Love is the answer to all questions. But sometimes in life, the difficulty is not in finding the right answer, but in finding the right question.
Once we have faith in God, we begin to understand that God is within us and within all those around us. Once we have faith in God and his angels, we come to expect that, no matter what the questions, the answers will come to us by some means; we just have to be open to receiving them.
As we learned from the Bible:
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)
If that is the case, you might then wonder, as I have on occasion: how did we get to a world that often depresses us?
Could it be that we have turned our backs on the natural way of living in harmony with the rest of God’s creation, and focused our God-given creative powers, not on the betterment of the world, but on the betterment of our individual selves.
We forgot the other advice which the Bible has given us:
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them,” (Matthew 7:12)
We forgot to “love your neighbour, as yourself” (Mark 12:31), particularly when it comes to what we wish for. We forgot that we are connected to everyone and everything in God’s creation. And we forgot to consider the consequences of our actions and our thoughts.
If we get this far in our thought process, we might start feeling guilty for the world we have created: the world where air pollution blankets our planet, the world where our life-giving trees are clear-felled to provide pastures for our meat and milk, a world where biodiversity is rapidly shrinking as species become extinct, and our oceans are filled with plastic, a world where war is a way of life, and fear accompanies us everywhere. We might start to feel hopeless and depressed, because we think we have done something wrong, and we can’t see a way out.
But remember “with God all things are possible”. (Matthew 19:26)
In God’s world, there is no such thing as a mistake. We live in a world of contrasts, and it is often only after seeing the results of our earlier choices that we can understand how we might have chosen differently. This is why questions are so important.
If, in our world of contrasts, we see a situation we would like to change, we could ask: “How might I, as an individual, make a difference to this situation?”
But remember that we are not separate from the rest of God’s creation. So the question might not be what you think. The question might be: “How might I help others, so that they no longer feel the need to contribute to this situation?” For I have learned that everyone is always doing the best that they can, in the circumstances in which they find themselves. In order to improve a particular situation, it may be necessary to improve someone else’s circumstances.
On the other hand, the question might be: “If I do this thing or think this thought, what will be the consequences?”
Perhaps the best question of all might be: “If I wish to help to create the world as I desire it, what is the best question to ask?”
If, as you ponder all of the situations for which you might feel regret or guilt, it will help to remember the lesson I learned from Esther and Jerry Hicks, and Abraham:
Your cork will always float.
If what you are currently thinking about upsets or depresses you, turn your thoughts to something else.
I will give you an example of something that happened to me yesterday:
I went for a walk and saw a beautiful black cat ahead of me on the path. Rather than thinking of it as a bad omen, I was grateful to meet such a beautiful creature, and I asked telepathically if I could stroke it. I received my answer when it came over and rubbed against my leg. As I stroked it under its chin, I felt the love that we shared with each other, and walked away with joy in my heart.
Imagine my dismay, then, to come back to my computer to find a posting on facebook telling about Vietnamese restaurants who cooked cats alive. Although I signed the petition to try to end this practice, I couldn’t bear to share this posting along with its graphic images, and inflict the same discomfort on others.
But how could I remove these images from my mind? There is no erase button on the mind, but it is possible not to focus on those thoughts. Instead I turned my thoughts to the joy I had felt when stroking the cat on my walk, and found my discomfort dissipating.
At other times when I have found myself feeling overwhelmed by something I have experienced, I have found that, now that I have had practice at controlling my thoughts, I only need to think the thought, “my cork floats”, and I am instantly reminded that well-being is my natural state.
Whether it be listening to soothing music, stroking a pet, looking at the stars, watching a bird in flight, hugging a tree, or remembering a joyful experience, God has provided us with many ways to refocus our thoughts, and refloat our corks.
The reason that all of these remedies help is that love is contained in them all. “What will help to refloat my cork?” Love is the answer to that question, as well.
May we all continue to ask the best of questions, and may we all help to create a world where our corks rarely sink.
Image courtesy of sippakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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