The Way of Mastery
This page is dedicated to The Way of Mastery which contains
the words of Jeshua ben Joseph given to us as a pathway to
transformation. I study it beside A Course in Miracles and The
Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament. I am
journaling as I study and will comment on each section as I feel
guided. All quotes are used by kind permission of the Shanti
Christo Foundation. To buy a copy of this profound book visit
their website at
www.shantichristo.com. I invite your thoughts and comments.
Comments are welcome, please log in.
ARCHIVE SUMMARY
View by Date
Tue Sep 30, 2008
Lesson 1
Inspiration From CD 1
Jeshua answered a question about the difference between discernment and judgment. He said that there is no condemnation in discernment, there is just a quiet awareness of what is. He said that in judgment there is an interpretation in which there is some form of right or wrong, good or bad.
My experience of this lesson
I understand the frustrations of driving in traffic because this is how I spend my days as an outside sales rep. I have learned that everyone I meet is someone I called to me for the purpose of healing both myself and that other one. The Holy Spirit seems to work that way; it is never meant for one but for both. I called it to me for my own joy, or to help me let go of what is blocking my joy. So why on earth do I so often resent them and decide they are the ones blocking my happiness? Pretty silly, I know. It¡¦s all part of that whole projection/you are the blame/I am the innocent victim ego thing.
The roads are such a perfect classroom. They offer me so many useful lessons. If I decide to start my journey by reminding myself that there are no jerks on the road, just my loving and helpful brothers who have volunteered to help me learn these lessons, then the whole trip becomes a lot more fun. I will probably forget this as the day goes on and my brothers will mysteriously turn into fools and homicidal maniacs, but then I figure if I remembered the truth all day I wouldn't need the lesson.
Just yesterday I was nearly run over by a lady who was multitasking and seemed to have no idea she was not alone on the road. I had been thinking about the difference between judgment and discernment. I was thinking that discernment is when I am aware of something happening and how it feels or affects me. It becomes judgment when I decide that it is either a good thing or a bad thing. I was thinking about examples and so the Universe which is my helpful friend sent me what I asked for. I was first aware that a car was swerving into my lane just often enough to worry me and too often to allow me to safely pass her. I noticed that this was provoking a mild sense of anxiety in me and was putting me on alert in case the driver was impaired and things got serious. This was discernment. I noticed that I felt ok, just ready to take action.
It didn't take long for me to lose my patience and I noticed that I was thinking she should get off the phone and drive. I saw she had passengers and thought she should be aware of her responsibility to them. I thought that I needed to get to the next customer and she was making me late. I noticed that I had gone from discernment to judgment. In discernment I just noticed what was happening and how it made me feel.
In judgment I had decided that she was wrong, bad and at fault. I also noticed that my body reacted by clenching up. I felt angry and defensive. I had to laugh as a cartoon image appeared in my mind's eye of myself as a woman, shoulder's hunched, fists tightly gripping the steering wheel, jaw clenched and storm clouds around her head. Of course humor broke the spell and I realized what had just happened. I was back to being grateful that my loving sister answered my call to help me see the difference between judgment and discernment. I was grateful for these harmless and gentle lessons which trigger the adrenaline just enough to catch my attention. I get them all day long.
What I have learned is that these lessons can be gentle or harsh and the biggest difference is in how I choose to see them. I can look at what is happening to me and say to myself, "Oh look, I'm judging. I wonder if I might be willing to simply discern what is happening rather than judging it." Maybe I will or maybe I will choose to continue judging. I am free to do so, remembering that there are certain things that follow judgment. In this case it is a stiff neck at the end of the day. It also changes my mood and so could affect my ability as a sales person. It fills my mind with dark clouds and so I don't think as clearly. Still, I am the perfectly free Son of an amazing God and so I can judge if I want to. There is no need for guilt. If I start to feel myself tensing up because I am repeating the same lesson over and over, I will deliberately calm my mind by using gentle and casual words such as I began with, "oh look" and "I wonder if... ." This seems to help me stop and take a new perspective.
The more I practice being the unattached observer the less stress and anxiety I experience as I do these lessons. I am going to get the lessons so I may as well learn to do them with humor and lightness rather than anxiety. I will still feel the anger and fear and all of that, but there will be a part of my mind that remains interested and calm. This is the observer who knows that all parties are innocent and this whole life is just an entertainment with all the aspects of a good movie; drama, horror, some great special effects and of course a love scene or two, not to mention a few tear jerking moments. This observer watches its favorite character, Myron, experiencing all this and is learning from Myron's reactions. The observer is really who I am, but I have a hard time remembering that and keep identifying with the character which is why I keep forgetting that it is all just good fun. Oh well. I am still learning whether I am having fun or not and that is all the matters because what I am learning is that I am the Son of God and that I am awakening to that reality.
Lesson 1 from page 3
Now, we begin. ļ
Inspiration
¡§In each and every moment, you cannot be a victim of what you see, and nothing is outside of you. What you experience you have directly and deliberately called to yourself.¡¨
My experience of this lesson
I know that Jesus has been telling me this for years now through the Course, but call it perfect timing or just the way Jeshua speaks in The Way of Mastery, but these words have shifted me into a different place. This morning I had planned to get an introduction to my book written and all sorts of interference seemed to be happening. I really felt like the victim of the world I see. I noticed my stomach knotting up and my jaw clenching. These are my physical signals that I am acting like I am a victim. My victimizers were my daughter who needed me to watch the baby while she showered, the baby who wanted my full attention while I watched her. Then it was the plumbers who needed this and needed that.
I noticed the physical symptoms and then I noticed who I was projecting onto. Then I stopped for just a moment to ask myself why I would directly and deliberately call this to myself. It doesn¡¦t really matter why I did it, but what a great reminder that none of this is anyone¡¦s fault and that I experience only what I choose to experience.
So I decided to experience my morning differently. I decided that what is, is. I am not going to tell my daughter to go to work without her shower, and I am not going to turn my granddaughter away. I am absolutely going to lay a red carpet under the feet of the plumbers if that will keep them working. What I can do about this situation is choose to see it differently.
My daughter did not make me feel anxious. I made me feel anxious. No one in my life made me feel anything. I can watch my granddaughter and enjoy her lively company or I can watch her with a resentful attitude and experience every moment as if it were an hour. I can allow myself to feel the relief of knowing the plumbing is finally being finished or I can resent their intrusion on my morning. How I feel is my decision. I am completely free to make a choice. It will always be a choice between love and fear because those are the only two categories, but the category I choose is up to me.
Lesson 1 pg 4 for Monday
Inspiration
¡§The insanity does not come from having chosen to see something other than the Mind of Christ. The insanity that you experience as your pain, your suffering, your seeing and your drams comes from your mistaken choice to become identified with what arises in the field of awareness.
My experience of this lesson
I cannot say how relieved I was to read this. I had somehow attached to the idea that I made a dreadful mistake. I know that Jesus tells me that God does not hold my mistake against me, but I still could not get past this original error. I was stuck on the error, and confused about why I did it. If heaven is everything it is cracked up to be why did I choose to turn my back on it?
Jeshua is helping me to see how it could have happened and how silly it is to be upset by it. Since beginning this book I have gone from thinking of myself as a bad child who probably was not going to be spanked but only because my Father is willing to overlook my bad behavior, to seeing myself as an unlimited being created to create. Sure I got myself into quite a mess but it was all in good fun. It lost its sense of innocent curiosity when I became identified with what I made.
