If you had a car with dual controls – steering wheels and pedals at both front seats – it could be a very helpful  advantage over single control driving.  If one driver is tired, can’t see, or can’t concentrate so well, he’s got someone to cover.
 
On the other hand, imagine if the second driver forgot about the very existence of the first.  He would likely interfere with or even negate the skilled driving of the first.  What a disaster.

This came to mind as I considered the wisdom inside each of us.

On the one hand, there’s something like the healing of a wound.  It’s basically a single steering wheel job.  I can do things to support or hinder the process, but I’m not directing coagulants, skin cells, blood flow, etc.  I’m not driving.  That’s all God.  It’s mind boggling how myriads of systems are choreographed with wisdom toward tangible healing.  I am SO grateful I don’t have any share in the driving on that task.  Can you imagine?

Then there’s my inner world – my internal experiences of warm and peaceful, idealistic and driven, fearful and tense, jealous and hurt.  To me that’s more dual steering.  God is the source of all thought.  He’s the source of my consciousness, that which allows me to feel my thought.  He’s sourcing everything.  So He’s obviously a driver. 

On the other hand, I’m also a driver.   I feel thoughts, prefer some, focus on, resist and protest others.  I have the ability to intervene. 
So now, what happens if I don’t know there’s another driver?  I am going to interfere with and negate His driving!  Gevalt.

It seems to me we do that all the time.  Yes, God gave us a steering wheel in navigating our inner world.  Our choice to focus and understand, to listen and pause, to act or step back are all essential uses of the gift of our steering.  On the other hand, part of driving includes remembering we’re not the sole driver.

To me, insecure, fearful, and jealous experiences are like times of reduced visibility.  They literally remind of the presence of the other driver.  God is driving me through certain thought terrain where I can’t see so well.  All human beings drive through these thoughts.  There’s something to be had in them, or else He wouldn’t drive us through them.  But trying to drive off the road to get elsewhere doesn’t go well; it messes up the Driver’s work.   When the road loses its visibility, it’s a good reminder there’s another driver; it’s a good cue to ease off the wheel.

This has been such a helpful understanding to me.  Please join me this at this Thursday's teleconference, 10am, to learn more about this metaphor and what it points to.  
 

Not long ago, I was filled with judgment and anger toward a certain person for what I deemed great damage he caused me and my family.  Recently, as I needed help on a new project, his name came to mind.  “He’s uniquely capable of helping,” I thought.  So I reached out. 

The notion that after feeling victimized as I did I would then turn to him for help – and pay him! – astonishes me.  And it also doesn’t.  In a nutshell, here’s my understanding of what allowed me to move from A to B.

Step 1: I began to see what’s true about what causes my feelings and psychological experience.  (Hint: it’s inside out).  Simultaneously, I began to see more clearly what cannot be its cause. (Hint: people, stuff, events).

Step 2: I started paying less attention to what cannot be causes.  Meanwhile, I went about my life as best I could and had a little less judgment when I did have false causes on my mind.

Step 3: The temptation and attraction of the false causes started to soften (sometimes, without my even registering that). 

Step 4: New thoughts (and their attendant feelings) showed up.

In short, he wasn’t cause in my lingering upset.  I didn’t know how to extract myself from the painful, consuming feelings of believing he was cause, but I got interested in what was true about those feelings.  As I did, the wisdom connection God wired into me got less muddled and I began to see and feel differently.

A few caveats. 

One.  I’m not saying there’s no free will or effort involved in such a shift.  It was plenty tempting at times to stay in the judgment and anger loop.  I often did.  To me, my role was to be interested in what was true, to be interested in acknowledging where I was mistaken.  Even still, the shift in my internal experience seems miraculous relative to the part I played.  

Two.  There is such a thing as damaging, inappropriate behavior that one can be a victim of.  I don’t think it wise or “spiritual” not to put an end to or redress damages.   I speak more of the emotional suffering that lingers independent of damages.

Three.  Looking at my words above, I wonder whether someone might feel it lacks empathy, as if a guy’s suffering is his fault and he should just stop blaming.  To that I say:  Suffering is just human.  We don’t go there willfully and if we knew how to end it, we would.  Without respect for a person’s struggle, it’s not helpful to tell someone consumed by pain or anger, “You know, the causes you attribute your pain to are built on falsehood.” 

Four.  I had a fourth thing I wanted to share but forgot it, which just reminds me again of how dependent I am on the gift of Divine thought.