The Beggar and the Coin

Summary
The following is transcribed from a session by The Wonders entitled "The Beggar and the Coin". This teaching illustrates how always looking for the "just-perfect opportunity" limits our life. The Wonders provide perspectives to help us recognize that our talents and abilities are not limited and that it is actually quite easy to create the reality we wish to bring about.

Transcript:
Let us begin by presenting this story to you:

One day, the beggar, starving to death, had been without food for a number of days and weeks, [and] as he walks, [he] finds two coins on the ground. Picking them up and clutching them to his breast, he decides that the best way to help himself is to go to the local bakery and buy a loaf of bread with his coins.

Now, as he enters the local bakery, he asks the baker, "Please sir do you have bread for these two coins?" And the baker says, "Of course my good man," and presents him with a loaf of bread. The beggar says, "This loaf is too round. Do you have anything else?". And the baker says, "Yes sir, we have this other kind," and presents him with another loaf of bread. The beggar says, "Oh, but sir, that one is rye bread. I would prefer white bread. Do you have another kind?" "Of course, dear sir," says the baker [who] presents him with another loaf. And the beggar says, "Oh, but sir, that one is too dark. Do you have anything lighter?" And the baker says, "Sorry sir, that is all that I have." So the beggar says, "Well, thank you very much," and moves on, goes outside and spots another bakery down the road.

He moves to the other bakery, goes in clutching his two coins in his hand and says, "Excuse me, mister baker, but do you have a loaf of bread for these two coins?" And the baker says, "Of course, sir. Here we have this wonderful loaf of bread." "But sir, that is twisted bread! I would prefer straight bread!" The baker says, "Well, we have this other bread that is straight bread." The beggar says, "But sir, that bread is too short! I would prefer long bread!" And the baker says, "Well, we have this long bread." The beggar says, " But sir, that is the wrong kind of bread! I would prefer white bread!" And as the beggar says that, the baker says, "Sorry sir, we have nothing else."

So the beggar leaves. And as he leaves, he sees another little bakery hidden in the corner and decides to go to that bakery, clutching his two coins to his chest. As he goes down to this other bakery, he goes in and says, "Please, mister baker, do you have bread for theses two coins?" And the baker looks at him and says, "Why, of course, sir; we only specialize in this one kind of bread." And the beggar says, "Oh, but sir, that is not the kind that I would like. Thank you very much."

And as he leaves, he thinks to himself, "Well, after all, that first baker did have a loaf that was almost what I wanted. Why don't I go back?" And so he walks back to the first baker. Unfortunately, when he gets there, he finds that the bakery is closed, for it is long past closing hours.

Now, the beggar, still starving to death, walks away clutching his two coins to himself and eventually settles down in the hills surrounding the city and falls asleep; and, in his sleep, dies, clutching the two coins that could have saved him.

Now, the moral of this particular story, dear friends, is to provide you with an insight into how people themselves work - if you would recognize that each and every one of you, to some degree, is like the beggar.

You have been given talents. You have been given abilities. You have been given a number of multitude of choices, of options, of opportunities to create wealth in your life; to satisfy and nurture your soul; to satisfy and nurture your desire for knowledge, your desire for awareness, your desire for expansion.

And yet, you take those particular opportunities and are so afraid to let go of them, that you clutch them dearly to your heart for fear that they will escape you, and that you will not get value for that which you seek to give in return.

As a result, you spend the rest of your life searching, from one relationship to another relationship, from one aspect to another aspect, from one opportunity to another, moving, always looking, for the "just-perfect" opportunity, the "just-perfect" relationship, the "just-perfect" choice that would satisfy you and would give you just the perfect value for your particular talent and ability that you clutch so dearly to yourself.

And, as a result, eventually, though you have experienced life from one perspective, we assure you, dear friends, that you have missed out on a greater part of life - the part of being, the part of living, the part of being in life.

And, therefore, you find yourselves, at the end of your particular lifetime in this particular reality and say to yourself in that space between lifetimes, as you review lifetimes, "My God, what have we done? We could have done things differently, chosen differently, made a different choice. If only: What If?"

The "if only's" begin to take over and, as a result, you then re-attempt, re-try, by reincarnating once again into this reality, that which you set out to do in your particular lifetimes.

Now, from one perspective, there is value to clutching to your chest the two coins that you have found as beggars. For after all, if you were to part with them, then you would no longer have two coins from which to purchase the bread you need in order to survive.

However, dear friends, of greater benefit to each and every one of you is to recognize that by using the two coins - which we equate to your talents, your abilities and your awarenesses - by using this talent, ability and awareness to allow yourself to nurture, to feed your soul, to feed the essence of yourself, to allow yourself to grow, then the greater benefit is that you then have a new opportunity to find more coins. For now you have a full belly and therefore can live longer, searching for other coins to bring about a greater reality for yourself.

