UNIT 5
Perfection Cannot
be Found in Form
If you are trying to find the perfect form—the perfect job, the perfect relationship—you will be continually frustrated. The world does not offer perfection in this respect. It simply offers you an opportunity to grow and to change, which is not hard if you are not attached to the form of your expression.
Use the form that is available to you at the time. Let go of your preconceptions and your expectations. Each moment is new. Each situation asks something different from you.
Every experience that comes your way will ask you if you are willing to let go, if you are willing to trust, if you are willing to step out of time.
If you do not reject the form or become attached to it, it is easy to step out of time. Your focus remains in the present. Whatever occurs demands your total attention.
Most of you are busy judging your experience, finding fault with it, wishing that it looked as you expected it to look.
Ask yourself honestly: are you looking for perfection? If so, you must realize that the world cannot offer you this. Everything in the world is in the process of change. Nothing is steady. Nothing is predictable. Nothing will give you anything other than temporary security.
Thoughts come and go. Relationships begin and end. Bodies are born and pass away. This is all the world can offer you: impermanence, growth, change.
Permanence cannot be found at the level of form. All form is in essence a distortion of the original formlessness of the universe. What is all inclusive, all accepting, all loving cannot be limited to form.
Love does not choose its beloved or the moment of its expression. Love extends to all at all times. Love is without conditions; that it to say it is “without form.”
Be aware that your experience of love will be diminished in direct proportion to your need to interpret or control it.
Interpretation places conditions upon that which must be without conditions. When you establish conditions on love, you experience the conditions, not the love. You encounter the form, not the content.
Journaling Questions
What conditions do you place on giving or receiving love?
How are you invested in form and unwilling to let go, even though the form no longer fits the content of your experience?
When have you been able to relinquish your expectations and surrender the conditions you place on love?
Look Beyond the Form
To understand anything in the world, you must learn to look beyond the form to the creative intention. Tune into the intention behind someone’s expression and you will see more clearly what that expression means for him. But look at the naked form alone and you will see only what it means to you.
To see your brother as he really is, you must look beyond your judgments of him. If you would know him you must come close to him, open your heart, and ask him what he intends. That is the only gesture that will bring you knowledge of him.
When one’s intentions change, the form that carries those intentions changes. If you are sensitive to your own intentions and those of others, you will be better prepared for changes in form.
Detachment from form comes from familiarity with others, not from estrangement. Distancing others does not bring detachment, but its opposite. Only when you let others into your heart do you become capable of releasing them.
Compassion and detachment go hand in hand. You cannot love someone and seek to control him. Only by wanting what is best for him do you offer your brother freedom. And if you do not offer him freedom, you do not offer him love.
UNIT 6
Opening to the Divine
Yours is a shadowy world, a world of darkness and light commingled. Yet this entire world you experience is made up only of thoughts. If you could eliminate negative thinking from your mind, you would live in a very different type of world.
Your life is made up of your inherent goodness assaulted by doubt and fear, which cause you to question that “goodness” in yourself and in your brothers and sisters.
You open to divinity when you see your good and that of your brother as one and the same. Divinity is always shared. It is never exclusive.
Only when you accept the inherent goodness and innocence of all beings will fear diminish in your mind.
Despite appearances, not one of God’s children can be bad. At worst he is hurt. At worst he attacks others and blames them for his pain. But he is not bad.
Yes, your compassion must go this deep. There is no one, including yourself, who does not deserve your forgiveness.
Only one who is in fear judges or attacks another. Are you beyond the grip of fear? If not, then recognize your fear and the fear that rises up in others.
Fear always distorts your perception.
Be aware of fear and confess “I am in fear now, so I cannot see rightly.”
Every judgment you make about your brother or sister reflects specifically what you hate or cannot accept about yourself.
Hate is a futile attempt to indict another for your own mistake. It lacks honesty. It lacks responsibility.
Admit that your judgement is fear-based and therefore mistaken. Admit your mistake. Don’t pretend to be right when you are wrong.
Everyone makes mistakes. Acknowledge yours as soon as you become aware of them.
To be mistaken is not so terrible a thing. It will not deprive you of love and acceptance. What deprives you of love is your insistence on being right when you are not. For that prevents correction from being made.
Please try to understand that being wrong does not mean being “bad” and being right does not mean being “good.” Every one of you will be both right and wrong hundreds of times in a single day. I tell you that you cannot count the number of times you are right or wrong in the course of your journey here.
This world is a school and you have come here to learn. Learning means making mistakes and correcting them. Learning does not mean being right all the time. If you were right all the time, why would you need to come to school?
Be humble and accept the fact that you are here as a learner. Your responsibility is to see your mistakes and correct them. That is the path that has been set out for you.
Journaling Questions
Do you understand that your judgment of yourself or another person stems from fear arising? Are you able to realize that your judgment is not correct and admit your mistake?
When you release your judgment, are you able to see the inherent goodness in yourself and your brother or sister?
Learning to Listen
You are so busy reacting to what happens or does not happen in your life that you do not have time to savor your experience. You don’t feel your joy or your pain, your anger or your grief. This is unfortunate.
It is when you are most frantic trying to figure out and “fix” your perceived problems that you most need to be quiet and listen. You may not realize that at first. But you can’t help but notice that the more you try to figure things out the more confused they get.
Sooner or later, you will give up trying “to make your life work” the way you think it should. And then perhaps you will begin to look within and ask, “Is there something in my focus that needs to change?” And you will learn to listen for the answer.
Usually, when you are on a collision course, the answer that you receive is something like: “Slow down, look around. Maybe you are not really going in a direction that is helpful to you.”
Slowing down and paying attention to where you are going is the beginning of correction.
As long as things are flowing smoothly in your life, you need not seek correction. But when the waters get turbulent, you would do well to pause and consider your course.
Just this much timely introspection would make a profound difference in your life. .
Journaling Questions
Are you acting under pressure and rushing through life?
Have you encountered obstacles?
Are you starting to slow down and pay greater attention to the course you have taken?
Is it time to change your mind or take a different direction?