The main reason we suffer or feel bad about ourselves or our current circumstances isn’t because conditions in our lives have the power to punish us–because they don’t. We suffer only from spiritual amnesia.

We’ve forgotten that God, the Divine by whatever name you choose, is Good: not sometimes, not for just the “deserving,” but for all … and in all ways.

Let’s restate this last idea to see its rescuing wisdom from another angle: whenever we find ourselves identified with some dark stream of thoughts and feelings, as opposed to being quietly aware of their downward-trending presence, we fall — in that same moment — into a world filled with unwanted negative states. The reason so much of what’s going on within and around us seems “bad” is because that’s all we can see. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so it is true when it comes to all our inner states, including fear, depression, and bitterness. In such moments, having become bound up in thoughts and feelings we don’t want, and then seeing a world that confirms our sense of captivity, we literally forget that none of what we’re going through is necessary.

The only reason that we’re standing in that storm of negative states is because we’ve fallen asleep! We’ve forgotten who we really are, including our divine right to call upon a power that instantly transports us out of harm’s way. Anytime we can remember to do so, we are free to wake up and return to our true home — within us — beyond the reach of fear, doubt, or any other dark state.

If our wish is to walk freely through this world without fear of sudden storms–to know that we have an interior home whose light cannot be breached by any darkness–then our task is clear.

First, we must see how this spiritual amnesia blinds us and then binds us in a prison of false perceptions induced by having fallen spiritually asleep. To this end, use the following insight as the wake-up call to action that it is intended to be:

The freedom you have to let go and outgrow who you have been is not something created; it is and always will be yours, which means it cannot be destroyed any more than the onset of night destroys the light of the sun.

Nothing in the universe can take from you your right to be spiritually free; it is a divine gift.
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Which means that anytime you find yourself struggling to escape the grip of a negative state, it’s only because you’re in a dream from which you have yet to awaken. There’s only one real prescription that has the power to end your pain: you must shake yourself awake from the forgetfulness that has caused you to forget your immortal Self.

Key Lesson: Remembering the truth of yourself is one and the same as remembering your right to be free.

(Excerpted from The Secret of Your Immortal Self, by Guy Finley, Llewellyn Worldwide, 2015)

Guy Finley is the best-selling author of more than 40 books and audio albums on self-realization. He is the founder and director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for self-study located in southern Oregon.