LESSON 109. I rest in God.
The universe conspired to teach me this lesson today. I sent a barrage of emails with incorrect dates to a potential guest speaker. I missed correcting emails from Regina. I missed responding emails from the speaker. When everything was said and done, it looks like the speaker may decline the invitation.
What my thoughts said was that I really messed things up; that I was too distracted; that I was foolish for mixing up Eastern Time and Mountain Time; that next time I write these types of emails I should do this and not do that. What I heard was, “I am bad”—maybe not at first, but as the situation devolved, that was what I was left with.
If you asked me about the scenario that was a setup for this lesson, I might say, “I was given an ‘important’ task. I carried it out ‘poorly’ and we did not achieve the results we had hoped for.” That’s not really what happened. Those are all judgments, habits of thinking of the conditioned mind. Within those thoughts there is an “I” who could have succeeded or failed; a task that was more important than others; and a mission or desired outcome.
In my conditioned way of thinking, I judge events by the way in which they affect me or could affect me. If I perceive good effects, I believe that I am “good.” If things don’t work to my benefit, I am bad. In my poorly executed task yielding less than desirable results, the I am bad thought flourished.
This has not been my experience of late. The I am bad thought has become much quieter. I have seen the thought “I am bad because …” many times and rejected it as ridiculous. That was not my experience today.
NTI Luke says, “Sickness must rest and be quiet. This is the way to health. Let your sickness rest.”
This is why we want to rest. When our attention is caught up in our mind’s conditioned thought habits, the neural pathways that are related to those habits are well worn and as slippery as water slides. When we rest from our habitual way of thinking, those same neural pathways begin to dry up. Later, we will experience this as the ability to pause and discern before going into a habitual way of reacting. Or a neural pathway may be completely healed through our rest, and we will notice that our happiness is unaffected by a situation that would have upset us before.
When you rest the mind, realize you are allowing time for healing. Rest during meditation, rest when you happen to notice that thought is all wound up and also rest when you feel an upset.
For myself, today, tomorrow and as often as I am blessed to remember, “I [will] rest in God.”
