Personal Growth Versus Spiritual Growth

I was part of the self-help movement for 20 years and all that I was taught was the if I am not growing (personal-growth) I was dying. Yet something deep within me knew that it was all a lie. I could not understand how come I did not feel like pulling through.

As I have let go and let God, my life continue to fall into place more easily, offering me whatever lessons I need to learn in order to continue to undue my ego. Not a bed of roses I have to say, but in hindsight, the suffering had nothing to do with the experiences I was having but in my resistance to what was taking place.

But as I continued to trust that everything is unfolding just as it is supposed to in order to help me detach from my personal self, I experience more peace, which is the ultimate goal, to experience the peace that passeth understanding. And from there, whatever I do in physical form it is what it is. What a peaceful way of living.

Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com

To judge them individually is pointless. Their tiny differences in form...

"To judge them individually is pointless. Their tiny differences in form are real no difference at all. None of them matters. That they have in common and nothing else." T-18.I.7:8-10

In life we experience all kinds of seeming challenges, yet what A Course in Miracles reminds us is that even when in form they appear to be different, in truth, every seeming challenge is the same for there is no order of difficulty in miracles.

Whether you are dealing with a financial, health, career, relationship, emotional or whatever the issue may seem to be, all we are asked to do is to offer our challenges to the Holy Spirit to help us see things as they really are; illusions and not truth.
In that sense, our mind is healed and the challenge no longer has an effect on us. As we practice being more peaceful and trusting as a result of surrendering our troubles to Spirit, we experience clarity of thought. From that space we are guided as to what to do, if there is a doing involved, which could be the answer to any seeming challenge we may be faced with.

But if we continue to solve our problems ourselves, all we are doing is perpetuating the illusion of lack and limitation within our own mind. Remember that everything we think is happening to us, is really happening within us and therefore projected out into the world. That's why it is said that as within so without.

So if we want to experience a difference without, we first need to address the within, which caused us to project the without we are experiencing. We address the within by offering our fear-based thoughts to the Holy Spirit, not by us trying to fix or change anything. In doing so, even if the without does not change, at least we are at peace with what is, which is referred to as the peace that passeth understanding. See how simple it is?

Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com

Is it okay to charge money for doing Spiritual work?

QUESTION: I am so much in the heart and to make money you need a mind. I wished to coach and teach EFT, but I have difficult in charging people in need. Spiritual people have these issues about charging others, do you have an insight for this?

ANSWER: The question is not really about money but about the guilt behind asking for money. When I ask for money am I coming from love or fear? First I am going to share an excerpt from my book, What Happens When You Let God:

"As I am bringing this chapter to and end, another thing I would like you to be aware of, is that after twenty years of following and even teaching self-empowering techniques, getting to meet some of these well-known speakers, even working for one of them, I noticed a concurrent theme. Not for all of them, but for most, all that they want is money for the false sense of power they derive from it. Without it, they feel small. Not because they are, but because they believe they are, even when they are in denial of it. As a result, they even make others feel guilty for not having money. And they must, for that is how they can manipulate, or as they say, “persuade” others into investing in whatever it is they have to offer, especially when most believe, as stated earlier, that you, me and everyone out there is their source and supply.

Here is a disturbing email I received before this book was published by someone who simply came across my website. These are her exact words, without any editing;

----- begin email -----
'Dear Nick, I just wanted to say that I am so pleased I found your site. I feel that this law of attraction fever, is two far away from the truth. I listened to (name undisclosed) tele-seminar last night on attracting wealth and it left me cold.
The questions were all from people wanting money. Not enough emphasis is being put on internal peace and strength. It took me a long time to realize this and forty years of searching, but mainly plumbing the depths. I gave up almost everything I had, ran my businesses down to virtually nothing and basically jumped empty handed into a void.
What I found astounded me. Peace, happiness and a totally new way of life. It mended not just my broken spirit, but all my relationships with family and my beautiful child who had become separate from me spiritually. I am now in a position to retain the beauty I have found in my new life, while attracting to me exactly what I need.
I found it interesting from my new perspective, that when you have peace and strength, there is little else you want, and attracting your needs is enjoyable, fun and effortless. You are a wonderful inspiration, and I believe that the world really needs you, now more than ever. With love, Sue. W.'
----- end email -----

Am I saying that there is anything wrong with having money? Absolutely not, as a matter of fact, feel free to have as much as you want and enjoy it! I do enjoy it when I have it. There is no reason to feel guilty about having lots of money. What I am saying is, be careful whom you choose as your god. If you were to be honest with yourself right now, unless money is not an issue for you, that’s where most of your attention probably is. And unless you want God more than anything else, meaning choosing peace above all else, if I can come up with a tool or something that can promise you financial freedom, you are most likely to fall prey to what I have to offer. In her book titled, “Oh My God. It’s ME” Dr. Sheryl Valentine states:

'Our true inheritance is not money or things; it is the remembrance that God is the source of all good. Once we remember this—instead of living in a place of isolation and fear, our lives become filled with purpose and meaning.'

