The Only Thing That Matters (2 page)

The biggest danger is that because of the inaccuracy of your perception, you will miss a once-in-a-lifetime (
literally
a once-in-a-lifetime) opportunity.

The good news is that your Soul is working hard to make sure you don't do that. It is working at this right now,
in this moment
.

One last time: Do you really think it is
happenstance
that you are reading this … ?

2
Can You Believe This?

L
IFE LOVES YOU
. It may not seem that way to you right now, and you may guffaw when you hear this, but Life loves you and is supporting you, and that is why
you are receiving a Special Invitation from Life on this day
.

You may actually be able to feel this invitation—much as you sometimes sense in the sleepy hours of the morning that it's time to wake up.

Have you ever had that feeling? Nothing in particular is happening. There's no alarm going off. No one has come into the room to stir you. There's just an inner knowing:
It's time to wake up
.

You may be feeling these days a muted excitement stirring within, generating a restless readiness to respond to a gentle but persistent inner voice that keeps whispering …

… I
T DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY
.

That inner voice is correct. Your life does
not
have to be a series of worrisome and challenging crises involving finances or relationships or health or family—or all of the above. Or, for that matter, on some days nothing in particular … just a nagging sense of
out-of-orderness
.

Neither does the world at large have to be a container of constant calamity engulfing its governance and politics, its commerce and economics, its environment and ecology, its cultures and religions.

Listen to that voice …

… I
T DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

That is not wishful thinking. That is your Awareness speaking.

What is occurring in your life right now is that your Awareness is growing—and now you are hearing its voice.

In strictest terms a “growth” in your Awareness is not possible. Your Awareness is what it is; it does not “grow” larger and larger. That's because your Awareness rests within your Soul, and your Soul does not get bigger, or in some way “more,” than it always was and is now.

It is your
Mind
that expands. For easy understanding, it could be said that Awareness rests in the Soul and Attention resides in the Mind.

So to put what is occurring in your life another way, you are now paying
greater Attention
to your Awareness. It's one thing to be “aware,” but it is another thing altogether to pay attention to what your Soul is aware of (instead of ignoring it, which most people do most of the time).

This mixture of the two is what might be called Consciousness. When your Mind pays attention to your Soul, and your Mind and Soul thus carry the same data, hold the same idea, and possess the same perspective, you might be said to be
fully conscious
.

So, in real terms, it is your Consciousness that is expanding as the Awareness of your Soul comes to the Attention of your Mind.

Now here's where the danger of misinterpretation exists: Your increased Consciousness brings along with it
an increased sensitivity to every aspect of life.
This has no doubt resulted in an expansion of the
effect
that all of Life has on you—and this could feel as if everything's
in your way
, standing between you and peace, because the same kinds of life experiences that you encountered with little difficulty just a short while ago now feel like they're going to put you on “overload.”

You've probably been wondering what's going on, and why you don't seem to be “handling things” as easily anymore.

Well, it's all very simple: You're not becoming less able, you're becoming more capable than ever. But you're
growing into that
as Life calls upon you to pay more attention to more things in more ways more of the time.

Add to this the fact that there is more data
in toto
of which you can
become
aware (the world's new technologies have placed more information at the fingertips of a 15-year-old today than that to which the President of the United States had access a few years ago)—and you can see the challenge.

And it hasn't stopped there. More things seem to be falling apart all at once all over the place than ever before—from financial systems to political systems to social systems, and even weather systems.

So here you are, in the middle of The Perfect Storm: a confluence of expanding energies, enlarging noticements, and rapidly multiplying negative events that are producing some very interesting times. To say the least … some

Very.

Interesting.

Times.

Yet it is as spiritual teacher Mary O'Malley wonderfully and succinctly puts it: “What's in the way
is
the way.”

The reason that life's events seem to many people to be
in the way
is that many people have no idea
where they're going.
They do not know that on the path they were
intended
to take, there
are
no obstacles.

The obstacles that people are encountering have not been plunked down suddenly and ruthlessly by Life, right in the middle of the path they're traveling. Rather, the path they're traveling
is the one with obstacles already on it
.

Why? Why would people be traveling the road with all the detours, all the pitfalls and potholes and stumbling blocks, and finally, all the dead ends?

It's because they've been given poor directions, or a very badly drawn map.

The way people have been
told
they're supposed to go is not the way they
came
here to go. And
that
is why 98% of the world's people are spending 98% of their time on things that just don't matter.

When you turn
that
around, you'll turn your
life
around.

3
It's Important That You Know
That You
Know
What You Know

Y
OU ALREADY KNOW
this. At the deepest part of your being, you already know what has just been said. Your purpose in coming to these pages is not to find out something you don't know, but to remind yourself of what you
do
know—so you may
know
that you know.

“Knowing that you know” is a major step in living a life focused on The Only Thing That Matters. You may have
forgotten
that you know that you know, but the very first Remembrance brought to you here corrects all of that. The very first Remembrance is that you know that you know. Now you
remember
that you know that you know—because now you have “remembered that you remember.”

There will be many other equally important Remembrances in the explorations just ahead. These Remembrances—what you might call “Soul Knowings”—are precisely what your Soul brought your Mind here to encounter. So you may want to keep track of them.

It is impossible to overstate the impact of “knowing that you know.” Remembering that you
know
that you know releases you immediately from any thought of helplessness, hopelessness, and haplessness. Yet once you know
that
you know, you will yearn to know
what
you know,
specifically
. Your
Mind
will want to know what your
Soul
is aware of.

It is in your Soul that your deepest awareness lies, for awareness springs from Knowledge, and your Soul is where true knowledge is found. The Mind stores Experience—which is
mistaken
for Knowledge.

And so now you may ask: “How can I
access
all of this Knowledge that I supposedly possess?”

Fair question. Very good question. And the answer? The simplest way to retrieve information that you already hold about life (but may have forgotten that you hold—or forgotten how to access) is to
call it forth
.

This is another way of saying: Bring it
forward
. Place it at the forefront of your thoughts.

You can do this in two ways.

One way is to gather it from a place that appears to be outside of you. That is what you appear to be doing right now.

A second way is to gather information from a place that is
inside
of you. That is what you are actually doing right now.

It
looks as if
you are doing the first, but you are actually doing the second.