Welcome back, Friends.
You’ve made it.
The key to Your Heart’s Desire is revealed today.
It won’t be what you expect.
It won’t necessarily be
what you want it to be.
You might even resist it.
You might decide to turn back.
But you’ve come so far.
Your Heart’s Desire
is about to get clearer.
I am telling you from experience
that if you use this key, your life will change.
And so will the lives
of those around you.
You will be using your responses
to the previous inventories as guides
to using the key.
You will need a mentor or buddy to help you
through what you are about to do.
Pick someone tough.
Pick someone who truly understands
the nature of your mission.
What you are about to do is difficult.
Scouring a dirty vessel is rarely easy.
If you do it however—the clearest, purest, most
Life-giving waters will flow.
And there are warnings.
IF YOU DO NOT USE THIS KEY
YOU WILL NEVER DISCOVER YOU HEART’S DESIRE.
YOUR DEEPEST PRAYERS
WILL NOT BE ANSWERED.
YOU WILL NEVER PROSPER,
I MEAN TRULY PROSPER.
That may all sound very serious and outlandish,
like I am trying to scare you
into doing the exercises in this section
but I am not.
I am not trying to scare you into doing anything.
The risks to the future of Your Heart’s Desire, however,
are grave if you do not use this key.
So do not be afraid, but consider yourselves
informed as to the gravity of your mission.
Again, I speak from experience.
I know the negative consequences
of not using the key, because I have lived them.
I also know about the positive consequences
of using the key, because I have lived those as well.
So read the next paragraph
and get ready for the adventure of a lifetime.
The swiftest, surest method for clearing the channel
so that you can hear the voice of God
is about to be revealed.
Due to the involved nature of this key,
we will divide Part 14 into 2 parts A and B.
The second part will deal with the more
practical aspects of using the key.
Paragraph 17, by Emmet Fox
“This is why all true spiritual leaders are so insistent upon the need for unselfishness in motive, for forgiveness of others and of ourselves too, and for a general attitude of peace and good will toward all; for only in this way can we get that sense of true harmony and freedom that will permit the clear unobstructed flowing of the Divine Mind through us. Only in this way can we become a free channel for the Divine Energy to express Itself at the point of Being, which is our Selves. This spiritual state of consciousness in which the Life Force finds unrestricted outlet which is so essential if we are to experience any kind of good, is technically known as serenity, and serenity, the great mystics are never tired of telling us, comes from within. It is not to be imposed from without by manipulating conditions or circumstances, or by any exercise of the will, but can only be derived from the natural, free flowing of our Divine Energy.”
Commentary, Questions, Exercises, by Joseph Anthony
Do you see the key? It isn’t serenity. It’s the thing that will “permit the clear unobstructed flowing of the Divine Mind.” What is it?
Forgiveness
—the thing all true spiritual leaders are so insistent upon. Fox didn’t just make this up.
Listen to the following statements by Jesus:
Matthew 5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
Matthew 5:23-24 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
Jesus is very clear—if you want the blessings from above, go make things right with your brother. In other words, He says, don’t even bother praying until you go make amends with whomever you are angry at—especially those people you are angry at “without a cause.” We all know about this—we all have fantasy resentments in our heads from time to time—people we’re mad at that we don’tt even know or have never met, or that we do know but they have no idea (consciously, that is) that we are holding a grudge for our own unmet expectations.
“Raca” incidentally means, worthless, contempt, vain. Have you ever felt these things towards anyone? Have you resolved those feelings before saying your prayers? That’s what Jesus and Fox are saying—make it right then pray.
And this step (which is really Step Nine in the 12 steps of AA) is the one most people do not do. We want to be forgiven, but rarely do we want to go out and fix what we broke. We want fast, intuitive answers, but do not want to clear the channel. And if we do not sweep off our side of the street, “nothing worthwhile can be accomplished (Big Book).” Things may get accomplished in our lives—we might get jobs, watch funny, informative TV shows, become involved in local politics, start businesses or relationships, we might buy houses or fancy cars, we might even go to church every Sunday or synagogue every Sabbath, but nothing worthwhile, nothing lasting, eternally significant will happen unless we forgive others and have ask them to forgive us. As Emmet Fix would say, “that is the whole truth of the matter.”
Forgiveness is the key to Your Heart’s Desire.
And this is one of the reasons we are so distracted and into accomplishing so many seemingly important little dramas. We get so excited and feel smugly complacent when we see the latest movie on opening day, when our team wins the championship, when we close that business deal or get that job. Yet somewhere inside we sense a weird failure in everything we do that is not of God and that does not move us towards our Heart’s Desire, but our vision as to why our lives are like this is clouded with resentment and fear, guilt and shame.
But we are after more here at the Wonder Child Blog.
YOU are after more or you wouldn’t be reading this right now.
Why do we have to go through such an extreme step in order to accomplish anything truly worthwhile? Because we are essentially here to “fit ourselves to become of maximum service to God and the people about us (Big Book).” And Emmet Fox is clear that to be following God’s will, to be serving God and our fellows, is to be living our Heart’s Desire, which is how we serve God to our maximum and how we can be of the most help to those about us. And in order to do this we need to live in a state of forgiveness.
This step is the key because once we have our resentments, fears, and harms down on paper, and have read them to someone else; we are then free to find the people we affected and harmed and seek their forgiveness.
How does we go about making amends or restitution? Next week I will give clear, practical suggestions. This week, simply absorb the information and reflect upon it. It is a lot. And some readers might feel discouraged. Fear not, many of us have done damaging things to others and ourselves and miracles of forgiveness have happened. And if it can happen for one it can happen for all.
Questions and Exercises
1). Reflect on how you feet now that you’ve discovered the key to Your Heart’s Desire. Do you feel disappointed or scared? Do you think it is completely unrelated to following your destiny? Do you feel it is too tall an order to accomplish?
2). Reflect on what you think forgiveness means.
3). Have you ever given thought to forgiving those around you or yourself?
4). Do you think there are things which can never be forgiven?
5). Is forgetting a part of forgiving?
To close out this week, I will leave you with some other words by Emmet Fox on forgiveness. They come from his marvelous essay on the Lord’s Prayer.
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.”
“As we repeat [that line of] the Lord’s Prayer intelligently, considering and meaning what we say, we are suddenly, so to speak, caught up off our feet and grasped as though in a vice, so that we must face this problem–and there is no escape. We must positively and definitely extend forgiveness to everyone to whom it is possible that we can owe forgiveness, namely to anyone who we think can have injured us in any way. Jesus leaves no room for any possible glossing of this fundamental thing…we are inevitably obliged either to forgive our enemies in sincerity and truth, or never again repeat the Lord’s Prayer….Notice Jesus obliges us to declare that we have actually forgiven, and forgiven all, and he makes our claim to our own forgiveness to depend on that.”
Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog