Have you ever noticed how the more negative you get, the more difficult everything about your life becomes, including being able to do the simplest things? It's like suddenly sinking into dark molasses, where not only can't you move, but everything you don't want seems stuck to you!
To the spiritually uninitiated, it feels as if you've been dropped into a river of resistance but, in truth, you are being pulled into it by a lower level of self that wants you to look at whatever challenges you in life as an adversary. Its attempt at deception - to negatively alter your perception - is the only power it has to keep you from seeing unwanted moments as they are in reality: an invitation from the Divine to outgrow your present limitations. Regardless the nature of the trial set before you, it asks: "Would you like to live in a larger world, one without fear? Do you want to be less worried, or angry, and more at peace with yourself?"
We may not yet be able to hear these "questions," or discern for ourselves the perfect timing of their compassionate appearance, but they are always present at the "point of impact" - whenever some event reveals an unseen limitation of ours. We may be given to see, for instance, how our impatience with someone we love trumps our wish to be more understanding of him or her; or perhaps we see that anger still gets the best of us when pressed into some stressful situation. You fill in the condition, but here's the point: no unwanted condition, or its outcome can change until we outgrow the nature responsible for it.
This realization empowers you to do something with unwanted moments that had been impossible before. Now, instead of hoping that you don't encounter moments where you feel suddenly inadequate, limited in some way, you meet every moment awake, aware, watchful - waiting for those instances where you get a chance to see the boundary line between who you have been, and are yet to be. All seemingly impassable moments in your life are seen for what they are: a pre-destined place for you to meet, let go, and outgrow that lower level of yourself that used to stand fearfully before it. The boundary between limitation and limitless disappears, and now you stand on the side of unlimited possibility.
Freedom is not found by fighting with what you think stands in your way; your true spiritual liberation rests within this one unthinkable realization: what is in your way is part of the way. Once it's understood that whatever seems to be set against you...has actually been put there for you to outgrow it, then you have received, opened, and accepted the invitation of the Divine. The rest is done for you.
Key Lesson: In many ways, the true blessings of life often come disguised as the worst moments...but those who will be patient enough to live in the presence of what seems to be a loss or painful limitation of some kind, will soon see that temporary mask fall away, and see before them an impossibly kind and just face.
Excerpted from The Secret of Your Immortal Self, by Guy Finley, Llewellyn Worldwide, 2015.
Guy Finley is the best-selling author of more than 40 books and audio albums on self-realization. He is the founder and director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for self-study located in southern Oregon where he gives talks four times each week. For more information and to download Guy's free 60-minute MP3 "Five Simple Steps to Make Yourself Fearless," visit http://www.GuyFinley.org/kit