I sent out a newsletter yesterday with a glancing reference to problems. You can sign up here if you like. In this post, I want to be blunter about responding to problems.
When things go sideways in the world, it is tempting to fix them. This is understandable but misguided. The desire to fix is what makes problems, not what fixes them.
You are not a body and there is no world. The problems you think you have are illusions. The attention you give these so-called problems – suffering them, fixing them – is what makes them appear real.
There is another way.
The only thing you need to do with problems is remember that by taking them seriously you make them real. Who takes illusions as reality? You don’t rush the stage when the magician saws a volunteer in half. Don’t rush the stage in your life either.
Not rushing the stage is a form of nonviolence and service. It is a shift from selfishness to selflessness. This reflects – in the illusion of body and world – the mind’s shift away from fear and towards love. It is an extension of the ACIM principle that we are only here to be truly helpful (T-2.V.A.18:2).
Helping others and bringing peace to all life is our nature. It is the inheritance from God we accept by giving away. Nothing else is worthy of us, much less our brothers and sisters (broadly defined to include maple trees, black bears and moonlight).
We think that Jesus and Buddha, Mother Theresa and Gandhi are special. In fact, they’re like us but more so, because they gave attention only to Creation’s cry for love. They heard nothing else so they gave nothing else. If a child asks you for bread, would you give her a stone? Well, the world is that child. Do what you are here to do.
You might still ask: but how? How do I do this? The answer is: you already know. You know. And I know you know. Asking “how” is a delay tactic. It always is. Be the beautiful clear light you are, the radical love for which you and the world so long. There is nothing else to do and no one else to do it.
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Thanks for this today Sean. We’re having financial “problems” right now and my first inclination is how can I fix this. And I have lots of ideas of what I need to do to fix it. I think I’ll try and wait it out and trust in Love(or God, or however you wish refer to it 😊)Let’s see what happens 🙏
Thanks for reading and sharing, Linda.
Stepping out of the way so that Holy Spirit make clear the solution never fails, but it can be tricky getting out of the way. At least for me. Ego has so many tricks 🙂
Be well 🙏
Sean
“Be the beautiful clear light you are, the radical love for which you and the world so long. There is nothing else to do and no one else to do it.”
Beautifully said. When I can keep this as my focus then life, as Richard Rohr would say, becomes a Divine dance!
And when I don’t, I feel like forgiveness is my best first response
Thanks Mark . . . that’s a lovely phrase of Rohr’s . . . it is my experience too that forgiveness is an effective way to find our way back to the divine dance floor 🙏