Using "Revision" in Your Daily Life

In our last message, we introduced our readers to the idea of "Revision", the technique of freeing yourself from the shackles of your past. Remember, we did not advocate denying or ignoring what is happening in your life right here and now! But you do not have to be a slave to your past hurts, failures and errors. How can we "turn the wheel backward" and use this wonderful spiritual tool to heal wounds that may have been open for a lifetime?

Our first step must be to forgive ourselves. Without forgivness, revision will feel dishonest and will engender guilt; which is the opposite of what we wish to accomplish. God has already forgiven you but you will only experience Her forgiveness when you forgive yourself. Remember God works for and through you! You are a partner in creation with the Most High God which is also the God indwelling in you. You must become a partner in forgiveness in order to be forgiven.

Some might say: "You just don't know the things I have done! You don't know has been done to me!" Dear friend, there is nothing you have done; no failure so huge; no hurt so great, that it has not happened millions of times before to untold millions of other people. God has forgiven each and every failure, hurt and offense. Why would He not forgive you? You are not a surprise to God. God knew you long before your birth into this world and God will be your constant and everlasting companion until the end of time. Since God knows you so well, it stands to reason that God is well aware of your failings, your mistakes and your weaknesses. Lighten up on yourself - God already has!

After forgiveness must come the realization that you are the creator of your personal reality. Life does not happen to you; you happen to life. You project your life onto the screen that is your personal world. Your current circumstances are a projection of your beliefs, thoughts, words and deeds. What is inside of you (all of it) is projected out from you and becomes your life!

Your thinking is creative, but not every stray thought has the power to change your life. Rather, it is the general trend of your thinking that has the power. If you focus and think of illness, either real or imagined, I will forcast with certainty that you are already sick or soon will be. If your thoughts tend toward struggle and hard times, you will experience struggle and hard times. Lack and poverty thinking brings poverty and lack - always! You are a magnet that attracts what you focus your mind upon. It is just that simple.

The next rule of Revision is: Never seek to avoid anything. The energy that you put into avoidance attracts to you just what you seek to avoid. Remember Job saying: "My God, my greatest fears have come to pass!" They always will. Fear is the great enemy of the happy and abundant life. If is poison to the soul and the heart. Fear not, you cannot die, except in body which is a mere husk. You are of royal blood, you are favored by the Most High God.

Paul admonished us to "think only of things of good report", in other words think of what you want in your life, give no thought to what you do not want. It is rather like gardening. If you want flowers to grow, water and tend them each day. If you want to rid your garden of weeds, give them no attention, no water and no care. After they have withered from neglect they are easy to pull out. So it is with your hurts, guilts and shame.

Each day you will decide what you will allow your day to be. Remember, you are not experiencing a day already constructed; when you awake in the morning you are taking the first step toward creating your day. Each choice, each word and the general attitude you take is what creates your day's experience. Be very careful what your first words are in the morning, whether to yourself or your family. I begin with a prayer of gratitude to God for each one of my blessings and for the wonderful day I am about to experience. Now this prayer is not a formal on your knees kind of thing at all. It is just a conversational thank you to your Creator for your life, for the power to create your life experience, and for all the great things in your life.

Gratitude is the great antidote to hurt, shame and guilt. You have no time to focus on the hurts and guilts in your life if your heart is filled with gratitude for the blessings that have been heaped on you. Get into a constant state of gratitude. That is a major step in Revising your life.

More on this next week. May your every moment be blessed!

AND SO IT IS!

The Art and Science of Revision

Have you ever thought, as I have, that it would be grand if we could rewind the tape recording of our life to erase some things that we have done to others or experiences that have happened to us?

I suppose that many of us have entertained these thoughts but dismissed them as idle foolishness, after all no one can do that-can they? If we could erase the hurtful or shameful parts of our past, should we? Don't we learn by our past mistakes and isn't guilt a valuable and necessary thing?

My answer might surprise you if you are new to this blog. If you are a regular, then you already know that I believe that shame, guilt and their cousins, self hatred and fear, are the true definitions of the "enemy" (some call it the Devil but as you know I don't believe that God plays deadly games with his children). As Jesus The Christ put it aptly so long ago,
"You fathers, hear me, would you put a snake into the bed of your children or feed them a stone when they hunger? What man would do that to his own flesh? Neither would your Heavenly Father. So it is your Good Father's pleasure to bring you the abundant life, The Kingdom of Heaven right here and right now."

There is one presence and one power in this Universe and that is God, the one indwelling, omnipresent and omniscient God; one and the same. There is no duality in this Universe, there is Unity and Oneness. However, mankind cannot conceive of a Being so loving, so pure and so without thought of anger, revenge or punishment, that we had to create an Evil One. God is not and never has been in the punishment business; no need for God to punish us, we do such a good job ourselves!

