Heavenletters

A very timely and useful find, dear Chuck. This is what stands out for me:

When you chose the aspects of this life on earth that you amicably chose, you were not thinking of yourself and yourself alone. Naturally, you had a bigger picture in mind. Naturally, you saw more than you see now. You were not blinded then. You are blinded now. But you even asked for this blindness so that you would be irrevocably innocent like the lost child in the huge woods who finds his way.

Intimately connected to this, at least for me, is the question, "Who grants, who denies?" Or "Who is the victim, who is the perpetrator?" I just found this in Heaven #1843:

To some extent, you choose your suffering. You may not choose all the incidents, but the next choice is up to you. Did you think it was up to someone else?

Rather than saying you choose unhappiness, let us say that you may have neglected to choose happiness. You have denied yourself it. You are the one who denies yourself happiness. You may say you face reality when, in reality, you are denying yourself. It is you who tells yourself that you can’t have happiness right now, and you list your reasons. You decide you must continue unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Yet it is you who continues along the same line, or it is you who gets off. The choice is yours. Perhaps you have already punished yourself enough.

You have many reasons for denying yourself. You say it’s because of money, or your wife, or some set of circumstances not to your liking. You have become your own strict parent who denies yourself. “No,” you say to yourself, “you can’t have that. You can’t go there. You can’t do this.” You have a long list of no’s, and you may go to the end of the line before you allow yourself to have what you have denied yourself for so long.

http://www.heavenletters.org/upgrade-now.html

It's absolutely astounding how long the blindness can be kept up even after you have understood everything intellectually. From time to time, looking up with a start, I find I'm still enmeshed in that same old victim consciousness and feeling of utter helplessness and powerlessness. Amazing just how huge the woods can be we agree to get lost in, truly amazing. Sometimes I can only look on in awe.