Voice of the Spirit

“Before a man can learn anything, he has to unlearn what he already knows.”  — Old Sufi proverb

In today’s short article, I would like to hopefully expound on this very profound old proverb.    

As adults, we pride ourselves on our knowledge, yet in some ways, spiritually, the knowledge that we’ve accumulated can hold us back and prevent us from growing.  We tend to think that knowledge expands our horizons, but in reality, the things that we know are often our biggest obstacles to our spiritual growth.

To think we know something is to limit it.  That “knowing” limits our understanding of what something actually is, what it could be, its importance to us and its effect on us in the future. Whether we’re a teenager or a senior citizen, we believe that we already know.  “With age comes wisdom,” is a statement that justifies that by merely getting older, we become enlightened.  In reality, age can make us more stubborn, set in our ways, inflexible to new ideas and how we look at things.

Most of us think that knowing indicates with absolute certainly that our perceptions, beliefs, and understandings of reality are indeed right.  But to think we know not only limits ourselves – it prevents us from truly learning.  With each day, our belief that we know only makes us that much more blocked, rigid, and stuck. 

 It stops us from seeing alternate explanations and new possibilities for the situations and problems in our lives.  In order to truly learn, we must unlearn what we already know – and that means our perceptions, beliefs, prejudices and current level of understanding must be let go of. 

We get into patterns that are based on our past experiences and conclusions which we perceive as irrevocable fact.  They may have worked before, but perhaps have outlived their purpose.  When you’re a child and are taught to never get into a car with a stranger, that is appropriate at a certain time.  However, if you were thirty years old and your car broke down, would you refuse to get into a tow truck with a stranger?  Some times the value of something we “know” has outlived its purpose and we need to be open to new knowledge.

“The world is bad,” someone says, because they feel that they’ve been hurt in the past.  But if they want to truly learn that the world can be seen in any number of ways, including that it is wonderful, they have to unlearn the point of view that the world is bad in order to grow.

How do we begin that process?  We start by letting go of subjective attachments, and opening our minds to be willing and able to be led.  Therefore, we truly begin to learn as pre existing assumptions and belief systems must be released.

Think of a gorgeous natural wooden table.  Thirty years ago, it was painted white, then it was painted lime green a few years later, followed by a heavy coat of varnish put on it two years ago, and one more coat of varnish was added this year.  Every layer of paint and varnish smothers and suffocates the beauty of the wood, which is like having a mind that is filled with things that clutter its space and stand in the way. 

So in the way someone would have to remove all the layers of varnish and paint to restore the wood to its natural beauty, it is the same with our ability to truly learn anything. We must always be able to look at a situation from a beginner‘s point of view and restore our mind to its natural state which releases all of the old acquired stuff that’s blocking and restricting our growth.

In Zen Buddhism the concept is taught of the “Beginner’s Mind.”  This is the ability to look at anything as though you are seeing it for the very first time.  This allows us to bypass all of our previous knowledge and experience and see things with a fresh outlook.

In a reading, a client said to me, “Jim, my soul mate is John and I just know that!”  However, in reality, that assumption is spiritually not accurate. When they hear from me that John isn’t the soul mate, if they refuse to let go of what they “know,” their energy can’t open up to allow the real soul mate to enter into their life.  Therefore, what they think they know with rigid certainty is exactly what is in the way of them getting what they want!

It is just like a simple door.  If it’s closed, how can anyone walk through it?  If the door is slammed shut or locked, no one is going to be walking through that doorway.  It is the same with the mind – it must be open for the divine universe to have an open channel to teach us.

Most people claim that they want to learn.  But in that quest, what are they willing to change in order to get there?  Remember, the divine universe needs a mind that is open at all times to be able to enlighten.

What about the arteries in your body?  How could your health function properly if the arteries were closed?  With blocked arteries, the blood couldn’t circulate correctly throughout your body which would lead to serious health issues and potentially, even death.  As our arteries must stay open always, so must our minds, if we really want to learn anything. 

A female client of mine had been through two bad marriages, so she believed that she knew that no one good would ever come into her life.  In her mind, she knew that was true.  But in reality, all she was doing was projecting her emotional reactions from her past experiences as fact.

When I told her that she was preventing anyone from coming into her life that could be good, she defended herself and said, “You don’t know what I’ve been through, and I know the kind of men that are out there and there’s no one good for me.  The good ones are all married already.”  So through her refusal to unlearn what she already knew to be true, the universe could not bring anyone good into her life.

