Trying
is Lying
06-10-01
Readings:
Spiritual
wisdom, starts the day that we know from now on every discovery is either a
discovery of the self or related to the self in Cosmic Mind."
Ernest
Holmes, The Anatomy of Healing Prayer
NO
FAILURES
If one appears to have failed she
should realize that there are no failures in the universe.
We should completely erase the idea of failure by stating that there
are no failures. If one believes
that she failed last year she will be likely to fail again this year, unless
the false thought should be erased.
Now here is a place where it looks as
though one were lying to herself, but she is not; for she is declaring the
truth about the Spirit that indwells her; this Spirit never fails. Affirm, "This word blots from the book of my remembrance
any sense of lack, limitation, want or fear of failure. There is no failure, no person to fail; failure is neither
person, place nor thing; it is a false thought and has no truth in it; it is a
belief in lack and there is no lack; it is a belief in a limitation which does
not exist."
Thought is very subtle, and sometimes
you may find, when you are making such a statement, that arguments will rise
against it. Stop right here and
meet those arguments; refuse to accept them. [i]
Every
violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at
the health of human society.
Ralph
Waldo Emerson
Our
consciousness is an empty screen and it is either filled with garbage--and then
we have the illusion that we are thinking--or we disengage our attention from
the garbage and refocus our interest on God.
And what happens then? The
garbage disappears, as far as we are concerned, and intelligent ideas begin
gently to engage our attention.
Thomas
Hora, MD
Try
not. Do, or do not.
There is no try.
The
character Yoda in the movie “Star Wars”
Trying
is Lying
We
walk around in a world that makes a great deal out of “trying.”
Whether we realize it or not, often we are asked to accept “trying”
as an excuse, or in place of the result that was sought, as if it is of equal
value. How many times have you been
left in the lurch, holding the bag, by someone who told you that they would be
reliable in fulfilling a promise, and when the time to do the promised deed, pay
the bill, or produce the work arrived, you got an excuse that involved the use
of the word “trying”? Often
people will tell you that they were “trying their best,” when what they seek
is being excused from demonstrating their word as it was given.
This is done either genuinely, or hopefully, but in any case, it signals
that you are not going to get what was promised.
“Trying” is a demonstration of the VALUE of the declaration that was
given to its maker. The same can be
said to be true of any excuse for nonperformance. Since a declaration of trying is given instead of performance
of a promise, it is an indicator of the how little value is placed on doing what
one has said she would do. And, to
be completely honest about this, we have to each stop and ask ourselves now if
we might be the folks of whom we are speaking.
If
what motivates us is either Love or Fear, then clearly using this particular
idea of trying is motivated by fear. What
kind of fear might it be? Between
the giving of our word and nonperformance, fear can come to us for a variety of
reasons and in a variety of flavors. I
am going to list, in brainstorm fashion some that have occurred to me, either
now, or at a time when I needed an excuse:
The
result I have reached here is NOT good enough;
This
not what they were expecting;
It
was supposed to be better than this awkward mess;
What
will they think of me if I say, give, produce, this?
They
are so much smarter than me, they will see right through to what I didn’t
understand;
This
needs more work, more research, more sanding, more thought, more phone calls,
This
is too salty, too crooked, and too fill-in-the-blank;
I
waited too long to get started;
I
was waiting to be inspired, and then inspiration didn’t come;
I
ran out of time;
I
am too tired;
I
was too tired to get the job done;
I
don’t know how;
Something
important came up; AND
I
didn’t understand what I was promising until I got into it and it was way too
big for little ole me.
Can
you think now for a moment and write down what your most common excuses are?
These
excuses are red flags, now you have a list of them so that you can recognize
when you are about to injure your own integrity.
It
is with these few words of excuse that we stop looking for why it is that we did
not do what we said we would do. I
wonder, and you can wonder along with me, how do we get in the habit of thinking
that this failure of our word is OK. How
is it that saying we tried, or giving these or any excuses, as a substitute for
the speaking of true words came to be something we would give so little thought
to? Do we make promises that we are
unlikely to keep? Now I am not
talking about big promises like ending hunger in the world.
I am talking about the promises we make as a part of living an ordinary
life.
For
instance, when you take a job, you promise to do a good job in exchange for your
paycheck and perhaps because there is an opportunity to demonstrate skill.
When you promise to do something as a volunteer you promise to do a good
job simply because you said so. Another
way of looking at these promises is
that you are exchanging your integrity for the opportunity to be of service.
This is the value of the word that is given.
Having worked with a good people and with many volunteers, I know that
some recognize this exchange as a deep and spiritual opportunity and others
value the opportunity according to what they perceive as payment.
When there is no money involved, or the idea of insufficient pay, if you
evaluate a promise on the basis of a
perception of value that is not a part of the deal, some pretty odd things can
begin to arise.
The
most common one is the idea that “I am doing this for free, what did
they expect?” This
attitude bypasses the value of the word given, shifts responsibility, and
completely ignores the affect upon our personal integrity and whether or not we
are living a life centered in the truth of our being.
We have to ask ourselves if we are being true to ourselves, are we being
present in the lives that we are given, are we honoring the divine within
ourselves and others? Asking these questions wakes us up and saves us from being
thoughtless with others. When we
promise do we really mean it? Let’s
just think for a moment about all the promises we make in our personal lives,
and how well we keep our word? How
does it make you feel about yourself to consider it? There is always the possibility to begin again, to do better,
and to build better on top of that.
Our
deeply felt intentions have everything to do with whether or not our actions
match up with what we have said. Wishful
thinking does not. From the reading
I have done this week in preparation for today, I am clear that “trying” is
an idea resulting from the internalization of the failure to remain committed,
centered and guided by one’s faith and the truth about oneself.
