If when you feel angry you can actually acknowledge that you really feel afraid, the anger will often deflate in a matter of seconds, if not instantly.
Energetically speaking, the fear energy turns into anger when it intensifies and projects, or when the apparent cause of the fear seems to be getting worse.
Being afraid means you see yourself as a victim and as attacked, which means you also see yourself as unfairly treated, which means you think you are justified in being angry because something's happening that you didn't ask for. So anger arises out of a perceived fearful situation.
Since the anger is based on the fear and doesn't really have its own foundation, and is made to DENY the fear, if you acknowledge that you're actually really afraid, it completely shuts off the generation of anger. It doesn't deny it or hide it, it simply disappears. What this means is you've moved up the ladder, or rewound the chain of cause and effect, to where you are now willing to 'stay with' the fear rather than build upon it. The anger will simply disappear when you admit to this.
So let's say something is happening to someone close to you and it scares the shit out of you. And maybe there doesn't seem to be anything you can do about it. And maybe you depend on that person and if that person has an issue, then .... who is going to look after you, or where are you going to get your ego needs met? So then you perceive that your own needs are going downhill as a result of the other person, which is frightening. And because you perceive that you depend on the other person to save you, and they can't even save themselves, you're going to get angry at them for failing to give you what your ego wants. This will make you snowball into a spiral of fear and anger, as you practically demand that the other person get out of their situation.
Secretly this is based on ego selfishness and your own dependent and fearful ego needs, which if unmet by the special relationship, sends you into a spiral of desperation. As soon as you can admit this and realize that YOU have a problem, YOU are afraid, YOU need help, this will dissolve the entire expression of desperation and demands, deflate all of the 'anger' completely, and put you in touch with what really needs to be healed ... your ego ego attachment and dependency and belief in your OWN inadequacy, which the other person is just triggering off to show you.
Once you admit to being afraid, you might have an emotional release, and this will actually shed a lot of light on the situation and show you that it is not as bad as you thought. The other person was probably being attacked by your dependency on them, and by your fear, and by your own neediness, and this was showing you a worse perception than was really called for. Things are not as bad as they seemed, once you do this. And then you can work with Holy Spirit on healing your OWN issues of desperation, whether they be fear of abandonment or rejection or 'who is going to love me' or 'how do I get my needs met be other people'.
There is a plan for salvation. Honestly is the vehicle, Holy Spirit is the destination.
I've been having a lot of deep insight lately about cause and effect and taking back my power, so I want to share some more on this. This may be a little lengthy so bear with me.
When we think of a victim we're usually talking about something negative. Someone does something to a person that they do not want. An enemy attacks, someone calls a name, someone judges, something happens to someone seemingly against their will, producing the effect of suffering.
And then we think that the things that don't do this, are not negative, or there's nothing wrong with it. Such as, feeling that a certain person is the love of your life, or having a special friend, or someone makes you happy and makes you laugh, or there's a favourite place you like to go to, or a place you call home because you like it more than other places.
You like these things, enjoy these things, want these things, "love" (conditionally) these things, because they seem to "cause you positively." They do things to you that you seem to prefer. You have needs, you have lacks, you have shortcomings, and these people or things seem to make up for it, they seem to do for you what you can't do etc. You seem to need them. They are the "other half" of you.
But the problem then comes when the person goes away, they die, they fail in some way to give you what you want or need. Or you leave a favourite place, or you break up with a person, or you lose a favourite possession or whatever. Given that your mind has become dependent on these things, it now suffers, and it flips into "special hate".
That is, the ego now sees itself as a NEGATIVE victim, instead of a positive one. The things you depended on are now seeming to turn against you and cause you pain. The people that you loved and cared for are now, in their absence, the seeming source of loss and misery. You might even feel angry at them. Special hate especially comes out AS hate if the person turns from favoured friend to an enemy, and seems to outright attack you.
