Read an Excerpt
Journey to Joy
A Course about Living and Being in Joy
By Tannie Bennett
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Tannie Bennett
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-0323-5
Chapter One
Understanding Why We Are Here
We have been alive for a long time, but most of us aren't really living. We are just barely getting by, and we are not very happy. Think about your own life for a minute. Are you happy?
You may be happy at times, but when you aren't, what is it that makes you feel dissatisfied with life? What makes you feel like you don't want to go home, you don't want to go to work, or you don't want to face another day? Maybe you don't even want to wake up; you just want to sleep all day. Have you thought about what causes you to feel that way?
What is the root cause of your misery, unhappiness, or depression?
We all have a desire to be happy. Most of us have experienced moments of joy and happiness. But are we happy most of the time, or are there days when we don't even crack a smile?
While journeying through life, we have experienced happiness and unhappiness. We have had moments of pleasure and pain. We have experienced every emotion known. But did you know that experiencing all these emotions was one of the very purposes for which you came into this realm of existence? You came here ("here" meaning earth) to feel-more specifically to feel the feelings of the physical body. Feeling in a physical body was something you had never experienced as a spirit in the heavens, and you desired to have that experience. In fact, you wanted it so badly that you could hardly wait for your turn.
Before you came to earth for your experience here, you were pure light and perfect intelligence. You were more in your pre-earth life than your finite mind at this point can even imagine. You were the perfect offspring of God. You were the spirit child of the Great Eternal Being, the Great Eloheim, the Great I AM. Can you even imagine the greatness of God? If you can, then you can imagine the greatness of you. You were literally the spirit offspring of God.
Now, for some that may be a big bite to chew, but consider it. It really is wonderful to imagine being a great and powerful, perfect being. Can you wrap your mind around it? Spend a moment thinking about that magnificent thought. Try it out.
For some, this is not a new thought but a familiar one. Even so, I would encourage you to stop for a moment and wrap your thoughts around the magnificence of being the offspring of God. It is a pretty significant thought, and it is a very important one for our subject today.
Assuming that you have stopped and taken time to get into the thought place of being the literal offspring of God, let's move forward a little further.
Considering the possibility of coming to earth to feel may be a new thought, but coming here to feel is a very significant experience and part of your purpose for being here.
Having the ability to feel is a very important part of being like your eternal spirit parents. It is truly a part of being a God. It is one of the most important elements of your earthly experience.
You may be wondering why I am going on about the importance of feeling. Well, if it is our desire to be happy and to have a happy, joy-filled life, then don't you think feeling is important? Of course it is. So what about all the "bad" stuff? Is that important to feel as well, or can we just experience the good stuff?
Imagine for a moment that you are an artist, and the only color you have to work with is white. What kind of picture would you paint? I imagine it would not be a very interesting one, but if you were to add the color black, then you could do so much with the contrast. You could create some very interesting art. In fact, with just the two colors, you could create for a very long time. Now imagine for a moment that the varieties of feelings are represented by all of the other colors and that this array is added to your palette. You would then have an infinite opportunity to create, and this magnificent array could take you well into forever. Think of the incredible variety of creations you have seen in your lifetime. It is quite amazing when you consider what you have already seen.
Continue to focus on your palette filled with numerous colors. You are now settling in to create a magnificent work of art. Wouldn't you experience tremendous joy knowing you had so many possibilities before you? There would be no limit as to what you could create on your canvas because of the infinite choices of color, right? Well, that's what you saw when you chose to come to earth. You saw an infinite array of feelings, and you wanted to experience them. You wanted to experience it all. You knew that from contrast, great works are created.
The contrast of light and dark is what makes a picture beautiful. It is the contrast of light and dark that will make you into the masterpiece you intended to be in your beginnings.
Before you came to earth you were already pure light, pure love, and pure intelligence. How could you improve on such perfection? There was no need to improve on perfection, to improve on who you were at that point. The only choice was to add to the perfection, to add another dimension to you. So God, in all his wisdom, gave us the incredible opportunity to add the physical element to our perfection, to add the experience of being in the physical body so that we could feel and enjoy everything that the experience had to offer.
