There’s often a moment in our spiritual journey when we realize we’ve been approaching everything backwards.

For years, I thought my job was to figure out how to make spiritual principles work in my life. I was constantly trying to manage my thoughts, control my emotions, and orchestrate outcomes that aligned with what I thought God wanted for me.

It was exhausting.

A Course in Miracles tells us “I do not know what anything is for,” and when I first read that, I thought it was the most depressing thing I’d ever heard. How could I not know what things are for? I had opinions about everything!

That ACIM Workbook Lesson #25 became my liberation.

When we think we know what everything is for, we’re trying to be the director of our own movie. We’re trying to write the script, cast the characters, and control all the outcomes. That’s not faith – that’s control.

Real faith happens when we’re willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, there’s a wisdom operating in our lives that’s far greater than our limited perspective.

I remember when my nephew was thirteen, and I took him on a trip to Los Angeles. We went to theme parks and had all kinds of adventures. At the end of the week, he said something that blew me away: “I learned that when you say ‘I have a feeling,’ we should just do that, whatever that is.”

He had noticed that every time we followed my intuition – even when it didn’t make logical sense – things worked out beautifully. Sometimes he didn’t want to follow my intuition – which was totally understandable, so we went with what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it. But he witnessed, when we trusted that inner guidance, we’d find exactly what we needed, when we needed it.

And, by the way, when he wanted to go against my guidance, I didn’t fight him. And when we both saw it would have been a better outcome (saving an hour of waiting on line) if we’d just done what my guidance was, I didn’t say anything about it. It was obvious. No need to say, “I told you so!”

With myself, and everyone else, I do my best to work with these situations on a “live and learn” basis. Every day I’m living, I’m learning. Live and learn is my way.

Ease and grace is what happens when we stop trying to manage our lives from a limited ego perspective, analyzing the logic of our choices, and instead, start trusting the divine intelligence that’s always available to us.

Here’s what I’ve learned: this shift from managing to trusting isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a daily practice.

It’s moment-by-moment willingness to say, “I don’t know what this situation is for, but I trust that everything is working together for good. I’m looking for the most loving choices I can find.”

When we’re in the ego’s management mode, we think problems exist that need to be solved. But when we shift into trust, we remember that all problems have already been solved – we just need to be willing to receive the solution.

This doesn’t mean we become passive. It means we become deeply responsive to the guidance that’s always available. We ask better questions: “How can I be helpful here?” “What would Love have me understand about this situation?” “What is this here to teach me?”

The most challenging part of this shift is learning to trust when things don’t look the way we think they should. When someone we love is struggling. When our bank account is lower than we’d prefer. When the world seems to be falling apart. It’s when our wishes and wants take over and we lose touch with intuition.

That’s when our faith practice can become real.
That’s when we get to discover whether we really trust Love or whether we only trust Love when everything looks good.

I’ve found that the more I practice this – the more I consistently choose trust over control – the more my life flows with an ease and grace that I could never have experienced through managing and manipulating.

And here’s the beautiful irony: when we stop trying to control outcomes, the outcomes often exceed what we could have imagined for ourselves. I experience that so often.

If you’re tired of trying to manage every detail of your life, if you’re exhausted from the worry and anxiety of carrying the weight of outcomes that were never yours to control, maybe it’s time to experiment with a different approach.

What would happen if you trusted Love completely for just one day? One situation? One relationship?

Your freedom is waiting in your willingness to let go of management and step into trust.

EARLY BIRD ENDS MONDAY! If you’ve been studying spiritual principles for years but still find yourself triggered by the same people, stuck in the same worry patterns, and secretly wondering why the teachings work for everyone else but not you – consider joining my Finding Freedom From Fear spiritual bootcamp with ACIM principles.With this program people have been transforming their lives since 2008. Finding Freedom gives you the practical tools to actually heal your patterns at the root, not just manage them. Early-bird ends Monday, September 8th at midnight Pacific – save $100 and finally stop collecting information instead of having lasting transformation. You can have a deep and powerful faith! Register now or book a free exploratory call to see if this is your next step toward the Freedom you’ve been missing.

TODAY, Sundays With Spirit – a powerful inspirational message and uplifting music in community with deep prayer!  Register now if you haven’t already and we’ll send you the link for zoom – totally FREE as usual!  It’s a full moon!  It’s an eclipse!  Let’s ride the energy waves of transformation together!

NEW ACIM PODCAST EPISODE: my topic is You’re Not Evil – You’re Just Playing Small (And Here’s How to Stop) In this episode, I shared how I used to feel fundamentally limited and evil, believing there was some immovable block preventing my spiritual growth, when the truth was I was simply playing small and denying my divine inheritance. Working with A Course in Miracles Lesson 166 (“I am entrusted with the gifts of God”), I discovered that God’s trust in us is limitless even when our trust in God is minimal, and that we must unite our will with God’s will to receive and recognize the pre-installed gifts that are already ours. I emphasized that we’re not victims but dreamers of the dream, and that taking responsibility for our creative power – rather than hiding from it – transforms us from tragic wanderers into servants in our Father’s house who hold the high watch for all humanity.