Ever Felt Like This?

Ever feel as if there is no purpose to your life and each day is just the same as yesterday?  Do you feel as if you struggle through life while others have it so easy?  Ever ask yourself why am I trying so hard and nothing seems to go right for me?  What about that empty feeling you have and nothing you do seems to satisfy it?  Ever watch the news and think that if God is real why is the world so messed up?

If you’ve ever felt any of those things above you are not alone.  Everyone struggles at times to find meaning in their lives.  If you’ve ever felt like you are on a journey and you have no idea of where it will end then read on.

Some people seem to breeze through life as if they have a guide that’s always showing them the easy way.  There is such a guide and a way of living that will bring you peace and harmony in all aspects of your life, for there is a Loving Intelligent Life Force that permeates all life.  It is the Invisible Force that animates and governs all we see from the movement of the heavenly bodies, to the changing of the seasons, to the beating of your heart.  Some call this Life Force God, some call it Spirit, and others call it Universal Life.  No matter what you call it, you must realize that it is Everywhere Present, All Knowing, and All Powerful in order to fully benefit from It in your life.  This Life Force animates, maintains, and sustains you.  It’s the intelligence that orchestrates the billions of interactions that happen in your body each day that keeps you alive..

You have unlimited access to this awesome Life Force through your consciousness.  As a matter of fact, this Life Force beacons for your recognition of it.  It stands always ready to come to your aid, but it won’t come unless invited.  It knows how to guide you easily and harmoniously in accomplishing all your task, great and small.

You exist as an expression of this great Life Force as spirit, mind, and body and in order to live a fulfilled and joyful life you must recognize and balance these three aspects of your life.  For, there is a rhythm to life that once entered and maintained in makes things flow easily and harmoniously with little stress and strain.  The object of this book is to help you find and remain in that rhythm of life.

“All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.  In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.”  John 1:3-4.

In What Do You Trust

Recently, I was sitting outside and enjoying a beautiful sunrise,  I could feel the warmth of the sun rays on my face bathing me in a spirit of peace and harmony.  All was good with the world in that moment.  Then, it occurred to me that I didn't have to put forth any effort to make the sun to rise and enjoy it's warmth.

Ever think about how the sun rises and sets without your effort and if for only one day the sun did not rise all life on earth would die.  There is an universal Loving Intelligence which governs the rising and the setting of the sun without any help from you and I.  This same Loving Intelligence created you and I out of Itself and will govern our lives just as It causes the sun to rise and set if we trust in It.

But, being human you and I think that we know best how to run our lives, so we struggle and strain to force our way in the world while there is a Loving Intelligence that patiently awaits to guide us effortlessly through life.  All we have to do is to totally trust in It, just as we trust the sun to rise each day.

Thoughts are Things

Out of your mental world of thought are born the conditions and circumstances that populate your life.  Entry to the spiritual realm of harmonious living can only be attained through conscious control of your thoughts.  Until you realize that thoughts are things that you give life and you are the thinker and thus, can select the thoughts you allow to dwell in your mind and consequently direct the conditions and circumstances that appear in your life, you will live under the false idea that you are a victim of circumstance with very little control over what happens in your life.

To master your mental plane of existence is to gain control over the circumstances and conditions of your life.  In order to master your mind you have to realize three very important things.  First, you are the thinker before the thought, and thus, you are the gate keeper to the thoughts you allow to enter and dwell in your mind.  Second, you are a creative being and you are always creating something via the thoughts you allow to take root in your mind.  Third, you are never and have never been a victim of any circumstance or condition in your life.

You Are the Thinker

This is the first truth you must realize in your quest to control your mind.  Most people feel powerless as to the thoughts they entertain.  However, you are the thinker before the thought and you have the power to scan every thought and choose whether or not you will allow it into your mind.  Another way to look at it is, you are the gatekeeper to you mind and thus you choose which thoughts you let in and which thoughts you keep out.

This is not an easy task, but it is necessary if you want to change your life.  Not only are you the gatekeeper for the thoughts you allow in your mind, you have to examine your mind for the false ideas that have already taken root and are producing fruit in your life now.  Some of these false ideas you got from your parents, grandparent, and other loved ones who taught you the things about life that they have learned.  While well meaning, some of the things they taught you may now be causing some of your biggest limitations in life.  These ideas are hard to uproot because you have trusted and believed them to be true for so long

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If you are having any reoccurring problems or conditions you can’t seem to overcome it maybe that you have a deep rooted belief you are unconsciously aware of in your mental garden.  This belief was probably planted in your childhood by some well meaning people in your life, or could be a result of some deep hurt you experienced sometime in your life.  However, you must uproot this false idea if you are to change the condition.  For example, when I was a child my older brother was very out-going and I was completely the opposite.  Consequently, my brother got all the attention at my expense I thought, and I was deeply hurt.  As a result I learned to guard my heart and not to let people get very close to me.  This belief carried over into my relationships as an adult and I could never let anyone get really close to me no matter how hard I tried.  It wasn’t until I realized that unconsciously I was still carrying the same belief from my childhood that I could change my relationships.  I had to uproot that old belief before I could let people get close to me.

