Gabrielle Bernstein

# The Universe Has Your Back

1. “I step back and let the Universe lead the way.” I step back and surrender everything I have, do, and say to God every day knowing that I am imperfect n the human realm. But an example to others of faith and fearless joy in God! That makes me sing and dance every day. Sometimes I lose my way and believe humanity and their destructive ways. But God pulls me out with a somber song and a powerful comforting and healing prayer from my support family circle and then I feel the Spirit of God moving in, around, and through me again. Enriching me. Establishing me. Anchoring me in Him deeper and deeper and lesser and lesser with humanity. My faith in God has increased exponentially over the last three years and has grown deeper and deeper and I lead and live with love and care and optimism and joy in spite of the hurt and suffering I have been through. I released all fear and all emotions that are against God to God and working on them privately in therapy and in discussions with my support family members by talking about how my genetic family members attitudes and behaviors affected me and my journey and still affect my heart. And that I am willing to let it go and start over again. Because I forgive them for all their hurts and anger and rage against me.

2. “The goal is to not believe in fear." Fear is a lie of the Devil and his adversaries. I have learned to believe nothing. But to search my heart and Bible verses for God’s Truth and Trust. I read books that He leads me to read knowing that fear is just irrational and not my own. It is an emotional block to open honesty with God that the Devil puts in my way. I refute that by being honest with my aunts and crying out to my mentors for prayer and counsel and guidance. And being brutally honest with my struggles in the mental realm. And to stop lying about my condition and hiding information from those that love me and care about me. To be fully myself and unabashedly in love with God! And to spread love and joy around wherever I go. But to surrender completely to God in prayer and fasting and singing and journaling.

3. "Being in union with the energy of the Universe is like an awesome dance where you trust your partner so much that you just surrender to the beat of the music." Having the Spirit of God working in, around, and through me is an experience that I love! Others notice and are blessed by my energy and positivity. I feel lighter. Like I am on the cloud nine. A few days ago I was not feeling the Spirit of God. I felt like I was being attacked by the Devil and his adversaries. The words that came out of my mouth were out of line and hurtful and I realise the Devil was trying to make me give in to him that entire weekend. I instead called on my support family members to pray with me and by Wednesday I felt better and like I could handle anything against the Devil. Absolute Trust and faith in God has kept me over the past thirteen years and I am not going to let the Devil take that comforting and everlasting peace and communion with God away from me. To be one with God. To be at peace with God. To let God work in me. To let God speak through me and not me speak my own words. To let God think through me and not let me think my own thoughts. To let God control my lips and tongue every moment of each day.

4. “Meditation and prayer open you up to the power of the Universe." Silent meditation is beneficial for me because it calms me and centers me and helps me find inner peace. Prayer opens up my heart to God. As does writing down my prayers.

5. "We are always manifesting either love or fear." I manifest love. Love with my heart. Love with my smile. Love with my songs. Love in my dancing. Love in my quotes that I write. I defeat fear. Fear over my mind. Fear over my anxiety and all its issues. I declare healing and restoration over my mental illness and anxiety and that I kick fear out and i receive love always no matter what. And give love. And speak love. And believe in love.

6. “That is the goal: to live in this world but believe in a peaceful loving world beyond it.” I believe in a world of peace, love, joy, honesty, harmony, and righteousness.

7. "We must learn to train our minds to create with love rather than with fear." Create with love in your mind. Lead with love in your mind. Lead with faith in your mind. Then spread love with your words. In your poems. In your letters. In your novels. In your behavior. In your attitude.

8. "Logic, fear, and limitation cut off our connection to creative possibilities and universal guidance." Fear is of the Devil. Logic is Stoic. Love is Godlike.

9. "Whenever you pray for the highest good, you get your agenda out of the way. You surrender into the Universe's plan and release your own. Remember that the Universe doesn't respond to manipulation–the Universe responds to love." God responds to love. So respond in love. Not in hate. Or fear. Or negativity. Or bitterness.

10. "Your plans are in the way of God's plan." Submit to God’s plan. Never humanity’s ever.

