Being dependent on everything external allowed me to feel happy and fulfilled. Being stripped of many material supports is teaching me to clearly see and comprehend the True Source of all that is; that everything that I had, have, and will have is but an expression of that Source; and that I am one with all that is – not better, not less than, but one with.
This concept is very hard for me to put into practice. I think I’m getting better. At least I’m aware.
We are all that we can be at this very moment. It is good to strive to be and do more in order to move towards our promise and destiny. However, being happy with the miracle of whatever is happening now can help create a happier tomorrow.
Temptations of the flesh are difficult to resist and overcome. By temptations, I don’t only mean lust, greed, envy, or other such attractions. I mean perceptions of the sense body. We look at the material world as the source and end of everything with little or no regard to our spiritual origins, our command of energy, and our dominion. We allow material existence (persons, places, and circumstances) to have power over us because we have forgotten the reality of our Higher Selves. We have forgotten who and what we are.
We can become so involved with and drawn into the dramas and traumas of our loved ones, jobs, community, society, and world that we drift into negativity, forgetting that we are Spirit – clear, free, and unlimited. In our essence, we are like air. We forget that we are transcendent, that only the perceptions of our minds can entrap us, hold us, and imprison us. That is the ultimate temptation of the flesh body. We let the material world make us blind and deaf to our true nature and, thus, become bound to the earth.
The more status we give to tangible things and people, the more we forget that the Infinite even exists. We drift further and further into anguish and hardship. The day of reckoning always comes. Judgment Day comes in different ways and times for each of us. Cumulatively, all of our unhappiness makes it difficult for the great healers of the world to survive in physical form and help us through this medium.
Great joys come from being in the body. However, the suffering of human existence becomes quicksand from which it seems impossible to emerge. Constant struggle grounds one increasingly into the material and away from the reality and source of our being.