In times when affairs go smoothly, when life is peaceful, we feel the guiding hand of Providence and are grateful.  In times when our hearts, minds, or bodies are troubled, and especially when this continues for a long time, we feel doubt or disbelief that we are being led.  Indeed, we feel alone with our dilemmas.  How do we know that we are safely being led when safety appears to be the furthest from what we feel?

Here, it is not a matter of feeling but of knowing, and not of knowing with the mind but of knowing with the heart.  The heart must reach out toward the deepest truth of its relationship to all of life, to the knowledge that all is purposeful, that all is held in the hands of God.  When events bring misfortune, tragedy, loss, or catastrophe, our hearts become confused and we wonder how such things can be held in the hands of God.  How can suffering, emptiness, loneliness, rejection, pain, and extreme limitation be held in the hands of God?

The victory of the soul lies in just this perception, namely, that it has the capacity to disregard the outer picture of difficult or distressing events and to know from a place beyond doubt, that all is being led toward an appointed end, an end that carries great good.  The embodied self may not feel this, in fact often does not.  Therefore, feeling is not a good guide to the presence of safety in being led.  Rather, the soul-self that lives in the deeper strata of the heart's knowing must become more prominent, more apparent, so that it can declare its positive message about the universe, even in the presence of great pain.

This capacity to orient toward the deepest truths of our being lives within each embodied soul.  It lives within the heart of all, telling us in the midst of all outer events that all is purposeful, that all contains meaning that our feeling-self is not aware of.

Whether we embrace the truth of our soul-self or not depends on several things: first, whether the rational mind has preponderant importance in defining reality and, as a result, may choose to reject what cannot be seen.  Second, whether our level of pain passes a threshold where it appears to consciousness that pain is all there is.  When this threshold is exceeded, then the deeply held principle concerning meaning or safety may be dimly recollected, but this no longer matters because the experience of pain is too great.  Such instances do not involve the absence of choice, however, for the conscious being can always choose to align with the soul.  Yet, it becomes much more difficult to do so in the presence of great pain, and much more difficult to hold a sense of peace concerning its meaning.

All who are present on the Earth at this time are being led to experience the deeper truth of their soul-self through the revelation of what has been hidden before now, that is, through the light that is penetrating the darkness which prevented consciousness from experiencing the truth of the soul.  Now, however, reaching toward truth, one feels the greater possibility of something reaching back.  Welcoming this, longing for this, trusting this, is the task of this time.

Article Section -  Individual