What I've been realising is that when I attribute CAUSE to something outside of myself, it doesn't matter whether it seems to be positive or negative, wanted or unwanted, if I give it causal POWER OVER ME, to cause me something, I'm on a slippery slope and am now gambling in highly risky ego territory. I'm now striking a deal, doing a bargain, forming a special relationship, in which I prefer to get something out of it that I want or need. I have become dependent on something external, and don't want to let the dependancy go.
When the mind is giving POWER to someone or something to cause you in some way, that's a double-edged sword. If they comply, you might think you are happy, and for a while they seem to "do something to you" that you like. Whether it be making you happy, causing you to laugh, giving you good feelings even, making you love them more, paying your bills, whatever. They are the chosen one. The best person you ever met.
But at the same time there is tremendous risk, and likelihood, that at some point this will stop, and you will suddenly feel deprived and neglected and ignored and lost and very unhappy. Because if they are not there to do what you have become dependent on them to do, you will revert to deprivation and suffering.
I've seen that this reversal of cause and effect, this giving of POWER to someone else or to some thing else, to have power over you in some way - positively OR negatively - results in your mind becoming DEPENDENT on that thing. This dependency, is what some people, buddhists for example, would call "attachment."
It produces a sense of holding on, identifying with, of DEPENDING ON someone or something outside of you, as though you lean on it, you need it, you are hooked into it like it's a part of yourself. Like you plug your mind in, you form cords or bridges of energetic and emotional attachment, you build inroads mentally, which feels literally like being attached and "connected" in some way. In a special way, which passes for "relationship". And indeed this can feel like special love, as much as it can feel like having a nemesis when the power is given to an enemy.
This dependency results from reversing cause and effect, disowning responsibility, claiming that you have no power to choose anything, suppression of your will, projection of cause and will and power and responsibility onto someone or something else. It's then like you've struck a deal, where this person or thing has power OVER you (always with your consent), and the bargain terms entitle them to some kind of "hold over you", like, there's a string attached. A conditional-love relationship.
Somehow they have some rights, some say in it, some POWER, some logical power, which entitles them to have some control over you. And what they say or do goes, and you cannot but be affected by it. And you feel bound and artificially joined and like they own you in some way, like you're a pet on a leash. And so long as you maintain the belief that they have your power, using it over you, even if its in ways that you seem to want or that seem positive and loving, it's still an egoic special relationship because cause and effect are backwards. It's a relationship of false/backwards perceptions.
And it still feeds the role you're playing of being "a victim" - someone who is AFFECTED BY something other than themselves. ie, that you are preferring to live by being AFFECTED BY someone or something, rather than proactively choosing and taking responsibility for what you feel and experience. So long as the thing, the person, the place, the object etc, is regarded as something that you WANT to have the POWER to CAUSE you, in some way, you will see yourself as a victim of them when they eventually fail to follow through. And now sunsets turn into thunderstorms.
If they die, you are up shit creek, because you need them, you want them, you depend on them to be or do something for you, something that you were not doing for yourself. They were responsible for your happiness, they were the cause of your well-being, they were looking after you, making your life better, giving you something that you seemed to be unable to find unless someone outside of you sourced it. You even thought of them as a parent to you in some way, because they were the cause of you.
What i've seen now is that for example when someone you love dies, or you leave a home, or some other big change where something that you had SPECIAL LOVE for stops being there, you're going to experience "loss". Your ego is going to go into a negative victim role, it's going to see itself deprived and hurt and rejected, lost and alone, lacking and in need, and it's going to create a lot of emotional pain and wallow in the misery of powerlessness, and in weakness and sickness. And it's going to feel like there's been a big terrible loss because the external thing that you believe you NEED in order to be happy has gone. And it will feel that even part of your own self is gone.
It's not really loss about the person or thing, or really to do with the fact that they've left. The loss is caused by the continued "relationship" psychologically in which you see them as the cause of you. The same "power" you gave them to cause your happiness, is still being given to them, and that means that when they fail to give the happiness to you, you will be unhappy. And the more power you gave them to do this, the worse it will feel. THAT is the cause of grief - not getting what you want. And the ego will pout and cry and feel like a child that isn't getting what it wants.
