How to Face Difficult Decisions

There’s no right or wrong answer here, by the way. You just need to know how you deal with things of this nature.

It’s like you’re in a raft going down a river and right now it’s nice and smooth and it’s pleasant in this moment and you’re with great people and you’re in the right place. But you’re gonna hit rough water. How are you prepared for that?

But how about if Knowledge does not show up, if you’re waiting for Knowledge? Or if Knowledge did show up and it told you you had a directive that you weren’t really ready or prepared to do, which would throw you into real turmoil.

See, the really big questions don’t have answers. They mean you have to go through something. You have to go through a kind of a process of finding out what’s real within you and what’s real around you. There is no answer for that. It’s not like you just become passive and Knowledge tells you what to do and you do that and you’re out of the woods and you’re back in smooth water. For little things maybe, but for things that are very important, that’s not how this works.

Because in the beginning, Knowledge always feels like it’s some kind of foreign agent, like God sent this Holy Spirit to guide you, but it’s not you and you’re not really sure you want to engage with it or follow it, particularly if it puts into question something that you think you want or are committed to, or to a decision you’ve made or a commitment you’ve made, then, hmm,
not so sure.

So this throws you back on yourself and you have to find out how you really feel about your circumstances and what you’re doing, who you’re with if it involves a relationship, your decisions involving direction, work, health.

If it’s an important decision, do you need to go through something? You don’t quite know what it is or what it will involve, but you need to be willing to go through something.

So basically, unless an urgent decision has to be made in the moment or shortly, better to wait, in most situations. And if you have to make a decision and you’re not sure, yes, you can choose. It’s best if you can sleep on it overnight, see how it feels in the morning, but yes, sometimes you just have to choose.

But the really big decisions are things that approach us gradually and kind of overtake us in stages and they aren’t things that are like huge decisions in the moment, like where you have to make a decision. Those are more probably rare.

So what I’m suggesting here is kind of an approach. Because Knowledge will not arrive because you’re not willing to follow it. And when you follow it, you can’t blame it. You have to take complete responsibility for it because Knowledge is not a foreign agent. It’s who you are.

So you can’t say, “Knowledge made me do this. I’m doing this because Knowledge told me to.” That’s irresponsible. That’s treating Knowledge like some kind of foreign agent. “God has sent a foreign agent to direct you.” No. Following Knowledge is learning to be true to yourself at a deeper level. That’s what it is.

Another thing that’s valuable here is to know the mistakes you’ve made already, like really know them, not just feel pain and regret over them, or never want to think of them again. I’m talking about really knowing them: what you did, why you did it, was there a feeling around that to do that thing you did or not? Was there an indicator, or did you just leap ahead? Your past is a rich demonstration of: at points Knowledge, and then your success and your failure with Knowledge, and your need for Knowledge.

So your past is a very good thing to have a hold of very objectively. “Okay I went through this. I don’t really like thinking about it, but I really need to know what happened here.” Very practically, there’s nothing mystical about this. You don’t have to attribute higher order realities to this. You did something; something happened. Or you didn’t do something; something didn’t happen; or something did happen as a result.

This is called functional spirituality right here. It has nothing to do with upper levels of reality. It’s just you and the deeper you. And then you have other influences from other people and so forth.

At some point, you may know what to do, but can you wait, find that point? You have to get to that point. I mean, from where you stand, you can’t see what to do. So you have to get to that point where it becomes clear what to do. And your past is a good reference point in terms of the things you’ve done. In this case, your mistakes are more valuable than your successes because your mistakes are really the bedrock of wisdom. We never became wise by having successes; we became wise by making mistakes. That’s really the thing that forges clarity.

Because you had a success, you were lucky, or it turned out great, and you say, “Life is perfect.” But I’m talking about the rough water.

Your mistakes also tell you your tendencies, what you tend to do when you don’t know what to do, or you tend to do when you have a strong preference, or you’re afraid of losing something, which is the fear of not having. You’re afraid of giving something up. That’s the fear of not having and I talked about that the other night.

In a way, facing a difficult problem is a process, as I said, of finding out where you really stand, opposed to where you should stand or want to stand or what somebody else wants you to do or what your culture teaches you to do or your family teaches you to do. Where do you really stand?