The truth is, not having money is not the problem. The real problem is a two-point never-ending loop. The first problem has to do with the way you feel about not having it, and second, the mistake of believing that the way you feel has to do with not having it. In other words, if I feel bad for not having money, that triggers guilt and fear. Now that I am feeling fearful and guilty, and thinking that not having money is the reason I feel the way I do, that puts me in a very vulnerable position because I have introduced a new god (money) into my life. That forces me to keep my attention out into the world as opposed to where my attention should always be, which is within, in other words, on God. Even many people in the spiritual community don’t want to accept that they have bought into the ego’s way of thinking. That’s why you hear titles such as, “spiritual prosperity” or “the law of spiritual abundance” or some other variation of the same premise."

Now let's look at money from A Course in Miracles' perspective. Everything I see in the world is an effect. The Mind is what project all effects I see in the world. However, I am having an experienced, which, although it is not real, it is still an experience. My experience is that I am a body who lives in a world that is real and that I needs financial resources, shelter, food, and so on. So as we heal our mind from our sense of separation from God, all we need to do, is to establish a very intimate connection with our Spirit within, so that every decision we make is rooted in love and not in fear.

From that space, we begin to feel that we are fully taken care of and provided for. As a result, the resource that we need will show up in the form of money, or something else. Using myself as an example, there are times when I feel appropriate to charge for my time and at other times I feel moved to offer my services freely. The key is to not doing service out of guilt because in that sense I am not serving neither one of us, and here is the reason why.

There is only one of us in the room. If I buy into someone's guilt, all I am doing is reflecting back at them their own fear, which in turn solidifies the fear in me. Why? Because the person I am seeing out there is my own projection. Remember, I am the one projecting everything I see. So really, the one who needs healing, is really me. They are the projections I am putting out there in order to make myself belief that they are the ones who need healing, when in reality they are showing the parts of me that need healing.

A world filled with fear is simply a reflection of the fear that resides within me. A world filled with love, on the other hand is simply reflecting back at me the love that is within me. So the work is never on healing others or the world, it is always on healing the dark spots in my mind that are projecting the world I see. That's why every master in one way or another have said, "Everything is perfect in my world." Because they are not seeing a world through the eyes of the ego, they are seeing a world through the eyes of Spirit, from the love that they are, not from the false sense of most of us believe ourselves to be.

So when it comes to money, the fear is not about charging money, the fears is about thinking that there is not enough to go around and when I charge someone, I think I am taking something away from them. But once again, the REAL issue is that we think that our source comes from the world, when in reality, it comes from Spirit. Once you are grounded on Spirit, then the money shows up from wherever it is at the moment.

Sometimes may show up from people compensating you for services rendered. Sometimes it will be from a business you started, or from a friend or stranger offering you a gift, from a sell of a product, from having money mysteriously showing up in your bank account, from having a gut feeling to play a lottery ticket, who knows. So if you want to teach EFT, just remember that even when the money seems to be coming from your clients, the real "Cause" behind the transaction is God, Spirit, whatever you want to call it. Always, always, ALWAYS, align yourself with Spirit FIRST! And whatever it is you end up doing, you can't go wrong. It's that simple!

Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com

All questions asked within this world are but a way of looking, not a question asked.” -A Course in Miracles

“A problem set in conflict has no answer, for it is seen in different ways. And what would be an answer from one point of view is not an answer in another light. You are in conflict. Thus it must be clear you cannot answer anything at all, for conflict has no limited effects. Yet if God gave an answer there must be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done. Thus it must be that time is not involved and every problem can be answered now.” -A Course in Miracles

Let’s take a look at the very first sentence. “A problem set in conflict has no answer, for it is seen in different ways.” What is conflict? It refers to our present state of human consciousness. The fact that we see duality suggest that we are in conflict. For in Heaven, there is no conflict, there are no opposites, only oneness. In Heaven, there is only peace.

So from a place of duality (conflict) no real answers are possible, only different points of view. Because as the Course states, “one point of view is not an answer in another light.”

So where can we find answers? First of all, there are no such thing as multiple answers, only multiple imagined problems, each requiring a seeming different answer. Yet, the only answer is I AM. With that answer, all seeming questions disappear. And where is the I AM answer found? In the present moment, or as the Course also refers to as the Holy Instant.

Every problem we seem to have is either rooted in fear or worry of an illusory future or guilt and pain based on a illusory past. And they are both in illusory sense of time. But as we surrender each moment to God, keeping our attention in the present moment, times ceases to exist, all worries and concerns are gone and we are in the midst of the experience of our oneness with God.

I know this sounds very appealing but because we have so much guilt deep in our unconscious, which is what is projecting the world that we see, or I should say, all of our seeming problems, we need to remove that guilt so that the experience of our oneness with God can reveal itself through us. And the way we do so is through practicing forgiveness. Forgiveness removes the guilt that is blocking us for the full experience of the now moment (the Holy Instant).

