SELF STUDY

How to Understand God (HUG)

The monthly focus is a written excerpt taken from one of Jim and Brian’s talks, with a link to listen to the entire talk. In holding to a one-pointed focus on Spirit, each month we post a new written excerpt by either Jim or Brian. The worldwide monthly focus on Spirit helps us collectively deepen our understanding of God.

April 2017 — AUSTIN CLASS Q&A

By BRIAN YEAKEY

Monthly Focus~

Surrender and accept it all. “Truly giving up is acceptance.”

Full Excerpt~

For years and years and years I use to think I was doing everything wrong because I kept having these disturbing experiences. Until one day I said, “No matter what I do, they keep going on, so I give up.” As soon as I gave up and went into acceptance it all transformed. Just like that. Literally, in one experience: turned around, changed, and was different ever since. Because, in that giving up and going into acceptance, it allowed me to now move into Loving and embracing the situation, rather than trying to get rid of it and think something’s wrong.

This is where I learned about sadness and joy. One of my favorite quotes from Kahlil Gibran was, “Sadness and joy come from the same place.” I spent a lot of years in my sadness or depression, and in all my inner experiences I was flying backwards, because I was always looking back into the world, rather than looking towards God – where I was going. One day, after going through all these things for years, I finally said, “You know what? I give up. No matter what, I can’t turn around. I can’t seem to get beyond this. I give up.” In giving up I just went into acceptance with what was going on and how things were. As soon as I did that, all of a sudden, God turned me around, and then from that day forward, I realized sadness is nothing but joy. When we look towards God it’s joy, but when we look into the world it’s sadness. It’s the same energy because sadness is really the soul’s longing for God. So in that soul’s longing for God, it gets us to move towards God until we’re ready to turn around and see God, and then we get the joy of it.

In truth, longing is just the soul’s joy for God, but since we’re not looking at God we experience a separation. We see it as sadness or depression, and we’re always fighting and struggling with it thinking something’s wrong. The only thing wrong is that we’re not looking towards God. We’re just looking into the world; in all the pain and problems. As soon as we embrace or accept all the pain and the problems, we release ourselves from the judgment that something’s wrong. Then all of a sudden, automatically, we’ll turn around and face God, and then we’ll realize the joy of it all. It’s that simple. It took me about six years, though, to experience that one to know.

It’s all the decisions we make. It’s all the choices we make. When we make the choice to let go and stop resisting, and truly surrender, and accept, and embrace the pain, the suffering, and “all that is wrong”, do we finally transform ourselves and then turn around and truly face God. And from that day forward it’ll be a different journey, but not until then. Until then we’ll keep suffering and being in pain because we keep thinking “something’s wrong”, and we judge ourselves. It’s a vicious cycle. We just keep thinking something’s wrong. We keep judging ourselves thinking, “What did I do to create this? How come I can’t change it? How come this is happening?” and on and on and on. The only thing that answers it is finally when we just surrender and accept it. Not even love it; just accept it. As soon as you accept it, you’ll turn around and face the Loving.

Monthly Focus “going Home work” ~

  1. Do two and a half hours of daily meditation, and then listen to Brian’s talk: DYING TO RETURN TO THE ONE, 01/29/2017
  2. Listen to the open-ended meditation: LET’S MAKE IT ABOUT GOD.
  3. Journal: What is separating you from God? What are you willing to choose to let go of and stop resisting, and truly surrender, and accept, and embrace, i.e. the pain, the suffering, and “all that is wrong”?…So that you can turn around and truly face God.

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