No matter how much I have learned of the power and wholeness of this Life we share, I am continually astonished at the way events unfold to lead me to even greater awareness, understanding and forgiveness of our human condition. Each encounter leads to ever greater love and appreciation for those who serve as mirrors, teachers who guide me to uncover and forgive the hidden aspects of my own consciousness.

This morning I awoke with a profound insight and understanding of our emotional reactions, and great love and compassion for four people who showed me different aspects of that process this week, as well as many others who have tried to teach me that same lesson in the past.

On Saturday evening, after giving an IS book to young lady, she remarked "how did you know I needed this right now?" She had read The Celestine Prophecy, was seeking answers, and was in emotional distress at the ending of a relationship that day. She described herself as a "turtle", with a hard outer shell, but emotionally "soft and squishy" inside. We talked a few times over the next few days, and she eagerly thirsted for more understanding of the "new way of life".

She happily anticipated attending our ACIM group Tuesday evening, but left a message that she might be late, as a male friend who had broken up with his girlfriend had asked her to go hiking that day, and needed her support. When she failed to arrive at the meeting, my intuition told me that she had fallen into the "rebound" syndrome, that the pain of separation from the love she had known in her relationship was so intense that her emotional self was COMPELLED to seek escape in another emotional relationship.

That same evening, another woman in the ACIM group shared her experience of overcoming that same rebound effect after the breakup of her relationship two weeks before, and how her awareness of her emotional AND spiritual self allowed her to over-ride the power of the emotional self.

Wednesday, I saw how a man, tremendously aware of his identity as a Son of God, was unable to make coherent business decisions on a subject after he had been misled for years by people he WANTED to believe in, even though the overwhelming evidence of their perfidy was obvious to more than thirty people who loved him. His emotional DESIRE to achieve his goals completely blinded him to the possibility that those he had trusted to help him achieve those goals had other, contradicting motives.

Also on Wednesday, another young woman shared her feelings of hopelessness when additional stresses caused her to revert to a pattern of emotional "shut down" that she had escaped in recent months after five years of depression. Though she was conscious of her behavior, she felt unable to CHANGE it due to the pressures she was facing at the moment. After a lengthy discussion, a greater understanding of her behavior pattern allowed her to "take charge" to a degree, and "forgive" her feelings of hopelessness.

My insight this morning was that we INSTINCTIVELY revert to what we have done in the past when confronted with new pressures, and that ALL such pressures are part of our evolution as spiritual beings. It is the nature of ALL animals to react with God-given instincts, until we learn we can CONSCIOUSLY choose our actions. In "Conversations With God" (book two) He tells us that we are REACTIVE until we SEE, and move the "C" from the middle of the word to the beginning and become CREATIVE.

I realized that the tremendous power of LOVE in our lives is so powerful, so complete, that we MUST fulfill it, one way or another. When we know only the emotional instinct to love, we yearn to express that love with such force that it CANNOT be contained, and MUST seek an outlet. We have been conditioned to believe that we are physical beings, and that the expression of that love therefore must be a physical union, the joining of our lives with another physical being. At the same time, our belief in ourselves AS physical beings separates us FROM those other beings, which makes us FEAR that union, and the pain that will inevitably befall us if and when that union fails.

Over the years I have seen many young women leave horribly abusive co-dependent relationships, only to immediately return to the abuser or plunge headlong into new emotional entanglements of the same type within days, or even hours. I now realize that, without knowing of their spiritual identity and power, they have NO CHOICE, the urge to love is TOO POWERFUL to resist. Even when presented with convincing evidence of the emotional addiction as described in Gary Zukav's "Seat Of The Soul", we cannot overcome that emotional self without the help of our own Higher Self, the One within that IS the true force of LIFE and LOVE ItSelf.

And I realize even more that "all works together for good" (ACIM), for without that pressure to extend love, we would have no purpose in life, and no reason to live other than as unconscious animals, rather than as the true CREATORS we are.