Tuesday 26 January 2010

Are You Too Close to the Problem?

We do not always understand the importance of perspective, particularly when we are faced with problems. There is an old saying that “You can’t see the wood for the trees.” It is very true and is why other people can often suggest a solution to our problem that has just never occurred to us. Because they are not sitting right on top of it, they are able to view it from certain perspectives that are unavailable to us due to our proximity.

However, perspective is not only a matter of physical or mental distance. There are some problems that even our friends are unable to help with and can just offer their love and support. Often these circumstances involve questions of loss or of sickness. If we have lost a loved one whom we adored and on whom we relied far more than we realised, the only comfort a friend can offer is their love, prayers and the assurance, though it may be difficult for us to accept, that time will soften the blow. “Time is a great healer,” they will tell us. It is the same with serious illness; if the doctors say an illness is probably incurable, all our friends can do is to pray, show us their love and talk to us in positive, encouraging ways. The more knowledgeable amongst them will know about Spiritual Healing and will intercede on our behalf with those wonderful healers from the spiritual world. In the final analysis however, we are forced back upon our own resources. Even understanding this, it is impossible to minimise the importance of the love and concern of our friends and more often than is generally realised, Spiritual Healing succeeds where traditional medicine has failed.

What happens in the loneliness we are forced into when we realise others can no longer help us? At first it is a benighted place; we are full of regrets about our future plans that will not now be realised; we may be angry with God and think He is punishing us in some way for some imagined transgression. In this initial phase, we are inconsolable and can become so self-centred and self-pitying that even our friends may be reluctant to visit us. Gradually, with most of us at any rate, the self-pity retreats as we become more accepting of our fate, realise we are driving our friends away and begin to think, what for many of us, was previously unthinkable. What is happening is that our true self, our inner spirit, is reaching out to our conscious mind. As it does so, we begin to understand that much that we considered important both in the past and in those plans we made for the future, is in fact ephemeral. They are things governed by a previously materialistic way of viewing the world and those around us.

Now, in our desperation at our loss or the possibility of passing to the higher life, we are looking at things from a spiritual (I do not mean religious or devout) point of view. We begin to sense with increasing certainty that what seems so solid and important here on Earth is merely appearance. It is in fact insubstantial compared to what we are beginning dimly to perceive. We begin to remember loved ones who passed many years ago and to think about the happy times we shared with them and the lessons we absorbed from them without appearing to do so. In doing this, we trigger the Law of Attraction. Our thoughts, being far more real than we imagine, are received by those loved ones and they draw close to us. We begin to remember even more about them and our relationship with them, realising that we are doing so with pleasure and with love. It dawns upon us that we or others must have felt exactly about them when they passed, as we are doing now about another. The reality of time’s healing properties is confirmed but there is more. We become conscious that what is happening inside us is not just due to memories. Those people whose time with us we are recalling so lovingly are actually present with us. We may not understand the ‘whys and the wherefores’ but we KNOW they are here.

As this realisation comes to us, it is as though a cloud has been lifted. No longer is what we are going through fearful or a matter for anger with the Creator, it is we realise another phase of life. We have become convinced, almost by a process of osmosis that life, individual life, goes on. It does not end when we pass from our earthly home, no matter how familiar and precious that has become to us. Not only that but somehow we know the life awaiting us after our time on Earth is more meaningful and more complete than anything we have known here. It is as though we finally understand that not until we reach our new home in the spiritual world, do we become complete. Part of that completion will be the reunion with all those we once considered lost and whose presence we now feel so close around us. We are no longer alone with our grief and our fears and in that knowledge, both fade away and are accepted as the impostors they truly are.

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