~ at Athens/Atlantis/9178 ~  | Entrance | Table of Contents | Purpose | Introduction | Daily Actions | | Assignment One | Assignment Two, parts 1,2,3 | Assignment Two, part 4 | | Assignment Three | Assignment Four, intro | Assignment Four, part 1 | | Recognizing Abuse | The Abusive Marriage | Assignment Four, part 2 | | Assignment Five, introduction | Assignment Five | Assignment Six, introduction | | Assignment Six | Assignment Seven | Assignment Eight, part 1 | Assignment Eight, part 2 | | Assignment Nine, part 1 | Assignment Nine, part 2 | Assignment Ten, part 1 | | Assignment Ten, part 2 | Assignment Eleven, part 1 | Assignment Eleven, part 2 |
Assignment Twelve ~
“I can’t help being amazed at the lack of instinct and insight among so many fellow humans. I’ve often wondered how anyone can live comfortably without introspection.”
 “THE TWELFTH PRAYER:” “Dear Father, please put the people in my life today that you know I can help or learn from. Help me be a reflection of you to all those you put in my life. I ask for your wisdom and guidance throughout this day, and show me how I can best be of service to you and my fellows. Help me be the very best (wife/husband, mother/father, son/daughter, sister/brother,) and friend that I can be today. Please take the personal relationships in my life and make them what you want them to be today, show me the truth and help me accept the truth. Help me make my relationship with you what you’d have it to be. ~ Amen.”
For any of us to experience a lasting change in the quality of life, we must first undergo a transformation of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. If you have been thorough and entirely honest with yourself to this point, continuing with daily inventories, meditation, and prayer, you will undoubtedly have experienced the necessary attitude changes conducive to emotional healing and spiritual growth. And we must remember that this is a life journey, not something we can do once, and then expect to reap the rewards from then on. Spiritual growth and fulfillment are a daily hunger, and like our physical bodies, our spirits must be nourished, exercised, and cared for every day. I’ve saved the essay on miracles for last, and for a very good reason. Our minds, emotions, and spirits must be made ready before we can expect to receive the rewards we seek. If you’ve made peace with God, your fellows, and yourself; if you’ve cleansed your inner dwelling of all past regrets and resentments, and have a handle on your fears, anger, and depression, you’re ready to delve into the powers of creative thought and faith. None of us are going to reach perfection in this life. We’re striving for spiritual progress, not perfection. You won’t reach sainthood, and few of us would even want to! But by all means, don’t become a martyr. As selfless as martyrdom may seem, it’s actually quite self-serving, in an attempt to prove ourselves loyal, worthy of love, and selfishly show others how superiorly UN-selfish we are. Be true to yourself first, and you will automatically be true to everyone around you. Miracles happen everyday, to those who believe and to those who don’t. What’s the difference? People who scoff at divine miracles never experience any magic in their minds and hearts. They see only coincidence and good luck, or, more often, they view such occurrences as well-deserved rewards. You may wonder why it’s important to believe in divine miracles if everyone receives them. And the truth is, it really doesn’t matter to the Universe, or to God, but it does matter to each individual – to you, personally, and to me. Our own perceptions of this life and the reality we choose to live in determine the quality of our lives, our goals, our hopes, dreams, and experiences. Recognizing miracles changes my life, and with the acknowledgement comes faith, and faith produces more and greater miracles. What we choose to believe or disbelieve doesn’t change God or the Universe one iota, but it does determine our perceptions, which ultimately guides our experiences.
