An article by Sha'Tara, local writer and friend.

Short Discourse on Life, with a Teacher

  [thoughts from    ~burning woman~   by Sha'Tara]

Can you define life for me?

Life is what is.  Specifically it is flow of energy coupled with intelligence.

Going into the micro here: Must life at my level of awareness, constantly be a struggle?

Life at your level of understanding is struggle, yes.  Even for those who would use their intelligence to avoid the struggle, because it becomes a battle against that which animates them.  Those who refuse to embrace life's struggle enter into a hopeless round of self-defeating quests.  By seeking to avoid life's normal struggle they create for themselves a host of unnecessary and completely useless lesser struggles.

What is the point of this struggle?  Why do we experience so much pain and uncertainty?

Life is change.  Change creates pain and maintains everything in uncertainty and this, in turn creates more and new change.  Without pain and uncertainty you get no change.  No change means your condition has degenerated into entropy.  At that point, even if you are motile, claiming to be alive, you are essentially dead.  There is no longer any spiritual or mental progression, just mindless repetition of motion.

Let me see here.  If I suffer pain, does that mean I am changing, moving with the flow of life, evolving?

Not at all.  Many of your kind suffer pointlessly, having no goal, having instilled no purpose in their incarnation.  Their struggle is to find release for unaccepted, even hated, pain to join with what they imagine to be the healthy, strong and consequently happy.  Because they have not incarnated their condition; because they know not how to use it properly, they spin their thought-wheels, seeking relief through various instituted agencies that cannot, by their non-spirit, non-life condition, provide that which would make the pain understandable.  Make no mistake about this: no one, and nothing, of itself, can heal or cure another aspect of life.

Not even God?

Least of all God. 

So, no miracles then?  Specifically, no miraculous cures for diseases, sicknesses or accidental death?

Oh yes, certainly, miracles are not only possible but quite desirable, but not as you understand the term.  I know what you have believed and repudiated regarding miracles.  You threw out the baby with the bath water.  You should have focused on the lies you were told about miracles and about what constitutes the miraculous, not throw out the whole concept. 

Going back over your answers, you are contradicting yourself.

From your viewpoint, yes of course.  But all of life is also, de facto, contradiction.  Your very existence is a contradiction.

I will ask you to clarify, but first, what about you?  Is your life a contradiction too?

Not for me personally.  It no longer contains contradictory principles.

Explain, please.

We call it transcendence.  As compassionate beings we do not react to circumstances but transcend them.  We are already above and beyond any circumstance.  For example, if I were to incarnate one of your chronically sick bodies and chose not to heal it, I would not be sick.  I would just go through the motions, appear sick, that's all.  Why would I do that, you think?  Perhaps to demonstrate true empathy.  Yes, I would feel all the sickness of that body.  But I am not feelings.  I am disciplined mind.  The same goes for concepts of good and evil.  I do not struggle with those because I understand them; I know them.

Self empowered?

Yes, of course.  No one makes choices for me or leads me.  I choose life then accept the conditions inherent to my choice.  Once those conditions are accepted at face value, then and only then am I empowered to drive my changes rather than have them drive me.  This is where my mind, my intelligence, enters into meaningful, cooperative, interaction with cosmic intelligence.

Miracles?

You would call it miracles, yes.  When your mind is in step with cosmic intelligence; when you are what some call "co-creating" with spirit, then it is not only possible, but necessary, to produce miracles.  When you come down to it, any truly new event within the web of life is a miracle.

How is my existence a contradiction?

Think!  Just think for a moment: do you know who you are?  Perhaps you have some idea what you are, but who are you?  What measure; what information, do you trust to tell you who you are?  Why do you need external confirmation to define yourself?  Because you live in contradiction.  You are a "transgendered" person in a world where gender is very much a case of black and white: male or female.  You of all people should understand contradiction.  But one need not be pushed as far as you pushed yourself to encounter one's own contradiction.  Religious and philosophical teachings have struggled with this since the beginning.  The good and the evil, right and wrong.  Conscience.  What is a conscience but the arbiter of contradiction?  You want to be good, but you find yourself thinking, saying, doing, countless things that rob you of your sense of goodness.  You become a good person only to realize that what you have become is a self-righteous puritan.  Conversely, you do evil things looking for pleasure, mindless satisfaction and you end up with guilt, depression and sickness. Why can't you be all one, or all the other?  Because life is contradiction.  An endless dance between saints and sinners, one no better than the other.  Duality in balance.

Are you saying I could never be a good person? 

Of course not.  But your level of mental and spiritual evolution still holds to too much judgment and condemnation to be able to grasp that holy grail.  It will yet burn your hands for some time to come.  You will have to learn to transcend the burns.  When we say you must be blameless, we do not mean you must be perfect: we mean you must not impute blame.  Do you understand that?

Yes, I do.  Thank you.