Trust the Universe with your Life

"In some way which you know not of, through some process which never reveals its face, life has entered into you, and with it the irresistible impulse to create. Divine intelligence has willed its so, nor you, nor any other person, nor all the wit, science, or philosophy of any man, nor the inspiration of Saints or sages, can change one bit of it, any more than man can arrest the eternal circuits of time, the revolutions. Of the planets, or the desire of the fledgling to leave its nest, to soar, and to sing"
. ~Dr. Ernest Holmes from This Thing Called You

Whether Charles Fillmore, Ernest Holmes, Eric Butterworth, Carl Jung, Jesus, Buddha or the poet Maya Angelou, all are inviting us into a life which transcends the suffering most human beings endure. Regardless the suffering, fear, worry, doubt and loss are far more prevalent than what Fillmore calls “a life of jubilation”which means great joy, exaltation and satisfaction. Eric Butterworth implies that when a human being steps out of the suffering into an exalted life – God and the angels celebrate. Why? Because happiness, not suffering, is the Divine mandate for our lives.

All of the saints, mystics and sages speak about a way of knowing and being which  transcends  the worrying, doubting and fearing that keeps the world bound in suffering, violence and lack. There is a way of seeing, hearing and expressing that leads to trust, surrender and faith as a way of living. That way of living eradicates the conditions of suffering that plague a weary world. 

Trust, surrender and faith are however complicated. Most of us identify almost exclusively as a human being living life on planet earth. Living as a human being on planet earth, is for the most part, an evidence-based experience where what happens to us as we move through life, ends up tucked away in our memory and subsequently used to navigate our life experience. Living  life in response to or reaction to the past, is destined to feel like a rerun rather than an unlimited possibility.  

This living from the past forward is an impediment to what could be. As a child, were you safe? Were you surrounded by loving, kind, compassionate and helpful people? There is of course a spectrum of what our childhoods might have looked like. For some there may have been real neglect, abuse or other such behaviors. Sometimes, our parents, grandparents, and others were just fine, but in our young minds we concocted another story. As we grow and enter adulthood, we encounter friends, lovers, bosses, co-workers and many others. Did those ‘others’ provide you with evidence that it is okay to live your life from a place of faith, trust, and surrender? 

The second impediment is, of course, the problem of “God” Itself.  In my work as a spiritual counselor and minister, I have met many people who when faced with unkind, mean or crazy people, were told to took to “God” for help. For some that worked but for most it did not and still does not. This is not “God’s” fault really since “God” as a super-hero does not exist in exactly that way.

The alternative we are left with, is to live protecting ourselves, always looking behind us, while constructing a no-trespass sign for our hearts, and waiting for the next proverbial shoe to drop.  Added to our personal story, we bear witness to the madness, meanness and insanity of a world where hunger, abuse, war, and the rest, adds to the conundrum of our human existence.

Trust, faith and surrender as ways of being are accessible more easily if your life experience, or your memory of your life experience, provides evidence that the world you live in is safe, friendly and has earned your trust. In most cases, this does not happen. In most cases, there is the necessity of becoming aware of a reality that is transcendent to our earthly experience. Fillmore, Holmes, Jung, Jesus, Buddha and Angelou are speaking to us about transcending that experience. Not ignoring, pretending or in any way denying, but rather, understanding that there is another way of seeing, hearing and experiencing the world we live in. A spiritual way. Whether you call it enlightenment, awakening, or transformation it all leads to identifying more as an embodied Spirit then merely human.

I am human with a story that can match the drama and the trauma of almost any Lifetime Television movie. I certainly don’t know everything, but I am a person who over the past twenty-five years has discovered a lot about transforming my life from chaos and unhappiness to jubilation. At 73 years young that is really good!

Somewhere I learned to trust the universe explicitly and discovered a secret that gave me immense freedom. I learned by adopting a more mature idea about “God”. But even more importantly perhaps, I learned about the science of creation which is the knowledge needed to become the captain of your own ship, the architect of your own life and the manifestor of your own destiny. When known and practiced, this knowledge leaves us with power and confidence rather than as victims of circumstance. I learned that the world as we know is not solid but rather created molecule by molecule by the thinking of individuals in a shared co-creation. If we as the thinkers change, the world and everything in it will change naturally.

Leonard Cohen had a beautiful lyric which said, “everything is here for you.”  Your world is but a reflection of your consciousness, which means the totality of your thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and actions. Whatever you expect to receive you will. Whatever you feel worthy of receiving you will. Whatever you put in you will get back.

This leads me to share a few of my ‘golden rules’, which I have learned to use to guide my life of jubilance.

Golden Rule #1: The universe is inherently good.

My parents taught me that most people were to be feared, up to no good and perhaps even dangerous. I have sense determined through my own exploration that most people are inherently good. A person will almost always show you what you are seeing in them. If you lean towards giving people the benefit of the doubt, seeing beyond their behaviors, understanding their vulnerabilities, and the evidence of their upbringing and the suffering, straight into the truth of their innocence and divinity, you are likely to find an angel behind the devilish behavior.

Golden Rule #2:  Positive expectation leads to positive results.

