Life is so scary. And so confusing. I wish things could be more clear.
There is nothing scary about life, if you are not attached to results.
You mean if you don’t want anything.
That’s right. Choose, but don’t want.
That’s easy for people who don’t have anybody depending on them. What if you have a wife and children?
The path of the householder has always been a most challenging path. Perhaps the most challenging. As you point out, it is easy to “want nothing” when you are only dealing with yourself. It is natural, when you have others you love, to want only the best for them.
It hurts when you can’t give them all that you want them to have. A nice home, some decent clothes, enough food. I feel as though I’ve been struggling for 20 years just to make ends meet. And I still have nothing to show for it.
You mean in terms of material wealth?
I mean in terms of just some of the basics that a man would like to pass on to his children. I mean in terms of some of the very simple things a man would like to provide for his wife.
I see. You see it as your job in life to provide all these things. Is that what you imagine your life to be about?
I’m not sure I’d state it that way. This is not what my life is about, but it sure would be nice if this could be a by-product, at least.
Well, let’s go back, then. What do you see your life being about?
That’s a good question. I’ve had a lot of different answers to that through the years.
What is your answer now?
It feels as though I have two answers to that question; the answer I’d like to see, and the answer I’m seeing.
What’s the answer you’d like to see?
I’d like to see my life being about the evolution of my soul.
I’d like to see my life being about expressing and experiencing the part of me I love most. The part of me that is compassion and patience and giving and helping. The part of me that is knowing and wise, forgiving and. . . love.
Sounds like you’ve been reading this book!
Yes, well it’s a beautiful book, on an esoteric level, but I’m trying to figure out how to “practicalize” that. The answer to your question that I see being real in my life is that it’s about day-to-day survival.
Oh. And you think one thing precludes the other?
Well. .
You think esoterics preclude survival?
The truth is, I’d like to do more than just survive. I’ve been surviving all these years. I notice I’m still here. But I’d like the struggle for survival to end. I see that just getting by from day to day is still a struggle. I’d like to do more than just survive. I’d like to prosper.
And what would you call prospering?
Having enough that I don’t have to worry where my next dollar is coming from; not having to stress and strain just to make the rent, or handle the phone bill. I mean, I hate to get so mundane, but we’re talking real life here, not the airy-fairy, spiritually romanticized picture of life you draw throughout this book.
Do I hear a little anger there?
Not anger so much as frustration. I’ve been at the spiritual game for over 20 years now, and look where it’s gotten me. One paycheck away from the poorhouse! And now I’ve just lost my job, and it looks like the cash flow has stopped again. I’m getting really tired of the struggle. I’m 49 years old, and I’d like to have some security in life so that I could devote more time to “God stuff,” to soul “evoluting,” etc. That’s where my heart is, but it’s not where my life allows me to go..
Well, you’ve said a mouthful there, and I suspect you’re speaking for a whole lot of people when you share that experience.
I’m going to respond to your truth one sentence at a time, so that we can easily track, and dissect, the answer.
You have not been “at this spiritual game” for 20 years, you have been barely skirting the edges of it. (This is not a “spanking,” by the way, this is just a statement of the truth.) I’ll concede that for two decades you’ve been looking at it; flirting with it; experimenting now and then. . .but I haven’t felt your true—your truest commitment to the game until just recently.
Let’s be clear that “being at the spiritual game” means dedicating your whole mind, your whole body, your whole soul to the process of creating Self in the image and likeness of God.
This is the process of Self realization about which Eastern mystics have written. It is the process of salva-tion to which much Western theology has devoted itself.
This is a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, moment-to-mo-ment act of supreme consciousness. It is a choosing and a re-choosing every instant. It is ongoing creation. Con-scious creation. Creation with a purpose. It is using the tools of creation we have discussed, and using them with awareness and sublime intention.
That is “playing this spiritual game.” Now, how long have you been at this?
I haven’t even begun.
Don’t go from one extreme to the other, and don’t be so hard on yourself. You have been dedicated to this process—and you’re actually engaged in it more than you’ll give yourself credit for. But you haven’t been doing so for 20 years—or anything close to that. Yet the truth is, how long you have been engaged in it is not important. Are you engaged in it now? That’s all that matters.
Let’s move on with your statement. You ask us to “look where it’s gotten you,” and you describe yourself as being “one step away from the poorhouse.” I look at you and see a quite different thing. I see a person who is one step away from the rich house! You feel you are one paycheck from oblivion, and I see you as one paycheck from Nirvana. Now much depends, of course, on what you see as your “pay”—and to what end you are working.