The attachment. The dependency. The depending on something external. The seeking for the source of love, or even of your SELF, outside of yourself instead of finding it within. The unwillingness to own the power and the love within, resulting in a projection and disowning of it, such that when the person providing the love leaves, you're left empty handed with your own lack of inner love. And then you are in sorrow because you're empty and miserable without their "help." And you feel lost and don't know who you are anymore because part of your identification has died.
The secret of salvation says that you are doing this to yourself. So yes, it means that you are unhappy because you have given your power away, and are using the relationship to disempower yourself. If you are in this "unholy" relationship with someone or something, where you are "getting" something from it that you believe you lack inside, or NEED from the person, you're not going to be happy long-term. As soon as they leave, you're screwed, because now there's no-one to fill the shoes that you keep handing over to be filled.
When you admit to this and own the power, taking back the power you gave TO these things to cause your happiness, now you are correcting the REAL problem. The real problem isn't the loss or the change in life events, it's the "seeking and not finding" love outside yourself. It's wanting some external person or thing or place to love you, be there for you, reassure you, give something to you. It's essentially you being dependent and irresponsible, and it's you trying to disown your power. You have loss because you think YOU lack something, something you gave away.
When you take that power back, and own the responsibility, and see yourself as CAUSE, no longer regarding the person or thing as the "cause of" what you feel, or what you experience, this then uproots the entire ego thought system and the dynamic that generates the suffering. If you are causal, no one else can CHANGE YOU or influence you or make you feel something or alter your experience. And that is spiritual because it means you are owning up to the powerful being that you really are - a being with NO NEEDS.
You CANNOT be ANY KIND of victim if you are empowered, if you are responsible, if you have owned the CAUSE of your suffering. Because the cause of your suffering is NOT the absence of the person or thing, it's your SELF ATTACK, in which you are giving your power away and using it to hurt yourself. The only way to end the negative consequences of victimhood, is to also end the so-called "positive consequences". You do NOT want your happiness to be depending on anyone or anything other than God who IS ITS SOURCE.
When you take that power and causation back and own it, you are not only undoing the attachment, you are undoing the dependency, you are undoing the neediness and lack, you are undoing both forms of victimhood, and are reclaiming your INDEPENDENCE. Your freedom from suffering is literally a choice. You choose to stop giving your power away to people and things that are not supposed to have power over you. Not even the good people, not even the friends, not even the family, not even the beloved partners, husbands or wives. You can have a far healthier relationship still but without the conditions and dependent needs.
Moving OUT of that specialness, that dependency, that power game, that subtle positive victimhood, that neediness, that irresponsibility, that insecurity, is a movement towards a holy relationship. A holy relationship with yourself and others, in which you no longer are trying to have an egoic specialness as the foundation for "what they mean to you" or "what they do to you." You stop playing the negative victim, AND the positive victim, and stop trying to get your needs met from outside of yourself. God and your reclaiming of the inheritance which God has given you is all you need for that.
I can say that realising this is very freeing, empowering, and does for me seem to be greatly reducing the sense of loss that I've been having for months. I cannot suffer if I do not choose to do so. I am ruler of the universe, master of my destiny. Nothing happens to me without my consent. I cannot suffer or be hurt unless I do it to myself. And the only way I can do something to myself is to disown my power and try to get someone else to do something to me, for me. Do I want to be a slave to someone or something else deciding for me if I am happy, or will I choose to own the power and the happiness that God has given me already?
The body's eyes do not forgive. They do not overlook any illusions. All they see is the forms of error, and everything they look upon is an illusion. They literally are incapable of seeing past illusions at all. Which means they cannot forgive, at all.
The body's eyes are completely unforgiving. They are blinded by perception of form. They are not designed to see beyond physical objects, and rely entirely on photons of light for vision. Without photons they see only darkness and they are literally incapable of ever seeing even the slightest glimmer of the light of reality.
