So you’re doing your life, working hard, being a good partner, raising your kids and being a loving friend. Someday the kids will leave home, you’ll retire – and other than grandchildren, what will you have? What will your life have really been about?
You may not realize it, but while struggling to hold your life together your trials and tribulations were part of a larger process involving the development of your soul. And if you understand a little of how that process works it might make your life today a little easier.
To help children grow and learn we create safe and nurturing environments for them. We go to great lengths to devise places that are both physically and emotionally safe. We create literal and figurative sandboxes. In those environments, children can learn the basics of life with little risk. They learn about themselves and how to deal with others. Empires in sandboxes are acquired and lost, toys are shared or not and no one really gets hurt. In the sandbox nothing is permanent. Tomorrow is always another day.
In much the same way, the Creator has made a great sandbox for you called “life.” In this sandbox you will be given opportunity after opportunity to work out the dilemmas presented by your fears without eternal consequence. We inject a lofty importance to the events of life because they import significant to a universe that has laws but no values. But the events of life have little ultimate meaning. All the fights, wars, joys, stresses, illnesses and other things important to you will dissappear when you pass. All you believe will also slip away. Those who come after you will sweep aside what you were and what you believed. Your money and fame will dissipate. If you were really famous they might build a statue or name a school after you, but that’s about it. Just like the play of children in a sandbox, nothing on earth is eternal with a single notable exception – the development of your soul.
In addition to this life, if you look over the succession of your past lives, you will find that The Universe has been busy urging you to address your fears. Many people assume that when people finish dealing with those issues they get to go home. Although that is partly true, it is only the surface manifestation of a much more significant process. And this is where things really get interesting!
First of all, the only thing that is eternal is your spiritual development. Every problem you have experienced in this life and in your past lives will have been because of limitations in your spiritual development. And what is the challenge? Put simply, it is to move to compassion, no matter what the circumstance. You may be dealing with the pain of a divorce for example, but at the same time The Universe is urging you to expand your compassion to accept the ending of the relationship with love instead of acrimony and pain. That is the fundamental challenge of life. In the ideal, when someone does something stupid or hurtful, you would hold love for them even while disapproving of their behavior.
But, there is even more! What is it that limits your compassion?
“It is fear. I get afraid.”
But, don’t stop there. Fear of what?
“Well, the fear of being hurt.”
By people?
“Yes.”
But people can’t really hurt you unless things turn physical. So, what are you really anxious about?
“I guess it is my fear of having other people confirm my unworthiness.”
Yes, but there is even more. What is beneath that?
“Ultimately, I guess, it is my fear of being rejected by God.”
That is correct, but this would not be an issue if you knew who you truly were.
“So, what you are saying is that all of this is happening because I do not yet embrace my true self?”
Yes, and until you do, The Universe will be relentless in encouraging you to find the truth.
When you separated from the Creator to come here, your feelings of vulnerability were exacerbated. This was intended. You interpreted the separation as a rejection. You felt abandoned because you were not grounded in the truth about who you were. You came here to specifically address those issues. The events of your life provide the grist for that mill. If you had understood who you truly were, there would have been no issue because you would have known that you and the Creator were inseparable. But because you do not yet hold that truth, today you are vulnerable to fear-based emotions like unworthiness and insecurity.
As I said, life on earth is the sandbox God has created for us. We struggle with issues that cannot possibly be true so that in the process we will learn the truth about who we are. These issues are not resolvable and are largely irrelevant anyway. You are part of the God consciousness and it is not possible for you to be unlovable, undeserving, unworthy or any of the other things you tell yourself. Besides, you cannot prove that you are worthy, although we try.
You need to accept the embrace of God’s love so that issues like unworthiness become irrelevant. You do not resolve these issues, you transcend them. Today you to experience fear, so your emotions and beliefs are real. They exist not to punish but to empower your transformational process. They provide the energy that will motivate youth change. Emotions are like the sand in the sandbox. They are not eternal.
At the core of every human’s being is compassion. People’s natural compassion and the urge to live it can be denied for a time, but not forever. Ultimately natural forces overwhelm repression, whether it is internal to the individual or external in the culture. The yearning to be free ultimately overwhelms everything. It will eventually push us closer to establishing God’s kingdom on earth or to put it another way, to return to Eden. It may seem odd, but the emptiness and alienation Western people feel today will ultimately prove to be beneficial because it will drive them to create more meaningful lives. If you look at human history, this has been the overriding theme.
Think for a moment about the unhappiness in your life. That’s the sand of irritation. That sand will rub and chafe until you cannot stand it any longer and then you will make changes. Whatever the issue, the outcome will move you to greater compassion. And like an oyster, you will create a pearl from your fear and aggravation. And when enough people do that, everything changes.
The Universe is saying to you every day, “Allow me to flow through you and you will experience magic you never thought possible.”
Aldous Huxley wrote, “The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning one’s self and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s self.”
Understanding this puts The Prayer of St Francis, I think, in a very different light:
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
copyright©Blue Lotus Press 2016
