Everything in this universe is geared in one direction: self-realization. Every event and every experience, regardless of our intention, perception or judgments, is oriented toward self-realization. Because everything is infinite in its essence, everything is sacred. There is nothing we can do to make it otherwise, except to misperceive it and cause ourselves a lot of grief. Byron Katie says that she loves what is. How can we not love what is when we realize that it is all designed for self-realization? All of our frustrations, angers, griefs, boredoms, hostilities, jealousies, guilts, self-punishments, abuses, addictions, and sufferings have one ultimate purpose: self-realization. It is that purpose which we fail to see when we mis-diagnose our symptoms. We attribute every cause imaginable to our symptoms except the truth. The cause and purpose of every symptom is the possibility of self-realization, spiritual awakening.

They asked Jesus: "Who sinned, this blind man or his parents?" and Jesus said that it was neither, but that God might be glorified. What kind of gruesome god would glorify blindness? Sighted people do not normally see and neither do the blind. Having eyes does not glorify god nor does being blind discredit god. Only spiritual sight glorifies God, only self-realization glorifies God. The Will of God and the will of man are identical but not as we know god and man. The universe is designed in such a way that the only way to know God is to know yourself and others, and the only way to know yourself and others is to know god. The person who has misjudged himself and others will misunderstand God, and the person who is ignorant of God will discredit himself and others.

My latest self-realization is that I am not separated from my Good; I am not lacking my Good; I am not trapped by less than my Good. I am not separated from the Good of my health, my abundance, my happiness, my pleasure, my freedom. I am not lacking in health, wealth, peace, joy and freedom. I am not a victim of poor health, poverty, suffering, lacks and limits. Wherever I Am, there my Good is. Whatever I am doing is toward the goal of my Good. Any judgment that I lack Good is false. I praise God for my ever-present Good, whether I recognize it or not. Anything that I resist is the result of telling myself that my Good is not present. I am pretending that whatever I am resisting is greater than my Good. Anything that I fear or resent, I am empowering, as though it were greater than my Good. You’re in a pickle? Consider it a perfect pickle!

Why do we keep feeding our fears, jealousies and resentments? Because we think we are feeding ourselves and our good. We do not even have our own best interest at heart.

Feeding our fears is not self-realization. Jesus kept saying "Fear not." There is nothing to fear. The only thing we fear is nothing. Fear has no reality except what we give it. Only truth and love exist, and there is nothing to fear about either. Where truth and love are recognized, fear disappears. When Jesus said that snakes will not harm you he didn’t mean to go out and pick them up. He meant that the most dreaded fears have no power to harm.

Whatever we have attracted into our life at any given moment is perfect for self-realization. The law of the universe says that we attract and experience what we think and that is exactly what we need for self-realization, because it will not satisfy. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God, in truth, in love, in self-realization. Basically one programmed human mind is not ultimately better than another, some are just better manipulators than others. Everyone is ruled to a degree by fear, anxiety,and insecurity. People respond to fear differently: some get nasty and some get nice. But the "nice versus nasty" pair of opposites rules human thinking and exists in every human mind. We are more alike than different.

Do I sound severely pessimistic? I am profoundly optimistic when I say that the human mind is ruled by insecurity. It is optimistic to realize that fear-based behavior is unconsciously motivating a lot of human behavior. If you don’t realize it, you become a victim of pessimism. If you realize that most human thinking is anxiety-based, then you can be an optimist. The fear-based mentality can never work and therefore it is an aid to self-realization. We will never find security in the finite viewpoint. And when you reach the infinite, the insecurity problem does not exist, so why would you need security types of manipulative solutions?

Am I self-realized? It is a matter of degree. I recognize some of the signs of the anxiety-based mind, and I am acquainted with some of the powers of self-realization. I am thanking God more and more in everything I experience. I am beginning to recognize the non-dual reality. It is the non-dual which holds together the apparently dualistic world. If the universe were merely dualistic, it would fly into a million pieces.

Love holds everything together. Human cells are designed to work perfectly. When they become dysfunctional and turn against themselves, we have cancer. It is rather amazing how well our cells stand up under the stress we put them under. However, I believe that the memory of the original design is still there and can be restored. "Troy can be un-burned." Forgiveness is possible on every level, including the cellular. All of our judgments and mistakes will all be unwound, unburned, forgiven, restored, rejuvenated, redeemed. Everything will be returned to its original condition because creation has never left the mind of its creator.

There is an invisible veil, an invisible barrier or wall of beliefs between your finite notion of yourself and the infinite truth of self-realization. When you bump into this wall in your search for answers, you may feel you have nowhere to go but to the finite, to the limited. Since you are an infinite being in a finite body, you are anxiously dissatisfied with merely the finite, and you are constantly searching. Unless you realize that there is a barrier of mis-beliefs you will search only in the finite.

The morning paper said that there were 69 police reports of "peeping tom incidents" in town this last year. What is the "peeping tom" trying to see? What is hidden, what is disguised, what is lost, what is missing? The peeping tom is not the only person who is searching in the finite world for his lost self-realization. We are all looking and searching, each in our own frustrated way. When Jesus spoke with the woman at the well, he knew that she had had five husbands, and that now she was looking for a prophet, for another man to fulfill some unknown need. He said to her that she was "thirsty." He said that there is eternal water with which she will never thirst again. Take notice of how and where you are looking and searching. Ask yourself whether you are searching for your own lost self. Ask yourself what your barrier of misbelief is? What do you tell yourself that keeps you locked into the frustrating pursuit in the finite realm?