If Life Sucks, Put Spirit First

Researchers tell us that we have thousands of thoughts each day. Now how do they know that? It would be funny, if we had a little counter pinned to us; and every time we had a new thought, the counter would give us a little click or zap. Some people say we have as many as 100,000 thoughts a day.

Now, all our thoughts, regardless of how many we have, make up our beliefs. That's where we get them. And, if you were to measure each thought and its direction, you would find that added together, they are the beliefs that you hold about life in general. They are the beliefs that you base your decisions upon. In fact, they are the beliefs upon , which you have built your entire life into what it is today. Beliefs are nothing more than opinions. Your opinions are as good as mine or anyones opinions. And they are opinions that we have formed from information that we have gathered with our intellect, things we have heard, things we have seen, things we have read, things we have learned, etc. Had we been raised in another culture, or another nation, our experiences and thus our beliefs would be much different.

Now, because the bulk of the people in our country seem to feel that we are better than anyone else, we don't need to learn any language but English. Travel around Europe .If you don't believe me, the people in those countries usually speak several languages including English. But, many Americans speak only one language, English. And, I personally think that it is a shame. I think that the people in the other countries are insulted by us. To them it is a kind of put down to their country. They think that we are too lazy to learn their language and most of us probably are. It would behoove us not to be.

Because most of us speak in English and our beliefs are mostly in English, so we tend to think that everyone else should think like we do and they should have the same belief systems that we do. Well, they don't. When Karl and I worked for a few months in Moshi, Tanzania, we lived in a Doctor's compound with mostly people from different countries, English, French, the Netherlands, Germany, even Japan and other Asian countries. It was the year of the Lewinsky/Clinton sex scandal; and their views on the whole thing were entirely different than the general American viewpoint. They thought that our country was crazy to focus so much time and energy on something that they felt was not the business of the population at large.

And, I have to admit that after thinking about it, I think that they may have been correct in their assessment. We spent so much time and energy on this scenario that other more important government business got put on hold for quite some time.

The other countries don't, as I said, always think the same way that we do; thus, they don't have the same belief system that we do. Now we are over in the Middle East and we are trying to get them to think and to believe the same way that we do. How is that working? Not very well.

So when you open your eyes each morning, what do you see? It is the hundreds of thousands of thoughts that you have had every day until today. And the world that you see each and every morning is a result of your thoughts, totally your own beliefs.

If you believe that you must be in a relationship to be happy and you aren't in one, well then what? If you believe that you must have a certain amount of money in your possession to be happy and you don't, well, then what happens? If you believe that you have to have the perfect job or wear the right clothes, or live in the fanciest neighborhood to be happy, and none of these things are happening, well then what?

Contrary to what most people believe, probably not in this room, but most people in our culture believe that the quality of our life and the way that we feel about ourselves is affected and governed by the people around us, basically what the people around us think about us; but, that is not true. That's not true at all. Sometimes I fall into this pit myself. It goes like this: If I could change someone outside of myself, then I'd be happy; but, I know that is not true. If I could make him or her be more like I think they should be, I'd be happy; but, I know I wouldn't be, not in the long run.

We can change things outside of us. Many people have tried. Many have changed husbands or wives; but how has it worked for them? Even if he or she is gone, you are still you when you look in the mirror. And you think, darn, I thought that I had gotten rid of that feeling by divorcing him or her; but, I didn't. The only way that we improve the quality of our lives and our circumstances is to change our own inner beliefs about ourselves, to change our own consciousness.

Now we are looking at prosperity here, not money; but just prosperity, which is the flow of life through you, so you have what you need and want. It is not the flow of cash through your hands, or the flow of romance that is in your world; but rather, it is how we see and experience ourselves. If it's good that's prosperity.

If you have negative thoughts and emotions about yourself, are you going to make very good financial decisions? Are you going to make any good decisions at all? If we are upset or angry at ourselves, are we going to trust our own instincts, which is what we should be doing; or or are we going to make decisions based on our fears, perhaps ask other people what we should do?

If you have poor self esteem, poor self regard, if you have negative thoughts and emotions about yourself, you tend to seek approval from outside yourself. And, what I have discovered is that we will do whatever is necessary to get that approval. We might use alcohol, get ourselves into some tangled romantic situation, even get physically or emotionally sick to fill these needs. What happens is that we make our insecurities our neediness our God. We get way out of step. We're putting our priorities in the wrong place. Have you ever been around people who are really needy? Everyone of us has been needy at one time or another; but here I am talking about the person, who is always needy, always has a problem. And don't you just want to scream. You can't get away from them, fast enough; but you can't do it. They sort of stick like glue. And you know when you are being that way yourself, because you want to get away from yourself as well. So you sleep or you drink or you try drugs or you zone out in front of the TV, a more socially acceptable thing to do; but, its the same thing. It's unproductive. You're blocking yourself from getting anything done.

