Welcome Back Dear Friends!
This week is not quite as heavy as last.
It’s still challenging,
just not quite as heavy.
In fact, I will be using a tone
that I’ve never used here before.
It is not meant to offend.
It is meant to challenge.
For just as the butterfly
needs the challenge of hatching from a cocoon,
so we need the challenge of breaking out
of old, worn out beliefs.
Let me say here that
the heart of Your Heart’s Desire is fast approaching.
Over the next couple of weeks
the key to the treasure box gets revealed.
It is an elusive key.
Yet it is perfectly graspable.
It is also radiantly golden.
It is the key to anything you have found difficult thus far.
It is the key to achieving Your Heart’s Desire, and
if everyone would use this key,
it would also bring about peace and harmony
throughout the world.
So keep moving forward.
You have made many choices to bring you this far.
There’s no going back.
You’re in it.
You are living Your Heart’s Desire already,
and it is about to blossom further
into form.
Cheers, and enjoy the journey.
Paragraph Seven, by Emmet Fox
“It is useless to blame Providence for your troubles, or to endeavor to saddle the responsibility upon other people. The universe operates strictly in accordance with Law, for God, among other things, is Principle, or Law, and where law obtains there can be no room for the idea of blame. If you break the law, you suffer the consequences, and that is all there is about it. It is not a matter of blame or punishment. It is just an impersonal question of cause and effect. This may seem hard at first sight, but actually it is your certain guarantee of ultimate victory and freedom. Impersonal Law is certain to hurt you when you work against it, but, for the same reason, it is equally certain to help you and heal you when you work with it.”
Commentary, Questions, and Exercises, by Joseph Anthony
Over the years I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with many people recovering from various addictions. This is both rewarding and heartbreaking work. One of the most astoundingly tragic things I have witnessed while listening to recovering people is when someone utters something like this:
“I’ll stay sober today, if it’s God’s Will.” Or, “God’s Grace has been sufficient to keep me sober today.”
The tragedy comes when these people resort to their destructive behaviors again as they so often do. Who can believe in a God that would will you drunk? Who could really believe in a God who would have it be His will that you destroy your life and the lives of those around you? The people who make statements such as these are, forgive my bluntness, fundamentally misguided or for lack of a better word, lazy. I know that sounds harsh, but I know this to be the case, because I used to say things like that, and that’s what I was being. It is the same for people who say: “God’s grace is sufficient to keep me sober today.” Does that mean, if that person gets drunk the next day, that God’s Grace—God’s Infinite, Unlimited, Boundless Grace was suddenly insufficient? “You know what I mean,” People will argue, “Sobriety is a gift from God’s Grace.” And to that I would completely agree.
But it is not a free gift.
I have to accept it, and that takes an enormous amount of work for self-centered people. I know. And it isn’t simply a matter of theological semantics. The words we say are powerful things. That’s why I am speaking in a tone not usually heard here at Your Heart’s Desire. So let me repeat: the words we say, and the thoughts (if there are any) behind them are very powerful. I say, “if there are any thoughts behind them” not to be offensive or mean, but because so many of us do and say things for reasons we do not know. We do and say things because other people do and say them. We follow. We parrot. We copy. And if I want to follow my Heart’s Desire, I need to an original; I need to accept the responsibility for my life—completely. I need to work with God’s gifts in the same way I would as if someone gave me a new guitar. If I just let it sit there, what good would it be? I need to use it, practice it, work with it, share it—that’s accepting the gifts of God. It is not a passive activity.
I am always amazed at how many times little children tattle on their friends for copying them. I hear this almost every day. “She’s copying me!” they protest. And the interesting thing is the reason they are so outraged is because they do it themselves. From the ages of four or five we begin projecting our blame and outrage onto others.
I bring these things up because so many of us live in a victim mentality. Our entire culture is shot-through with victimology and blame. It is a virus passed on by word-of-mouth as people complain about their lot in life but never do anything to improve it. The person listening, or should I say, hearing the complaint, is then infected. And they, in turn, pass it along.
To live in the spirit of Your Heart’s Desire, means putting away the old ideas of being a victim and blame. Even if things happened to us that were traumatic, as they did to me, we still need to lift our consciousness above the hurt and even above the level of survivor. We need to live—fully and lavishly.
Paragraphs like number seven would have outraged me years ago for the simple reason that I did not want to be responsible for my own actions. Everything I’ve commented about here would have thrown me into a tizzy. I would have been deeply offended at being challenged in the way I have just challenged you. I never wanted to be responsible or accountable to anyone. I blamed everyone for my problems. I felt like I was above the law. For example, I used to cross the street wherever I felt like it, even though there were crosswalks at the corners—but I didn’t want to walk that extra 100 feet—jay-walking laws did not apply to me. I only started obeying this law when it was pointed out to me by my friend Lefty that I have lived above the law for many years—or so I thought. (Really I was living below them.)
And so if I feel laws like jaywalking do not apply to me, and that I can ignore them at will, why would I bother to follow God’s laws?
What are God’s Laws? We will talk about these in a later entry, but for now, suffice to say God’s Laws are all wonderful, easy to understand, and sometimes really hard to follow. Also we know when we break them—we get physically, emotionally, and spiritually sick. We know when we’re following them too. We’re healthy, happy, and following our dreams.
Questions
1). Do all laws matter and should they all be obeyed?
2). Do you believe you have complete responsibility for your life? Why or why not?
3). If you feel you have been victimized in some way, are you willing to consider that it is time to move towards the freedom of total personal responsibility now—for how you’re living now—not for what happened to you, but for how you are dealing with it now? Are you willing to seek support for any deep, traumatic experiences you are struggling to process?
4). Do you believe God’s Laws are just, merciful, and necessary?
5). Reflect on the following statement: And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. (Mark 12:17). How do you think this relates to obeying the law?
Exercises:
1). Consider the following questions: Do you jay walk? Do you speed? Do you burn cd’s that you haven’t paid for? If you answered yes to any of these questions, reflect on why you feel like you are above the law.
2). Reflect on what the word responsibility means to you. What sorts of feelings, thoughts, and images does it bring up?
3). Reflect on a time when you either blamed someone for something you knew you were really responsible for or they blamed you for something you knew you didn’t do. Reflect on ways to remedy this experience.
4). Resolve to obey one “little” law this week that you routinely break–like, perhaps, jay walking. Notice how you feel obeying this law. Is it inconvenient? Is it liberating?
Thank you for sharing Your Heart’s Desire with me. Next week brings Part 7, paragraphs 8 and 9. Cheers.
Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog