The
Paul Solomon
Lecture Series

"The Trail of the Mysteries”
(Excerpt from “The Wisdom of Solomon”
compiled by Grace de Rond)

. . . Every experience in your life is structured for the purpose of learning a lesson. If you met each experience with that in mind—no matter how fearful the experience, no matter how realistic the threat, no matter how well constructed the lesson—remembering that it is only theater, you would not be afraid. You would meet each challenge with curiosity and confidence, knowing that it has been carefully prepared especially for you.

If you remembered that the challenge before you in any given moment has been structured by a loving inner teacher who has put it together as an excellent piece of theater—just to test your awareness, to see if you would be afraid or if you would remember the bigger scope of things—you would not be afraid, would you?

If you are willing to be conscious, if you are willing to be consciously, deliberately enrolled in this school of lessons called Life, you can face each of these experiences alongside this inner friend and
guide—without fear. 

All you need to do is draw aside the curtain and be who you really are, which simply means, admit what you are doing while you are doing it and be responsible for doing it on purpose. Take responsibility for being who you are, and admit that you are doing whatever you are doing because you choose to do it, because you want to produce the effect that it is producing. “I am who I am, doing what I am doing, because it is my choice.”

Give up any pretense that the way you feel in this moment is caused by someone or by some condition of life. Give up all the excuses and reasons why you are where you are—except the one: “I am here because I want to be doing what I am doing. I am solely responsible for my actions and
where I am in life. I am doing it, it is not being done to me, and I take responsibility for it.” This requires that you become deliberately conscious. You can still play the same role, do all the same things, be in the same place, but do it on purpose. Drop the act that anyone or anything else in life is responsible.

If you are willing to wish for what you have instead of trying to have what you wish for, you are ready to take responsibility for being alive. Too often, at any given moment, life is either acceptable or unacceptable. If it is unacceptable, you are wishing that things were different, or that you had things you do not have. You are concerned about your security, your survival, your health. You are wishing that people would treat you differently. You are wishing that God would treat you differently. You are wishing that you were more intelligent, wealthier, more beautiful, thinner, more spiritual, able to change the world, able to escape the world. You are not willing to accept life as it is because you believe certain things are unjustified. They are not balanced or merciful.   There is something wrong with the world. There is something wrong with God.   Otherwise, why would there be all this starvation? Disease? Crime?  Poverty? War?

Your dissatisfaction with the world has affected your experience.  As you approached the sacred altar before entering this lifetime, you were already out of balance with what you would encounter on Earth. This planet is the ultimate altar to God. You approached this experience. You created for yourself the equipment that you would need. And you stepped into this body and into this earth.

In order to be in harmony with the altar that you serve, you must stop wishing that it were different. You must look at life and say of God and of all that he created, “In this place, in this moment, all is right with me and my God. I give to all people on Earth the right to be exactly as they are. I am willing to accept life exactly as it is, without wishing that it were different. I am willing to be in harmony with the source of it, for to suggest that there should be a difference in what is suggests that I am dissatisfied with, and out of sorts with, its creator who is my creator. I accept life just as it is. At the same time, I accept my personal responsibility to encourage, to uplift, to create and to recreate harmony where I see the need—but without wishing things were different. I cannot be powerful in this world while wishing things were different.”

You must first accept things as they are. Then, you can change what they are into what they can be. But this can only be done without condemning what they are or what they have been. The secret of alchemy is to take what is and lead it a step further in its own development. In this way, you are in harmony with your God while you increase his creation. You are a co- creator with God—you have limitless power when you are in absolute harmony with that which has eternal duration. . . .

© Paul Solomon Foundation 1994