Good evening. Here is a drawing I made today in my journal while I sat at a meeting:

And here is something very helpful I read in one of the most helpful books ever. The book is called There is Nothing Wrong With You: Going Beyond Self-Hate. It is by Cheri Huber.

Today I want to share a chapter called "The Worst Thing That Could Happen:"

STUDENT: Belief in fairness is such a setup for self-hate. "If things were balanced the way they should be, this wouldn't be happening to me." It's easy to go from there to, "I must have done something wrong." It's that old "why do bad things happen to good people?" I guess there aren't bad things and good people, just things and people.

GUIDE: And that's frightening, isn't it? Because it means that we have no control. If anything can happen to us in spite of all our best efforts to make things go the way we want, where does that leave egocentricity? One of ego's threats is, "If you don't do exactly as I say, something awful is going to happen to you."

If you believe this threat, the worst thing that can happen to you...

HAS ALREADY HAPPENED!

STUDENT: What is this "worst thing?"

GUIDE: Belief in inadequacy. Believing that you are not equal to your life. Turning away from your True Nature, your Heart, God.

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It's really quite miraculous, in the face of all our conditioned fear, to be wiling to even consider sitting still with ourselves. We work and work to uncover the layers of our conditioning, and when we see what we've uncovered, our reaction is

"Oh, No, not that!

I don't want to see that!"

What did we think we were going to see? We must remember that this is the layer of "stuff" between the one who is seeking and that which is sought. It's what keeps me from ME. We have been taught to hate it and fear it so that we'll be too frightened and disgusted to look at it. It knows that if we ever do --- if we ever get back to our unconditioned selves -- the jig is up!

Getting back to who we really are means no more self-hate, no more illusion of separateness, no more egocentricity. That's why it's so hard. That's why almost no one ever does it.

Egocentricity is very powerful and very clever and very determined because it thinks it is fighting for its life.

So it looks worse and worse the deeper we go. That is why it's critical to learn to sit still and believe nothing that the voices say to you. That's why it's so crucial to find compassion.

If the voice is not speaking compassionately to you, it has nothing worthwhile to tell you.*

*Everything you need to know will come to you in compassion.

p. 141-145

good night!