There are possibilities in every given moment that exist solely for us to become new – to change what we’ve been – but we must learn to open ourselves.
What does it mean to open myself? It means that – in this moment – I must understand that when I’m looking at your face, at what you do or don’t do, at the weather, even when I’m looking in the mirror at myself, I am at once looking out at the world and looking in on myself. Because when I look out and I see something I don’t like, is what I don’t like outside of me? No. If I look out and see something I don’t like, what I don’t like is what is being sounded in me because of what I see.
Image by Jared Rice from Unsplash
And when we look out in the world and see a world we don’t like, what do we do? We close ourselves off, don’t we? I don’t like you; I don’t like what you said; I don’t like the weather so I’m moving to Spain. Whatever it may be, I look out and I close myself off with resistance. This unconscious nature in us – that doesn’t know it is being revealed to itself by the moment – blames the moment for the way it feels.
To open ourselves so that we make the most out of every moment of our life, we must learn instead to welcome whatever helps us to explore ourselves. We turn lead into gold. Because what’s lead in a human being? Lead is that which looks out at a moment and then blames the moment for the heaviness it feels. But if I open myself to the moment and let in the spiritual light, I realize it is this nature that is leaden. It is the demands that I have placed on this weather, on this person, on this circumstance, on my life because I haven’t been profitable. It’s the demands that I place on myself that don’t allow this lead to be turned to gold.
You are a natural gold maker. God does not create conditions whose sole outcome is the defeat of the individual who wishes to be different. The true nature of this life, if we will learn what it means to open ourselves to it, is to discover a completely different relationship with life. Even when you are inwardly under a cloud you will know that the spiritual sun is shining. You will know it, and because of placing yourself in that understanding, you will make the most of the moment – which is to not allow yourself to be made heavy and dark and fearful as all negative states want to do.
To really see something in the moment is to change yourself. You didn’t change yourself. Something happened in the world you were looking at, and when you saw it – the minute you saw it – you changed. And that happens because of something you don’t want to see. It’s never not happening. But we don’t live there yet, inwardly. That’s why we want to learn to make the most out of our moments.
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