An Imagined Life

"Your life is not as you imagine it." -- A Course in Miracles

I have somehow always known that nothing is what it seems. From the time we are born we have an advanced radar system for navigating the half-truths we call life. The problem is that we are taught to discount it, and taught that there are others who are much wiser and more experienced than we are that we must listen to. The question to ask is: experienced at what? It takes no experience to know the truth. It only takes listening within. The very thing we have conditioned ourselves not to do.

How can we reverse ourselves in this? First, we must know that every person we encounter is a projected aspect of our own self. At the same time, they are only interacting with their own projection. So there is absolutely no point in trying to understand it 'out there.' Second, we must completely surrender the need to make decisions and order our lives around external feedback and guidance, and be willing to truly listen to the inner Voice. It is your true Self, the Voice of God speaking to you. ACIM says that "God is very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him." The still, small voice won't argue with you. You just have to keep quiet and listen.

Our lives are not as we imagine them. Thank God. But we find them being re-imagined through the lens of our true Self, when we let go of the conditioned external addiction. We find that an organic emergence takes place that fills our lives with meaning and purpose that does not come from without, or from the conditioned self at all. We find an effortless unfolding that is not our doing, but the grace of God.

"The Will of God is One, and all there is. This is your heritage. The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive belong to you." -- A Course in Miracles