I’ve never been a smoker. So, whenever I ate out (when they used to allow smoking in restaurants), there would be an unused ashtray on the table. And when the conversation turned toward God, which it invariably would, it was convenient to use the ashtray to illustrate a point and the ashtray would be ushered to the center of the table.

Ok. Pretend the edge of the ashtray (better when it’s a round, glass one) is a lens. And surrounding the ashtray, outside the lens, are all your human circumstances in life: relationship with your family, your friends, job or school, where you live, etc. So when you’re standing in the center of the ashtray (the place where you’re aligned with God and conscious of your perfect self) and looking outward through the lens, everything is in focus. (All lenses have a focal distance. Inside or outside the focal distance, everything is out of focus.) No matter which direction you look – no matter which circumstance in your life you look at – it’s in focus (as long as you’re standing in the center), and it’s clear how to interact with your circumstances.

This tells you two things. When we stand on the center and align ourselves with God first, before we look out, we can trust that all will be clear. And if we reach out and try to change something humanly (step off the center), not only does that circumstance go out of focus, everything goes out of focus – no matter which direction we look.

It’s a good alert system. When things are out of focus, we immediately know why – we’re not standing on the center point, aligning ourselves with God – and we immediately know what to do – get back on the center first and see who we are as God’s child – pure and perfect – possessing all the intelligence of Mind, all the intuition of Soul. Then when we look out in any direction, it will all be in perfect focus – we’ll see what’s true. And we won’t react, we’ll be inspired to act.