Instead of our minds being as closed as a completely clogged artery in our bodies, we must begin letting go of the layers of our “knowing” that don’t serve us to get to a higher place.  Our minds need to be as open as the universe itself, and with that, we master the ability to unlearn what we already know in order to learn what far transcends all that we once believed to be true.

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I now open my mind, heart and spirit to learn what the divine universe teaches me!

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For our entire adult lives, we’ve believed that fear is a bad thing and something that stands between us and our success.  Certainly all of us have felt fearful in our lives, as we can recall the times when we have experienced terror and panic – even sweating with our hearts racing.  Who likes to feel that way…?  So we tend to see fear as the enemy and something that is clearly harmful to us.

However, what if I told you that fear is clearly not the enemy, and that it can be a wondrous, divine gift from God – and our friend, perhaps, even our greatest ally?  How about if I said that fear can be the mouthpiece of sacred protection to guide us through the physical plane, which is filled with unpredictability, danger, violence, sudden accidents and potential catastrophe that we can experience at any time, whether in our lives or observe on the news?  In addition, what if I proposed that fear may be something that can help us to lead a more positive life?

Instead of it being able to assist us in manifesting a better life, we think of fear as a dreaded, awful, unsettling and terrifying energy that makes us feel horribly out of control.  It is seen as a primitive and base emotion no longer necessary for us as rational adults, but reserved for people who don’t have themselves together, psychiatric nut cases, and those who are rabidly violent and behave like wild animals.  In fact, it was in ancient times that fear raced through our veins as the adrenaline rush that tried to protect us from ever-present life and death circumstances such as being chased by wild animals – and that was as a good thing back then. 

However, in today’s world, our lives have dramatically changed and we’re no longer running through the jungles, and thankfully, we hardly face being killed on a regular basis.  So it’s easy to see fear as an archaic, out of date, negative emotion which serves no valid purpose in our lives at all as we are now logical, rational adults.  But we may not even realize that today, we still do rely on fear, even though we may not think of it quite that way.

Presumably, we teach our children from a very early age how to be careful as we are their mentors and guardians.  But what we’re really doing is teaching them how to be afraid: of playing in the street as they could get hit by a vehicle and killed, of sticking a fork in an electric socket as electrocution could occur, and of getting in a car with grown up strangers as they could be sexually assaulted and murdered.  What if we didn’t ever teach our children to be scared of anything at all?  Clearly, they would meet with horrific, and probably life ending circumstances before they reached the first grade.

However, as adults, we have turned our backs on the value of being afraid and attempt to make fear our adversary, all under the guise that we are now more mature and no longer need it.  “Why be afraid of the boogie man in the basement?” we chuckle.  But in reality, we should never turn our backs on fear, no matter how smart, together, or evolved we think we are.  With that in mind, you might be asking if I’m trying to state that absolutely all fear is a good thing for us to embrace.  No, I am not at all.

Keep in mind that for the sake of this article, I am not speaking of fears that are bad for us such as the fear of commitment, intimacy, losing control, not being good enough, being scared of showing who we are because we’ll be rejected, and of not being approved of by others.  These are the types of fears that are not for our highest good, hold us back, cripple us, and that we need to work through, get past, and rise above.  But for the sake of this writing, I address the fears that spiritually are a divine guiding light that we must absolutely learn to listen to.

How we’ve made fear the enemy

In today’s culture, people go to therapists, read self help books, say affirmations, meditate, and desperately try anything and everything to get rid of their fears, so that they can ostensibly be free to live better lives.  New age and modern spirituality teach us that we should not be afraid, and that in order to evolve to a higher consciousness, fear must be eradicated within us.

But in our culture, where blatant self centeredness and narcissism are the prevailing mode of behavior today, the absence of fear has created a whole new world of people who boldly enshrine everything they do.  “I’m just being me!” has becomes the calling card of people who are behaving selfishly and disrespectfully toward others.  “This is just the way I am!” people curtly rationalize as they’re hurting others.  In today’s society, people are far more selfish and aggressive than ever before. 

We have been taught that being pushy and “looking out for number 1” is good – and that being concerned about how we treat others is unnecessary, and may even put us at a disadvantage.  “It’s all about me!” is now seen as a good motto.  The concepts of self-censorship, caution, and awareness of how we interact with the world at large have been distorted into the false belief that by doing so, we would be denying who we are.  In short, we just now do whatever it is that we want to – and we’re ok with that.

