ORDER FORM | HOME PAGE

 

 

MASTERY A Chapter from the Upcoming Book GROWING THROUGH JOY Channeled from Michael by Shepherd Hoodwin

 

THE UNIVERSE-ITY

 

Each person is on a self-study program. You decided what your project would be. You checked it out with the professors, and now have the resources of the entire universe-ity at your disposal, if you know how to use them.

 

 

BEING UNLIMITED

 

It is hard for most people to conceptualize what being unlimited would be like. We suggest that you confront your small limitations one at a time. You will feel increasingly unlimited as you do that.

 

 

THE TRUTH

 

The truth is of the present. If you are willing to see the truth, especially the truth about yourself, it is easier to be in the present. You might say the truth sets you free to be in the present.

 

 

KNOWLEDGE

 

Knowledge is not gleaned from a book. What you know is what you have experienced, what you have made your own through your life. When an idea is truly your own, it is beyond mere intellectual understanding.

 

As an exercise, you might write down some things you know, as well as some things you intellectually probably understand but do not yet know. You will see that they are different. If a person is on the spiritual path, he aspires to know the things he understands. Understanding naturally precedes knowledge.

 

It is all right to discuss what you understand and do not yet know, but if you do it too much, your conversation becomes theoretical and lifeless. Others may perceive in you an air of intellectual superiority. Even if you do have an excellent intellect, it is wise not to put your purely intellectual understanding center stage. The understanding that carries the most weight is based on knowledge.

 

 

SELF-UNDERSTANDING

 

There is no substitute for conscious self-examination on a regular basis. There are many people in spiritual circles who intellectually are quite knowledgeable but who have not applied much of what they have learned to their own lives. To make an analogy, if you read every book there is on how to golf, but you never swing a club, you are not a golfer. To be truly spiritual, it is necessary to look in the mirror honestly and frequently to see what your actual experience is. This does not mean that you should be self-recriminatory--the essence of spirituality is unconditional love and acceptance, for yourself as well as others--but if you do not even know yourself, how can you love and accept yourself? You do not know what you are accepting. There is little conscious growth without self-examination and complete self-honesty, being humbly willing to acknowledge your shortcomings. If you do not do this, you will grow, but you will grow the hard way. You will be knocked around. Eventually, you will understand the meaning of your experiences, but it may be several lifetimes down the road. It is much preferable to be awake and know what you are doing now.

 

 

CHANGING YOUR BELIEFS

 

Doesn't changing your beliefs only require willpower?

 

Willpower is probably not the best way to describe what is required. It implies that you are imposing something on yourself. It usually does not work very well on deeply entrenched beliefs. Persistence is required, because whatever your beliefs are, they have developed over time. Changing them need not take a long time, but it does take some.

 

After attending an uplifting, catalytic spiritual gathering, for example, it is common to find yourself falling back into old patterns. You might criticize yourself for this. It is important to recognize that the experience at the gathering was probably just the beginning of a process of change. You have to take responsibility for the change and stay with it if it is to continue. There may be several steps involved. You cannot know ahead of time how long your process will take. Sometimes it takes much longer than you had hoped. The beliefs you are changing may be deep and go back several lifetimes. Nevertheless, you will usually be successful in completing the change if your work is persistent, vigorous, and honest.

 

If you have self-defeating patterns that do not seem to be changing no matter how much work you do, you may need a fresh approach. It is also possible that change has occurred and you do not see it yet. This is one reason keeping a journal is a good idea. You get a better perspective on where you have been, and can see whether change is occurring.

 

 

MAINTAINING SPIRITUAL MOVEMENT

 

I have a lot of spiritual movement when I'm not working, but when I am, I lose it. I reach to other things to give me strength instead of my soul energy, and then I get burned out.

 

There is great value in integrating the spiritual lessons you learn in your time off with the work you do. We suggest that you begin your days with some sort of meaningful activity, such as taking a quiet walk or writing in your diary, something that helps you connect with your spiritual being. Then, take breaks throughout the day, five or ten minute breathers, to reconnect.

 

See your work as a meditation itself. Perhaps you could put on music that facilitates this. Calm your mind so that it is wholly focused on what you are doing, as if you were meditating while gazing into a flame. This is easier said than done, especially if your work is stressful, but as you practice, you will gain greater facility at it.

 

If you are still unable to maintain your centering at work, perhaps you should look for a less stressful job in which you might find it easier to have this experience.

 

 

THE SPIRITUAL PATH

 

The spiritual path is not primarily about accumulating information. It is about continually expanding your ability to open, to give and receive, to see, and to handle greater challenges with grace. All of this leads to agape [see Glossary], which is the ultimate transcendent experience.

 

The spiritual path is often viewed as difficult, the straight and narrow one must tread while trying to avoid temptation. But in fact things work better on the spiritual path than they otherwise would. If things are working well, they require less effort, so there is more opportunity to have fun.

 

You cannot be on the spiritual path and be asleep. This is not to say that it is required that you be awake. Most people are asleep and are experiencing their lessons anyway. They are just experiencing them more painfully and slowly, as a rule, than those who are awake. On the spiritual path, you take responsibility for guiding the course of your life, making intelligent choices rather than functioning automatically. Doing that requires examining the input you receive, both through your own feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and through other people. Most people do not take adequate advantage of the input they are given, and hence do not make the necessary adjustments to make their lives more pleasing.

 

Those around you are normally more than happy to give you additional input when you need it. More often than not, it is fairly accurate. All you have to do is ask for it. If it rings true for you, then it is simply a matter of acting on it. Doing so is truly in your best interests.

