4-32. Do not allow emotional pain to hobble you. Instead recognize it as a call to arms to transcend the machinations of your ego and to choose Love in all that you offer to yourself.
To be aggrieved of this world is commonplace and quite acceptable. To be paralyzed by pain is not at all a state that should be allowed to continue for even the briefest of moments, for with each instant spent atrophied within the desolation of emotional devastation, your will to continue unabashedly unabated is increasingly diminished, until the point when it seems nearly impossible to contemplate any state of emotional resonance other than those that are associated with utter helplessness and abject apathy. That your heart may become “broken” is not a wholly inept or inappropriate descriptor applied to a state of difficulty and challenge that is hearty in its latent ability to seemingly prevent you from moving forward with what is to occur next. Yet it is equally a designation for a state of being that has nothing at all to do with genuine fracturing, for your heart cannot be cleaved by anything that assails it, no matter how horrific the event might be at the time. That is the crux of the issue that so many face - they encounter pain, and then presume that they must not be possessed of the ability to release all that besets them, choosing instead to rise again as a phoenix of Love in the face of an overwhelming tide of loss and the meaningless cruelty of a world that is chaotic in the extreme and unsympathetic in its distribution of woe to some in great quantities. Loss is not necessarily intrinsic to the world of form, but it is so very common that it can be accurately said that it is indeed the rarest of lives that is lived to any extent of fullness that does not entail the occurrence of some form of painful alteration, threads of connections severed seemingly before their time of maturation and bonds of the heart stripped away with no apparent value at all that can be associated with their loss. But it is not such a simple matter as a mere equation that we contemplate when the subject of loss in a physical sense, or more metaphorically in an emotional sphere of influence, is brought up for comparison to what another Child of God may have endured and overcome. For there are two aspects to any emotional pain, both of which are necessary for a complete and honest evaluation of the import of what has transpired. The first is the most obvious to any who have encountered a difficulty that they - at least initially - imagined to be so difficult that recovery must be impossible. That is the fact of the loss itself, one that is often undeserved and unwarranted by any sensible system of measurement. Yet that is not the way of the world - there are no rules that dictate that the virtuous should not suffer and that the cruel and vicious should be left to experience all of the misery of materiality. That would imply a system of oversight that simply does not exist, for fairness is indeed not at all the organizing principle of the world of form. Recall that materiality is, at its most innate and inalterable level, simply neutral. There is no objective measure of “good” or “bad” to be extracted from the world of form, for all occurs just as it unfolds. All forms of evaluation and judgment are fundamentally subjective and never possessed of the impartiality that is a prerequisite of effective observation, for all present the contradiction of a singularity of awareness from which all that is judged is relative, not universal in scope. As such, what is a tragedy that cannot be overcome to one Child of God is a difficult that contains within its arising the seeds of its own transcendence to another soul. There is no singular point of balance that can be struck between these two elections of perception, for both are reflective of the individual states of awareness and acceptance of each who experiences any particular event, and so they cannot be enmeshed and said to be congruent, for each is just as unique as the party effecting the evaluation. What then are we to make of a loss that seems too great to bear? Are we to state that we are all individuals, and so no one else can possibly be of any assistance in understanding why it is that we are reacting as we are? Certainly not. Simply because there cannot logically be a state of absolute resonance between the reactive frameworks that two souls apply to the same loss is in no way a justifiable rationale to posit that one cannot comfort or encourage another. A great many examples of triumph through massive adversity and inequity are accessible to everyone. All can be a source of inspiration, if regarded from the correct perspective - namely, one that ensures that no matter what has been lost, you yourself are not forgotten by God. That is often the case for many Children of God, though they frequently know it not at all. They become beset and overcome with pain and emotional instability, believing that they were once dependent upon another for any form of validation or reassurance that they were or are unable to provide for themselves, and so when that other companion is no longer accessible for any number of reasons, many of which are often pointless indeed, the sufferer becomes dejected and elects to presume that they must be abandoned by God just as equally as they were cast aside by another. Yet what remains, when all else has left? What is consistent in a world of endlessly undulating alteration? What is assured, when love in any form other than its universality of acceptance and peace is presumed to be endlessly accessible? What lays under all that is of the world of form, a constancy and a surety that is inalterable by any transgression that could ever be imagined? The Truth of Love abides. The Joy of God persists. The Light of Unity shines forth through all that is temporary and destined for alteration. That is not always what a suffering soul wishes to be told. Certainly it is seemingly painful, when the wound is raw, to be presented with the Truth that recovery and transcendence is not only possible - they are inevitable. The cliche “time heals all wounds” is an interesting aphorism, for while it is true indeed in a manner that speaks to a much deeper Truth, it is often misunderstood within the world of form. It is not time that heals anything at all. It is the necessary distance from the initial schism or shift in stability that begins to encourage the “heartbroken” Child of God to be sufficiently cognizant of their own biases and presumptions to begin to be able to set aside all of their immature notions of “unfairness” and to begin the process of acceptance, no matter how undeserved they certainly were when they were first confronted with an emotionally tumultuous circumstance. The ego is overjoyed when it is presented with an opportunity to take up the pain of loss as a form of justification for its perspective, for who would feel safe to attempt to be vulnerable if they have allowed their egos to convince them that they will, once again, be destined to lose whatever it is that they covet as necessary or vital to their own happiness. Such is the conflation of joy, which is a cause, with the effects of this world, which are all derivatives of perspective. That is one of the most vile machinations of the ego indeed, for it is a great reversal of Truth to propose that peace is predicated upon anything at all, when in fact it is the present of Peace in your awakening awareness that generates the necessary impetus to the universe to encourage it to align you with situationalities that are justificatory of your acceptance of yourself as a being of Love first, and as an experiencer of material reality lastly and most unimportantly. That is the final undoing of the ego’s wish to control you, vetting all that you experience through its own patterns of evaluation, excluding anything at all that could possibly be accepted just as it is, for the ego has no use for contentment, even though your heart knows nothing else. When tragedy or adversity strike, and certainly they will at one moment or another, turn not to the ego for endless rationalizations as to why you should collapse. Look deeply into your heart to find the strength to continue until the very last moment of your current incarnation in form and upon this world’s surface, for there is always infinitely more to be grateful for than there are reasons to despair. Your fortitude and determination are unlimited. Your ability to actually experience this Truth may seem to be sorely tested at times. Those are not the conditions of loss. Only when you relinquish your will to transcend any and all challenges are you genuinely attempting for forfeit anything at all that is eternal. And yet you will not lose it. You will simply forget that you can, which is not a tragedy at all - it is merely an inefficient state of mind to occupy. To choose Love is to choose everything - the summary whole of all that is Real. To choose anything else is to be willing to accept less than All That Is. Over time, and with as many lessons as you need, you will learn to See that this is not a choice at all - it is a Path, one that leads only homewards to a level of Peace that will subsume all pain, a Joy that will erase all loss and a Certainty that will transcend any doubt that could ever have arisen.