10/22/97

The best lessons are the ones we teach ourselves. It may be hard to believe but the people that push us, anger us and the ones we usually hate (which you should not do) are the ones most spiritually connected to us. These are the people and situations that make us look deep inside of ourselves to help us find out who we really are (which is what this is all about). These are the people you will celebrate with on the other side (or how ever you want to phrase that) . You must go through hard times/situations to grow it is as simple as that. If you lived a life where nothing went wrong you would eventually get bored causing yourself to seek out disruptive situations you can not avoid it. Instead welcome it and glide through it. Pain is inevitable Suffering is optional! !

Like jobs we are moving out of the times that you stay in one job your whole life. It is happening all around us. We learn what we need and move on. One of the first things you have to learn to do is let go/forgive. Look at the bad things and people in your life as teachers

then learn and move on. We tend to want to hold on to things even though we do not want to admit it we love our pain. It keeps us warm at night — gives us comfort. Some people hold on to pain thinking that by holding onto old pain no new pain will come along -~ Sorry it does not work that way.

This is why people repeat situations over and over if you center your mind on how you are hurting instead of what you are learning you will never learn the lesson. If you do not learn what you are to get out of it that situation and person may leave but another person and situation will come along to teach you again until you finally get it forgive and thank them for the lesson and move on.

Think as LIFE as a mountain climb. As you go through life you pick up situation and people along the way. If you cling to the negative situations this become chains you drag. Now while this is happening the mountain is getting steeper steeper. If you have to many chains in the past this will cause you to slow down and in some cases stop (look to the ruts in your life these are telling you to do the work to let things go and change you attitude) . To keep moving forward you have to let go of the past. With each thing you let go of a chain drops (now you have to watch it you can still pick up new chains) and you become lighter more able to move forward. The mountain becomes more and more of a challenge getting steeper -~- as you drop stuff the easier the climb becomes. To reach the top and become master of your mountain/life you have to have dropped everything to make the last step naked to the world and God.

I thought everyone had some idea of karma. I always hear people say stuff like “it must have been his karma” , “that’s bad karma”. Well, most people who believe in really do not know what it is EXACTLY. Most agree though that it is a balancing of things. For example if you do something bad to someone else you will get something bad back in return (not necessarily from the person you did the bad to)

Most people like the idea of karma, because if someone did something bad to me and I could not even the score the universe would for me. On the other hand people do not like the idea of karma, because •they feel they will have to pay for something (they got away with) somewhere down the line.

I won’t go fully into what I believe, but I do believe in karma. I think we create more of it for ourselves than we actually deserve. I also think there are two kinds of karma