“God will fight your battles. Remember God is love and acceptance and peace and joy. Not any negative emotion So let God lead your life in everything and release all negative emotions and live in daily in His Love and His Light.”- ASN… (altro)

After-note: As I write this note I just finished a very wordy criticism of an economics guy who’s very stuck-in-his-head, you know; it was a very wordy book and I could have written about it too much. I don’t think it was too vitriolic or anything, but it was probably a little repetitive and the length may have given the impression that I was trying to fight him. I actually don’t think I’ve become more judgmental recently, though, actually I feel like it’s drawing off a bit, so maybe I’ll talk about that here. I mean, basically, I think I just want to do less with history, politics, and sociology, although that stuff served a purpose for me in the past and I’m not cutting it out completely. Sometimes history—banging the drums—can just be little boy crap, not really evil or anything, and it can be a release from the sorta spiritual philosophy of say a Leonard Jacobson (like a slightly less popular style of Eckhart Tolle); for the record I don’t think that Gabby is in that philosophy style, you know, and actually it’s a relief to get back to this—light and air, and even without the heavenly philosophic knowing, you know, just the real bits. I actually think that sometimes economics or whatever—the science, not the nature of money, if you follow—can drag you down and give you reasons to be judgmental, even if plenty of ordinary people can act in much the same way with different reasons, just spinning their wheels, you know. Oftentimes they think that the person with advanced degrees is just better than they are, you know. Then they go looking for somebody who’s beneath them. Like, you’re the cracker that can keep a truck on the road—look over there! A cracker who can’t keep a truck on the road! And here’s a song about a truck on the radio! Turn it up, so he can hear!

Yeah…. Anyway.

Anyway, I always have judgments about something, at least over the course of a whole day, right—but I notice a gradual (partial) loss of interest in the most judgmentalism-generating topics, even if there’s still a little beat-the-drums little-boy crap, you know.

………….

Reading—or in Gabby’s case, writing—a book about giving up harmful judgment is an excellent exercise, but I think we should always remember that it’s difficult, but not complicated. What feels better—honoring yourself and others, or putting yourself above/below others (separation)? It’s not really complicated, sometimes. Of course, sometimes you have to say, I don’t know, that “white people are the best; denying this objective verity is racism” doesn’t need equal time in your life, with, well—anything, really! If I could pay the newspapers to put the Mets on the front-page instead of Trump or somebody demanding to be hated, right! Because here’s the thing: some people demand to be hated, but nobody ever wants to be taken up on it: and it also doesn’t do you any good, either.

So, there is discernment (another article on Trump? Let me think about this before I dive in), but don’t do condemnation/judgment (when I was a kid I loved bombastic historical drama, you know: Conscript Fathers! I propose a formal motion. That Gaius, Julius, Caesar, should be declared an Enemy! of the Senate and People of Rome!and that it should be the duty! And the obligation! Of every good Roman: to do him harm…. Or to kill him! If they are able….” /Caesar gets tackled by some fishmonger wives and dockworkers, right/ 😹…. Talk about bloodshed, and pompous self-righteousness…. And then there’s you, rehearsing judgment for no reason, and nothing’s even happened to you yet! Gotta get ready! Might have to attack; might have to condemn….)

And, you know: certainly loving all people doesn’t mean waiting for people to like you. People don’t like other people, quite often; and that’s fine. They get to think in their mind. But understand: giving up judgment means you have to dissent from the (informal) world-system, you know, the thoughts of the world. The system will never give you permission to take yourself out of its judgment-making, anymore than everyone will like you, you know…. You just have to silently, perhaps wordless bless them, and not wait up for them, right….

…. And it is really is love, you know; you don’t need a new strategy and a new choreography for each “new problem” in your life; really it is all love, and all One.

…. It’s a good book. ‘I shelve this thought, and choose again.’

…. Maybe her friend Jack that she had a fight with is really C.S. Lewis, right. 😸

I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry you guys; I’ll see if I can get through the rest of it without anything else. 🦁 😸

…. Gabby, like a lot of people, even spiritual teachers, seems to be still trying to resolve her own karma or whatever (if you really had no karma you’d probably just meditate in silence all day and answer any question, You say that I am—you know—I guess unless you took somebody else’s karma on you, what a trip! But that’s rare, I think, even for spiritual teachers), but I think she’s much more teachable and open/trusting in her stance towards the Universe, than most people (if you’ll forgive the term, right)…. Maybe that aspect of her modeling is the greatest lesson: just that she knows that she has bedrock, whereas most people spend most of their time trying to disguise the fact that they aren’t conscious of bedrock…. There are things you can do to release anger, but maybe the lesson can be just to have the anger, and to know that it ends, right. To hold bedrock for yourself, and even for the other person, to the extent that they exist in your mind.

…. (ACIM quote) “Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing.”

Which frees you up to do something productive, incidentally, or just to have fun. But if you really want the cosmic light and nothing else, you just have to…. do nothing, basically! The cosmic light is everywhere!

…. I know she doesn’t really do the Bible or the Torah, that much, but I’m always reminded of that verse in Exodus, that superficially most un-meditation-y of documents, that goes—this is right before the title event, the big, Bob Marley, ‘exodus’, you know—God will fight for you; you need only be still…. 14:14, that’s it.