Even though we hurt others, and through harming others, ultimately victimize ourselves, we don’t want to recognize that fact.  As a culture, we really don’t care, as long as we get what we want, or perceive that we are.  But if we made fear our friend, we would be far less likely to hurt others and ourselves.  You might ask, “How is that possible?”

When it’s good to be afraid

Without fear, we would literally do anything we wanted to do, as we’d feel that there are no repercussions for our actions and we’d be living in a “consequence free zone.”  If nothing scary or bad is going to happen to us from what we do, then what’s there to be afraid of?  Think of it for a minute.  If most people on this earth believed that they could do whatever they wanted without any negative consequence whatsoever, this world would be a disastrous free for all.  Living and interacting with others would be only about our desires, ego, impulses, narcissism, and violent survival of the fittest.   Unfortunately, that is largely where society is already at today. 

From a spiritual perspective, it is terrible, as this type of sensibility and behavior does one of the worst things we could do on earth, which is to create additional negative karma for ourselves!  By creating more negative karma, we keep reincarnating into the physical world under difficult, hellish, and sometimes downright miserable circumstances where we owe many types of debts to others.  So then, what can we do?

We must absolutely learn to be fearful of the possibility of creating additional negative karma, and we do this by first becoming afraid of the repercussions of our thoughts, words, actions and deeds.  One way of doing this is by taking a different look at an old Biblical phrase that completely speaks to this situation.  If we change the statement, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” to “Fear of the Karmic Law is the beginning of wisdom,” we gain clarity and understanding.  In fact, many Bible passages will make perfect sense from a metaphysical perspective by replacing the word “Lord” with the phrase “Karmic Law.”  

But how many of us are really scared of karmic law, as we should be?  Who really stops what they’re doing because they know it will all come back to them in a negative way at some undeterminable point in the future?  Most of us rationalize, make excuses, sidestep looking at the truth, go into a convenient form of denial, and in short, just do whatever we want to do.  This is exactly what happened to Jenny.

If only Jenny was afraid

Jenny supposedly knew all about karma, had read many self-help books and claimed to be spiritually aware.  Yet, she never really considered listening to anything that went against her ego and what she emotionally desired.  Therefore, Jenny always did exactly what she wanted to do, and in late 2004, came to a life altering crossroad. 

She had been married to a man who really loved her, doted on her, and was completely faithful to her.  However, this became tremendously boring to Jenny.  As a woman, she wasn’t that comfortable with real intimacy and commitment and took her marriage totally for granted.  Jenny liked dangerous, exciting, cocky and edgy men, as she still wanted to live like a rebellious teenager.

So in surfing the internet one day, she came across an old high school flame on Facebook who now lived across the country.  Curious and excited, she started emailing him and to her delight, he emailed back.  Immediately, they started engaging in sexually explicit fantasies together over the Internet.  This went on for about six months.

Yet, every time Jenny sent or received a correspondence from her old flame, she felt a rush of fear surge through her body, like a lightning bolt of terror.  It wasn’t that she felt guilty or bad for being disloyal to her husband; she felt scared!  “Something felt wrong,” she said to herself — yet she chose to ignore the fear and kept the contact going.  But as time went on, this impending feeling of doom became stronger, not weaker, yet she still refused to examine what this fear could be saying to her.

After a year of regular contact with her old flame, she was addicted to the excitement of the situation, yet she was feeling literally sick to her stomach every time there was correspondence.  Yet, in spite of continuous fearful misgivings, she considered taking a plane to see this man, thinking he might be her soul mate. 

In her mind, Jenny planned on dumping her husband if things worked out with her old flame.  So she booked the plane flight and lied to her husband, claiming she was going to look at houses and neighborhoods in another state for them to potentially move to.  However, Jenny couldn’t shake the fear, as now she was literally trembling in terror at the thought of getting on that flight.  Still, with all her fearful misgivings, she did it anyway…. 

She got on the plane and went to see her old flame.  When they first met face to face again after almost 13 years, they immediately went to his place and had wild sex, which was of course, electrifying.  In fact, for a few weeks, that’s all they did.  With every day becoming more sexually kinky, Jenny put aside her fears which were still nagging her every day and thought this was it!  “He is my soul mate.  I’m going to dump my husband and be with my soul mate forever!” she proclaimed out loud.  So Jenny not only divorced her husband, but she gave up the home she and her husband shared and let him keep all of the assets — all supposedly for love. 

Then, all at once, the roof caved in.  She found out that her old flame had been working as a contractor in the state she flew to see him in.  But now, his contract was up and he was going home to a different state, one where of all things, he lived with someone – his wife.  So after this man had his fun, he calmly and non-emotionally left Jenny to go back to his wife. 

