“As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances.” – As A Man Thinketh
It has taken me a long time to be able to look at a problem I’m having as a necessary spiritual lesson. To be frank, I’m still not always real excited to be enduring the pain and frustration that negative circumstances usually cause. Some days I’d like to “play hookey” and skip the lesson 🙂
But as I look back at my life, it is easy to see that the times when my wisdom and understanding grew to new levels; those times when I approached becoming the person I long to be; it was always the times that followed negative circumstances. The greatest growth you’re going to have is going to come from the negative circumstance you have today that sometimes seems too overwhelming, too big to scale.
Writing in Byways of Blessedness, James Allen is strong in his call for us to embrace our circumstances. “Let a person rejoice when he is confronted with obstacles, for it means that he has reached the end of some particular line of indifference or folly, and is now called upon to summon up all his energy and intelligence in order to extricate himself, and to find a better way; that the powers within him are crying out for greater freedom, for enlarged exercise and scope.
“No situation can be difficult of itself; it is the lack of insight into its intricacies, and the want of wisdom in dealing with it, which give rise to the difficulty. Immeasurable, therefore, is the gain of a difficulty transcended.”
Maybe that explains why it sometimes seems that I can’t shake a particular problem, or I have one that keeps rearing its ugly head. Instead of fighting it, I need to jump in and gain the insight and wisdom to handle it. Then it would be gone, and I would be ready for the next lesson — only stronger, both in spirit and in wisdom!
My long-time hero, Emmet Fox, wrote, “It is the Law that any difficulties that can come to you at any time, no matter what they are, must be exactly what you need most at the moment, to enable you to take the next step forward by overcoming them. The only real misfortune, the only real tragedy, comes when we suffer without learning the lesson.”
And that’s worth thinking about.
Dear Vic,
I read the sample of The Secret Ages book and would like to ask and answer a couple of points made. 1. Do you know WHY it makes a difference as to whether we believe that the Earth and Man were made billions or 500,000 years ago or in 6,000 years (6 days)? 2. Or why it is important to make a distinction between Evolution and Creation? Just look at this World for the obvious answers. Yes, there is an awesome intelligence evident in Nature and the biology,psychology and spirituality of Man and yes, this is a power and endowment that we can and should connect with and yes, we can and do evolve in understanding and spirituality when we connect with this extraordinary intelligence. The reason why it is important to make a very clear distinction between two premises is that one is TRUE and the other is FALSE; one leads to exaltation, justice, honour and abundance; the other leads to greed,cruelty,ignorance and horror. It is clear that the world has followed the latter and is being encouraged further down this sliding chute to destruction. We certainly did not ‘evolve’ from some kind of bacterial activity any more than a simple bug did and this is proven for those who lack the intelligence of reason. In order to delude us further down this path of ridiculous ignorance, it has to be justified by the story of an Earth billions of years old, as evolution could not happen in a mere 6000 years. From this fantasy, everything else becomes possible, no matter how bizarre and illogical. That we are graced with the power of imagination and choice is a gift which can be used for either benefit to all or detriment for all. Look at how this has been and is being used. If we leave God out of the equation (which is impossible anyway) we delude ourselves into thinking that material wealth and personal aggrandisements are all we need for a happy, successful life. This pure selfishness conveniently ignores the awful reality of millions of children, adults, animals, suffering unspeakable horrors right below the radar screens of our ignorance. The situation is on a scale where we are helpless to resolve it by ourselves or collectively without Supreme Assistance and there is only one Supreme Assistance we can and should call into our lives and that is Almighty God and Jesus Christ. The most important book of the whole world history and our relationship with this Supreme Almight intelligence and power is God’s message to us through The Bible. Everything else is secondary to this. Do the research, as I have and surely you will find the truth. I am not religious, by the way and do not belong to any corrupted church; I’m just me. Don’t leave God out of the equation, for in truth, you cannot and if you try, nothing makes any sense – as events in this world proves and will continue to become even more evident. What are people going to do when they find themselves in concentration camps? Use their imaginations?