Final Lessons

The Introduction to our final lesson says, “We come in honesty to God and say we did not understand, and ask Him to help us learn His lessons, through the Voice of His Own Teacher.”

We are here to let go of our self, which means we cannot rely on our self at all. Clear reasoning can see that as long as we rely on our self, we cannot let go of our self. This is the purpose of coming to know the inner teacher. It gives us something to follow other than the self-centered self.

Most people are not overtly familiar with the inner teacher, because there have been many times in our lives when we dismissed it in favor of our own thinking. Each time we chose our thoughts over intuition, intuition was repressed a little more. That means our thinking is very conscious while our spiritual intuition may be deeply buried beneath the ego. However, this process can be reversed.

By wanting to follow intuition more than thinking, by seeking intuition within and by following intuition when we recognize it, we invite intuition back into our conscious awareness.

As we move forward with Gentle Healing, be prepared to put your thinking aside. Be prepared to put your self aside. To quote Nisargadatta Maharaj:

Try to be, only to be. The all-important word is “try”. Allot enough time daily for sitting quietly and trying, just trying, to go beyond the personality with its addictions and obsessions. Don’t ask how, it cannot be explained. You just keep on trying until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure. What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are; now see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits. This steady resistance against the unnecessary is the secret of success.

Intuition is the alternative to “unnecessary self-identification.”

“Steady resistance against the unnecessary” is not thinking, speaking or acting from self-identification; instead, rest until intuition is known, and then follow the guidance that comes from intuition.

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Final Lessons

The Introduction to the final lesson says, “It is our function to remember Him on earth, as it is given us to be His Own completion in reality. … And shall we not forgive our brother, who can offer this to us? He is the way, the truth, and life that shows the way to us. In him resides salvation, offered us through our forgiveness, given unto him.”

As we approach the gate to Heaven, one thing that will show up in our path along the way are challenging personalities, those that we are willing to shut outside of our heart. Or, if we are not willing to go that far, we are at least willing to disregard them as something less than God. For this tendency, we need to be wary.

Love is a matter for the heart, not the mind. The inner teacher knows how to love. The mind and our prior conditioning does not. That means that whenever we face a challenging personality, we must rely heavily on inner intuition and not rely on the mind at all.

Our thinking is the ego. It’s purpose for any challenging personality that we come across is to keep us securely locked within our own false personality. If you look carefully, you can feel your false personality balloon up when you attend to thoughts about a challenging personality. You may be filled with anxiety, fear, guilt, unworthiness, anger, annoyance, control, righteousness or some other feeling, but it definitely fills up.

Know that every challenging personality you meet is a chance to enhance the ego or deflate it, and then turn carefully, quietly and consistently to inner guidance regarding how you are to be with this one.

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Final Lessons

The Introduction to the final lesson says, “Let us together follow in the way that truth points out to us. … And to this purpose let us dedicate our minds, directing all our thoughts to serve the function of salvation. Unto us the aim is given to forgive the world.”

Yesterday I addressed the spiritual persona. Today, I would like to address the political persona. It is a tricky ego persona that gets in the way of “directing all our thoughts to serve the function of salvation” and keeps us from forgiving the world.

Spiritual students sometimes lose all clarity when it comes to politics or pet political issues like the environment, women’s rights, minorities’ rights, etcetera. They may argue that their emotional involvement is coming from compassion, but there is a distinct difference between compassion and the political ego.

Compassion comes from the right-mind. Compassion can move us to become involved in world-issues in some helpful way, but it is humble in feeling and non-judgmental in thought. It accepts the world as it is, does not pick one side over another and acts with right-action too. This is a balance the ego cannot maintain.

In contrast, the political ego is typically aggressive in some way. Its thought system is filled with judgment and attack.

For example, compassion for displaced refugees might give money to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or volunteer in refugee camps, but it is able to do these things without attacking the President for his refugee policy.

On the other hand, the political ego is very judgmental. It feels right in its point of view and sees others as wrong. In fact, the tricky political ego often does nothing at all to help; it only attacks. It might attack the President in Facebook for his refugee policy without taking any positive action or giving any money to help people who are currently having the refugee experience. The political ego is not as concerned with helping the world as it pretends. Its primary interest is taking a stand. In its own way, it wages war from its point of view.

To be moved by compassion without taking a stand is an aspect of humility. A stand, regardless of what the stand is, is ego’s way, not salvation’s way.

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Final Lessons

The Introduction to the final lesson says, “His is the only way to find the peace that God has given us. … It is His ending to the dream we seek and not our own.”

As you contemplate the final lesson throughout the day today, it is also helpful to contemplate this excerpt from the Introduction. We seek “His ending” and “not our own.”

Recently I read The Final Understanding by Floyd Henderson. In that book, he wrote:

So many take their favorite teaching method and its teachings as the final step, adopting a religious or spiritual persona and fixating in that role for the remainder of the manifestation…doing spiritual stuff and eating spiritual stuff and wearing spiritual stuff and—in all of their spiritual doingness—living in what they take to be a most non-natural, supernatural, “elevated,” “higher” (and yes, “separate and different”) manner.

In other words, the ego can play the spiritual game. It can believe the teachings and imagine itself living them. The ego gets a sense of satisfaction out of being the spiritual one. However, we aren’t seeking a new game for the ego to play. We do not seek an elevated, spiritual persona or even an elevated, spiritual community. We seek “His ending” and “not our own.”

Let humility be the name of our game. We are students until the very end (even if we happen to be placed in a teaching role).

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