Each and every event in our life brings with it a kind of gift just for us, provided we know how to receive it. This priceless offer isn't about ways to empower ourselves through possessions or greater position in life; it is presented to us to help free us from the stress and worry born of the false belief that we need such riches to realize the timeless value of ourselves.
What is this gift yet claimed? What power can we hope to know that can make all of life's moments golden? Don't let either the simplicity or the familiarity of the following answer keep you from realizing its unimaginable promise: perfect Love casts out fear.
Why does perfect Love cast out fear along with all of its self-compromising conditions? Because much in the same way as it is impossible for a shadow to live in the light, such a love ensures that dark divisive states such as fear, anxiety, and depression cannot dwell in its presence. Our task, should we wish to walk through life with such a fierce advocate by our side, is to awaken ourselves to the fact of its presence as a power already within us. Discovering "where" this Treasure of treasures is found -- and how to make ourselves one with it -- that's the question! Now, let's find some real answers.
We can all see that life is a mystery. What remains unseen is how to solve it. But before we can ever hope to "solve" this enigmatic puzzle that we call our life, we must have all the pieces on the table; and there is one "piece" to this puzzle most never find because this missing piece is our life itself!
Life -- this moment and every moment -- is a school for the education of the soul. At its heart is an invisible core curriculum, a kind of celestial "program" with one great purpose: to help us realize that behind each of the life-lessons that come our way dwells a divine, just, and loving Intelligence that wants us to be one with its life.
Imagine how different life would be if we understood that nothing happens to us that isn't sent our way to help us learn more about the eternal nature of Love. With such a realization we would know that whatever takes place in our life has not come as something set against our best interests, but to help us realize them!
What prohibits us from awakening to this essential relationship and realizing its power as our own? In a word: resistance. We see life through the eyes of a part of us that instantly opposes whatever challenges its idea about the meaning of life and what's "best" for us in it. This false self refuses or denies anything that threatens the flattering image it has of itself. All in all, the negative effect of our unconscious condition can be stated like this:
We have become lesson-intolerant.
Nothing that resists life can learn from it, and without higher self-discovery there is no hope of recovering our real relationship -- our oneness -- with God's life.
The following insight helps us see why our false self resists the "touch" of reality upon it: Real learning requires subordination to that which would teach us. If our teacher isn't someone or something greater than ourselves in the moment, then what have we to learn from that teacher? So, it is not we who masters a principle. It is we who must surrender to it if we wish to learn its ways -- if our wish is oneness with its mastery. Only in this way does that principle lends us the power that lives behind it so that we may embody its life. We must yield to what is above us. The amazing thing is that what lives "above" us, loves us and actually wants us know its power as our own.
Just as Christ washed the feet of his disciples, there is an eternal relationship between the greater and the lesser; but because the greater is continually giving itself to the lesser, the lesser is always made greater if it will surrender to what the greater wants to give it. Each time the lesser becomes the greater, then it understands the greater work, and will give itself again. This is Love. It never stops, because its genesis is eternal. It is our God-given right to realize this beautiful, creative Love that cannot betray its lover.
As we realize that all things come to us for the sake of freeing us to love more deeply the Love that would liberate us, true faith grows. Little by little we come to see that there is nothing that takes place in life, including whatever is "ugly" within it, that isn't part of preparing us to transcend -- to outgrow -- ourselves.
There is an order between power, principle, and practice. Before we can have relationship with power -- Peace, Beauty, Kindness, Love -- we must first become an embodiment of principle. And in order to become an embodiment of principle, we must practice it. The only way for us to know there is a world above us that would perfect us is if we will put ourselves in relationship with its powers through practicing them.
There is an integration that takes place when we practice what we love. As we work to embody these higher powers in our life, we are united with them. A marriage takes place within us that lessens the distance between that power and our purpose to be one with it. Surrendering self is how we end the separation between ourselves and that all-powerful Love for which we long. Only to the degree that we perfect our love in God do we come to realize oneness, and only God can perfect our love in Him.
Each moment of the day, no matter what comes your way, let what you remember as being true about Love always be your guide. Never let darkness, dismay -- any of the things that attend the mind -- be your guide. If you are sincere in your wish, and willing to work with practice to embrace principle, to discover what is necessary to put you in relationship -- in alignment with a higher order -- you will enter into God's life, which is the one life.