I am practicing seeing myself as the director of this little play rather than the lead character. It is taking a lot of vigilance on my part. I am in such a habit of identifying with the character that I forget I am the writer and the director. I am simply noticing when I am identifying with my story and sometimes that is enough to change my perspective. What has been most helpful for me is to realize that it doesn¡¦t matter. There is nothing to be upset about or to regret or to feel guilty about. This story I mistakenly thought of as my life is just a story in the mind of Christ. It is not real so why should I feel guilty or upset about what happens. I am trying to loosen my grip on it and to have more fun with it.
Healing the past
Here is something interesting that happened yesterday. I started the day by spending a couple hours on the phone with my mind healing partner, Loretta and she gave me an idea. She was talking about how time is an illusion and that everything is happening at once. I know this is true and is the reason why it does not matter when we forgive. I have often ¡§gone back in time¡¨ to forgive. I had a wonderful experience doing this with my mother. She has Alzheimer and doesn¡¦t know me anymore, but mind to mind we had a forgiveness session about something that happened when I was a thoughtless young woman. I felt the release of the past and it was a beautiful thing.
So why not expand this process? I have been thinking about my children a lot because of writing my book on the subject of raising children. This is what I did. I started with my oldest son, Scott. I remembered myself carrying him in my womb and I returned my attention to how I felt at that time. I then allowed the Love that is God to flow through me to that child in my womb. I had no plan as to what was supposed to happen when I did this because, as Loretta pointed out, Love knows what to do. It knows what is needed.
I imagined myself a clear conduit that simply allows Love to flow through it unencumbered by egoic needs. It was a very lovely experience. Then I thought about a time when he was very young. We were visiting with a friend of mine who had children. All the kids were playing and we adults were talking. I decided to go to the store for something and got in the car to leave.
As I was driving away, I glanced at the rear view mirror and saw that child running as hard as he could to catch up with me. I felt a flash of guilt and then immediately projected it onto him. I thought, ¡§Couldn¡¦t I even go to the store without that child?¡¨ I stopped for him and told him that I was coming right back and he could stay and play but, of course, he wouldn¡¦t let go of me. My guilt could not let me look at how badly I had scared him, so I became angry.
My idea was to send Love to Scott at this time in his life to heal what I was unable to cope with as a young woman. What I discovered is that I could not do it because I was still so caught up in the guilt of the moment. I had never forgiven myself for that moment and so my guilt and need to be forgiven was clogging up the conduit. So instead of directing Love to Scott, I directed it to that young inexperienced mom that I used to be. At first I didn¡¦t feel anything, and when I asked Holy Spirit what to do, He gave me the idea that I needed to return in feeling to that moment.
I really didn¡¦t want to do that. It was not my best moment and I felt ashamed. But the idea of being able to forgive and to heal both Scott and myself motivated me to do this. I went right back to that time and felt everything as if it were happening right now. The difference is that I was also the compassionate watcher.
I felt all the emotions, the fear of not knowing how to be a mom, the guilt at doing so badly at the job, and I saw the moment when I chose the ego solution of projection. I felt all the anger and frustration of being a mother and saw it as the child¡¦s fault. I sent Love to that young woman and in sending Love, I forgave her in my mind. The shame I felt before was replaced by compassion. It was a very emotional moment.
Once I had cleared that old grievance against myself I was able to direct Love to Scott. It flowed freely and this time the tears were tears of joy. I continued doing this process for awhile using different times in Scott¡¦s life when memory suggested it would be appropriate. It makes a great five minute Christ meditation. Healing in this way feels like expressing myself as Christ. I did a lot of self forgiveness as well, a lot of releasing of the past. I am going to do more.
I wondered if it made any difference to the Scott I know now, and once that would have been a big thing to me because of the guilt I was carrying around about how I raised him. But without that guilt which had melted away with the forgiveness I was able to hear the Holy Spirit assure me that the gift of healing was waiting for Scott. He would accept it when he was ready.
Lesson 1 more on page 4
Inspiration
I speak from experience that separation is an illusion. When death occurs in your plane, in that very moment you still have the power to choose to recognize that something has changed, and to shift your attention to a different faculty that the body could never possibly contain. One in which you perceive and hear and communicate with that spark of divine light ¡V the soul ¡V that seems to have given up the idea of trying to keep a physical form animated.
My experience of this lesson
This quote slammed into me with the force of an asteroid slamming home. It was like my whole way of thinking shifted in the moment I read it. The first thing I noticed is that I really believed in death. I thought I had given up the idea of death, but I see I had not. As long as I believed in death I had to believe in separation. Now all of that was being questioned because Jeshua is telling me that there is no death, just a shift in thinking. I thought about being a body and then I gave up that thought. This is all that death is. In death, I don¡¦t change at all, I just think of something besides animating a body.
Then I realized that when someone else ceases to animate the body, there is no reason I should lose communication with them. We both exist on a level which is not in form so why should I ¡§lose¡¨ them because they changed the focus of their attention. Of course to remain in communication with them I would have to shift my attention also. Evidently I do not have to shift it fully. I can still keep this body animated and shift my attention in a way that does not depend on the body for communication.
I would be interested to know how this passage affected others. Does anyone see this differently? What does it mean to you, not just intellectually, but what does it mean in your life? How does it change things for you? It was just such a powerful passage for me that I am interested in your take on it.
Lesson 1 pg 5
Inspiration
You need to come to the point where you say to yourself, ¡§I have done this to myself. I did it; I must correct it. No one is to blame. The world is innocent.
My experience of this lesson
This is certainly the foundation of the book, isn¡¦t it? I think of this as the opposite of feeling like a victim. I could look in the mirror and wonder why I tend to gain weight and some other people do not. It must be my metabolism and I know where I got that. My mom had the same problem all her life. Well yes, it probably did come from my mom. But I chose this mom and I did so for the purpose of experiencing myself in this way. My mom is not the cause of the problem and I am not her victim. My mom is simply the path I took to experience a very specific set of circumstances for a very specific lesson. I did this to myself.
Taken in a more general way, I look around at the world of form in which I seem to be and I am like a small grain of sand on a vast beach. I am just one little person in a world of people, in a universe of worlds. How could I be responsible for this mess? And yet, I am not simply the body mind I have chosen to be identified with. I am far more than that; I am part of the one mind which made the choice that created the world I see. I am the one who did the choosing, not the one who is the result of the choice. I did it.
And now I must correct it. So far the most effective process I have found for correction is to notice simply and without blame what I have done. I do this with a willingness to perceive differently. Sometimes my willingness is greater than other times, but I give the willingness I have. I don¡¦t effort and I don¡¦t fall into guilt about it. And if I do, then I notice that. Just noticing seems to bring about a subtle change, and as I do this more and more often the change builds on itself to the point that I begin to experience a shift.
This kind of radical responsibility seemed unbelievable to me at another time in my life. But now I see it as my salvation, my way out of the world. I am thrilled when I notice I am withdrawing into victimhood again. I am thrilled to notice that I am placing blame because, as I notice, I am given a chance to see that I did this to myself and am willing to be corrected. I see this done on the level of thought. I don¡¦t try to change by correcting my behavior. I notice that as I change my mind, my behavior automatically changes. However, changing my behavior does not automatically change my mind.
An example of this is the way I feel about my chief competitor in chemical sales. He doesn¡¦t play fair. He lies. When I think about him I feel resentful and afraid because sometimes he will take one of my customers because he lied, not because I did anything wrong. This makes me feel like a victim. Well, let me rephrase that. I choose to feel like a victim. I don¡¦t have to feel like that. I cannot change how he does business, or even that he sometimes gets one of my customers. But I can change how I choose to feel about it.
What I forget sometimes is that I did not choose to be born into the third dimensional world of form so that I could sell more product. I chose to be here because there was something to learn that I could not learn elsewhere. That¡¦s why I keep asking myself what everything is for. This situation with my competitor is for forgiveness. It is for me to learn to let go of grievances. It is for me to see what it feels like to think I am a victim so that I can choose differently. When I make that choice and let go of the idea of victimhood, I will no longer need those kinds of lessons and so time will collapse on them.
