When Conflict Arises, We Always Have A Choice
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When conflict arises, it uncovers unresolved negative thoughts and feelings. It is a blessing because it is a chance to attend to these buried emotions and belief systems.

We cannot escape our subconscious mind, but we can use life as a treasure map to unlock the secrets hidden within the dark corners of the psyche. These secrets direct the course of our lives, and like tyrants hiding behind smoke and mirrors they chart a course for their own benefit; like thieves they rob us of a conscious connection to infinite intelligence (or God if you choose).

We plough through life building defenses, creating illusions of safety and networks of friends all to reinforce the agenda of our troubled minds. We call this way of life free will: we can do what we want to do, be who we want to be, hate who we want to hate.

But a life built on avoidance and an attitude of exclusion is a misguided life indeed. Building defenses against vulnerability does not remove risk. Conflict arises. People betray you. But when things go wrong, we always have a choice. We can open in gratitude and attend to the buried treasure, or we can bog down in resistance and continue blindly through life. You can always choose your response to any circumstance.

Shackled by Fear and Hesitation?

People are not meant to be shackled by fear and hesitation. We have the right to love openly and with total abandon. Without judgment, we can embrace everything and everyone. Or we can entrench ourselves in hatred and blame. We can create a limited life with strong boundaries that make us feel safe.


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This is the true essence of free will - we can worship the ego, or we can embody the divine. What you choose is up to you!

However, the divine will never abandon us. In fact the very word “abandon” is totally inaccurate because the divine can no more abandon us than wet can abandon water. We are the expression of divine will. We are within the consciousness of the divine. You and I and the divine are one and the same.

The Gift of Divine Consciousness

What many have come to understand as the ego is also an expression of the divine. It is the gift of divine consciousness that enables it and us to experience physical life: we cannot exist without some limitation. The physical world is finite, and its essence is limitation.

We have physical boundaries. We have laws of physics. We have biological needs. We have emotional needs. The body needs constant care. These are limitations! This is not the problem.

The problem is the confusion we experience through our strong identity with these limitations. In experiencing limitation, we begin to believe that we are limited. It’s like having a daydream and then becoming so deeply enamored of the dream that you no longer remember who you really are -- an infinite being having a finite experience.

How Does This Relate To Conflict?

Divine consciousness embraces and includes. It is always urging openness and freedom, and it imposes on the mind’s need to contract and limit. In our dream-state, we feel vulnerable and small (or limited!). The need for security is primal and urgent, but the divine wants us to break free of this fear and awaken to our ever expanding and powerful nature.

So, divine consciousness will continue expanding, creating, loving and embracing. This ever-expanding urge to embrace all, to love all is a strong imposition on our need to judge and to blame and to exclude. Conflict reveals this tension.

Our impulse to exclude anyone who hurts us is in direct conflict with the divine will. So, a conflict with another is really a conflict occurring within ourselves. It is our divine nature imposing on the limited ego.

If we were awake, we would not experience conflict with others because we would feel totally secure in the knowledge that we are safe, loved and cared for by the everything we perceive. So, conflict is a gift because it reveals our limitations. When we open our hearts, conflict serves as a reminder that we are lost in the dream. It leads us back to the divine.

©2020 by Sara Chetkin. All Rights Reserved.

Book by this Author

The Healing Curve: A Catalyst to Consciousness
by Sara Chetkin.

The Healing Curve: A Catalyst to Consciousness by Sara Chetkin.Healing is more than a physical experience. Genuine restoration unveils the self and awakens the seeker. It requires openness, enduring courage, and honest inquiry into the self, and, ultimately, total surrender. The Healing Curve chronicles such a journey. On one level, it is a book about the ardent quest for true and lasting restoration from scoliosis. The story begins in the physical, leading us across the United States, Brazil, New Zealand, and Europe . . . encountering healers, exploringcathedrals, and meditating in gas stations. But the journey often ventures inward, offering up powerful truths about our potential as human beings and how we can access this potential to create joyful and abundant lives. With each experience the seeker shares her spiritual insights as she realizes her own limitations and strives for awareness and deeper understanding of herself and her place in the world.

Click here for more info and/or to order this book on Amazon.

About the Author

Sara Chetkin, author of: The Healing Curve--A Catalyst to ConsciousnessSara Chetkin was born in Key West, Fl in 1979. When she was 15 she was diagnosed with severe scoliosis, and spent much of the next 15 years traveling around the world seeking healing and spiritual insight. These travels and explorations are the basis for her first book, The Healing Curve. Sara graduated from Skidmore College in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology. In 2007 she earned a Master of Science in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine from the New England School of Acupuncture. She is a Rohun therapist and an ordained minister with the Church of Wisdom, Delphi University. Visit her at thehealingcurvebook.com/

Watch a video/interview with Sara Chetkin
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