Practice this oneness. Anyone can do it. You don't need strength. You don't need wisdom. You don't need anything except for the wish to be a part of that Greater Life to which you have been called.
What is this gift yet claimed? What power can we hope to know that can make all of life's moments golden? Don't let either the simplicity or the familiarity of the following answer keep you from realizing its unimaginable promise: perfect Love casts out fear.
Why does perfect Love cast out fear along with all of its self-compromising conditions? Because much in the same way as it is impossible for a shadow to live in the light, such a love ensures that dark divisive states such as fear, anxiety, and depression cannot dwell in its presence. Our task, should we wish to walk through life with such a fierce advocate by our side, is to awaken ourselves to the fact of its presence as a power already within us. Discovering "where" this Treasure of treasures is found -- and how to make ourselves one with it -- that's the question! Now, let's find some real answers.
We can all see that life is a mystery. What remains unseen is how to solve it. But before we can ever hope to "solve" this enigmatic puzzle that we call our life, we must have all the pieces on the table; and there is one "piece" to this puzzle most never find because this missing piece is our life itself!
Life -- this moment and every moment -- is a school for the education of the soul. At its heart is an invisible core curriculum, a kind of celestial "program" with one great purpose: to help us realize that behind each of the life-lessons that come our way dwells a divine, just, and loving Intelligence that wants us to be one with its life.
Imagine how different life would be if we understood that nothing happens to us that isn't sent our way to help us learn more about the eternal nature of Love. With such a realization we would know that whatever takes place in our life has not come as something set against our best interests, but to help us realize them!
What prohibits us from awakening to this essential relationship and realizing its power as our own? In a word: resistance. We see life through the eyes of a part of us that instantly opposes whatever challenges its idea about the meaning of life and what's "best" for us in it. This false self refuses or denies anything that threatens the flattering image it has of itself. All in all, the negative effect of our unconscious condition can be stated like this:
We have become lesson-intolerant.
Nothing that resists life can learn from it, and without higher self-discovery there is no hope of recovering our real relationship -- our oneness -- with God's life.
The following insight helps us see why our false self resists the "touch" of reality upon it: Real learning requires subordination to that which would teach us. If our teacher isn't someone or something greater than ourselves in the moment, then what have we to learn from that teacher? So, it is not we who masters a principle. It is we who must surrender to it if we wish to learn its ways -- if our wish is oneness with its mastery. Only in this way does that principle lends us the power that lives behind it so that we may embody its life. We must yield to what is above us. The amazing thing is that what lives "above" us, loves us and actually wants us know its power as our own.
Just as Christ washed the feet of his disciples, there is an eternal relationship between the greater and the lesser; but because the greater is continually giving itself to the lesser, the lesser is always made greater if it will surrender to what the greater wants to give it. Each time the lesser becomes the greater, then it understands the greater work, and will give itself again. This is Love. It never stops, because its genesis is eternal. It is our God-given right to realize this beautiful, creative Love that cannot betray its lover.
As we realize that all things come to us for the sake of freeing us to love more deeply the Love that would liberate us, true faith grows. Little by little we come to see that there is nothing that takes place in life, including whatever is "ugly" within it, that isn't part of preparing us to transcend -- to outgrow -- ourselves.
There is an order between power, principle, and practice. Before we can have relationship with power -- Peace, Beauty, Kindness, Love -- we must first become an embodiment of principle. And in order to become an embodiment of principle, we must practice it. The only way for us to know there is a world above us that would perfect us is if we will put ourselves in relationship with its powers through practicing them.
There is an integration that takes place when we practice what we love. As we work to embody these higher powers in our life, we are united with them. A marriage takes place within us that lessens the distance between that power and our purpose to be one with it. Surrendering self is how we end the separation between ourselves and that all-powerful Love for which we long. Only to the degree that we perfect our love in God do we come to realize oneness, and only God can perfect our love in Him.
Each moment of the day, no matter what comes your way, let what you remember as being true about Love always be your guide. Never let darkness, dismay -- any of the things that attend the mind -- be your guide. If you are sincere in your wish, and willing to work with practice to embrace principle, to discover what is necessary to put you in relationship -- in alignment with a higher order -- you will enter into God's life, which is the one life.
Practice this oneness. Anyone can do it. You don't need strength. You don't need wisdom. You don't need anything except for the wish to be a part of that Greater Life to which you have been called.
-- Guy Finley
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