The good news is it doesn't have to be that way. We are so programmed to avoid discomfort and pain that we want to just take it away with some medication or perhaps more innocently do something for ourselves that makes us "feel good."

 

Especially during these holiday seasons, we are tempted to just shop or go out and give ourselves and others gifts.

 

But what if the true "gifts" we really need are the "inner gifts?" The type of growth that doesn't always come in a package we can appreciate. It can come as through our disappointments.

 

All of us have that child part of ourselves that never wants to be let down, always wanting to get the things we want. Its a completely different thing to find the maturity within ourselves that allows the graces of life's lessons to find us.

 

Yes, it is in a sense a Spiritual life that beckons for our attentions. We have it so good or so it seems in the West that we hardly can have any patience that we might have to wait for something.

 

We want it all to happen now, we have little tolerance when our friends let us down, when our birthdays are forgotten, when the better things seem to go to someone else. So and so's life seems so much easier, mine is filled with hardships. When is it going to stop? Won't i ever have enough money? Be pretty enough? Likeable enough...can't things ever go my way?

 

And yet, even when life seems so unfair, we just don't seem able to take any more. We find ourselves becoming irritable, even negative. We try and be positive but something nagging just keeps at us. We want good things to happen for us, but i just can't take another let down.

 

It seems so futile and that's because it is. It's futile to keep fighting within ourselves. We are about to reach a breaking point, but before we have to breakdown we can decide to instead break-through!  Again, its our disappointments that can actually help us.

 

In a sense it probably takes a strength we may not feel we have, especially when things are tough, but in another sense that's when we can discover a true key to our Victory...Surrender!

 

Most people are taught, surrender means losing, but it can on another level, open us up to finding new solutions in our life to our problems and disappointments.

 

The difference is what we must learn to surrender to is our own

inner walk with our true inner selves.

 

Again, the idea of the "inner life" may have been a distant concept to us, but for many of us is is only when "outer" things are not working for us do we then consider new options of understanding.

 

When we think we have been let down by our friends, even our spouses we can discover that depending upon outer people is at best inconsistent. It can be a  moment of awakening when we discover we may have been ignoring or avoiding the relationship that matters most, the relationship with ourselves, but were not talking about our humanly conceived idea of ourselves, but a vast infinite dimension of our being, ourselves as Soul, ourselves as becoming Spirit.

 

How much time do we devote to our view of ourselves, not what we see as Physical, but as that of what we cannot see with our outer sight.

 

It can begin with introspection, with a sense, a growing sense that we are more than our interests, our desires, even our hopes, but we are a non-physical reality that tries to reach us, to speak to us, to get us to hear its subtle impressions.

 

This can be the beginning of a new sense of ourselves...an awakening.

 

It can be like a small voice that doesn't command an over powering presence. In fact it might have to compete with a million other interests that clamor for our attentions.

 

In a sense it is like a spark, because we have to ignite it, we have to fan that flame that this might grown in us.

 

Often times, outer disappointments can actually be a way we pause in our lives long enough to turn away from an outer dependence on things and people and in a sense are forced to discover within.

 

So in another sense, loss is good. It can be transcendent. It can lead us to what has been referred to as a sort of "divine discontent," that can spur our journey.

 

We may not know what type of word to put on it. We can call it Soul or Spirit, but there is something within each of us that exists as a living potential.

 

Maybe, it is learning to find this "gift" within ourselves. It has been there all along, but it has been like an un-opened package. We have to first discover it and learn that exists, that if we have to have enough interest to learn how it works. We have to have a basic desire to investigate.

 

For most of us we may have never conceived that we already have an inner appartus, a component, even an invisable part of ourselves that exists to give us perspective and exploration of the innward source of our being. Something that helps us to find and define our purpose, our sense of our place in vast Universes of awareness and a vital link that connects Man to the Divine.

 

We can perhaps perceive that a part of ourselves longs and yearns, we might even be able to recognize it as a Soul longing

 

Something beyond our understanding of the Physical heart, is the abode, the habitat of this Divine Spark within all of us.

