Application Part 7

January 6, 2025

​​​​​Application Part 7

Is there a person who concerns or troubles you? They may be a family member, friend, neighbor, or associate. Are you possibly concerned about their welfare, their decisions, or their chosen pathway? You may be so worried that you lie awake at night thinking about their situation. Maybe there is a nagging feeling you need to do something to help, but nothing you have done works, and nothing you think of would work. We suffer. 

Or perhaps there is a person who troubles you because of tension between you and them. This relationship may cause continuous uneasiness, like a thorn in your side. We tend to suffer in such relationships because nothing we do will change it.

Coping healthily with such relationships is challenging because we cannot change others. No plans or strategies work. Such relationships are beyond the efforts of our thinking processes and our ego. But our ego rarely gives up. It wants people and things the way it wants them, and will not let go of its narrative about the relationship. What do we do about our suffering? 

In spiritual consciousness, we realize our powerlessness to change anyone. Through self-inquiry, we identify our ego's part in the relationship and its force to dominate our thoughts, emotions, and actions. We accept that the person we are concerned about or who troubles us may remain essentially the same—regardless of what we do or how we act toward them. We realize that if they change, it will be because of their own decisions.

Yet, spiritual consciousness gives soothing comfort that paves the way for eventual healing. How is this possible? In spiritual consciousness, we relinquish our perceived control over the relationship and our strategies to fix it. We take ourselves out of the center of the relationship, and this gives spaciousness to the situation, which had become tight and suffocating. We realize how egocentric it is of us to think that we have the power to change someone else.

Healing is possible because we are now conscious of a much larger story than the ego's perception. We may not know or ever know the whole story, but we know it is much larger than ourselves and our power. We realize how small we are compared to the vast unfolding story. This story may be so much bigger than us that it preceded the births of ourselves and that of the other person.  

Now we can release what we thought we could never release; we can give up our control but regard the person in love; we can stop taking ownership of the relationship and trust the mystery; and instead of having it the way we demand it, we place that person and the future in the hands of the Creator. In so doing, we place ourselves there too. This is Holy Freedom. 

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Spiritual practice: List in your journal the primary principles of applying spiritual consciousness. Apply principles of spiritual consciousness to a relationship that concerns or troubles you. After one week of application, how would you describe your level of suffering? 

Self-inquiry: Why would you not be able to trust that the relationship is part of a vast story that possibly started long ago, even before you became involved?  

Dear God, 

I pray for consciousness and to receive spaciousness in every situation and relationship. Amen