But now it was too late for Jenny, as she had already burned the bridge with her husband, and had no money.  Through the devastation of by being discarded by her old high school flame and losing the security of her marriage, she became seriously and violently ill.  With no options or support from anyone, her life completely fell apart. 

Now, it’s almost five years later and Jenny has chronic back problems, no money or lover, and is barely scraping by.  Not only was her husband devastated by the divorce, but after he later found out why Jenny originally got on the plane to meet her old high school flame, he went into a serious depression and lost his job.

In this instance, through not listening to her fears and doing what she wanted to do, the karmic repercussions were immediate for Jenny.  So it’s easy to illustrate the very graphic and direct cause and effect relationship between what she did and how and when it came back to her.  However, karma does not usually come back instantly to us or in a quick fashion.  It can take years, decades, and/or even lifetimes to come back.  It begs the question, “What would have happened if only Jenny was fearful enough to act on the misgivings she felt?” because if she was, she would have never got on that plane, and her life would have not had to fall apart in the horrific and dramatic fashion that it did.

It took Joe 7 years to learn that fear was really his best friend

The repercussions for our thoughts, words, and choices don’t usually come back to us immediately, and that’s indeed what happened to Joe.  Back in 2000, his best friend Chuck wanted Joe to put up money for a joint business venture — a restaurant that Chuck would run day by day.  Chuck had already managed many successful restaurants, and now, he wanted to go into business for himself with Joe as his partner.

Even though Chuck had a great track record of success in business and was supposedly Joe’s best friend, as soon as this idea was proposed to Joe, he immediately saw an intuitive vision in his mind which was a picture of a stop sign that had the words “Don’t!” written on it.  Granted, Joe had never really been a big financial risk taker, but still, in spite of that, Joe was stunned by the intuitive flash he saw, therefore, he felt unsettled about giving Chuck the money.

“C’mon Joe, this is your chance to make some real money!  We will be working for ourselves.  You’ve got the money, and I’ve got the know-how!  Let’s do this now,” Chuck encouraged.

For three months, Chuck rode Joe about investing in this restaurant venture, and no matter what day of the week it was or what mood Joe was in, when the issue came up, Joe would see the same intuitive vision of the stop sign that said “Don’t!” written on it.  Every time he thought of doing this with Chuck, he just couldn’t say yes.

But as many of us do, he brushed the fear aside, didn’t listen to what his intuition was saying to him and invested in the restaurant venture.  The day he signed on the dotted line, he was nervous, unsettled and frightened all day.

So in the years that followed, the business only yielded a marginal amount of financial return to Joe.  At times, Joe would think that eventually he’d at least make back his investment and break even.   However, whenever Joe thought such thoughts he received a new intuitive vision which contained the words written across the sky that said, “Get out now!”  This happened almost every time he’d receive a financial accounting of how the business was doing. 

Once again, Joe blew off what fear was saying to him through his intuition visions and just let the business agreement drag on and hoped for the best.  However, the reason for all of his fears became quite apparent in one simple knock on his door, when Joe was paid a visit by the IRS.

After 7 years, the IRS caught up with Chuck, who had not paid taxes regarding the restaurant and had lied on his tax returns.  So now, the IRS had indicted Chuck, was seizing the assets of the restaurant and wanted to question Joe about his involvement in this tax fraud scam.  As one can imagine, he almost saw his entire life flash before him when the IRS agents appeared at his door with this type of interrogation.

As it turned out, Joe didn’t get indicted, but he had to pay a huge debt to the IRS, which virtually wiped out his entire life savings.  The IRS was able to seize all of the assets of the restaurant, close it down, and Chuck ended up in prison for a few years.  Now, Joe is out of money, and has no idea to manifest a new nest egg to retire on.  Sadly, it took 7 long years for the repercussions of his choices to finally come back – and he learned the very tough lesson that Chuck was never really his best friend – but that his fearful intuitive visions were.

Nancy’s terror saved her life

Nancy was a woman who had been alone for 5 years, and she finally decided that it was time to at least go out and meet some men socially, and see if anything might come of it.  She went to a restaurant/bar that she used to frequent years ago and sat down to order a drink.  Within minutes, a dark haired, well built, seemingly pleasant and friendly Hispanic man approached her and said, “Hi, my name is Juan.  Do you mind some company?”

