To a Friend in Need: Opening the Way for Inner Healing & Transformation

I understand that it can be hard seeing yourself as able to make a big shift, especially when everything in your past says you can’t. The way I’ve been able to make that shift is to realize that there is a reality much bigger than my past and my conditioned identity (I tend to refer to this reality as God, but if you’re an atheist, you might think of it as the evolutionary life principle that somehow keeps advancing human life and consciousness in spite of all our self-destructive ways) that absolutely knows I’m capable of such a shift and fully supports me in doing so. After all, my conscious evolution facilitates the conscious evolution of all sentient beings. And if I’m miserable and self-destructive, that way of being negatively affects all life.

Then I simply try to find a place within in myself, regardless of how small that opening may be, in which I can feel even the slightest possibility for such a shift; and after doing so, I do my best to keep thinking, speaking, and acting from that place of possibility, that place of faith in my ability to evolve.

The enlightened sage Jesus was onto to something when he said, “If ye had faith [that is, the living, breathing inner feeling and intuition of possibility] even as small as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say to this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.”

Faith in your own innate capacity to realize your highest potential, otherwise referred to as spiritual inspiration and intuition, is very much like a seed. Your consistent attention and intention to be true to that inner intuition are like the sun and the rain that nurture the seed and enable it to grow to full fruition. This truth is the source for the common saying that, “You must believe in yourself;” that is, you must learn to trust the part of yourself that transcends your present condition, because your present condition is only a conditioned state of mind. It’s not who you really are.

The soil in which that seed of spiritual insight and inspiration grows is your very own heart, your innermost being. Every thought, word, and action you habitually focus on hardwires your brain and nervous system to support similar thoughts, words and actions. So, the key is to find that mustard seed-sized bit of “faith” in your higher self and SPEAK from that place. When you speak from a place of genuine faith in your highest self (as opposed to just mouthing a positive affirmation about yourself), your spoken words of faith act very much like numinous spiritual seeds, which enter back into the spiritual soil of your heart and eventually bear like fruit. But the key is to actually locate even the smallest tangible feeling of living, breathing faith in such a possibility within yourself when you give voice to such words. If, on the other hand, you only express words of doubt, rage, and confusion at your present situation, those words, too, will enter your heart and give birth to their own innate fruit. What you habitually focus on will train your brain and nervous system to support similar thoughts, words, and actions.

One of the simple ways I access that place of faith within myself, even when I seem to be making mistake after mistake, goes something like this:

I have no idea how this inner healing is going to take place in my life, and I admit that every bit of physical evidence in the real world seems to point to the fact that I’ll never be able to make such a profound shift in my life; but nonetheless, there’s something within me that refuses to let go of the idea that such a shift is not only possible for me, but is in fact a part of my destiny, if I’ll allow it to be. And I hereby declare and commit that I allow this healing shift to take place in my life. I have no idea how such a possible shift can happen, and it doesn’t matter how anyway; I just know that it will happen, and I’m thankful. I fully commit to cooperating with and allowing this shift to emerge in its own perfect time. Thank you.

Then, whenever I catch my mind going back into its old habits, I’ll sometimes actually talk to my own mind (just like Jesus said that with real faith you could talk to the sycamine tree and it would obey you), saying something like, “Okay, brain. I realize you’re just trying to help by solving problems in your habitual way, but there’s a deeper truth within me, a deeper voice, that says that my true nature is free from this chaos and that I can learn to live from that higher nature in real life, and I believe that voice, I trust that inner truth. So from now on, I’m going to speak from that higher place; and if I temporarily lapse, I commit to returning to speaking and acting from that higher place.”

Continue to nurture that inner seed of potential, and it will grow.

This article is an excerpt from a letter to an anonymous friend in need.