We neglect our spiritual work out of fear that doing so will cause us to shortchange other areas of our lives. Like earning a living. The Lower Self serves up all kinds of excuses and faults for routinely making the wrong decisions, usually without our awareness of why we have these thoughts…Rather, think of this path as new foundation on which we can plant ourselves so that we can become more well-integrated—more whole…
This path is based on the simple law of cause and effect…If we apply these teachings to our lives, they will work for us. There is nothing we must believe…If we want to become capable of experiencing genuine happiness, we must learn how to course-correct back into alignment with spiritual laws… None of this can happen by merely concentrating on our outer problems. We must look deeper and find the corresponding inner problems, which always, always, always are the cause of the outer ones…
Expressing our love for God in our beautiful prayers and profound meditations is a wonderful thing. But we must also do the work. And what is “the work?” Just this: to master the Lower Self…As long as we don’t recognize how our Lower Self works, it will continue to rule the roost, hiding behind handy excuses and cloaking its devious ways…
We might perform a nice act and check the box on good-deeds-done-for-today, but if our actions aren’t supported by good, clean feelings, this doesn’t count for much…We will need to learn to grapple with the unconscious mind, which is where the Lower Self operates…
Every fault we harbor stands like a brick wall in the way of unfolding pure loving feelings or insight or understanding. It’s in this way that we do indeed do harm to others. All the livelong day…Another equally impactful hindrance is our fears, which we generally don’t put in the same category as faults…Our fears are like a wet blanket on our inner light of love and understanding; after all, when we are in fear, we are not in truth. So on this path of purification, we will not only come face to face with our faults—our character weaknesses—we will need to face all our fears…
Asking another to tell us how they see us, especially our faults, is tricky business…The best approach is to go with the one who knows us best…We can ask for guidance in receiving unpleasant truths from others so that their input can be used in a productive way…If our wish to overcome our faults is sincere, we will have made the very best beginning one could imagine…
For certain, this path is a difficult one. But God is not the one making it so hard…We must never lose sight of this truth: everything we suffer from in life results from—directly or indirectly—our shortcomings and our fears. If we had no shortcomings, we would have no fear. And our fear and insecurities are what make us so miserable. They spoil everything.
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