The body's eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see. They are devices designed for fixating on the images of physical form, which is made of sin, and do not see anything else. They are literally blinded by sight of forms and we call this "seeing" - where vision is blocked by objects rather than seeing through or past them.
The eyeballs are permanently hardwired into the physical level of perception. As sensory devices, they can only sense illusions. Since they cannot see past illusions, they cannot forgive, because to forgive is to overlook illusions. And so physically sight is really permanent false perception. And the body will constantly send false perceptions to the mind for interpretation, where the mind gives them either the meaning of reality or unreality.
This is why you need another kind of vision, entirely free from dependency on the eyeballs, in order to see reality. To be forgiving, at the mind level, must entail you somehow looking past what your body's eyes see. The body sees only the outside surface of nothingness, pretending to be somethingness. To see REAL somethingness, you cannot use the body.
Forgiveness is of the mind, in the mind, for the mind, moving beyond the body, overlooking all of the forms of physical chaos, and seeing a light beyond them. What lies beyond all physical forms is the real world. This cannot be seen with the eyeballs, but it can be seen with True Vision. True Vision is direct mind seeing, based not on photons or artificial light.
In order to shift into true perception, you have to shift away from dependency on physical sight. Which also means learning to categorize everything the physical eyes sees as an illusion - false, unreal, and not happening. While fixating on the physical world, and believing what the eyes see, you are blinded from seeing the real world.
Forgiveness, ie true perception (atonement, salvation, the miracle, etc), occurs when the mind recognizes that all of the images of physical forms coming in through the physical eyeball sensors are illusions, not to be believed. The mind overlooks the sensory input and looks past it. In effect it bypasses the world and every signal coming from the world. It looks past it all to the light of the face of Christ.
Christ looks upon christ, love looks upon itself. Forgiveness does not look upon bodies, mistaking them for the son of God. It looks past bodies to the light. In effect, everything the body sees must be overlooked. In other words, you need to see past what you see. Look beyond the flesh and bones to reality.
"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen , for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."
"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."
As usual, the ego has a version of whatever the Holy Spirit has, seeking to replace it and obscure it.
It has its own version of healing, its own version of forgiveness, its own version of helpfulness, its own version of service, its own version of happiness, its own version of love, its own version of life.
If you are involved with the ego's version of any of these things, then you have lessons to learn and a clarity to attain.
The ego has a version of being helpful which involves destroying others through service.
The ego has a version of love which involves trying to take away from others what you want them to do for you.
The ego has a version of happiness which entails complete dependency on the random whim of chaos.
The ego has a version of healing based on attack and sacrifice and making sickness more real.
The ego has a version of service based on self-sacrifice and disownership of true responsibility.
In every way the ago has formed a new version of everything, even with its own version of God.
The ego's version of God is a parent who dictates and condemns and wills that you be dead. Fun.
If I am not fully responsible for who I am, I will perceive and find people outside of me and try to make them responsible for who I am.
Another way to describe this mechanism is to realize that you are making yourself dependent on the ego.
Your entire purpose of disowning yourself is to attempt to claim ownership of the ego self, and to make yourself depend on it for everything.
This is of course a substitute for depending on God for everything.
So as you own up to who you are and what you are and being yourself unconditionally, you are also restoring your dependency on God.
You can't be truly responsible for who you are without being aligned with God, therefore. If you are anti-God or don't believe in such a thing, you must and will remain separate, and in doing so you will depend on the ego heavily.
The act of waking up is relinquishing all dependence on the ego, because if you depend on it, you are attached to it. It's an attempt to try to own and possess it, and as it turns out, this causes it to appear to possess you!
When you let go of depending on the ego, this means letting go of depending on anything outside of you for your happiness or peace of mind or the meeting of so-called needs. Artificial needs are only created when you are not being your real self.
Jesus is 100% dependent on God and no longer depends on the ego whatsoever. You can too.
