Hello everyone.

With all due respect I would like to share with you what's been happening to me for the past few days.

I've been checking in and reading the posts. Some have been very uplifting and I congratulate all of you who are experiencing great results with your business, relationships, etc. However, I've read some posts that have really zapped my energy and made me wonder what's going on.

I understand that many of us have in the past taken courses, seminars, read books on positive thinking, healing, and so on. Many of us are also facing our past. Many of us have questions about situations (holocaust, sufferings, injustices, attitudes, prejudices,etc.) Now my questions is when do we get out of the past and start looking at what's here now and the glorious next day we are expecting to have? I think it's great that we have been enlightened to some degree by the teachings of SOGR and many have had "aha" moments. But I also find that sometimes we spend too much time analyzing what happened in our past. We cannot change our past. But we can learn from it. Why do we have to try to find an explanation to the holocaust (I visited Auswitz, saw, heard and cried like a baby. Couldn't enjoy the rest of the trip because I couldn't understand why this had to happen. I probably missed having a terrific time because my thought, at that time, kept dwelling on what happened. The pictures of those people and children constantly alive in my mind.)I was not the best person to be around with at that time.

We are now blessed with a course where we can share with each other what we are learning about ourselves and what we can do to change. Mr. Wattles says "This book is pragmatical, not philosophical - a practical manual, not a treatise upon theories. It is intended for the men and women whose most pressing need is for money, who wish to get rich first, and philosophize afterward. It is for those who want results and who are willing to take the conclusions of science as a basis for action, without going into all the processes by which those conclusions were reached."

I think this is a wonderful opportunity for all of us taking this course to do the LLs and share how those LLs have influence, touched us and helped clarify our aim in life. Yes, I am completely aware that while doing the LLs I learn more about myself, how my growing up experiences influence the kind of decisions I make, how past thoughts have kept me from moving and taking action. I understand that many of us have gone through many deceptive and hurting experiences in the past. Some we share here in the forum, some we just acknowledge in the privacy of our rooms, while reading SOGR or doing the course. What do we do now? Continue to think about those negative experiences and talking about them? For how long are we suppose to keep a negative thought alive?

My apologies if I'm off base. We have a beautiful tool in our hands. We are not alone. We have God - the formless substance in, around and permeating the interspaces of the universe, waiting for us to make that contact. I believe that acknowledging this presence continually is what keeps us in track - moving ahead and not looking back, appreciating the lessons learned from the past. That's all. The rest comes as an added blessing.

God bless you and as Rebecca says "expect success"

Evelyn

Here, Here, Evelyn! Wonderful post!

I believe your post was sent at just the right time (others may disagree).

I believe we all have been guilty of (myself included) too much "paralysis by analysis." I find it particularly exhausting at times, and believe that it does hinder us from moving forward. Yes, we can all wonder about all the horrors that have happened and are continuing to happen, but as Mr. Wattles says, we will not eliminate any of those problems by making a study of out them. We are to behave as CREATORS and our job is to visualise and focus our attention on what we can create, not what we are experiencing by what we see around us.

I believe there was a quote by a Buddhist? or Hindu? scholar in one of the LifeLabs (and I'm paraphrasing here): "Don't trust your senses, they lie."


Blessings To All
Cheryl

I agree...let's bless our experiences and move on!

Hello, all--

I purposely did NOT weigh in with an opinion on the messages concerning "bad" things that happen or have happened in our lives and in our world.

But I think it is important, as others have said here, that we NOT give our focus, faith, and feeling to those things. As Mr. Wattles says, what's the use of focusing on those things that are passing away? And when we DO focus on them, we impress THAT vision on the Formless. So we get more and more and more.

There are things that happen that seem awful to us and we have no explanations -- not now, at least. But there really is no point in looking at those things and trying to figure out what "those people" must have been thinking/feeling to create those situations. We only have a small piece of the picture. We can't know this. We can't see right now how these things could possibly be good. (And yet we all have the experience of looking back at painful things in our own lives and seeing how they were interwoven into something larger that WAS ultimately good.)

And when we bog down in this -- whether we are looking at others' experiences or our own -- that leads us into harsh judgments. A teacher of mine calls this tendency "metaphysical malpractice" and she's right: It does no one any good.

One of the problems with doing this is that it tends to lead us to call events and people bad, evil, wrong. But when we do that, we distance ourselves instead of seeing that we are all in this together, all one, all part of the same mind, all in and of that same original substance. Mother Teresa said, "If we fail to have peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." And I think she was SO right. We don't just belong to each other, though. We are part of each other.

That place of comparison, judgement, and calling things/people bad is a place of no power. That is the place where people brood on their "victimization." That is the place where we look for someone to blame. That is a place we get STUCK.

