THE SE7EN KEYS TO THE KINGDOM: Could there be more to life than weve ever known?

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Lesson 1: Beginnings

Arianna Huffington has long identified the fear of failure as a major roadblock to success. She told Business Insider last year: And we have a bigger problem with failure But failure, Huffington insists, isn't the end of one's journey to success, but usually the beginning. She told The Guardian earlier this month that her mother always taught her that, "Failure is not the opposite of success but a stepping stone to success. While risk taking can clearly be personally and professionally beneficial, it doesn't occur in a vacuum, either.

People don't benefit from risks without preparing to take them and educating themselves on the possible fall-out. Tap here to turn on desktop notifications to get the news sent straight to you. Great, otherwise unforeseen opportunities often come from risk-taking. Taking risks shows confidence and helps you stand out. Success won't fall in your lap -- you have to pursue it. You don't achieve your dreams by playing it safe. President and CEO of EngenderHealth Pamela Barnes urged female professionals to leave their comfort zone in order to achieve their potential in an interview with The Grindstone: Embracing risk-taking helps you overcome a fear of failure.

Taking a risk doesn't mean doing so haphazardly. Author of College But this is an overly literal interpretation of ancient teachings. This divine inheritance includes our ability to decide what we focus our awareness on i. We have been born under a case of mistaken identity.

And almost everything we see, hear, and experience—almost everything produced by society—keeps us in the dark about who and what we truly are. Our mistaken identity is that we are merely human beings having an occasional spiritual experience; that we are born in sin, circumscribed by our personality, a product of our culture and family, conceived on a certain date, destined to die. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Sin, as it turns out, is not some demonic quality of our soul; the word is an archery term that means to miss the mark. The only original sin we were born with is this false belief about who we are. This human incarnation is a magnificent thing, like a work of art, with the potential to reveal great beauty and meaning. Your true Self is, as Genesis 1: Everything you need for your total fulfillment is already within you, constituted as a part of this essential Self.

And when you are more identified with your true Self—and learn to depend on it for everything—all your needs will emerge without the effort and struggle so common to the human experience. I remember the first time this true self principle became real for me. It was before I stood on that stage I spoke about in the beginning of this book, and before I had the words to explain it.

It was an initiation, something we all have at a certain point—often many points—on the path of personal growth. At a certain point, I had gone through my savings, had no work or future prospects, and had exhausted all external means of support. I was left with nothing but my spiritual insights—literally living on a prayer.

Introduction

As I was losing sight of my true self, I was also, to be honest, pretty pissed off at God. One day, after groveling for another rent extension from my landlord, I sat in my worn faux-leather meditation chair and laid down the gauntlet: God, either there really is a true spiritual Self with everything it needs to fulfill its purpose, or this is all a bunch of bull. I meditated and prayed and beseeched and surrendered, trying to reconnect to this essential Self I had touched in my brush-with-death experience in that coral reef.

Wave after wave of emotion rolled through me, threatening to drown me again, with no end in sight.

And in that moment, it was like a pressure valve opened inside my body, draining me of all anxiety. I crawled into bed and fell asleep. For the next few days, I went about my business, actually forgetting that I had a problem. It was my former acting agent, calling me with an audition. I immediately knew it was the answer my true self had trusted would come and accepted the audition.

There are a few key elements to this experience that I want to highlight. I just reconnected to that part of me that was already whole, my true self, had a feeling of my innate completeness, and then surrendered my control of the outcome. By making this connection, I cultivated the conditions in consciousness that allowed it to naturally emerge.

Had I tried to visualize the outcome, I might have fantasized a variety of things, from getting a job as a spiritual teacher or writer for which I was unqualified , to winning the lottery or receiving an inheritance from a long-lost uncle one can always dream. At first, as in my case, doing so might help you pay your rent and put food on the table—meeting your basic survival needs is often one of the initial results of making this connection.