 

We all move in a natural progression, and each step along the way is beautiful. Parents cherish the moments when their little ones take their first steps and speak their first words. It is not better to be 21 than one-and-a-half.

 

Those who are genuinely advanced on the spiritual path see others with compassion and understanding, rather than judging them. This does much to help others grow faster and enjoy their process more.

 

There are always those who are ahead and those who are behind. However, in a sense, everyone is in the same place because the path is a circle; it has no real beginning or ending.

 

 

COMFORT IN THE BODY

 

What does it indicate if you're uncomfortable being in your body?

 

Discomfort in your body may indicate that you are not fully in it. You may be resisting the choice that you made to incarnate, or the lessons of your life.

 

It could also indicate that you are more accustomed to one type of body, and you have chosen to have another type of body in order to find greater balance.

 

For example, in this era, many people who are more accustomed to a male body are choosing to come into female bodies as a way of learning about the female side of things, and vice versa. Some people prefer the Oriental body and have chosen one that is Caucasian or some other race, and vice versa. Others are accustomed to large, powerful bodies and have chosen to incarnate into small, delicate ones, and vice versa. So discomfort can simply indicate a lack of familiarity: somehow, the body does not seem quite right.

 

The issue, though, is acceptance, taking responsibility for the choice that you made and learning about your body as much as possible, as you learn about your life.

 

 

SUFFERING

 

Suffering can be a great teacher; for one thing, it can help people to deliberately and consciously choose beauty rather than suffering.

 

Individual suffering is often self-created; collective suffering has certainly been collectively self-created by humanity. In one sense you could say that suffering is unnecessary, yet in a practical sense it is necessary or it would not exist. When its lessons are learned, it will no longer be necessary. One of the purposes of a spiritual teaching is to show how to reduce and ultimately eliminate suffering. As you expand your ability to love, the need for suffering is reduced in your life.

 

 

CRISES

 

Crises are times of opening. If you could easily handle them from your previous abilities, they would not be crises, and opening would not be required. The fact that they are crises means that you need a larger capacity to handle them, a larger capacity to love.

 

 

UNPLEASANTNESS

 

Life is not "perfect." You cannot control every element of the outer world so that you will not be beset by unpleasantness in the future. Some people have the hope that if they grow enough and eradicate all negative beliefs, nothing bad will ever happen to them again. We would agree that their lives would go much more smoothly, but if, for example, you live in New York City, you are not going to be surrounded on every hand by peach blossoms and azure skies. You are here to learn, and you have to accept the whole as a "package."

 

 

BUSY-MINDEDNESS

 

Your anxiety is exacerbated by your tendency to overly burden yourself with the thinking process. It is an example of taking a strong attribute and overworking it, creating imbalance. Your mind, like your body, needs rest to be most efficient. Remember that it is possible to burden yourself with something you enjoy. It becomes a burden when it is done without respect for your capacity to sustain it and the needs of the rest of yourself.

 

The idle chattering that often goes on in the mind is like having a television station but not broadcasting anything on it, so that only static and interference, or bits and flashes of broadcasts from other stations, come through. When this occurs, discipline, which could be defined as making conscious choices, is lacking. When you are conscious, you choose what you do with your mind, what you broadcast on your station, so to speak.

 

 

ASKING

 

To receive of the universe, you do not simply ask and then forget about it. There is a constancy to receiving. You stay open, and the response keeps pouring in, a little at a time. Ask, and it is given, but if you ask and then turn your attention away, where can the gift be deposited? There must be a place made to receive.

 

 

BEING SPIRIT-FULL

 

Life cannot be spiritual without spirit. An intellectual appreciation of spiritual things is not the same as being spiritual, being of spirit. Spirit has substance to it. It is felt. It is either experienced or it is not. When you focus on a high place, you are filled from that place. Making room within for what is of spirit is the most important part of a spiritual life. One of the ways this is done is through undergoing self-examination and eliminating what is false.

 

It is much more comfortable to live a spirit-full life. When spirit is missing, it is keenly felt as a void. Those who know of the existence of spirit are the most capable of consciously experiencing it. If you feel spirit in the presence of others who are spirit-full, you can increasingly begin engender it from within on your own.

 

 

COMPLETING THE PHYSICAL PLANE

 

Many spiritually oriented people hope that their present life is their last on the physical plane. The higher planes are easier in some respects, and we do not underestimate the difficulties of the physical plane, but the higher planes have their challenges also. If you have not prepared properly, you can have problems there. As they say, you take yourself with you. Your comfort anywhere has more to do with your inner strength and clarity than any other single factor.

 

The body is sometimes a source of discomfort and pain, and you do not have to contend with that on higher planes. But if you have not dealt with the reasons for the pain and discomfort of your body, you may still be uncomfortable on the astral plane, and find it more difficult to do something about it there. We suggest that you take full advantage of being where you are now, and not turn to spiritual things because you do not like the material world. There is nothing wrong or unspiritual about being on the physical plane. It is not a prison. Many souls actually like it!

 

Ultimately, each soul decides for itself when it is complete with the physical plane. All is choice. Some think they are finished, only to find out otherwise later. Then they return for another go at it. They may see something incomplete, or an opportunity to be of service that they wish to take advantage of. They may look back at an unsuccessful experience and say, "Let me try it one more time and see if I can do it."

 

Some souls want to have an in-depth experience of the physical plane. They do not want to miss any important eras or cultures. Others only want to experience the highlights. This is a matter of choice. It is your game. You can play it any way you want to.

 

 

---

 

UPCOMING BOOKS

SUMMERJOY PRESS BOOKS

 

 

 

 

 

ORDER FORM | HOME PAGE | TOP OF PAGE