Article 9: Trying to Understand the Blessings
Posted Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
This is the second of two articles presenting passages from the section in Chapter Two of Lessons from the Source called “A Higher Perspective.” The first talked about the importance of being able to view our experiences in the physical world from the perspective of our spiritual identity.
The rest of that section, which appears below, has been among the hardest for many people to understand, and it also is the one part of the book that readers have commented about most frequently, saying it is simply beyond their ability to accept or to reconcile with what they see in the world.
These teachings expand on the concept presented earlier that our good is always present and that there are blessings in everything, even the most horrible situations we can imagine, and they remind us again that our challenge is to be able to accept that that is the case, even if there is no way our human minds will ever be able to understand what those blessings might be.
The following passages are taken verbatim from the third section of Chapter Two of Lessons from the Source: A Spiritual Guidebook for Navigating Life’s Journey. The symbols are used to separate segments that were written on different days.
Rejoice in All Things
Rejoice in your good, but rejoice also in what might commonly be perceived as your “bad.” For if you truly believe that your life is unfolding as part of the divine order of the universe, you will know that your good will manifest in a perfect way and with perfect timing. You will rest secure in the knowledge that whatever happens in your life is part of the perfect process of the unfoldment of your good.
When you see your life on earth from this perspective, the negatives will fade away from your path, for you will know that they cannot influence you.
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See Everything as a Blessing
It is easy for you to identify and give thanks for the major blessings in your life, and your gratitude for them is very important. But what is harder for you to understand is that everything in your life—every person, every encounter, everything that happens to you, everything that you can see or feel or sense in any way—is a blessing. The challenge here, of course, is in seeing everything as a blessing. Human consciousness finds hatred and anger and pain and despair and illness and all of the other “negatives” of the world to be anything but a blessing.
It is agonizingly difficult for you to find the blessings in life’s most difficult moments, but it is essential that your faith remind you of the importance of acting as if they were there. Offer thanks for them, even when you have no idea what those blessings might be. Believe that there is a higher truth and another reality where everything is, in fact, working together for good. This is not always a truth that you can fully know, and there will be times when your doubt or sadness or anger or outrage will challenge this truth. So be it.
The Assurance of a Perfect Outworking
If it is helpful to you, you can compare your travails to those of a movie in which there appears to be no conceivable way for the hero or heroine to find a way out of the difficulties confronting them, yet you know in the back of your mind as you watch the movie that there will, in fact, be a positive ending—that incredible forces will come to play, and all will be well in the end.
The reality where these incredible forces exist is beyond the world of your everyday life, beyond the world you can presently know, though there will be many times when these two worlds will merge. As you confront your challenges—no matter how difficult—you can and should rest in the assurance that there will be a perfect outworking and that all of these things are happening for a higher purpose that has yet to be revealed to you. While this is difficult to believe in your present life, accept it as if it were true, and you will weather difficult times and be a source of strength for yourself and for others.
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Nothing Can Happen to You that is Not for Your Highest Good
Nothing can happen to you that is not for your highest good. Make this into an affirmation that works well for you and use it repeatedly. This is a particularly difficult concept to embrace, especially when you are faced with loss or grief or disappointment. But remember that you have chosen this lifetime for its lessons, and you cannot be aware of all of those lessons while you are learning them. Remember also that loss and grief and disappointment are concepts generated by human consciousness out of its lack of understanding of the “big picture.”