But the underlying principle has more profound implications. The realization of your essential Self, and the resulting activation of the Law of Emergence, can transform every aspect of your life—and those lives that touch you—ending conflict, dissolving fear, and creating a world that works for the highest good of everyone. We spin our wheels trying to come up with solutions to all of our social, political, personal, and professional problems. We create new policies, more restrictive laws, bigger prisons, and more powerful weapons to attack the issues—or just twist ourselves into knots trying to solve things.

Besides these broader implications, an understanding of our true Self versus our human self is a primary condition in the successful activation of the Law of Emergence.

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To the extent you identify with the part of you that is changing—the human self—you create resistance to the part of you that is emerging—the true spiritual Self—much the way an acorn would if it identified with its shell instead of the oak. This prevents our evolution.

We keep trying to solve the problems created by the human mind and its limited or distorted perceptions—problems such as separation, self-preservation, competition, and conflict—using the same mind-set that created them. But you can never solve a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it. When, however, you identify more with your changeless, boundless True Self, you stay rooted in your core, even as your human incarnation and external world continue to change form and reveal your ever-expanding good.

You no longer live from the level on which the problems were created. You stop doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. You enter into a peace and fulfillment no longer dependent on external conditions, but supported and fueled by the whole universe. While this is a liberating truth for our true selves and a great step up the evolutionary ladder, it can also be an overwhelming realization.

A lot of causes have been set in motion—how will we ever reverse all their effects? Mercifully, there is a higher law: From this consciousness, your past does not determine your future—neither past mistakes nor past lives. Things are not linear or bound by space and time. This underlying intelligence seems to be simultaneously everywhere omnipresent , with a knowledge of everything omniscient , and is the only power there is omnipotent. In short, it could be described as an omni-active intelligence with infinite organizing power in a field of unbounded potentiality.

That also happens to be how many mystics, prophets, and, to some extent, religions have described God—and how many cutting-edge scientists are describing consciousness. Rather than there being interactivity among all things—the basis of cause and effect—there is an omni-activity. Here we arrive back at our central idea: Things are not unfolding by chance.

Bad things do not only happen to bad people. Job recognized that many times the wicked live to reach old age and even appear to prosper There are many whys that we will never know in this life. Acceptance that the why may prove elusive sets the stage for a fifth vital lesson from the book of Job. Job was in despair. His whole life had been turned upside down. He had lost his wealth and his loved ones in a series of sudden calamities. Now his health was gone too. Job was deeply frustrated because he could not make sense out of his trials.

Yet in the depths of perplexity and despair he made one of the most profound declarations of faith recorded in the Bible: He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and He has set darkness upon my paths My kinsfolk have failed me, and my familiar friends have forgotten me Yet even at this low point of anguish and bewilderment, Job declares his heartfelt trust in God.

Job understood the truth of the resurrection. He went on to record the divinely inspired answer. Job knew that God would call and that he would answer and come forth from the grave, because God would have a desire to the work of His hands v. It is relatively easy to trust God when things are going the way we like them. When the world around us makes sense it is fairly easy to believe God is in charge.

But what about when things turn upside down and inside out? It is in the midst of such perplexity and anguish that faith in God is most needed. One of the things Satan never understood about Job was his motive. Satan thought Job only served God because it was to his advantage here and now. He was convinced that if God removed blessings and protection, Job would curse and revile Him. But that was not true. Job loved God and served Him out of sincere devotion.

He trusted God even when he was feeling abandoned. This lesson of steadfast trust is one of the most important aspects of character we can gain from any trial. Reward both Good and Evil. Life can often seem unfair. There are those who make no pretense of serving God and yet they seem to be doing well. There are others who are genuinely trying, but they are experiencing many difficulties and setbacks. What we have to keep in mind is that this life is temporary. Yet he realized that was not the end of the story.

Ultimately, it is in the resurrection that God will reward the righteous and punish the wicked. However, there are many times when even in this life events can make a sudden shift. But God does not operate that way. He is the great Teacher who is preparing us for a role in His Kingdom and He insists that we learn our lessons properly.

It was only when Job began coming to grips with the lessons that God wanted Him to learn that he began emerging from his period of great trial. God focuses on the bottom line.

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