Why do we end up as often as we do in those painful situations in which the last words usually spoken go something like, “How in the world did I get myself into this mess?”
Sound familiar? It should. And while the answer to this woeful question should rescue us from similar future sticky situations, it rarely works out that way. This is very important to admit to ourselves. The truth is we keep falling into the same old snares. Why?
There is an authentic answer to this question that may surprise you. The reason we haven’t as yet realized real rescue — and so usually wind up trapped in a tangle once more — is because every time we ask ourselves how we’ve managed to get stuck again, we usually turn right around and tell ourselves the answer. And so the sad cycle starts all over! It doesn’t have to go this way. With a little closer examination and the help of higher ideas, we can see that we couldn’t have possibly come up with the “answer” that we did.
Listen to this new and true explanation as to why we seem to keep repeating the same mistakes in our lives: If we really knew the answer to that recurring problem of ours, we wouldn’t have had it in the first place!
Look closely and you’ll see that the answer you are always given as to why you are unhappy is that someone or something outside of you is making you feel that way. What’s wrong with that answer? Everything.
There is no profit in blaming your painful position in life on other people or an uncaring world. This is the solution your lower nature wants you to swallow, because it knows that if it can get you to see life its way, then you will have no choice but to spend the rest of your life struggling with life. This is its conquest. First it blows you off course and then it gets you to blame ill winds. Its very existence depends on keeping you off balance and looking the wrong direction. You can start seeing through the blame game by learning to let go of all the familiar but self-abandoning answers this lower nature wants you to believe in.
Real rescue from our problems can only come to us from above the level of our problem. And yet, in order for any solution to be real, it must be found somewhere within us, since that is the real location of our problems. The question then becomes how can we reconcile these two seemingly separate and distant notions, rescue from above and solution from within? The answer may surprise you.
Above and within mean the exact same thing when it comes to attracting higher help.
We can call this new and higher location of real rescue the True Self or our own undiscovered higher nature. Name this indefinable divinity as you will, the point remains the same: it isn’t what we call this compassionate intelligence that gives it authority over our painful conditions. Its power is its elevated position, which is above and outside of the lower nature’s sphere of influence.
This beneficent and loving wisdom becomes your intelligence whenever you refrain from attempting to rescue yourself long enough for it to show you that what you need is more understanding, not more battle plans. Temporarily abandoning yourself in this special way, where you consciously watch and so suspend the influences and activities of the lower nature by refusing to go along with its directives, allows authentic understanding to flow into the vacancy and give you real direction.
(Excerpted from The Secret of Letting Go, Llewellyn)
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