Paramahansa Yogananda defined truth this way: “Truth is exact correspondence with reality.”
So to create this correspondence, we will need an idea of what reality
is, and as we discussed earlier this year, reality is that which does not
change. That which does not change
is our true self, that awareness that is behind all action, behind all thought,
it appears to be the part of us that is divine.
This is always there in us and we know it as unchanged.
It is from this part of ourselves that we give our word, make our
promises, express Love, and choose Life. This
is both oneself and ones source.
The
idea of tradition and its cost
A
good many times when we get “trying” rather than that which we have sought,
I believe it is likely to be the result of
unthinkingly buying into tradition, or the status quo, rather than
tapping into oneself and ones source for the means necessary for whatever might
be next for us. Being true to
oneself, living a life that is committed and fully harmonious with ones given
word, a life of self-generated freedom, is discussed in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
essay “Self-Reliance”
I remember
an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who
was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church.
On my saying, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if
I live wholly from within?” my friend suggested, “But these impulses may be
from below, not from above.” I
replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child,
I will live then from the Devil.” No
law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.
“No
law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.” What if trying is simply not following ones own true nature?
Richard
Geldard writes, in response to this passage from Self-Reliance, “This
self-trust marks the beginning of wisdom and the first step on the royal road to
self-knowledge. Those who see
themselves as the arbiters of sacred tradition and revelation will always call
Emerson’s declaration dangerous and arrogant.
Philosophically, however, such independence and self-reliance are both
necessary and proper….The next question then, has to be, “What is our
nature?”’
Emerson
answers in his essay, “Nature”: “Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask
which are unanswerable. We must
trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever
curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can
satisfy.” In other words, the
very idea that a particular question arises in you indicates that you have the
resources to respond to the question available to you right here and now.
Given the kind of limiting beliefs we can all place upon ourselves, it is
no surprise that at some times we simply do not know ourselves or what we are
capable of making of our selves and our lives.
We get stuck with the results of our negative feelings and thoughts, and
then trying arises. Ernest Holmes
said in the first edition of the Science of Mind:
“There is neither effort nor strain in knowing the Truth.
Right action will be compelled through right knowing; therefore, when we
know the Truth, It will compel us to act in the correct manner.”
It really does come down to
this. If at our foundation, we know the truth of our being, if we
keep in place the practices that lead us back there when we experience our own
humanity, then we cannot fail. There
is no failure. There is only the
pathway on which we match our word to what we have said and this pathway is
empowered by God, in God there is only success.
There is no time, no space, no obstacles, nor barriers between us and the
full expression of who we truly are. There
is nothing missing the presence of which would make a difference to our success!
It is in our willingness to receive the bounty of being who we truly are
that we realize the power behind our words.
God set it up this way. All
there is for us to do is to gratefully turn in affirmative prayer to our Source,
and within the Law of Mind the mechanism of Spirit responds to our word.
And then there
is of course the part of doing what one has said.
But when it really comes down to it, we don’t have to know how we will
get the job done. Each of us knows
that there are times when we have no idea how we got something done in as little
time as we did. Yet it is done and
we are exhilarated and uplifted for Spirit did flow through and as us. God makes of us an instrument.
Remember, if God is all that there is, there is nothing impossible to one
who believes. The power of Love
cannot be overcome by anything. In
Love there is no trying, there is only being.
Choose now to be Love, Love is the agency of Spirit, and that is truly
who and what you are. Within Love,
within Spirit it is not possible to be thoughtless, to be wrong, to be bad, to
be evil. All things that we use to
judge ourselves when we fail to live within the integrity of our word.
Now,
to make a point, I am going to share with
you an assertion made by Hannah Arndt, a 20th century writer and philosopher. Time Magazine sent her to witness and write about the Adolf
Eichmann trials at the end of World War II.
She said that she was struck by the fact that "evil" might not
be the most accurate characterization of Eichmann. A more accurate analysis might be that he was
"thoughtless.” That he was
clearly someone who had never engaged with the questions of humanity - that he
proceeded without thought. I wanted
to illuminate Arendt's point that Eichmann appeared neither malevolent nor as an
emissary of the devil - but rather as someone who had never engaged himself with
the question of his being, his integrity, his authenticity; someone who had
never truly thought for himself and was concerned only
with the banality of bureaucratic success.
I
am not suggesting that anyone here is like that, his life exemplifies the
extreme of what happens in a thoughtlessly lived human life.
On the other side of that equation is the life of Gandhi or Martin Luther
King, who I will quote here speaking shortly before his death at Ebenezer
Baptist Church in Atlanta:
Every
now and then I think about my own death,
and I think about my own funeral....I don't want a long funeral.
And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too
long....tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize....tell them
not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards....I'd like
someone to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his
life serving others. I'd like for
somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love
somebody....
Say that I
was a drum major for justice. Say
that I was a drum major for peace. That
I was a drum major for righteousness. And
all of the other shallow things will not matter.
I won't have any money to leave behind.
I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind.
But I just want to leave a committed life behind.
Heraclitus
taught us “You can not step twice into the same river, for other waters
are continually flowing on. It is
in changing that things find repose.” Ernest
Holmes taught us that we can change our lives by changing the way we think.
Let us commit here today to notice those things that indicate we are out
of integrity with our word. Next
week we will discuss what we can do when we find ourselves approaching the
moment we are to do what we said, and we discover we are not ready.
Until then, I ask you to observe yourself and to take the following
warning to heart:
Warning:
Authorities warn that "try" is a dangerous expression that has
enormous power to influence your behavior.
It's toxic. Use it very
carefully. When "try"
creeps into your language or into your thoughts, pluck it out quickly.
Walter
Anderson
Thank
you for being here today!
[i]
Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind, 1926 Ed.
Emerson
Center for
