Printed in the Conscious Creation Journal
April-May 2000, Issue 11
Dispelling the Myth of the Fall From Grace
by Gail E. Steuart & Barry Blumstein
While we focus much of our attention on the “Afterlife”, we often fail to consider the “Beforelife”, in gaining a more comprehensive understanding and perspective of our life experience. It is during the period before being born into this world that we placed within our Soul what we determined to be the purpose for our life.
To gain the broadest perspective on our life, let’s go back to the beginning. It was in the beginning (so to speak, because God really always was) that our beloved Creator so greatly loved who he/she is, that who we are came forth into individual identity. The purpose of our Divine existence, therefore, is to continue in this experience of embracing emotional feelings, eventually evolving into our own infinite and unconditional love of ourselves. This we are all doing in a grand manner.
Since we originated in the essence of infinite and unconditional love of self, you may be wondering, “How did we end up stuck in this experience of life as a struggle?”
Barry asked that same question when he was in the Presence during his near-death experience. What he was instantly shown was a scene that looked like an individual giving a presentation to a huge audience on a very large frozen lake.
This individual giving the presentation was making an argument for his contention that he had devised a way by which those in the audience could accelerate their evolution. To demonstrate and prove his theory, he gave two examples. The first was what appeared to be a vehicle like a car. When the vehicle attempted to move on the smooth surface, it just spun its wheels, and wasn’t going anywhere. When a sand or grit was placed under the wheels, creating FRICTION, the vehicle moved forward quickly. The second example was to imagine (because it had never occurred before) that when you attempted to move forward you now encountered RESISTANCE–a force pushing against you, holding you back. What do you do now? – You have to PUSH HARDER! The theory was that if you push harder, you will then MOVE FORWARD FASTER.
Have you ever considered that our struggles in life seem to embody the elements of FRICTION and RESISTANCE? Have you ever heard the expression, “no pain-no gain”?
We who now struggle upon this Earth agreed with the above presentation on that fateful day so long ago. None of us could have possibly imagined what would really occur! We must always keep in mind that our beloved Creator remembers that we had only the best of intentions-desiring to accelerate our evolution, so that we could return sooner to our Divine source.
The way that we became stuck in this experience of life as a struggle can be described in a breath, although the reversal of the process is quite another story. The fatal error we made and continue to make to this day is in viewing the emotional components of our struggle with judgment. Although it is true that the emotional feelings always associated with our struggles, resentment, frustration, anger, fear, etc., etc., etc., in the experience of them, FEEL TERRIBLE, the fatal mistake we make is to JUDGE THEM TO BE TERRIBLE.
We have now become faced with the dilemma of understanding what it means to have what we have judged to be terrible feelings within us. The rational mind can come up with only two explanations for it-we must have either done something terrible in the past, or even worse, we must be terrible! Regardless which of these incorrect assumptions we choose to adopt, the response is the same-we get down on ourselves for it. Judging ourselves to be not good, because we do not feel good, only results in further limiting and restricting the happiness that we allow to come into our lives. We then judge our even more limited happiness, and get down on ourselves even more. This is the downhill spiral that has led to our present predicament.
The old adages, “look before you leap” and “live and learn” are great truths that certainly apply here. If we could not learn from the looking, as this experience of approaching life as a struggle was nowhere to be seen at the time, then we had to learn from the leaping. In this respect, experience was the only real teacher. Living and learning always has us in the classroom of life. When we learn our lesson, we go on to the next one. If we fail to learn our lesson, we take the class over again, and perhaps, over again.This is the cycle of karma.
Consider what happens when we find that weeds are growing in our lawn. Imagine how frustrating it would be for someone whose vision and understanding did not extend beneath the surface of the lawn. All that they knew to do was struggle over and over again to remove the weeds when they came up. If they mowed the lawn and got rid of the weeds, the lawn would look great-for awhile. However, since the “root of the problem” still remained beneath the surface, what’s going to happen? The weeds will come back! The solution to “lawn karma” is to remove the root of the problem.
Our new understanding of the Emotional System is that our emotional feelings are at the root of our experiences in life. Remember-the emotional feelings really come first, and they then result in a corresponding event subsequently occurring in our environment! With this expanded awareness, the unfolding of our lives now makes ever more clear the cause and effect relationship between the feelings we emotionally embrace and what we then come to experience in life.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to choose what we place in our hearts with the same care that we choose what we place in our mouths. Effecting this shift in the quality of emotions we embrace in our hearts from the painful to the joyful will then result in a corresponding shift into a greater experience of happiness in our lives.
It is appropriate at this point in our evolution, as we are now approaching another crossroads in the unfolding of our lives, that we once again consider the decision we made so long ago. How do we feel about it now? Do we wish to continue struggling with resistance and friction in our life, or has our experience finally taught us that the argument that seemed so reasonable on that frozen lake was really not true.
This is how our decision will be made-it’s just like eating a meal. When we sit down to our meal we’re hungry and desire the food, just as we once desired the struggle. At some point in our meal, we become satisfied that we’ve had enough and no longer have an appetite. Have we come to the point yet where we’ve lost our appetite for the struggle in life?
©1999, 2000, Gail E. Steuart & Barry Blumstein. Printed in the April-May 2000 Issue of the Conscious Creation Journal. http://www.consciouscreation.com (Feel free to duplicate this article for personal use – please include this copyright notice.)
Gail E. Steuart & Barry Blumstein are a married couple living in Arizona. Their training program, “Mastery of the Emotions”, originated in the teaching Barry received in a Near-Death Experience in 1969, and has been presented nationally since 1985. It empowers you with the technology to relinquish whichever emotional feelings you no longer desire to experience. Their articles have been published internationally, and on the Internet. For additional information E-mail: emotionalmastery@msn.com for a brochure.