The Only Thing That Matters (27 page)

The presumption at this stage is that you have already selected Choice #2. It is highly unlikely that you would have read this far if you had not. Yet merely making this choice is not enough.

Some human beings make this choice consciously, seeing and embracing themselves as Spiritual Beings, but then don't really believe that they are—or are not sure.

Some human beings make this decision consciously and are sure about it, but then don't know how to implement it in their lives.

Some human beings make this decision consciously, are sure about it, and know how to implement it in their lives, but don't do so.

Some human beings make this decision consciously, are sure about it, know how to implement it in their lives, and do so—but then
don't
, and then do again, and then don't again … so they experience their spiritual identity as an on-again-off-again thing.

It is for all of these reasons that the world is the way it is today.

The challenge, if you are to find peace and end the struggle and suffering in your life, is to embrace your identity as a Spiritual Being, and then implement that choice consistently.

As has been stated here now many times, most people don't know what that “looks like.”

We are about to show you more of that, and how you can bring that more fully into your own life, using some marvelous tools. You've already remembered Gratitude. Now let's look at some other tools as well.

32
Another Gift, Another Tool

A
SECOND VALUABLE ITEM
for your tool chest is called …

R
ECONTEXTUALIZATION

Using this remarkable device, you dramatically alter the Data that gives rise to a Truth that forms the Thought that produces the Emotion that creates your Experience of any Present Moment.

The process of Recontextualization does just what its name suggests. It creates a new context within which to frame Life Itself, as well as any event or circumstance within Life, virtually eliminating any reason or justification you might have felt in your life to be angry or resentful with or about anyone.

This remarkable tool involves a repositioning of your perspective, allowing you to see what is going on at any moment in your Life within a new and startlingly different context.

Let's back up here and begin at the beginning on this one.

It should be clear at this point in your life that what brings you joy—the
highest
joy—is self-expression. It is through the fullest expression of Self that the fullest experience of Who You Really Are is achieved. Now, a person looking at Life a certain way might feel that the fullest expression of Self is very wonderful if it can be made to happen, but that it doesn't happen very often for many, and that Life has more to it than this, and that we must all go on, whether we feel “fully self-expressed” or not.

Recontextualization, on the other hand, tells you that
full self-expression­
is the experience
you came for.
This creates a not-willing-to-settle-for-anything-less thought in your Mind. It reformulates the days and times of your Life within the context of your Soul's Agenda, not your Mind's concepts. The Soul's Agenda always exceeds the Mind's Concepts. This is not true some of the time, this is true all of the time.

What is being said here is that Recontextualization dares you, calls you, invites you, empowers you to see your Life in a new way—to give it a different meaning, to surround it with a different purpose, to place it in an entirely different context.

It invites you to place yourself in the center of the Wheel of Creation, and to envision your Self as collaborating with other Souls all around you in the producing of conditions and circumstances that are ideal for the Completion of your purpose in placing yourself in any Present Moment.

It invites you to place that purpose itself into a new context: the Agenda of your Soul and the Sacred Journey upon which your Soul has embarked. This is truly seeing your life and its every event in a new way.

With Recontextualization can come a sudden reactualization of the Self. And as you become a self-actualized being, rather than a reactive being, everything changes in the way you move through the world.

Let's look at just one example. After using the tool of Recontextualization, you never again “work” at a job you don't like, and you never again “don't like” a job at which you are working. That is because your “work” has become a “joy”—even
if it's the same job you had before
.

What has happened is that you have reframed your whole idea of what “work” is about. You have
recontextualized it.
Before, you thought work was about “earning your keep,” paying the bills, being “responsible,” and “doing what you have to do” to stay alive and take care of those you love. Now you know it's about making a
life
rather than a living. It is about you as a spiritual being, not what your business card says, and it is suddenly this that matters.

Your work is simply a means to an end; it's a way of your being what your spiritual journey is inviting you to be. It is merely providing you with a context within which to be that, nothing more.

What aspect of Divinity are you demonstrating—to yourself and through yourself—when you're taking care of those you love? What aspect are you expressing when you pay bills that you owe and acquire things that you need or desire?

What aspect of Godliness are you exhibiting when you give to charity, or offer financial assistance to someone you know who is in need? What about when you purchase a wonderful gift for a loved one?

Look at what you do with your money. This is who you are.

You are not your job.
Your job simply provides you the means with which to be who you are. Are you generous, giving, caring? Are you fair, honest, trustworthy? Are you protective, empowering, creative?

All these things are aspects of Divinity that you give yourself the ability to express freely, through the gift that Life has given you of what you call “work.”

When you see your job in this way, you will experience it not as something that you
have
to do (there are many people who choose not to work), but as part of a larger process by means of which you get to
be
particular aspects of Divinity that you have freely decided to be.

For some, this is a new way of looking at employment for sure—but
that is what Recontextualization is all about
.

Interestingly, you don't even have to have an affinity for what you're doing in
any
given moment, not just at work, for this tool to be effective. It could, indeed, be that job you don't particularly like, but it could also be a home chore with which you are bored, a task you would rather not do, a conversation you wish you did not have to have, an evening you had hoped to avoid—it could be anything
.
Again, it is suddenly not what you are
doing
that matters; it is the decision you have made about
What One Desires
, and your close look at how you can manifest that through
whatever
you are doing. This becomes The
Only
Thing That Matters.

This is how you can Recontextualize any Moment. You simply decide that it exists for a reason entirely different from the reason that you had given it before.

Magically, that new choice—if it is your highest choice—can impact and affect what you are doing in such a way that the actual
doing of it
becomes a pleasure and a joy.

You can find it joyful to wash dishes when coming from this place. You can find it easy, and actually wonderful, to go to a job that you once hated to go to when coming from this place.

Returning to the motherhood example, this is the place that a mother comes from when she changes and nurses her two-month-old baby at 3:30 in the morning. Bringing herself out of a sound sleep is probably not what she most wants to do in the middle of the night, but she consciously or unconsciously recontextualizes her activity in a way that permeates her thoughts about herself and about what is going on—and this process is so powerful that she finds she actually
does
want to do what she is doing.

Conversations with God
tells us that “no one does anything they don't want to do.” Recontextualization takes you to the heart of that truth. People can
think
that they don't want to do it by forgetting the reason why it
benefits
them to do it, then imagining themselves to be the
victims
of having to do it, through a circumstance that they, themselves, helped to co-create
in order
to experience the benefit that they now cannot see.

Recontextualization places you back into the original space, the space of your Soul's first purpose. It replaces Original Sin with Original Motivation. This truly is an amazing grace, for once you were blind, but now you see.

Using Recontextualization, you realize that what
ever
is happening right now is happening in order to provide a context within which you can be and experience the next grandest version of the greatest vision you ever held about Who You Are. This exceptional tool is another way of focusing on The Only Thing That Matters.