The Inner Teacher
All my writings are of an intuitive nature. They represent a flow of consciousness that is like a river and like any river this one must be allowed to find its own way. The same as my writings, my beliefs and understanding have their origin in my inner guidance, the only truly trustworthy teacher and guru in the whole of Creation.
This does not make me in any way exceptional. Everybody has this inner teacher and to be guided by it is every soul’s birthright. Its guidance has nothing to do with outside forces; it rises from the very depth of everyone’s own being, where our Highest or God Self dwells. It knows the way of all things and is always waiting to give us feedback as to what is right or wrong in any situation. There’s a snag though! It speaks to us through the world of our feelings and can only be contacted through them.
Many men are finding it difficult to get in touch with their inner teacher, because in the past they were not encouraged to stay in touch with and acknowledge their feelings. This is a dangerous practice! Those who persistently neglect and therefore fail to respond to the guidance that comes to them through their emotions are courting the hazard of falling prey to deep depressions, which are caused by leftover feelings from the undigested traumatic events of past experiences.
Some of them are likely to be from earlier during this lifetime, but their main bulk has almost certainly been accumulated in the course of a great many previous ones. Ever more memories of unresolved issues and their accompanying feelings have in this way accumulated inside us. Those from earlier during our present earthly sojourn have been piled on top of even older ones. There is only one purpose that all these memories are serving by now; they are waiting to be looked at, dealt with and then discharged.
The residues of the feelings that are too difficult for us to handle, at any given moment, always leave an imprint behind on the memories of our soul. For a while, maybe for many lifetimes, they thus remain tucked away in our subconscious. There they wait patiently until the earthly self, at some stage in its spiritual development, wakes up from its spiritual slumbers and starts working on their release.
When that moment has come the past must be dealt with by us; it will then no longer tolerate being pushed away, buried and forgotten. Many of our most difficult memories, having left their imprints on our souls, demand our attention and want to be healed. We need to work our way through them and, through a renewed understanding of the higher purpose that lies behind all life and every one of its experiences, find the kind of forgiveness that comes from the very depths of our heart and soul for ourselves and the ones who trespassed against us. This brings healing to our whole being, mind, body, spirit and soul.
The first step on this healing journey consists of a very careful and honest look at our inner life and the world of our feelings, always bearing in mind that we are here to seek healing for the wounds we received in the course of all lifetimes, not just one or two but many. To find it, everything that surfaces has to be accepted. Before God, i.e. in our perception of the nature of God, we all stand alone and each must work on their own salvation. This means looking for ways of dissolving every last shred of the unpleasant soul memories we have brought from previous lifetimes into this one, so once and for all they can be shed.
That is the reason why, at certain times, some of our most ancient soul memories in the form of our feelings begin to knock ever more urgently at the door of our consciousness and rise to its surface. They are not doing this to hurt or harm us in any way, but merely to remind us that they are there. In truth, they are saying: ‘Look at me! Pay attention to me; you don’t need me any more; let me go and release me! Set yourself free from the past and from me.’ But it is difficult to recognise this because some of the feelings that come can be so unpleasant and frightening that, rather than facing them and dealing with them, we turn heel and try to run away from them. Constantly reminding myself that they are just feelings and not real, shadows of past realities, and nothing more, I find most helpful in such situations.
Trying to reason them away with intellectual jargon and arguments is probably the most counterproductive approach altogether, as it can bring neither the wisdom nor the healing that is the very purpose of our being in this life. The only way the earthly self can find the true enlightenment that will release it from its prison of darkness and depression is not by talking endlessly about enlightenment. The emptying process, which the mystics of all ages have known and talked about, is something that every soul must eventually go through at some stage in its long evolution. For many the time for doing so has come.
Staying with our feelings and fully experiencing the events of times long gone by once again, though in a somewhat milder form, creates fresh opportunities for finding enlightenment, i.e. new understanding. It is highly unlikely that this will ever come to people who would rather read and talk about illumination than actively working on finding it. In my view it is far more constructive to surrender our feelings to our Highest Self and ask for Its help with shedding all unpleasant ones from our soul consciousness, once and for all.
That, in my view, is the only safe way any one of us can sensibly expect to find the wisdom and growth we are all in this life to search, since the moment we came away from God. As our perception of life slowly changes and we make peace with our soul, we find the healing that is the main purpose and the final aim of our earthly existence. As pointed out earlier, shortcuts and quick fixes do not exist on the spiritual pathway through life and the reason for this is a very simple one, as explained in the following chapter.
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The above is a chapter from ‘The Spiritual Aspects Of Depression And Suicide’
.If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘The Spiritual Aspects Of Depression And Suicide’
