| Dear Friends, This week's quote is from spiritual awareness class CC 46, which was published in Volume 3 of The Living Light Dialogue. This teaching was selected in response to a request for more understanding regarding anger. This is Part 2 of a long quote. Part 1 was provided last week. For those who have recently joined, if you would like a copy of Part 1, just email your request.
"Now, we all know that it is not beneficial to our soul and to our mind to entertain thoughts of guilt. Now, when we think that it is not spiritual to express the functions, when we entertain that kind of thinking, we're no longer spiritual. My good friends, our Spirit, God, the Divine, is expressing through a physical form, a mental form, an astral form, and several other forms here, this moment. And if we think that we are only spiritual when we no longer express our sense functions, then we have lost the true meaning of spirituality. If that were the case, surely the Divine Intelligence would not be expressing through sense functions. What we are trying to teach here is a balance between our sense functions, of course, and our soul faculties. Because that is just a direction of the energy.
You see, now we're speaking here, of course, I understand, on anger. Why does a person express anger? What is it that truly motivates them? Let us think for a moment. Is it because things in our life are not going our way or the way that we think is best? Or is it because someone that we are associated with in some way isn't doing what we think they should be doing? You see, my friends, it goes right back to the one basic teaching: self-awareness, self-control. Because, my friends, the reason that we express energy through the function known as anger is because we are expressing our soul consciousness through a level of consciousness known as judgment. We have decided how things should be in our life! We have decided how people associated with us should think, should act, and even how they should dress. That, my friends, is where we get these emotional outbursts. We get them because we have judged in here and we have decided not only what is best for ourselves, but what is best for the world.
Remember, friends, the moment that you or I or anyone else decides what's best for our life, that guarantees the day, the moment, when we will decide what is best for somebody else's life. And when we get onto that treadmill, believe me, we become absolutely miserable, because we're in a constant state of turmoil. A constant state of turmoil.
Now, we've spoken in these classes before on self-will and divine will. Well, what's the difference? What is the difference? Well, it's really quite simple, I think, myself—it's my own understanding, but I'll share it with you. Knowledge knows much—and that's called the brain—but wisdom knows better— and that's called the Spirit, God, the Divine.
Now, when we look through life and we see that we've put our efforts here, we've put our energy there, and it hasn't turned out just the way that we think it should have—but, don't you see, my friends, we're not a brand new soul that came direct from God and that came to this old earth realm. We are an evolving, expanding, individualized soul that has stumbled along the way through untold centuries, that has merited this life, this experience, this moment. So man decides he wants this and he wants that. Man decides what's best in his life and he makes all of those decisions. He thinks he's making those decisions. The truth of the matter is, he isn't. What is truly making those decisions are the patterns of mind that we have become addicted to. That's the great sadness.
Now, when we try to make the effort to release what we decide is best in life, when we really make that effort and become receptive to an infinite intelligence, then our ship will sail serene on the sea of time. It doesn't mean that we won't have some experiences, because we've already set those laws into motion. But if we will stick with it long enough, then we will see the change and the transformation, because we have let God move into our lives. But that takes, my friends, a little bit of faith, poise, and humility. And that is the second soul faculty."
Although this quote touches on many topics, with regard to anger, the key teaching for me is that we express anger when people we are interacting with behave in a way that is contrary to our judgments about how they should behave. Anger is not an expression of our soul, but it is an expression of our judgments. It is often an attempt by our judgments for force another to behave in a way that our judgments dictate and it is often a retaliation. But people have a right to express and behave as they choose. People can be considerate or as inconsiderate as they choose; that is their right. And the more we grant them that right, even if it's just for 60 seconds, the less anger we express and the more harmonious our lives become.
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Sincerely yours, Russell Fitzgerald Vice President |