Well, anyway that is the way I understand it at this time. I am constantly finding out how little I actually know so I may change my mind about how some of this works. What I feel pretty certain about is that my dear brother the competitor is joining with me to share in this lesson even when neither one of us is consciously aware of the purpose. He is not my enemy, but is my partner in this lesson. He is innocent and so am I.
Lesson 1 pg 6
Inspiration
You are empty within. In truth, you desire nothing, though you allow desire to move through you. And you recognize it as the voice of the Father guiding your personality, your emotions and even the body to the places, events, people and experiences through which the tapestry of the atonement¡K
My experience with this lesson
I cannot really say too much about desiring nothing and yet allowing desire to flow through me. I am only just beginning to experience this and don¡¦t know how to speak of it yet because it is so new. I am still filled with many desires, but I have begun to let go of them. I do this by withdrawing the value I placed on them.
Ok, this time in the morning to journal and to share with you what comes to me is an example. Before I have always felt there was not enough time and resented all the things that kept me from doing this. I desired the time and words and the sharing. And often I did not have time. I would have to leave for work before I had done much. It felt frustrating and I thought the solution was to change something in my life to accommodate this effort. I felt justified in this plan because doing this spiritual work seemed more important than other things.
Now I have experienced a shift in this thinking. I did not do anything or think of anything that made it happen. I just stopped wanting and moved into allowing. The shift feels like relaxing and letting go of anxiety and uncertainty. It feels like resting in the mind of God. It doesn¡¦t look different. I still get up in the morning and answer emails, sometimes write something for my zebra site and then do this journaling as well as other things. What has changed is that there is no anxiety associated with it. If one day there is no time or no inspiration to do so, then I will let it go without a sense of loss because I don¡¦t desire it, rather I am allowing desire to move through me.
I am interested in seeing how I experienced this moving of desire through me in other parts of my life. I feel humbled as I realize that this desire I am allowing to move through me is God bringing me home. I think the emptiness that allows the space for this movement is the result of vigilance against ego. The daily awareness of choosing ego and then making another choice is emptying me.
Lesson 1 pg 7
Inspiration
What if the very life you are living, and each every experience that is coming to you now since the moment you decided, ¡§I have to awaken here,¡¨ was being directly sent to you of your Father because your Father knows what is necessary to unravel within your consciousness to allow you to awaken? What if the very things you are resisting are the very stepping stones to your homecoming?
My experience with this lesson
When I read this it was as if the next piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Of course, this is true. Of course, each moment in my life is perfect, is the best possible lesson which if learned will bring me that much closer to my awakening. This puts an entirely new light on all the circumstances of my life. My ex husbands were not mistakes, they were the next step. My job is not a distraction from what I really want to do, it is the perfect school room for practicing what I really want to do.
I have a cold. This cold is not punishment for wrong minded thinking. It is my next step home. This is the second time I have been able to experience sickness in a different way. This is what happened. As I have been visiting customers this past week, I began to notice how many of them are sick. At first it was just an observation. Then I began to think that it was amazing that I have not caught anything from them. I even told someone that it feels like the whole world is sick.
I began to think about catching what they have. I didn¡¦t let myself dwell on it, but the thought was there. Not dwelling on it is not the same thing as looking at with Holy Spirit and allowing it to be healed. In fact not dwelling on it in this case meant I was pretending the thought was no longer there. It was burying it deeply within my mind where I did not have to look at that belief. Not looking at it is the same thing as defending it and keeping it.
I started to feel sick and so started thinking about what I had done. I went to Walmart to buy some medicine and when I got there I saw a long line of people with their shopping carts. I asked one of them what on earth was going on. She said they were waiting in line for their turn at the pharmacy. I had never seen anything like that and for a moment was stunned. I asked why there were so many people in line, and she said everybody is sick. I nearly laughed out loud. It was like I was getting my thoughts reflected right back to me. The Holy Spirit may as well have said, ¡§See Myron, this is what you are doing in your mind.¡¨
As Jeshua points out later in The Way of the Heart, I dropped a pebble (thought) into the lake of my awareness, and it caused ripples (effects) to form. I am experiencing the effects which in this case look like a cold. I am not going to keep putting the same pebble into the water because I don¡¦t want to experience the same effects.
I have used this cold as an opportunity to heal more than my body. I am looking at how I created it. I am also recognizing the power it takes to do this. I am using the power of creation to make myself feel really bad, but even misused it is an awesome power. I am feeling the mystery of the whole thing. How did I do this? There is so much I do not know, and the only way to know is to admit I do not know. I cannot be taught what I think I already understand.
I am reminded of this passage from page 6. ¡§For your way begins with the illusory and insane assumption that you are a separate being from the Mind of God and must, therefore, direct your own course. For if you are sick and diseased and not at peace, why would you decide that you know how to create peace?¡¨ I am willing to step back, Holy Spirit, from the idea that I know anything. I am willing to empty myself of all thought that I can direct my life. I invite the Love that is God to flow through me and live my life. I am ready to trust the flow of that.
I feel like I have a cold. I am sneezing and coughing and feeling achy. But at the same time I am aware of the meaning of the cold, the underlying cause and purpose. It is a different experience. When I start feeling really sorry for myself, I stop and allow myself to feel the discomfort without judging it. I feel my head pounding and just be with that pounding. I don¡¦t call it bad. I just call it an experience.
This changes nothing and changes everything. The pounding is still there, but I am not angry about it. I am not afraid of it; I don¡¦t feel worn out by it. It is like cutting the misery in half. I wonder if I could cut the misery out completely if I keep practicing this. I called this cold to me and now I call to me the Holy Spirit to show me a different way to see it. It takes some vigilance to do this. It is a great temptation to just give into the misery and wallow in it. I tell myself I am too tired to do all this work. But I don¡¦t really believe in my story like I used to, and I cannot go back to it. The truth keeps disrupting it.
[0] comments (257 views) |
[0] Trackbacks
[0] Pingbacks
Lesson 2
Lesson 2 What you perceive is communicated always
Inspiration
You are an infinite focus of consciousness. Your very sense of existence is nothing more than a feedback loop or feedback mechanism, so that you can witness the effects of the choices you are making in the very deep, deep depth of your mind that rests right alongside the Mind of God.
What I am learning from this lesson
My sense of existence is that I am a body living in a certain place on this planet in this Universe. Here I am. When I thought that this was all I was, I thought everything that did and did not happen to me was important in and of its self. I thought that it really mattered if I got married or had kids or got a good job and made lots of money. Now that I understand that this sense of existence is just a symbol and not real, I can see that its only purpose is to feed back to me in a visual way exactly what I am thinking.
So, who is this “I” who is watching the body mind, using it to understand the effects of the choices being made? Who is making the choices? It is not Myron, the body mind with whom I have become so identified. My mind is not in that body. In fact that body, that out picturing of a thought, is in my mind. And my mind rests alongside the Mind of God. I apparently exist as mind and this body is a thought or an idea in that mind. Everything I say or do or think reveals what I have allowed to make a home in my mind. Am I sick? Then I must have allowed the idea of sickness, of lack, to make a home in my mind. Sickness is merely the effect of that thought.
Inspiration
I am pure Spirit, undefiled and unaffected by anything or anyone. I am given full power to choose and, therefore, to create my experience as I would have it be.
