Why?

Remember this:

1. It can be painful, fearful and frustrating to cause change in inner beliefs. Especially your own.

2. At the same time, the changes you are making are worth the effort. As you change what you perceive yourself to be, you become able to understand yourself more completely.

There is something very important to understand as you grow.  You are not dealing with what you truly ARE as a created being. This self-knowledge is obscured from your current perspectives and beliefs. What you are dealing with in inner-growth is your perception of yourself. In mortal life, you truly ARE who you think you are. But in Eternity you are ever as your source has defined you. 

Understand fully that you cannot change what you are. That is an eternal constant. You can only change your beliefs about yourself.

You are created as eternal life by the Source of all life and form. This source is known as God. Your being extends beyond the universe, beyond the cosmos, and all the way to God. Any changes you think you can make to yourself, or any changes you think others can bring upon you, are changes in your perception, not in your existence. You will continue to exist eternally in all planes of creation no matter what you or anyone else says about it.

You are defined by your source

&

You define yourself again by your experience.

Can you clearly visualize the difference here?

Please Do!

You are dealing with the two primary aspects of your being:

Your Created nature.

Your self definition.

As a created being you have the ability to perceive and discern. This you do all the time. As you perceive and discern you develop an opinion of yourself, your experience, and the events around you.

It is the opinion that can change, not you.

You are changeless in your created essence. All you can change is the "amount of your eternal heritage" that you access in your living experience.

Once you
understand it,
this is
your
protection
against all kinds
of fear and pain.

It is not just you, it is part of a process. People tend to take for granted or "stand upon" their created self and "look from there" as their self-defined, self-imposed persona in a given life situation. In other words, your beliefs, opinions and preferences are not YOU! The pain and fear come in when you forget this. No matter what you have going on, it will not change your eternal existence in any way. You will continue to BE, eternally. All that can change is your self-definition and your perception. Indeed, your perception changes automatically when you change your self-definition.

We all get stuck in our beliefs and assumptions.

We
tend
to identify
ourselves with
the things in life
that verify who we think we are.

This is where the fear and pain come in:

In
a world
of constant change
we are forced to defend our self-definition
against things that would invalidate it.

We all get all caught up in this. Awesome. By forgetting that we exist eternally in power and peace, we cling to our limited beliefs and suffer.

The solution is easy to say:

Stop defending yourself and use the energy to look at what you really are.

The words are few and simple...
but the act is a bear.

We each have a lot involved in what we are "being" in this life. We take it very personally. We identify with our bodies and feel threatened when they betray us. We identify with our possessions and feel attacked when they are lost. We identify with the judgements of others and develop an addiction to their opinion of us… Yet in all of this, we continue to exist. No matter how good we feel about our bodies, or how bad we feel about them, we still exist. No matter what we own, or what we lose, we still exist. No matter what others think of us, we still exist….

Are you seeing the common denominator in all of this?

You do not have to look outside yourself for your self definition. The one your Source gave you is more than adequate. Get to know that one.

There is great inertia in the world to deny this. Our position, our friends and family, our possessions, our health… even the media to a large degree. These are the things we are used to looking at to see "how we are doing".

It takes Will to sit and be still… to look within and see the solid reality of your eternal being…

But it takes more than "will". Most people don’t really know what that is anyway. What really turns the tide is persistence, and self respect. You see, if you feel limited in any way, if you are not totally aware of your eternal nature, then you have a limited self-definition. Everyone has a limited self definition.

This is touchy.
Another way to word it is that you are "wrong" about yourself.
People hate that.

Being wrong is difficult to take. Admitting wrong knowledge, wrong actions or wrong opinions is a source of great distress. To find that something you have been believing is wrong is to invoke all kinds of bad feelings. You feel betrayed by who or what gave you the wrong information. You feel embarrassed at being wrong. You feel angry at what makes you wrong. You feel threatened in a deep way… in your very soul, so to speak. When the way you define yourself is proven wrong, you feel that you yourself are invalidated at the same time. When you get enough of this, it can trash you completely… and then you know what the bottom is like. Then your life crashes, or your love is betrayed or your body blows out. The bottom is the rocks. You know the place when you are there. But even there, you are still you.

You can say "I live through this."
You can say "The worst has happened and yet I still exist."
You can say "I am here, now."
You can say "I was completely wrong about everything."
You can say "I am free of that now."

And yes, as you heal and grow into your new beliefs,
You can say "I am glad I was wrong".

This is correct.

It is a bitter irony that our fears and pains
hide what we really are
from our perception of it.

You learn what getting up is. You learn that nothing can be taken from you which changes the fact of your existence. Life goes on. It ever does.

So now, as you look upon your spiritual growth for what it is, the reasons for your distress become apparent. At any given moment in time you have an opinion of yourself, and how you are doing. Changing this is often experienced as painful.

This is a simple thought. You can say at any instant in your day "I am well" or "I am in trouble" or "I am bored" or whatever you decide at that moment best describes your current condition. Just say "How are you?" to yourself and listen to the answer. Then, with mind open, ask yourself how you know that. Determine in all honesty exactly what beliefs support your assessment. When you do that, you are looking directly at your own self-definition. You must understand that this is the aspect of you that you can change. It is not "you". It is "who you are being".

If
you
think
about it
now you will
begin to get a
look at where you
are and where
you can start
heading

If your self-definition is not in line with what you are created to be, the difference will be experienced as distress by you. The whole need and purpose of Spiritual development is to bring this alignment into reality. Unfortunately, it is a process where you will find yourself being mistaken frequently. We all have many misconceptions about who and what we are. The sooner you are able to look differently upon being wrong, the less painful your growth experience will be. Spiritual growth is a rough road because it involves so many kinds of change. You must learn that your self-definition governs your life experience. When your self definition changes your life will change accordingly. This is an automatic result of changing what you are "being". You will always be able to recognize a relationship between what you are being and what comes to you in your life experience. The one is the cause of the other. You have great control over this when you allow it.

It is important to have some thoughts about the relationship between what you are being and what your life is composed of. They are connected. There is no doubt that your life will change when you begin a Spiritual journey, or when you increase your efforts on the path you have already chosen.

Spiritual growth is a process of realizing and correcting mistakes. The only variable is how you feel in the process. If you are constantly feeling attacked as your mistakes are revealed, you will be in misery, and spend much time picking yourself up from the rocks. If, however, you hold close the idea that you are in a process of correction that will leave you feeling much better in every way, it is an amazing and exciting journey.

This process doesn’t start getting any easier until you are able to separate your opinion of yourself from what happens to you in life. We all must learn, in our own way, to get our self definition from our eternal nature rather than our mortal experience. But achieving such perspectives tends to be a very difficult and delicate process. You really do think you are existing in limitation and you really are wrong about that. Be aware that a mistake is not a mistake in the mind which makes it.

You perceive limitation and react to it, but the fact remains that you exist as unlimited Being.

Go easy on yourself. There is no emergency because your existence is never threatened. Only your "image" can be.

Take your days gently. Keep your eyes towards the outcome of your efforts. You have decided to peek out of your preconceptions and grasp a whole "new" reality. Be glad of that. Let it excite and motivate you. In a very real way you are a pioneer in this. Know it. Live it. Keep going towards the light within you which guides you to a greater place… Then shine it!

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