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Chapter II Discovering
Your Inner Advisor To
rediscover the “secret” of precision guidance for healing and
happiness, you must enlist the help of your Higher Power God as you
understand Him. As surely as any downinthegutter drunk, you need
to ask the Source of all wisdom to shine Light on your darkened
selfunderstanding. Dr. David Bresler, while director of the U.C.L.A.
Chronic Pain Clinic, demonstrated the power of this Power in the arena
of applied medicine. He developed a program for the relief of pain, a
system available to anyone that medicine or surgery couldn’t touch.
It realized a 97 percent success rate. Within the walls of that modern
medical facility he taught his patients an ancient truth : We have a
Source of information and healing within. It only awaits our recognition and response. Call It what you will, it doesn’t seem to
matter. Bresler refers to it as your “Inner Advisor.” Others prefer
“the Voice for God within.” In Evangelical Christianity, the
religious tradition of my youth, it is called “The Holy Spirit.”
They all refer to the same Master Mind which can guide our minds if we
permit It. Great
Historic Witnesses To The Power of Our Inner Advisor Great
souls have known this secret of peace and happiness from antiquity.
Socrates, than whom there is none greater in the ancient Greek world, is
one such witness. He gave clear testimony to this inner Voice before his
death in the
5th century B.C. He had been warning the youth of the citystate of
Athens that they would destroy
their world if they didn’t abandon the dissolute life their parents
were living. Public
outrage against him led to his trial before the Athenian Senate. The
senators told him that if he didn’t cease and desist his
rabblerousing insurrection, he would be sentenced to death by lethal
ingestion, a cup of hemlock. Socrates’ response, recorded by Plato,
revealed the Source of his ethical and spiritual certainty. He told the
Senators that a ‘Spirit’ spoke to him each day and faithfully warned
him if he was to face any misfortune. Since he had received no such
warning that day and he was about to be put to death, he confidently
concluded that what lay beyond death is good! Reaffirming his message to
the youth of his day, with a tranquility that baffled and troubled his
executioners, he drank the deadly potion and embraced his immortality.
Such illumined guidance makes the shadow of death or any other Shadow
impossible. Boundless happiness is always its gift. Spiritual
Mastery And Our Inner Advisor Five
hundred years later, Jesus perfected this response. “I do nothing of
myself,” he told the confused witnesses to his spiritual genius, “I
do only what the Father gives me to do.” Out of this guidance emerged
a life of unparalleled happiness and power. It is foolish of us, don’t you think, to blindly stumble
through life with what amounts to little more than educated guesswork,
at best, when such precision guidance is available? Your
Custom Made Inner Advisor What
is noteworthy about Bresler’s approach is that he removes the idea of
spiritual guidance from the exclusive arena of sectarian religion.
Through a process of visualization, he taught his patients to discover
their Inner Advisor in whatever form they were able to accept. This is
important. Many seekers after truth are not up to pursuing mystical
enlightenment. The idea of angels, spiritual messengers or the Holy
Spirit leaves them confused or turned off. For some people who were
cursed in childhood by hypocritical and loveless religion, the
religious world itself is their Shadow.
There are even more good people who are tired of religious
dogmatists who believe they have the whole ocean of God’s truth in
their little, religious teapot. They
identify with Woody Allen who said, “ I was walking down the street
the other day when someone threw a Bible at me. Fortunately, the Bible
hit a bullet in my pocket, and the bullet saved my life!” For such
walking wounded, Bresler’s approach is a loving path to inner
guidance. A
patient with such a skeptical mentality came to Dr. Bresler’s pain
clinic. She was a bright, left hemisphere research chemist dedicated to
empirical science, not spirituality. She was directed to his clinic
because of chronic migraine headaches. Using guided affective imagery,
Bresler asked her to visualize an inner advisor. Let it be anything a
person, an animal or even something inanimate. She imagined herself in
a lovely natural setting, a forest. After a moment she said, “I see
him. He’s a green leprechaun!” “What
is the leprechaun’s name?” Pausing again, she replied, “He said
his name is ‘Harvey.’” He
instructed her to ask Harvey what she should do to relieve her
migraines. Her response was recorded for later transcription, the
protocol with each patient in the program. The material Harvey covered
had to do with emotions, diet, and some recommended daily disciplines. A
panel of physicians reviewed the material, deemed it appropriate and
gave it to her to apply. Six
weeks later she returned to the clinic and informed Dr. Bresler that she
had not had any headaches since applying Harvey’s advice. “But,”
she protested, “since you said that Harvey was a part of me, why do I
need to go to a silly leprechaun for advice? Why not just go to me?”
Bresler knew where to get the answer. “Why don’t you ask Harvey?”
he said. She closed her eyes and went to her imaginary trysting place.
There stood her green clad sage. “Why
did I need to come to you for advice?” Your
Contact With The Infinite She
sat silently awaiting his reply. Then with a tone of amazement she said,
“Harvey is holding a bright ball of light in his hands. The ball is
spinning at a high rate of speed. A rainbow of colors is spinning off
the surface of the ball.” The patient’s head recoiled slightly
backwards. “The ball just exploded and Harvey is saying... ‘I’m
your contact with the Infinite. Are there any more questions?’”
