by Gary Zukav
An authentically empowered person lives in love. Love is the energy of the soul. Love is what heals the personality. There is nothing that cannot be healed by love. There is nothing but love.
Love is not a passive state. It is an active force. It is the force of the soul. Love does more than bring peace where there is conflict. It brings a different way of being in the world. It brings harmony and an active interest in the well-being of others. It brings concern and care. It brings Light. It washes away the concerns of the personality. In the Light of love there is only love.
There is a relationship between love and power and the transformation of the quality of experiences that occur within the Earth school as a whole. The type of power that you are trying to transform in yourself is the type of power that needs to be transformed in general upon the Earth. There are numerous, numerous, numerous human beings who are drawn to violence-violent fantasies and violent acts. Most of them essentially center in the fact that the individual himself or herself feels powerless and victimized and, therefore, wants to live, for a brief period of time with one other human being, a sense of being empowered, but there is no genuine power to be found in that area.
It is through the evolution of your own consciousness, through focusing on more and more empowered choices that you create the distance that is necessary between you and your negative emotions, and heal yourself in such a way that violence no longer asserts itself. To heal violence there must be love.
Love is the energy of the soul, and, therefore, the experience of giving and receiving love, of living a life of love, fulfills the personality. It is something that the personality continually reaches for. Reaching for love unconsciously can produce anger and fear. This happens when the personality does not see clearly what it is reaching for, which is the case with addiction.
If you reach for an addictive sexual relationship, for example, you are reaching for love. It is the illusion that you think that you are reaching for something so manly or womanly. You are reaching for love, but you will not admit it and will not deal with it, so there is anger within you because there is a level of energy and emotion that longs to be born but is never given an outlet.
It is emotionally, spiritually impossible to have a sexual connection with a human being and not ignite certain emotional patterns, but they are a continual dead-end street when there is no relationship or true emotional feelings to go with the act. Therefore, there is a level of brutality, frustration, and eventually emotional disease which results in physical illness and breakdown because a significant pattern is being tremendously abused. Remember, you do get what you ask for.
Asking for love is asking for the energy of the soul. It brings with it a genuine concern for the other. You cannot prey upon someone whose well-being is in your heart.
When you seek to impose your intelligence or your way of seeing upon another, you are reaching for love, but you are routing your reach, so to speak, through the wants of your personality. You are seeking external power. There is only emptiness there. When you seek to dominate another you dominate no one but disempower yourself. The less empowered you feel, the more you feel a need to control that which is external. The loving personality seeks not to control, but to nurture, not to dominate, but to empower. Love is the richness and fullness of your soul flowing through you.
Humbleness, forgiveness, clarity and love are the dynamics of freedom. They are the foundations of authentic power.
CHAPTER 16: TRUST
Each soul comes to the Earth with gifts. A soul does not incarnate only to heal and to balance its energy, to pay its karmic debts, but also to contribute its special-ness in specific ways. Each soul brings the particular configuration of the Life force that it is to the needs of the Earth school. It does this with purpose and intention.
Before it incarnates, each soul agrees to perform certain tasks upon the Earth. It enters into a sacred agreement with the Universe to accomplish specific goals. It enters into this commitment in the fullness of its being. That is why when a soul succeeds in accomplishing its goal, in fulfilling what it has agreed to do, there is a richness and a special-ness to the lifetime of that personality that is recognized and honored by its fellow souls, both physical and nonphysical.
Each soul takes upon itself a particular task. It may be the task of raising a family, or communicating ideas through writing, or transforming the consciousness of a community, such as the business community. It may be the task of awakening the awareness of the power of love at the level of nations, or even contributing directly to the evolution of consciousness on a global level. Whatever the task that your soul has agreed to, whatever its contract with the Universe, all of the experiences of your life serve to awaken within you the memory of that contract, and to prepare you to fulfill it.
An unempowered personality cannot complete the task of its soul. It languishes in an inner sense of emptiness. It seeks to fill itself with external power, but that will not satisfy it. This sense of emptiness, or something missing, or of something wrong, cannot be healed by satisfying the wants of the personality. Gratifying needs that are based upon fear will not bring you to the touchstone of purpose. No matter how successful the personality becomes in accomplishing its goals, those goals will not be enough. Eventually it will hunger for the energy of its soul. Only when the personality begins to walk the path that its soul has chosen will it satisfy its hunger.
Authentic empowerment and the fulfillment of the soul’s task upon the Earth, therefore, are not separate dynamics. Authentic empowerment is necessary to accomplish fully the mission of the soul, yet as you move into authentic empowerment, you move toward the fulfillment of your soul’s agreement with the Universe, and as you move toward that fulfillment-as you move consciously toward the energy of your soul-you empower yourself. You and the work of your soul upon the Earth expand together. As one grows and develops, so does the other.
