If we desire to be more conscious in the way we go about our daily duties, life is here to help us.

Now you might think that life is the problem, not the solution. At least, that’s how most see it.

Life is regarded by the average person as a series of problems that need to be solved. Most wish such problems wouldn’t arise in the first place, since they are inconvenient, if not painful.

We’ve been seeing how our inner knower, which traditionally has been called the holy spirit, seeks to lead us into ever-increasing consciousness. This heightened consciousness in turn empowers us to manage our life more meaningfully, enabling us to derive greater fulfillment from whatever we may be doing.

Mention inner knowing, or the holy spirit, and people tend to listen for some kind of inner voice to guide them. However, we’ve noted in previous lessons how easy it is to imagine we are hearing the voice of divine guidance, when what we are really tuned into is an old brain pattern. This pattern naturally resonates with us, feeling “right on,” because it's familiar.

The result is that we often fail to take the very path that would lead to increased consciousness and the fulfillment such brings. In this way we resist growth.

The chief characteristic of conscious “knowing” isn’t a powerful inner voice, a red flag, or a fearful gut feeling. The divine isn’t found in the resistance we feel to people, situations, experiences. It never speaks in a nervous, hesitant, negative, or anxious tone.

The chief characteristic of conscious “knowing” is stillness. We find ourselves inwardly suffused with peace.

When we can’t hear the “sound of sheer silence” that’s the hallmark of the guidance that flows from consciousness, and mistake all kinds of brain noise or emotional turmoil for inner knowing, we can become stuck. Growth ceases. It's at such a time that our inner being as it were “calls up its reserves.”

This reserve capacity that has the ability to free us from our stuckness is in the form of what we might call our "inner grower." It complements our inner knower, working hand-in-hand with it.

How does our inner grower work?

Those aspects of our life that aren’t in harmony with our essence put out “vibrations,” so to speak, which attract to us situations that resonate with these inharmonious parts of ourselves. These situations have the potential to awaken us to whatever in us hasn't yet been integrated into the state of wholeness.

An example of this is the attraction people often feel, as the song says, “across a crowded room.” Individuals with mirror issues are drawn to each other.

In a similar way, the alcoholic can “spot” an alcoholic in a room filled with people even when there’s no alcohol on the premises.

And, too, the person who is used to being a victim in abusive relationships is drawn magnetically to the person who will abuse them, even though a perfectly healthy relationship is available to them if they could only choose such a relationship. But until they wake up, they can’t find the healthy person appealing.

It’s because of our inner grower that we find ourselves repeating patterns of behavior over and over, until we finally wise up to the fact we are attracting these situations to ourselves.

Our inner grower specifically walks us into such situations so that we can identify the unintegrated and undeveloped aspects of ourselves, which usually happens only through a great deal of pain. In other words, we learn to hear our true being as opposed to the misleading voices of our false self in the “school of hard knocks.”

Note that it isn’t just the unintegrated aspects of us that are the subject of our inner grower’s attention, but also the undeveloped aspects. Our inner grower isn’t interested in merely healing wounds, but in calling forth the entirety of our being into a state of wholeness—and then taking us way beyond mere wholeness, into creativity and productive service to our fellow voyagers on this journey into divine consciousness.

Whenever we face a situation in our life that feels threatening, problematic, or challenging, our tendency is to imagine life is against us, even "out to get us." Just the opposite is the case. Such situations are on our side, asking us to step up to the plate and show up in our magnificence.

The key to our growth into more conscious beings lies in how we respond to what life presents us with—whether we recoil, resist, or want to argue; or whether we inquiringly and humbly seek to identify the lesson or invitation inherent in a situation.

This is where awareness is so important. If you are in resistance, you can sense that you are “off kilter” from your true being. But it takes awareness to pay attention to the fact and bring it to the front burner.

In such situations, the disturbance you experience occurs because the resistance occludes the stillness that spontaneously and consistently radiates from your essence. You no longer feel the deep peace within that's the mark of your essential "beingness."

Whenever you feel resistance to a person, set of circumstances, or occurrence, you can be confident that your inner grower has placed you in a situation that’s for your advancement into a more profound experience of consciousness. In this, your inner grower never misses a beat, never gets it wrong. Resistance is always a sign that we are being asked to face up to something within ourselves from which we have been in flight. 

In our next lesson, we’ll examine specific examples of how our inner grower works with us to get us unstuck when we are bogged down, to help us integrate the energy trapped in the various aspects of our woundedness, and to draw out the fullness of our potential.

In the meantime, whenever life confronts you with something that disturbs or challenges you, know that you are in the hands of a wise teacher—your inner grower, which is part of the consciousness in which all of reality is grounded.

Opportunity for Self-inquiry and Sharing:

A.   Sit in stillness and allow the holy spirit that is your essence to bring to mind a time when you began to feel uncomfortable, only to in due course realize that the discomfort you were experiencing was life’s way of showing you that you were out of sync with your true being. Briefly share the experience with fellow students in this Course if you wish to.

B.   Call to mind a time when you experienced recoiling, resistance, or an urge to enter into verbal combat. Describe how you began to recognize that such emotions didn’t arise because you were “right,” which is what you had told yourself, but because your inner grower was asking you to look at the reason the situation was causing you to bounce off the ceiling.

C.   Can you think of a time when you were able to ask yourself not, “Why did this person do what they did?” but, “Why does what this person does cause me to go ballistic?”