Remembering True Self
By Eve Wilson
Living with gratitude is both a path toward and a symptom of enlightenment. It is a gift that flows easily when we are living in partnership with our Higher Selves. Gratitude overcomes negative reactions that everyone can have when life is discouraging. It is an expression of hope, trust and the awareness of our eternal-true selves.
If we think that we are victims of life, gratitude is a hard attitude to own. But the higher truth is that we are the creators of life, and there is a good reason for everything – everything! When we remember that we are each a facet of the One that many call God, then we also can remember that our human experience is a soul building mission. Every experience can be understood to be purposeful and necessary, but also temporary. In fact, every experience is designed perfectly to build a particular set of skills and potentials which we need our soul to embody, in order for us to incarnate fully and to fulfill our true purpose within all of life. Phew! It can be a lot to take in, but it is the absolute truth.
A soul is the body of learning we have been building through all of our incarnations. It is the vehicle for our Higher Self to be able to live within our creature bodies. Our souls are vast, with only a small part available for a particular life-mission. But as we grow more into unity with our eternal true selves, more and more of our soul will incarnate at once, allowing our true selves to reveal our amazing potentials into our lives and our world. Then we can take our place as partners with God to co-create a world that reveals the qualities of experience we always believed it could have.
As eternal Beings, we know that growth is often painful, but that pain is always temporary. Even the most horrific things may be necessary to open the capacity for unconditional love and true self-awareness that some souls require to manifest their higher potentials. Not everyone needs those things, but some do. So from the perspective of our true self, we can have compassion on ourselves and on others when suffering is part of our contracts for life.
Try to look at it from the perspective of your eternal self… You can see the goal and it is brilliant and important. It is how you become able to manifest your own unique facet of God within all future lifetimes and on unlimited worlds! It isn’t easy to get this potential to awaken within the creature consciousness that is our human selves. The creature within us wants only comfort, security, peacefulness, full stomachs, joyful-sensual satisfactions, ease. Somehow the greater potentials need to be awakened within us; suffering is a powerful tool for awakening. But as I mentioned earlier, suffering is temporary, the potential gifts – once developed – are eternal. This is what our eternal self sees.
Gratitude in our creature selves expresses a willingness to grow into our potentials and to do the work needed. That willingness paves the way for our Higher Selves to enter into our lives and make our growth easier, and with minimal suffering. Once we achieve our goals, gratitude flows naturally because we feel wonderful owning new gifts which allow our true self to act within our lives more fully. Life feels joyful and satisfying. But then another cycle of growing and challenging heralds the next phase of work, and gratitude allows our Higher Self to make it easier to accomplish.
Why is gratitude so effective? Gratitude generates an energy which is a natural medium unifying our Higher Selves with our creature selves. That unity allows Higher Self to act within our lives to create an easier journey of soul growth.
To nurture the attitude of gratitude, simply remember who you are! Each of us is a part of the Oneness of life, building a human capacity to live in the world. Once here we can partner with the One to create a world we all want to live within. So each challenge can be met with trust in this process and gratitude that we are never alone. Our Higher Self is One with all enlightened Beings and together they will work to bring fulfillment, satisfaction, and joy in the process of growth to our lives. When gratitude is present each circumstance reveals itself to be a gift. If not immediately, then with patience and perseverance it will do so. And in that patience and perseverance, we can remember that we are doing something essential – building a soul muscle that will support our true self to create a wonderful reality on earth for eternity. What could be better than that?