What I am learning from this lesson
I have been identifying with the effect – the body mind. I am actually the cause – Spirit. The egoic part of the mind that I have spent so many years identifying with is actually just a very small part of the mind. This is taking some getting used to and I have been schooling myself to think of “I” in a different way. When I identify myself with the egoic “I” I am making myself feel very small, and very vulnerable. As I have become more vigilant for signs that I am thinking of myself as ego I have been learning to let go of that false sense of identity and to see myself as the creator of the ego.
The result of this change in identity is that I have learned to see myself as responsible for everything in my life. As Jeshua says on page 13, “No great force in the universe has made this perception well up within my consciousness. I have selected it,” and “Every aspect of the life you live is the symbol of what you have chosen to experience and, and therefore, to convey throughout creation.” I am learning that I am a creator always.
This is a radical change in the way I have seen the world for most of my life. What will it cost me to be made in the image of God, to be a creator as He is a creator? I will have to give up all excuses for those things in my life I don’t like. God didn’t send me a cold so that I could learn a lesson. It is not my customer’s fault because they keep breathing germs on me. I don’t have relationship problems because I was raised in a dysfunctional family. There go all my excuses down the drain. All I am left with are the results of what I chose to hold in my mind and to believe in. And when I accept the truth and change my mind, all I am left with is wholeness, peace, bliss.
Here is something that helped me as I was doing this section. I wrote down some of the effects of my thoughts that I see made manifest in my life everyday. Then I wrote down the ideas or beliefs that likely created them. I claimed them as my creations. I pronounced them as good. Then I decided if I wanted to continue creating in that direction. Writing this down a step at a time helped me to clarify for myself what is going on, and it helped me to strengthen my resolve.
Lesson 2 Peace flows from alignment with the Mind of God
Inspiration
You are perfectly free at all times. Everything that is experienced has been by your choice and at no time has there been any other cause.
What I am learning from this lesson
There is so much to learn from this section that I hardly know where to begin. I am completely responsible for everything that happens in my life. I know this is true but I keep thinking there might be exceptions. The more I practice radical responsibility, the more I hope there are no exceptions. This works only if it is absolute. I am ready to claim responsibility and so I am vigilant for the ego thoughts that someone or something else is to blame.
Inspiration
It takes great courage and faith to look upon all of your creations your thoughts, your feelings, your manifestations with love and with the innocence of a child.
What I am learning from this lesson
Ego would have everything judged and assign that judgment to my self worth. If I think that my friend has betrayed me the ego has already begun its work by telling me that betrayal is possible and that it happens outside of me and I am an innocent victim. Of course there is nothing I can do to change the betrayal. I can defend myself and must do so if I hope to survive the betrayal. It then attacks me further by suggesting reasons I deserve to be betrayed. I feel as if I am embattled from without and from within.
The Holy Spirit teaches me that nothing outside of me can affect me in any way. Whatever my friend says or does is a perfectly neutral event. The meaning I gave it was my own creation. Even that creation is perfectly neutral. I created this whole situation in which I see my friend as a betrayer of friendship. It is a creation. All creation is neutral. The other voice tries to convince me that I am only as worthy as my creations and that creating betrayal makes me unworthy. Spirit tells me that failure is not even remotely possible. I was created to create. I created, therefore I succeeded.
Now the only thing left to do is to decide if I am happy with the direction of my creation. If not, I am still perfectly free and still a perfect creator. I can create differently; not out of a sense of having messed up the first time, but rather out of joy in living the life of an unlimited creator, I create differently.
When I chose to experience a cold I knew I did it. I created this cold. I saw the moment in which I invited this creative idea into my mind. I saw the ego twist the creation and heard its strident voice blaming and condemning. But I remembered that I am the creator of all my thoughts, my feelings, my manifestations. I looked with love and innocence on this newest manifestation and appreciated the power that is mine as God’s Son. Wow! Look what I have done! It is good.
I played with this idea for awhile, practicing seeing where discernment ends and judgment begins. Practicing seeing how the ego would see this cold as a failure and would urge me to project its cause outside myself. The germs did it! But I will not deny my own power and I will not condemn myself for exercising the power of creation. This is what I was created for. Well, ok, I might find another way to exercise that power since I don’t seem to enjoy having a cold. But never, never again will I deny my self.
When I decide to pick and choose those creations I want to claim, I am denying my self and denying my power. I am also creating the illusion of separation. In order for me to project my feeling of betrayal, my friend must become separate from me or who will there be to betray me. In order to deny my responsibility for manifesting my cold, an array of sick brothers who must become separate from me and there must be bacteria called into creation which are also somehow magically separate from me.
Each time I deny my creation and try to foist it off on someone else, I must create someone else. I must decide all over again on the separation. So over and over again, day in and day out I make that original decision to separate myself from my Self, to see myself as separate and different. My many selves become my enemy, full of betrayal through words and the passing of germs.
This depressing state is simply the result of denial. It occurs because I judge my creations, find them wanting, think I am my creation and therefore wanting, hide my face from that sense of wrongness by flinging it outward and flinging with it my birthright as creator, Son of a Creator. Holy Spirit, I open my heart and mind to the joy that is mine as God’s holy and loved Son. I open my heart to my creations, and accept each one as good and perfect. I open myself to Your Guidance, and gladly welcome Your help as I choose the direction of my next creation, and my next, and my next. Thank You, my beloved Father for my existence. My heart overflows with gratitude and with love for You.
Lesson 2
Mastery Arises From Innocence
Inspiration
Become again as a little child to enter the Kingdom.
What I learned from this lesson
This is a short section but very important. In it Jeshua tells me that the world of conflict, fear and guilt and the world of the Kingdom lie side by side within my own mind. As I read this I remembered that there is nowhere to go and the only thing to do is to choose between them.
Yesterday I had a moment of clarity. I have been trying to get my house repaired and ready to move into. It seems to be one thing after another with that house and I have been wondering why it is not going smoothly. I knew there was a reason but I couldn’t see it. Suddenly it was as if I could look back over everything that happened with the house, all the problems I have experienced, and see that I was being led gently one step at a time to a final conclusion. Instead of walking lightly down that path I kept wandering off thinking that I knew the way and each of my own side journeys brought me to a place I didn't want to be. It wasn't horribly scary or anything because in my heart I knew that I was being guided. I was just confused because I didn't understand the results.
Once I accepted that I was not listening to my guidance but was trying to guide myself, it all became clear. I simply surrendered everything. I decided that I don't know the way and that all my attempts to guide myself were not working. I decided to simply trust that my Guide would always do what was best not just for me but for everyone involved, and that I could not do this, and I was left with a feeling of gratitude and of peace. I thought of my children. When we would go someplace where there was a crowd or some kind of danger, I would tell them to hold my hand. They would place their hand in mine trusting I would guide them perfectly and they would be safe. This is what I am doing with the Holy Spirit now. I am holding His hand and trusting Him.
This morning I watched a little film clip of this young girl riding bareback and with no bridle. It was a competition and it was a beautiful display of two acting as one. The girl and her horse were in such perfect harmony. She guided so gently and lovingly and he followed so willingly and in obvious love and joy. It was like they were one being. I see the Holy Spirit guiding me in the same way, with gentleness and love, not forcing me to follow but allowing me to follow. How effortless it is when I choose His way, and what a beautiful thing it is to behold.
Lesson 2 What You Decree Is
Inspiration
I have literally created this experience. Something within me is grand, so powerful, so vast, so beyond anything that scientists have ever come up with, that I have literally crystallized into the field of experience an awareness of being a body in space and time! It has come forth from the field of my consciousness, the gift to me of God, who asks only that I learn to create as God creates.
