There were two explorers who wanted to set out and discover the new world. They were filled with ambition and desire and adventure. They set out from the same port on the same day, so it didn’t matter what the numerology was because it was the same. It didn’t matter how the planets were aligned because they were the same.

The first explorer’s name was Chris and the second explorer’s name was Mark. Chris and Mark set out with the exact same type of ship, the same number of crewmembers, the same provisions on board. Neither knew exactly where they were going, because it was the new world, nobody had been there before. But they knew they were setting off to find these new lands, to have new adventure and to have triumphant discoveries of their own.

They set off at the exact same moment. The only difference was one item of cargo that was on Chris’s ship but not on Mark’s. There was a box in the holding area of Chris’s ship. It was a box, a rather simple looking box, but its contents were very, very powerful. And its contents would come out and be used throughout Chris’s journey. Those contents in that box were doubt. Doubt.

So they left port at the same time on the same day each heading out, and of course … you can probably figure out the story but we’ll tell it anyway. Mark went off on his adventure with his crew. Shortly after they left port, they hit a storm. But instead of wondering why that storm was there, instead of wondering what Spirit was trying to tell them, instead of panicking and wondering why he had gone on this journey in the first place, Mark said, “There is a storm. I feel it. The ship feels it. The men feel it. They’re all getting sick. We have a storm, and the storm is just energy. I don’t own the storm. I am not the storm, but I feel it, I live it, I ride the waves. And that storm will take me to where I am choosing to go. Even though I think I may be going one way, I know that energy of the storm is going to work for me and take me to the grandest possibilities of all.”

And Mark went off on his journey with his crew and they encountered all sorts of things – storms, they encountered times of no wind – but they didn’t have any doubt, you see. They were experiencing all along the way and they found new lands. They found spices and exotic plants and even peoples and animals that they had never seen before, and it was a tremendous experience and they felt every step of the way. They returned back home after two years of voyages and experiences, richer, happier, more fulfilled and having truly lived.

Chris set out with his ship – his ship with a cargo of doubt – and the moment that he ran into the storm, he wondered why he had ever left. It took away from the experience because then the waves were the demons that are trying to take something from him and trying to kill him, when in fact the waves and the storms were just part of the experience. He altered his course because he felt immediately he had done something wrong. How else would he have driven himself and the crew straight into the storm? So he altered his course.

And the whole time he was worried about this, and the worry that he felt could be seen and felt by his crewmembers and they began to get sick, but not just for a moment. They got very ill, and they started to die.

Chris’s ship was taken in a course that was very, very difficult, and he didn’t discover grand new lands. He didn’t find spice or gold. Each time he landed someplace he found that the natives, those peoples who inhabited the islands or the lands, were hostile and angry, and they fought him. They ran him off. More and more of the crew starved and got sick, and after just a year Chris returned back to his homeland a failure, sad, lacking in any sort of light or any type of expression. He was ridiculed by some, and many others were very, very angry because they had lost loved ones on his ship.

And that, dear friends, is the difference between doubt and triumphant discovery. Doubt.

You’re all explorers in new consciousness. You all headed out from port carrying the same degree of energy and consciousness. None of you, back when in the angelic realms at the Order of the Arc, had any more or any less. You’ve all been on your experience of life. For so many that doubt has taken away the real essence of the journey.