As long as there is a particular thing disturbing you, you are not enlightened, and you came into this world to find the Light. Many times Spirit helps you to find the Light through the people around you. – John-Roger

This article by John-Roger was first published in the Movement Newspaper, August 1983.

The part of you that knows the magnificence of who you are — your Soul — has designed the perfect blueprint for you to follow in this lifetime. Through the different levels of your consciousness, personality and environment, you have been given the tools to accomplish exactly what your Soul has chosen to do during your lifetime. But sometimes it’s difficult to experience the higher realms of Light and to truly know your Soul when you live in a physical body in this physical world. You often get tired of walking through life in faith and want to know that these other things exist. So, you may end up asking yourself, “How do I get to know my Soul so I can find out what I’m supposed to do?”

It’s important to know that the understanding and experience of the Soul is always available to you, but you can block it by your own levels of conceit and doubt. For example, you may come in contact with a spiritual master or someone with more knowledge than you who is pointing the way toward higher consciousness, but you think you know better and say, “That can’t be it. It can’t be that way.” Or you may be following spiritual teachings and know they are true because your experience has validated what you’ve been taught. But there is that something inside of you that says, “Well, maybe that’s not really it.”

How can you really know if the path you’re following is the right one for you or not? If you convince yourself that you “know it all” or doubt that anything like that could be true, you block yourself from checking out the information with the part of you that knows the truth.

When you are open enough, it’s quite simple to check out what someone tells you to find out if it’s true. For instance, if someone tells you a flying saucer has landed in your backyard, you can get up and look out the window to see for yourself. If you don’t see anything, even after you’ve walked all over the backyard and searched for it, it might be possible that the flying saucer landed in another dimension you’re not aware of. In that case, you may not get a definite answer that the event actually did take place. If you check inwardly and touch to the consciousness of your Soul, you may find that the landing of a flying saucer didn’t make any difference in the context of your life anyway. So you move on to something else.

The best way to find out the truth is to move your consciousness from this outer world, inward to where your Soul resides, so you can place the experiences you have in proper perspective. Through practicing spiritual exercises, an active form of meditation that MSIA teaches, people are often able to reach into Soul consciousness and see more clearly what is happening in their lives.

Sometimes, however, just having the information about the best thing for you to do is not enough. You need to participate on this physical level in order to grow in consciousness and become aware of the higher realms. You need to use the knowledge you have gained by moving yourself out of your indecisiveness and your inertia into the act of doing because this planet is the level of getting things done. Even if you just get up to do the dishes, make the bed, or write out a check to pay a bill, you are doing what you need to do to free yourself from the distractions and obligations of this world.

In the process of getting free, it’s important to know that the ability “to do” and the ability of “doing” are not necessarily the same thing. You may be able to get out of your depression because you have the ability to do that, and you may tell yourself you have that ability-but you don’t always use it. Instead, you may sit around and feel sorry for yourself. Saying you can do something and not doing it is like living a lie. You’ve probably realized that you are in darkness when you play that masquerade with yourself and others when you pretend you have an ability to do something but never actually do it. On the other hand, you are living in the Light when you do what you say you are going to do. Once that action is completed it’s a thing of the past; it’s done, and you can go on to something else.

When you constantly say you are going to do something or have the ability to do it, you may experience the thing you’ve been talking about as a thorn in your side which continually pricks you. The good news is that this “thorn” may be a constant reminder to get up, get moving and do.

Sometimes you may find that focusing on your next breath to get energy into your body is all you need to do in that moment to get moving. When you are in a Light consciousness you work on those levels that are your immediate concern which may be your health and happiness. To get on with your life you need to make those levels balanced and whole, and it’s important that you do this in the way that’s right for you.

The level of consciousness you are in, or those things your Soul has planned for you to do, is your level of responsibility. If you’re not doing what your next door neighbor or someone else you admire is doing, don’t try to compare yourself to them. You are where you are meant to be. By doing the things that are directly in front of you to do you’ll grow in the Light. If you don’t handle those things, you sit in a form of darkness. You may not be able to progress spiritually until you are able to move onto the next level, and you do that by becoming competent on the level you are on. Fortunately, you have no choice, because if you try to get away from where you are, you probably won’t succeed. It can always be there for you to complete. There really is no failure in life. We always have another chance to complete what we came here to do- even if it means experiencing a similar pattern in a different situation.

As long as there is a particular thing disturbing you, you are not enlightened, and you came into this world to find the Light. Many times Spirit helps you to find the Light through the people around you. Often, you may misinterpret the feedback you receive from your friends and loved ones and shut yourself off from them. At that moment, when you shut off your love, you know what darkness is. Many times your friend, lover or spouse will “smack” you verbally to awaken you. You may think they’re arguing with you, but what may be really happening is that a place deep inside of them is reaching out to a similar place inside of you and saying, “Open your eyes and take a look at what you’re doing.” Your reaction may be, “Who are you to tell me that?” If you thought more highly of yourself, you might think, “Maybe I should listen to this person because they must be wonderful: they’re in a relationship with me!” It may sound like conceit, but there’s a lot of value in that way of thinking. We’d probably all be better off if we faced up to the fact that the person who lives with us or is close to us must be magnificent because we are, too.

Spiritually, you are oriented to know that there is a divine Light within you–the Soul. We are all extensions of the one Soul, the one Light. That Light can’t be fooled. At some point in your eternal existence you are going to be able to see the truth. Right before that time, you’re going to get a chance to look at all of the things you only thought you knew or that you perpetrated as truth, but really weren’t. Now is the time to prepare yourself for that moment by attuning more and more to the Light within you.

The Soul can have anything it wants and one of the things it has chosen to have is truth and rightfulness. When you are aware of your Soul, you are living right and full. Everything at that point in your life is oriented to lifting the consciousness of everyone around you. In all your interactions with people your message to them is, “I love you. God bless you.” When you keep those words in your mind and in your heart, you can live a life of health, happiness and abundance and know the magnificence of who you are.

Baruch Bashan.
John-Roger