April 2008 Newsletter

Hello [First_Name]

Welcome to the new subscribers. There are quite a lot of you since my last newsletter. Thankyou for signing up and I hope I can provide you with some helpful wisdom. If you have friends and associates who you think may be interested, please forward my newsletter on to them. If this newsletter has been forwarded to you, please visit http://www.eyeofthearcher.com.au and sign up for your own copy.

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The movie selection this month, Starshine is an old one but it is worth viewing again.

Article – The Puzzle Of Life

by Pat Campbell – 16th April 2008

When we are born it is as though we are given a jigsaw puzzle to work on. In the beginning the pieces of the puzzle are thrown haphazardly into a box and there is not even a picture on the lid to show what the final result should be. And to compound matters even more, the puzzle pieces are constantly shifting and changing as we ourselves shift and change on our way to both human and spiritual maturity.

As we progress through our life a picture starts to appear on the box and we even manage to fit a few pieces of the puzzle together. I liken the evolvement of the box picture to our human progression; our learning, preferences, ambitions, habits, desires and achievements. Unfortunately most people only ever develop a hazy, indistinct picture. No wonder life is so confusing. In actual fact though, one can solve the puzzle without having a complete picture to go by. Having a clearly defined box picture will result in a successful life from a human perspective but solving the puzzle itself will result in spiritual enlightenment.

For most of my life I really did not know that there was a reason for our lives. I thought that we were born by some random act of fate and after X number of years of existence that we would cease to exist by some other random event and that would be the end of the story. For over 50 years I just let life happen to me, totally oblivious to the fact that I could change anything I didn’t like any time I wanted to. How ignorant I was! I often liked to feel sorry for myself even though my life was not too bad most of the time when compared to a large percentage of the world’s population. I did after all have a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in and food to eat (at least most of the time). But I didn’t consider those things to be blessings; I thought they were my right.

I knew nothing about the power of positive thinking nor did it ever occur to me that the less than satisfactory life I was experiencing was solely the product of my own thoughts. If I had known, I most likely would have rejected such ideas as hogwash because I so totally believed that we had no control over lives. I was a great believer in destiny; I believed that our lives were mapped out when we were born and we were unable to change whatever fate had in store for us.

I look back now and I think, how could I have been such an ignoramus? But the fact is that these things were not taught in school (or if they were I wasn’t listening or the lessons were too subtle for me to grasp). Perhaps there were more life lessons to be gained in church but I didn’t have a religious upbringing. My parents did profess to believe in God as it would not have been “the done thing” to do otherwise but nevertheless religion was a taboo subject in our home (along with politics, sex and financial matters). And the only time my parents attended church was for weddings and funerals. So God was not in my thoughts at all and by the time I was about 12 or 13, I considered myself to be an agnostic. I didn’t believe in God but I didn’t entirely discount His existence either; I was openminded but disinterested.

I actually feel that it was an advantage to have not been raised within a framework of religious dogma. Because when I was launched very dramatically onto a spiritual pathway, my learning rate was exponential because there were no preconceived ideas or ingrained boundaries holding me back. And now my whole life revolves around God, not in a religious sense but I feel God’s love most of the time and it goes so far beyond anything I could have possibly imagined from a human perspective.

There is absolutely nothing that compares with “the God feeling”. I wish I could bottle it and give it away to everyone I encounter because there is no comparison between my life “before God” and “since God”. Of course God was always there (as He is for everyone); it’s just that I didn’t know He was there. And God will never come into your life unless you invite Him. He gave us free will and He cannot override that.

So if God is not already a part of your life, then invite Him to be. There is no necessity for formality or ceremony; invite Him to be your best friend and confidante. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. And if you do already believe, perhaps it is time to redefine the way in which you believe in Him.

When you have challenges in your life, don’t ask God to solve the problems. Ask Him to show you how to solve the problems yourself. Ask Him what the lesson is because when moments of drama occur it is always because there is a lesson to learn. Solving your life puzzle is infinitely easier with God’s help.