Too many times, individuals, in this reality, survive by reducing that which they have, rather than expanding that which they have. For they see that which they have to be of such preciousness to themselves that they fear to let go of any portion of it, for fear that if they let go of a small portion, they will then no longer have that portion available to them.

And we would suggest to you, dear friends, that of greater benefit to all of you is to recognize that the portions that exist within yourself are unlimited. They have no limit. It is but your concept of limitation that creates this feeling within yourself that you are limited; that your talents and abilities do have a certain limit, a certain depth, that you can plumb to.

We assure you, dear friends, that, in truth, your talents and abilities are limitless. Your creativity, your ability to create around you is absolutely limitless if you but allow yourselves to create that limitlessness. However, if you choose to create a limit, we assure you, dear friends, that your creation will, in truth, exist. And therefore you will recognize your talent and ability to create as a creation of a limit.

Of what benefit would that be to the totality of the self?

In the majority of instances, the benefit is one that allows the self to exist within a certain parameter of reality that therefore brings about certain desired consequences. However, we assure you, dear friends, of greater benefit is to recognize that there is no limit to your ability to create and, as a result, allow yourself to create whatever you wish to create, whatever reality you wish to bring about.

Now, it is easy to say these words, "Create the reality you wish to bring about." And we recognize that from one perspective, many of you will say therefore, "It is easy to say, much harder to do."

We assure you, dear friends that it takes no more energy to do than it does to say. The same amount of energy is expended. From our perspective, we see the same amount of energy being expended in the doing as in the saying. The difference comes in that, for the majority of you, it needs for you to move through a process of justification to the self to bring about the doing.

How many of you have gone through processes in your life where you've changed jobs? You have moved from one job to another job, from one environment to another environment, and, in the actual decision to move, the actual doing to move takes very little energy.

In effect, you aim yourself in a different direction and let your feet move. However, the process of justification that brings about within yourself the concept that it is "okay" to move is a process that, in itself, expends a trillion times more energy than the actual energy to do. And, as a result, individuals within your society today, find themselves constantly being tired, being depressed, feeling wiped out, feeling totally without energy; for they are moving through processes of justification, rather than processes of doing.

We assure you, if you were to but try for an instant, set aside the process of justification within yourself, and allow yourself to move from one position to another. And indulge us momentarily please. All of you, this very instant, right now, move one seat to your left, please!

Now move one seat to your right!

Didn't take much effort, did it?

And yet each and everyone one you, as you were doing it, you were justifying to yourselves why you needed to move one seat to your left, and even more so, why you would possibly move, once again, one seat to your right. You thought through, you moved through the action of justification.

Now, had you eliminated that justification and just looked at the energy expended to do, you would recognize the degree of energy you needed to move. And that energy was very minute, wasn't it? Now indulge us once again.

Please, stand up, sit down, put your hand on your head, put your hand on your stomach. Now, we are not playing "Simon says," so we don't have to say, "Simon says!"

However, see how easily you allowed yourselves, the second time, to follow instructions to move. Once again, a simple example of how easily the second time, and the third time, and the fourth time, how each time becomes easier and easier, provided that the justification remains the same.

To each and every one of you, the justification was that we ourselves did ask this of you. We asked that you indulge us, and, as a result, you justified it on the basis of, "Why not?"

And, therefore, you moved!. However, the second time, it was easier to do it because you anticipated, you knew what you were moving towards and, therefore, it did not require the same energy of justification to move.

Having said all of that, dear friends, how can you apply this in your particular daily lives?

If you recognize, dear friends, that each minute of your life is an opportunity to move - an opportunity to move from one perspective to another perspective, to move from one point to another point, from one point of view to another point of view, from one aspect of the self to another aspect of the self. If you allow yourselves to move without the justification, simply because the energy impetus is there to move you, we assure you, dear friends, you will have more energy to accomplish than you will have to justify.

If you catch yourselves in the energy of justification and allow yourselves to move through that energy, you will spend a greater amount of your own personal energy, your own life source energy, your own universal life energy in justification, in justifying your movement, and spend less time in doing. And that, dear friends, is the difference between the movers and the shakers of this world and the followers of the rest of this world. The movers and the shakers allow themselves to move, without justification, knowing that they can, once having moved, change direction by allowing themselves to move once again.

Nothing is written in stone. Nothing is cast in iron that it must remain that way. And, as a result, those individuals [who] accomplish, accomplish because they allow themselves to move with the energy as it moves them, as opposed to just spending vast amounts of their own resources justifying to themselves the reasons why they moved. Do you see?