Psychology | Born to Be

Our Universal Plan
By: Jessica Burnham

You know that feeling? When you’ve had a really peaceful meditation, and it sticks with you throughout the entire day? You carry this beautiful energy through you like an electric current, and even the most annoying things- for some reason- don’t annoy you? And you sit there, in your car, and think- I wish I had this reaction every day!

Life is strange that way. But in its strangeness, when we are given gifts like that, it helps us see something different. And then our whole life has a different perspective when stress rears its ugly head. Perhaps this is what happens as we grow out of the mind’s streaming program into our bliss. Recently, as I was encountering my usual mood altering circumstances (like mind altering drugs I suppose- are they really different??), I felt this stream of peacefulness flowing through me and I realized all I had to say to myself was “This is what the universe has planned for me today.” When I heard this, all thoughts of restlessness, impatience, frustration dissolved in my consciousness. I saw something completely different, and it felt really good. I didn’t feel like I was being controlled by anyone and others’ circumstances- it just simply was. What was happening around me was not some conspiracy by my outside world to test me beyond acceptance.

Whatever that good feeling was by spirit’s definition, it basically felt good because it simply was the lack of negativity projected by my own issues. It was not anything beyond that. I was not striving for some ‘great’ feeling like we do with all our searches. What I realized is- this really is who I am. Inherently I am this peace. I am nothing beyond that- not even ‘good’. I simply am without my negativity born of karma and past experiences. The inherent desire to not want to deal with our garbage puts us into this delusion. Our resistance to seeing our flaws and our darkness, through shame, creates a deep bog that can become unbearable at times for our beingness.

Have you ever witnessed a confrontation and thought to yourself, why are they getting so upset? If someone said that to me, I wouldn’t get so upset. But then when someone does confront you in a similar way you find yourself agitated and angry, and defensive? And they say, why are you getting so upset (this is when the bubble pops over the character’s head and reads “Haven’t I heard this somewhere before”)? And you don’t want to admit to yourself that you’re getting upset by something that you’ve questioned someone else for getting so upset over. You are all of a sudden sandwiched, cornered by your own rejection. So you fight back, trying to get out of your corner.

What is even more interesting about this kind of situation, is how completely different we feel when someone else tells us what they see in our behavior. If we say it to our self, it has no meaning- but when someone else says it to us, we react. Why is it when another conscious being calls us on something we react, but it is okay for us to say something negative to our self? To take it a step further, why has our society taught us that self abuse is completely acceptable, but abuse from others is not?

Someone once told me that when the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ was taught, its true meaning was that the soul could never be killed. No matter what we think when a body dies, the human experience disappears before us in that body- but it still exists, because we are still existing. We are a part of that soul’s experience- and in that oneness, nothing can ever die. Can the mind’s madness continuum ever dissolve like the body in death? I believe the answer to this is no. But- where we act from, and what we connect with inside can change. And this is what brings us peace in our lives. This is the lightness that we deserve.

Every day we venture out into the world, we are encountering a plan. Whether it was something we, as a part of the universe, thought of years ago, or thought of yesterday, the plan appears. But the plan can morph from day to day based on where our consciousness resides. What a relief to know that sometimes, the plan presents itself, rather than me always having to present a plan in some formal way like I am the delusional micromanager of my universe!

There remains a balance to achieve in our understanding of this concept. A balance that keeps us in check, so we are not always waiting for the next great plan to appear. Rather, we are constantly planning in all that we think and do, the catch is accepting the ones that don’t always seem so appealing without resistance. I think this is a deep accomplishment for all of us. Profoundness lies in being in this state of acceptance regularly. Encountering the happenings of every day life, without attachment to what should have happened and our expectations of what ‘good’ truly is.

Indecision Blues
By: Jessica Burnham

Then indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Faith and decision making- how do they relate to one another and how do we not allow our inability to trust ourselves and our faith in spirit to interfere with living our lives? How do we intertwine the trust we have in spirit, and the trust we have in our inner map so we don’t put up road blocks to opportunity and the flow of our greatness?

