Kuan Yin Speaks. The Tough Inner Core of Resolve. 10 steps to pass spiritual testing.

Hello my dears! It’s been a while I know.

All beings go through it, what is called testing. You can call it suffering, or karma, but it’s all obstacles on your road to where you think you want to go. Hopefully that is home to the awakened state of Tao realization.

Sometimes it’s just plain karma, but for those on a committed spiritual journey it is also God’s way of seeing how we deal with things that are placed on our path to see how ready we might be for the next step up. Do you see challenges as personal injustices, as insurmountable, as God being mean to you? Or do you take each thing as it comes as something that can teach you and make you stronger? One thing is certain, no aspect of your life experience will remain untested in some way, and this testing is designed to block you at your weakest point.

There are times when this process enables you to utilize your gifts and find creative ways to manage it, and there are times when you simply have to put your head down into the wind and get through it. How to you deal with a boulder on the path? You go over, under, around or through. Even the hardest stone will give way to the persistence of water eventually. You find a way. If you can laugh and have joy, that is best.

All beings have it to some extent, that deep tough inner core of resolve and resilience that will simply never give up. It is a shining part of your own Divine Self, and the amazing human spirit at its best. What is the alternative? To give up and fall back into the sleep of the endless suffering of the wheel of birth and death? To slide into victimhood and complaint? That is the end of the Journey of Light. Maybe forever. Better to let Heaven shape and sharpen your blade so that you can rise and rise and rise, finally to remember and rejoin the infinite and eternal awareness of who you are.

Now to the one through whom these musings flow.

As my beloved teacher Master Sha tells us, the higher you go, the harder it gets, and the further you have to fall. Be careful.

I must be getting higher, because the testing for me has been pretty rigorous in the last few years.

My job as a FedEx driver retired me, I loved it but at some point the body says enough. This body anyway. That has been an emotional and financial knock in many ways. I had a lot of plans on how retirement would look, but this isn’t quite that.

A year ago this month I fell hiking and broke my ankle. That just took me out of the game for basically two months, with surgery and navigating a house with stairs. There was some depression involved. I’ve never been a depressive person at all prior to that, but it’s been instructive.

That weak spot mentioned earlier has been finances for me, and it has seemed an immovable boulder.

Now, and for the last few months karma has smacked me down in the low back, spine, hips and sacrum, probably a predictable part of the aging process and a life lived very large, but upsetting. And very very painful.

There are those who have harder testing, but this is mine, and it’s hard enough.

What has ongoingly helped me so much is the ingrained habit of spiritual practice and study, and that core of resolve. I will NOT give up. If this body should decide to go back to the earth, I will stay on this journey somehow, some way. This I know. I will not give up.

…..

I can use this all to be of service to others, with a little list of what keeps me on that path of Light.

1. Do your spiritual practice more if possible, it is truly the lifeline.

2. Stay in touch with your spiritual community and do that together whenever possible. Feeling that you are doing it all alone can be sad and isolating.

3. Laugh. Laughter is like magic in its way, it can shift that boulder in a powerful way. Like the tale of the anger eating demon, problems shrink in the face of good humor, and it will help to establish a better perspective.

4. Don’t forget forgiveness. We didn’t get to karmic testing because we and our ancestors have been pure angels, but because we have done identical harm to others. Heaven is completely fair and balanced and it is pivotal to shift our perspective from poor me to, ooopsy, I/we caused that pain for someone else. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I forgive all souls. In Master Sha’s teaching, Da Kuan Shu or greatest forgiveness brings inner joy and inner peace. Not self-flagellation, but reconciliation.

5. I recommend the study of Tao Science (Dr. Rulin Xiu), which cuts through a lot of spiritual fluff language. Love is God in action, and we are that in some way. She teaches to speak to pain, offer love and attention to it, feel it, be in the body, and be aware. It’s a very effective formula that I am finding extremely helpful.

6. When it all seems too much to bear, stop and be still. No-thought is fertile ground for healing and inspiration. All thought comes from the mortal experience and is 90 percent negative. Do work to clear the subconscious mind, which along with karma, runs the show.

7. Do your human stuff. Hug the dog, walk in nature, breathe in Light. Eat what you love to eat. Drink a glass of wine if you want to. Take a nap. Take your foot off the gas.

8. Serve. I find it is an absolute truth for me that when I am leading a class or a practice or a blessing, I feel fine. There is no worry, no pain. Master Sha teaches that it is the Yuan Shen or Divine Self that is in charge and fully present when we are serving from the heart. That is where it wants to be on its journey with us.

9. Set a sleep intention. Science is verifying that what you hold in your mind in the last 7 minutes before sleep is what it will work on all night. I myself meditate and chant, do forgiveness and honoring at bedtime. I also set the recordings of Tao Meditations to loop all night just at the level of hearing, and I almost always feel better in the morning.

10. Know that whatever it is has come to be transformed and will pass. It will pass. The clouds will dissolve, the sun will come out, and you will go on to whatever the next adventure is. With joy, with courage, with resolve. Never give up.

See there? My good daughter is on the right track. Perfect? Of course not. But her heart is seen and known, and that is good.

May all your journeys be blessed and brave.

That is all for now.

I love you.

For information about the Tao Meditations click here. When subscribed there is also a lot about Tao Science at this site.

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By Kristin Strachan

I am a teacher, author, and spiritual practitioner in Colorado. I am blessed to be a student of Master Zhi Gang Sha, worldwide Master Teacher, Healer, Calligraphy Master and more. For more information on the teachings and programs of Master Sha please go to:

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