Separation is really about trying to do everything alone, without God. After all, if you separate yourself off from God, who was essentially doing everything for and with you, you end up in a position where you have do it all yourself. You then start to depend on yourself in every respect.
Depending on your own thinking, your own efforts to assign meaning, to figure out what things are, what to do and when to do it, making plans, making decisions, interpreting everything through your own personal beliefs, trying to single-handedly do everything without help.
It's as if we say, "I don't need God". And then we start developing all kinds of needs, lacks and limitations. And now we seem to have to fend off the attacking world single-handedly. And then we develop pride and prowess and abilities and skills and information and all manner of defenses to try to bolster our ability to survive.
But the fact is this. All of our efforts to do everything alone, has made us miserable and exhausted. It has produced every conceivable form of suffering and sickness. It has eroded all relationships and trust. It has made us seem small and weak and helpless.
We've basically tried to take on this huge burden of managing "our own life" to the exclusion of depending on God, and we've found that we're horrendously under-equipped. We've been just carrying a heavy weight of burden trying to be "the one" that does everything. And then to top it off we've framed our efforts at "independence" as something to be celebrated, complete with victories and successes, and all manner of self-appointed empty awards.
What I see ACIM telling me now is that basically, I have orphaned myself, and put myself in a position of loneliness and isolation, such that I've ended up having to carry the weight of the world. To do alone everything that I should be allowing God to do for me. It's like someone who refuses to accept any help and prides themselves on their seeming "abilities" to accomplish goals on their own.
But the course is saying hey, the Holy Spirit is here to do all this for you and through you, to mange your life for you, to look after your body and health for you, to think and inspire and heal for you. But it's going to require two things - a willingness to give up your position of autonomy, and a willingness to surrender to trusting in being dependent on a higher power.
It really boils down to a question of, do you want to be separate anymore? Do you want to be alone in everything you do? Do you really want to have to be the one that figures everything out and makes all decisions and solves all problems and heals all wounds?
The fact is this. The more you separate off from God, the less power you have. The more you isolate from help, the smaller and weaker you become. The more distance you put between you and God, the less capable you are of doing anything at all. You basically lose everything by moving away from him. You THINK that you're gaining everything, but it's really an illusion, and you end up with literally nothing. Or as Jesus puts it, you will think you are gaining the whole world, but will lose touch with your soul.
What we call an "ego" is just some soul who is trying to be separated off from the shared dependency of relationship with God. It's a self that doesn't want to share and doesn't want to be part of the whole. It's a self with an attitude problem of selfishness, autonomy, specialness and every aspect of the ego mindset that comes with that. It's just someone who is alone and afraid, lost and confused, and doesn't know how to get out of it.
The more you try to gain in terms of what you can do on your own, the more you lose in terms of what you share with God. The more you think you are becoming strong in your independence, the more strength you lose. The more you think that you are so confident on your own that you don't need anyone, the more afraid and vulnerable and limited you become.
The only thing that we're really being asked to do is to come home and rejoin the family. To stop being an outsider or a loner. To open up to sharing with God again. To re-establish your dependency on God for everything, and learn to not want to do anything alone any more. It's God's heart just reaching out and saying, hey son, I love you, come back to me, you're still welcome. Come home.
And so this whole thing is indeed like the prodigal son, running away from God believing you are so capable of going it alone, until you run into pain and misery and suffering, and then finally realize it is utterly impossible to live without him. And then you return to him, willing to surrender and let go of all efforts to do everything without him. To give up all judgment and all evaluation, all decisions and all plans, all interpretations and all meanings, and everything you thought you had to do when you had no-one else to depend upon.
Just to let yourself be a part of God again. Supported and protected, nourished and cared for, guided and directed, loved and made whole.
If you are fully and completely responsible for yourself, for everything you feel, everything you experience, and every causality, then
1) You will not have any reactions because reactions require you to see yourself as a victim
2) You will not see yourself as victimized or caused by anyone or anything else
3) You will be free and invulnerable and immortal
You will know that you and what you experience are kind of .... enclosed... insulated.... invulnerable to.... detached from... shielded from.... protected from.... everything that is 'out there'. It will be like you're walking around completely invulnerable to everything, unaffected by anyone.
