Part 1 Whoever fails to try what his heart would have him do—because his mind tells him, “This you cannot do”—fails to hear the ever-present Voice of Reality forever shouting to all those who would dare: “No sincere effort ever goes without being rewarded.”
Part 2 Never believe in any negative thought or feeling that would have you believe, “There's no way!” Always remember instead that real life is a secret and vital flux of possibilities rising up from the Ground of what seems improbable, much as a spring flower manages to bloom in a once-frozen field.
As the Light of higher self-knowledge dawns in us, we are able to see—in ever-greater clarity—the formerly unseen parts of ourselves that have held us captive. It's a paradox of the true spiritual path, but the more conscious we become of what limits us, the more limitless becomes our life. So, take as long as you need to understand the lesson that follows. It's intended to shed much-needed light on one of the more deceptive dark states that stands between us and the freedom for which we long.
The only purpose discouraged feelings serve is to keep your thoughts on what you can't do. And with your attention fixed in this fashion—on what seems impossible—there's no room for discovering what is possible—for what you can do.
Let's cover this important discovery one more time.
The only thing that feelings of discouragement do is keep you busy doing nothing except feeling sorry for yourself, which is the perfect guarantee that your sorry situation will remain hopelessly the same. Enough is enough! You don't have to put up with one more discouraging moment, let alone a life filled with its darkness. That's right. There is another choice you can learn to make besides falling into those familiar feelings of failure. Use this next higher idea to help you start thinking about those old discouragements in a new way.
Whenever we suffer over what we aren't able to do, have, win, or work through, our attention in these moments is riveted on our own thoughts, thoughts that are busy telling us we're somehow stuck. Maybe you can recognize some of these heavy-hearted inner voices. They say in one way or another . . .
Now, on the surface of things, these all-too-familiar whispers of defeat—these dark voices that reach our inner ears, speaking to us with our own voice—seem to be genuinely concerned with our unfortunate condition. But a deeper look into this covert operation reveals these troubled thoughts are up to something totally different. There is an unseen “conspiracy of limitation” taking place within our own consciousness! Follow the next four ideas all the way to their stunning conclusion. They show us that self-illumination and self-liberation are one and the same power.
We end up being able to go no farther with our wish for broader personal horizons because, unbeknownst to ourselves, we now believe that there's no way to get past where we now perceive ourselves to be limited or tied down. The key idea in this part of our investigation lies within the word perceive, because—for the purposes of this exercise—the word perceive rhymes with deceive. And that's precisely what this faulty perception is: a self-deception. Here's proof.
There are no dead ends in real life. Of course you must prove this bright fact to yourself, and here's a good place to start: in any given moment, there is always something higher you can do with your life than sit there and suffer over what you think you can't have, or do, or be. Why wallow when a small amount of interior work will act to change your reality?
Here's one example of a new and higher inner action to take when faced with the presence of any discouraging inner state: See that the size of the discouragement you feel is directly proportional to the size of your insistence that life conform to your demands. Then, having verified this truth for yourself, dare to quietly drop that self-defeating demand.
The first time you bring such a light to bear on any discouraged thought or feeling, it will fade from view—much as shadows do when the sun reaches its midday zenith. Their departure leaves you with fresh new energies that not only grant you “new eyes” through which to see how you can proceed with your wish, but that also grant you the strength to begin the next leg of your quest.
For instance, maybe you've felt discouraged because you wanted to learn something new—a higher skill or a difficult lesson—but felt sure that certain limitations of yours placed this possibility beyond your abilities. And so you resigned yourself to feeling discouraged. While this kind of self-defeating behavior is commonly accepted as natural, it's totally unnecessary. You can do something much higher!
Instead of falling into those familiar feelings of futility over yourself, work to deliberately drop those discourage-filled thoughts that are telling you the limit of your present view is the limit of your possibilities. Who you have been matters only to those dark states that want you to remain that way so that they can continue to rule the day. Refuse to dwell in discouragement over who your own thoughts are telling you you'll never be. Just get started working on who, and what, you are right now!
