The Only Thing That Matters (32 page)

And that's how “real life” can get in the way. That's how what's happening now can look like it has nothing to do with your eternal journey. That's how Everything That's Going On Outside can feel like an obstacle to Everything That's Wanting to Go On Inside. And there's no way you'll be able to use any of those tools consistently (if at all) unless you first give yourself a special gift.

This gift precedes all the tools, and creates the space for you to be able to use them. It's the very first gift you must give yourself on The Sacred Journey. It's your “ticket to ride.”

Many people have sought to find a way to experience the fullness of who they are by taking the Path of the Soul, yet in crucial moments of their lives they have been resistant to stepping onto that path. They know what the path is, or at least surely have some idea about it, but they may find, in that critical moment, that they do not wish to release a particular negative emotion that they are experiencing.

Or, they may be ready to release their negativity, but they find it difficult to surrender fully to The Divine Purpose and embark with total commitment on The Sacred Journey.

These reactions are not uncommon. People sometimes can feel “good” feeling “bad.” So the first gift you have to give yourself if you want any of the tools you have been shown here to work is very, very important.

You must be in the possession of this gift if you're going to even see the
potential
of changing a moment, much less your life—to say nothing of actually
doing it
, using the wonderful tools that Life has given you.

The gift you must give yourself is …

W
ILLINGNESS

This is the essential ingredient in any truly transformational experience. Without it, nothing we have talked about here will be possible. With it, everything we've described here and more can occur.

So how does one move into Willingness? It's a choice. It is, quite literally, an
Act of Will.
To engage it, one must have will
power.
One must really understand what is meant by the phrase “Free Will.”

One must
free one's Will
.

Your Will and God's Will are One. This is another way of saying that God wants for you what you want for you. It is also true that what you want for you, at the deepest part of your being, is what God wants for Divinity Itself.

Divinity and Humanity want the same thing—the highest expression of Life that is possible and conceivable in any given Moment—because Divinity and Humanity
are
the same thing. Yet your human Will can be, in a sense, imprisoned.

You can be closed off, shut down, locked in, trapped by one's view of life, by a stubbornness to “give in” to love, by a refusal to use the Tools of Life that you've been given. You can, for sure, build your own jail, step into it, and close the door behind you.

People do it all the time. Resentment, Anger, Fear, Self-Righteousness, and Closemindedness are the roads they take to their own penitentiary.

People sadly and mistakenly think these pathways will get them to where they earnestly yearn to go: a place of safety.

That's all that any of us can really think about when we're coming from Small Self. All that our Little One wants is safety. We want protection, finally, from Life. We've had enough sadness. We've had enough suffering. We've had enough of being attacked, of being made wrong, of being overwhelmed. Enough, already. Enough.

And so we close the drawbridge, circle the wagons, batten down the hatches, retreat to the fortress of our Mind's limited experience. At least it's familiar territory. At least it's common ground. At least it feels safe for the moment. It may not be fun, it may not be very exciting, it may not offer the glory of arms-wide-open expansion or the joy of heart-wide-open love, but it's safe.

Or is it? Soon, while sitting in this mental bunker, we find that we've not gone to a Safe House after all, but to a Jail House. We see that while we thought we were going to be safe, the people here are always angry and afraid. The energy we were trying to get away from is the energy we feel now more than ever. (Meanwhile, the people who have “escaped” now feel totally secure in the arms of a Larger Love.)

You may not be in this jail right now. It is hoped that you are not, that even a bit of what you've read here has brought you sufficient Reminders to get you out of your imprisonment. Yet wherever you are right now, if you look around you, you will notice that most people have not fully understood the phrase “Free Will.” Their Current Thought is not combined with their Present Awareness.

You can now always tell if you have slipped back into that place yourself. It is when your Current Thought is not connected to your Eternal Awareness, when your Mind is not combined with your Soul. It is when your Current Thought is negative.

If your thought is a negative one, you are without question coming from your Mind alone. You know this because the Soul, where Eternal Awareness resides, is
incapable of negativity of any kind.
It knows too much. It
is
too much. It is
infinite
, while the Mind is finite.

Current Thought can, of course, also be positive. Not all thought is negative. The Mind can be either negative
or
positive, depending (quite literally) upon the mood of the Moment. The Soul, on the other hand, is incapable of such duplicity.

