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Best-selling, self-realization author
The universe is a work being continually perfected; though unseen, it is justice, compassion in action. Those who resist and resent what comes their way—who fight with its unending waves that rock their contrived sense of reality—are actually the ones who live without real choice. They must serve their struggle to resolve the sense of loss that comes each time the world changes without first having consulted them. So, instead of being what they could be—an intelligent instrument of a beautiful awareness that illuminates and transforms all it touches—these poor souls reflect ugliness in all its dark, malcontent forms. Such people have neither peace nor freedom. How can they? Any happiness built on a demand that life comply with its imagined pleasures is a disturbance waiting to happen. Yet, here’s an astonishing truth: there is not one true reason to be unhappy, not one. How can this be?
There is no moment in which everything around us isn’t beginning. Can we look around us and see this truth? Can we see that the ocean of life—within whose endless waves we dwell—never stops beginning? Because, if we can see this fact, it means that whatever our mind tells us is the reason for our unhappiness is never the real reason for that pain. How can it be? The whole universe has changed since the passing of that moment our mind still holds responsible for its misery! What hasn’t changed—and what resists change at the same time—is that lower level of our self that clings to negative images in order to hold onto its suffering! Which brings us to this grand question:
Will we choose to be a part of life’s endless beginning? Shall we enter into the incorruptible present moment—or continue to live from a nature that clings to imagined endings so that then it can complain about whatever disturbs that dream? Can we realize that everything that happens to us does so for the one purpose of revealing to us something of our present nature ...and, in so doing, invites us to transcend who we have been?
If we can answer these last few questions in the affirmative, then we can see the truth behind appearances: real life is self-renewing; and as we learn to align our will with this eternal principle, then a measure of its power—which is an aspect of God’s life—becomes an active part of our own being. Let’s look at one example of how this new and higher relationship with life might unfold in real time, under circumstances common to us all.
We are sitting someplace, or perhaps driving down the street, and something happens that creates a disturbance within us. Maybe it’s something on the news, or someone touches an old nerve with a careless remark. It doesn’t take much to stir up suffering, but now we know a better response than to wreck ourselves. In that same instant that we feel our world being “rocked” – instead of resisting that unwanted wave by setting out to “make things right” – we do nothing but let go, and watch the wave run through us. We don’t fight life; we observe its movements. What does it mean to “watch” these waves, instead of letting them carry us away? Here’s a crucial lesson in letting go:
Fighting with, resisting any wave creates more waves. Do something new: let that wave of worry or fear rise – and fall – back into the darkness from which it came; and be assured it will do just that – if we will only agree to let it run its natural course. Why should this non-action be our choice? Because if we will dare to watch the wave go its own way, then soon we will observe a true miracle: all waves return – on their own – back into the uncharted depths of the ocean from which they came – but only when we watch and don’t touch!
Our task is to no longer try to control or contain these waves, but to watch them come and go. We must learn how to use all of life’s movements to free us from our false ideas that life can ever move against us. It cannot, any more than waves challenge the integrity of the ocean through which they move. In truth, the waves of the ocean – of life itself – refresh and renew the world of their origin. To know this is to cooperate with that greater consciousness that sits behind these changing forms.
See that everything in existence serves what is Good. Choose to participate in life as it is. Embrace the full moment through your awareness of it – whatever it brings. This level of watchfulness first sees what is real, and then serves to “transform” it into the next and higher form of what is possible. This Divine process is perfect; it is eternal. Its promise is that we will know its being as our own if we will do the work of awakening to the truth of ourselves.
Guy Finley is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher and bestselling self-help author. He is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for transcendent self-study located in Merlin, Oregon. He also hosts the Foundation’s Wisdom School — an on-line self-discovery program for seekers of higher self-knowledge. Guy offers 2 talks on GoToWebinar, open to the public every week. Each talk is followed by a Question-and-Answer session with the audience. These talks are free to anyone who wants to join in. To register visit www.guyfinley.org/light
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