When the plan of creating an earth and having the opportunity to inhabit this earth was presented, we all wept for joy because, in our premortal state, we understood the magnificence of this opportunity. We wanted this experience. We wanted the experience of being in a physical body, and we wanted the experience of creating in this realm. What a joy this was to us.
If you are still with me on this, then imagine the first time you experienced contrast, when all you were used to was pure light. Imagine the first time you saw your pure white canvas being spotted with a contrasting color. I imagine that it might have been a real shock to see and experience something other than pure light and love.
Well, indeed it was!
When you left the spirit realm, you were magnificent. You were pure greatness. You came here to feel and experience contrast, and for you that contrast began in the very beginning of your life. It began when your physical experience began. The contrast began because you entered a lower, denser realm. You were entering a world of clay. Your physical body was composed of the elements of the earth, and it was very different from the experience you had while you were a spirit in the heavens. But remember, it was the experience you desired. You wanted to have the ability to create, and in order to have that ability you needed the whole array of choices. You needed all of the colors to choose from. You wanted to progress and to add to your perfection. Your intention was to be like your heavenly parents, who possessed both perfect spirit bodies and perfect physical bodies. To be like those whom you esteemed so greatly caused immense joy.
Leaving the spirit realm to come to earth was like leaving for school the first time. You were excited about the opportunity and the growth but a bit apprehensive about this totally new experience. When you came to earth, the contrast began. You began to "feel."
This experience was an experience in feeling. You would now feel what it was like to be in a physical body, to be in a tabernacle of clay. You would feel what it was like to have your array of contrasting experiences. Remember, this was what you wanted. If you didn't, you would not be here because agency is an eternal law that God Himself honors. You must have choice in this matter. We did have choice, and from our spirit perspective we thought it was a great plan. Now we are here experiencing our physical perspective, and we often question our choice.
We began to question the experience because of the contrast we felt. We had great contrast; we had love and hate, pain and pleasure, hope and despair-we had the entire palette of feelings. Now we are in the middle of the experience, and most of us wake up not wanting the experience anymore. We are tired of the contrast; we are tired of all the battles we fight, all the pain we feel, all the guilt, frustration, anger, hate, illness, abuse, neglect, and loneliness. We are screaming, "Stop, world! I want to get off! I don't want this experience anymore. I want to go home. I am tired of all the battles. Just let me die."
Have you ever felt anything like that before? Most likely you have. Why else would you be reading a book about how to be happy or how to be in joy?
Here is the good news: you can stop the contrast. You can stop the pain and the battles, and here's how.
The reason the contrast feels the way it does now is that you have not let go of your early perceptions and beliefs about the contrast. We came here to feel and experience contrast, but we do not have to stay in those feelings. We can move past them and on to more pleasant ones. We can have a totally new experience by simply letting go of those first perceptions about our experience. For example, have you ever jumped into a swimming pool and felt the shock of the temperature variance between your warm body and the cold water? After a moment of being in the water, you adjust and then you can enjoy your swimming experience.
But how do you know you can adjust? You know you can adjust because you have had the experience of adjusting. Within a few short minutes of being in the water, you know that you will come into balance with the temperature and won't feel the cold. Well, imagine how your swimming experience would be if you stayed in that shock mode or that first-moment experience. My guess is that you would not enjoy your swimming experience and perhaps never go in the water again. But the good news is that we do adjust and things do get better. Now imagine for a moment that, for some reason, your life-recording button got stuck on that shock moment. Do you think it would influence your relationship with water and swimming? I am quite sure it would.
Our contrast, or our earthly experience, is tainted to a great extent by our first shock moments. We have had many such moments in life, and they have colored our world with a murky medley of negativity. As an adult, you know that you will eventually adjust to the water temperature and you can stick it out until that happens because your intention is to have a great time swimming. So it is with life. As an adult, you know a lot about life that you didn't know as a child, an infant, or a new spirit being experiencing the physical body for the first time. You didn't know the very first time you experienced cold that it would soon warm up. You didn't know in your first experience with pain that you would heal. You didn't know during your first experience with being alone that your parents would return. All you were left with was the experience of that "shocked feeling."
Your life progressed, and through experience you soon learned that pain heals, Mom and Dad come back, winter turns into spring, and life gets better.