If the object of your life is to acquire what you call security, I see and understand why you feel you are “one paycheck from the poorhouse.” Yet even this assessment is open to correction. Because with My pay, all good things come to you—including the experience of feeling secure in the physical world.
My pay—the payoff you get when you “work for” Me—provides a great deal more than spiritual comfort. Physical comfort, too, can be yours. Yet the ironic part about all this is that, once you experience the kind of spiritual comfort My payoff provides, the last thing you’ll find yourself worrying about is physical comfort.
Even the physical comfort of members of your family will no longer be a concern to you—for once you rise to a level of God consciousness you will understand that you are not responsible for any other human soul, and that while it is commendable to wish every soul to live in comfort, each soul must choose—is choosing—its own destiny this instant.
Clearly, it is not the highest action to deliberately abuse or destroy another. Clearly, it is equally inappro-priate to neglect the needs of those you have caused to be dependent on you.
Your job is to render them independent; to teach them as quickly and completely as possible how to get along without you. For you are no blessing to them so long as they need you to survive, but bless them truly only in the moment they realize you are unnecessary.
In the same sense, Cod’s greatest moment is the moment you realize you need no God.
I know, I know.. .this is the antithesis of everything you’ve ever been taught. Yet your teachers have told you of an angry God, a jealous God, a God who needs to be needed. And that is not a God at all, but a neurotic substitute for that which would be a deity.
A true Master is not the one with the most students, but one who creates the most Masters.
A true leader is not the one with the most followers, but one who creates the most leaders.
A true king is not the one with the most subjects, but one who leads the most to royalty.
A true teacher is not the one with the most knowl-edge, but one who causes the most others to have knowledge.
And a true God is not One with the most servants, but One who serves the most, thereby making Gods of all others.
For this is both the goal and the glory of God: that His subjects shall be no more, and that all shall know God not as the unattainable, but as the unavoidable.
I would that you could this understand: your happy destiny is unavoidable. You cannot not be “saved.”
There is no hell except not knowing this.
So now, as parents, spouses, and loved ones, seek not to make of your love a glue that binds, but rather a magnet that first attracts, then turns around and repels, lest those who are attracted begin to believe they must stick to you to survive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing could be more damaging to another.
Let your love propel your beloveds into the world—and into the full experience of who they are. In this will you have truly loved.
It is a great challenge, this path of the householder. There are many distractions, many worldly concerns. The ascetic is bothered by none of these. He is brought his bread and water, and given his humble mat on which to lie, and he can devote his every hour to prayer, meditation, and contemplation of the divine. How easy to see the divine under such circumstances! How simple a task! Ah, but give one a spouse, and children! See the divine in a baby who needs changing at 3 A.M. See the divine in a bill that needs paying by the first of the month. Recognize the hand of God in the illness that takes a spouse, the job that’s lost, the child’s fever, the parent’s pain. Now we are talking saintliness.
I understand your fatigue. I know you are tired of the struggle. Yet I tell you this: When you follow Me, the struggle disappears. Live in your God space and the events become blessings, one and all.
How can I get to my God space when I’ve lost my job, the rent needs paying, the kids need a dentist, and being in my lofty, philosophical space seems the least likely way to solve any of this?
Do not forsake Me when you need Me most. Now is the hour of your greatest testing. Now is the time of your greatest chance. It is the chance to prove every-thing that has been written here.
When I say “don’t forsake Me,” I sound like that needy, neurotic God we talked about. But I’m not. You can “forsake Me” all you want. I don’t care, and it won’t change a thing between us. I merely say this in answer to your questions. It is when the going gets tough that you so often forget Who You Are, and the tools I have given you for creating the life that you would choose.
Now is the time to go to your Cod space more than ever. First, it will bring you great peace of mind—and from a peaceful mind do great ideas flow—ideas which could be solutions to the biggest problems you imagine yourself to have.
Second, it is in your God space that you Self realize, and that is the purpose—the only purpose—of your soul.
When you are in your God space, you know and understand that all you are now experiencing is tempo-rary. I tell you that heaven and Earth shall pass away, but you shall not. This ever-lasting perspective helps you to see things in their proper light.
You can define these present conditions and cir-cumstances as what they truly are: temporary and temporal. You may then use them as tools—for that is what they are, temporary, temporal tools—in the crea-tion of present experience.
just who do you think you are? In relationship to the experience called lose-a-job, who do you think you are? And, perhaps more to the point, who do you think I am? Do you imagine this is too big a problem for Me to solve? Is getting out of this jam too big a miracle for Me to handle? I understand that you may think it’s too big for you to handle, even with all the tools I have given you—but do you really think it’s too big for Me?