"Be passerby"
So if you see that this is kind of the 'goal' of total responsibility and acceptance of yourself and unconditionally being the love you are, then you can see what happens when you DON'T do this.
Without this responsibility you disown, you victimize, you see yourself threatened and vulnerable, you become imprisoned, you develop reactions, you go unconscious, you disown your feelings, you accuse everyone else of being the "reason why" your life now sucks, and you disassociate from your Self, trying to get others to live your life for you. And then instead of being yourself, you will try to be THEM, because now you are reflecting outward what is within - if you are not yourself, and you're expecting others to be you for you, you will start to become other people and lose yourself.
So no matter the situation, no matter what's happening, no matter who is doing what to whom, we need to get to this place of true responsibility where nothing outside of us is seen as the cause of anything we experience, other than God. We need to disengage. Detach from the drama that involves others.
All of the 'involvement' with others in an ego way creases an ego dependency relationship where it feels like you are joined to the other person and are exposed to them and that they can do stuff to you directly. That's the opposite of invulnerability. And that's doing stuff to yourself through them.
God does not, cannot, will not, has not, and never could, create anything that is even capable of death. God is eternal, permanent, unchanging, unflinching, constant, always, perfect in every way and utterly incapable of degradation, decay, destruction, disease, or death.
If something even has the POSSIBILITY of seeming to do any of these things, it cannot possible have come from God. That much should be obvious. A divine being who can only create in his own image and likeness could never even conceive of creating suffering, sickness, pain, misery, torture, war, murder and suicide.
God could not possibly have created seasons in which entire populations of seeming lifeforms are wiped out through temperature changes. God could not possibly have created stunning vistas and sunsets only to later have them destroyed by an atomic bomb. God could never in any way conceive of creating an environment for his beloved children which entails any form of suffering, conflict or terror whatsoever.
For God to create such a place God would have to be cruel. God would have to have a mean streak. Some kind of aspect of his own nature which, when creating in his likeness, produces more of the same. God Himself would have to be diseased, suffering, dead and destructive, in order to create anything that exhibits these tendencies.
It is utter complete total bullshit nonsense to suggest that God created this world. This is a cruel, vicious, unfair, cold, lifeless world, houses in a dream of death, framed by sickness and set off against a background of suffering. It is absolutely not in any way related to God's nature or God's will. It has absolutely nothing to do with reality, truth, love, perfection, happiness or holiness. The world is a total illusion that has no reality, is not possible, and cannot exist. Because if God cannot participate in what exists, it cannot exist, because God is the creator.
Again, this is why there is no world. A world of bullshit cannot come from a God of love. And it doesn't have anything what so fucking ever to do with perception. It does not matter whether you are looking at this world with utter contempt, or whether you are looking at it with love. The world's character, features, makeup, dependency on spacetime, separateness, fluctuations, changing images and so on are all evidence of being NOT LIKE GOD. It doesn't matter if you view it with the most holy pure perception possible, it STILL cannot exist because it is still not like God. Looking at bullshit correctly doesn't turn it into the truth.
The requirement to eat and get food is built into spacetime, did you know that? If space is the idea that something is "over here and not over there", then the thing over here lacks what is over there. This makes all of spacetime fundamentally lack based. Which means that everything that relies on it, which is all physical matter, every atom, is in some way lacking and deficient. Everything thus depends on something other than itself to attempt to become whole or sustained.
This lays the ground rules for what later becomes "feeding". Taking something outside of something to try to replenish what is lacking. And because of the ego's laws, if you take something from somewhere in order to address a lack, there is no increase, and only decrease, and now that thing is forced to lack "against its will". So if I take the apple from the tree the tree is now lacking an apple, and I have impoverished it.
