The One Secret That Defeats Discouragement

by Guy Finley

There are times when it feels as though dark states of discouragement dog us, following us around as if just waiting for us fall down, never to rise again. On these days our own lackluster emotions are hounded by thoughts barking at us that nothing is right with our lives. Sound familiar? Clearly, discouragement is a punishing state.

On these same sad days, even the smallest wish on our part to part ways with these sentiments is greeted with waves of doubt that, like an undertow, turn our resolve not to sink into a malaise into what feels like a futile struggle with the inevitable! Unspoken, yet most telling, we can hear reverberating within us words to the effect, "What's the point? Why bother?" Then, as though we have heard from the Fates themselves, we accept as our guide the dreariness of some "can't do" negative state. Is this how it must be? Must we mingle ourselves with what discourages us? The answer to these questions is decidedly "No!" But to free ourselves from the spell that discouragement casts over our consciousness requires that we gain New Self- Knowledge.
The Good News is that once we have uncovered exactly how this negative state steals our will and turns us into will-less toadstools, we are on the road to realizing a life that sits out of the reach of any discouraging state. So, let's get started. We begin our journey with a truth: All discouraging feelings are a lie. Now perhaps you are already wondering how something with the power to wreck us can be called unreal. So, please make the mental note that this initial truth doesn't mean that we don't feel the weight of bleak moments, nor does it mean that many of us don't fall beneath their spell and become trampled under their powerful illusion.

No, discouraging states of self can land upon us with the force of a thousand regrets. They sneak in and steal our vitality, infusing the very atmosphere around us with misgivings about our very lives. Clearly just contending with such an adversary is a task, let alone hoping to overcome its negative influences and come out on top. But that is exactly what we are going to do!

The next truth we must realize about discouragement is that it makes no difference why we feel this darkness in us -- meaning that what our discouraged feelings blame themselves upon is of no consequence when it comes to our eventual conquest over them. For instance, sometimes we can feel discouraged because our past efforts have never prevailed over what challenges us, so why try now? Or perhaps we are disheartened because one of our main hopes for happiness suddenly proves itself to be hopeless. Maybe we get downcast in the day because our body, or our mind, is no longer capable of doing what it once could in younger years, and all we see on the horizon are more limitations.

The point is -- when it comes to these dispiriting states -- it makes no difference what they say is the cause of their punishing presence within us. The truth is that these dark states find the cause they need to inhabit us right from within the content of our own past experience! What does this mean?

Negative states, all dark energies that enervate us, only succeed at draining us because they are capable of making us see -- drawn up from the storehouse of our own mental and emotional memories -- those psychically loaded images that validate their existence. In other words, and this following Key Lesson deserves your careful consideration if you wish to conquer this unwanted condition: The only power these dark states hold over us is that they get us to identify with feeling ourselves as being powerless. And when such strong feelings of futility are accompanied by what is seen (in our own mind's eye) as being valid -- because we are given over to unconsciously recall the considerations that make them so -- then boom! The trap is sprung and into the darkness we go!

Had enough of feeling like you are never enough? Good! Let the following truths do their healing work.

When we feel discouraged it is just that: we are without the courage we need to attempt whatever it is before us. Feeling emotionally drained and mentally depleted, we seem to have nothing to call upon to overcome life's challenges. We never feel so alone as when we are in the company of dark, discouraging thoughts and feelings. Which brings us to a vital lesson in our search for liberation: This dreaded sense of isolation that discouragement draws us into is a part of its punishing plan. Discouraged thoughts and feelings want us to feel alone.

Here is a quick glimpse of an amazing insight to help us defeat this darkness at work within us: Discouraged states of self can only breed themselves in a specialized sense of isolation, in a dark medium that is able to effect in us the illusion that we have been cut off from the Endless Resources of Real Life. In other words, the reason discouraging states hold us captive is because they have managed to convince us that all there is - is the limited darkness of their reality!
And this reality -- regardless of how we protest its presence -- impresses itself upon us until this unconscious conspiracy is almost complete. No doubt we would be headed for a kind of black hole in our own consciousness were it not for one thing: Discouragement only has the last word with us as long as we give our consent to what it would have us believe is true about ourselves.
But we can do better than agree to ache, and here is how: When we know that who we really are, our True nature (our God-given Self), is not created to be contained by any dark condition, then we act in these moments from an altogether different Truth. And this knowledge, born from Truth and founded in the faith it holds in the freedom of the Living Light, does the rest for us!

Here, for your study, is the One Secret that Defeats Discouragement. The more you will work to integrate its insight into your mind and heart, the better will it be empowered to go before you to help light your Way. Stay awake and bring its wisdom with you into your every moment. Do this and watch how defeated feelings fall way.

The principle trick any discouraging state plays on us, as it descends upon us, is that we are made to feel as though we have reached the end of our powers and hence, our possibilities. Assessing ourselves from this perception we are certain there is no farther we can go because we have nothing to get us there! Our overriding sensation is not too dissimilar from a train out of steam and thrown off its tracks; we feel deadened and derailed with little hope of ever getting started again. But, as we will now discover, what has been pushed upon us by this dark state as being real, and the actual Reality of what is available to us, are two totally different things. Let's see:

The next paragraph holds the great secret of how it is possible for us to defeat any discouraging state. But, like all great spiritual secrets, the only way it can be coaxed to tell itself to us, and grant to us its power, is if we will do the Work it requires of us to reveal its hidden treasure of Truth. Read and study the next insight until its Light breaks in you:

First, the depth and breadth of one's awareness is a feature of the Ever-Present Now within which it dwells. This Timeless Now is omnipresent -- it dwells everywhere already, knowing no boundaries. Nothing can capture awareness any more than a cloud can hold back the sky. Here is what this means:

Our awareness of discouragement, or of any negative state for that matter, transcends its boundary and already dwells beyond the limits of its confining darkness. Which brings us to this discouragement-busting Truth: Whenever we will lend our attention to the inner task of working to transcend some dark state at work within us, then -- in that same moment -- even if we don't see the immediate fruits of our effort, we actually release it, and ourselves, from its restrictions. For our effort to be conscious of our condition instead of remaining its captive, fresh energies flood over and through us, lifting us into the new understanding that who we really are can never be held back! Our willingness to bring that dark, discouraged state into our awareness of it, instead of allowing it to define what we are aware of, has changed our very relationship with life!

Now the path before us, only a moment before impossibly dark and shut off to us, opens up to us because we have opened ourselves to God's endless resources. No walls exist because the nature now active within us cannot be walled in by negative (life-stealing) thoughts and feelings. We can no longer be dominated because we have chosen Truth's Illumination as our advocate.
There is a Way already made for us to be free, fulfilled, kind, and true. Our task is the realization of this Wisdom awaiting us within the Living Light in ourselves. We may take some comfort in knowing that nothing in the universe can stop us from knowing this Perfected Life because the Divine has already seen to the Truth of it. We need only agree to pay the Cost of this Consciousness and we will find that the needed Coins are there in our pocket.