I Don't Do The Past
An Interview With Terry Cole Whittaker
By Ronald S. Miller with Kathy Julie, Contributing

  Continued...             

What happened then?

Terry: I discovered that you don't just jump once and that's it; you keep on jumping as a way of life. My jump, my leap of faith, took me on pilgrimages to the world's holy places and ultimately to a teacher in India who showed me how to live with faith and trust. The main thing he taught me is the importance of striving for wisdom. He taught me that real spiritual progress comes not from our success in manifesting things, but in cultivating love, faith, and surrender. If we practice serving others, we gradually wear down our self centeredness, which lies at the crux of many of our own and society's problems.

 Seeing everything and everyone as a manifestation of the divine, we develop the feeling of oneness with it all. We live without fighting or struggling against circumstances, but welcoming them with gratitude. While all this sounds wonderful, it takes steady practice, deep faith, and a courageous heart to have this kind of openness to life and to others. An egotistical approach to life means that we will be happy only when life fulfills our exact specifications. It means having a scenario for happiness that depends on people and circumstances being just the way we want them. However, as scriptures teach us, the only way to be truly happy is to be un-attached to conditions. Without attachment, we can enjoy happiness whether we're praised or criticized, rich or poor, famous or anonymous. 

When looking for a job, for example, we should accept what comes our way without comparing it to what we desire or expect. In this way, we'll live with contentment, avoiding the mental agitation that comes from rejecting the past in favor of an imagined future. Just because our heart's desire doesn't come along immediately doesn't mean that we should give up our commitment to this goal. It just means that we move forward with whatever does come along, in faith. But we do that without attachment to the results, because when we're  attached to the results of our work, our mind is always agitated and anxious. Since we always have some unfulfilled desires, unless we remain nonattached to them we will suffer some degree of mental and emotional distress. We need to practice an attitude of surrender, even though that is often hard to do.

What makes surrender so hard?

Terry: It takes great faith and courage to accept the divine will as it unfolds in our experience, whether it meets our expectations or not, whether it pleases us or not, whether it seems the "right way" or not. Most of us are afraid to surrender because we don't trust God. We often pay lip service to the Divine Intelligence that rules the universe, while secretly thinking we know how life should unfold for us. We act as if our limited intelligence can be counted on to supply us our needs. But surrender doesn't mean that we accept what fate brings us and that we're helpless to change our lives. It doesn't mean that we sit quietly in a corner without doing anything to change our lives. We're supposed to use our intelligence! We do that by maintaining a positive mental attitude and coupling it with faith, patience, and perseverance.


Thank you Terry for your time and welcome back.