UNIT 19
Thoughts and Actions
Thoughts do not become powerful until you turn your attention inward. When you meditate or look within, thoughts gradually slow down. Past and future surrender to the present moment.
Power is the potential for action. As soon as action is taken, It encounters the resistance of the environment and it is weakened.
The power to create remains strongest when it is held in trust and not outwardly expressed.
When you act, you commit yourself to a specific course of action. Changing that course then becomes difficult, particularly when a certain momentum is achieved.
People expect linear results from every action taken. Yet linear results are rare. As soon as a force meets a resistance, its course is altered. It moves up, down, or around the obstruction. Often, it is deflected from its original trajectory.
Yet all your planning anticipates linear outcomes. It is no wonder that you are disappointed so often.
Since most decisions are ill-taken, they tend to be recycled. Guilt is like a magnetic field that brings all actions home.
In order to avoid the boomerang effect of guilt, you must learn to anticipate the possible outcomes. A plan that anticipates resistance and objection will fare better than one that does not.
A master chess player does this at a very deep level.
Ill-considered actions err at both ends of the spectrum. At the one end, they are premature and impulsive. At the other end, they are over-deliberate and lack spontaneity.
In order to take the right action, you must be neutral. Your preference will falsely influence and distort the effect of any action you take.
Before taking action, be calm. Consider your options. Ask for guidance. The more calm and centered you are the better your chances of success.
All actions result in reactions and consequences. Repetitive actions bring up continual lessons for you. Those lessons underscore the gap between what you expect will happen and what manifests in your life.
The Mirror
Yours is a world “conditions.” Some of these conditions are placed by you. Some are placed by others.
The conditional world cannot give you what you want. It is simply a mirror that reflects back to you the conflict in your own consciousness.
The search for happiness in the world is a grim one. The world cannot make you happy. The sooner you learn this, the easier your struggle will be.
Like most people, you spend a lot of your time “resisting” or trying to avoid certain situations. Yet the more you try to avoid these situations, the more they come up in your life. That is because you can’t learn anything through avoidance or denial.
A fear driven life leads only to distrust and desperation.
It isn’t easy, but you need to learn to face your fears and hold them gently. Then they will cease to be in charge of your life.
You think that you are here to accomplish many glamorous and important things, but that is just your ego calling out for recognition. It puts a lot of pressure on you and on others.
But you are mistaken. You are here not to do anything, but to undo the false ideas and beliefs you have about yourself and others. You accepted these ideas and you must be the one to reject them.
Do not Live for the Future
Meeting your goals may bring you temporary satisfaction. But it will only result in more goals being set, more pressure to succeed and more disappointment when you fail or do not fully realize the outcome you seek.
Maybe it is time to take yourself off the hook.
Stop living for the future. The future cannot make you happy. Happiness happens only in the present moment.
If you are happy now, there is nothing else to accomplish. But if you become concerned about whether you will be happy tomorrow or even five minutes from now, you will get stressed and anxious.
Journaling Questions
Do you take time to meditate or sit in silence so that you can slow your thoughts down?
Do you take time to consider your options and get clear before you choose to act?
Have you realized that living for the future just brings more stress and anxiety into your life?
Mastery
There is nothing glamorous about the process of awakening. People who wake up do not become famous spiritual teachers. They do not build fancy organizations. They live for the most part unnoticed by all but a few people.
Teachers who are valued by the world tend to teach at a very superficial level. For the world rewards tangible outcomes, and spiritual accomplishments tend to be intangible.
Great spiritual masters are not valued by society and you rarely find them in a positions of authority. They do not seek wealth, power, fame or recognition.
For those who have mastered life’s curriculum, there is only one question: “Are you happy right now.”
If the answer is “yes,” then they congratulate you. If the answer is “no,” then they simply ask, “why not?”
All the master can do is ask “why not?” S/he cannot tell you what to do or what not to do, for the responsibility for both doing and undoing belongs to you.
UNIT 20
Not Withholding Love
Giving another the love he needs strengthens that love in you. Withholding that love from him creates a blockage in your heart and diminishes your awareness of love’s presence.
When your brother acts inappropriately and demands your attention, he turns you off and you turn away from him. You know you cannot meet his demands.
Yet by turning away from your brother, you withhold love from him. And when you withhold love from him, you are also withholding love from yourself.
Your brother only wants your love, but he does not know how to ask for it. indeed, he is confused about what love is. So he asks for money, or sex, or something else. He tries to manipulate you to get what he wants.
Of course, you don’t want to be manipulated. You don’t want to reinforce his inappropriate behavior by giving into his demands. But you don’t want to reject him either. So what do you do?
You give him the love that he really wants. You give whatever you can give freely. And you don’t worry that you aren’t meeting his demands. You say “Yes” to loving him and “No” to being manipulated.
You say “No,” but you do not cast him out of your heart. You refuse to be a victim or a victimizer.
Even though you refuse to accept his demands, you do not reject him. You do not pretend that he is less worthy than you, or that his need for love is less important than yours.