Startled, Nancy was caught off guard, and clumsily replied, “Well, ok.”  Within a few minutes, Nancy started feeling complete and utter terror and had no idea why.  While Juan was gazing in her eyes, focusing only on her, speaking gently and quietly while paying for her drinks, she could literally feel the hair stand up on the back of her neck.  What was wrong, she asked herself? 

Then, Juan went to the bathroom, and suddenly, Nancy heard a loud voice with her physical hearing that said, “Leave immediately!”  Startled, she looked around the room, but no one was even looking in her direction, so she realized that this had to be one of her spirit guides communicating with her.  She prepared to pick up her purse and run out of the establishment, but Juan came back and sat down.  Now, he started caressing her hands and as he did, she felt a level of fearful panic that rarely came over her.  A few minutes later, he excused himself again to go to the restroom, and her spirit guide loudly said once again, “Leave immediately!”

This time, Nancy was not going to ignore this fearful spiritual message, and she literally grabbed her purse, ran out the door, got into her car and quickly drove away.  When she got home, she was literally almost hyperventilating and couldn’t understand why.

Then, three days later, she happened to turn on the local news, and there it was: Juan had just been indicted for the rape of a local woman.  He picked this woman up the very same night at the exact place he met Nancy.  Juan was from out of state, so no one in the restaurant/bar knew him, so he was cruising anonymously for a victim — and he found one. 

But that victim could have been Nancy.  However, she listened to the terror that was sent from the divine universe – as it was truly one of her spirit guides that literally proclaimed out loud the sacred words to her of, “Leave immediately!”  Fortunately, Nancy listened to what her spirit guide said to her and let terror save her life! 

How fear can help you every day

Whether it’s the stories of Jenny, Joe, Nancy, or any of our own, we see how fear can play a much more profound and potentially positive role in our lives than we’ve ever imagined.  And it is not just that horrible dreaded emotion we all desperately pray would somehow just leave us alone and go away.  Instead of running away from our fears, we need to listen to them and always ask the question, why….  Why am I feeling afraid?  What am I scared of?  But to do that effectively we must first answer the question, “What is the real spiritual purpose of fear in our lives?”

The purpose of fear is to help us stay alive and survive so we can fulfill our destiny and complete our various missions here on earth.  As we will all die, and everyone knows it, the instinctive sense of survival is extremely deep rooted in us.  It’s as if a branding iron has burned fear deeply into our subconscious minds.  So fear is the warning alarm of our survival, but is that always a good thing?  That all depends on the type of “survival” we’re looking at.

With negative fear (which can be thought of as self-defeating), our fears try and protect us in a non-productive way, and instead, only hold us back and only hurt us.  If we’re afraid that we’re not worthy of being loved, we won’t let someone good into our lives.  In this instance, our fear tries to protect us from the very thing that is good for us, which is being loved by someone else.  And that’s all because we’re scared that we’re not worthy of being loved.  If we’re afraid that we’re not worthy of being rich, our fear will prevent money from coming to us.  This is also not beneficial, as that only prevents us from manifesting our divine highest good!

With positive fear (which helps us to avoid danger, harm, bad choices, tragedy, and anything that hurts us or others), our need and ability to flourish through listening to fear is a spiritual gift.  And we must learn to listen to these divine warnings.  That positive sense of fear can manifest in any area of our lives: our health, physical safety, finances, romantic relationships, business and career choices, decisions regarding family and friends, and in any number of ways.

When we receive any kind of a scary warning, we must stop and look at it to see if it’s just our internal “stuff,” or something truthful that can protect us and potentially save our lives.  There is no magic formula for understanding each fearful warning, but something we need to look at on a case by case basis with a sincere, open mind.  Remember, God isn’t in the business of trying to fool us, and we won’t ever be given something too complex for us to figure out or handle.  So it’s a matter of sincerely listening and working with the benefits of what fear can do for us. 

There are more than enough curve balls and tough challenges that life throws us – and certainly, we don’t need to add any more to that potentially long list.  We achieve this by letting fear reveal to us the choices that are going to harm us, sidestep tragedy when we can, and prevent us from destroying our lives and the journeys of others.  Divine fear speaks to us in any number of ways: through a vision, a spiritual message from our spirit guides, gut level instincts, intuition, an unsettling, scary psychic feeling that may not go away, and information revealed to us in our dreams.

By healing our relationship to fear, we can walk through this very unpredictable and often dangerous world with a renewed sense of confidence, security, trust, and safety.  We can do this now because we indeed know to listen, receive, and bond with one of the greatest and best friends the divine universe could ever give to us – a loving friend named fear.

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I listen to the warning signs given to me through my intuition to make choices that are for my highest good!

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