If I take an animals body it no longer has its body. If I take water from the fountain it now lacks some water. Everywhere in this world this is true, with absolutely no regard for the form or type of object. And the act of "getting" from "others" is a murderous, attacking act, because it's an attempt to deprive them and to diminish what they have and to steal it away for your own selfish reasons. And so every single atom in spacetime is fundamentally, scientifically selfish.
The system of massive dependency later becomes what people call an ecosystem. An inter-dependent system where stuff consumes other stuff, selectively, and so it seems some things are "more ok" than other things. That's just part of the hierarchy of illusions. There are no special separate laws for animals versus plants versus microbes. It's all governed by the same ego laws of physics which are fundamentally selfish and murderous. This is why this is a cruel world that God did not create.
It's impossible to not be murderous if you do anything in this world physically. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." Best you can do is let Holy Spirit use the body and inform you of what to select, but this is not on a basis of being able to spiritualize or avoid the fact of what is happening here based on ego's laws. If you were truly operating under holy laws, God's laws, and no other, you would manifest food out of thin air, symbolizing the laws of increase of God, so that nothing is deprived or made to lack at your expense.
That is the ONLY way not to be murderous, by breaking the ego's laws entirely and bypassing them. This is why Jesus materialized food to feed people. You can justify and spiritualize a breakdown of objects into categories and give some special rules and other different rules if you want, suggesting some items are more sacred than others so you should avoid eating them, but that's a fragmenting and separation-based illusion of harmlessness, trying to be harmless to some parts of the world of death so as to justify why its okay to harm other parts. "The world was made that problems (like this) could not be escaped."
Only in God's Kingdom or under God's laws is there the possibility of true harmlessness.
I get this feeling that deciding on my own is not the right thing to do, given everything that's said about choosing not to decide, not doing it all on your own, etc. So then I feel torn.
But what I then see is that really, when I am in a state of indecision, fear, doubt, etc I am really not in a state of decisiveness. I probably am trying to decide, but I am not being decisive. And my attempts to decide are really delaying mechanisms to avoid the certainty of decision. In this state, I'm not really making any decisions at all anyway.
Pretty much every time Jesus says "decide", I am in a state of fear and self-doubt. I recognize then that staying in this state is not going to bring about any kind of decision, and if I want to become decisive, I have to get out of the fear.
Sometimes then, I will remark to Jesus that I don't know what to decide, and He will say, "you know". As I pull myself out of the fear and become more dynamic, more certain, more sure of myself, I then automatically feel more decisive and knowing and sure of what it is that I will do.
Then I have to even put aside this idea that I don't already know - that I even need to decide, and stop for a minute to become aware of what it is that I know already.
If I already know, a decision is not needed. If I already know, then I don't need to even get into the fearful drama of "not knowing" what to do. Then, somewhere deep inside, I tune into what it is that I know, and in this there is an acceptance, a peace and a clarity that makes it much more obvious what to do.
Usually knowing is covered up by all kinds of faffing about, doubting, fearing, drama, control, thinking, etc. None of it is really needed because it's actually all a distraction away from knowing. I can't know what to do when I'm choosing to be in a state of not-knowing. Seems so simple, but easy to get lost in.
As I go forward, and as I embark on new endeavors led by trusting Jesus etc, I find myself coming up against fears and concerns I didn't have to face before. Yet each step of the way He guides me to trust, to know, to put aside fear, and to recognize the ways that I am undermining my own certainty and decisiveness. In other words, learning to claim and work in a more empowered state of confidence.
I am finding that the more I am willing to put aside the dishonest toys of fear and self-sabotage, the more I am growing in confidence and strength and certainty. Also fear is reducing, people are growing ever-more approachable, and procrastination is melting.
This is how we gradually move into action. This is how we get off the fence and become truly helpful. And this is how we let go of the dependency on the ego as our guide as to how we should waste time.
We need to learn to be truly decisive, certain, knowing and trusting, before we might become actually willing to allow God to guide and direct us in all that we do. This somehow is tied into becoming willing to do His Will, and to follow Jesus's direction. But in a partnership of mutual agreement.