Working with the Higher Life

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that push us to the limits of our abilities, tolerance, and endurance. When we are overwhelmed in this manner, some will retreat into defeat and resentment. Others believe impending disaster is our cue to call on a higher power to support us. They believe there must be a plan and resources that can help us in this crisis. 

Unfortunately, superstitious people sometimes give this higher power a bad name and discourage intelligent people from summoning it to assist us. However, the narrow thinking of other people need not distract us from the legitimate support of our higher guidance and powers to cope with our challenges. We may, however, need a new approach to this pursuit.

Seeking help from the resources of our higher life can be a commonsense idea similar to how we might seek repairs for our car. Suppose we have special access to the factory where our automobile was assembled. We might be able to return it to the factory for maintenance, plus any available upgrades. Even repair for dents and scratches would be possible. If we believed there was some fault in the design, we could consult with the engineers to fix any problem. How about that!  

When we connect to our innate, higher intelligence, something similar is possible for our body and personality. Just as skillful engineers design our automobiles, higher intelligence creates designs for healthy bodies, minds, and emotions. We must take advantage of this fact and learn to use the higher life as a resource for repair, renewal, and enrichment.

Our innate intelligence

Many doubt the existence of an inner intelligent life force that sustains and repairs our bodies. However, evidence for its presence is abundant. For example, we do not have to think about or understand how to digest a peanut butter sandwich or repair a small cut on our hands. Nor do we have to consciously direct our heart or breathing to speed up if we exercise. The innate intelligence of the body manages these changes for us automatically. Our conscious attention is not required.

This innate intelligence shapes our response to infections and physical injuries. Our immune mechanism rushes to neutralize various germs and rebuild the body’s health. At a less obvious level, this intelligent power serves continuously to prevent illness and supervise the integrity and function of our physical body.

Healing and renewal of the personality

While our innate intelligence works smoothly to repair and heal the physical body, it works less directly at the level of our personality. For example, problems with resentment, fear, and discouragement often require our conscious attention. Repairing, renewing, and growth at the psychological level are only partly automatic. Much still depends on the deliberate and skillful redirection of our thoughts and emotions.

Despite this complication, we all eventually develop coping mechanisms to manage insults and other injuries to our well-being. While these skills may be inadequate, we will undoubtedly learn how to handle most annoyances and not allow every disappointment to distract us. This development begins our ability to practice automatic healing at least for our lesser emotional injuries.

The capacity to repair mental and emotional distress proceeds faster in some people than others. Some understand that our best path to peace and harmony is to seek the skills, knowledge, and resilience to cope with our many challenges.

Others seem to prefer to develop their capacity to resist these challenges by practicing avoidance, denial, stubbornness, or intimidation. These maneuvers are successful to some degree. However, these habits are destructive to relationships and leave many conflicts unresolved. This path of resistance is not nearly as successful as the path that focuses on building better skills for managing our challenges.

Working with our inner potential for healing

We all arrive on earth with a powerful birthright of our innate intelligence and a capacity to have a relationship with the great life force that gives vitality and intelligence to all life forms. While getting lost in speculations about these possibilities is easy, it is realistic and practical to call on these resources to help us in our time of need. 

This process of collaborating with this higher power is not as complex as many make it. For example, we work with forces supporting healing and renewal whenever we recover from minor colds and bruises. We can do this without being confused by theological details. We also benefit from these higher forces as we absorb our emotional hurts and disappointments into our greater confidence and love for life.

Of course, many will claim that our physical body already has the power to heal, maintain, and digest the food we eat. However, there is a higher intelligence that designs and energizes the mechanisms that keep us healthy. This is part of the higher life that transcends the physical forms it animates and can accomplish repairs that body and personality cannot achieve by themselves.

Simple ways to summon our higher life to help us

Anyone who works with children knows that sincere praise and warm encouragement usually elicit and enhance cooperation. We can use kindness to get children to do things that would not happen without it. Our active and affectionate concern will link us to their attention and capacity for cooperation.

While these attitudes and concerns seem natural when working with children, this practice may seem strange or absurd in our relationship with our bodies and personality. Adult individuals often treat their bodies and character as a machine they own and should function flawlessly. We expect it to be healthy and ready to obey our requests. Health is supposed to be our natural state. However, demanding our bodies to operate perfectly may be too much. We will have better results if we apply respect and kindness when expecting our bodies to function well and be free of discomfort.

The gentle way we work with children is similar to how we can summon our inner life resources to support healing and renewal for ourselves. We cannot demand children obey and stop coughing or having runny noses. The innate healing mechanism will also be unlikely to respond to demands or threats. We need to relate to it in the same manner and reason that a good parent encourages the proper behavior in children.

Our innate capacity for repair and healing will operate at its own pace, but it also will respond favorably to our encouragement and gratitude. For example, we can thank our body for loyal and effective service for many years. We might be grateful that our feet stand and walk for us effectively. We can be sorry that our knees, nose, or tummy are upset now, but we hope they return to normal status quickly. We know that both we and our knees or nose desire this. We wish them well and encourage a rapid return to complete comfort and healthy function.

Yes, this may seem somewhat childish, but the simple tone elicits an extra boost from our body or subconscious. We are not speaking to our peers. Instead, we respectfully address the powerful and deeper intelligence in us.  

We can quietly remind ourselves that our inner intelligence has helped us recover from many cycles of irritation, pain, conflict, discouragement, resentment, and anxiety. While we are concerned about our current distress, we know healing can happen again. Whatever helped us in the past can return to restore peace of mind and confidence. 

Curiosity as a cure for indifference and stalemate

Curiosity means we think for ourselves and do not automatically follow what others are doing. It means we often test our assumptions by asking ourselves what we truly know and how we know it’s true. With curiosity, we do not stop at the first seemingly correct answer we get. Instead, we keep going for the second or third good answer, which might be more comprehensive and valuable than the first two. Curiosity means we know there is always more to learn. We must never assume we know enough.

We must turn on our curiosity to increase our belief in our higher human and spiritual potential. For some intelligent people prone to cynicism, curiosity may be a more helpful path than faith alone. Even dedicated cynics can be curious about why stuff happens or fails to happen. They can wonder what they have missed in their observations and what they could do to mitigate their distress.

We can apply our curiosity to such fascinating topics as how we have effectively sabotaged our well-being without being aware of it. We might even be curious about what is wrong with our current approach to managing our distress. Perhaps we might discover that we have been wasting time on sophisticated versions of banging our heads on a wall.

Mature curiosity can be essential for curing the habit of living in the worst of our past and meditating on what went wrong. Obsessing about the faults of our enemies and society can be a powerful lure, but ultimately, this serves only to bond us to adverse events and forces and encourage more disappointment. Exploring what we can do to help ourselves instead of attacking others will allow us to shift to more constructive priorities.