 

It is actually like a gentle flame, even tiny. Its mere discovery brings a wonderment to our outer awareness. We  have learned to look away for most things, but here, in the folds of our inner being , this gentle enduring spark is found.

 

It is our Child within with all purity and innocence that can first behold that which our Adult selves can see only as imaginary.

 

Though its seems to be a single flame it is actually three flames and each separate flame has its own color.

 

These three colors are beautiful and radiant and they seem to synchronize and give off an effusive quality of light. As we look upon them we begin to take on emanations that each color and flame has its own specific gift and yet they are together as a whole, a Unity of three, a tri-unity.

 

Somehow, the colors themselves and the flames that contain them begin to distill in us a new sense of ourselves, of who we are. Of what we are a part of .  As we look into them we in a sense are becoming that flame.

 

Our outer idea of ourselves is transformed as we discover the different qualities each of the three little flames begins to reveal to us.

 

First, the Pink flame, a  soft  translucent radiant Rose color, not really a color we have seen before except in my minds eye warms us with its glow. We discover it is not just a color or a flame but it is a quality , a presence, a living expression, a deep and completely eternal joy. It is the living manifestation of Love.

 

The second flame also comes before us. We are drawn into its Yellow brilliance. It is a shining illumenesence that transfers our minds and quickens our understandings to realms before to not known. It is a yellow fire that singes the density of pall and ignorance for its existence and presence, radiates, uplifts and illuminates. I am the coordinates of the MIND of God that may be in you. Seek thee within and find. It is the intelligence lifted upward, true Wisdom, that directs the path of WISE-DOMINION. It is the consideration that comes before action. Its Yellow Flame is another arm of thy whole being, not intended to be the sole way, yet a part of the new understanding we seek. It is a partner of the heart. Look again, its Yellow Brilliance is really a Golden Fire. 

 

We find it is both through devotion and by pondering and awakening that a new sense of my being is borne, Yes, what is this? A New understanding i find within?

 

Strange and even trivial, now seems my outer preoccupation with the approvals and attentions of others, the comings and goings of both fortune and sorrow that visit me.

 

How have i been found wanting in these temporary , oh so fleeting human vexations.

 

Disappointments? Nay! They are but ego-disappointments, for i have cast my gaze on that which could only surely change, for inevitable is its course.

 

I have already begun to lose some sense of my outer self, the importance i have so placed on all of these outer hopes. Dashed and even silly it so seems. Now i have seen love's promise meld in my heart. This is not too hard, too trying...i look and i find even that which really Lives. It is ME beating, with loves ways, it is the piercing fire of the New infinite mind. I have really begun to take flight, soaring above, a great vastness and beauty i experience.

 

Even more there is to discover, for now i have seen that both the heart and the mind are a way and a path and here before me i see again it is the WILL that can liberate me yet farther.

 

How i have not really known or understood the Power of thy being. Blue, oh, so royally so, and magnificent in its surges and fount. 

 

There is no doubt that can hold me any longer as i stand in its endless sapphire radiance. Obedience it reveals is its secret if i would also learn to turn and render to thy law of my own being.

 

All idea of loss springs from what has departed from truth, Power can be your steed, the very horse we may bridle, but we cannot disobey, for to mount in error is futile.

 

Newness in hope i can go forward, equipped with these eternal gifts of my little friends of the Flame.

 

I return with eyes a new that have been opened by impartations of seeing with inner sight, of imagining of what is always possible, of endless and boundless resource that would serve me.

 

Now that i have discovered that Universal fount that springs within me, so regally prepared Am I to hold life challenges as opportunities to prove the measure and mastery of thy Divine will, thy educated and loving heart, yes, the very mind that beholds all understanding and solution.

 

Perhaps, all that i have sensed that i felt had befallen me, was but a venue that i might turn and find a new course set that i might more mightily and divinely be inspired.

 

Even so, so vastly improved i may now make my advancements, moving about in this world of form, compassionate and impassioned to both share and inspire those who would traverse a course such as I....new hope, no sorrow for IAM FREE!