We meet life, with all of its complex relationships,
through what we know. Each daily event, with its
dozens of unsuspected twists and turns, challenges
us to come up with our best answers. Once our most
suitable answer is at hand, we launch it and
ourselves into action and watch to see what happens.
With each situation this challenge and response
process is repeated over and over again, until the
condition resolves itself for us, either favorably
or not.
The point being made here is that at any given
moment we always do what we know. This may seem very
obvious, but with closer examination, especially in
light of the fact we wish to elevate ourselves and
what we are getting from this life, we will discover
something very astounding.
Read the next three sentences very carefully. I have
separated this trio of important ideas for ease of
reading, but they are very much connected to each
other. Each higher idea leads to the next one, and
when they are absorbed all together, they will tell
you a great secret.
Before you can get anything different from this
life, you must first do something different.
Before you can do anything different with your life,
you must first know something different.
Before you can know anything different, you must
first suspect and then confirm that it is your
present level of understanding that has brought you
what you now wish you could change.
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Now let's reverse the order of these right ideas so
that we can see how they work from the other way
around.
Until you know something different you cannot do
anything different.
Until you do something different you will not get
anything different.
And until you really get something different from
your life you cannot know what you have missed and
how much more there is to understand.
Here's the point. Trying to change what you get from
life without first changing what you know about life
is like putting on dry clothes over wet ones and
then wondering why you keep shivering. You must stop
trying to change what you are getting for yourself
and go to work on changing what you are giving to
yourself.
It is vital for you to realize that life has not
held back its riches from you. The truth be known,
which it will be, you have been held back from real
life by a false nature which thinks life is meant to
be suffered through and that all there is to
insulate it from a harsh world is what it can win
and possess for itself.
While there is no denying our world is becoming more
and more cruel, there is also no denying that we are
the world. Neither our individual world nor the
global one can change until the connection between
what we experience and who we are is no longer
denied.
This is why we must have a new knowledge. Spiritual
knowledge isn't something mysterious or out of this
world. In fact, spiritual understanding is the most
important and practical knowledge a person can
possess. It is ultimately what we know about
ourselves, about who we really are, that determines
the quality of our life.
The truth is we cannot separate our answers from our
actions and our actions from their results. They may
appear to be individual in their operation because
they often occur at different times, but they are
really one thing. Intellectually we already know
this important concept, but its deep significance
hasn't yet become clear.
Let's look at the old adage, "As ye sow, so
shall ye reap." Here we can see a new
significance in this New Testament teaching. What
you sow is seed or, in this metaphor, your
knowledge. What you reap is the crop, or your
results. This spiritual knowledge shows us the great
importance of reconsidering what we think we know.
Life is trying to reach us and teach us, through our
experience of it, that we need new and true answers.
These higher answers serve as a special kind of
personal shelter that effortlessly keeps out what is
harmful and keeps in what is healthy and
life-giving. That is its nature.
Here are five examples of how these higher answers
can work for you. You'll see how each one also
suggests a new action and promises a new result.
Remember that each complete section, one through
five, represents a whole action. In reality, you
cannot separate your answers from your actions and
your actions from their results. Just as warmth must
follow sunlight, so must a higher, happier life
follow when inner-light is allowed to flourish.
1. Your New Answer: Real
strength is the refusal to act from weakness.
Your New Action: See where you have been calling
inner-weakness an inner strength; such as calling
anxiety concern, or anger righteousness. Dare to
live without these false strengths.
Your New Result: The end of your confusion and pain
over why your strength so often fails you. At the
same time you will realize the birth of a new and
true strength that never turns into its weak
opposite.
2. Your New Answer: Have the courage to proceed even
while knowing that you are afraid.
Your New Action: Dare to take one shaky step after
another.
Your New Result: Freedom from a life of fear because
fear cannot exist whenever insight is valued above
feeling frightened.
3. Your New Answer: Forgiveness is the personal understanding that
except for circumstance there is no real difference
between you and your offender.
Your New Action: In spite of all the inner-screams
to the contrary, dare to treat your trespasser as
you would want to be treated.
Your New Result: When you stop punishing others for
their weakness, you will stop punishing yourself for
yours.
4. Your New Answer: Compassion is the conscious
refusal to add to another person's suffering, even
though it may seem to increase yours.
Your New Action: Dare to shoulder one hundred times
the mental and emotional weight you think you can
carry.
Your New Result: Contained right within the
suffering is the glimpse that there is no sufferer.
5. Your New Answer: Real hope
is the fact that there is always a Higher Solution.
Your New Action: See that any time you feel pained
or defeated, it is only because you insist on
clinging to what doesn't work. Dare to let go and
you won't lose a thing except for a punishing idea.
Your New Result: A new life that fears no inner or
outer challenge since defeat can only exist in the
absence of a willingness to learn.
Now that you have reviewed these five new and true
answers, you may wish to write down some of your
own. This is highly profitable for accelerating your
inner growth. Don't be discouraged if at first you
can't come up with any new ideas. There is great
gain in your efforts because even the smallest
attempt to find new answers is a new answer! The
more you work with truthful principles, the more
they will work for you.
Always remember when you work with powerful higher
ideas such as these that there are many temporarily
unknown parts of yourself that may try to mislead
you. They know that your growing true spiritual
insight will lead you away from their harmful
influence and deliver you to true safety. No matter
what the harmful voices within may say, whosoever
puts the Truth first will never lose anything except
for that which was never real in the first place.
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It
seems necessary to completely shed the
old skin before
the
new, brighter, stronger,
more beautiful one can emerge. . . .
I
never thought
I'd be getting a life lesson from a snake.
Julie
Ridge
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