That’s why it’s a process. It’s not just give me an answer and get me out of this situation, or make it go away. This is where you lay the foundation for knowing yourself. Regarding that situation, where do you really stand? No matter the risk or the possible cost or sacrifice it might entail, where do you really stand?

There may be problems or dilemmas that this is not applicable to, and there probably are. But in most things that people go through regarding relationships or work, which is relationships, or your health, which is a relationship—in fact, it’s all relationships, honestly. Where do you really stand?

Building a bridge to Knowledge is learning how to find out where you really stand, in many different situations. Facing adversity, facing opportunity, facing decisions, facing influence from others: where do you really stand?

But if you’re only thinking in terms of what is the right thing to do, what is the spiritual thing to do, what is the easy thing to do, what is the profitable thing to do, what is the kind thing to do, what is the loving thing to do, you’re gonna be lost. The opportunity in adversity is to find out where you really stand. And from that, you will know the kind of action you need to take.

Steps to Knowledge is kind of a process of reduction, where things fall away and there’s more of who you are as things fall away and your mind becomes clearer and more simple as it learns to think in alignment with Knowledge, which doesn’t mean you’re not going to hit the rough water. But it means that when you do, you have a better opportunity to know where you really stand and to know what you really need to do.

The Step, I welcome those problems that will redeem me. [paraphrased] I remember I had such a difficult time with that Step. Would I really welcome those things that would really put me in the hot seat? Or make me really uncomfortable or really challenge me? I welcome those opportunities that will redeem me, or the situations that will redeem me.

But then, in contrast to that, when I graduated from university, I went off in the wilderness for two and a half months alone, trying to challenge myself, to find out can I be on my own and can I be resourceful and can I know what to do and can I learn and can I be in a situation where there’s nobody there to rescue me and face everything that a wilderness can throw at you? Bears, bugs, rain, snow, everything.

I was even, at that point, trying to push myself out of my weak and immature state.

So it seems that even if we try to be comfortable at all times, there’s a part of us that keeps wanting to put us into difficult situations because otherwise we’re just supporting our weakness and our inability. We’re not getting ready for what we’re really here to do.

So maybe I’ll leave you with that thought of finding out where I really stand, which is there, but it might have a lot of other competing agendas in your own mind. And if you can hold off on taking action, this has to precede taking action. Otherwise, taking action is just lunging ahead or doing whatever seems the easiest thing to do or the least costly thing to do, or will garner the least amount of disapproval from others.

And so maybe what I’m saying is, that is the question: Where do I really stand regarding this situation that I’m in? Which is probably pointing in the right direction.

Now if you have to get off a sinking ship, this is not the appropriate approach. Or escape a burning building or things like that. But the big things that aggregate in our lives that were never right to begin with and only got worse, and you’re in the middle of it, those are the things where you need to find out where you really stand. It’s a very soul-searching process.

The problem that people have, I could say, that instead of following Knowledge, you’re learning to be true to yourself, to who you are. But the problem is that people have as much clarity about who they are as they have about Knowledge. So who you are becomes kind of an ephemeral thing that you try to make into something beatific or magnificent that is not in the realm of reality.

Life gives you certain decisions you must make, not only to escape your circumstances, but to choose beyond them which way to go. “Oh, I’ll follow Knowledge. I’ll wait for Knowledge.” No. Knowledge is waiting for you, to know where you stand.

Knowledge is not going to override you and just take you somewhere. It’s not a chariot here that’s going to sweep you off the desert into paradise. I mean, it’s the guru within you seeing if you can be a real student. And running marathons and climbing mountains is not a substitute for doing this…or being over the top with anything. So I’ll leave it at that.

So think about this for yourself. It’s a challenge; it’s not an answer. I’m designed to give challenges more than answers. That’s why many people won’t come to the New Message; it’s such a major challenge. They just want answers. They think answers are all you need to navigate this world.

And I will say one other thing in an afterthought. One of the things that prepares you for taking up big things is by doing little things successfully. Like using where you stand regarding less significant things, regarding what you do or what you don’t do, and who you choose to be with and things you think you really shouldn’t do that aren’t good for you, lesser things, build your strength for the bigger things, right?

It’s like shooting at a target. You don’t start off putting the target 100 yards away. You start off putting it 20 yards away to see if you can hit it at 20 yards. And then you can gradually move it out beyond yourself as you become more skillful. You don’t look like a group of target shooters to me, though.

But nonetheless, there’s other good examples of that.