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Come Celebrate With Us every Sunday:

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Oasis Rising Center 8125 West Sahara Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89125

Enjoy another wonderful text by Rev. Phil Smedsted, minister Emeritus of Oasis Rising Center

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Phil Smedstad's texts are one of the ways Oasis Rising Center supports members.

A Positive Path for Spiritual Living

Oasis Rising Center Spiritual Center
Oasis Rising Center 8125 West Sahara Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89125
(702) 804-8189
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“How Much Good Can You Tolerate?”             By Rev. Phillip Smedstad

Lura and I used to periodically lead a workshop called Overcoming the Fear of Success.  The workshop was based on a book with the same title.  In the workshop, there was a questionnaire to fill out with questions like:

• Do you feel that if people really knew you, they wouldn’t like you?
• Do you feel deep down that you’re a fraud?
• Do you think that feeling good can’t last?
• Do you prefer the sidelines to center stage?
• Do you believe that there are too many alternatives to ever commit to one thing?
• Are you attracted to people who are unavailable?
• When one part of your life is working, do you sabotage yourself in another area?

These are all symptoms of “the fear of success.”  The premise of the book and the workshop is that we’re not really that afraid of failure.  For most of us, failure is a fairly familiar feeling.  We are actually more afraid of success than we are of failure.

A Course In Miracles would agree with that concept.  It tells us that most people live in a state of mind called “the ego.”  The ego is who we believe ourselves to be when we feel separate from God and other people.

When we’re in ego mind, we feel cut off from God’s guidance.  Wayne Dyer likes to refer to the ego as “edging God out.”  When we’re in this state, we find ourselves being afraid of God.  We also unconsciously find pain and guilt to be attractive, and we’re afraid to receive too much love.

Gay Hendricks, one of my favorite authors, said in his book The Big Leap, that with himself and with his clients that there was only so much good that they could tolerate in their lives.  It was a surprise to him to discover this.

When he worked with couples, he found that often, if they were on the verge of some free time, some time when they could really enjoy themselves, they would find a way to start an argument.  He started to call these events “the Friday night fights.”

Gay realized that once people found themselves feeling really good or having a lot of success in life, they would often find a way to sabotage themselves.

There’s an old joke about a man fishing off a pier.  He seemed to be catching a lot of fish.  Someone watching him noticed that it looked like he was keeping the small ones and throwing the big ones back.  When asked about this, the man said, “That’s because I only have an eight-inch fry pan.”

In Unity, one of our basic teachings is that we each create our own reality according to our most deeply held beliefs and emotions.  In other words, we each have a certain sized inner “fry pan.”  Another way to say it is that we each have an inner “success thermostat.”  If the joy, the love, or the success gets to big or too high, we unconsciously look for a way to bring it down.

Some ways we might do that include: getting sick, getting hurt, getting a traffic ticket, worrying, and having an argument.  No doubt there are lots more.

On Sunday, I told everyone, “Your assignment today, should you choose to accept it, is to practice raising your inner thermostat, to practice raising your upper limits.”

Where do these upper limits come from?  We could say that they come from our childhood, and many of them do.  However, as A Course In Miracles points out, ultimately, they all come from guilt.  And, “the Course” says, the root of all guilt is “the authority problem.”  The authority problem is the belief that “I am the author of my own life,” that “I’m on my own,” rather than practicing, “I will make no decision by myself today.”

How do we practice raising our upper limits?  I outlined four of them on Sunday.

• We begin to notice when we’re sabotaging ourselves, especially if we find ourselves worrying, judging, or looking for an argument right after or on the verge of feeling terrific.  Most of the time, the argument really isn’t about the toothpaste, the toilet paper, or the last French fry.  It’s a way to bring ourselves down.
• The second way to raise our upper limits is to practice continuous forgiveness – both for ourselves for believing we’re separate from God, and for others, especially anyone who taught us that we’re guilty.
• The third way is to practice surrendering to God every day.  This is the way to go right to the root of guilt.  As Jesus said in one of the Beatitudes, “Delighted, overjoyed (blessed) are those who surrender to God (the meek), for they shall inherit the earth.”
• Finally, another way to raise our upper limits is to practice some affirmations, like:
• “The more I surrender to God, the better my life gets.”
• “I now accept my innocence, so I always succeed.”
• “The more I succeed, the more innocent I feel.”

I invite you to let this week be about raising your upper limits.  Let it be about accepting more love, joy, health, prosperity, and ease than you ever have before.  You are an innocent expression of God, and you deserve to be completely successful every day.

Some day, we all will be completely successful in the highest use of that word.  How about if you start today to be an example for others by raising the bar on how much good you can tolerate?