What I have learned from this lesson
Did this blow your socks off? If it didn’t, you might want to go back and read it again! It was right here, reading this paragraph that I began stepping into my power. I began to realize and accept that I am truly an extension of God and therefore an extension of the power and creativity of my Father. He intends that I create. He intends that I play and have fun. He does not care what that play looks like. No one is mad at me because I decided to play in the dirt and make mud pies. I don’t lose my birthright because I am not using it to its full potential. Just because I choose to count on my fingers for awhile doesn’t mean that the mathematical concept of multiplication ceases to exist. If I don’t use that concept for awhile I may temporarily forget about it, but when I tire of my childish finger counting, I just need to be reminded, and quickly I go back to using multiplication as if I had never stopped.
I am remembering right now. That is why one day I picked up A Course in Miracles and began reading it … and believed it! And now am reading The Way of Mastery as well. Why did I do that? Why would I have decided to read it and why on earth would I have believed it? As Jeshua says, “Do you think it just happened by accident? No! The thought is penetrating your conscious awareness from the depth of your mind that rests right next to the Mind of God. Therefore, the power to generate that very thought is the effect of God’s will entering into your field of being, penetrating the veils of distraction and shining forth as thought…” Just writing this, just thinking what this means fills me with so much awe and so much joy that it leaks out of my eyes as tears of gratitude.
Holy Spirit, what would you have me do now that I have changed my mind? I don’t want to pretend that separation is real anymore. How do I get out of this playground? I am ready to step forward and accept my birthright, but I have been so long in the game I forget how to do it. I have followed the rules of separation dividing up into teams of victim and victimizer for so long that I find it extremely hard to break the habit of judgment and blame. It is a little frightening to think about everyone being innocent. I keep telling myself that at least this one person who did this truly horrible thing must surely be guilty. And before long I feel small and helpless again. How will I ever get back home? I feel so lost.
My sweet precious child, open your eyes and look around, you are playing in your own room. You have gone nowhere except in your imagination. Give me your desire to awaken, and give me full attention as I guide you. All around you will be the all the little distractions you have spent many, many years making and they will tempt you to step aside and play awhile longer. They will call out to you as a child to its maker, and ask you not to abandon them. Allow them to drift by you and be not distracted by their glitter for it is the shimmer of false gold. Allow yourself to move from the playground and take your seat next to your Father. What will your toys mean to you then?
Give me your trust just a little while, dear one. All you have made will remain awhile in your mind and will call to you, but you need not heed them. Keep your eyes firmly planted on the light to which I am guiding you. Take one step at a time, and allow yourself to feel the certainty that you are walking toward God. That certainty is in your mind. Yes there is also the fear and doubt of your ego creation which still, temporarily, abides within it as well. But that is just a tiny sliver of thought within your vast and holy mind. It looms large only because your full attention is on it. As you begin, more and more, to give your attention to Me you will soon laugh at idea that the Son of God is held hostage by his own thought. You have done this thing and it is good. Allow yourself to revel in the amazement and delight of your creations! You have decided to create differently now, but do not be ashamed or afraid of anything you have done. You have never done anything wrong. Simply set aside what you have done, and come with Me. Let Me remind you of the glory of creating as God creates.
Lesson 2 I need do nothing.
Inspiration
You do not have to survive.
What I learned from this lesson
I think I have often misunderstood the words, I need do nothing. I thought it meant that I didn’t have to do anything to awaken and yet I also felt that there was much to do in order to reach that state. At the very least I must decide I want to return to God. I must decide there is nothing else I want to do. So I was confused. In The Way of Mastery, Jeshua emphasizes the word need. I NEED do nothing. This is different than saying I want to do some things.
What I understand from reading this section is that I am being asked to understand that as the Son of God I was created with perfect freedom. There is nothing that I need to do, only what I want to do. When I read the words, you do not have to survive; I truly did understand that there is nothing I need do. I don’t even have to survive. I also understood how ingrained is the idea that there is much that must be done. I need to get up and go to work. I need to be careful how I speak to others, how I dress, how I present myself. I need to be careful that I don’t talk religion or politics to my customers. I need to watch my money, have a savings account in case I lose my job, have extra money to help my kids in case they need it.
I have such a long list of need tos that I could go on for pages. As I write them I begin to feel a sense of constriction. I feel like I am imprisoned within my need tos. I do not feel like I was created in perfect freedom, but rather I am governed by what must be done. I begin to see the reason I need do nothing is the second axiom. It feels very strange to think that maybe I really need do nothing. It feels a little scary to think of being outside the confines of all those need tos, as if I will not know how to act, as if I cannot trust myself to make decisions without rules to govern me, as if the need tos keep me safe. I need to is just another statement of victimhood.
If I can say that I do not have to survive, I can step outside that prison of need tos. I don’t know who told me I had to survive. I do not need to. There, my declaration of freedom! I choose to survive right now. I choose to do this journaling. I choose to eat and go to work. Right now. I may change my mind one day. I NEED do nothing.
Lesson 2 Practicing the First Two Axioms
Inspiration
I am created as my Father created me to be. I am free.
And nothing sources my experience but me in each moment.
Nothing has an effect upon me whatsoever, save that which I
choose to allow to affect me.
I need do nothing.
What I learned from this lesson
These two axioms are no different from what I learned from A Course in Miracles. The first axiom says the same thing as Lesson 152, “The power of decision is my own.”
No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. NOTHING OCCURS BUT REPRESENTS YOUR WISH, AND NOTHING IS OMITTED THAT YOU CHOOSE. Here is your world complete in all details. Here is the whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.
They say the same thing, just phrased differently, and yet, when I read the first axiom I felt something stir within me that I had not felt before. I am sure that studying the Course prepared me for this reaction, that I was ripe for it, but it surprised me nonetheless. Every so often I read something in The Way of Mastery and it brings me to tears. Often these are tears of joy or of relief. I read and rejoice that I recognize the truth long forgotten. This first axiom was one of those times.
What came to me first was the realization of ultimate responsibility. There is literally nothing in my life that was caused by anything outside of me. I am in no way ever a victim. I do this to myself. I practice this axiom by noticing when I still try to blame others for my experience, or when I try to place the blame on the circumstances that seem to be the cause of my experience. I call myself on this and refuse to stay in that victim stance. The reason this axiom is so powerful is because there are no exceptions and so I allow no exceptions in my thoughts.
The other realization this axiom brought to mind is that I am a powerful creator. As Jeshua say, “For when the anchor is firmly in place, you will literally create whatever you so desire from perfect freedom and from perfect deliberateness.” More than anything else I have ever read or thought of, this axiom helps me to understand that I am meant to be creator. I was created by God, like God. I finally realize what the desire for separation has cost me; the memory of creation. I also see how small I have made myself as I cling to the desire to be separate. As I insist on being separate I constrict myself until I am afraid of my own power.
I spoke about the second axiom, “I need do nothing” yesterday. Both of these axioms are beginning to free my mind from the prison I designed for it. I am taking small careful steps toward my Self. I am beginning to wonder if it might be okay to create as I was intended to create; to create as God creates, without doubt and fear. Might I be willing to create with expansiveness, and with certainty, and know that it is good?
Lesson 2 Exercise in Conscious Creation
There are a number of little gems in this section. The point is to learn to recognize and enjoy the process of creation. Jeshua says that, “Consciousness is your sandbox and you are creating castles. You have simply forgotten to enjoy them.” I do truly relate to that. I have taken everything very seriously and the ego must love that. As A Course in Miracles says, “Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh.” There are many references to laughter in the Course, but somehow I dodged them all as I contemplated my terrible mistake and all its painful effects.
Can I learn to relax, to know that I am safe, to know that I am God’s Son and this can never change? God is not afraid for me nor is he disappointed in me. He is delighted at my playfulness, and if I want to play at being serious, He is fine with that too. It is only I who suffers by this choice, and even that is only temporary and easily discarded by simply making another decision. That is the point of these simple exercises. They give me the opportunity to try on a different mask, to write a different act to my play and see how I like it.
