It’s a common human trait, it seems, to cry out for God in times of perceived difficulty. If you find yourself in that place now I’d like to extend you an invitation to look closely at what’s going on. What’s the problem, really?
Is the problem money? Health? Relationship? A combination? Most of the problems we believe ourselves to have can be categorized by money, health, relationships, or a combination. Consider the problem you’re having now — the problem that motivates you to seek out God.
How should your particular issue be described?
Once you know what the problem is consider whether it’s really a problem. Is it a problem — a legitimate and pending problem — or is it actually a mental story? If you’re able to read this writing it doesn’t seem likely that you’re in great immediate distress.
You’re able to take the time to read this, after all.
So are you, actually, in the midst of a pending problem? Or are you stuck in a mental story… possibly about how badly the future is going to turn out? It really is important to be precise.
If we are precise, if we are present and aware, we can distinguish between a real world situation and mental static. If we are precise and present and aware we know that the mental stories within our awareness, the stories that insist on a worst case scenario, are not the same as the truth. Do you know certainly that your story, the one causing you to call out for God, is actually the truth?
Is it possible that the story really is not the truth and that things will not turn out so badly as you imagine?
In fact it is not life that is causing you to suffer so — it is this mental story playing within your awareness. Even more specifically it is you believing, attaching to, this story that is causing your suffering. That really is the truth of it.
Perhaps you’re not really in crisis at all but are simply complaining. Perhaps life is not providing you with your ego desires and so you, at the behest of your ego, are filing a complaint with God.
Give me this, God, and then everything will be okay!
Most people believe that genuine peace and contentment follow positive life circumstances, but the opposite is actually much more true: positive life circumstances follow genuine peace and contentment. This is extremely difficult to grasp for many, mostly because the ego cannot grasp it. The ego equates true happiness with having, and not simply being.
You can have genuine peace and contentment right now. Now. It does not matter what your external life circumstances are, or are not. Can you believe this? If you cannot you are in need of insight; otherwise you will continue calling out for God when God all the time has been within you.
And it is because God is within you that you can be happy and contentment right now, no matter what the outside world does or doesn’t do. Consider the following Biblical quote:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
All this time then you’ve been calling out for God, looking out for God… when you should have been looking in.
