Day 41

Today's Lesson:

God goes with me wherever I go.

Today's lesson really starts getting to the heart of what this Course teaches. When we think about the current state of the world - with all the loneliness, abandonment, depression, anxiety, worry, misery suffering and fear - we can see how today's lesson really is the opportunity to overcome all those heavy emotions.

We have tried so many "cures" for what we see as "the ills of the world," but we have been acting on the effects, not the cause. If we are treating symptoms of dis-ease that isn't even real, what might we be able to "cure" if we get to the root cause?

We have learned over the past few lessons that our minds are part of God's and we are very holy, our holiness envelops everything we see, our holiness blesses the world, there is nothing our holiness cannot do, our holiness is our salvation, and we are blessed as sons of God. However, today's lesson says that we probably still don't really believe all this. We are conditioned to look at the heavy clouds of insane thoughts which represent all we see around us. We see the clouds and think the sky is gray, when really the sky is always blue - it's just that the clouds sometimes get in the way of the blue sky - of the truth. The light is always there beyond the clouds - we just have to trust it and find it within.

God is the light behind the clouds and He is with me wherever I go. As we start really thinking about this statement and take it to heart, we begin to see that the answers to the problems we see in the outer world are within us as God is within us.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I got a book in the mail today (well, it probably came yesterday, but I got it today when I went outside to get today's paper) called "Hard Optimism: How to Succeed in a World Where Positive Wins." Coincidence? The book tells us how it is possible to create hard results from something as traditionally "soft" (in the business world) as positive thinking. One of the quotes at the very front of the book is from my hero Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The ancestor to every action is a thought.

So if the thought is from within us, where does that thought come from? Today's lesson makes it so much easier to trust those thoughts if I know that God is with me wherever I go.

The world is all abuzz over Oprah's interview on Thursday with the people from The Secret. Think about the way we can alter the entire universe now that we've got so many more people thinking about ways we can really make a difference in the world instead of looking for ways things won't work. Think about all the creativity and innovation that can manifest when given fertile ground in which to work.

Yesterday before I started on my 5-hour journey back to Fargo after speaking to the group in Mankato, I stopped to see a friend of mine who works in Mankato. She and her husband both work in the same office building - a shopping mall transformed into an office building (very cool) - and she showed me his office, warning me that he was very busy and probably wouldn't be able to stop and say hi. As we walked into his office, he stopped what he was doing and asked a couple of questions about why I was in Mankato, what I was doing, etc. It turns out his business is a management company that helps businesses succeed, including helping startups with all the steps they need to take in that phase. We talked for probably a half hour, and he gave me all kinds of great advice as my business, Bock's Office Transformational Consulting, grows into the next stage. He even gave me the name and phone number of a woman he has helped grow her company - in a very similar genre as mine. Coincidence? I don't think so.

I had stopped at Barnes & Noble on my way back to my hotel the night after the speech in Mankato and picked up Wayne Dyer's "Ten Secrets for Success and Inner Peace" on CD, so I popped that in on my way back home. Wow. Have you ever read a book (or listened to one on CD) and thought, "I wish I'd have written that"? This is one of those for me. It's so in tune with everything I think. I'm so grateful for Wayne Dyer in the world.

I also bought a little book called "When God Winks At You." It's all about coincidences and what they really mean. Hmmmm.

Just notice what seem to be random coincidences. What if God really was with you wherever you go. Would those events seem to be as random then? What are you seeing in your own life?