Of course, the opposite must be true. Negative expectations result more often than not  in negative results. Because of the laws of spiritual science, which Jesus beautifully stated as, “It is done unto you as you believe”, you cannot separate your attitudes, behaviors and beliefs from what happens to you.  Dr. Ernest Holmes, said, “Change Your Thinking - Change Your Life”. These are not glib utterances.  They state a fundamental truth, which if you take seriously enough, and change yourself enough, will have an amazing impact on the quality of your life.

Golden Rule #3: I trust that all my needs are met, all the time.

The fear of languishing as a penniless bag lady on the side of the road is a foolish idea. For most of us, our needs have always been met and always will be. At any rate, I expect to always have a roof over my head, food on the table and people surrounding me who care. My expectation of that is reinforced by Golden Rule #2.

Golden Rule #4: Everyone and everything is working itself out on my behalf.

Whatever it is that created the cosmos, also handles the workings of it. The planets rotate, the stars shine, the seas ebb and flow and flowers bloom. Since I am a creation of life, I trust that whatever it is that is in back of all of nature’s creation and maintenance, IT also has my back and a blueprint for my jubilant  life.

 What I used to call miracles or good luck, I now understand are the natural and spontaneous demonstrations of a universe that has been designed by infinite intelligence. This includes me. Dr.  Ernest Holmes said, “There is a power for good in the universe and you can use it.” I am certain he meant that I could use it to create a life I love. A crucial understanding here is that the power of creation is always working. What it creates is in the hands of the creator. Dr. Holmes’s point is that it can be and should be used to create happiness, wealth, health and a meaningful and productive life – rather than suffering.

Using this ‘power of good” implies our knowledge of the rules and our conscious application of them. Even Ikea’s furniture is easy to put together once you understand the instructions included when your purchase the product. So, it is with life. You and I were never given the instructions, until now.

I suppose in truth there a couple of things we might need to deal with before faith, trust and surrender can become our natural approach to life.

The first is our relationship to “God” – or lack of relationship. As with everything else, we might have human conditioning, which is held within our memory, conscious or not, that “God” may or may not exist and that if He does, you may not be sure He likes you or is on your side. Many, if not most people, were taught some nonsense about a judgmental, angry and vengeful Deity. Who could trust that?

A new and more mature idea is that “God” is not another form of a person but rather a pure, positive, loving energy and power for good. It is self-evident, to me anyway, that we did not create ourselves or anything else in the universe. It is self-evident that the natural world is intelligent, orderly, predictable and amazingly beautiful.  Dr. Michael Beckwith, and many others have said in their words, “we have created “God” in our image and likeness. And as human beings we possess the qualities we accuse “God” of being, do we not?  When in truth we are made in the image and likeness of “God”, which is loving, compassionate, kind and creative. Humans unaware of their spiritual identity,  can be mean, vengeful, spiteful, judgmental and all of those things we may have been taught about “God”. Being made in the image and likeness of “God”, means that we are inherently created and designed by love, beauty and intelligence. Those who live their spiritual identity do not engage in behaviors and activities which cause harm  To believe in that is to be in right relationship to the Universe that created you.

The second is to forgive everyone you have encountered along the way for their mistakes, missteps, shortcomings and perhaps cruelty. This includes yourself. We are all pretty much on autopilot until we are not. This simply means that the tapes created by our experience and stored as un-conscious memories are running the show. The people you let off the hook for their transgressions, are just like you. Jesus said this best when he said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

The kind of trust and power of manifesting good in your life, is only possible when your ideology and personal theory of the universe matures enough to understand that you are a part of the cosmos – and intimately connected, guided, guarded, supported and maintained, as is everyone else. The universe is a matrix of connection so if you need help, money, food, purpose, friends, a lover ------ following the golden rules, will attract those who can provide these things for you. There is no universal resistance to what you need or want --- except you!

How can you begin to do the work of transformation?

#1 Become aware of your own mentality and emotions.

You can train yourself to become aware of your thoughts. There is within everyone, a ‘watcher’, which is an aspect of you that can observe that you are thinking, as well as the content of your thoughts. As you cultivate the capacity to watch, notice any degree of negativity, skepticism and pessimism.  Notice your resistance to good and happy things. Then consciously and intentionally shift into the golden rules. Find words and mantras which help to remind you of the truth so that you can move into a different way of thinking. Say to yourself things like, I feel happy , or all of my needs are met, or I expect only good to come to me, or the universe is for me and not against me. The new words and thinking come first, and the demonstrations and manifestations will follow.

Visualize yourself in new circumstances and feel into the fulfillment of them. Everything externally, whether stuff, conditions or circumstances all start in mind. Visualizing yourself happy, driving that new car, on that vacation or twenty pounds lighter  – may not be true at the time but doing this practice helps to create the internal environment for a new possibility to emerge.

Ultimately trust, faith and surrender are possible because you recognize the unique and individualized expression of Life that you are – and you know that whatever name or however you describe the Divine – IT knows what you need not by watching you but by BEING you.” It is for this reason that trust, faith and surrender are excellent strategies for a good life. In this your jubilation will arise.

Love, love and more love, Rev. Denise

PS Join me this Sunday Night for Sunday Night Alive at 6pm for our topic, Feel Your Way Into Bliss" at http://www.facebook.com/A-Life-of-Spiritual-Power on Facebook or YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@rev.deniseschubert4107/streams

If you enjoyed this post and derived value, please consider donating to my ministry.