If we have the God given power to create our lives using The Word, do we not have the power to turn the creative wheel backwards and create a new past? May we not re-write or edit our past, as long as we do not hurt, deceive or defraud? We cannot erase events that have happened but we can erase their impact and their effects on us. Some people might reply: Rev. Dore', that sounds like denial to me and don't we have to face up to reality, to live in the "real" world? The question I would ask is: Whose reality is the "real" world? We all live in a world of our own making. If we make our world (our personal reality), can we not remake it?

In Science of Mind, we do not advocate denying what is happening in our lives right here and right now. You have to deal with what is in front of you but how you do it makes all the difference. If the IRS sends you a tax bill you may wish to remember Jesus telling us to "render unto Caesar"and be sure that you render unto the IRS. Denying the existence of the tax bill will lead to a very bad chapter in your life. However, you can go into this IRS experience knowing that it will be painless and easily resolved to the satisfaction of both parties. Expect this and that will be your reality. Or, you can go in to the IRS examiner with a chip on your shoulder and an attitude and your reality will be that he or she will throw the "book" at you. You will then almost certainly feel like a victim of the "heartless tax man".

Who created that reality? You did, with your choice of behavior, attitude and expectations of being treated unfairly. You get what you expect in life and not one bit more or less. Expect the good and experience the good. The reverse is also true. Remember what I have said over and over: God does not say yes or no; God says right you are. What you expect, what you focus on, what you speak of and what you choose are your requests to the Father. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom; Father always gives what you really desire and expect.

So many of those I counsel are haunted by the ghosts of childhood abuse, either real or imagined, family breakups, hurtful words spoken by parents. They are haunted by guilt for something they have done and can never seem to feel clean, new and lovable again. They live in a permanent state of unworthiness. No one should live this way!

God never intended his children to wander in a wasteland of shame, regret and self loathing. God sent his messenger, Jesus, to teach us to accept the abundant life, the life lived in the full knowledge that we are of royal blood; that we are the sons and daughters of the Most High God. Jesus came to show us that we may triumph over anything, even death itself - that we are literally invincible, if we believe.

How then, do we rid ourselves of the ghosts of past guilt and shame? By Revision. Revision is a technique whereby we write a new story of a past event in our lives, replacing the one that causes us so much pain. Oh, we know it happened, we are not delusional. What we change is how we feel about what happened. We acknowledge the event, re-write the script the way it should have happened and then move on; learning the lesson that needed to be learned. We never look at the old script again.

You cannot pilot a boat by staring at the wake! There is nothing redemptive in constantly beating yourself up for something in the dead past that cannot be changed. You cannot deny the present but you certainly may re-write the past. Caution here! I do not mean to give a license to falsify your resume or lie. The re-writing is done in your mind and heart and is never to be done to defraud, deceive or to hurt others.

Here is the major point in this message: God is all about forgiveness but God cannot give what you will not accept. Until you forgive yourself; you cannot receive God's forgiveness. You must love and approve of yourself for God to send his Grace and Favor. You are a creation of God, you are created to be just who you are - you are not a cosmic mistake! Who are you to loathe a creation of God? Who are you to feel unworthy and shameful? You are what God intended you to be. You are made of the very substance of God the Father.

You can never enter that state of peace, joy and abundance that we all long for; the place that Jesus called The Kingdom of Heaven, until you can be in love with you! To fail to love yourself is to fail to love God.

You are as much the Son or Daughter of God as was Jesus The Christ. God did not have one Son, he makes millions every day. Do not confuse procreation with Creation. God is the ONLY Creator in this Universe. Humans procreate somewhere in the world every second but humans only serve as vessels and vehicles for the Creator; by themselves they create nothing.

Your Good God is always ready to offer you the balm of His Grace, to heal your spirit and your body; if you will open your heart, mind and soul and let Him in. Infuse yourself with the Spirit and become once again One with God, as you were at the hour of your birth. Learn from your past; then forget it. It is dead and gone; the future is your creation and you haven't completed it yet. Put your focus on NOW - that is the point of power. It is where the future begins and the past ends.

Be kind to yourself, be easy on yourself. Decide what you want your life to be NOW and pursue it with focused tenacity. See it done long before it appears in form in your life. Hold on to your faith in God. Trust in your Divine Best Friend - your loving God. Trust in God's Law, that wonderful tool of life creation that works the same for kings, peasants, moguls and fools. It is your anchor and your staff - depend on it. May God bless and keep you and yours!

And So It Is!