B.J. lives with her husband in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. She met Babuji in France in 1976 and became a Heartfulness trainer at that time. She also contributes to the Heartful Communication program. In her personal life, she tries to live up to the admonition of Socrates, which is to be what one wishes to seem.


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B.J. Levin O’Riordan


      <h4
      class="block-heading"
      id="h-b-j-levin-o-riordan-explores-the-nature-of-problems-and-why-we-struggle-so-much-with-change-she-offers-some-simple-guidance-on-how-to-approach-transformation-in-everyday-life-as-well-as-in-the-field-of-spirituality-and-how-to-take-help-from-others-including-a-spiritual-guide"
    >
      <strong
        ><mark
          style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #2251a3"
         
          >B.J. LEVIN O’RIORDAN</mark
        >
        explores the nature of problems and why we struggle so much with
        change. She offers some simple guidance on how to approach
        transformation, in everyday life as well as in the field of
        spirituality, and how to take help from others, including a spiritual
        guide.</strong
      >
    </h4>

    <hr class="vertical-space1" />

    <div class="block-image">
      <figure>
        <img
          alt="guidance-from-the-future2"
        
          
          class="lazyload has-img-center"
          src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/guidance_from_the_future2_395d3fbbd1.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-13T07:06:46.880Z"
          
        />
      </figure>
    </div>

    <hr class="vertical-space1" />

    <p class="has-text-align-center">
      <em
        >“When you have a problem, don’t think about it.<br />Think of God
        instead. This is the Golden Key.”</em
      >
    </p>

    <hr class="vertical-space1" />

    <p>
      I am grateful to my friend E.W. for bringing the Golden Key into my
      life. &nbsp;
    </p>

    <p>
      I believe that problems result from the benign conspiracy between two
      agents – who we are now and who we are becoming. Our current limitations
      give us the motivation to take the next step, but those very limitations
      don’t allow us to take that step. The purpose of the problem is to
      enable us to become a new person operating from a frame of reference
      beyond the previous set of limitations.
    </p>

    <p>
      For example, a five-year-old child is ready to go to school. The
      family’s love, in which she has basked since birth, has given her the
      confidence to explore, discover, and relate to others. She needs these
      abilities, but now that she is at school, she can no longer behave like
      the family’s darling. She won’t get away with it! The very purpose of
      the problem – school – is to enable her to emerge from the old version
      of herself into a new version. She can no longer use baby ways, like
      crying, to get what she wants. To solve the problem, she has to behave
      like and become a school-aged child. &nbsp;
    </p>

    <p>
      This pattern of development persists throughout our lives. A child
      cannot use childish ways to solve the problems imposed by puberty, so
      the child becomes an adolescent and solves the problems from that
      perspective. An adolescent cannot use adolescent ways to solve the
      problems imposed by adulthood, so they become an adult. &nbsp;
    </p>

    <p>
      We can never solve a new problem by being who we are. We solve it from
      the perspective of who we are going to become. &nbsp;
    </p>

    <p>
      Throughout our lives, others help us negotiate these rites of passage.
      At each stage, we have guides from the past and guides from the future.
      The guides from the past ideally help us to retain the best of the old
      values, and the guides from the future usher us into the new
      perspectives necessary for our future selves.
    </p>

    <p>
      For example, kindergarten children have their parents (past) and their
      teachers (future). Middle school children have their parents and
      teachers (past) and their peer group and new friends whom they want to
      be like (future). Young adults have parents, teachers, friends (past)
      and mentors and role models (future). Older people reminisce about
      people from the past and also learn from their own parents who are
      declining or dying(future). &nbsp;
    </p>

    <p>
      Likewise, spiritually-oriented people have saints and sages from the
      past and, if they are very lucky, a living spiritual guide or master to
      usher them into a future of a different kind.
    </p>