Another gem in this section talks about my fear of what others will think. Jeshua says, “Who cares! For the opinions of others mean nothing, unless of course, you want them to mean something.” I delighted in these words from the moment I read them. It was like having someone hand me the keys to my chains. Jeshua gave me permission not to care. At the same time, he reminded me that caring was simply a choice, a decision that I had made. I make that decision if I want to, but if I do I will experience the effects. Every event is perfectly neutral until I give it some meaning. All meaning everything has for me is completely my responsibility and therefore completely in my control.
Jeshua ends this lesson by telling us to “…engage in the exercises with great zeal, with great joy, and above all, with great outrageous playfulness!” Not so long ago I would heaved a great sigh here because I did not know how to have fun, and I felt the resistance of fear at the thought. I am learning to let go of the seriousness that has governed my life and while I may not yet have decided to be completely free, I am really considering doing so. I am practicing in little ways and am learning to want joy and fun.
[0] comments (222 views) |
[0] Trackbacks
[0] Pingbacks
Lesson 3
Lesson 3 The Power of Forgiveness
Inspiration
For to forgive means to choose to release another from the perceptions you have been projecting upon them. It is, therefore, an act of forgiving one¡¦s self of one¡¦s projections.
What I learned from this lesson
I¡¦ve already learned that I am the cause of everything in my life. No one else is responsible. Nothing else is responsible. On the soul level I am responsible for choosing what I will experience, and on the mind-body level I am responsible for choosing how I will experience it. So I am never justified in placing blame. At no time is anyone else to blame for what happens to me or how I feel about it.
An example: I ran some tests for a customer and the results were not correct. As it turns out, I was using his equipment and that was the source of the problems. But when my boss heard about the error he was very angry. He had already sent a proposal and the new numbers negated it. He was upset that he was going to have to change everything and concerned about the company looking unprofessional. He saw me as the cause of his problem and so he was angry with me.
My first reaction was to defend myself by thinking what an impossible person he is to please and how unfair he is. I was upset for awhile, and anxious about the consequences. The more I thought about this the more upset I became. The fears that I indulged in opened the door for other fears and I was off into a real ego storm. The way I stopped this is that I wanted peace more than I wanted the ego rewards of righteous indignation. The ego kept pointing out the facts and insisting that he was wrong and I was right and true as that might be, it did not make me happy. In fact I was miserable.
I remembered that on the level of soul I chose this lesson. In order to have the lesson, Paul had to agree to join me in it. We were in this together. It was our common goal to have this lesson and to learn from it what each of us needed. Paul does not need me to point out his lesson to him. He doesn¡¦t need me to tell him that he is misperceiving and acting badly and that there is another way. I only need to learn my lesson and trust him to learn his. I did tell him what happened, but I did not attack him or defend myself in any way. At least not out loud, and later I was able to withdraw my judgment of him.
On the level of body-mind, Myron had a choice about how to experience this situation. She could choose to listen to ego point out Paul¡¦s errors and use the facts of the case to ¡§prove¡¨ he was wrong and she was right. The goal then becomes win or lose and they are no longer working toward a common goal. They now have separate interests.
This was not Myron¡¦s only choice however. She could choose to step back a moment from her fear and anger and allow the Holy Spirit to show her another way to see this. She could see that Paul was operating from his fear and was calling for love. She could see that this was an opportunity to choose to practice remaining in peace no matter what happens.
She would then be able to see clearly and know that the blame she placed on Paul was her own projection and that he was blameless. It was always her choice to feel upset. Paul¡¦s words did not make her upset. Even if he fired her that action would not make her upset. It was entirely up to her how she chose to experience it. So in the end, it was not Paul who was forgiven, but Myron¡¦s projections onto Paul that were forgiven. It took awhile, though, because the ego part of the mind really hates giving up a change to be ¡§right.¡¨ The ego thinks the way to protect itself is to put the blame outside itself and onto someone or something else. Accepting responsibility feels very scary to the ego.
Even now as I write this I feel a tug of resistance as the ego tries to win me back to the dark side. ƒº That part of my mind would like Paul to be wrong no matter what the consequences. It really believes that it can protect me by winning. I don¡¦t fully believe it anymore. I feel a little sick to my stomach when I think of winning by hurting the other person, which is what the ego thinks it is doing. I think that this is the underlying anxiety I feel when I listen to the ego. I know I am wrong but I get distracted by the ¡§facts.¡¨ My salvation is remembering that no matter what it looks like I am never justified in my anger and never justified in placing blame. Starting from that premise I am able to allow the Holy Spirit to bring me back to sanity.
Lesson 3
The Power of Forgiveness 2
Inspiration
What has not been forgiven in others, has not been forgiven in you. But not by a God who sits outside of you, for He never judges. What you have not forgiven in another or in the world is but a reflection of what you carry within yourself.
What I learned from this lesson
This is a good day for me to consider this. I seem to be going around judging everyone and everything. I didn¡¦t like the hotel room I got Monday night or the one I got last night. You would have thought the world was conspiring to make me miserable, that hotel clerks all over Louisiana got together and decided to deprive me of the room that would make me happy. ƒº And hotel rooms are just one thing I have been judging. The effect of all this judging is that I have been feeling tired and unhappy. It requires a lot of energy and pretty much all of my joy to hold a grievance against so many people and so many things.
One thing I know for sure is that there is something within myself that I am refusing to forgive. Maybe it is something I have already stopped doing, but never forgave myself for. Or maybe it is something I still do and when I see it in another, it triggers fear. I simply am afraid to see this in myself. But what could this have to do with hotel rooms? Well, I think it has to do with judging. I look at the room and see what is wanting and feel put upon. I judged it as bad and the rules I set up say if you get a bad hotel room you feel upset and look around for someone to blame; the hotel chain, the clerk, my job, whatever as long as I don¡¦t have to take responsibility.
I think that so many judgments are bubbling up in me because I said that I wanted to give up judging. Now I have all types of judgments to look at and decide if I really want them, or if I might be willing to see things differently. What if I simply discerned that this room does not have a desk and so I have to work with my computer on my lap? I could discern that this is awkward. It is not a judgment until I decide this is bad. With that judgment comes anger and frustration. I wonder if I could just forgive myself for all this judging, and decide to simply use it when it comes up to see what it is within me that I need to release. It is really interesting to see how different it feels when I choose to look with discernment and notice where the judgment begins. It is so much easier to let go of judgment when I do it that way.
I was being very judgmental of one of our drivers because he did not do a delivery the way I asked him to. I was angry and called in a complaint. As it turns out the driver did exactly what the customer requested. I¡¦m glad I didn¡¦t complain too harshly. Why did I jump into judgment like that? Could I be seeing within myself those times when I only half listen and so get a job wrong and then get into trouble about it? Jeshua reminds us that it takes one to know one. He says: ¡§Do you think you would even be able to judge another if there was not something within you being elicited that triggers within you the belief that you know exactly what that other one is up to? That is why you judge them.¡¨
All this judging is wearing me out. I think it would be worth my while to pay attention to those judgmental thoughts as they come up and to ask for help in seeing clearly. I am ready to forgive myself for my guilty thoughts, past and present. I am ready to forgive myself for the projections I have placed on others. I am entirely ready to lay down the heavy burden of unforgiveness I have been carrying around these last couple of days.
Lesson 3 Forgiveness, the Bridge¡K
Inspiration
Forgiveness is the bridge that links you to the soul ¡V the essence ¡V of your brother or sister.
¡Kyou will literally be able to see what events seemed to cultivate that soul¡¦s belief that they must act in that way to survive, and what perceptions have led them to feel justified in their inappropriate behaviors.