The Eternal Awareness arising from the Soul will, therefore, never produce negative energy of any kind. Your Mind, on the other hand, can produce an unending supply of it.

Yet stand where the Mind and Soul come
together
and the Soul's positivity converts whatever negativity the Mind may at any Moment hold—using Gratitude, Recontextualization, Compassion, Forgiveness, and Meditation.

These tools cause the sheer uplifting
power
of the positive to supersede the draining energy of the negative. But none of it will happen—
none of it
—without you first entering fully into Willingness.

We can become lighter & lighter.
We can pull from the soundless sound
We can sit completely still in movement.
We can open every cell, as wide as it can open.
How, you say? And I dare say
by Willingness first.
Then faith in the Unbelievable.
By Perseverance beyond your idea of it,
then by layer upon layer of Patience.
Now, Grace moves through, unannounced.
Now, the Unimaginable. Miracles.
Then Darkness. The Womb. Gestation.
Birth. Then Light.
Then Willingness again …
_____
“Willingness”
©2007 em claire

38
A Bit More About Basic Instinct

D
EAR
C
OMPANIONS ON THE
J
OURNEY …

No human being wants merely to
get by.
We want to rise to the highest expression of ourselves that any moment, and that this entire life, will allow.

We mentioned this before, but let's delve into it a little more deeply, because it is important that you have a full articulation of the driving motivation of your life.

Our Basic Instinct is not survival, but
revival:
The revival of the grandest dream that lives within all of us. The revival of the greatest idea we ever had about ourselves. The revival of the
original truth
that we held about God—which is that God wants only the
best
for us, and gives only the best
to us
, and sees only the best
in us
, and has in
store
for us …
nothing but The Best
.

This whole life is not about redeeming ourselves from Original Sin and never has been—it's about reclaiming ourselves with
Original Truth
.

Life is
the best
, and we've made it seem as if Life is
the worst.
God is
the best
, and we've made it seem as if God is
the worst.
Or at least,
the scariest.
The most
judgmental.
The most
vindictive
and
revengeful.
The most
damning
and
condemning
and
punishing
.

Wow. No wonder human beings think it is “good” to be a “God fearing” person. Wow.

Yet we are all as pure as little children, wandering about in innocent confusion, not knowing, not remembering, who we really are; not understanding, and not being told, what is really going on.

We can ignore our Basic Instinct if we want to, but we can't claim it's not there. It lives within all of us. The yearning
by
us for the best
in
us is what motivates all of us. It's what can bring satisfaction to a simple game of
solitaire
, for goodness sake. Or joy to a solo round of golf. Or the overcoming of a bad habit. Or the improving of one's reaction to a challenging person or event.

It's about
beating yourself
, besting your own
last best effort.
It's about being
better than you ever were before
—without there needing to be anyone else around to know about it, much less to compete with.

It's not about competition, it's about REPetition—doing Life over and over and over again until you do better than you ever did
or ever thought you could!

This is what your life is all about, and
Eternal Life
as well: giving you chance after chance to Best Yourself.

(And please notice—for
God's sake
, please notice—this is
not
the same as doing something over and over again until you “get it
right.”
This is not about being Right or Wrong. This is about being
better and better.
This is about getting closer and closer to Completion.)

This fundamental impulse of every human is what we have called, here on these pages, “Divinity”—but you may call it anything you wish. The highest expression of Life. The greatest expression of Self. The grandest expression of Being.

It is, in the end, The Only Thing That Matters because it really
is
What One Desires—the One that is you, and The One that is One
with
you.

It is the only thing people are living for, and, ironically, it is that to which the largest number of people pay the least amount of attention.

And so, you brought yourself the Reminders that you have found here, because now you see that if you didn't
know
about these things—if you hadn't reminded yourself of The Agenda of the Soul, the Sacred Journey, and the Divine Purpose—you would never get away from struggling and suffering; you would never lead a truly joyful, wondrous, exciting and fulfilling life.

Now you see that the intersection of Current Thought and Eternal Knowledge is the crossroad of the Mind and Soul, the junction of Experience and Awareness. The trick is to
stand in the intersection;
to
stay centered;
to feel the combining of The Totality of You; to be submerged in the mix of Body, Mind, and Soul; and by this single decision to live life as a Complete human being.