Isn’t it phenomenal that we spend our lives trying to produce powers for ourselves to protect and keep in place all the things that we believe are necessary for us to have a life with the least possible worry? And yet, our days are consumed with spending thought and emotional energy trying to figure out how this change affects that, and what that change means over here — all the time trying to put back together a life we hope to finally have without worry in it. How did we become so dependent upon people, possessions, praise, and all the things that we cling to as the source of our security, when time and time again, the greater story of life changes, and our story — our plans — are shown to be as nothing.
We know which of the stories is the prevailing story. This broader life, God’s life — reality as it is — with all its beautiful intelligence and ability to commune with itself, is working never-endingly to take some form and allow it to reach its full maturation, so that at the end of its maturation, it can go on and become something in a completely different form because of that intelligence working in it and through it to produce that perfection.
These two stories are concurrent stories. One unfolds for the purpose of revealing the greatness of the other. Our individual life exists as it does so that through it, we can recognize that the greater story that’s always working upon us is not set against us. It’s not trying to create worry for us. It’s trying to teach us that we can have a life within that life, even as we have our individual life. And in that greater life, that broader life, we can take part in another order of existence altogether — another order of possibility that doesn’t preclude our plans or our individual preferences, but merely says that if we want to find a life without worry – that has an abiding happiness in it — then we must begin to understand that these two stories are not divergent stories. Because what makes something wrong, unhappy, worrisome, troublesome in the moment, isn’t the moment itself, but the way in which we are relating to it. Our perception of the moment produces our pain, not the moment itself.
Do you ever have a fear? Maybe you’re thinking about what’s going to happen and what it means if it happens the way you fear it will. What if I told you that fear is produced by a memory? Here’s the proof: something inside of you is clinging to the optimum ideal. In other words, you have in mind what the outcome should be of what’s about to take place. Can you know what the outcome of something is about to be, what it ought to be, without a memory? No! “But that’s how I know! I’ve already seen it. I’ve envisioned that people are going to throw flowers at my feet. I’ve envisioned my dog is going to finally sit when I ask him to.”
In other words, you’ve envisioned an outcome. And in envisioning the outcome, the moment comes where it’s in question, and the fear comes up. That wave of fear is produced by your insistence that the outcome be what you want it to be. So the wave that you’re experiencing is a wave of memory. It doesn’t feel like a memory because it’s taking place now. But what’s taking place now is one thought measuring what it thinks is going to happen and what it will mean to what it thinks ought to happen.
So here comes this wave of fear, and you go, “Oh God, I need a surfboard! I have to deal with this wave, because look how I’m so worried.” And what are you worried about? You’re worried that you’re going to lose what you imagined is yours. You imagine yourself to be a certain kind of person. An event is coming up, and all your imagination is about to be called into doubt. So what do you do? How do you fix it? You get negative. You fear. Because that proves you really are fearless. You prove to yourself how special you are by the degree to which you suffer over what you imagine you’re not. And all the time this is going on, the wave comes, then another, and another.
As long as you run into the wave, fight with it, change the direction, or evaporate the ocean, there’s only one possibility. What’s the possibility? The continuity of conflict. That’s the only possibility there is. So how do we begin to work with being free of this wrong relationship that creates impossibility? We can look into our own present nature and see how we are always getting into the mix, believing (somehow or another) that we can resolve this thought, this reaction — whatever it is we’re going through.
What then would be our conscious choice in an unwanted moment? What position would we take towards our painful reactions? It would be to have no position at all. None. We would just be watchful instead of being tricked into being willful.
Have you ever watched a cloud in the sky until it disappears? Where does it go? It changes form. It lives in a concurrent relationship with a host of forces acting upon it. And the very purpose of the whole relationship is to change the form that those same forces produce. Nothing is lost. When the cloud disappears, nothing is lost; it has simply taken on a new role. The role that it takes on will change again, and eventually it will appear as a little cloud again. That’s the nature of life.
What would happen to you if you understood that your true nature, relative to your reactions, is as this broad body of concurrent forces is to the awareness of the cloud? I’ll tell you what would happen. You would stop trying to make something out of what happens within you and allow it instead to make something new out of you.
To change our relationship with the forces that affect us, we must change where we place our attention, so that instead of being the captive of a flood of reactions, we become the very close observer of them. It’s such a beautiful idea if we can see it.
When that fear comes, the real possibility isn’t in finding a way to protect yourself from him, her, this, or that outcome. The real possibility is to let the wave go by so that as the wave goes by you become aware of the sky instead of crying over the wave. You become aware of the fact that, “I really don’t have anything to worry about because I can’t lose anything!” No one can take anything from you that causes you pain, unless you’re clinging to it without knowing it.
When we understand that nothing we cling to can complete us, and in fact creates the opposite effect, then we begin to understand the true nature of being the observer. The true nature of the one who watches is this completely different relationship with our own reactions, with our own thoughts, and our own feelings, because they do not profit us. There is no gain in trying to control something. By trying to control, we have decided what the best outcome could be! And we can’t know the best outcome of this moment. God alone knows the true positive outcome of this moment. He also knows that the positive outcome is the effect of letting the greater story of life act upon our lesser story for the purpose of revealing to this small self, to this little “I,” that there exists a world in which everything is exactly as it should be.
As that becomes clearer for us, a completely new kind of confidence sets in. It’s not confidence based on images that we keep hauling around with us about who we are, what we’ve been, what we’ve done, and all we know. Because every part of that is conflict waiting to happen with someone who challenges it. Instead, we become recipients of the knowledge, of the understanding, that everything that comes is a gift given to us for the purpose of introducing us to a world in which there is no limit to the possibilities.
Excerpted from Guy Finley’s Audio Album, Seven Powers, a 6.5-hour MP3 album that’s available for just $14.95. Click here to purchase it from the Life of Learning website >>
