you fight, and fight. And then one day, what happens? At some point, you realize you've been fighting with the wrong thing. You were trying to reconcile in your own heart and mind, a set of conditions that you believed you were apart from. But now you realize, "Ah, no wonder I can't get the condition to go right! I'm the condition and I've refused to accept it. I've refused to see how I am entwined in all the things that presently trouble me the way they do." And when that happens, suddenly -- by a form of grace -- you see that you don't need to fix this. What you need is to be another kind of human being who does not carry forward the thing that attracted the situation to you... and brings it back again and again.
Resistance is really the initial form of reincarnation at all levels. What you resist, you reincarnate. To make sure you keep getting what you don't want, just resist it. It's all you have to do. There is a part of us that loves that because, "I know who I am every time that idiot does what he does that I hate." But I can't stop thinking about what I hate! Why? Because it confirms some order of myself that exists to continue that cycle.
Our work as aspirants is to see through the nature that produces this cycle of recurrence by "turning on our brights." Because when we come out of such moments, we actually have not changed the situation, but we have changed the way in which we see the situation because we have a new understanding about ourselves. So when we come out of the crisis, having learned the lesson because a light showed us the whole of the situation -- that we were inextricably woven into whatever our woe was -- we exit that moment a new order of man or woman. Something is integrated in us. Something that formerly was certain that you, this, or them was the problem. We can now see that "Wherever I go, there is the problem!"
Most of us live in the dark, not in the light of consciousness. It's like being an iceberg, thinking the part above the surface is the whole thing while beneath us is this mass that runs into everything it encounters. But within us lives an order of light, intelligence, and love that sits in the dark of us for the purpose of illuminating what has been unconscious, unaware, and not yet participating in what can suddenly be brought up into this light where it is integrated into the whole of us.
When something happens that you don't want, and you're disturbed, the event has not created the disturbance. It has revealed a disturbance in your nature that you walked into the moment with. To resist the condition is to resist the illumination of that part of yourself that has demands that you're not aware of until they suddenly appear full-blown. All this pent-up demand belongs to a certain order of yourself that you are only stuck in because you haven't "turned on the brights" yet to realize that another order of yourself exists in this moment if you can attend to it.
Have you noticed yet that wherever you go, the thing that you don't want the most seems to know where you are? The fact is, it doesn't just know where you are. The Divine has created the conditions under which a reaction will be stirred and brought into your consciousness so that you can finally realize running from it doesn't change the reality of it. Only bringing it into the light of a new order of awareness can bring into its presence the fulfillment of itself. Why? Because you start to understand the reaction is just what you don't know about yourself yet. That's all your pain is.
Your fear is what you don't know about yourself yet. Your hatred is what you don't know about yourself yet. Your regrets -- every last part of every moment of resistance is just what you don't know about yourself yet. And the Divine keeps saying, "Want to learn this now?" And what does this present consciousness keep doing? "Not yet!" Because you're so used to having a knee-jerk reaction that pushes away anything that brings up what is uncomfortable or untoward inside of yourself. "Not yet!" Because you are so used to being afraid of your own suffering. That's all that level of consciousness knows to do!
But you are created, moment to moment, to meet what is "not yet" -- what is in the dark, what is unconscious -- and put it into the light of this awareness that actually brings it out; and allow that light to act upon what is asleep and in the dark of itself to produce a brand-new form out of that "not yet" so that it becomes an "I am." It becomes a new power, a new authority, a new way to meet the moment where you're not dominated by it because you've begun to understand the task has to be the illumination of the moment -- not some struggle to change it so that it matches what you hope life should be.
Do you have a few "not yets?" Are you pretty sure that whatever your "not yet" is, somebody else is responsible for it? It's true, isn't it? It is so incredible how fast a human being can be made negative. When you are negative, you are essentially locked in a world that resistance has created -- that ensures nothing can happen in that cycle, save for a certainty on your part that nothing else can happen unless somebody else changes.
What kind of life would it be to recognize that -- existing right now within yourself -- is the marvelous recognition that for your life to change, something new is going to have to take place? In the unwanted moment, you're going to have to remember that this moment is an experience of your own consciousness. Do you know what a change that would make, to assume that kind of authentic, spiritual responsibility? What would happen is you would have all the pain of wanting to blame, but nowhere to go with it save to hold it in the light. Then the "not yet" of that misunderstanding becomes the seed of a new understanding. And an integration takes place within yourself where what was formerly in the dark is brought into another order of consciousness that fulfills the purpose of the very thing that you think is causing you pain.
Everything about our lives is purposeful once we understand how to use the appearance of it for the perfection of ourselves through this relationship between what illuminates and what needs to be illuminated. This is our Work. This is the whole of the Work -- to begin to recognize that our task in any given moment -- even the ones that don't seem to have anything to offer us -- is to just be there, fully present, to complete the revelation.
Every event is a revelation of what it stirs in you -- an aspect of your consciousness you did not know was there until the revelation. The light comes and the "not yet" is revealed. If you agree to stand in the place where the light has revealed it, and you accept the entire situation as being a bridge between levels of consciousness, in that moment there is everything needed to change that "not yet" reaction into something that serves you instead of stealing from you.
So what are you going to do the next time a "not yet" shows up? First, you recognize, "Oh, the problem isn't you! It's a 'not yet.' It's what I haven't understood yet... but, oh no, there's pain!" There is pain. Why? Because the "not yet" does not want to be brought out into the light. Its nature is inherently a perfect form of resistance. But perfect resistance exists to be reconciled with perfect activity.
Our task is to serve as the reconciling factor -- to bring that moment in which this "not yet" appears into something that understands the purpose of its appearance. Can you imagine how different your life would be if you actually understood -- fully and consistently -- that whatever you have suffered over all these years has the purpose of leading you into another order of yourself that no longer suffers over what it used to be because you are no longer the same order of human being? Wouldn't that be nice?
