Spiritist Society Towards the Light

Fear, Faith, Being Diligent, and Letting Go

March 30, 2018

 

Overview:

• Facing Fear (Medical problems, no work)

• Overcoming Fear (Mover to smaller home)

• Faith & Overcoming Fear (Target & Walmart, humbled, reevaluated what was important)

• Being Diligent (credit cards paying off)

• Fear (food)

• Being Diligent & Letting Go (property search)

• Surrender

 

Being a victim or being Responsible

Being a Victim

• look outside of ourselves (powerless, weak)

• cause and source of problems outside ourselves

• if someone is the cause of your problem they are also the source of your problems

• other people outside of us will not change to relieve our problems

• we create anxiety because we want something different to happen and it doesn’t

• it is our choice to be a victim

• nothing to gain from being a victim

• being a victim is effortless

 

Being Responsible

• looking inside of ourselves (powerful, strong)

• cause and source of our problems inside of ourselves

• we can change our problems to become challenges and learning experiences

• it is our choice to be responsible

• being responsible is the alternative to being a victim

• asking ourselves “What have I done to cause or be in this situation?”

• need to have the courage and strength to look at the cause of our pain

• I become the solution of my pain

• We can tell ourselves to change

• Being responsible requires work

• Change requires work

• Situations are opportunities for us to develop our intellect.

• Problems are an opportunity for progress.

• Work is how we develop our intellect, how we improve ourselves.

 

 

Fear

After not working for a year due to medical issues in my family, we were out of money.

my husband had retired the year before, then been hospitalized, in skilled nursing, and rehab centers off and on for 6 months. I was self-employed, but couldn’t work for that year, I was emotionally a basket case. But that is another story.

 

This story starts when I finally put myself back together enough to face the financial reality I was facing. Bills were piling up from credit card companies to businesses who had given us credit, and now there was no money coming in. What to do. The credit cards we did have were now at really high interest, and even higher if I took out cash advances. I was counting pennies and coins just to buy lettuce. My husband had retired 6 months before he got sick. So, he was still recuperating from his illness and couldn’t help out with the business we ran.

 

My fear was on high gear –

• How were we going to eat?

• How were we going to pay our bills?

 

If I would have kept dwelling on the glass being half empty instead of being half full, it would be sending negative, anxiety vibrations out – and that is when spiritual obsessors start to hone in on us – and create more havoc, and keep spiraling downward, increase fears, increase anxiety….

 

Sense of completion and determinations. Give yourself a goal, a plan and do it. I could have kept being a victim – no insurance, can’t pay the bills, can’t pay the rent, why did my husband get sick, etc. etc. I chose to face the challenge head on – forgetting about the why me’s…..just went to the plan and did it.

 

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Overcoming Fear

So First we had to move from a larger home to an apartment, cut our rent by almost half. This actually happened while my husband was in the hospital, since we also had no health insurance and that fear of humongous bills forever was looming over us also.

 

Then I started paying the minimum each month on the credit cards we owed, but the day after the payment went through, I would take a cash advance on the amount I just paid to buy food and pay the minimum on the next credit card – this was super silly financial planning, but who said I know all the answers at 63.  But I was trying with the super limited skill set I had at the time in life skills. Before I would just call my Mom or Aunt and they would help bail me out, or I would just walk down the street and take the first job I saw advertised in a window…. But this time, my mom had just passed away a few years earlier, and I was still paying off my aunt from the last time she helped with some medical bills a few years before this current medical crisis. But now I had a business and knew I had to get that back up and running. But cash money to buy food and pay rent and electricity was survival. Fear of all kinds played havoc on me. But I was calm. I knew we would make it. I had faith

 

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Being Diligent

So, I calmly started paying off credit cards and creditors at the rate of $5, $10, $20 a month. And I did not miss a month, I was diligent. One creditor even forgave me $2000, I was amazed. A few years later when I started working with that credit again, I insisted I repay that $2000 they forgave me to start our relationship up again.

 

Then out of the clear blue sky two new credit card applications came from Walmart and Target. I gobbled them up. I was able to buy food from Walmart and then Target. Oh Boy we could eat limitedly again. It was pretty expensive food, but we ate. Then I discovered Grocery Outlet, and it has been my new best friend ever since, which was cheaper than Walmart or Target food, but I did not have a credit card with that store and had to use the expensive cash from credit card cash advances, difficult decisions. I overcame a lot of prejudice also. I was used to buying food from Whole Foods, now when I went to grocery outlet and the dollar store I was very humbled and proud to be amongst humanity that was like myself, just trying to be careful with what little money I had. I felt very connected to everyone in those stores, struggling to make it. My prejudice just got blown to bits…..My spiritual lessons were coming fast and furious.

