The Spiritual Secret to Defeating Discouragement
As we all know, there are trying times when states of discouragement literally dog us – following us around as if they’re waiting for us to fall down, never to rise again.
On these days, our own lackluster emotions are hounded by thoughts barking at us that nothing is right with our lives. On these same days, even our smallest wish to part ways with these painful states gets pushed under by waves of doubt so that our resolve to not sink into a malaise feels like a futile struggle against the inevitable!
When falling into deeper and deeper states of feeling discouraged, we can almost hear these unspoken words within, “What’s the point? Why bother?” Then, as though we have heard from the Fates themselves, we accept the dreariness of some “can’t do” negative state as our guide. Is this how it must be? Must we identify ourselves with what discourages us? The answer to these questions is decidedly no!
Negative states, all dark energies that enervate us, only succeed at draining us because they are capable of making us see mentally and emotionally charged images of past defeats. These images, drawn from the storehouse of our memories, seem so real that they validate the existence of our negative conclusions, which brings us to a key lesson deserving of our special attention.
The only power dark, discouraging states hold over us is that they get us to identify with feelings of being powerless. And when such strong feelings of futility are accompanied by what is seen in our own mind’s eye as being valid, then boom! The trap is sprung. We become the unwitting captives of our own negative imagination! Had enough of feeling like you are never enough? Good! Let the following truths do their healing work.
First, we must know in our hearts that our True Nature is not created to live as a captive of any dark condition. If you have never heard this before, then hear it now: no power on earth can restrain the soul that seeks its liberation in the uncontainable truth.
Next we realize, to whatever depth we can conceive, that our own awareness is a living and intelligent feature of the ever-present Now within which it dwells – and that this same timeless Now is omnipresent. It dwells everywhere already, knowing no boundaries. And here we catch a glimpse of another timeless truth: nothing in the universe can capture our awareness any more than a cloud has the power to envelop the sky.
What these last few discoveries teach us is that our awareness of discouragement, or any negative state for that matter, transcends its boundary and already dwells beyond the limits of its confining darkness.
This brings us to this discouragement-busting truth: whenever we will lend our attention to the inner task of working to transcend some dark state at work within us, then in that same moment, even if we don’t see the immediate fruits of our effort, we will have already begun to release ourselves from its restrictions.
For our effort to be conscious of our condition instead of remaining its captive, fresh energies flood over and through us, lifting us into the new understanding that who we really are can never be held back! Our willingness to bring that dark, discouraged state into our awareness of it, instead of allowing it to define what we are aware of, has changed our very relationship with life!
Now the upward path ahead, which was closed off to us only a moment before, opens wide its narrow gate as we open ourselves to the endless resources of a Living Truth.
The Now nature newly active within us cannot be walled in by anything, which means that the limitations of former restrictions no longer exist for us. The darkness that once dominated us is literally dismissed because we have chosen the Living Light itself to be our advocate.
So now we know: the Way is already made for us to live in perfect contentment; we need never again suffer for no reason. More than this, we may take great comfort in knowing that nothing in the universe can stop us from realizing this victorious order of our own being, because the Divine has already seen to the truth of it. We need only agree to pay the cost of this higher consciousness, and we will find that the coins we need are already right there in our pocket.
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About the Author
Guy Finley is the best-selling author of more than 40 books and audio albums on self-realization. He is the founder and director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for self-study located in southern Oregon where he gives talks four times each week. For more information, visit www.guyfinley.org.