Contact
with the Infinite. That was her need and ours. This Contact will meet
us where we are in our development. Availability has nothing to do
with being spiritual. We are all totally spiritual. What decides
how and how well we hear the Voice for God in each of us is how
thoroughly we know our spirituality. Suiting
Guidance To Your Understanding If
you want answers but question your capacity to make contact with the
Infinite, you will be given answers in a way that is suitable to you, free
of fear. As parents we know
how to address a child on its level of understanding and vocabulary. Say
your little child falls down and scrapes his knee. You may have a wealth
of information the child can’t use and doesn’t need. The wound is homeostatic. Macrophages will clot the blood, building new tissue. Tcells
will fight infection. This means nothing to a child mind. Loving wisdom dictates a simpler approach. You kiss the
“boo boo,” gently bathe and disinfect it and apply a band aid
(preferably one with Barney dinosaurs printed on it). The Infinite Source
of all wisdom relates to us with that same compassion. What we receive
will always be tailored to our capacity to accept and understand. The
Voice for God in us reflects it Source.
It is love as God is love. Dr. Deepak Chopra said that when he
gives lectures in medical schools, he defines God as “a nonlocal
field of information with selfreferral cybernetic feedback loops.”
That may be a helpful description for many medical students. However, Love
would speak in quite different terms to Moses. He stood before a burning
bush, aflame but not consumed. Out of the fire came a Voice. When he asked
the identity of the incendiary theophany, it said, “I am. I am that I
am.” It profoundly communicated to Pharaoh when Moses ordered, “In
that Name I command, let my people go!” That Name was carefully crafted
divine guidance that would redirect history. It sent down roots that to
this day feed the finer, enlightened spiritual foliage of our world. But
don’t be intimidated by such grand moments of divine communication.
Remember the jackass who spoke to the Biblical prophet Balaam. In the
story a jackass was used to communicate with a person who was stubborn as
a mule. It shows to what lengths our Inner Guide will go to get the
message across to us when we want guidance but our egos resist. The
One Requirement For Guidance There
is only one requirement: we must commit ourselves to truth. Without
equivocation, we must will to eliminate the Shadows that keep us from
releasing our imprisoned splendor. The atheist or agnostic may say without
reference to God, “I will to know the truth.” The one who knows God,
other than by hearsay, may affirm, “I will to know and do the will of
God.” Both statements say the same thing and will realize the same
results. What determines the clarity of the guidance received is
never theology, but intention. What is your purpose?
Is your intention to know the truth undivided? If the will to be
guided is not a passion, you need only to will that it be so. If you
question the purity of your purpose, again, will that it be made pure.
That
is all. Be willing to be made willing. The whole of God’s love and power
stands ready to assist anyone who so much as whispers the thought that
they are willing to be made willing to know and live the truth. Your
will is the most powerful and decisive part of your consciousness; it is
the most Godlike. It is the rudder of the craft of your life. When you
will to align your will with God’s, you will discover direction so
profound and precise that your life will be effortlessly transformed.
Turned around, you will be brought to a safe haven of peace and happiness.
As
you seek to implement this power, do not confuse the will with wishful
thinking. The latter arises from the subconscious. Its source is the
ego. Its goal is selfgratification without regard for God or others: I
want something because it appears pleasurable. This attitude deepens
Shadows. It never dispels them. In fact, the ego is the proud sponsor of
all our Shadows. It is the one part of our consciousness that will do
anything. It will lie, deceive, disrupt, anything to hold on to our deadly
Shadows. Psychoanalysis
As Egoanalysis Freudian
analysis is essentially the study of the ego. “Psychology” derives
from the Greek word “psuche” meaning “soul” the study of the
soul. Ironically, it developed into anything but that. Rather, it became
the study of the ego madness and illusions of a group of upper middle
class Viennese neurotics. Freud’s
analysis was masterful. He describes the insanity of the ego world
perfectly. From the study of his patients he concluded that the basic
human drive was pleasure. This lies at the heart of the ego’s wishful
thinking. Replace the word “ego” for “human” as he describes our
insanity, and his conclusions are flawless. Pleasure is our ego’s
basic drive. His next logical deduction is equally accurate. He perceived
that the human consciousness is “necrotic.” That is, we all live with
an unconscious death wish. He missed the human psyche, our soul,
completely, which has the will and capacity to live forever. But as an
analysis of the ego, Freud’s conclusion was brilliant. Pleasure is the
flip side of pain and death. The road the ego’s wishful thinking builds
always dead ends at a graveyard. Our
will, on the other hand, emanates from the mind of God. It doesn’t have
the words necrotic, death or suffering in its glossary. Its goal is to
lead us to life, love and joy. The
will’s home is our soul, our spirit created in the image of God. Our
soul knows who we are. Our ego doesn’t have a clue. In its delusion and
blindness, it fearfully exalts our momentary little whitecap. Our
fathomless Self witnesses to all, “God is love; therefore I am love. God
creates; therefore, I create.” Your
soul knows that you are one with the whole Ocean of Life. It knows that
you, the you that wills to be one with God and every living thing, are an
infinitely powerful Child of the Eternal. It
knows that you were created by your Creator to create through perfect
love and infinite wisdom. Your Shadows hide this Reality. That is why the
first step toward the manifestation of your true splendor is to will to face each
diabolic
dark cloud in the subconscious. |
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