by CC Lawhon, M.Ed.
Are you in pain? Physically, mentally, emotionally because of something that is going on right now? Do you feel powerless to figure out how to solve this problem? Do you feel like you need help?
Can another person really help us? Can someone else lead us to happiness if we aren’t ready to go—or even if we are? Isn’t it in the end our own actions, thoughts, and feelings that truly move us in any direction?
I ask you to consider that the perception of pain can often be worse than the pain itself. Considering that the fear of loss is usually greater than the desire to gain, there has to be something that puts happy people over that edge. When someone fixates on what they know they want, they focus only on that goal and not on the fact that they might lose what they currently have to get there. Plus, they have no way of knowing if it is the Highest and Best thing to even focus on having—and yet some “go for it” and others do not. Some are happy, many are not. Some feel successful, most do not.
The majority of mankind focuses on what they have now, and out of fear of losing that, however lame it might be, they don’t go for more. Rumi says, “Give up this life, get a hundred new lives.” If you knew that you would lose the pain and suffering you have now but would gain everything you ever wanted, would you go for it? If you would not, I probably cannot help you, because what I just heard you say is, I am happy with what I have now, with the way things are now. You are satisfied with what you have. And that can be okay, if it is not out of complacency but out of true Peace. Although if what you have is an abusive husband, a porn-addicted boss, and a drug addict son, I would seriously question your deeper satisfaction. So at what point will you realize this life is meant to be amazing and miraculous?
When will you say:
HEY. IT’S OKAY FOR ME TO WANT MORE. I KNOW I WAS PUT HERE FOR THE HIGHER GOOD. I AM IMPORTANT BECAUSE I AM ME. I WAS A SPECIAL DESIGN FOR A REASON. I AM DOING THE WORLD AND MY MAKER A DISSERVICE EVERY DAY I DO NOT FIND HAPPINESS AND PEACE BEING ME. I KNOW THERES MORE TO THIS LIFE AND I AM READY TO EXPERIENCE IT!!?
I wonder if it is always dissatisfaction with our current state of affairs that causes us to want to grow, change, or move on? What if we could stop changing and growing just because we are unhappy, and could begin growing to be happier? What if we could allow our lives to blossom? What if the motivation, our driving force, was positive every time? Of course, this means being 100% thankful for what we have now--loving our circumstances fully enough to allow them to burst forth into new, livelier, more exciting circumstances.
Are you willing to learn out of happiness and openness to new possibilities rather than out of avoidance of painful situations? Are you ready to evolve?
Notice in the last paragraph I said allow your life to blossom. Not make, push, cause, force, etc? The key here is we will naturally grow upwards if we allow ourselves to do so (just like a flower to the sun). We do not actually have to do anything...we just have to BE 100% in love with What Is. And What Is at any given moment, is whatever you want it to be. What?? Yep, you heard me. What Is is simply what you see as your reality. So, if you see it as a horrible yucky existence, guess what? You live in a horrible yucky existence. If you see it as a beautiful loving place, guess what? You live in a beautiful loving place. If you see yourself as not whole...then...yes, you are getting it...you are not whole. If you see yourself as whole, then you are. THAT is Truth.
It is all an illusion based on the observer’s way of seeing it—and yet each perception can absolutely become reality. We are still clinging wildly to the old scientific method of “have to see it to believe it” but quantum mechanics says that is moot. Just the fact that we have to have an observer means we cannot possibly see something accurately. So if that is true, then why not just start deciding what our reality is and letting it be that? Arguing with reality is so last millennium. Loving What Is is très 21st century!
The most important concept to grasp is this: In the movie What The Bleep Do We Know, they explain how back in the 1400’s natives on an island couldn’t see Columbus’s ships at first. The shaman saw the ripples in the water, he knew something was there, but couldn’t see the thing itself. Why? Because they had no schema in their brains with which to associate a water-going vessel. Only after the shaman stared at the ripples for days, open to whatever might be there, did he finally see the ships. Imagine today, then, the amount of things that are happening that we cannot even see because we have closed our brains to anything that does not fit our schematic processes. I think this is why there are so few UFO sightings. Those of us who have seen a UFO know they exist, but there are so few confirmations of it. Why? Because most people do not have a place in their brains where that fits their world view. The few who have seen them are open enough or have read about them enough or have drug induced open mindedness occurring or something else that allows them to see that.
Imagine living when the populous truly believed the earth was the center of the Universe. Today, we think thats silly! BUT, imagine you believed that as much as we believe the sun is the center of our solar system...and then....you find out that is WRONG! How do you cope? Well, I just wonder how many things that we hold as total fact today are as wrong as the earth being the center of the Universe? That is what we must learn to grasp. We must begin to open up to the fact that there are truly infinite possibilities. When you can begin to catch your mind when it tries to put the brakes on your creative process and thus keep fixed thoughts from limiting you (or even better, convince your brain there are infinite possibilities), you can create a life and a YOU that is more amazing than you ever dreamed.
The kinds of events that I cannot explain remind me that my world is flat in a lot of ways. As convinced as I am that it is round, I remember that those who believed it was flat were equally convinced. As soon as I realized my perceptions of most things could be wrong, I started looking at the bigger picture. Seeing the potential for options where none were before has changed my life in so many ways. It has led me out of clinical depression and into an amazing view of the world and my role in it. But these sorts of “radical” ideas have always come with difficulty. Galileo and many others have died for merely suggesting a new truth.
So, I hereby offer you Guru-YOU. I am here to give you an easy road to radical ideas. I show you a path that is fun and interesting and that comes with roadside assistance. I bring to you a stream of continuous tools and ideas for daily life which keep you open to the greatness you deserve, and a manual for how to use them. I simply do not subscribe to the idea that we are supposed to struggle, or that pain and suffering are the only ways to truly learn and grow. It is only our obstinacy or inability to see positive potential that causes our pain and suffering. As the great poet Walt Whitman said in Song of the Open Road, “I do not offer you old, smooth prizes. I offer you rough new prizes!” And I do. “I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.” I can tell, because you are still reading, that you agree. You are ready to embark on an adventure within to your very soul, with the deep belief that when you do, you will smile at what you see. Allons! To Guru-YOU!
