INNER LIGHT MInistries Journal Volume 24 Number 3
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December, 2012
Listening Within by Jim Gordon, President of ILM
(from The Inner Pathway, 2/11/03)
ver the course of our soul’s evolution, we’ve created certain belief systems, attitudes, and ways of being. Some of our creations work for us, some of them don’t; but even when they aren’t working for us, we continually repeat them hoping somehow they’ll magically change. “I’ll eat more chocolate cake, and then I’ll lose weight.” As we begin moving from evolution to involution, we’ll start to take personal responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, imagination, and physical creations. We’ll begin to evaluate, “Does doing this repetitive behavior or thought pattern really work for me? Am I getting what I want?” A simple example of this is when I was living in Hawaii. Every time I’d go out to do my errands, I’d unconsciously be thinking, “I can make living here work. Everyone says Hawaii is paradise, it’s the greatest place to live, so they must be right. I know I can make this work,” but it wasn’t working for me. In Hawaii, parking is so limited that you have to wait your turn for a spot to open. As I was waiting, my usual unconscious chatter was prattling on in my head. I suddenly became aware of it and started listening to what it was saying to me. “I can make this work. I know I can make this work.” Out loud, I said, “Wait a minute. Why do I have to make this work? I don’t have to make anything work. I want to be where I’m happy, where it’s easy.” So I asked myself, “Where is that?” The answer – “Back home in Texas.” People I knew said, “Are you crazy?” The struggle that maybe everyone was right and I should stay began its taunt, and rather quickly and unconsciously, I returned to the old thought of “I can make this work. I know I can make this work.” I also returned to feeling miserable. Some part of us is always trying to convince ourselves that we can make living this creation work. “I know I
can make this work. If I just do it right, I can create happiness here.” Being on the Path of Sound and Light, there’s now another voice, maybe a more still voice, that’s saying, “I know where you really want to live, I know where you can truly find happiness, and I’m the one that can tell you.” This voice is the Spirit of you, that which is truly you, who knows where you came from and knows where you shall return. This is the voice of your own soul calling you back Home. It knows this creation is not your Home and knows you are miserable trying to make it work here. So, listen for that voice, and it will begin to resound louder in you, and will lift you out of this creation and into the realms of pure Spirit. In the process of awakening, of going from evolution to involution, we’ll realize that if we want change in our life, we’re the ones to create the change, we’re the ones who will have to do some things differently. The easiest, the simplest, the most direct way to create change is by turning our focus from living more outwardly to living more inwardly. By doing so, we’ll find ourselves complaining less, we’ll stop blaming others for everything “wrong” in our lives, and we’ll seek happiness in the world less often. By holding our focus more on the inner, almost automatically, ways in which to bring about change in our outer lives will begin to come forward. We’ll also become more contemplative, asking questions of ourselves such as, “What do I want to do? Where do I want to go? What do I want to accomplish?” We’ll simplify our life, and align ourselves more to our true self. It’s so simple. All that we are, as a divine spark, is pure Loving. Where “love” is here and then gone, “Loving” continues on; and we’ll continue on. We exist in the purity of Loving beyond time, in the allness of all that is. Until we begin to experience this transitional point from evolution to involution, it’s just a lot of words. If, somewhere inside you, you’re saying, “Through personal responsibility, through taking different actions, through experience, I’m beginning to understand, I’m beginning to know,” then know you’re also beginning to wake up to that which is eternal, your own soul.