What I learned
It has been very helpful to be reminded that I cannot recognize in someone else what I have not experienced myself. This helps me remember that it is always myself that I am forgiving. But what really jumped out at me is that when my brother acts inappropriately it is because he thinks he needs to. He thinks his survival depends on it and this helps him to justify his actions.
Someone was telling me last night about a situation at their workplace. An employee was using Machiavellian means to manipulate her fellow employees and her boss. We think we have private thoughts, but really it is all out there for anyone with eyes to see. With just a little understanding about why people act the way they do it all becomes obvious. For instance, that I can understand this kind of behavior tells you that I have experienced that same energy myself. I may have acted on it or I may have only thought about it, but I know that energy very well. That I recognized her behavior and understand what she was trying to do tells you something about me that perhaps I thought was my secret. There really are no secret thoughts, just an unspoken agreement between us all to pretend we have private thoughts and to act as if we do.
If I became very angry and resentful of this woman¡¦s behavior that would tell you something else about me that I perhaps thought was a secret. My angry reaction would tell you that I am perhaps still struggling under the desire to act on that energy, or perhaps I simply have not forgiven myself for past actions. In some way I am not clear of the energy of manipulation. I may be afraid of my own behavior and that is why I don¡¦t want to see it in someone else.
I have watched myself go from that very position of anger and defensiveness with a similar situation as my friend is in, to a position of understanding and forgiveness. I still recognize the energy because I have been in it myself, but I have forgiven it in myself and no longer act on it, and therefore have forgiven the other person. I am now free to extend love since I no longer feel the need to project what I am unwilling to accept in myself. This is the bridge to my brother, this act of forgiveness in which I forgive myself and by extension my brother. When I forgave myself I no longer needed someone to blame. We now both share only innocence.
What happened in the illusion of the workplace? Nothing much. She still goes around hatching plans and whispering her secret fears in corners with whoever she has pulled into her drama. But now I don¡¦t see her as a threat and I have no anger toward her. She is working out her own salvation in the only way she knows how and I am absolutely certain she will succeed. I am grateful to have been a part of her lesson at one time, and am grateful for what I learned. It is a different way to be. Thank you, Holy Spirit for your help in this.
Lesson 3 The Veil of Projection
Inspiration
Projection is an act in which you psychically try to throw out of ownership everything that you have judged as being despicable or unworthy of you ¡V something you do not want. So you will project it. You will throw it up and out and let it land on whomever happens to be nearby.
What I learned
I have become pretty good at recognizing when I am projecting and asking the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking. I really do not want to continue projecting. When I project I am in denial about what is going on in my mind. This makes no sense. Can I do any good by pretending something is not what it obviously is?
When I project I am making someone else guilty when in truth, my salvation depends on that someone else being innocent. While I am projecting my own stuff onto someone else I am hiding it from myself and so it cannot be corrected. When I am telling myself that someone else is guilty I am also telling myself that the cause of my unhappiness is outside of me and that I am weak and helpless to do anything about it. Could this do anything other than guarantee my unhappiness?
Projection is a way of keeping the ego thought system in place. It is a way of keeping my life just as it always has been. It is a way of keeping my brother in a perpetual state of guilt and of denying his innocence. It also perpetuates my own guilt because what I believe is possible for my brother I believe is possible for me. It makes healing impossible because of a refusal to look at what needs healing and therefore to fail to ask for healing.
An obvious projection: ¡§The plumber cheated me of my money and now I am in a financial bind trying to get the house finished. It is the plumber¡¦s fault that I am feeling this stress. What a jerk he is, what a cheat.¡¨ I am trying to make the plumber responsible for my anger, frustration, and fear. Discernment tells me that I paid the plumber for work he didn¡¦t do and that I am short of money to finish the project. Judgment tells me this is a really bad thing and causes the negative emotions. I don¡¦t want to be responsible for this situation so I blame it on the plumber.
It seems reasonable to the ego. The plumber did this and it is not my fault. The ego always looks for someone to blame and says, ¡§Doesn¡¦t that feel better?¡¨ Then everyone around me agrees with me and helps me to keep the deception going in my mind. I am just a poor victim and blameless in the situation. I am also weak, vulnerable and helpless. I now have an underlying anxiety which is unfixable because I cannot bring myself to look at the cause.
When I chose to finally withdraw my projections and leave Sonny innocent, I was able to see that I choose everything in my life and therefore I chose this. From that basic premise it was easy to see how I set it up. Who told me to pay a person I barely know for a job he has not yet done? It was a clear invitation to the world to show me what it feels like to be a victim. At this point I have the opportunity to choose differently, to see that I am the one who chooses, and nothing is done to me without my consent.
It was a hard pill to swallow especially since I had such a good setup for projection. I could think of a hundred different reasons to see Sonny guilty and myself innocent. But I cannot be innocent if Sonny is guilty. And that is the crux of the whole thing. I need my brother to be innocent. Sonny was not honest, but that does not make him guilty of my feelings. It is not why I feel like a victim or why I feel afraid and angry.
Those are feelings I chose and have nothing to do with Sonny. He was just a handy way to justify feeling like a victim. Now that I have withdrawn my projection, I don¡¦t feel those things. Why not? Sonny is still dishonest, so why do I not feel victimized? He still has my money and I am still hustling to get more, so why do I not feel victimized? The reason is that the facts of what happened did not make me feel bad. Feeling like a victim, and denying my power as a Son of God made me feel bad. This was my doing and not Sonny¡¦s. As soon as I saw us both as innocent which is the truth, the consequences of victimhood vanished and I no longer felt angry and anxious. It was not Sonny who kept me in misery; it was my choice to project.
Every so often, when some other consequence of this situation arises, I will begin projecting all over again. As soon as I notice what I am doing, I withdraw the projection by asking the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking and bring me clarity. I paid dearly in dollars for this lesson but I have used it to such advantage as I practice over and over remembering the truth that I feel it was worth the price. This is especially when you consider that the money is just part of my illusion, but the lesson is forever.
Lesson 3 Awakening Requires Vigilance and Discipline part 1
Inspiration
¡§Oh, I see that I am judging someone. That is an interesting
Cloud passing through the sky of my awareness. I wonder
if I might be able to make another choice.¡¨
What I learned
These simple sentences really made a difference for me. Their casual delivery helped me to step back. They helped me to relax my grip on judgment and the resultant guilt. They helped me to consider other options. Of course before this can happen I must be willing to notice when I am judging. I must be vigilant for my judgmental thoughts, words, and even the way my body feels when I judge.
At first all this vigilance feels like hard work, but soon it becomes second nature. Of course ¡§soon¡¨ is a relative term. ƒº But it does get easier and even enjoyable. I have also noticed that the ego mind gets sneakier and so I have to be even more vigilant for the ways in which I hide my judgmental thoughts from myself by disguising them, or skipping over them so quickly I don¡¦t even notice I did it. Also, the ego can be very compelling as it demands I notice how deserving the judgment is. It is easy to catch this, but not always easy to let it go.
Inspiration
¡§But I say unto you, anger is never justified.¡¨
What I learned
This is pretty clear and doesn¡¦t leave a lot of wiggle room. Never seems to be the word that pops out for me. I am grateful for this kind of absolute, unyielding, unqualified, unconditional statement. It makes it so much easier that I do not have to decide when anger is justified. It simply isn¡¦t. From there I can just get to work undoing the notion that it is ok to sometimes judge.