I’ve talked already about faith not being the absence of fear, but the presence of determination and faithfulness to our own values, principles, and priorities; maintaining the will and commitment to continue living according to our personal, spiritual guidelines, despite whatever emotions may bombard us in times of distress and fear. Faith is an attitude and an action, not a feeling. The times we actually feel full of faith are only when there’s nothing going on in our lives that really require faith. Having faith is born when situations are at their darkest and most uncertain and we continue to follow Truth anyway. The greatest help comes once we’ve walked through upsetting experiences and come out on the other side a better person because of recognizing how God worked in our lives to help us during those hardships. We then begin to build a foundation of trust and faith that we can pull from memory to give us strength and reassurance when the next storm arrives. Many times I’ve heard that faith and fear cannot occupy the same space. In a sense, this is true, because fear occupies the mind while faith is carried out in our actions. But it’s never true to believe that we cannot have faith until all fear is banished. When we reach our perfect spiritual conditions and no more need for human experiences, then we’ll know total absence of fear. Notice I didn’t say, “Then we shall be free of fear,” because we can be “free” of fear in the here and now, even while we’re still fearful. Sound like a paradox? It is. Remember, we don’t have to be controlled by our emotions. Just because I feel fear, anger, or grief doesn’t mean I’m in bondage to those emotions, and it doesn’t mean I’m not free. It simply means that emotions are part of this human experience. Emotions aren’t good or bad, positive or negative; they just are. It’s the perception and mental attachment we place on them that determines how we label emotions. We decide how much power our emotions have in our lives by the energy we invest in them through our thoughts and actions. None of us have the ability to determine what we will or won’t feel, but we all have the choice and the responsibility for what we do with them. To integrate our whole selves into a complete individual, we need to view all the aspects of our characters like the limbs and appendages of the body – each different, with different purposes, and yet, all part of the whole. Many people think they must rid themselves of their negative emotions, such as anger, fear, frustration, and sadness. They expect to be happy and peaceful all the time once they’ve eliminated these emotions. And sadly, many others believe they cannot please God if they continue to have such feelings. God gave us all of our emotions and He certainly doesn’t hold it against us that we experience them! He does however, hope that we will learn to use our emotions wisely and to control our emotional natures rather than being controlled by them. We have the ability to be content and peaceful despite, or even because of these emotions. Everything we experience, internally and externally, is an opportunity for character development and spiritual growth. Many of life’s most precious gifts come wrapped in very ugly paper, but we have to look beyond the unpleasant exterior to find the prize inside. It’s just like when you were a kid and are a whole box of cereal you really didn’t like just because it had such a cool prize inside. How can we rid ourselves of only negative, or uncomfortable emotions, and keep the ones we like? We don’t get to pick and choose our feelings – only our actions. Substance abusers become such because they choose to escape the painful emotions in life. However, they also forfeit love and joy. If we choose love and joy in our lives, we must accept hurt, anger, disappointment, and sadness.
 Emotions aren’t good or bad, positive or negative. They just are. It’s what we do with them, how we act on them, and the way we allow them to affect our lives. Anger, for example, isn’t taboo. It’s not the enemy emotion it’s so often thought to be. Simply experiencing anger about a situation or occurrence is perfectly natural, just as natural as feeling joy over a happy occasion. Resentment, on the other hand, isn’t so normal, but is like a slow, festering wound that refuses to heal, causing its carrier pain and illness. But anger over something current can be beneficial and quite positive, when it’s used properly. Used improperly, anger can be a very destructive force. Anger at a situation or person over something unacceptable to us is your healthy-self standing up and shouting in your mind, “This is not acceptable! I don’t deserve to be treated this way!” Anger, in that case, is a healthy response, demanding your unhealthy self to change. Like fear, anger can be an inner warning signal, designed to alert us when we’ve put ourselves into a situation of failure, or of being used, abused, or taken advantage of. When another’s actions toward us spark anger, before reacting on the emotion, we need to look at the cause of our anger and determine if it’s truly justified, or if we’re merely lashing out against something that isn’t going our way, or is possibly hurting our pride. But if we see our anger is derived from being treated with disrespect, cruelty, or plain rudeness, then our anger is definitely our healthy selves rising up within, demanding that we stand up for ourselves. In any case, released anger shouldn’t be directed at anyone – not at others, nor ourselves. Anger turned inward becomes self-pity, self-loathing, and depression; anger turned loose on others causes harm, making us as guilty as the one who initially hurt us. Instead, anger is an emotional energy we can use rationally to re-direct our lives, guiding us out of a destructive situation and into a more positive environment. With people or situations that cannot be avoided, that healthy anger urges us to stand up for ourselves, making it clear that we won’t be treated with disrespect. Fear too, is designed as a protector. It’s a warning when we’re in danger, and can lead us to safety, or guide us away from potentially dangerous or otherwise destructive situations. However, more often than not, anxiety is the fear we experience. Unlike pure fear, anxiety isn’t a warning of an immediate, present danger, but a lingering dread, uncertainty, and imagination predicting some vague sense of doom in the future. When we understand fear and its purpose, we can learn to befriend fear and integrate it into our whole selves. When seen for what it is, rational fear can be used for our protection. Likewise, irrational fears, or anxieties, can be kept in check and prevented from controlling our lives.
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