You also allow false ideas to unconsciously enter your mind through conversation with friends, things you read, and what you hear in the news.  You have to be vigilant of what you consciously allow to be planted in your mental garden for a thought will always produce fruit in the form of condition after its kind.

You are a Creative Being

You are always creating the circumstances and conditions of your life via your thoughts and beliefs.  What you believe to be true will always manifest in your life as a condition or circumstance.  Behind every condition and circumstance in your life is an underlying thought and belief.  If you want to know the sum total of your thoughts and beliefs, just look at the conditions and circumstances presently in your life.  This is very sobering but, must be accepted if you want to create the life that you desire.

As previously mentioned, thoughts are things and when you give a thought your attention you give it energy by allowing it to be planted in your mind.  The more attention you give the thought the more you nurture and energize it until it becomes a belief and blossoms into a condition in your life.  You are always thinking, and thus, always creating something and herein lies the problems and the solutions in your life.

Most people allow their minds to aimlessly wonder and thus, they allow random thoughts to be planted in their mental garden.  Some of these thoughts are constructive and they bloom into constructive conditions, while others are destructive and they blossom into undesirable conditions.  Consequently, most people believe the conditions and circumstances of their lives just randomly happen.  They get some things that they want and other things they don’t want.

Look at like this, you are the architect of your life and the thoughts you allow to take root in your mind is the blueprint by which your life is built.  If you don’t like the house you built you can remodel it or completely tear it down and build one you like but, you can only do this by changing your thoughts.

You Are Not a Victim of Circumstance

If you have read this far you should now realize that you are not and never have been a victim of circumstance.  No circumstance or condition can ever hold you powerless because you created the circumstance or condition through the thoughts you allowed to germinate in your mental garden. And, you can pluck out the condition causing thoughts from your mental garden just as you would pull weeds out of a physical garden.  Then, the condition or circumstance must change accordingly.

You have the inner power to create the life of your dreams.  The key to accessing this power is mastery of your mental activity.  Always remember you are the thinker before the thought and thus the gatekeeper of the thoughts you allow to be planted in your mental garden.

The Spiritual Law of Detachment

The Law of Detachment says not to be attached to the material things in your life, be it person, place or thing.  For you give your power to whatever it is you are attached to.  When you are attached to anything you spend your efforts trying to hold onto the thing you are attached to.  You place your trust and security in a thing and not in your Inner-Self which is the only place lasting security can be found.

Real security is in your connection with your Inner-Self which knows how to manifest and provide for your every need.  As previously stated in the Law of Cause and Effect, the things that surround your life are manifestations of your thoughts and beliefs.  Thus as you change your thought patterns and beliefs the things in your life change accordingly.  Therefore, things are temporal, corresponding to your level of consciousness of the Divine’s limitless substance and supply.

The Divine is always ready, willing and able to meet your every need in life, but It can only give you what you are ready to receive.  Thus, when you become attached to something, you keep your consciousness at the level of the thing you are attached to and you stifle your growth.  You see, when you place your security in a person, place, or thing you limit your access to Divine substance and supply because you hold your consciousness in a static place.

For example, some people are attached to money and they spend most of their time and effort trying to keep it and to accumulate more of it.  But no matter how much money they accumulate they are not secure because they are always afraid of losing it.  They place their faith in the amount of money they have in their financial investments and spend their time worrying about every fluctuation in the financial markets.  They become a prisoner of their attachment to money.

Another example is people who are attached to a luxurious lifestyle.  These are the people who live in the huge beautiful homes, drive the luxury cars, and send their children to the best private schools.   They have accumulated everything that should make for a happy life, but most of them not.  They are unhappy in their marriages, unhappy in their careers, or unhappy with the business they have created and they are unwilling to change anything for fear of losing the lifestyle they have created.  They are prisoners of a false sense of security and have traded their happiness for the symbols of material success.

I’m not advocating that you should not enjoy having money, and the luxuries of life.  I’m saying that you can have the money, the lifestyle, and happiness too if you practice the Law of Detachment.  Happiness is found in the right relationship to things in your life.  The Divine wants you to have a happy, healthy, and fulfilled life.  However, you can never find these qualities in material things, for these qualities come from an inner knowing that you have access to a Divine Power that fulfills and meets your every need.