 

 

Faith – Overcoming Fear

But I overcame my fears, I was no longer afraid of being able to make it when we were down and out. The most important things to me were no longer material, the most important things to me were my husband and our two cats, that was it, the big house didn’t matter, the organic food didn’t matter, the new furniture I couldn’t buy didn’t matter, shelter, heat, running water, safety, and nourishment – survival things were the only important things.

 

 

Fear Again

Fear of not having enough of what I want when I want it

Freezer full

Cupboards full

Enough to feed 3-4 families for a few months

When fires, flooding threats, I inviting families up to stay because I knew I had enough. It felt good to offer to share

I live 40 minutes from town

I only go to town once a week

I buy most from Amazon and Jet

I stock up whenever I order something

Or when I come to the bay area, specials stores have things I really like

So now I am on a minimal weekly spending for absolute essentials only

I have to eat what is in my freezer.

It is a surprise when I open up each container of things I made a while back.

 

Of course, I also prepare much more food than needed also. That must be another fear I have of really liking it so much that I want to keep eating it, or save it, or freeze it….

So, things pile up in the freezer.

 

I don’t think I consciously do this, but subconsciously I certainly do.

So, I am trying to address these fears and get them under some sort of control. So, if anybody wants to come up anytime, I have a ready-made party ready to go, but be prepared for strange surprises.

 

 

Being Diligent

Property Search

When first started looking tried to apply for a mortgage, but credit was so bad, it took 2 years to build up credit enough to even be at the bare minimum required for a mortgage.

 

Looked for several years

I looked every day 2-6 hours a day

I looked in Northern Ca, Southern Ca, Southern Oregon, the Bay Area, the mountains, the coast, I looked to partner with other property owners, looked for grants. We went to So. Oregon for a week looking at properties, on day trips looking at other properties in No. CA.

 

So, we went to get preapproval this time to see how much we might qualify for now. So we had a number, so we could look in that range that we qualified for.

 

Saw one in the spring, then kept thinking about it for 6 months, so went back and finally decided that was it.

It had unlimited water, springs, ponds, etc.

 

Unfortunately, we were only qualified for a mortgage that would only pay for 2/3 of the amount of money they were asking for that property. Now what?

 

Since we were going to be running our non-profit on that property, our experimental research gardening, maybe the non-profit could pay the other part?  We let a foundation know, that had been sponsoring us for the first few years, what our needs were, and they just happened to give us exactly the amount we needed to make up the difference.  Great…So we are good to go, right?

 

Well we still needed an appraisal, so because there was a lot of land with the house, guesthouse and garage being the only structures, it only appraised for ½ of what the owners were asking, so that was all the mortgage company would give us. So now what?

 

We were $100,000 short…..where were we going to get this money.

 

Were we banging our head against a wall…

 

Was god trying to tell us, maybe there were too many obstacles and maybe we weren’t supposed to be getting this property……..our minds were going round and round and back and forth…….

 

I had worked so hard and done all that I could do for so many years to make this happen….it was time to let go and give it over to God.

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Letting Go -- Surrender

So I had to let it go…..not even in my deepest darkest regions of my soul – I had to let it go –

 

“God if you want us to have this property, that is fine. If you do not want us to have this property that is fine too.”

 

I could not hold even one little bit of thought anywhere in my being, “But God I really, really, really want this property.”

 

Total surrender.

 

Then we got the owner to lower the price, and take a $25,000 loan for the difference, and the business bought the acreage and we personally bought the land with the structures. And we moved in.

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Summary

1. So, we can be a victim or we can be responsible

2. It is all in our thoughts – accepting the challenges as opportunities and doing something to improve ourselves instead of just being victims and expecting others to change, while we not put out any effort to affect change

3. We can always have faith that God and our Spirit friends are with us every step of the way

4. Keeping our thoughts positive

5. Making a plan, setting goals, and implementing those plans, step by step

6. Being Diligent

7. Overcoming our fears

8. Letting Go and giving decisions over to god and not always trying to be control

 

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As Spiritists

As Spiritsts, we learn that we are given a body which is a collection of knowledge, with ethical and moral consequences for our lives -- From simple to more complex. It is our choice to be conscious or unconscious, to exercise our Free will and work towards our goals or do nothing and sit and stew about our problems. We determine how we use the resource available to us in this lifetime.  We can decide to view things as challenges or suffering, as ways of improving ourselves or allowing anxiety to eat away at our lives constantly creating negativity and depression. It is up to each one of us.