The lover does not tell the beloved, “I will do anything that you want. “ He says,” I will find a way to honor us both.”
Do not enable abuse by acquiescing to another person’s demands. Refuse to place another’s needs before your own. Love has nothing to do with sacrifice.
On the other hand, do not try to ignore or escape your brother’s call for love. Do not build a self-protective shell around yourself to feel safe. Confront your brother and tell him the truth.
Establish healthy boundaries. That way the door can be closed to abusive behavior, but it can open when that behavior changes
Say “No” firmly and without apology when someone trespasses against you. But do not let this rejection of abuse become a rejection of your brother’s call for love.
Most importantly, do not respond to attack by attacking back. That will lead to further abuse.
Refuse to be a victim or a victimizer.
When you stand up for yourself yet keep the door to your heart open, you will see the behavior of others toward you begin to shift. As your words and actions soften, you become less threatening and others become less afraid of you.
For when love meets an enemy, it makes a friend. That is its transformative power.
Meditation on Feeling Loved
One day, when you are feeling cheerful, go out into your community and when you see someone who is sad or angry, find a simple way to remind him that he is loved. Give him a smile, a flower, a balloon, a sandwich or a cup of coffee. Sing him a song or recite a poem.
Another time, when you are feeling depressed, do the same thing. Do this frequently, and you will be amazed at the results. There is nothing more ecstatic than reminding others and yourself that you are loved.
No one can give love if he does not feel loved. Therefore, you have only one responsibility: feel the love that is there in your heart. And help others feel it too.
Journaling Questions
Is there a time in your life when you realized that withholding love from others also withholds it from you?
Have you learned to say “No” to abusive words and actions and “Yes” to your brother’s call for love?
When have others reminded you that you are loved? When have you reminded someone else?
Removing the Barriers to Truth
Life unfolds with a certain rhythm and grace. But then you step in and try to give it meaning, and the rhythm and grace are lost.
As soon as you think you know what something means, you cease to be able to understand it.
Understanding is more than an intellectual process. It requires patient attention and observation.
Until you can differentiate the events and circumstances of your life from the judgments you have placed upon them, you cannot know what these circumstances mean.
To know “reality,” you must remove your judgments from it and dwell with it simply and profoundly. Move with it, breathe with it. Learn from it. In time, it will reveal its true meaning to you.
Overcome the temptation to consult with others. Nurture your insights and let them ripen. When you are ready to share it will happen naturally.
When some self-appointed expert comes to you saying, “I have the answer,” send him politely away. His answer is just as toxic for you as your own judgment of the situation.
Look into the anxious faces of your friends who want to help. Be grateful for their concern. And let them know: “There is nothing here that needs to be fixed. . . .there is just something moving more deeply in my life and I am allowing it to unfold.”
The way to truth is to cease judging, interpreting, conceptualizing or speculating. Let all that is not “being” fall away and being will flower of itself. Then you will dwell with the truth in your heart and it will guide your way.
Be patient. Be gentle. Appreciate the joy and beauty of your life as it is right now.
Do not look for meaning outside your own experience. Just trust what is and be with it. That is the most profound teaching I can give you. For, in this simple practice, all the barriers to truth will come down.
Coming to the End of Doing
The more you are trying to accomplish in your life the stronger your fear of death will be. For death is the end of doing. It is the end of thinking. It is the end of separation.
Those who have come close to death know that there is a reality which is beyond the limits of perception in this world. In that reality, you are in communion with unlimited Beingness.
You don’t have to wait for the body to die to open the door to that reality. You can open it right now.
Once you leave the body, you will be in the experience of it, ready or not. If you resist the experience, you will gravitate toward another limited body which offers you only a partial experience of truth. Then there will be yet another veil that must be lifted before you can return home.
All forms of spiritual practice merely exist to help you save time. They invite you to the experience of unconditional love and grace here and now.
They invite you into silent communion with yourself and forgiveness of all the hurt you have experienced or caused.
They simplify the warp and woof of life to a single thought, a single breath, a single action. They tell you that every event, every relationship, every gesture of heart or mind is a vehicle for God awareness.
Throw out all the dogma and empty ritual and you will come to the core spiritual experience, the essential invitation to awaken. It is there in every tradition.
The call to peace, to joy, to happiness will be answered by each person when s/he is ready. Each path has its challenges, its own simple beauty and its own mystery.
It is never what you think it is. Yet it is never beyond your own ability to intuit the next step.
Deeply imbedded in your psyche is the call to awaken. It does not sound like the call that anyone else hears. If you are listening to others, you may not hear the call.
But once you hear it, you will answer it gladly.
And you will recognize that others hear it too, in their own way, and wish them Godspeed on their Journey.
Journaling Questions
What happens when you over-think or over-analyze your Life, instead of accepting it and allowing it to unfold?
Do you notice the attempt to give your own meaning or interpretation to what happens places an additional burden on your shoulders?
Have you learned to be with your experience without seeking to judge it, justify it, or avoid it?
Can you see and be with the simple rhythm and dignity of your life without trying to add or subtract anything from it?