March 2016

QUESTION IT!
     Whatever your life now is, question it. Inquire into your life and don’t fight with anything you see there. Just ask what is going on inside me? Inquire. And when you see what is going on inside of you quite clearly, that is an invitation to God to come and turn on the light for you.

LET TRUTH GUIDE YOUR LIFE
     Why do you feel at any time that you’re suddenly out of control, that the storm is too much for you? Why do we ever have feelings of dismay and discouragement and defeat at all?
     There’s one reason why we fall apart. That reason is that you have had remnants of beliefs in your own strength and wisdom to guide the boat, to handle your life. You still don’t understand that you insist upon being the pilot of that boat. And you want to be the pilot because you want to take credit for the successful voyage. As long as you picture yourself as a pilot instead of as a passenger you must by the nature of things run into storms of darkness and dismay. And you’re going to worry over what’s going to happen to you.
     When this happens the solution is astonishingly simple. All you have to do is be willing to give up your place at the helm. You are not the captain of your life. That’s the problem; you want to be. You think you are, you insist you are. You think it is necessary to guide your own boat.
     We’re talking about you losing something, losing your identity as the captain of the boat. This means you must resign from that position. Spiritually translated you have got to drop what you call your own strength. If you weren’t trying to succeed you wouldn’t have feelings of failure.
     The way to sail right thru every storm, avoid every rock in the sea as if they are not there, is for you to know where you belong on the boat. You belong there as a passenger, who’s willing to be a very happy pleasant one, instead of a strained nervous captain who’s so sure that it’s up to you to guide the boat right.
     And only when you’re seated at a distance from the wheel do you really know something from your spirit, higher spirit. What you know is that there is some force, power, besides you, besides your mind. You would have vowed when you were so nervously guiding that boat left and right to avoid the rocks and you hit them anyway, at that point you thought that you were all alone in that vast ocean called the universe.
     This is the stage of very low inward development, in which you actually believe that you are all there is.
     Over on the nice resting place where Something Else is in charge, only when you’re there can you know something that you never knew before — which you thought you knew, by the way, because your imagination was operating — only then will you know that there is a God.
     When you’re a passenger watching that mysterious invisible force take the wheel and guide it past the rocks and thru the storms easily, you know from yourself, not from your beliefs, not from your anxieties, you just very quietly and silently know, for the very first time you know it — you can call it God if you want, you can call it a higher force if you want — you know absolutely that it cares for you.
     You see there’s always so much more to learn. You’re seated over there, you have a little insight and then you fall asleep, and you trust — listen, this is what it amounts to, isn’t it horrible, dreadful? — you trust yourself more than you trust God. And you get up and rush over to the wheel and sigh, “At last my life is back in control” — bang against the rocks!
     Give up! I assure you that the Creator of this universe knows what he’s doing. He knows what he is doing with your life. Now I know that doesn’t give you any cause for rejoicing, because you don’t accept it. Unknown to yourself, you still want to hang on to your present ways of living and thinking and feeling and reacting. Therefore there can be no real rest for you. You still would vow that you have to take care of yourself. All right, If you still take care of yourself then God can’t do it!
     This is a figure of speech but you’ll see it inwardly, you’ll see the steering wheel, helm of a boat — you’ll see it go back and forth of itself. And when you see it moving by itself — I’m talking about the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Truth guiding your life — it will occur to you, an intelligent thought will come to you that could never come to you before, which is: When you don’t do anything about guiding the boat, no rocks, no storms.
     And if you stay there and you stay away from the wheel, this is what is called a spiritual revelation of God. It will come to you. What will come to you is a heavenly spiritual enlightenment. And what that enlightenment will be is you’re seeing that you’re in the right place because the boat ceases to crack up.
     Ah, and I’ll tell you something else that happens as you’re sitting over there on the couch just watching your life flow by. You will see how foolishly, how ignorantly, how you looked forward to the next crash on the rocks. Because every time you crashed on the rocks you could sob, you could scream and you could get hateful and you could blame someone for it; you could blame yourself. Oh, what a revelation to see how in love you were with blasting hot fiery feelings!
     …There’s the danger ahead, the threat, the worry, whatever. Instead of clutching the wheel and trying — look, just open your hands. Oh, what an experience! This is called full terror. It’s marvelous, and the beginning! Now with empty hands…you walk towards the resting place. And from there forever more, the voyage will be smooth.