In other words, do what's in your power and refuse to be discouraged about anything else. And keep repeating this new conscious action one step at a time, over and over again. It is in your power to learn whatever it takes—one lesson at a time—and make it all the way to your designated goal.
Here's one last special thought to help summarize this important life lesson in liberating ourselves from the limitations of discouragement:
Any conversation you permit yourself to have with dark and discouraging thoughts guarantees you'll wind up with a dozen good reasons for why you feel so dark and discouraged.When it comes to any negative thought, the first word you have with it is the same as giving it the last word with you.
Practice these higher lessons in self-liberation until you're free of all feelings of futility. You'll soon see how this new action gives you the last laugh on discouragement.
KEY LESSON
Part 1 Calling on anxious thoughts to check the rising tide of some fearful feeling is like trying to stop a landslide by throwing rocks at it!
Part 2 Using thought as a tool to resolve the troubles that thought stirs up in the mind is like trying to use your fingers to seize, sort, and settle dust particles that are dancing in a sunbeam across your living room floor.
Too frequently we feel as though our lives are under the power of things outside of us and beyond our ability to deal with: we are prisoners in one way or another of an unfair social system, impossible work conditions, an unforgiving past, or a failed relationship. Even trying to assemble a build-it-yourself bookshelf that doesn't know it “goes together with ease” can lock us away in the house of pain.
Whatever the antagonist, our response is pretty standard: we resist, struggling to get out from under what we see as standing over us. However, the fact of the matter is things are not as they seem. No event of itself has power; it is we who unconsciously color the moments of our lives with the unhappy quality of character that we then turn around and lament for being there. Let's examine this important idea, so that we can begin liberating ourselves from what amounts to an unseen act of self-limitation.
Our experience of any passing event—for the pain or pleasure of it—is the product of how we see it. This principle is a timeless spiritual truth: the inner determines the outer, which simply means that our experience of life is one and the same with how we perceive it. So, as astonishing as it may seem at first, it's true: The only power any unwanted moment holds over us is the power we give to it. Think what this means, beginning with this vital idea that points directly to the possibility of never again having to feel like a victim.
Negative states are not mandatory; believe it or not, they are voluntary! Proving this to ourselves is the first step in walking out of the psychological prison created by our current misperception of reality, so let's get started.
Emotional pain is not an intrinsic part of any event, any more than gathering darkening clouds means an inescapable depression is coming.
The light of this insight changes everything, starting with the age-old question, “How do we free ourselves from ‘powers’ that seem greater than ourselves?” Now we know where to look for the answer: emancipation begins with our willingness to explore and expose the invisible workings of the false self that keeps us its captive. The following example will make everything crystal clear.
Imagine for a moment you're driving home from work, and you've just come from having a pretty rough day at the office. As you drive along, your eyes see the road before you, but your mind is in the past. It's very busy running and then rerunning a few of the day's unpleasant events, much like an unattended slideshow cycling through the same few images over and over again. You relive that painful stab of some thoughtless remark someone cruelly blurted out, or the embarrassment of that stupid comment you made without thinking.
All we need to see to be able to walk out of this darkened theatre of unhappy thoughts is right before our eyes: the more we think, the more we sink! Instead of achieving the freedom we imagine will result from this struggle, we find ourselves further entangled in the dark web of our own imagination!
In moments such as these, our lives and our choices are not our own; they are literally the property of a mind that is asleep to its own operations. Its unique “blindness” is that it's busy showing itself the very images that it doesn't want to look at! This means the more desperately the mind struggles to escape the conflict it feels, the less it's able to realize that its real struggle is with itself—and not with the world that it blames for its conflicted condition.
As we are now beginning to see, breaking free of this interior web of thought can't happen by pulling on the individual strands of thought that hold us there. In the end, it is awareness of our actual dilemma that releases us from it. By its light we are empowered to see the truth about our “thought self” and the false sense of life it weaves for itself by thinking about itself: its world is not the same as ours.
Like the swan that mistook itself to be an ugly duckling until it caught a glimpse of its own graceful reflection in still waters, we can open our interior eyes and see that the world of thought is not the home of our True Self. This practice is called self-observation. It is “the alpha and the omega” of a life without limits, because through it we realize that who we really are cannot be confined by anything, let alone a cage of thought.
Learning to observe our self begins with one simple but deliberate act of attention on our part. As many times a day as we can remember to do it, we want to first come awake to whatever activity is running through our own mind, and then simply, quietly, take a single step back from our own thoughts. We watch our own thinking—its movement and character—instead of allowing ourselves to be drawn onto its stage and into its drama.
Our foremost wish is to witness what our false self is busy spinning out of thought so that we don't fall into its web; instead of reacting to these thoughts and feelings as they pass through us, pulling us into their world as they do, we release them as they are being formed. In other words, we are neither for, nor against, any thought with any other thought. And should we find ourselves sinking into the web of some needless negative thinking, we need only step back and watch that event. Although thought is sticky stuff, please know—in spite of appearances—release is immediate! So, we must stick with our new intention to “see” our way free until we know the truth of it in the moment.
If we agree to start over and over again with this interior practice, here is the glad discovery we can't help but make: Higher self-awareness, through self-observation, puts us in direct contact with a new and superior intelligence that already lives within us; and through its steady silent wisdom we realize a new kind of strength that is always there when we need it.
This living Light sees the mindless self-serving antics of our false self from a thousand miles away—which is the same as lifting us above its web of limitations. By this Light we see for ourselves what is real and what is not, which is the same as saying negative states no longer have the power to hold us down because we can no longer be deceived into mistaking their world for that of our own.
KEY LESSON
Most people pounce on other people as they do—when they do—not because they want to cause pain, but because they're afraid of being hurt. To see this truth is to realize that the real enemy of a relationship is fear itself; for this dark state that dwells in the unenlightened heart knows that the best way to protect itself is by being first to find fault with another.
No relationship in life can be any more successful than what we are willing to learn about ourselves through it. The moment we turn our back on what others give us to see about ourselves, we not only walk away from what we need to see, but also from the better person we could be . . . were we only willing to learn the lesson at hand.
The success of our relationships with others—and that must include all we're intended to realize about ourselves through them—depends on a two-part key that unlocks our potential to love: First, we are asked to do the interior work of becoming aware of ourselves in a whole new way. Second, we must learn to welcome what this new light reveals to us about ourselves. One without the other is useless.
Sadly enough, due to the mass marketing of spiritual ideas and the glut of iconic imagery that goes with that, many people these days believe they are already self-aware and “living in the Light.” So, the first step for those of us wishing to escape the painful limitations of any harmful relationship with another—or with our own present nature—begins with admitting the following to ourselves: Yes, we have the awareness we need to “get through” life and to resolve many of its issues, but this power to rationalize the world we walk through is only part of the whole story: our continuing conflict with others—as well as within our own heart and mind—clearly reveals that this level of awareness is not enough.
The late great mystic Vernon Howard, a spiritual giant, had a favorite saying when it came to seeing the truth about our present level of development. He would often tell his students, “The medicine is bitter, but it heals!” It's true; and so is the fact that nearly all of humanity is asleep to itself; six and a half-billion “sleepwalkers” who—even as they move through life—are all but oblivious to the reality of the invisible worlds within them that are shaping their lives.
It is to help us discover this unseen state of our Self that authentic spiritual “exercises” came to exist and have been passed along down through the ages. Their true purpose was never to empower human beings with what the sleeping mind dreamed would rescue it, but to awaken the “sleeper” within—the True Self—to its unnatural state of imprisonment. True illumination is liberation from the illusion of passing time and the world of thought that creates it.
So, the purpose of any true interior practice is not to help us “do” or achieve something in the world that will make our future a brighter one, but to help us see something now about our present level of being. But our wish and work to be aware of ourselves isn't just to see ourselves through this Light of higher awareness, but also to allow its celestial presence to act upon us.
We cannot change ourselves; nothing in the created universe can make itself greater than it already is. This means our responsibility is not to try and enhance ourselves through our various relationships in life, but rather to discover and realize ourselves through them. Think of the vast difference between these two pursuits. One brings endless ways in which we feel we must make painful compromises with others in order to protect what we have “gained” through them. The other way leads us to the gradual realization of an interior greatness that can neither be enslaved nor corrupted. Only our awakening can end the aching inherent in the many ways we have become falsely dependent upon others. Those who depend on others to provide them with their sense of worth are codependent; each must have the other to keep the illusion alive, even though by feeding this relationship they effectively separate themselves from the possibility of ever knowing their true value.
Here's the point: Anyone we enable, we disable . . . including ourselves. And there's only one reason any two people consent to compromise themselves in this way: neither has yet discovered the truth of who they really are. Now let me restate a spiritual law:
We can never enable someone else without having first disabled our own higher nature that knows better than to bargain for friendship, love—or just to feel “needed” in some way. Resentment and regret are the bitter fruit of all codependent relationships, because the ground out of which they grow is self-compromise disguised as caring for one another. We cannot authentically care for another until we carry within us the lighted lamp of higher self-understanding.
A big part of our inner work in all of our relationships involves remembering this key idea: Whenever we are not present and properly attentive to ourselves, we may be sure the false self is busy attending to something we'll be paying for in the days ahead. Disconcerting, yes; but there's no denying it: there are unconscious parts of us that feel good about getting us to do wrong! No form of codependent behavior thrives without an unseen character at work within us, providing it with the conditions it needs to flourish.
Any time we enable another—cause them to wrongly depend upon us—or, conversely, depend upon someone else to “comfort” us for what we give them in exchange, we have limited the lives of all involved. Of course we're not conscious of what we are doing, or we wouldn't involve ourselves with others in this way. Which brings us to the examples that follow.
Welcome these next insights, which are taken from my book, Beyond Dependency. Let your intuition instruct you as to how to apply the lessons they impart. Use their light to help you see some of the invisible ways in which we not only enable but spiritually disable friends, family, loved ones, and ourselves.
There are parts of us that would rather be punished by unkind people than have to spend one minute being alone, because the only way these same parts in us can exist is if they have someone to resent or somehow fear. In this case we remain in these ruinous relationships because the fear or emptiness we feel in even considering leaving them seems to be too much to bear on our own.
Here's the key to escaping this captivity: This familiar fear—of being alone in life—feels real, no doubt; but it belongs to an imagined self. We must now act on what we know is the truth of our condition, instead of remaining its captive. Translation: Walk away from anyone who “helps” you to feel that it's necessary for you to hurt; leave anyone who causes you pain for “your own good.” Here's the rule to remember: Never accept as natural or necessary any relationship outwardly—or inwardly—with a person or psychological state that punishes you. Say “No” and just go! A whole new and independent life awaits you.
Whenever we allow angry parts of us to cast blame on others for the conditions we find ourselves in, we enable the false self to keep dreaming that if it weren't for others doing us wrong we would never feel so angry, defeated, or depressed.
The truth is there are unconscious parts of us that readily find fault with others in a misguided effort to remain infallible in our own eyes. Each time we blame someone else, we agree to remain asleep in this misery-making mistaken identity. Saying “No” to this nature is saying good-bye to a host of imagined enemies this false self needs to remain itself, as well as to a war that can never be won.
What should be clear now is that we have to do a special kind of inner work if we wish to catch and cancel self-harming codependent behavior. It's not enough to just talk about achieving a good, contented life. Anyone can talk about that, and most do. Few will really do the interior work it takes to be free, which is why we must be different.
We must learn to put the Light of Truth before all things. No such effort ever goes unrewarded. Little by little the living Light reveals within us a new and higher order of strength that has no problem saying “No” to those unconscious parts of us that care for nothing and no one, not even themselves! This new “No” then becomes a “Yes” to self-wholeness—the secret source of all healthy, happy, and unlimited relationships.
