Anytime you allow anything or anyone outside yourself to cause you to choose hurt and to be disturbed inside yourself, then you are being shown how you can strengthen your understanding of the first and second laws of Spirit, to accept and cooperate, no matter what, no matter who. That can be a very tall order that perhaps only God in the flesh could fully express.
Nonetheless, the opportunity for you to fully accept and cooperate is available which can lead to realization of understanding, enthusiasm and compassion for exactly what is the reality of the situation. — John Morton
Understanding is a quality or condition of one’s consciousness associated with perceiving and comprehending the nature and significance of a person, situation, or experience. As the laws of spirit unfold, understanding typically comes forward once acceptance and cooperation have been achieved. Sometimes this is a rapid sequence of events and other times it takes years and years to work yourself through to understanding. Personally, it’s the acceptance part that is typically the hardest for me. Once I accept something, cooperation and understanding are pretty much a no-brainer.
Have you ever had one of those implausible streams of events that led you through twists and turns to just where you needed to be for something important to line up in your life? More and more, I am finding that happening followed by an “Aha!” moment of understanding why all those things had to happen. And, because I have a deep sense of God’s presence in my life and understand the karmic component of many experiences in my life, I often smile when these things happen.
Here’s an example. I went to my sister-in-law’s retirement party and was amazed by her startling success with the Ideal Protein diet. I had been looking for many years for a weight loss program that I believed in and felt confident would bring me success. Having hurt my knee several weeks before, I went to the chiropractor when I returned. I’ve been going to her for over two years and seldom had a physical adjustment. Instead, we used NET — a muscle-testing technique that identifies and releases mental and emotional blockages held in the body. I had been doing this work primarily to prepare myself to cooperate on a mental and emotional level with whatever weight loss program I choose.
This time, my chiropractor asks me to let her brand new associate look at my knee. She does so, and with my permission, gives me extensive adjustments. While lying on my stomach, I notice that she has a reverse crease in one of her toes. Curious, I ask about it and find that it makes her self-conscious. I apologize for bringing it up. She says “No problem — it’s mine and I have to deal with it.” Now sitting up, I grab my excess belly and say “I have to deal with this.” She grabs her belly and says “I know what you mean, I have to deal with this.” I mention that I am exploring a diet program that I am interested in and tell her it is the Ideal Protein diet. She just about falls on the floor in surprise, saying she has been studying this diet for a year now and is in the process of signing up to be a coach. I jump for joy because the deal breaker for me with the program had been the requirement to drive 90 minutes to a program center each week, and she would be local! We agreed to start later this week and for about an hour the little kid inside of me was so happy I could hardly contain myself.
So, one major form of understanding that arises in our lives when we accept and cooperate with whatever is happening is the wonders of 20/20 hindsight. Things often don’t make any kind of sense when we go through them, but later we can be filled with wonder at the perfection of what has happened and how meaningful it is to us.
Sometimes I just can’t get to square one with acceptance at all, for what seems like a lifetime and understanding is inconceivable. Many of my biggest life lessons have been this kind of struggle. When I am really lucky, a miracle of grace presents me with the opportunity to understand the situation first. In these cases the acceptance and cooperation follow easily. Here is an example that relates to my belief in karma, reincarnation and our essential identity as souls.
I had an extremely difficult relationship with my father. As a child, I could never please him. At the age of 7, I overheard him tell my mother that he loved my brother and sister, but I bugged him. I carried that as proof that he didn’t love me until my 50s. Then, several years after my father’s death, I had an extraordinary spiritual understanding that instantaneously freed me of my anger toward him. I was in a class doing a guided visualization process intended to bring forward deeper awareness of ourselves as souls. In the theater of my mind, I found myself sitting in a circle with my spiritual support team with an empty guest chair. My father appeared and took that chair. I became enraged, yelling at him that he had no right entering my safe and sacred spiritual circle of support. He was silent and sat there, somewhat humbly. I raged on, confronting him with his lack of love toward me all our shared lives together, saying how much he had hurt and wounded me and that I was now moving on with people who loved and supported me, and he was not welcome, and I wanted him to leave immediately.
One of my team members put his arm around my shoulder, and said, “I have an idea.” He suggested that since my father had shown up, perhaps there was some value there for me, and how about if we listen to what he has to say and then I could throw him out if that was still want I wanted to do. Subdued and slightly embarrassed by my tantrum, I acquiesced. I looked at my father and said “OK, so what do you have to say for yourself — why should I let you stay when you never showed me one ounce of love in my entire life?” He winced, and tears fell from his eyes, which shocked and softened me somehow. He looked me straight in the eye and told me he was only doing his job — it was part of his assignment as a soul to be my father, never showing me any signs of love or affection. This was intended to serve as a means of assisting me in learning to turn inward and upward to find my truth rather than seeking it out in the world. Instantly, that made perfect sense to me. My eyes filled with tears, my anger fell away, and something let go within me that had restrained me all my life. Somehow, I knew that what he was saying was true. I also knew that for the first time in my life, I was seeing my father, a fellow human being, as a soul. We were communicating soul to soul, and that changed me forever after. The reality of our essential identities as souls came through in that moment, through that experience, in a way that redefined me.
In that moment, I glimpsed a spiritual reality so profound that it changed my history with my father. I no longer saw him as the heartless, self-centered ogre who could not and would not love me. I realized that as a soul, it had been an extraordinary act of love for him to take on that awful role in my life, knowing that I would hate him, and that he could never demonstrate his love for me or receive love from me. A deep taproot of anger, tension, and self-rejection was pulled out of me in that moment as I rose into my soul and knew us both as innocent and pure souls rather than as damaged people. We were just two sweet souls playing characters whose egos had been out of balance in the karmic dramas of our lives. I finally understood that we were right on course with God’s perfect wisdom, timing, and plan, balancing our karma and learning our lessons.
The Laws of Spirit are governing principles that provide access to the knowledge of ourselves as divine as well as human beings. In order to access our deeper spiritual truth, we must learn to accept, cooperate with and learn to understand even the most challenging people, situations, and circumstances in our lives. They guide us through a process of surrender that enables us to trust ourselves and God. Without this journey, we are left to live lives defined merely by our personalities, human faculties, and desires. It is the spiritual dimension that provides awesome meaning to our lives. The Laws of Spirit serve as the gateways to that dimension.
I hope you will tune in next week for the fourth Law of Spirit — loving. Until then, I look forward to your responses and reactions to this piece.
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