Life’s Lessons and the Gift of Faith

In order to benefit from our conditions and situations, we need to welcome each and every event, situation and change in our life as an opportunity to discover even greater inner strength and wisdom. We need to believe in the wisdom of the universe, which brings us only what is the highest possible good for our happiness and life purpose.

Life gives us, in every moment, exactly what we have created and chosen to experience in our evolutionary process. We benefit greatly when we can remember that and accept the past and present as it is, without bitterness, hurt, fear, anger or guilt. When we do not accept something that has happened or is occurring, we are literally saying "I do not trust in the wisdom, love and justice of the divine or the universe. I believe that a mistake has been made and that I am the victim of injustice (or that I am guilty)."

Life is a mirror

We are also negating another important spiritual truth, which is that we are all responsible for all that happens to us personally. Others cannot create our reality and we cannot create theirs. Our feelings of bitterness, injustice, anger and hate are based on the illusion that others could cause something to happen to us, which we ourselves have not subconsciously created by our previous thoughts, words, actions and choices, or through our "soul choices."

Just as others cannot be the cause of our reality, but only the means; we too cannot be the cause of others realities, but only the means. We are responsible not for what happens to others, but only for our motives and acts, regardless of their effect on others. Others are responsible only for their motives and actions and never for what actually happens to us.

How we create our own realities

In order to welcome each event and situation as an opportunity for growth, we need to understand the forces creating our reality. We have already briefly touched on this in some of my previous posts.

a. The past. Our previous thoughts, actions, choices, feelings and words all have a causal impact on our present reality. This concept is accepted by all religions and spiritual philosophies. Not all believe in reincarnation but all do believe in cause and effect. Our choices to care for ourselves or not, to communicate sincerely and honestly or not, to help and love others or not, to free ourselves from fears or not, all have their effect on our present reality.

b. The present. Our present thoughts, beliefs, expectations, fears, guilt and other emotions and behaviors all create our present reality through the "laws of reflection and attraction." Others and life itself reflect back to us the content of our mind and behavior on all levels. If we reject ourselves, fear or expect rejection, or reject others, we attract rejection. If we think, speak or act antagonistically or egotistically, we attract the same. Basically, we attract whatever we fear, love, desire and hate, as well as what we expect and what we do.

Life wisely mirrors back to us our own thoughts, emotions, beliefs, roles and behaviors, offering us an opportunity to look inward and let go of those aspects of ourselves that are attracting what is unpleasant for us. In such a case, our lesson is to discover what is being reflected and transform it. Otherwise we will continue to attract our present reality.

It is important to understand that the power and opportunity for positive change is in the present and nowhere else. We cannot change the past - but we can change our perception of the past - and thus its effect upon us in the present. We do not know the future, but can form it by our choices in the now moment.

Some people accept negative realities believing that it is some "karma" that they have to suffer. There is no benefit from suffering or being punished if we do not learn something from the experience and if it does not initiate change.

c. Our soul choices. The third factor that determines the nature of the events occurring in our lives is the "soul choices" . When we are passing through difficult times, it may not be because we have made wrong choices in the past, but because we have chosen to learn specific lessons.

d. Our interpretations of what is happening are the fourth factor creating our reality. We create our subjective reality by the way in which we interpret behaviors, situations and events. Unfortunately, most often we do not perceive what is there, but actually perceiving what we have been programmed to believe is there. Our belief system works as a filter that subjectively and selectively interprets whatever is perceived in ways that corroborate what we already believe and ignore what we do not.

For example, if we believe that others will reject us and do not love us, we will interpret their suggestions or other actions as a form of rejection and lack of love even when that is simply not true. We have all been surprised to discover that others have misinterpreted our actions, believing that we had motives and feelings that we never had.

We do the same. We project onto persons and situations motives and dangers that simply are not there. When we do so, we experience fear, pain and bitterness, creating unnecessary unhappiness for ourselves and others.

We also tend to ignore what is there (such as love, caring, goodness and acceptance) when it does not coincide with our belief system. We project our programming and preconceptions onto others and our "reality" in general. Our reality is not what is happening "out there," but what we are creating within ourselves through our interpretations of that.

We have free will

We have the free will to perceive every behavior, situation or event as the perfect opportunity to fine-tune our perceptions of ourselves, others and life. As souls in the evolutionary process, our minds are not yet perfected and we have much we can learn from the realities we are attracting and interpreting. The universe is benign and loving and reflects to us only the experiences that are useful to our growth process. Only through evolution can true and lasting happiness, satisfaction and peace be found.

Every event, every outcome, is an expression of love from the universe giving us an opportunity to use it to realize the truth or not. We have free will. We can use these experiences for their ultimate purpose - discovering greater inner worth, security, freedom and fulfillment. Or we can sink into fear, discouragement, pain, bitterness, resentment, anger, guilt, hate or helplessness. This is our free will. The events have been created by our previous and present thoughts, words, acts in conjunction with the lessons we have chosen personally and collectively to learn at this point in our evolutionary process. But how we use and react to these events and situations is our free choice.

Strengthening our spiritual muscles

Our opportunities for growth and evolution come in doses that may stretch our "spiritual muscles" but not so much that they will damage them, unless we ourselves chose to ignore our inner power. When we want to increase the weight we can lift, there is no sense in lifting the same weights we have been lifting for years. We need to increase the weight, but not so much that we will break our backs trying. In the same way, we "choose" opportunities for growth that test our spiritual muscles, but always in doses that we have the power to deal with. We will never be given a growth opportunity that is beyond our ability to deal with. We, however, have free will to access our inner power or to ignore it and feel weak and thus allow the event or situation to drag us into pain, fear, despair, depression and helplessness. Some of us after suffering or fearing at first, recoup and reconnect to their inner power and others do not. It is our choice.

Trusting in the universe and ourselves

By welcoming and trusting in the wisdom of all that has happened or is happening, we become reconciled with our past and present and let go of resistance, rejection, bitterness, anger and hate, all of which estrange us from life and the one creative power. Believing and trusting in the wisdom of the powers of creation allows us to align ourselves with them and thus manifest our ideal reality.

This attitude of trust and acceptance also enables our feelings of inner power as it indicates that not only do we believe in the justice and wisdom of the universe, but also that we have faith in our own inner power and ability to deal with whatever may come.

In this way, the energy we would ordinarily lose in fearing, resisting, complaining and rejecting what is happening becomes allocated to discovering inner powers and resources that we did not realized that we had, and probably would not have realized, without these opportunities.

Learning through pleasant experiences

Avoid the misconception that we grow and learn only through difficult experiences or tests. We also can learn much by positive and pleasant events. We can learn that we deserve and can attract such positive realities. We do not need to suffer in order to grow spiritually. Welcoming each moment as a growth opportunity also means enjoying and increasing the happiness in our lives. Ultimately it means learning to be happy in all situations, pleasant or not.

May we always have faith and look for the gifts in all of our experiences. Much love and light …..Christina