…. A lot of crime ultimately happens because of our desire to punish people as soon as they step off the path. (“Got to keep the loonies on the path.”) It’s very unnecessary, and in that sense perhaps it would be correct, if you like, to call it “evil”.

…. And what a great song that was: got to keep the loonies on the path…. I just started listening to Pink Floyd’s first, 67’s “Piper”, since I’ve only ever listened to the two that are real famous back when I didn’t even like albums of music—Dark Side of the Wall, you know—and eventually I’d like to cycle through all of it. Pink Floyd is weird stuff—far weirder than we know….

…. Forgive, if you can’t think of another reason, because it’s good for business. Random chaos fighting isn’t good for anything really, including business. There’s just no good reason we have to let the market get derailed by all the things we let it get derailed by….

I won’t judge another’s path, even a potential partner. Hell, if I had to, I could even date a murd—ah, a meat-eater. A chicken-killer. (Mister Downfall: A random person I don’t like is one thing…. (camera pans out to the hall where you can still hear him) But date a chicken-killer! A chick responsible for the deaths of little baby chickens! Little baby male egg-laying-variety chickens! I’ll have that bitch arrested on Brandon-ed up charges!)

Would I rather be right or kind—right. That’s my early childhood conditioning. I figure if things go bad, I can always eat my parents’ brains, you know. After all, they say that zombie is legal now, and, according to the “paper of record”, The New York Post, so is eating brains, you know.

Ok, book’s over. Go home. Or, keeping scrolling, or whatever. Lol. Choose again! Right!, that’s life.… (altro)

Gabby’s book here is about accepting the love of the universe and dissolving one’s nagging fear that the world is an unsafe, unfriendly place. I’ve read this book before, but the first time I was a little stilted and although I didn’t judge it strongly, I slightly depreciated her vulnerability, as I had rigid ideas about what a spiritual teacher should be like. —A spiritual teacher’s not supposed to have had panic attacks, right. It’s all supposed to be done and resolved, starting on the day, starting on the day, well I don’t rightly know when it would start; but, forever, right. Just like…. Boom! Spiritual! 🤯—

It’s also vulnerable in another way, in that being a spiritual teacher, a ACIM teacher, isn’t licensed and regulated and bureaucratic as motor oil like a specialist/scientist like a biological psychologist, right. (Or even an Episcopal priest, like as not.) Gabby’s a simple girl, and free, but that very simplicity—spiritual, not scientific, and like a lot of ACIM teachers she doesn’t even have a bibliography about the history of religion in the back of the book—is a sort of vulnerability. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for specialists—room for squares, as John Mayer put it once—but I think once we “grow up” myself and others tend to obey and esteem specialists too much. Of course, in a sense you can never /esteem/ someone too much, but you can esteem them for the wrong things, you know…. There’s often too much esteem, not too little, for debating and ‘proving’ things. Useful skills at times, but if it’s a substitute for ideas like “you are loved” and “the Universe is a safe, friendly place”, you won’t be happy, you know. You’ll just be invulnerable—sometimes.

And you know, the other aspect is that this is kinda a pretty non-lightweight book, a deep book. Writing a paper saying that there should be a federal mandate for preschool for 4-year-olds (or whatever) would probably be a difficult thing, and you might ‘prove’ things…. But you’d pretty much bang it out and be done with it. It wouldn’t fill you with wonder, or happiness. Saying, “I’ve learned not to be afraid to be happy”, is kinda a vulnerable thing to say, and could get you laughed at by people, you’d call you a granny idiot and not hard-headed and cynical enough—even if they were watching a sitcom, or something, much less learning in a biology textbook that they’re smarter than you are.

But, there you go. A guru said it once on YouTube: if you’re happy, really put a grimace on your face, so nobody knows. And he did this exaggerated grimace.

And then he laughed, right.

…. I have problems with vulnerability; for example, although I like having written reviews, I somewhat dislike the actual process of writing them, which is very different from the controlled process of reading, you know. With the creativity comes a slight loosening of control that’s subconsciously a little frightening. But, then, this is something I do. It’s important.… (altro)

Wonderfully insightful. This is my first book by Gabrielle Bernstein and won't be my last. She is like a breath of fresh air in the self-help genre. Her honesty and down-to-earth personality are very attractive and relatable. She provides humor and personal experience as motivators to the reader to empower herself. The 40-days was a do-able reading assignment with "homework" for each day. It further demonstrates her lesson of learning which is that it takes time to master. I have already recommended this book to friends. I purchased this book before I noticed it being reviewed at NetGalley. I felt compelled to add my opinion since I found the book extremely helpful.… (altro)