There is a fantastic character in the film called ‘Along Came Polly,’ that has the curse of never being able to make a decision. When Polly calls up her friend to set up a date, she will go around in circles for 20 minutes giving him several choices because making a solid decision about something as trivial as dinner is as painful as a root canal. It is extremely comical watching it in a film- but in real life, have you ever been in this situation, or had someone close to you do this with each decision making process in their life? Watching someone live their life like this, always with one foot out the door, can be a tortuous experience. Especially when you really care about that person, and you see their self sabotage move through not only their life but those close to them like lightning again and again.

I say lightning because it is paralyzing. When we cannot make a solid decision when given the opportunity, we paralyze ourselves. We never go anywhere and this begins to reflect in all aspects of our being, including our spiritual growth. There are many forms of indecision makers out there. Perhaps the most common is the person that believes that they have no power in their life, and the universe is only going to deliver to them what is ‘meant to be’. They are constantly watching for signs, and are distracted easily into the ‘next best thing’. This includes everything- jobs, healing, spiritual commitments, and relationships. Something happens in the sky, and they have to move to a new town. Okay, maybe that is a little drastic- but perhaps it is not?

When we receive a sign from the universe, our angelics, it is up to us to go inside and look through the glass with our inner knowing. This inner knowing serves as our antenna and the signals sent to it are pretty clear. It is our connection to everything around us, it is spirit. When we harness our power and let go of our fear of honoring our dreams and self judgment, making a decision suddenly becomes a much more simple process. We have this extraordinary gift called free will, and so many of us are afraid to use it. The gift of free will affords us experiences of all colors. Many include suffering, but so many more include the moments of revelation within our selves.

Stagnation is a transformative process in its own right. It transforms your desired outcome into stuck energy. This stuck energy clouds our mental capacity to see beyond our fears, and brings us nothing but wishes and unfulfilled hopes. If you don’t know what to do next- just doing something gets the juices flowing and the energy moving out of stagnation. It is like writer’s block. A writer can procrastinate sitting down and writing; because they fear they don’t know what to write about or what they write about will be perceived as schlock by their peers. But if they sit down and just start writing about some thought, some knowledge, then transformation takes place. When you succumb to the stagnation of your mind and its paralysis behind indecision, you are giving all your power away to the inability to become, constantly afraid of having nothing rather than something.

To become something doesn’t mean you have to be doing a hundred things at one time. That in itself happens much of the time out of fear of doing nothing in your life. It becomes a mechanism to feed your fears of being a ‘nobody’. When we sit and watch a flower over time grow with the seasons, bloom and open itself up to the sun, the elements, we are witnessing a subtle process of transformation. That is the way our lives are meant to be. Everything has its own steps, its own sequence of transformation. But when we become melancholy or overwhelmed with possibilities and the thought of making the ‘wrong’ decision, then we end up off the path to something much greater than our little power-tripping mind could ever dream of.

When Dorothy was lead to the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz, and she came to a cross roads, a very clear sign came to her- the Scarecrow. What if Dorothy sat there and said to her self, “Well, I don’t know if I can trust this guy. And, what if it isn’t a real sign from the universe leading to where I need to go? I don’t know. What should I do? Please give me another sign. I’d rather be safe and just sit here for who knows how long than do something I’m not completely sure of.” Then she would have sat there in front of a Scarecrow who claims he doesn’t have a brain, wondering, maybe I should have taken that offer a couple hours ago. We all know what happens after Dorothy makes many of her choices- a great adventure filled with meeting her darkest fears and greatest joys of friendship. And the outcome- I’d say a huge success.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said in the beginning quote, “Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” The boldness to surrender your fears to the universe, to the great spirit within your heart and soul, and make a decision based on what you hear from inside, in meditation, from the joy that you are meant to be- now that is truly magical. Harnessing your power, as it was meant to be used and not abused- now that is truly magical. Let us all move beyond the stagnation of our minds and become rather than live in the possibility of becoming. So many people in this world and in the world’s past have been deprived of choices because of tyranny. It is our responsibility to take our given gifts in choices, and make them instead of fearing them.