Untitled 1

Presenter: Dick Stetler – November 15, 2021

We encounter people all the time that appear to be lost in understanding why their lives are unfolding as they are. The realities of life have nothing to do with why religious people define others as being lost. Through the many centuries, such a belief was created to explain why people willfully engaged in wandering through life by going where the wind in their sails takes them. What is happening is that such people have not yet awakened to the potential that remains hidden within them.

A fundamental truth that is a fixed foundation for all people remains that they are eternal spirit-beings that have willfully entered this imaginary world to polish their divine nature. The only way people can begin the process of refinement is to exit the birth canal and awaken as an infant that has little or no memory of their former selves.

Each of us comes here to see how we do, given the twists and turns of the rollercoaster ride provided to the average citizen during the course of their lives. We could not perfect anything about ourselves if we came through as divine-beings. Each person becomes like a pilot-in-training climbing into the cockpit of a simulator. They cannot possibly hurt themselves by the early crashes, the near misses, or the lack of their attention to what the gauges on the dashboard are telling them.

In spite of our divinity, we pay more attention to our emotions and our responses to the external world than to the world within ourselves. The remedy to this is that we have to pretend to be gods. However, few of us know this because it is such a ridiculous assumption that will never work. Stop and think for a moment about our Creator whom many refer to as God. Think of all the definitions people have given to the Creator since primitive humanoids first appeared millions of years ago.

The first god was the Ice-Bear according to Joseph Campbell. When the glaciers from the ice age were receding in the Pyrenees mountains, caves were discovered containing crude worship-centers to the Ice-Bear that provided food during the bitter winters. Egyptians worshipped the sun god Ra. The Hebrews assigned to the Creator traditions that they were favored among all the people on the earth. God made promises to Abraham. God fought alongside the Hebrews to defeat their enemies. God dictated the Ten Commandments to Moses. The Bible is believed to be the Word of God.

Think also about how people have defined God in our generation:

There is no God. Such a belief is nonsense and wishful thinking by needy people. If God is so loving, why doesn’t He intervene like He did in the Old Testament? How could a loving God allow Down’s syndrome infants to be born? If God is so perfect, why did He create such a dangerous world, e.g., earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, fires, tsunamis, and plagues? Why are there so many religions with vastly different points-of-view that often use fear to attract believers? They dictate beliefs that are mandatory for salvation. They made Jesus to be half divine and half human.

The list of speculations about the nature of the Creator could go on and on. Everyone has their list of God’s many failures. However, the only failure is one that each of us creates. It does not dawn on us that we are the only ones that are here. This is our moment to practice our divinity. There is no need for the Creator to give us anything more. We came into the material world equipped to cope creatively to every contingency. The problems people face are theirs to solve. What would be gained if this loving God did our homework for us?

We had to create the wheel. We had to learn how to tie our own shoes. It is our responsibility to recognize where we are and what is required of us to adjust our thinking and feelings to reveal our divinity. The world has always been filled with those who understand life by revealing their loving energy. We can learn from all of them by looking within ourselves and develop our own understanding of how to use the treasures that we find. Many people, however, build their lives on the constantly changing values they find in the external world. (John 18:22)

The world is perfect for what it was designed to do. Again, this is our time to allow our divinity to reveal itself. The world is a very temporary reality where great societies rise and decline. The grand simulator is designed to give a pilot-in-training experiences that threaten the design of how the aircraft and the pilot’s training perform. Yes, mistakes are made and pilots can be killed many times before their responses and skills are so automatic that they do not have to think before performing as an ace pilot. This is what our physical lives are all about, i.e., testing our divinity to see how we perform in the midst of thousands of distractions.

Nothing in the material world exists in reality. The countless, distracting dramas have the ability to awaken our inner world because there is nothing else that can save us but our choices. However, very few make the grade and most of us learn about this at our physical deaths. (Matthew 7:13-14) At that moment, we think to ourselves, “Had I only known about this, I would have done much better.”

The point is that many of us did know. Just read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) with fresh understanding. Most of it is a clear road map for the spirit that needs to surface as we negotiate life’s countless dilemmas. Paul also developed a more refined understanding of life. (Galatians 5:22 and I Corinthians 13:1-13)

Institutional religions designed their teachings around being exclusive, intolerant of other belief systems, and horrible consequences for sin rather than love and forgiveness. For Christians, life is a pass or fail exercise when life is nothing of the kind. The Creator was merely giving spiritual-beings an opportunity to see how they would perform if they had power in the physical universe to create matter from their thoughts. Spirit-beings do not have an ego in their former surroundings. When they incarnate into Disneyland, this is where the ego can get in the way of performing like the divine-beings that they are.

How have others accomplished separating the spiritual world from the temporal world? Wayne Dyer told his audiences that they are born winners. Sperms struggle to get into the egg. The strongest succeeds. After the sperm penetrates the egg, the creation process begins of creating a physical form during nine months in a womb filled with liquid. Thus, Dyer teaches how we are born winners.

Tony Robbins tells his readers how to gain mastery over their lives in a small, well-illustrated book that is 6 & 3/4^th inches long and 4 & 1/4 inches wide. It’s entitled Giant Steps; Small changes make a big difference. The book contains 365 short-lessons to self-Mastery. Tony’s book only provides methods; his words cannot instill the desire to make the suggested changes. Only our choices can do that. His former book is a commentary on human potential, Awaken the Giant Within.

People can pretend that they are of the Samurai Caste in feudal-Japan. Such warriors are disciples of military virtues that can only surface by their choice, e.g., loyalty, trust, honor, integrity, health, self-reliance, and silent, prompt obedience to orders.

I witnessed a very seasoned sales clerk beautifully handling a small group of angry women trying to return garments after Christmas. A problem was that Macy’s did not carry the labels of their garments, nor did these women have sales slips. When the dust had cleared, I asked her how she learned to deal with angry customers. Her response gave me another tool for my toolbox. She said:

I taught myself to turn every person I meet into my personal trainer. If their response to me can cause me to become unhappy, they have succeeded in gaining control over my temperament. No one has been able to do so during my years of working at Macy’s. If anything, they have taught me why it important to allow others to be exactly as they are while I display the person I have become. It did not take much effort for me to remain helpful and kind in spite of the maturity level of those who are standing in front of me.

No teacher can give us anything. All they can do is point to the path that allows each of us to practice our divinity. There is no other way but through the choices that we make to become Gabriel in the flesh. Everyone of us has this potential. To have good results we have to reveal who we are every hour of every day. Remember, no one can hurt our self-esteem unless we allow them to do so.