When unconscious beliefs are not brought to the forefront of our minds to be looked at and released, the past replays itself over and over. This is no life. It is like being a robot—getting up in the morning, brushing your teeth, getting ready for work, and just going through the motions. How many of us get up in the morning, sit up in bed, and ask: “What is the nature of reality? I do not even want to brush my teeth until I get a handle on this!”

Later, you click into gear, and maybe during your lunch hour or sometime at work, you will have questions like, “What am I doing here? What is the purpose of any of this?” Often these questions get brushed aside by all the things you think you have to do, the so-called “practical things” that get in the way of investigating more deeply. But you can’t get to a state of peace until you let go of the beliefs that are blocking your awareness and experience of it.

All We Need Is Willingness

We need a willingness to heal our mind. We need to be willing to see where we say no to peace. In fact, we only need willingness. We do not need intelligence, we do not need lots of money, and we do not need lots of skills and abilities—all the things that the world says are essential. In my life, I did not have a lot of money, and I did not feel like I had a lot of skills, but I know I was very, very willing to be shown, to let the doors be opened. If you come to God with willingness and sincerity, then watch out: it will knock your socks off! You will arrive at an experience of peace, freedom, and clarity that you had never imagined or ever thought was possible. You will truly know who you are.

Like I mentioned previously, the ego is bent on outcomes in form, on setting specific external goals and then striving to achieve them. In doing that, we’re still not happy. Then the quest becomes, “What is next?” The game of “I will be happy when” goes on and on. Eventually, we realize how powerful it is that peace is just a decision. Why not have peace of mind be our goal?

What Are We Really Asking For?

It’s not in our conscious awareness that peace is always there, rather it is buried deep within our minds, covered over by beliefs and attachments. Therefore, our way to peace must always involve the very rewarding undertaking of uncovering of beliefs.

Someone once asked me: “You say we all get what we want. I have a friend who would not agree with you. She is forty-five years old, she has always wanted a husband and a child, and she has not gotten them. She is praying, and we say to her, ‘Leave it up to God,’ but you say that we get things even if it’s our ego that wishes it. So, what would you say to her?”

No matter what seems to be going on in specifics, on the surface, or in our hearts, we never really ask for “things.” What we are really always asking for is an experience or a state of mind. You could ask your friend questions like, “What is your experience?” and if she said, “Well, I’m lonely. I want a husband and a child because I want something to fill my life up. I want a feeling of joining, of connection. I want to share my life with someone. I want to share the joys of being a parent.” She could start to see that there is a belief of lack in her mind. It is this belief that leads to the experience of loneliness, feeling isolated, or feeling empty and unfulfilled. She may express things like, “Okay, I’m feeling empty, a bit alone, and unfulfilled.” The way her life and the world look for her is a reflection of those feelings.

When we feel this emptiness, isolation, and loneliness, it is not the way it looks in the world that is causing us to feel this way. It is not our circumstances of being single or married, for example. We are feeling it because that is our state of consciousness. We are feeling that way because of our desire to follow ego beliefs that tell us we are capable of feeling lonely, empty, or isolated. We always get what we ask or pray for. That means we are always getting exactly what we are aligning our mind with. The form of our life is simply an out-picturing of our inner beliefs and desires, bringing witness to an inner state of mind, without exception.

So, this woman who does not want to feel lonely could start working more inwardly to cultivate the experience of a relationship with the Holy Spirit within: releasing the feelings, looking at the beliefs, looking at the thoughts that are running through her mind on a daily basis. And she eventually would say, “The good news is that I’m not a victim. I’m not powerless based on those thoughts.” In fact, we are never powerless in the face of our beliefs because we can change them. We can change our minds in an instant.

She could look at how this is demonstrated in others. All of us have known or met people who are very, very happy and joyful. Some of them are what we would call single, and some of them are what we would call married. Some of them have children; some of them don’t. This shows us that happiness, joy, and love are not circumstance dependent. Nothing is really dependent on the circumstances. Sometimes people can feel very lonely in a crowd, while when they are on a walk in the forest all by themselves, they feel joy and a connection to the whole universe and everyone in it.

Sometimes people say to me, “Yes, David, we see that you are very happy, but that’s just because of your circumstances. If you were married, if you had children, if you had a mortgage, and if you had a boss, let’s see how happy you would be then.” Well, it would be really strange if God would set up a world where some people could have fortunate circumstances and other people could have unfortunate circumstances. Wouldn’t it be much more reasonable to think that whatever world we are perceiving is there by our own choice? We have chosen our life the way we know it. We built it. It is like the little child with the building blocks, making a castle, making a little fort or something, building, and then looking at what has been built. There is really no point in lament- ing circumstances. They are there by decision. On an unconscious level, they have been chosen. We chose everything in our movie the way we preferred it. Even if it seems undesirable to us, on some level, our ego-self wanted it that way. And, of course, this is why you can learn to choose again. You are not locked into circumstances, but by choosing peace more and more consistently, you get a whole new experience of all circumstances and situations. When the woman who feels lonely focuses on getting in touch with her core desire, the experience she wants, rather than on the external circumstances, she will find present connection and fulfillment and therefore cultivate a consistent and stable experience of peace of mind that is not dependent on outer circumstances.

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