PREDIPICE 4

p. 120-121

Wow! Diving deep today.

I believe an aspect of our chosen journey here on Planet Earth is that the is no such thing as “Instant Enlightenment.” Our growing, learning and evolvement is not a “one shot deal” nor is it meant to be. (Even those recorded events that appear to be sudden (like Bill Wilson’s “white light” experience or Paul being knocked off his horse on the way to Damascus are not rally sudden. They may appear so to our outsider consciousness, but there is always much internal preparation for the soul to enter into that kind of awareness.

A classmate made allusion to the idea of “process.” Life, growth, evolution is a process—it is meant to be a process—that is how we learn and grow in this stage of our education.

Even though it might seem we are learning the same lessons one rand over!!!!! Each time, we learn /experience on a deeper level.

I shared a personal insight and hopefully it will translate lovingly into the written word.

I discovered that one of the ways I was describing myself, and in fact I did this quite often, I would say, I am a person who is prone to bouts of depression.

My discovery was as long as I continue to describe myself that way then I will continually be and experience myself hat way. Now my mind will say something to the effect of yes that is true—you are a person prone to bouts of depression.

What I was not conscious of is that my mind will always define me according to its own limited awareness (and my mind always wants to be right). And my mind is very comfortable with its way of defining me—it makes life quite predictable.

And see what happened to me was I accepted that so much as being the truth, that I never questioned the validity of it nor did I even suspect that not only was I holding onto that description of myself but I was perpetuating the pattern.

We are being encouraged to explore and to be open in our awareness to patterns of thought and behavior that might have been with us for a very long time and which no longer serve us.

There is an understanding here to that even when I work on changing a pattern, that my emotions are not going to change right away. Let us suppose in that situation mentioned above that I choose to change my thinking and the begin to change that old pattern or description of myself. That does not mean that all of a sudden depression, sadness, anger of fear is going to leave. It is as if we turned on a light in a really dark room. I am not going to see everything clearly all of a sudden, it is going to take awhile for me to acclimate myself to this new vision. Even then, I might doubt whether or not I am seeing clearly.

We were reminded as well of that wonderful statement from Gurdjief, “You have to realize you were in prison before you can get out.” It was stated that perhaps, for whatever reasons, we might enjoy the prison bars of our own creation. I do not deny that one, however, once we begin to embrace the truth of Who We Are anything that limits us, whether it is in thought or in action, is going to begin to feel uncomfortable. The discomfort, if we sit with it honestly, is going to push us towards release, letting go, growing and evolving.

I could not help but be reminded of that wonderful quote from Augustine when his prayer was “Lord make me chaste but not yet.” What a beautiful, honest expression being aware of the desire of my soul and yet at the same time be aware of my human limitations.

He understood also then we cannot force ourselves to be somewhere that we are not or to try to be in a spiritual space, where we think we ought to be, rather than embracing who and where we are. And even then realizing that to is a perception of who I am. But also as I am embracing my perception of who and where I am at this moment, what we discover, as we did in our meditation this morning, is we are actually opening ourselves up to being embraced by our Divine Self.  We are allowing even our limited perception of ourselves be embraced by the unconditional of of the Divine.

This morning, we mentioned looking at our limited or small self as a child or as it curious puppy. When we speak about embracing that, we begin to realize that we are embracing our concept or our perception of self, our limited perception of ourselves; we are embracing that with our divine being. And in some ways that is all we need to do.

I do not mean that in a passive way, but as we open ourselves up to the Divine within, the movement and the growth and the evolution that the soul desires is set in motion.

As we have mentioned before, it is through my willingness and through my intention that I allow myself to move to a higher level of awareness and vibration. Much of my willingness and my intention comes from my personality or ego self. It pushes us to the edge and when we reach that point when our personality self can go no further, we allow our divine self to take over. We might not even be doing that consciously but we are doing it none-the-less. There was that marvelous sentence In our work this morning that said “And if you don’t want to climb, allow yourself to be lifted. ”

What a great description of Prayer. “Lord I don't know where I am; sometimes I don't know where I'm going; yet I know that you know the yearnings of my soul even more deeply than I know them myself. Let me be open to the movement, the growth and the evolution my soul desires at this moment in my life. Thank you. Amen.

“How do I live in infinite choice? Where do I go when the map I have called to me for the rest of my life no longer serves me anymore? How do I stand in my knowing when my authority is questioned? When the rules that I believe were told to me for a good reason may only be there to get me to behave?

Now you ask yourself these questions and you lie to yourself when you pretend you don’t know the answer. You know who you are. You are an aspect of the Creator manifested in form and the decision to be this in actions, in your words, in your deeds, will claim you in your worth as the one who may know what she needs. What is infinite worth but a true statement of each man and woman as they are designed and protected by the light that they are?”

“The designs you have held and known as your own have been agreements you have made with your history. The contracts you have signed, the decisions you made to be this way or that way, were agreements you made born in your history. Now why do you want to do this all the time? Why do you claim this for yourself? Why do you bring this upon you again and again? Because you think you must and because you do not know that there are other ways to be.

Now, if you want to lie to yourself and tell yourself that you are not in choice, you may go back to bed, you may go back to sleep, and you may stay there. There is no reason to read further. But if you can align to the possibility, each and every one of you, that you stand at the precipice of great change, of infinite possibility, the moment you are willing to relinquish who and what you thought you were supposed to be to become who and what you are, you will see that the cliff that you stand on the edge of is the launching pad for the rest of your life.”

Lastly, I addressed some comments to the idea of being a survivor. I feel as if I need to be more clear with my thinking here.

I do not want to discount or demean the work that survivors have done be that with working with a physical illness, addiction, or trauma. What I am suggesting is that we are more than that.

Although our addiction/trauma/abuse might have been a defining moment in our lives, we are still more than that moment.

Certainly we honor ourselves and one another for working through our stuff and our process of healing, and yet, I believe we are urged to go beyond the incident(s) and to know ourselves even beyond our life circumstances.

As we spoke this morning I had an image of you sitting with Jesus/Buddha/Quan Yen and asking Him/Her—“Who do you say that I am?”

In Love and Gratitude.