True compassion -- for ourselves and for others when we or they are going through difficult times -- doesn't come from that part of us that looks at people and sees them as less than. Less than whole, less than us, less than in any way. It comes, I believe, when we look beyond those appearances to the Truth and see them as they truly are within, when we recognize ourselves in their faces and experiences. And THAT becomes part of the larger vision that we hold collectively (sometimes called "race consciousness") which is a powerful force in creating our collective reality and experience. When we persist in seeing people as less than -- victims, downtrodden, poor, incapable, etc. -- we perpetuate the very thing we wish to see pass into mere memory.

This is hard to accept at first for some of us. But it's amazingly liberating and powerful for us and everyone when we make the choice to stand in our higher selves, see Truth, and call it ALL good.

Many blessings, and, of course--
EXPECT Success!
Rebecca

[This message was edited by Rebecca on July 02, 2002 at 04:28 PM.]

[This message was edited by Rebecca on July 02, 2002 at 04:29 PM.]

I too have dwelt on past experiences that have led to my previous dodrums of life. Those serve no purpose today other than ways I found that didn't work. Until now I didn't know to leave them alone and go forward without dragging the baggage behind me. It only slowed me down.
SOGR has brought into focus many of the past trainings to which I have been exposed in books, syminars, etc. As one instructor said, "Why" is not a good course to take.
Let's just concentrate on how in the now and journy toward all that we expect.
Looking forward,
Benny

Hi All! Thank you Evelyn for your post. Yes it is time to move on. Rebecca mentions in her posting about the collective consciousness - My understanding is that group consciousness up until recent times has agreed to grow through pain and crisis and NOW thankfully we are starting to evolve into creating through joy, peace, gratitude and focus on the NOW instead of the past. So the more we can stay focussed on the positive, the good and in the present moment the more quickly the collective consciousness with come into alignment with the power of this way of living. Many blessings of Great Goodness to All.

HI guys


Absluly agree.


If we ask ouselves the question,


"Why is it this way?"

"Why I am I like this?"

"Why cant I be....?"

Our subconcious will always provide the answers and a 100 good reasons why, and yet nothing changes.

I believe it to be much more powerful (and real) to ask,


"How can I...."

"What can I do to....?"



And while I am on it, I believe that when we make a statement, "I am ..." it will always reinforce our position, and much , much worse, will give us a forward position and lock in the future.


When we use the "Up to Now,..." we give our selves permission to change.



Try it and notice how different it feels.



With love and grattitude

Roger B

Angelnet you sure said it when you mentioned how we are evolving. We all sure have been since we've embarked on this amazing journey into our own selves while we keep in touch with each other. I'm so very grateful to be a part of such a wonderful and unique group of people.
Much Success to us ALL ..............dd

Yes, I agree, we can get bogged down in it all, but I think a lot of us have been going through that getting worse before it gets better bit, talked about in one of the class sessions.

I also feel that many of our life long beliefs and habits are being challenged, and such change can bring inner confusion for a while until we can refocus and integrate all this into everyday life and move on.

This course has challenged me in many ways and sometimes we need to work something through before we can leave it behind and move on.

Having said that, I have been re-reading the book and getting back to the basics of it and just concentrating more on doing it instead of questioning it all, the introduction says "that instead of questioning how these principles work, you'll just need simply to accept them and begin to practice them".

How long do we hang on to something - as long as we choose to I guess. Acceptance could be the key.

Here's to moving on.
Denise

Yes, a few of us have derailed here and there so thank you for the friendly yank back and, as we get a handle on this and with a bit of help from our friends, it is going to get easier to stay on track.
Just want to share a strange moment in the supermarket the other day. An old man with a plastic bag of groceries stood in front of me and across the way was a late middle aged woman buying items from the chemist. Neither of them looked particularly happy. I was waiting my turn and couldn't help noticing the checkout girl. She looked bored, tired and her shoulders were slightly forward. What struck me about her was that she was unbelievably beautiful to look at. I asked myself what she was doing in this place and the thought came back, 'She has no idea how beautiful she is.' Suddenly, I felt swept up in an almost ecstatic rush and felt connected to each of the 3 people and had a sense of the largeness and potential in each of us. It was like we were actors who'd wandered onto the wrong set. We were playing out roles in the wrong play. I'm not sure I'm expressing this well and it was short lived but the memory of it lingers. Something to do with the untapped potential in each person.
Ann

Hi all,

I agree with Evelyn - when I first found the SOGR book I tried taking part on the general discussion board and stopped for exactly this reason.

Let's concentrate on the course material and keep the discussion positive and focussed.

Rich Blessings to us all :-)

Christine O.

Evelyn that's a great message, we are learning to stay in the present by applying the principles of SOGR, therefore let's look ahead for a better tomorrow, keeping in mind not to mess up today's performance.

I'd like to thank everyone taking this course, for your feed back, your comments, and so on, and little by little I am learning to let go, in order to participate more, as it's been said everyone has something to share that someone, somewhere needs to hear or read, I've been getting so much from all of you that I am really greatful to be a part of this course.

Many blessings to you all, and let's move ahead, for the horizon looks beautiful.

And of course as Rebbeca says EXPECT SUCCESS