We are stubborn creatures. If we refuse to learn in bliss, we most certainly will learn by amiss. Each trial is a potential stepping-stone to greatness, just as passing each test in school allows a student to graduate to more difficult grades, with increasing rewards for each success. Logically, the student then becomes the teacher for those below, as these lessons are mastered.
A stone rolling down a hill will continue downward. A cloud rising upward will continue up. Is the one good and the other bad? Thoughts moving away from Divine order are increasingly chaotic over time and distance, introducing elements of disorder to our lives.
Pain has the lesson of pleasure at its core, and pleasure also speaks intimately of pain. One cannot exist without the other, just as ‘hot’ cannot be without ‘cold.’
Any perceived excess generates imbalance, with a resulting stress upon the system as a whole. Excessive eating, worry, stimulation or sloth will cause ‘defects’ in our body structure. ‘Dis-ease’ itself is a process of too much and too little – function out of time with need – like a tyre out of balance that wobbles as it spins.
I was born on Thanksgiving Day — my mother, it would seem, wanted me to be a grateful person. One day, when I was about four years old, she sat on my bed, leaned over to me and said, ‘Son, you must always count your blessings because those who count their blessings and are grateful for their life, receive more to be grateful for.’
Our private and public experiences enter our lives through the gate of our ‘dominant thought’, even though this connection may be invisible to us.
True prosperity is the inevitable reward for a willingness to walk the path of service with Love, to open our hearts to the magnificence of our Universe.
Our sense of true self-worth is the natural product of Love and gratitude for Divine order. In contrast, the drive for materialism without spiritualism, compels a lingering need for hard countable wealth; its luxury and enjoyment always seems to be offset by the calculation, ‘Is this enough now?’