I’ve had a weird week. Several people with whom I’ve worked, including people who already know the answer, were lashing out at God (or whatever they called the Creator of All Things) for the state of affairs in the world. They were struggling with questions like, “Why does God allow cruelty?” and “How can a loving God allow war to happen?” and “Why did God allow the environment to get so messed up?” to the most visceral, “Why does God allow innocent school kids to be shot by madmen?”
We look around ourselves for answers, looking at the negative behavior—or the shining example—of others. We look to other countries, to our friends and relatives, to our neighbors, to our political and social leaders, and still—no answers. We feel lost and vulnerable, and often afraid. We don’t know what the future holds. We don’t understand how things got this way.
It can be tumultuous; even chaotic. But the thing to remember is that the world outside doesn’t have your answers. The world outside can only provide your lessons. Your answers lie within.
For example, if you, as spirit, are working to master emotional stability, where will you be born? Into a happy, supportive family in a quiet, peaceful environment? Probably not. Do you WANT a happy, supportive sense of belonging? Very likely. So, by choosing a childhood rife with strife, you’ll be given endless opportunities to observe and feel your way through relationships designed to test your emotional responses, making choice after choice, each choice moving you a little closer to the realization that YOU ALONE control your emotionality.
What you seem to want and what you receive may seem at odds; yet if you take this path, eventually—and yeah, it may take lifetimes, but eventually—you’ll find a mature relationship to your emotional expressiveness, move out of the “victim” mindset, and reclaim your creative power. And then you’ll look back and see the value in the dents and dings you endured on your journey. You’ll probably even feel gratitude towards folks you once found the most oppressive. This is one path to mastery of emotional stability.
Is it always comfortable? Oh, HELL no! But is it worth it in the long run? I imagine so–or we wouldn’t keep incarnating.
You can’t let yourself be horrified by appearances. “Bad” things happen to “good” people—and “innocents”—because it makes for the most powerful avenues of learning. Abraham-Hicks constantly reminds us that the bleak contrast of what you don’t want brings into stark relief the experience that you do want. Often the problem is that, once we’ve experienced the “don’t want” part of the game, we get stuck there, and it’s all we see. We forget to shift our creative focus onto what we would really enjoy experiencing. We forget that there is no “good” or “bad”–only the experience, and what we learn from it.
I recently attended a seminar on retirement planning, where the speaker took great care in pointing out all of the difficulties and pitfalls caused by the whimsical power our government has to change the rules of the investment game. He asked the question, “How can we safeguard against this?” and several people outlined plans to minimize loss and gird themselves for difficulty. I saw it differently. But when I piped up to offer, “We need to overhaul our tax laws—and our government,” I was laughed at.
We’re immortal beings, playing at being human, and we think that this vision is beyond our scope? Everyone there jumped in with a band-aid for their own situation; no one could even contemplate a structural revision that would benefit everyone. They tacitly reaffirmed a “reality” of limitation and oppression, and found the “reality” of substantive grow ludicrous.
That’s being caught in what you don’t want.
And remember, God perceives our experiences from a completely different vantage point. God sees our trials , our lessons, and our learning from the perspective of an omniscient being who knows that there is no death. Yes, your body may appear to die, but at the point of transition you call “death,” you, as an immortal spirit, simply step out of your body and into the next phase of your experience, taking the distinct consciousness you knew as “your ego” and “your body,” along with you. From the perspective of spirit, There is no reason to fret. You can’t BE killed. Not really. Your body may die—all bodies will die, some day—but the point of consciousness that is you, cannot. Not in the big picture perspective. And the expanded consciousness that’s “you;” what some folks call their “higher self,” knows that perfectly well.
That’s the part of you that also understands that there can be no real conflict, only perceived conflict, because conflict requires a minimum of two parties, and well, the truth is that there is no “other.” All that seems to exist around us is an active aspect of the Creator. Not discrete individuals, but aspects of the same single Consciousness. That’s Oneness.
And I know; to someone who’s struggling to pay the bills while fearing to send her kid to school, this sounds like utter tripe. But that’s where the power of the lesson lies. Who are you? Who are you really? What is your spiritual truth? And most importantly, can you live it? Even when things get rough, and I’m teetering on the edge of a panic attack, this is what I hold to. I WANTED THIS LESSON. And if I ordered it up, I’m pretty sure I have the wherewithal to see it through.
So you take a deep breath, and you ground. And you allow yourself to be conscious, and anchored in the present moment, and you appreciate the stimulus being offered. And you step inward to find your still center; that place of neutral non-judgment that lets you see and experience an event without needing to judge it as “good” or “bad.” And you take another deep breath, breathe in relief, slow down, and you examine, clean off, and tune up the one thing in the whole world that you can control–your emotional response.
And you grow.