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Seeking Spiritual Growth?
A single word can open your heart; a single glance can tell you who you really are. Awakening doesn’t happen according to the plan. It’s much more like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without knowing the finished picture in advance. All you can imagine in advance are images, and images are never the same as the goal.
If there was a spiritual payoff at the end of the trail, like a pot of gold or the key to heaven, everyone would work as hard as possible for the reward. Any struggle would be worth it. But does it help a two-year-old to struggle to become three? No, because the process of child development unfolds from within. You don’t get a paycheck; you turn into a new person.
The same is true for spiritual unfolding. It happens just as naturally as childhood development, but on the plane of awareness rather than in the realm of physiology.
Don’t wait for a miracle. It really doesn’t matter how you define miracle – whether it is the sudden appearance of perfect love, a cure for a life-threatening disease, anointment from a great spiritual leader, or permanent and everlasting bliss.
A miracle is letting God do all the work; it separates the supernatural world from this world, with the expectation that one day the supernatural world will notice you. Since there is only one reality, your task is to break through boundaries of division and separation. Watching and waiting for a miracle keeps the boundaries up.
I’ve met countless people who gave up on spirituality because they didn’t reach their goals fast enough. The best way to avoid disappointment is not to set a deadline in the first place, although many people find this difficult to do without losing motivation. But motivation was never going to get them there in the first place.
Rather than a timetable, give yourself support for spiritual growth. This can be in the form of a personal teacher, a discussion group, a partner who shares the path with you, regular retreats, and keeping a daily journal.
Adapted from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2004).
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15 comments
add your comment »We come into this World to seek our lesson and to teach others as best we can, we continually move in the Spiritual direction if this is your destiny. There is good and bad in life and how you handle each one is how you become advanced in your search for peace. We all have choices and individually we seek what we chose before coming back here to this Planet with our God of your choice ~ our journeys are designed in our charts for whatever it may be is how you obtain the reality.
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Taking one day at a time and if it shall be for any individual upon what you have succeeded to do for the right of others, you will encounter a Miracle in your life without the possibility of you even being aware of the surroundings..
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A discussion, networking and study group for anyoneinterested in A Course In Miracles (ACIM). About 1.5million copies of ACIM are now in print. Get support &make friends. Access FREE ACIM news feeds, magazine, lessons, podcasts, tweet & text.
http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/CMSG
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To Alice B.... Please reread this article especially paragraphs 4 and 5. He says to not wait for a miracle and defines what it is. Your comprehension is a little off.
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I really DISLIKE the smarmy, aging/New-Agy self-promoting crapola in this blog. "A Miracle is waiting for God to do the work" = JUST WHAT THE OPPRESSORS AND EXPLOITERS OF THE WORLD LIKE TO HEAR BEING PREACHED TO THE REST OF US. No activism - just sit on your cushion while rapists, paedophiles and war-mongers do their thing? WHAT A PILE OF SH*TE! No wonder this type of stuff gets so much "free" press in this crapitalist, proto-fascist USA!!! Talk about a Yuppie Philosopher! YUCKOLA.
How about folks growing backbones and standing up to homophobia, bullying of kids, environmental horror and animal cruelty? TOO BUSY SITTING ON YOUR CUSHION?!!!
Readers: go take a look in the mirror and honestly ask yourself if you wouldn't want an activist to 'have your back' - and then ask yourself WHAT ARE YOU DOING - WAITING FOR 'GOD TO DO ALL THE WORK?!!
STAND UP - FIGHT FOR LOVE AND JUSTICE - DON'T WAIT FOR 'GOD' TO DO ALL THE WORK!
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How right Deepak is. People laugh derisively when I say one particular word crushes me. It robs me of all individuality. It clumps me together with everyone born the same colour as me as if we are all the same, should be called the same, should be treated the same regardless of my individual personality and character. When I report that I'm a natural redhead you won't be surprised to learn that the word is 'ginger' and I am not alone as 'gingerism.com' shows. They tell me they call me the word because I am unique yet as I say they strip of every bit of individuality and stereotype me
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Remember to look for the love Janine. Smiling will help you to connect with others. There is a commercial world that does not want people as partners. But unless we demand renewable energy we will keep having oil wars. We need to share ideas to overcome global warming. The solutions may surface when we least expect it. Love to you all.
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2 Just as we are attracted to the differences as the soul seeks unity with itself and the mortal self thinks to find completion in successful union with our opposites, thinking to find sameness we forget that the spiritual union that we desire and the promised ecstasy of that union lets us come together to create and protect progeny, we forget that apart from spiritual reality, in this world WE ARE TRULY VERY DIFFERENT. Just as we feel that they can't be bothered to understand us but are too selfish, they are in the same position. Let us accept that arriving at peace in our quest for the PLACE TO BE AT is in our personal makeup alone and not dependent on any outer semblance of perfection. Fortunately for us all the understanding we seek and all it's rewards are independent of any reality beyond our control including our allowing ourselves to surrender to our own unfolding. Peace be yours, all you need for your spiritual growth is part of you and has absolutely nothing to do with the time or place or who's around you. Virtuous patience is where you're at when you are pleased with your unfolding, prickling irritability is when you are shedding another outgrown ego skin like a snake rubbing against a rock and it's not who you are either but just your industrious pragmatic response to outgrowing another self. Your spiritual development rests in your opening understanding of your unlimited nature and it's dance with the rest of the godly creation.
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Janine: for men the development you are seeking isn't there; they have their own. The whole self is male and female and all the other unknowns from this perspective.Whatever the physical manifestation the other part is opposite for the balance.The physical is our chosen challenge and we, the sexes, are so different that I didn't begin to comprehend it till in a car seated up front with my sister's husband I listened to why listening to us communicate caused him actual physical anguish. As a judge and tuning us out doesn't come naturally to him. As three sisters who hadn't seen each other in a long time we just go at it like we always do. Women throw a million different unrelated bits together like throwing veggies in a cauldron and observe what floats to the surface and such. With tears in his eyes he told me " I'm a judge and I hear it all but it's always one at a time. Before that I thought that men were just being sexist when they couldn't be around us, I had no idea that it actually caused pain and on reflection the men that I know who love,admire and enjoy women simply disappear when we converge, a little nap a little something, simply knowing how to tune out. I'm not talking about the multitudes of Y people who can't or won't hear words at our normally higher pitch( I had to drop my voice octaves for men to pay attention to what I was saying, now that I no longer smoke and it's risen a bit I have the same problem again. I must lower my voice for them to hear me.)
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When I reached the age where we start to be drawn towards our goals in life; to the worry of my parents,nothing in the world of what adults are supposed to do appealed to me. The word "career" seemed particularly obsessive like: careening off into space on a roller-coaster car ,madly racing towards the end of the track in darkness, kids are dramatic but that's how I saw it. I could never let on since that was what every one was supposed to want. I presented a bland face outward hiding behind it.Later,the dominant reality around me was the V. war. Since all the men of my age were liable to induction and destruction there wasn't much place in my world for anything but response.Because of dreams and unexplainable attractions; philosophies and deities that had nothing to do with my immediate family but were, inclinations that came awake with odd stimuli,there was always an undercurrent of what would be my path, like an afternoon raga always there sub-audibly.The years with my spiritual master ,driving my awareness at the "WHO am I?", the aim of all efforts, was because Master showed me that this was the one desirable attainment, all quickening of talents not to be sought since they were only natural by-products of the quest.The path is multi directional and dimensional so there's no place from which to judge one's attainment.Judging one's place on the path is deluded melodrama, no place to judge from.Like whistling. it seems impossible and then it's there.
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