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I used to feel that I hated this world. That was a common thought in my mind.

I didn’t hate this planet, I hated my life on this planet because I couldn’t figure out how to be happy and live without fear.

Year after year after year, I’d really believed that if I could accomplish certain things that’s what would make me happy. No matter what I accomplished it didn’t make me happy for more than a moment. Everything that didn’t work out was devastating to me.

I didn’t realize that Life was pointing me in a different direction to what I thought happiness was.

I know it might seem like I’m talking mumbo jumbo, but I have really experienced what it talks about in the development of Trust.

In all of my programs, and on my weekly A Course in Miracles podcast, I’ve shared how helpful I feel it is to read the section on Development of Trust, in Chapter IV of the Manual for Teachers of ACIM.

In that section, it talks about HOW we actually come to learn to trust Spirit in this world and in doing so decrease our ego-identification while increasing our Spirit-identification.

The section talks about six different periods that we go through in the development of trust. I feel it’s so helpful to understand these steps because without that understanding life can be extremely discouraging from an ego perspective.

The first period is about undoing our attachments to false idols. In it, we’re going to experience what seems like a lot of loss. Actually, what’s happening is that we’re being given support to truly understand that we’re valuing things that aren’t valuable.

It’s not that we have to give up the things that we want and that we think we love, so much as we must give up our ATTACHMENT to them and how we hold them in our mind. Is it a false idol? Do we think it’s our savior? Do we feel we’re worthless without it?

My experience has been that I’ve given up so many of the things that used to be important to me. I’ve realized that they really aren’t meaningful. Living in both New York City and Hollywood/Los Angeles I really saw how much people valued status symbols.

When I think about it now it feels really insane to think that the things of this world would give me any kind of status that would be helpful to me. Now, what’s important to me is being loving. I’m not interested in comparing myself to others anymore. I’d just like to fully LOVE them and accept them without judgment or complaint.

I’m more interested in what I can do for others than what they can do for me.

Now, I know that if there’s what seems like a loss, Spirit is helping me to find a better way.

For instance, last year I moved into a rental house in May. I knew the house was going to be put back on the market to be sold – and I was interested in buying it, but not for 6 months or so. I wasn’t concerned because the house had been on the market for at least five years and hadn’t been sold.

Two weeks after I moved in it was bought and I was given two months’ notice. Ugh. I had to move out on August 15th. August 1st I still had no clue where I’d be moving to. Yikes!

I knew that Spirit had a plan even if I didn’t know what it was. I could trust that because I’d learned to trust it. So, I was at peace even though my situation appeared to be uncertain. It was clear that the uncertain appearance was just that.

Spirit had a certainty.

I could rest on that.

I made a plan to stay with a friend if I needed to. It turned out that I only needed to stay at my friend’s for 2 weeks. I moved into my new place in September and all was well.

Of course, had I been worried and fearful it all would have gone differently. That’s why learning to trust, and eliminate fear is SO crucial to our happiness and Peace of mind.

Spiritual practice saves time, money, and worry.

Without fear driving my choices I have a lot more time because I’m not running all over trying to figure things out. I let Spirit inform me what the highest and best choice is and I go with that.

Without fear motivating my decisions I don’t throw money at things hoping to fix things that way.

Without fear pushing me I’m not worried about the future. I’m looking forward to seeing what unfolds and what Spirit has prepared.

It’s a completely different way of living.

One time I was going out to dinner with a friend who was telling me her concerns about something in her life. After she had explained the situation to me, I said to her “it sounds like you’re planning for what you don’t want to have happened.”

I’ve been a spiritual counselor for two decades and I can tell you that it’s a very common thing to counsel people who are focused on how to prepare for what they don’t wish to have happened.

Why is that their strategy?

It’s because they don’t trust and have faith in Spirit.

I get it.

It’s almost as if we’d like to experience what we don’t want so that we can say, “I knew it. I was right.” And then they’re glad they prepared for what they didn’t want because it happened.

And often we don’t see any real correlation between our focus on the thing and what happens. We refuse to recognize how powerful our mind actually is.

The fact is that our mind IS the mind of God.
What we hold in our mind IS going to be what we experience.

And we’ve ALL been trained to prepare for what we don’t want and to expect disappointment.

We’ve been trained to expect to be ripped off, disrespected, let down, and rejected.

And then we wonder why it keeps happening to us.

We say it’s because “they can’t be trusted.”

The fact is that our trust is misplaced. Our faith is misplaced.

We’ve placed our faith in fear, worry, doubt, lack, and limitation.

We are responsible for what we see, and the way that we see it.

So let’s look for something we’d like, and can enjoy and feel good about.

We can break free of the patterns of fear. It does take focus and effort, but it’s so worth it. Imagine being able to break free of worries and fear, guilt and shame, and all the self-attack. We can stop managing and coping and start transforming and transcending.

This is what ACIM teaches us. It works.

If you’d like to do this work with me, and have a major increase in your connection with Spirit and feeling PEACE of mind, you might like my Finding Freedom From Fear, spiritual boot camp class with ACIM principles. We start TODAY Sunday, October 3rd. We can develop trust together and change the rest of our lives for the better.

If this is right for you right now, you’ll know it. Trust your intuition and you won’t regret it.