Unless we put Spirit 1st in our lives, we'll never function peacefully. We have to find some way to change; some way to be productive again. It can be anything we try, as long as it doesn't pull us down.

I can guarantee you this. You can have it all. You can have all the blessings of life that you want, all the blessings of Spirit. It can happen to you right now. All you have to do is change your thinking, change your consciousness. Universal Mind, Infinite Intelligence, Your Higher Power, God, Spirit, these are all names for the same source. That “Power” is waiting to give you every possible thing that you could imagine. The catch is that you have to put that power 1st in your life. You must have that Power 1st above all things, above your lover, above your money, above your children, even above your new house. Remember in the Bible passage that I read a few weeks ago, where I quoted a lawyer, who asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered him this way, “You must let the dead bury the dead, leave everything behind, and follow me. Do what I teach you to do.” No one wants to hear that, of course, I don't want to hear that all the time either; but, I am telling you, it is what works.

Just think, there is never a policeman around, when you need one; but they are always there, when you don't need them. It's similar to this statement. When you don't need anything outside of yourself to be happy, then the flow of the Universe just comes rushing through you. When I need no approval from anyone, I am able to be productive, to write or to paint, it just flows through me, hours go by, and I feel great.

When we are not being driven by our insecurities and our demands, we can flow with the energy of life and opportunities just come to us. We are able to make decisions based on our intuition. And, we continue to feel good about ourselves and our choices.

How difficult is it do you think, to change from chasing your tail and running around in circles to being inner directed? The necessary step has been taught to you, spoken to you, since you have been in a human body, I know that I have said it here. And in this case, it doesn't make any difference, which land you had been born in; for truth is truth in any language. It makes no difference what Religion you practice, for this step is always the same. It is truth and truth comes from the heart. When you can say this statement with all honesty and conviction: “I am personally powerless to improve my life, I need help. I believe that there is a creative power and intelligence responding to me in which all things are possible. It is not I but the Spirit within me that does the work.”; you will finally feel good about yourself.

After a short period of being down the other day, I meditated. I remembered The Mastermind Class in Prosperity from School. That statement that I just said to you was the first step that we were taught. I looked in my notebook from class and found the whole thing. And the 1st step was this sentence, “I admit that I am personally powerless to improve my life, I need help.”

You see until now, we have been trying to live life by ourselves. We thought that we were supposed to do it that way. We remembered statements like, “Be strong, learn to stand on your own two feet.”etc. Yet most of us thought that we still needed a partner of some kind, a Soul Mate to complete us. So we ran around life looking for that perfect physical someone to journey with through life. But that need for a partner is not a partner in a physical sense at all. Your need for a partner is your need to turn to your own inner power, your own Christ Consciousness, we might say in Unity, Your Higher Power, you might say in AA.

Whatever name you call it, in whatever language or Religion you speak doesn't matter to “The Beloved.”

Here's one of our problems: We've all made choices to use coffee, or tea, or chocolate, or worse to smoke, use alcohol, romance, or sex, or terror, or drugs of any kind. It numbs us but that's not why we do it. All the conscious altering items or things that we try are just our attempt to reach the Ultimate without putting God or Spirit 1st. That's all those things are. We're trying to get to the place of comfort without admitting that we are powerless, without putting Spirit 1st. What a sad sorry game we play with ourselves and with each other. What misery we bring to ourselves and to others from our stubbornness and our ignorance to in a way be unwilling to be humble.

We have thousands of thoughts a day. The vast majority of these thoughts are, however, about how we are not good enough, how we don't measure up to some crazy made up standard that we put in our minds. And, if we finally do measure up to that standard, we change the value so that we are not good enough again. We have to have a standard of measurement that does not change. Many people, possibly even here, are part of a 12 step program; so you know about what I am talking. 12 Step programs work because they have a constant, unchanging Spiritual base. The teachings of Unity work because it has a constant unchanging Spiritual base. The teachings of Jesus or the Buddha work for the same reason; they had a constant Spiritual unchanging base. Life is Spiritual.

Yes, we have thousands of thoughts a day. One of them must be, “I admit that I am powerless to improve my life, I need help.” When we say just that much, we open the door for our Spiritual Soul Mate to call the shots. If you want a new car, put God 1st, if you want prosperity in any form, put God 1st, if you want more cash flow, put God 1st, if you want to feel truly good about yourself and your life, put God 1st. There is no other way.

The reason that these words are so powerful is because they are from the heart and they are true: “I admit that I am powerless to improve my life; I need help. There is a Presence and a Power responding to me in which all things are possible. It is not I but the Spirit within me who does it. “These words work. They are very powerful. Try it yourself, if you haven't already and see for yourself what happens.

Namaste,

Barbara