You ask for help in your spiritual development. Yet here is an element
in you that wishes to escape difficult situations, pain and suffering.
Some of this is natural but you are using it in a way that is not in
your best interest. You have turned it into a game in which it shows
how clever you are in avoiding unpleasant tasks. You pride yourself in
manipulating the situation to what you think is your advantage. This
process, however, is hurting you in the long run. You ask for our help
and when we send you something so that you can learn about yourself,
you try to escape from that situation as well.

There may be, for example, a certain person in your environment that
you say that you do not like, so you avoid contact with that person.
If you had more contact with him or her, you might discover certain
behaviors that they exhibit that are mirrors of traits within yourself
that you do not like. If you were open to learning, you could examine
those traits in yourself and perhaps decide to change your own
attitude and behavior. Then you would like yourself better and be
happier. You would then learn that there is no need to project what
you do not like about yourself onto others around you. You might also
learn that the avoided person has a lot of good traits that you
overlooked while keeping them at a distance.

When you ask for our help it does not come with labels in the form of
Lesson 1, Lesson2, etc. You may not recognize it at first, but when
you find that things have become more difficult and you begin to do
some soul searching, you are finding out the sticking places within
yourself that are holding you back. Sometimes this is what our help
looks like, a problem for you to solve. When you address it head on,
then you are open to learning the lesson and can move on. When you
escape the opportunity presented, then you will have to be presented
with another situation to learn the lesson, sometimes under more
difficult circumstances. This does not mean that we are not sending
the help that you ask for, but that you do not recognize the process
that is happening.

Sometimes you have a preconception that help is in to come only in the
form that will please you, that it will make your life easier. It is
not our way, however, to remove people from your environment simply
because you cannot get along with them. There may be lessons for you
and them to learn in your encounter. What good does it do to remove
one of you from the circumstances before you learn your lessons?

The same is true for other situations. Many people pray for what they
see as positive things like health, money, happiness, world peace.
Then they may also wish for spiritual growth and the way to achieve
that may not come in the form that they were expecting. Expectations
about how things should happen is a major cause of disappointment
among humans. Deal with how things are now rather than how you wish
they would be. You have chosen to live in this world for now, so
remember to make the choice to learn and to grow rather than to escape.

With great love,

Aristenna of the Spiritual Hierarchy

2006-02-16