    <p>
      At a certain stage, the game radically changes. It is not a
      chronological stage, but a stage of character development. Something odd
      occurs. The problems that come to us seem crucial and hard. Friends who
      gave us good advice in the past don’t know what to tell us. We have
      reached a moral precipice where no one knows what to do. &nbsp;
    </p>

    <p>
      To make things even harder, the spiritual guide does not seem the least
      bit interested in providing overt assistance. Either he says nothing
      when we ask for guidance; or he says something that can be taken in ten
      different ways; or he says something like “<em>Acha</em>,” or “Yes, I
      will pray”; or he refuses to speak at all.&nbsp;
    </p>

    <hr class="vertical-space1" />

    <div class="block-image">
      <figure>
        <img
          alt="guidance-from-the-future3"
          
          class="lazyload has-img-center"
          src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/guidance_from_the_future3_f5b86136a8.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-13T07:07:42.647Z"
        />
      </figure>
    </div>

    <hr class="vertical-space1" />

    <p>
      We are left with a problem that our past self cannot solve and which our
      spiritual guide does not seem interested in solving.&nbsp; The more we
      think about it, the bigger and more complicated the problem seems to
      become! We cannot solve it because we are relying on the past to help
      us, and the solution can only come from the person we are becoming.
    </p>

    <p>
      The spiritual guide seems uninterested in helping us because we are not
      relating to him properly. We are treating him like a wise man, thus
      making him something from the past. He is not just another wise man,
      like all those who have helped us before. He is something radically
      different, coming from a future we cannot comprehend.
    </p>

    <p>
      We think we are using a problem as a means of growing, but our future
      selves may be using the problem as a way of growing us. Perhaps we
      ourselves are the problem! Our old self from the past and the new self
      we are becoming are bound together in fetal embrace, struggling to grow
      out of and into itself. &nbsp;
    </p>

    <p>
      If we look at the situation from this point of view, the problem is no
      longer about income, family, or health. The problem is no longer about
      whether we will eat or starve, be included or cast out, alive or dead.
      The problem, quite simply, is how to relate to the new inner self
      within. That and only that.
    </p>

    <hr class="vertical-space1" />

    <div class="block-image">
      <figure>
        <img
          alt="guidance-from-the-future4"
          
          class="lazyload has-img-center"
          src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/guidance_from_the_future4_09b7af2827.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-13T07:08:27.480Z"
        />
      </figure>
    </div>

    <hr class="vertical-space1" />

    <p>
      The spiritual guide is very interested in this. He is watching us very
      attentively and carefully, even though his role in the matter is to say
      and do nothing. &nbsp;
    </p>

    <p>
      Our work is to emulate him, that is, to also remain silent and do
      nothing. First of all, we don’t know what to do. Second, anything we
      would do can only come from the past. Third, we are no longer the person
      from the past, and we don’t quite know who the person we are becoming
      is. The most efficacious choice is to be quiet and have the faith to
      allow the nascent inner self to find a way to solve everything, by
      becoming itself.
    </p>

    <p>
      It takes self-discipline to stop trying to do something about what we
      are trying to become. The person who is trying to do something and the
      person who is trying to become may not be the same, and we may confuse
      the one for the other.
    </p>

    <p>
      We may pray, but I wonder if there really is any need for prayers at
      this time. Perhaps the problem has already been solved from the
      perspective of the future. Perhaps all we need to do is to try to live
      in confidence, savoring the problem as the blessing it truly is. Our
      prayer becomes one of gratitude.
    </p>

    <p>
      I think that this may be how things work here on Earth, this training
      ground for Love, this vehicle for human transformation. It is also why a
      spiritual guide says nothing when we bring him a terribly hard personal
      problem. He understands that the problem is working itself out.&nbsp;
      Our inner self from the future will somehow solve it in a way that is
      unique and utterly unpredictable.
    </p>

    <hr class="vertical-space1" />

    <hr />

    <h4 class="has-text-align-center block-heading">
      Illustrations by ANANYA PATEL
    </h4>

    <hr />