I’m reading a memoir (not yet published; still being written) called Gurus Behaving Badly. In it, a young woman gets swept up into something very much like EST (though she says it wasn’t based on EST), called The Course.

She gives us a balanced view of it all. In the beginning, she says, she learned something worthwhile and powerful — self-responsibility and self-empowerment. She learned that it is useless to blame the outside world and other people for her problems; she came to understand the empowering fact that she is the sole cause of her problems.

As it said in the old Pogo cartoon, “I have met the enemy, and it is us.”

“We are the cause of our problems.
The outside world isn’t doing it to us, in any way.”

Knowing this simplifies our lives. We have only to deal with our own mind — nothing else, nothing out there — to create the kind of lives we want for ourselves.

Along with all the empowering teachings she found in this organization, though, there was something about it that she realized only much later didn’t serve her well at all:

There was an unspoken message under it all, constantly reinforced, that said, “You need this Course. You need to put your money in it, and take all the programs, because there’s something wrong with you that The Course can fix.”

It took her many years, but she finally realized something important: There is nothing wrong with her. She’s okay. Every moment of her life has been perfect, in fact, leading her to where she is now. She has found her peace in her own way, no longer involving gurus and courses.

It’s true for all of us — in spite of our minds, and excuses, and dysfunctional families, and all the rest of our “stinking thinking”, as they so eloquently put it in AA:

“There is nothing wrong with you.
You’re okay.
Every moment of your life has been perfect,
leading up to this moment,
which is perfect.”

Once we understand the perfection of this moment, all our problems dissolve, like grains of sand thru our fingers.

Eckhart Tolle asks us a good question: In this moment, right now, what’s the problem?

Good question! And almost every one of us who is asked this question can’t help but answer that right now there’s no problem. In this moment, right now, there’s very rarely a problem confronting us. And when there is, we’ll deal with it.

To use Eckhart’s words, we no longer mistake our life situation — our life story — for our life. We no longer identify completely with our past, our situation, and the fascinating story of our lives, for we realize who we really are: we are life itself.

Eckhart uses a wonderful image: He sees his physical body as a window frame, with light shining thru the window. That light is who and what we really are. Our bodies are temporary frames that let the light of our true nature shine thru.

It’s a good image to bring to mind when you’re relaxing, and when you’re active as well, walking around, talking to people:

Your body is the frame that lets the light
of your Being shine thru.

Keep bringing that image to mind, and see what happens.