When a soul incarnates, its memory of the agreement that it has made with the Universe becomes soft. It becomes dormant, awaiting the experiences that will activate it. These experiences are not necessarily experiences that the personality would choose. They are nonetheless necessary to the activation of the awareness of the power and the mission of the soul within the consciousness of the personality, and to its preparation for that task.
What does it feel like to remember your soul’s task?
When the deepest part of you becomes engaged in what you are doing, when your activities and actions become gratifying and purposeful, when what you do serves both yourself and others, when you do not tire within but seek the sweet satisfaction of your life and your work, you are doing what you were meant to be doing. The personality that is engaged in the work of its soul is buoyant. It is not burdened with negativity. It does not fear. It experiences purposefulness and meaning. It delights in its work and in others. It is fulfilled and fulfilling.
Interactions with your parents, and with those whom you have chosen to share your intimacy, and with those whom-out of the billions of souls upon our planet you share parts of your life, serve to activate within you in awareness of who you are and what you are here to do.
The pains that you suffer, the loneliness that you en Writer, the experiences that are disappointing or distress the addictions and seeming pitfalls of your life are the doorways to awareness. Each offers you an opportunity to see beyond the illusion that serves the balancing within each experience of pain or negativity is the opportunity to challenge the perception that lies behind it, fear that lies behind it, and to choose to learn with wisdom. The fear will not vanish immediately, but it will disintegrate as you work with courage. When fear ceases to scare you, it cannot stay. When you choose to learn trough wisdom, to evolve consciously, your fears surface be at a time in order for you to exorcise them with inner
That is how it happens. You exorcise your own Your guides and Teachers continually offer you Light. They encourage you in each moment to your fullest growth and development,
yet they cannot prevent you m your learning or your growing or your moving cough your experiences and letting your experiences in influences you. This is so even if you are able to communicate with them consciously and directly. Your experiences willmove you right or left, and you will ask your Teacher this question or that. If you move left, your question will be entirely different than if you had moved right, and the reality that you open by that question will be entirely There is no single optimal path for the soul. There are many optimal paths. With each choice you immediately create numerous paths within a choice, one of which is then optimal. In other words, the optimal path of your soul is the choice of awareness, the vertical path. Once you have made that choice, then come the various forms of enactment.
In what way, therefore, does nonphysical guidance serve you?
It is a partnership of challenging you to come to terms with the full width and breadth and depth of authentic power and responsible choice. It is not that you give permission to be mindlessly manipulated. It is that you give permission to be shown the fullest of your power and guided to its use.
When you depend entirely upon the ability of your personality to determine what is best for you, you may stand in the way of a richness that is waiting for you. How do you know what the Universe has waiting for you if you take off your restrictions? If you are determined to have your life unfold in a particular way, and none other-if you have your heart set on using your creativity only to accumulate money, for example-consider that you build your entire reality around that. The Universe cannot help you in the same way that it can if you are trusting of it, because it cannot overshadow nor penetrate your choice. Yet what if what you are doing is more appropriately regarded in a social sphere rather than an economic one? In other words, what if the enterprise that you seek to develop is more appropriately a way to an avenue that you have not yet recognized? It is now deadlocked because it cannot go down its appropriate path, for you have your ltd on a door that you insist upon opening that will go
Let go of what you think is just reward. Let go. Trust. ate. Be who you are. The rest is up to your nonphysical Teachers and the Universe.
Take your hands off the steering wheel. Be able to say the Universe, “Thy will be done,” and to know it within your intentions. Spend time in this thought. consider what it means to say, “Thy will be done,” and allow fur life to go into the hands of the Universe completely. the final piece of reaching for authentic power is releasing your own to a higher form of wisdom.
Long before we, as a species, became aware that there is such a dimension as the realm of nonphysical guidance and teachers, each human being was guided, and beautifully, y many nonphysical Teachers. Even though unseen by us this guidance happened nonetheless in its perfection and in its balance. That is what is happening now. It is just tat for the first time, as we become multisensory, we are aware of it, and can put names with nonphysical Teachers and have a sense of personal relationship with them, yet ;ilk it is that what you experience is always appropriate and will always move toward the greatest wisdom of your development and guidance.
Remind yourself that you are supported, that you are not going it alone upon this Earth. Dwell in the company your nonphysical Teachers and guides. Do not discriminate in terms of what you can and should ask and speak out. Just assume and live in the beauty of the bond. Do not fear dependency. What is wrong with being dependent upon the Universe, whether that is your Teachers or Divine Intelligence? You do what you do for yourself and the Universe and your nonphysical Teachers and guides are there in assistance. They will never do it for you. It is not possible for them to do it for you. Delight in the dependency. Give your guides and Teachers permission to come closer.
When you ask for guidance and assistance, simply assume that it immediately is pouring forward. You may need to work a while to relax your mind into receptivity, or you may need to have lunch, or drive into town or do whatever it is that you need to do in order to relax your mind to hear or to feel, but live in the total assumption that the moment that you ask for guidance it is pouring in.
