This post is a summary of a life help perspective that I refer to as spiritual life help. I consider this spiritual life help perspective — which is influenced and inspired by the works A Course in Miracles and The Infinite Way — in detail in the book Metaphysical Truths: Problems Aren’t Real and also through the life help platform Life Help Journal (LifeHelpJournal.com). I’m putting this post up because I want to provide insight about spiritual life help in an open source way, for those who can’t access it another way or don’t want to. A single post won’t offer as much information as an entire book or a life help platform does, because it’s not as extensive, but I’ll provide the best insight within this space that I can.
A single problem
You might think that you have a particular problem, a single problem that you’re presently dealing with, but it’s very unlikely that you believe that you only ever have a single problem. In other words, you’ve only had one problem in the past, you’ll only have one problem in the future, you only have one problem now, there is only one problem. What is that single problem? Misperception. You are not seeing what is actually there and are seeing what isn’t there. What is actually there is a heaven state; and the reason a heaven state is there is because of God and particular traits of God: God is the only power and is only good. God is not a power of good, God is the only power and is only ever good. This truth of God means two things — first that God is, as the only power, the only creator and that if God doesn’t make something nothing makes it; and two, only blessings come from God. If only God creates and God creates only good then existence must be a heavenly state. But heaven is not what we are experiencing. In fact, many of us are experiencing something closer to hell.
The solution
Is the heaven state somewhere to be found, is it something we have to try and get our way into? No, heaven is at hand now and we all reside there — this must be so if only God creates and God creates only good. The reason we are experiencing inharmony and difficulty, the reason we experience lack and loss and suffering, the reason we witness injustice and catastrophe and the suffering of others, is because we are misperceiving; heaven is there but we’re not experiencing it. This means there’s only one ever one problem: misperception. And there’s only ever one solution: get beyond misperception and experience the truth of what’s there. We don’t need to overcome various problems as these problems, all of them, are only misperception in some form or another. Get clear of misperception and experience truth, that is the only approach that makes sense. The obvious question now is, how do we get clear of misperception? In the spiritual life help approach there are two ways:
– Recognize misperception: Our present response to hardships is to consider them to be real, to be a genuine experience. We are mentally investing in misperception by responding in this way, we are reinforcing misperception and perpetuating it. We are, within our mental realm, giving misperception the power of truth and so granting it truth where it actually has none — God didn’t create it and so it doesn’t actually exist at all. To put misperception in its proper place is to look upon it and, in some way, mentally express and identify that it is unreality.
“God is the one power and God did not create this. This is misperception, this is unreal.”
Come up with your own way of expressing it, a way that feels right to you, but be sure to properly identify misperception when it appears: something that God did not create, that God does not sustain, and so an unreality.
– Recognize God: In spiritual life help recognizing God involves two forms of recognition. First, that God is in our presence and one with us always. God is not a deity that resides in some location separate from us, we are an expression of God and so God is very literally always with us. By acknowledging God’s presence with us we recognize this presence rather than overlooking it or outright denying it. The other form of God recognition is to recognize that God is our source, our source for sustenance and for well-being. Humans are convinced that what we need, and what we want, is found in the world in some form or another: money, a body that looks or feels or acts a certain way, a relationship, whatever else — but whatever it is that we want or need, it is found external of us, in the world, in the physical realm. This cannot be so however if God is the only power that there is. If God is the only power that there is it is literally impossible for what we want or need to be in the world because God, as the only power, has to be the only source. Nothing besides God has any power so how can anything besides God provide? It can’t. Whatever we’re looking for then has to be found in God, and God is within us. As we consider the external, as we consider what seems to be outside of us, and some form of longing or attachment comes up, we can make a conscious effort to mentally interrupt this.
“My well-being does not come from this. My well-being comes from God, and God is within me.”
Those things that we typically believe we need include money, companionship, food and shelter, a healthy body, and more. But none of these things are actually needs if we only have one need — God. If we accomplish our one need, God, then the other things we believe we need will come along with it, as an effect of God. This is, I believe, what Jesus was referring to when he said seek the kingdom and everything will be added.
The challenge
Spiritual life help is not necessarily an easy path. First, it is difficult to believe; then it is difficult to be confronted by hardships and not accept them, and engage them, as if they’re reality. Neither is this a genie in a bottle or make a wish where outcomes quickly and easily turn out the way we want them to. We should have optimism about spiritual life help and how it can help us, but we shouldn’t carry false expectations about our desires being met just as we want them to be. Spiritual life help is mostly about connecting with, coming into alignment with, God because God is our sufficiency. Many of us are convinced that our good is found external of us, within the world. The spiritual life help perspective disagrees and stands fast that our good is found within, in the presence of God. Now there’s a choice to make, a decision to make, on where to look for well-being and how to connect with it. We can attempt to make the world cooperate with our wishes or we can turn to God.
It’s our decision to make.