I believe you are born with a special gift inside of you.  There is something that you can do better than anyone else in the world and when you reach inside yourself and give that special gift to the world you are happy and fulfilled.  The security you are looking for is contained in the giving of your gift and you cannot release your talents while being attached to temporal things because you will spend all your energy trying to keep things as they are.

As crazy as this may sound, the only security you will find in life is in uncertainty and non-attachment.   When you are certain that a thing is your salvation, you lock your consciousness at that level and you live your life within the limited boundaries you have created for yourself.  On the other hand, there is unlimited possibility in uncertainty and non-attachment, for the Divine in you is saying all that I have is yours and you can have all that you are conscious of receiving.

Using the Law of Cause and Effect for Your Benefit

SPIRIT (Photo credit: MarianOne)

In my previous post I talked about the spiritual law of Cause and Effect.  In this post I will explain how to use this law for your benefit.

The first thing you must do to use the Law of Cause and Effect to create the things in your life that you desire is very sobering.  You have to realize that you are responsible for every condition in your life be it labeled good or bad.  The conditions and circumstances that presently surround you are a sum total of your inner thoughts and beliefs.  Thus, you are never a victim of anything that appears in your life, because you have called whatever it is into your life via your inner thoughts and beliefs.

I know the above statements are hard to digest, but they must be in order to use the Law of Cause and Effect intelligently in your life.  God has given you the power to create the world that you live in by giving you the capacity to think.  Contained within a thought is the energy to create the things thought of.  You are always thinking and thus always creating and giving life to your thoughts.  The problem is that most people are not conscious of this truth and think random thoughts and create random conditions in their lives and believe they are the victims of random circumstances and conditions.  The irony is they created the conditions themselves and then they try to change the conditions at the level of their appearance and thus, create more of the condition.

Think of it like this, you are the writer, producer, and director of a play called Your Life.  You write the script, you set the scenes, and cast all the characters in this play through your thoughts and beliefs.  Every person in the play of life is only reading from the script that you wrote for them.  Every situation that happens in your life is from the script you have already written in your mind.  The good news is if you don’t like the play you can re-write the script at any time.

Nothing happens randomly in your life.  Everything that you experience you have written as a part of your script in your thoughts and beliefs.  Therefore, it is pointless to try to fight against circumstances that you created, just as it is pointless trying to make your reflection in a mirror smile while you are frowning.  The experiences of your life are only a reflection of your inner thoughts and beliefs.

Meditation and Self-contemplation

In order to use the Law of Cause and Effect to create harmony in your life you have to learn to quiet your mind and control your thoughts.  Your mind is constantly bombarded with thoughts.  While you cannot stop thinking you can control the thoughts, for you are the thinker and gate keeper of the thoughts you allow to enter your mind.

You learn to control your thoughts through the regular practice of sitting in silence.  Some people call this meditation, I call it self-contemplation.  This is the most proven way to access your spiritual energy which is your true identity.  Your spiritual energy will always reveal truth in your life showing you errors in your thoughts and beliefs which materialize as inharmonious conditions in your life.

Sitting in silence can be very difficult at first, because your mind is filled with chatter and you are constantly jumping from one thought to another.  Thoughts are like little children competing for your attention, they say “look at me, look at me” and you have to train yourself to only pay attention to the thoughts you want in your mind.   Don’t get discouraged.  The mental practice of silence is just like physical exercise, you get stronger and better at it the more you do it.  Here are some techniques for learning to control your thoughts.

• Go to a quiet place where you will not be interrupted for about 30 minutes.  Sit upright in a comfortable chair.  Close your eyes, take deep controlled breathes, and slowly count backwards from 100 to zero.  The counting will cause your mind to focus on the numbers and shut out any other distracting thoughts.

•  Go to a quiet place where you will not be interrupted for about 30 minutes.  Sit upright in a comfortable chair.  Close your eyes, take deep controlled breathes, and think about your favorite outdoor spot.  It could be the beach, the mountains, or watching a beautiful sunset.  Imagine that you are physically at your favorite place. Visualize hearing the birds singing, feeling the sun on your skin, hearing the sound of the waves crashing on-shore.   The object is to training your mind to focus on one thought at a time.

• Take a relaxing walk in nature.  Listen to the birds singing, marvel at the beauty of the trees, flowers, and plant life.  Again, the object is to train your mind to focus on one thought.

• My favorite technique for quieting my mine is to read some inspirational passage and then to contemplate it’s meaning.

You will find that once you become efficient at quieting your mind, things start to be revealed to you.  It could be the solution to some situation that you’ve been struggling with, or the vision doing some project that would be very fulfilling.  The things revealed to you in these times of silence comes from the core of your existence, from your unity with the Divine and you can trust that it is right for you.