Nothing in the universe can make you relive some painful moment from your past as long as you choose to live in a self-renewing awareness that remembers the following truth for you: no old dark thought has the power to define you, let alone drag you down.

Use the following three practices to bring the light of a higher awareness into any negative reaction so that in its revelation a reconciliation can take place that will effect new and real change in your life.

#1: Rather than live with the pain of a thousand regrets, we must work to remember what we always seem to forget any time we're "tempted" to relive some pain from the past: no number of visits into our past has ever changed one thing about it, let alone the suffering we find waiting for us there! The light of this higher self-awareness IS the new choice that changes our life, because within it we see who and what we can no longer agree to be!

#2: Rather than look to anxious thoughts to help put whatever we fear behind us, we must work to remember this one spiritual truth we always seem to forget until too late: Fearful thoughts are powerless to free us from any dreaded time to come. Why? Because no anxious moments exist without the fearful thoughts that create them. To see life in light of this higher self-understanding IS the new choice that changes our life, because within it we see who, and what we can no longer agree to be.

#3: Rather than struggle to escape, or try to overpower our negative states - let alone identify with some old excuse for them - we must work to remember that all dark states are the spawn of an unseen dark master. Its power over us is that we believe its promise that things will change IF we do as it bids us to do. To see the truth of its lie is a new order of awareness that not only releases us from its dark influence, but places us in the hands of a living Light that can't act against itself.

Because we are conditioned from birth to see, and experience ourselves as separate from -- “other than” -- what we imagine is needed to make ourselves whole, our search for this missing sense of holiness that we believe is somewhere “outside” of us... ensures we never realize it.

The real journey back “home” begins with a necessary shock: the painful end of this deceptive perception, along with the false sense of self imprisoned within its imagined realm.

So that, when all is said and done, our first step toward a conscious, “real-time” relationship with the Divine requires we not only agree to enter into this ensuing, unwanted sense of emptiness, but that we remain there until comes what has always awaited us within it: a realization that we have never been apart from the Holiness we seek, and that all along, the only thing missing from our search was the faith to prove the same.

1. To grow into a new and higher order of peace we must remember at the first sign of resisting some unwanted moment that we must work to detect and dismiss any tendency we have to identify with that negative reaction. HOW? Instead of being the passive instrument of those dark thoughts or feelings that have come to justify that pain, we work -- in deed -- to be the active, impersonal observer of it... that we might embody a new Will that can’t act against itself.
2. To grow into a new and higher order of faith we must work to remember this truth, and then ground ourselves in it as best we can: the limit of our present view in these moments is not the limit of our possibilities; and then deliberately, consciously test the reality of any resistance we may feel to that moment. HOW? Work -- in deed -- to at least attempt to take one step past what we are sure was the end of what we can do. The way out is through. Find out!
3. To grow into a new and higher order of compassion we must work to remember that we are not the only ones who suffer. HOW? Work -- in deed -- to practice being consciously patient with whatever may be the unpleasant manifestations of others. So that before we blame anyone or anything for our negativity, to bring that painful reaction into the awareness of ourself... that we might suffer ourselves before we blame others.
4. To grow into a new and higher order of wisdom we must remember to be fully present to the lesson in every moment, especially the ones we don't want... that have come to give us an insight intended to reveal, and then help release us from our dependency on failed, or otherwise incomplete beliefs. HOW? Work -- in deed -- to remember, no matter what, our first task is to work in the garden of the revelation, rain or shine.

Now is an incorruptible, ceaseless awareness, inseparable from the celestial opposing forces of creation within which, and for which it appears. It is a divine level of awareness that reveals, without conflict, all seemingly opposing forces -- the influence of what is active upon the passive body within and upon which it acts -- as being totally complementary in the moment of their interaction.

It is at once the consciousness capable of realizing its own existence, as well as the creator of that consciousness as it is made self-aware.

There is a door that swings both ways... where the difference between open and shut can be as narrow as the threshold over which that door stands guarding it. So it is with the weakness of fear, and the strength of grace.

Our choice, if it can be called that, is to recognize this ever-present “razor's edge” within us and, whenever we can remember to do so, to move in the direction of what we know is good and true for us, and for others. We can do no more or less than this, and it is this (silent) action that determines whether we enter the higher worlds within us, or find ourselves shut out of those Divine possibilities.

Persist with your wish -- and work -- to understand this life you have been given, and your role within it. If you will remain true to this, your new intention, then in time your interior work becomes choiceless, and you are set free, accordingly, because now you live in this world, but you are no longer of it.

Scripture isn’t true because it has been written down. It isn’t true because someone at some point caught and registered and wrote down whatever was said, or gave their impressions of it later. What is true in scripture is what is true in you that can see the truth in that scripture. It is a principle that is as alive and powerful today as it was when it was first spoken 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 years ago, because in truth, that principle is not 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 years old; it is eternal, and it is as present in you and me now as it ever was and always will be. The truth of the scripture is in its realization by the corresponding part in us. And in the instance of a shocking realization, that realization doesn’t create a truth; it reveals where something in us tells us it knows what is true, and secure in that false belief, is reduced to a quivering mass the moment something challenges it by word or deed.

What is the nature of what we call the past -- its make-up and our experience of it, individually and collectively -- other than the sum of all our choices up until this moment in time... moments we still find, too often, are filled with fear, worry, and their dark partners of painful confusion?

And if -- IF -- we had actually learned from these choices past, would we still live in the largely unspoken fear of our own future... that continues being created by the choices we had made...

Where -- despite the appearance of some urgent fear pressing itself upon us -- we should have earned the right to see through -- and to drop, on the spot -- its demand to choose for us what it will...

...Or, at the very least, to recognize its fearful choice as contradictory to our own best interests, and so to struggle -- consciously -- to separate ourselves from the suffering inherent in it?

Life is not "equal opportunity." It never has been, and never will be. That is the nature of this world, and resenting the reality of it does nothing but destroy those filled with such anger. However, real Life is equal possibility, in that each of us is given what we are given by life, and it is up to us what we make from such "ingredients." The majority of life’s great ones are not those who are handed silver spoons, but those who dig into the raw ore of their own character and who -- through hard work, persistence, and faith -- turn what they touch into gold.

Do not fall into the trap of resentment and self-pity. Choose instead to start over whenever some challenge rises to meet you. Instead of feeling "blue" over your circumstances, choose to learn what is true about yourself in that same moment. Do this and you will find the part of yourself that cannot fail, for it is created to rise above whatever it meets. Once you know this truth from yourself, everything that happens to you is seen as being for you. Then you are free.