I know intellectually that no job is too big for God. But emotionally I guess I can’t be sure. Not whether You can handle it, but whether You will.
I see. So it’s a matter of faith.
Yes.
You don’t question My ability, you merely doubt My desire.
You see, I still live this theology that says there may be a lesson in here somewhere for me. I’m still not sure I’m supposed to have a solution. Maybe I’m supposed to have the problem. Maybe this is one of those “tests” my theology keeps telling me about. So I worry that this problem may not be solved. That this is one of those You’re going to let me hang here with.
Perhaps this is a good time to go over once more how it is that I interact with you, because you think it is a question of My desire, and I’m telling you it’s a question of yours.
I want for you what you want for you. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t sit here and make a judgment, request by request, whether something should be granted you.
My law is the law of cause and effect, not the law of We’ll See. There is nothing you can’t have if you choose it. Even before you ask, I will have given it to you. Do you believe this?
No. I’m sorry. I’ve seen too many prayers go unanswered.
Don’t be sorry. Just always stay with the truth—the truth of your experience. I understand that. I honor that. That’s okay with Me.
Good, because I don’t believe that whatever I ask, I get. My life has not been a testimony to that. In fact, I rarely get what I ask for. When I do, I consider myself damned lucky.
That’s an interesting choice of words. You have an option, it seems. In your life, you can either be damned lucky, or you can be blessing lucky. I’d rather you be blessing lucky—but, of course, I’ll never interfere with your decisions.
I tell you this: You always get what you create, and you are always creating.
I do not make a judgment about the creations that you conjure, I simply empower you to conjure more—and more and more and more. If you don’t like what you’ve just created, choose again. My job, as God, is to always give you that opportunity.
Now you are telling Me that you haven’t always gotten what you’ve wanted. Yet I am here to tell you that you’ve always gotten what you called forth.
Your Life is always a result of your thoughts about it—including your obviously creative thought that you seldom get what you choose.
Now in this present instance you see yourself as the victim of the situation in the losing of your job. Yet the truth is that you no longer chose that job. You stopped getting up in the morning in anticipation, and began getting up with dread. You stopped feeling happy about your work and began feeling resentment. You even began fantasizing doing something else.
You think these things mean nothing? You misun-derstand your power. I tell you this: Your Life proceeds out of your intentions for it.
So what is your intention now? Do you intend to prove your theory that life seldom brings you what you choose? Or do you intend to demonstrate Who You Really Are and Who I Am?
I feel chagrined. Chastised. Embarrassed.
Does that serve you? Why not simply acknowledge the truth when you hear it, and move toward it? There is no need to recriminate against yourself. Simply notice what you’ve been choosing and choose again.
But why am I so ready to always choose the negative? And then to spank myself for it?
What can you expect? You were told from your earliest days that you’re “bad.” You accept that you were born in “sin.” Feeling guilty is a learned response. You’ve been told to feel guilty about yourself for things you did before you could even do anything. You have been taught to feel shame for being born less than perfect.
This alleged state of imperfection in which you are said to have come into this world is what your religion-ists have the gall to call original sin. And it is original sin—but not yours. It is the first sin to be perpetrated upon you by a world which knows nothing of God if it thinks that Cod would—or could—create anything im-perfect.
Some of your religions have built up whole theolo-gies around this misconception. And that is what it is, literally: a misconception. For anything I conceive—all that to which I give life—is perfect; a perfect reflection of perfection itself, made in the image and likeness of Me.
Yet, in order to justify the idea of a punitive God, your religions needed to create something for Me to be angry about. So that even those people who lead exemplary lives somehow need to be saved. If they don’t need to be saved from themselves, then they need to be saved from their own built-in imperfection. So
(these religions say) you’d better do something about all of this—and fast—or you’ll go straight to hell.
This, in the end, may do nothing to mollify a weird, vindictive, angry God, but it does give life to weird, vindictive, angry religions. Thus do religions perpetuate themselves. Thus does power remain concentrated in the hands of the few, rather than experienced though the hands of the many.
Of course you choose constantly the lesser thought, the smaller idea, the tiniest concept of yourself and your power, to say nothing of Me and Mine. You’ve been taught to.
My God, how can I undo the teaching?
A good question, and addressed to just the right person!
You can undo the teaching by reading and re-read-ing this book. Over and over again, read it. Until you understand every passage. Until you’re familiar with every word. When you can quote its passages to others, when you can bring its phrases to mind in the midst of the darkest hour, then you will have “undone the teaching.
Yet there is still so much I want to ask You; still so much I want to know.
Indeed. You began with a very long list of questions.
Shall we get back to it?