Lesson 131
No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.
Failure is all about you while you seek for goals that cannot be achieved. You look for permanence in the impermanent, for love where there is none, for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching, and the place to which he comes to find stability?
Goals that are meaningless are not attained. There is no way to reach them, for the means by which you strive for them are meaningless as they are. Who can use such senseless means, and hope through them to gain in anything? Where can they lead? And what could they achieve that offers any hope of being real? Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security, while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made.
Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for. But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search, unless you give it power to do so. Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one that comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want.
Be glad that search you must. Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven, and must find the goal you really want. No one can fail to want this goal and reach it in the end. God’s Son can not seek vainly, though he try to force delay, deceive himself and think that it is hell he seeks. When he is wrong, he finds correction. When he wanders off, he is led back to his appointed task.
No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. You will find Heaven. Everything you seek but this will fall away. Yet not because it has been taken from you. It will go because you do not want it. You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness.
Why wait for Heaven? It is here today. Time is the great illusion it is past or in the future. Yet this cannot be, if it is where God wills His Son to be. How could the Will of God be in the past, or yet to happen? What He wills is now, without a past and wholly futureless. It is as far removed from time as is a tiny candle from a distant star, or what you chose from what you really want.
Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other’s sorry outcome which is Heaven’s opposite in every way.
God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two. How could it be His Son could be in hell, when God Himself established him in Heaven? Could he lose what the Eternal Will has given him to be his home forever? Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon God’s single purpose. He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now, beyond the reach of time.
Today we will not choose a paradox in place of truth. How could the Son of God make time to take away the Will of God? He thus denies himself, and contradicts what has no opposite. He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find.
Leave foolish thoughts like these behind today, and turn your mind to true ideas instead. No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth, and it is truth we seek to reach today. We will devote ten minutes to this goal three times today, and we will ask to see the rising of the real world to replace the foolish images that we hold dear, with true ideas arising in the place of thoughts that have no meaning, no effect, and neither source nor substance in the truth.
This we acknowledge as we start upon our practice periods. Begin with this:
I ask to see a different world, and think a different kind of
thought from those I made. The world I seek I did not make
alone, the thoughts I want to think are not my own.
For several minutes watch your mind and see, although your eyes are closed, the senseless world you think is real. Review the thoughts as well which are compatible with such a world, and which you think are true. Then let them go, and sink below them to the holy place where they can enter not. There is a door beneath them in your mind, which you could not completely lock to hide what lies beyond.
Seek for that door and find it. But before you try to open it, remind yourself no one can fail who seeks to reach the truth. And it is this request you make today. Nothing but this has any meaning now; no other goal is valued now nor sought, nothing before this door you really want, and only what lies past it do you seek.
Put out your hand, and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes, and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams.
You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you, that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it, to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here, and all the seeking of the world, which end together as you pass beyond the door.
Remember often that today should be a time of special gladness, and refrain from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. Salvation’s time has come. Today is set by Heaven itself to be a time of grace for you and for the world. If you forget this happy fact, remind yourself with this:
Today I seek and find all that I want.
My single purpose offers it to me.
No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.
Journal
“Be glad that search you must. Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven, and must find the goal you really want.”
“You will find Heaven. Everything you seek but this will fall away. Yet not because it has been taken from you. It will go because you do not want it.”
“Why wait for Heaven? It is here today.”
“How could it be His Son could be in hell, when God Himself established him in Heaven?”
“I ask to see a different world, and think a different kind of thought from those I made. The world I seek I did not make alone, the thoughts I want to think are not my own.”
“You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you, that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it, to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here, and all the seeking of the world, which end together as you pass beyond the door.”
Wow! That was quite a meditation. I went into it as the holy endeavor it was, seeking to end my searching, seeking to enter that sacred room. I don’t really want to try to put words to this experience. It was different than anything I have done before. I still feel the effect even now.
Regina’s Tips
It is very good news that “no one can fail who seeks to reach the truth,” but the key in that sentence is that it is the one who seeks that finds. When one is tempted to listen to recommendations to drop seeking, it might be helpful to ask, “How does not seeking serve the ego?”
Based on Jesus’ example of the woman with the lost coin, it seems that Jesus recommends determined seeking. That reminds me of a quote from Nisargadatta Maharaj:
“We discover it by being earnest, by searching, inquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one’s life to this discovery.”
My thoughts
I’m still a little disconnected from my thinking mind right now. I do believe in seeking and have never felt drawn to the idea that seeking is not necessary. I think even in an awakened state one will probably need to remain a seeker, in the sense that awakening is not an end but a true beginning. I am not at that place so I could be wrong.
Past Entry
What is my goal? That is the question to answer if I want to awaken. The world has many goals that will keep me busy but will lead me only deeper into the world. I will be confronted with endless goals but I do not have to accept them. I am free to choose my goal and therefore to choose the world or to choose heaven. Why not choose heaven today?
I haven’t walked through that door yet, but I am going to. In the meantime, I am beginning to see so many little ways that I can choose Heaven as my goal. For the last three days, I have been planting a raised vegetable garden and adding some lovely flowers in my front yard. What I noticed is that by yesterday, my greatest concern had become how much money this is costing.
That worry crept up on me and at first, I didn’t notice how much it was affecting my outlook. This gardening started out as a joyful (heavenly) project and had now turned into a stressful (hellish) undertaking. At first, my goal was to add beauty to my front yard and to enjoy planting vegetables and watching them grow and then enjoying the fruits of my labor. It was a labor of love, driven by love. It was a joyful venture. And that had been my goal.
But when I fell back into an old ego habit of worry, I was setting a new goal, one of fear. I began to focus on lack and to see myself as endangered and needful of defense. Instead of feeling love as I did my garden work, I was feeling stress and regret and resentment. When I began to feel the tension, I knew that something was wrong, and this is when I recognized that I had chosen a goal that would keep me in the illusion and rob me of my happiness.
I quickly changed my mind. Love is all that that I am. And love is all I want to express in every facet of my life. Instantly, I returned to my one goal, which is peace. I felt love for my little squash and tomato plants, and happiness as I remembered how pretty my front yard looks now. Love continued to well up in me and I began to anticipate returning to it as soon as I finished my morning posting and meditation.
You know, maybe I have walked through that door. Maybe I am still hovering in the entranceway, deciding moment to moment if I am ready to fully abandon hell for Heaven. All day, every day, I choose for love or for fear, for God or for ego. While that has always been true, I notice now that in the end, I always decide for God and that choosing for God happens so much faster than it used to.