What Works
The choice to live in Truth, Love, and Light is the first choice you need to make. And, if you make that your first choice, you will find, if you are sincere and honest with yourself, that it becomes the basis of every other choice you make in life. That is the Way that leads to the Highest Good.
If you want to know what is really right, good, or true for you, you need to question everything. This means turning over every decision in your life to the Light and Truth — God within — not your programming or social indoctrination.
If you have never questioned things, if you have never taken the time to look deeply within your self for the Truth, you have, by default, given your power to something outside you. Throughout your life, your social conditioning is reinforced, and you keep losing more and more of your self. You are programmed and conditioned to give in to what is popular, what others think, ... to think wrong, to choose wrong, to behave wrongly. The world-at-large presents you with many temptations, desires, false promises, and illusions. And, you could fall for them, one after another, or maybe just one. One addiction is enough to overshadow you.
You might wake up one day, and find that nothing is really working for you. Which brings us to God. Christ is — if you choose it — always working for you, always looking out for your spiritual well-being, helping you to make choices that minimize your suffering. This is a much truer kind of success in life.
Think about it. How much of your time, energy or resources is going toward the wrong things?
Put God first, and everything else takes its proper place
There are many things that can be helpful in your life, but if you do not put God first, then you may get the lesser things you focus on, and miss having the greater. In other words, there is your Highest Good, and then there is everything else.
What else works for you? Consciousness, choice, commitment, creativity and intelligence, flexibility, dynamic action, faith, responsibility, purpose, personal power, integrity, patience, realism, perspective, love, truth, simplicity, honesty, trust, nonviolence, respect, openness, originality, spontaneity, flexibility, receptivity, aesthetic appreciation, imagination, insight, initiative, organization, communication, focus, integration, expanded awareness, overcoming negativity, spiritual truth, mindfulness, balance, sincerity, evenness, detachment, courage, letting go of emotions, and thinking for yourself.
It works to understand life, and to understand your own resources.
There are courses that can help you learn how to do what you can from your side. It is said that "The Lord helps those who help themselves."
Ask yourself: who or what is in control of your life?
Is it God, Christ, Jesus? Or something else?
It is helpful to understand how many of the things in your life are not working for you — or are working against your higher good. That's why we are looking at problems. Problems are situations in which things are different from what you already know, think, believe, or practice. So, something different is needed, if you want to find solutions that truly work for you. It's not just more of the same. That's the realm of programming, conditioning, and indoctrination, none of which entirely serve you, no matter how common, pervasive, or accepted they might be in your given society.
Ask God to help free you from what you are stuck in
A person, institution, society or nation can create and live in their own fantasy world, a world of untruths, ignorance, oppression, deceit, exploitation, or illusion. And, they really know how to make that "work." They are very good at developing a system, including a belief system, for enforcing their wrong thinking. And, they never even come close to the Truth in their whole lives. The Nazis did that (and thought they were good Christians). People do that, today. People you know. It is the self-serving ego that is entirely resistant to correction, truth, reality, and a Higher Good. Ego creates the most narrow, selfish, world of illusions, in which it reigns supreme. Ego can create an entire false existence or life for you, with desires and ambitions that have no relation to who you really are. The wrong things can run your life. And you can work really hard to make them your "reality."
Anyone who has an addiction has learned how that behavior "works," for them. They are better at doing that than anything, over, and over, and over, and over. They can do it without even thinking. And, that is the whole point. Just about all of those things that people imagine are working for them, are coming from a place of unawareness, unthinkingness, habit, reactiveness, and mindlessness. Sure, it "works," but it is in reality only working to keep them trapped in self-limiting behavior, in unawareness, or in denial. Illusions do not work in reality. Anything that separates you from reality, so that you more readily live in your illusions, may eventually ruin you. And, your problems will simply not go away.
Bill Maher noted people that "start every conversation with 'As a person who,' 'As a survivor of.' I’m triggered every time I see a trigger warning, because I’m reminded of how weak my country has become. It’s like wearing a mask on your mind." "Students started demanding them so they could get ready in case something in a book, or a piece of art, or a history lesson reminded them that life included bad things and not just good and sometimes people were mean."
People who refuse to accept personal responsibility for themselves do not accept a higher spiritual responsibility, guidance, wisdom, morality, or vision, either.
Isn't ignorance bliss? This is, historically, what all tyrants, exploiters, and corrupt authorities count on: your taking the easy way out, your not thinking. Does ignorance protect us from the consequences of our choices? Of course not. If you are not aware, if you refuse to accept responsibility, if you will not solve your own problems, it would be foolish to put blind faith and trust in others to solve them for you.
It would also be unwise to merely go along with the popular sentiment of the moment, whatever that might be, rather than truly think for yourself. You could be greatly disappointed in the end. Popular thinking, based most often in ego and emotion, and shaped or manipulated by indoctrination, is not really thinking at all.
Are you solving your problems any better than our leaders are?
What makes all of our problems harder to cope with is the fact that we have been lied to, deceived, misinformed, and exploited so often, and on such a scale, that we may feel we don't even know where to even begin to solve our problems.
Awareness, clarity of perception, right understanding, and the capacity for right action, are the true abilities and responsibilities of the individual, not the society you live in, and not any institutions in which you may erroneously place your trust. It takes true courage to not give in to hatred, evil, or indoctrination — to reject the programming of your own society — to do the right thing. It takes discernment not to label a group of people as evil, just because they have been demonized by your society or its leaders.
Do not let the present wrongs of your society live or act or propagate through you.
People look back on their lives, and see what they did, and realize it wasn't really them. It was their parent's persuasions, their peer pressures, their society's programming, their conditioning, their unspoken agreement, their unthinkingness, their unawareness, their excuses, which led them along their path in life. It was all of those things that took them down a road that they would not have chosen if they ever took the time to find who they really were. What would life be like, if it was led by your True self, and if all choices came from a basic choice to align yourself with Truth, Love, and Light, continually, along the way. It would be a very different life, every step of the way.
Let God and Christ lead you every step of the Way. Your thinking changes. Your choices change. Your behavior changes. The activities you pursue change. For the better.
Ask God what God wants for you, rather than asking God to just give you what you ask for. Realize, God knows what you need better than you do. This is how true prayer works for you.