Adapted from Beyond Dependency
We are not created to spend our lives in fearful preparation over what may come—but rather to use whatever comes our way, each moment, to help us perfect our understanding that God is good.
In those moments when we meet a challenge that stands in our way, we are not meeting some immovable, transient object. In reality, we are meeting nothing more than our own present understanding of that event. Wherever we are—whatever we encounter—we meet there our own understanding.
This is such an important insight for us to ponder: the dimension—the breadth and depth of any event transpiring before us—is a reflection of the level of self that perceives it. In other words, life cannot be any deeper, wiser, shallow, or selfish than permitted by what we are capable of understanding about it.
There is such beauty and freedom in this realization about the nature of our reality: we look at life through the mirror of our consciousness, and what we see there—whether all bound up or boundless—is determined by our present level of self-understanding. In other words, whenever our present nature meets some barrier, a limit of any kind, all it's really run up against is itself. The self that sees limitation . . . is the limitation it sees; this is why it can't see past that point! It is the “end” it sees; they are one thing.
On the other hand, true spiritual success is one and the same as our realization that, in real life, nothing ends without the birth of something else taking place in that same moment.
Our True Self is the creative Ground of a ceaseless genesis; our great task in life—through our awareness of the whole of it—is to be a kind of midwife to this eternal miracle of birth. And what is continually being born in us and into this world of ours—whether for its bitterness or brightness—depends on how we meet these changes that drive creation forward. Let's see how these grand ideas reveal themselves in our daily affairs.
As life pours itself out in the stream of passing time, and we run into challenges seemingly greater than our ability to answer, each of these encounters “asks” this question of us:
“Are you willing to change (who you have been) in order to realize a higher possibility of yourself?”
And though moments like these trouble us because of their uncertainty, here's why we should be very grateful for their continuing appearance in our lives: this unwanted experience of realizing our limitations is the only way life can ask us if we wish to go beyond them. So this unknown moment of not understanding (what is to be) is actually the beautiful seed of a new order of our being, providing we're willing to see it as such.
Unfortunately, most of us automatically resist the unknown. Whenever we can't understand the nature of some unwanted situation, we fall, by default, into the hands of a nature whose answer to this ache is always the same: get negative and then try to protect ourselves from anything that can't be otherwise controlled. The rest takes place in us on automatic pilot: in the wink of an eye, we begin to see the “way out” of our situation: blame him, fix that, fight or flee. But here's what we don't see: in that moment, our guiding light is a dark reaction dedicated, in one way or another, to avoiding what that moment came to give us. This false nature takes what was a celestially planned event—for the purpose of our further spiritual perfection—and turns it into a dead end.
We have all heard about people receiving messages, instructions from God. What you probably don't realize is that “communications of a celestial kind” are raining down on us every waking moment. In fact, each impression we receive—wanted or not—is just that: the Divine Life speaking to us, asking, “Would you like entrance into a larger world, one without fear and hatred? Do you wish to be more patient, loving, and kind? Are you interested in developing a relationship with a living Light that never goes out, and whose peace passes all understanding?” But before we can hope to affirm our answer, we must first see how these questions are being put before us.
Life repeatedly brings us moments that introduce us to some unseen limitation in our present level of self. For example, when conditions get too stressful, we can keep neither our patience nor our temper under control. Too often, though we know better, cruel words spring from our mouth as our way of answering cutting remarks from someone else. Perhaps we see how the fear of being betrayed (again) colors all our relationships, limiting our ability to give ourselves freely to those we would love.
The point should be clear: Time and time again, interior trials such as these return to help us see one thing: we can't get past them as long as we remain who and what we have been—because who and what we have been is what we are meeting in these same moments! Another way of stating this same insight is startling: Resisting what life shows us—not wanting those moments wherein we're invited to see the truth about our present level of self—ensures they will return again! This is the interior meaning of reincarnation: the recreation of self through resistance to the negative effects of its own manifestations. It doesn't have to be this way. We are meant to rise above creation, not repeat our life through it in ever-descending cycles.