From that space, all of our problems resolve themselves! Either that, or we are not longer affected by our seeming circumstances, from which ideas can then surface that could be the answer to any seeming challenge we seem to be dealing with at the moment. Not that we are trying to solve anything, but if we are going to ask for guidance, why not ask the Holy Spirit first. At least His one answer, out of all the millions and zillions of points of view and choice we seem to have, will always be the perfect answer to every seeming challenge we may be faced at any given time.

Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com

This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity.

"This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream is sacred to you. That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream.” -A Course in Miracles

Sometimes the Course can use pretty strong words to get make a point. In the first sentence we could say, “This world is not your home, and do no underestimate your belief in thinking it is so.” But what is important is what the Course is helping us realize, and that is, because I created this illusion, every area of my perception is influence by this belief in the illusion, by my belief in separation.

So the way God answered is by placing the Holy Spirit in the same place where I placed the dream, which is in my mind. So in essence, what the Holy Spirit does is having a continuous conversation with the part of my mind that remember Who I really am. The purpose of our forgiveness process is to allow the Holy Spirit to continue this conversation until His voice becomes more clear than the one of the ego, which is nothing more than a belief.

It is pretty much like having a conversation with oneself. When I talk to myself out loud for example, it seems as if there are two people talking, but in reality, it is just me talking to me. Or I could say, one illusory part of me talking to another illusory part of me. That is the conversation most of us have in our heads when we try to convince ourselves of anything we believe to be true for us.

Many times I have made decisions that were not very wise, because although my feelings were warning me about it, my intellect, my perception, is what I used to justify what I was thought to be true. As a result I ended up suffering the consequences. So the more I practice listening to the Holy Spirit, His guidance always will lead me to truth. And all I need to do, is to simply practice being still and listen. There is nothing for me to do. I just need to hand over to Him every seeming concerned to be reinterpreted by Him, and if there is something for me to do, I’ll be led to it. How simple that is!

Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com

What is temptation but...

"What is temptation but the wish to stay in hell and misery?" -A Course in Miracles (Original Version)

What is hell? It is the physical experience we find ourselves having, also known as the world? And what is this physical world filled with? Misery. So temptation is referred to wanting to stay in the world, in worshiping the things of this world. This statement raise numerous questions such as, Is there’s anything wrong with moving in the direction of my desires while I am experiencing myself in this world? Can I not have dreams and goals while I’m here? Is there’s anything wrong with having things and wanting to be in relationships or having experiences that feel good and so on?

The answer is simple, yet tricky for many. While having this experience, all that we are asked is to not attach ourselves to any of our desires for in doing so we are worshiping the things of this world. While having this experience, it is okay to move in the direction of our dreams and having things of this world as long as we are clear that they are meaningless and not important, as long as we are clear that God is all we want above all else. That puts us in a position where we are not putting any Gods (things of this world) before Him.

But as long as we continue to do so, putting Gods before Him by wanting and wishing things of this world, in other words, by allowing temptation to lead us, all we will experience is more hell, more misery, even when at times we may have the pseudo moments of seeming contentment. We must remember that in this world, everything is temporary. In the Kingdom, which is our Real home, our joy, happiness, peace, and abundance is permanent!

Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com

Once you have developed a thought system of any kind, you live by it and...

"Once you have developed a thought system of any kind, you live by it and teach it. Your capacity for allegiance to a thought system may be misplaced, but it is still a form of faith and can be redirected." -A Course in Miracles

Let’s look at this carefully. “Once you have developed a thought system of any kind, you live by it and teach it.” The thought system of any kind the Course is referring to is our beliefs. So once I believe in something, that’s what I teach. The challenge with that approach is, all beliefs are based on separation, on fear. It does not matter if they seem like positive beliefs. The reason being is because beliefs can be changed, and all beliefs have an opposite. Truth on the other hand has no opposite. So if we went to experience Truth, we must let go of everything we think we know; of every belief we have. In other words, we must let go of the “thought system” we have developed on our own.

That is a very simple thing to do, but not necessarily easy. It is simple because all we have to do is let go, but it is not easy because deep in our unconscious we have attached ourselves to those beliefs. So they need to be released gradually. That’s what the Holy Spirit is for, to help us release ourselves from every belief we have. But in order for us to do so, we first have to be willing to relinquish them to the Holy Spirit because we are the ones hanging on to them. We are the ones who have developed our own thought system the moment we chose the ego as our guide. The tool the Course offers us is the forgiveness process. We are not forgiving ourselves for being guilty because we have not done anything. We are innocent. However, we are forgiving ourselves for continuing to project an illusion that is not real, and in that forgiveness we release ourselves from our own chains. In that sense, the Course is not to be studied it is to be practiced.

The studying is the preparation, but the practice leads us to the experience. So the question is, How long do we want to delay the experience of remembering Who we really are? It is only a matter of when we want to let go of our own thought system (beliefs) and replace them with the Holy Spirit’s. It is that simple!

Remember to order a copy of Nick's book What Happens When You Let God at: www.TruthAndMiracles.com or www.WhatHappensWhenYouLetGod.com
And to hire Nick to speak at your church, college or corporate event, simply visit: www.NickArandesPomo.com