Month: May 2017

One of the “reasons” we are not condemned for our sub-optimal choices is that God understands that we are often acting from a place where we ourselves have not received the love that we need. Others act unlovingly, and we become hurt, and we then make choices from the resulting “darkness” that end up hurting others. We buy into negative self-perceptions because others communicated them to us. Indeed, God has great compassion for the many ways in which we have not been loved. Yet often we do not practice compassion with ourselves.

When others hurt us, it is often not about us- it is about them. They are dealing with their own life situation, their own circumstances, their own constraints, their own beliefs, and perhaps most importantly, the pain of their own experience of lack-of-love. Those that hurt us are simply acting from their own place of lack-of-love. The pain gets passed along in a chain, often from one generation to the next. But all the pain, all the failings, all the fearful actions and judgements and hurtful words- they are all arising from a place of lack-of-love.

We can break that chain. We can be brave enough to see hurtful actions for what they are: ignorance of love! Others hurt us because they hurt, and they hurt because they are temporarily blind to the love that is so nurturing to their soul. Rather than allowing ourselves to perpetuate the hurt, we can choose instead to see those hurtful actions for what they are – simple acts of ignorance to love – and put them aside! We can decide rather than to let them bring us down, to choose to respond with love instead! We can choose to love ourselves in the face of hurtful actions, and we can also even choose to love those that hurt us while they are acting from their place of lack-of-love. This is a truly powerful choice! For choosing to meet the hurtful actions of another with love meets the problem at its source: it meets the hurt by giving it what it actually needs- LOVE! Doing so allows the powerful light of Source to slip in to any situation. And when that happens, even miracles can and do happen!

We can break the chain of hurt- and all it takes is our own choice to meet the ignorance of love, with love!

Being able to be something (while being “not something else”) is an exciting and amazing opportunity for the spirit. “All That Is” can become even profoundly more when it- through you- can experience actually being “this and not that.” Creation gains meaning in the process. Right now as you experience your own identity and circumstances, you are participating in that very valuable process.

As we participate in that process, we end up being deeply mired in the dualism (being “this and not that”). We become so entrenched in the perception of duality, and we focus on it so much, that we become “lost” in it. We forget all else. We might even say that in a sense we are currently “addicted” to form. We are often addicted to thinking, to defining, to quantifying, to identifying. It is common to be addicted to these things when one is existing in a dualistic reality such as ours, as such stark dualism is a remarkably alluring and rich experience!

However, it is worthwhile to note while we are here that our larger state of being always transcends all of the form. Our awareness itself spans incredible distances of time and space- in fact all of the distances of time and space- as well as all of the “this or that” ideas that exist here on Earth. You may be completely focused on the form, but in fact, you are fundamentally free! Those statements are not just ideas- they attempt to describe your very actual nature of being, even if you have forgotten it.

You can let go of the form. You are free enough to do that! You can let go of your judgments. You can let go of your needs. You can even let go of your thoughts themselves, and just allow yourself to be exactly with “what is,” just for the moment. You do not need to quantify or qualify anything at all. In fact, you may find that when you finally let go, the peace and joy available to you far surpasses any of the wonders available in beholding the stimulating dream that is before you.

At the most fundamental level, all life is connected to all life. All life is a part of all other life. Everything is unified. Yet we choose to have the experience of the illusion of separation. Since being separate is not what is fundamentally actually true, we suffer when we buy into that perspective of separation. When our local perspective or belief does not align with the actual fundamental truth, we experience suffering. Our suffering is a sign that we have embraced the illusion, and forgotten ourselves within it.

Beyond our forgetting, all remains connected. Unity is the underlying truth! This is why Love and Fear are the two great themes of spirituality: Love is inclusive, accepting, unifying; Fear is dividing, rejecting, separating. Love is the move towards What Actually Is; Fear is the move toward the illusion.

As we consider spiritual ideas we are in the intellect. Yet what we are- Beingness!- is not an intellectual activity (though the intellect occurs within Beingness). The name of the game- Love!- is also not an intellectual activity. Love is a state of intention genuinely pointed toward the benefit of another over one’s self. Love is a state of intention genuinely pointed towards inclusion, acceptance, and unity. Surrender is not primarily an intellectual activity either- it is also an intent. Love and surrender can occur through an intellectual context, but they are not of the intellect. The intellect and all of its knowledge and understanding of one’s current experience is but a tool and a context: the quality of the intent of the individual who is using that tool and operating within that context is the primary force that we are here to develop.

Our primary reason for being here is the growth of “what we are” toward love. What survives bodily death then is our true selves- our Beingness- which retains its true nature. That is retained forever! Even as form falls away, the quality of the consciousness which beheld the form and did something with it, remains. To the soul, the development of that quality of consciousness is well worth the price of being physical for a while.