Try looking at life as a beautifully well-organized dynamic. Trust the Universe. Trusting means that the circumstance that you are in is working toward your best and most appropriate end. There is no when to that. There is no if to that. It is. Release your specifications and say to the Universe: “Find me where you know I need to be. ” Let them go and trust that the Universe will provide, and so it shall. Let go of all. Let your higher self complete its task.
Allow yourself to pray. Just as the many times human beings find themselves in circumstances where the hurt or the pain is so great that on their own power they cannot forgive, it is enough that they pray to be given the grace, the perception, the elevated Light that will allow them to forgive.
It is impossible for you to come full circle in this way of empowerment without prayer. It is not enough to want or to intend or to meditate. You must pray. You must talk. You must ask. You must believe. That is partnership.
Think of what you are doing as entering into partnership with Divine Intelligence, a partnership in which you begin to share your concerns with the understanding that there is an Intelligence receptive to what you are saying that helps you create within your own environment of matter and energy the most effective dynamics to bring
you into wholeness. You do not need to think that you create alone, but rather that you are guided strongly in ways to help cocreate in the most effective way for your healing and for the fulfillment of your contract.
Consider your intentions and your meditations as part of what is done within the context of prayer. Be able to say within your intentions and your meditations, “And I ask for guidance or help,” and expect to get it. Expect to get it. Aside from your level of the responsible choice of energy and how you form that into matter, the dependency on prayer assists you in pulling to yourself and invoking grace. Prayer is moving relationship with Divine Intelligence.
It is impossible to have a prayer without power. It is impossible to have a thought that is a secret for all energy is heard. When you pray, you draw to you and invoke
grace. Grace is uncontaminated conscious Light. It is Divinity. Prayer brings grace and grace calms you. That is the cycle. Grace is the tranquilizer of the soul. With grace comes a knowing that what you are experiencing is necessary. It calms you with a sense of knowing into a personal.
Relax into the present moment. Do what you need to do in the present moment. Yours is not to worry about that which we call the future. That does not mean that you do not consider the consequences of each of your choices. Taking into account the consequences of your decisions is responsible choice. It means to create strongly in the present moment. Do not lose power over the what-ifs of your life. These are unlimited and endless. Keep your power in the now, in present time. Keep your power just in the day that you are living on the Earth, and not on how to maneuver tomorrow.
Use all of your worldly connections, but not out of panic and not out of fear. Do what you need to do on your end. Your choice comes in knowing appropriate timing, clear motivation, and trust. Allow your intuition to guide your timing. Take it inside, ask how you feel, and then move forward. Allow yourself to experience what it is to learn step by step the freedom that comes from being unattached to the outcome, but operating from an empowered heart.
Do not assume that the Universe operates like humankind, because it does not. Do not insist that the Universe comply with your understanding of it. Rather hold onto the thought that there is nothing without value that exists upon the Earth, that it is impossible to create any form of Life that does not have value. Therefore, it is impossible to create any action that does not have value. You may not see it, but that is irrelevant. Live in the trust that when it is appropriate, pieces will fall into place and you will see clearly. Trust allows you to call forth your negativities in order to heal them. It allows you to follow your feelings through your defenses to their sources, and to bri
ng to the Light of consciousness those aspects of yourself that resist wholeness, that live in fear. The journey to authentic power requires that you become conscious of all that you feel. The unearthing and healing of your negativities may appear to be an endless process, but it is not. Your vulnerabilities and weaknesses and fears are not different from those of your fellow humans. Do not despair because your humanness awakens.
Feel your intentions in your heart. Feel not what your mind tells you, but what your heart tells you. Rather than serve the fake gods of your mind, serve your heart, the real God. You will not find God in your intellect. Divine Intelligence is in the heart.
Open yourself to your fellow humans. Allow yourself to experience what you feel toward them, and to hear what they feel. Your interactions with them form the basis of your growth. When you fear what you will find in yourself, or what you will find in others, if you allow yourself to hear what others have to say, you turn your back on the opportunities that the Universe is giving you to find the power of your heart, the power of compassion. It is not until you have the courage to engage in human relationships that you grow.
Compassion is mutual compassion. The physical body is soothed and invigorated by the energy of the heart, and torn by lower frequency currents of anger, rage, fear and violence. When you treat another harshly and distance yourself from your heart, it is you that suffers as well as the other, and when you treat another with compassion, you treat yourself kindly at the same time. As your consciousness expands, and as you become aware of what you feel, you become aware of the dual effects of compassion and the lack of it. You become aware of the damage that you do to your own body when you feel and act without compassion.
Challenge your fears. Fear of growing and of transformation of self is what causes you to want to disengage from the present situation and reach for another. When you feel that you are in a pattern of wanting what you do not have instead of what you do have, of seeing the grass in the other pasture as greener because it is in the other pasture, confront it. Challenge it each time that it comes up by literally realizing that when it comes up you are not in the present moment, you are not engaged in your present energy dynamic but, rather, you are letting energy leak to a future that does not exist.