There's only one way for us to transcend the limitations of our present nature. We must see—as has been the purpose of this whole lesson—this one great fact: These limitations don't belong to us any more than the clumsy body of the caterpillar belongs to the butterfly liberated from its husk. Then, we must act on this new understanding by daring to let go of any part of us that wants us to embrace its limited view of life as our own.
True freedom is not an achievement; it is our awakened relationship and participation with the genesis of real life. We cannot create a life without limits by trying to overcome what we think stands in our way. Real limitless living is the fruit of this higher understanding: what is in our way is part of the Way. To know this is to know that all of creation has been made for you, just as surely as you have been made for everything that happens to you within it.
If we work each moment to practice kindness, patience, and persistence—doing so in grateful remembrance that each breath we take is a gift—here's what we'll find: the power of being present in this way ensures that each of our “tomorrows” dawns with more Light than was seen this day.
Everyone wonders whether or not there is one Great Secret for truly successful living. There is. And it is not a secret. It has been quietly, steadily telling itself right in front of us all along. We just couldn't hear it over the clatter and chatter of our own demands. Listen quietly for a moment. Everything can change right now. Learning to hear this Supreme Secret is no more difficult than choosing whether to swim against a current or to let it carry you safely to the shore. Let it speak its wisdom to that secret part of you that cannot only hear what it is saying but that is, in reality, its very voice. Listen to it now. It is saying, “Want what life wants.” Think about it. Locked within these four simple words is the secret of an uncompromising power for effortless living; a new kind of power that never fails to place you on the winning side of any situation. Why? Because when you want what Life wants, your wish is for Life itself.
“What if I don't like what Life brings to me?”
“Try to see that it is not what Life has brought to you that you don't like. It is your reactions that turn the gift of Life into the resentment of it.”
“I don't want to sound ungrateful, but speaking plainly, I'm tired of being unhappy. What difference does it make why I feel this way?”
“Because these unhappy feelings are born out of Life failing to conform to your ideas of what you need to be happy. This shows you, if you will see it, that Life itself isn't denying you happiness. It is your ideas about Life that have failed you. Give up these wrong ideas instead of giving up on Life. Be increasingly willing to see that they are nothing but a constant source of conflict. Your false nature will tell you that you must have these self-protecting ideas; that you can't live without them or you will lose something valuable. What you must do, in spite of any such protest to the contrary, is to see that you can't live with them. All you will lose is your unhappiness.”
Here are two lists that not only will make these life-healing ideas more personal for you, but that will help you to make a higher choice when it comes to what you really want from life. It would be valuable to study and then compare the lists to each other. You may wish to add to either list some of your own insights, which I highly encourage you to do.
Let's look at what happens when you want what you want:
Now carefully consider what happens when you want what life wants:
“Is there a simple guideline to follow when it comes to distinguishing between what Life wants and what I want? How can I easily tell which is which?”
“Always remember the following. If any want is the source of anxiety or sorrow, that want is yours and not Life's. If the want has pain, it is in vain. To let real life flood in, pull yourself out of the flood of self-wants that promise a future pleasure but only deliver a present pain.”
“How do I pull myself out of the flood of my own wants?”
“See that you are being washed away by them and you will grow tired of being bounced along. Here is a key. Never accept the presence of any mental or emotional suffering as necessary, no matter how much importance these impostors lend to a particularly pressing want. By refusing their dark presence, you make space for the real Present. This is where the Life you want and that wants you is waiting.”
Let Life bring you itself. Welcome it. At each instant, it is new, full—untouched and undiminished by any moment before it. To enter into this full relationship with Life is to give yourself to your Self. Fulfilling the true purpose of Life is fulfilling yourself. They are one and the same. Want what life wants.
Adapted in part from The Secret of Letting Go