How did you learn that? Through your experience.
What about the "shock experiences"? They are still in us waiting to be completed.
What do I mean by "completed?"
It's quite like that first dot of black paint on your white canvas; it can be pretty ugly unless something is done with it. When you begin to move the paint around and add to the experience more skill, knowledge, and time, it can become a beautiful work of art. Yet if it is just left as a blob, it will affect the beauty and wonder of your life's creation. You came here to create and to feel the wonder of the experience, not just experience the shock of the contrast.
What we are experiencing now, our great opposition experiences, is the painful result of those shock moments. Each experience is not truly complete until you can stand back, look at what you have created, and feel awe, thinking, That is magnificent!
Can you now look at any part of your life and feel the magic of your creations? Can you look in awe at what you have learned and what you have become? If you cannot, then the only message I have for you today is that your work is not complete. If you are still living in pain, anger, and loneliness on any level, your work is not complete. This is the message of this course. I am here to teach you how to bring your masterpiece into view. I am here to teach you how to complete what you have come here to do and how to feel the magic and wonder of your magnificent life. I am here to help you capture the vision of your greatness, the vision of your work completed.
Your work will be complete when you can see yourself as your Father in Heaven sees you, when you can love yourself as your eternal family loves you and once again feel the majesty of being the divine child of God that you are.
Join me on this marvelous journey of completing the purpose of your life, of coming into your magnificence and divinity, and of experiencing and celebrating that on a daily basis.
Life is wonderful! It is filled with purpose and meaning but only for those who seek to see and experience the masterpiece that lies within.
Chapter Two
How We Are Programmed for Our Life Experiences
Can We Change the Programming?
The day you were born was a very special day. It was an important day for everyone.
Your mother of course was there, along with other significant people anxiously awaiting your arrival. As the anticipation of your birth moment arrived, there was much excitement in the air. For some, it was just another birth, but for you, it was the most significant moment of your life up to that point.
When the birthing process began, the little bundle of perfection inside the mother's womb was awaiting the event. This indeed was something you had never experienced before and something you would never experience again. We are only given one birth experience, so the importance of this moment is significant.
You probably have never considered looking at birth in this way. We usually look at the birthing process from the mother's, father's, or doctor's point of view, but few have given thought as to what it is like for the infant.
The purpose and intent of this writing is to focus on the significance of the birthing process for the infant from its own perspective. Typically, we believe that because of an infant's limited capacity to communicate and its underdeveloped brain, there is not much going on. But what I am about to share may change your perceptions. This information certainly changed the direction of my life.
From the moment of conception to the moment of birth and beyond, the infant is very much alive and active in its environment. The infant has the ability to perceive and feel absolutely everything that the mother, father, and family experience. The infant actually makes conclusions about life itself.
This is important because these conclusions formed in the infant's mind are the very programs that make up the life experiences of that individual. For instance, if the infant perceives at the time of conception that it is unwanted and a burden, then these beliefs actually create to a great extent the life experiences of that individual. If the infant perceives that it is welcomed and a wonderful surprise, then these perceptions affect the individual as well.
All conclusions that the infant forms become the infant's core programming and life script.
These early beliefs are cemented in the infant's life script and create future experiences based upon these perceptions. These are the programs that the infant's brain runs on or is programmed with for the rest of its life or until the individual becomes aware of the programming and decides it is time for a new program.
You can have a new program anytime you are ready. Usually it is not until we are doing a face plant in the pavement of life that we are awakened to the fact that life is not fun. We realize then that we really need to make some major changes because we are not going to survive many more of these painful experiences.
When we awaken to the fact that we can change our lives and that there is an easy way to reprogram our original programming, it is definitely a high-five moment. It usually takes some very painful experiences on our part, and we may have to experience them not only once or twice but multiple times before we awaken to the fact that we have done this enough and wonder how we are going to change. I personally tried to change direction many, many times without success before I became doggedly determined that I was going to find a way or bust.
I found the way! And that is what I intend to share with you in this course.
(Continues...)
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Excerpted from Journey to Joy by Tannie Bennett Copyright © 2011 by Tannie Bennett. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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