Hello everyone, I hope that this letter finds you in good health and enjoying abundant energy and love.

 Lets face it, no matter how much inner work you have done, we all have our tests and challenges.  These are the circumstances which cause us to reach deep within ourselves and come up with creative and graceful (well sometimes graceful) solutions which work for us and those around us.

 It is often said that if we pass our tests, then we move on to another level of evolution, and it is in the passing of these initiations that we gain mastery.

 This can be a daunting concept as the whole mastery and initiation thing brings up thoughts of having to do it  perfectly.

 I have started to understand recently that this is not really the case.  Life in the inner planes is reflected in life on the physical plane.  We do not need to get 100% to pass a school or university subject,  and nor do we have to get 100% to pass a Spiritual test.  We just have to get it substantially right.  To get it substantially right , we have to get it more than half right, which means 51% right is good enough. 

 Think of a difficult person in your life.  As an experiment, try to think loving thoughts at that person for a month.  Focus on their good points, even if you have to scratch your head and really search for them, you can be sure they will be there.

Deliberately treat that person as if you liked them.  This is probably different to how you usually (perhaps unconsciously) treat them. Usually in conflict situations we react to insults from the other with pain, defensiveness and giving as good as we get.  Tempting as it is, this just escalates things.  Our journey as masters is to take a deep breath, get centered and project what WE want to get back; patience, knowledge that we sometimes make mistakes and say the wrong thing or act inappropriately, and the will to understand the other persons point of view.  There is usually something in what they say, even if it is often incomprehensible because of the degree of anger that overlays it and stops us hearing it.

 When I practiced family law early on in my career at the Bar, I used to be amazed at how much two people who had loved and admired each other enough to get married, could not find anything good to say about each other by the time they got to court.  These couples would need to deal with each other for the next 10 years because of children, but they would not make any effort to be constructive or display good will towards each other.

 If you look, no matter how badly they have treated you, there will be something admirable about any person.  Place your focus on their good points for a month and see what happens.  Remember, we can get it wrong 49% of the time (focus on what we dont like by mistake) and still pass a test!!! 

 As life is a mirror of our internal landscape, you will know if you have actually passed because there will be a shift in your experience of the person.  They wont drive you nuts any more.  You might even feel love or compassion for them.  This is mastery!

 Phew, what a relief!  We dont have to be Perfect!!  Even after mastering a particular relationship, it (or he/she) can still piss us off.  That is just showing us our buttons that are there to be pressed.  Say Ill get back to you about that and become calm and centered before contacting them to discuss whatever it is.

 If we take this one step further, we realize that we are perfect already, whether we pass or fail a particular test or initiation does not change that.  Whether we can muster sufficient inner resources to forgive and love our enemy (as Jesus taught) is immaterial to the fact that we are an expression of Divinity.  We are neither our skills or our shortcomings.  We are Divine souls having a human experience so that we can develop certain attributes like compassion, love, happiness, faith, etc.  We have many life times in which we can work on our skills!!

 Spiritual tests are often not what we think they are.  Often we are presented with a challenging situation and we need to find a solution.  We think that if we have it right, we will win the day and God will be on our side.  I dont think thats really where its at.  I think that we can often learn more from failure, and it is the learning that the soul is interested in, not the result. 

 Toddlers know this.  Do they want you to feed them?  NO! They want to do it themselves, even thought half the food ends up in their hair or down their collar, (failing to get in their mouths) but they get so much joy from the experience of the LEARNING! 

 I am not advocating failure as a Spiritual path, but merely pointing out that we can fail forwards in life, discovering many things along the way,  andbecoming enriched on a soul level as a result.  Looked at from the perspective of Spiritual mastery, it is often the amount of love and compassion that we can bring to any given situation that is more indicative of our progress than our outer world result that we achieve.

 Even thought the real test might be an invisible one (how much love did I exhibit in that exchange), the degree to which we pass the test may affect our futures.  Like in life, the result we get in any particular test has a bearing on the opportunities that get presented to us afterwards.  At law school, I thought that getting more than a pass was a waste of good party time, but there were plenty of other people who thought that getting a pass was really a fail, and only a distinction or high distinction would do.

 At the end of the degree, there is no doubt that those who went the extra distance and really applied themselves,  got the pick of the jobs with the most prestigious firms.  However the rest of us still managed, and sometimes went on to become amazingly successful lawyers, just taking another route.  Others went and did other things outside of the legal field.

 The point is that every thought we think, every choice we make and every action we take closes some doors and opens others.  By thinking a kind thought about a challenging person, we open the door for them to exhibit that quality to us.  Done regularly this is transformative of our experience of them.  By focusing on their shortcomings, we open the door that allows the  less attractive aspects of their nature, to be graphically displayed to us in unpleasant detail.

 If we get a pass at this, we go on to other things, tick box, initiation granted.  However if we get a credit, we may go onto bigger things.  If we get a high distinction, we may progress to the level of affecting national and world affairs like Gandhi did. 

 Where are you heading?  Not where do you think you are heading, but where are you actually heading as a result of your dominant thoughts, words and actions?  How congruent with your objectives are your choices?  You want your partner to respect you.  Do you respect him? (or her)  Do you respect yourself?

 Try to ensure that if you want to achieve a particular thing, that you concentrate on doing so, rather than all of the obstacles that are in the way.  AS Grand Master Choa Kok Sui says, see yourself as very large and the obstacles as very small.  Take back your power from the obstacles and learn to flow around them.  Get some pranic psychotherapy treatment to dissolve and disintegrate the thoughts that may be sabotaging your efforts.  Take responsibility for your own creations and remember, you only have to get it substantially right to move on.

 You dont have to become Perfect,  because you already are.

Namaste,

Kim Fraser