Choosing Transparency

 On this day of Good Friday, I think back to what came to me in the predawn hours of Easter Morning last year. I awoke with the thought that was revealed to me 11 years earlier regarding my impaired vision. "When I can see through the eyes of God with total love and no fear, my vision will become clear."  Over the years, I have fashioned it into an affirmation of gratitude, acting as if it has happened. "Thank You, Divine Beloved, that I AM now seeing everything clearly both the spiritual and the material, through your eyes with total love, no anger and no fear, and my vision is completely clear." Opening my eyes, I gazed expectantly into the darkness surrounding my bed. I then thought of the example of Christ on the cross. My prayer-affirmation became: "Thank You, Divine Beloved, that I AM now seeing everything clearly both the spiritual and the material, through your eyes with total love, no anger and no fear as Christ did His persecutors from the cross, and my vision is completely clear because my Christ vision is here." How can we do this? By remembering who we really are, which means, we affirm our spirit- or love-based identity. 

As we choose the transparency of a spirit-based identity, we replace the solidity of a body-based identity. We let stressful external events pass through us.

Consider the following from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. My thoughts are in brackets.

Interviewer: "how do we stop negativity from arising and how do we get rid of it once it is there?"

ET. . . . "Whenever you notice that some form of negativity has arisen within you, look on it not as a failure but as a helpful signal that is telling you, 'Wake up! Get out of your mind! Be present!' . . .

. . . "As an alternative to dropping a negative reaction, you can make it disappear by imagining yourself becoming transparent to the external cause of the reaction. I recommend that you practice it with little, even trivial things at first. Let's say that you are sitting quietly at home. Suddenly, there's the penetrating sound of a car alarm from across the street. Irritation arises. What is the purpose of the irritation? {Is it really necessary for me to be upset about this irritation?] None whatsoever. Why did you create it? You didn't. The mind did. It was totally automatic. Totally unconscious. Why did the mind create it? Because it [the mind] holds the unconscious belief that its resistance, which you experience as negativity or unhappiness in some form, will somehow dissolve the undesirable condition. This, of course, is delusion. The resistance that it creates, the irritation or anger in this  case,  is far more disturbing than the original cause that i is trying to dissolve. All this can be transformed into spiritual practice. Feel yourself becoming transparent as it were, without the solidity of a material body. Now allow the noise, or whatever causes the negative reaction, to pass right through you. It is no longer hitting a solid wall inside you. As I said, practice with little things first: the car alarm, the dog barking, the children screaming, the traffic jam. Instead of having a wall of resistance inside you that gets constantly and painfully hit by things that SHOULD not be happening, let everything pass through you. Somebody says something to you that is rude or designed to hurt. Instead of going into unconscious reaction and negativity, such as attack, defense or withdrawal, you let it pass right through you, offering no resistance. It is as if there is nobody there to get hurt anymore. That is forgiveness. In this way, you become invulnerable. You can still tell that person that his or her behavior is unacceptable if that is what you choose to do. But that person no longer has the power to control your inner state. You are then in your power, not in someone else's. Nor are you run by your [reactive, automatic stimulus-response-based or conditioned] mind. Whether it is a car alarm, a rude person, a flood, an earthquake, or the loss of all your possessions, your resistance mechanism is the same."