"Imagine taking your canoe down to the river's edge...a very nice, fast moving stream...and your oars or paddles are already attached to your boat and you put it in the water and you deliberately turn it upstream and begin paddling very hard against this fast moving current. And we say, 'Why not just turn and go with the flow?' And our human friends invariably say, 'Doesn't that seem lazy. That seems lazy.' And then they will say, 'My mother will not approve of that or my teachers. They all have me pointing the other way. In fact, every plaque on my wall was based upon paddling upstream. AND, I was measured against others who did it, too. And the better we did it...the better we were able to fight that current...then the more proud our human friends were of us and the bigger the trophies and monuments. And we hear that when you die there are even more.'
And, we want you to know something...in fact, it's worth writing this down...nothing that you want is upstream. Nothing that you want is upstream and the reason we know that is because we've seen the cycle of life. We know that Source extended itself here into that which is you. And we know that you are asking, as a result of your leading edge experience ...just like you knew you would...for more. And we know that Source is becoming that 'more' that you are asking for and is calling you to it. And so we know the Source of the Stream. And we know that when you turn and go with the Stream, you feel ever so good. That's what positive emotion is...varying degrees of it...but it's what positive emotion is. And we also know that when you buck that current, it can beat up on you pretty good. And that's what negative emotion is. We want you to understand that there is only one Stream that you might be going with or against but there is only one Stream.
And, when you learn from those around you to go against the Stream, then you want to pronounce that there are evil streams...that there are streams of sickness or streams of badness or streams of poverty. We say, 'No...just one Stream. You're just not going with it.' You say, 'Oh, that can't be. If it's a stream of goodness why is it beating me up so.' And we say, 'Because you're clinging to the bottom. It's beating you up because you are not going with your self-created stream.' Do you get this?
And that really is the strongest point that we want to make with you. This Stream of Well-Being is a powerful Stream and it takes you downstream whether you go easily or not. In other words, when you look around at your environment, you've just got to aknowledge that Well-Being abounds. Your planet continues to spin in it's orbit. And, even beyond the Well-Being that is obvious...more obvious to some of you than others granted. But, even beyond the Well-Being that is obvious, we want to remind you that even when you get further downstream and you have that which you call your physical death...which there isn't any of...we like to be disrespectful of death since there isn't any and call it 'croaking'...when you croak, you really move rapidly with this Stream of Well-Being. In other words, the Stream of Well-Being is not only dominant, it's all that there is.
So, while you can be in this physical body and you can fume and fuss and give yourself a lot of grief and point in opposition of the Stream to the point that you beat yourself up pretty good and then claim that there cannot possibly be a Stream of Well-Being because your life is going too badly, we want to say to you, 'If you would let go of your resistance and start going with the flow, you will discover how good this Stream can be to you.'
The river guide said to all of Jerry and Esther's friends, 'You know, that rock is not moving with the flow. And because it isn't and the water is rushing past it, if we get our raft sideways up against one of those rocks, it will be big trouble for us. It could turn us over, trap you in the rocks and the stream will beat you up. So, the idea is not to get up against one of those boulders that is not moving.' He made it very clear. He said, 'If you will listen to me, I will guide you around them. And if you don't listen to me, you may end up against one of those rocks.' And we say, 'The same thing applies in this Stream that is flowing so rapidly. When you let yourself go with it, you have a glorious ride. but when you paddle against it or cling to the bottom or don't let yourself, that's what fear and depression...that's what that feeling of loss of control is. That's what that feeling of disempowerment is.'
And we also want to remind you that this stream is not being assigned to you by some one else. Source or God or someone benevolent or not benevolent is not saying, 'Oh, let's speed up their stream and see how well they do.' You are the one that makes your stream go to the speed it does.
A mother on a recent seminar took a break during a segment of lunch and had lunch with her child, who said to her, 'When you get back, if you get a chance, would you please ask Abraham a question for me?' And, she said, 'I will.' And he said, 'Why are grownups so grumpy?' And we said, 'It is the best question we've heard and it applies to what we're talking about here more than anything else we can think of. Grownups are more grumpy than children...there are grumpy children, but grown ups on the whole are much more grumpy than children...because they've lived more life and they've got a faster moving stream. And when your stream is moving fast and you're not flowing with it, it's beating you up and it makes you grumpy.' In other words, it just comes down to one thing and that is, if you are to be the joyful being you want to be and that you are meant to be, you've got to go with the flow. And when you don't, you don't feel good. It's just that simple. Not going with the flow of your own creation is what makes you feel unfulfilled. It's what makes you feel dissatisfied and worse. It's what makes you feel overwhelmed. It's what makes you feel frustrated. It's what makes you feel angry. It's what makes you feel fearful. It's what makes you feel discouraged and depressed. Not going with the flow is what is at the heart of every negative emotion that you feel.
So, when you think about that...break it down into the simple terms that we want you to hear...that means that your life, just like you knew it would, has caused you to launch many rockets of desires that, if you're feeling negative emotion, you're not keeping up to speed with. On the other hand, if you do keep up to speed with the rockets of desires you've launched, you feel wonderful. You feel wonderful when you launch the desire. You feel wonderful even before the desire manifests. You feel wonderful even though you don't even see the evidence of it manifesting yet. You feel wonderful, wonderful, wonderful all the way to manifestation. And, when you feel wonderful, manifestation of what you want is assured and when you don't feel wonderful, manifestation is slowed, maybe even held apart your entire lifetime from you. And, most important...even more important than you not manifesting what you want...is that you feel rotten all the time while you're not letting it flow.
So, we want you to get a sense from this analogy that we're offering...a very apt, appropriate analogy...that if you will just make a decision that, however you can make it happen, you're gonna turn and go with the flow. Sometimes we think, especially those of you who have been listening to us for a while, as we crow about the good feeling emotions being on this end of the emotional scale...love and joy and all of that wonderful energy...and on the other end of the scale are things that feel like depression and fear and anger... And we give you the impression that your work is to not only not be on this end of the scale but get to this end of the scale as quickly as possible. And, of course, we'd rather that you felt this way than this way but what we really want you to understand is that since the Stream is moving, we really are not asking you to turn your boat downstream and put a motor on it...thdthdthd (vocal sound effect)...and get all the way down here as quickly as you can because we know the power of the Stream. You don't have to do that. In fact, you don't even have to turn your boat in the Stream. Just stop paddling upstream. Just stop paddling against the current. The current will turn you. And this is the thing we most want you to hear. As the current turns you, that's your point of relief. And, when you think about it, that is your only choice...upstream or not...upstream or not. Of course, it's nice when you're choosing downstream and you're so good at it that you can really choose it. But your choice in any moment is really to feel worse or better...worse or better. And when you make that decision, all day every day...I could beat the drum of this situation and make it worse or I could just stop talking abou it and make it better."