Jeshua also tells us that he understands we are going to be angry, but that we should stop fooling ourselves that there is some validity to it. I appreciate that statement, too. If the ego cannot stop this mad rush to awakening, it is going to slow it down if I let it. Guilt is sticky stuff that my feet get stuck in and suddenly, my mad rush is a slow painful movement. So I am relieved to be reminded that I don¡¦t need to feel guilty for being angry, just remember that there is another way to see and all I need to do is ask the Holy Spirit to rise within me and correct my thinking.
Jeshua gives an example of seeing the one you are tempted to judge as one, ¡§¡Kwho does not recognize their great power to create whatever they want in a way that is not hurtful to anyone¡¨ and goes on to say, ¡§What if you chose to look upon them with compassion rather than reactivity?¡¨ I am immediately reminded of Sonny, the plumber. I can choose to judge him for his dishonesty and then suffer the pain that comes from judgment. Or I could choose differently, and see Sonny as one who does not know how to live in the world without being of the world. Frankly, I have no trouble seeing him this way because I can see myself failing to recognize my own great power and thinking the only way to defend myself is to hurt someone else. I have done it many times and yet I don¡¦t think of myself as a bad person, just a frightened one.
Lesson 3 Awakening Requires Vigilance and Discipline part 2
Inspiration
What is this moment teaching me?
I do not live any ordinary moments.
With each breath, my experiences are the stepping stones
laid before me of God to guide me home.
What I learned
I, as have you, have decided to wake up from the dream. Everything that happens to me is one more step toward that awakening. This realization has allowed me to see my life differently. Nothing is a tragedy and nothing is simply nice. It is all purposeful and I am frequently asking myself, ¡§What is it for?¡¨ In the Course Jesus says: In any situation in which you are uncertain, the first thing to consider, very simply is, ¡§What do I want to come of this? What is it for?¡¨ Knowing that I have called to me every experience that will help me to awaken, I better understand the purpose of asking what it is for.
Weight control has been an issue for me since I had my first child. Earlier in my life I used this issue to prove that I am weak willed and unable to control myself. I told myself that my metabolism was too slow, that I inherited my mom¡¦s fat genes and that it was just a matter of finding the right diet. I told myself whatever I could think of as an excuse at the moment. Weight gain and my failure to stay on a diet were always caused by something I considered to be outside my ability to control (projection).
The other day I decided to return to being careful of my sugar intake. I am gaining a little weight and I don¡¦t like the way I feel when I eat too much sugar. That very evening I ate a piece of cake. I noticed my reaction. I felt anxious and realized I was thinking that I had no control over my compulsion to eat cake. I laughed at myself and wondered how I could have no control over me. How ridiculous! I simply chose to eat the cake.
I then asked myself what this is for and that reminder put me back on track. My goal is to awaken and so this is to help me awaken. I remembered that I am literally creating everything I choose and nothing is forced on me. I remembered that this situation is a blessing and a gift as I use it to remember that I have the freedom within me to choose what I want to perceive and to elicit only what I want to feel, and that this is a great power.
This is a very different use of the situation and it is the result of setting my goal and remembering that goal. This seemed like just another typical and unremarkable moment in my life but it was actually a wonderful blessing, a step laid before me to guide me home. I decided to fully embrace myself, all of me, including the part of my mind that seems to be in conflict with my higher good. I love myself and so I heal myself.
Lesson 3 Awakening Requires Vigilance and Discipline part 3
Inspiration
My God! This is my life!
This is my pathway home!
And I am going to live it!
What I learned
I had to comment on this part before I went on. Jeshua is encouraging me to embrace my life fully recognizing that it is the individual moments of my life that provide me with all I need to return home. When I first began to study ACIM I misunderstood it in some ways. I thought that because God did not create the body and the world that they were worthless and I felt a need to distance myself from them. If I was sick I would think that I couldn¡¦t be sick because I am not a body. It was denial pure and simple, and yet I couldn¡¦t see any other way to think that was not fully ego. This is what happens when I ask the ego how to overcome the ego. It makes the answer complex and confusing so that I quit asking.
I did finally begin to understand that I may not be the body, but certainly I experience myself as a body. It was a horrible mistake and one which brought me shame and fear. I wanted desperately to experience myself differently. This led to more denial. I admitted to the experience, but I refused to look at the power behind the creation. Again, I was trying to distance myself from the error.
I am now learning to accept full responsibility and to embrace all that I am including all my creations. The body-mind-separation thought is not in alignment with God Thoughts and so are not real. They are not eternal and they are not perfect. I will let them go, but while I am still experiencing them I will use them. This world I made is a perfect classroom for returning my mind to God. I am learning to appreciate it and not disparage it. This body is a wonderful tool and points me to those thoughts which need healing as it reflects through sickness mistaken ideas.
There is no way to heal except through love. I cannot hate myself enough to heal myself. I practice daily embracing and loving all of myself and that includes what I have made in time. The power that made this is the power I will use to change my mind. If I refuse to accept what I did I am refusing to accept the power that did it and so refusing to accept the power that will undo it. Embracing and loving myself and others and all we have made is the way I am stepping out of judgment.
Lesson 3 How Forgiveness Heals
Inspiration
If you could see this, you would never judge again. When you judge, even the cells of your body go crazy. They vibrate in a completely dissonant way. There is contraction. The fluids do not move through the cells. The nutrients do not become transported or delivered to the cells. The waste matter is not processed properly. Everything gets clogged up, and there is disease.
What I learned
I have known for a long time now that my thoughts affect the body, but this is a picture I cannot ignore or forget. The body is a very useful tool for picturing the effects of ego thinking. The ego uses the body to convince me that I am separate, but the Holy Spirit will help me use the body differently. If I ask what the sickness is for, and I have decided my goal is to awaken, then I will see sickness for what it is; the effect of judgment, and the body becomes a tool for awakening. If I am not paying attention, I will make the ridiculous mistake of judging myself for judging. I can always choose again.
Inspiration
There is no such thing as past and future, there is only now. So when you have that thought or that memory, it is coming to you for a specific reason. ¡KIt is being presented to you, yet again, that you might make a new choice.
What I learned
I have been using this frequently. Every time I think about someone and that thought elicits guilt, I make a new choice. I use the forgiveness process Jeshua gives:
I judge you not.
I extend forgiveness to myself for what I have created.
I embrace you, and I love you. I free you to be yourself.
I bless you with the blessing of Christ.
After I have done this, the guilt has melted away. This dissolving of guilt is not something I made happen but something I allowed to happen using this process as a bridge. I have not experienced a reemergence of the guilt in these particular instances. It feels like a miracle to me because some of these situations have been haunting me for a very long time.
Lesson 3 Healing Exercise
Inspiration
I am the source of my experience.
I a feeling disturbed.
What is it in me that needs to be healed?
What I have learned
There is a young woman I do not like. I find it disturbing because usually I would say there is this particular thing about this person I do not like and from there I work with it until whatever it is in me has been forgiven. But I could only look with dislike on this person and be very uncomfortable. I finally mentioned it to a couple of people hoping something would pop up. I know I am projecting. That I recognize something in her can only mean that I am familiar with it. Either I have done it before and failed to forgive it in myself or I do it now and am repulsed by my own behavior and so try to get rid of it by tossing it onto her.
I told Holy Spirit that I was tired of carrying around this projection. Once you understand projection it is impossible to keep kidding yourself about it. It is like sitting uncomfortably on a fence unable to get down on either side. I tried to let the source of my dislike float up into my mind but I was too resistant. I tried to figure it out, looking for signs of myself in this woman. Neither thing worked. I mentioned it to a mind healing partner and she told me about a process she is doing with a long held resentment. She began praying for the person she resented. She prayed that this person would receive everything that she herself wanted. She wrote down each desire of her heart and asked that the other person be granted these beautiful gifts of love and abundance. She is doing this for two weeks.
I was very excited to hear this because it felt right to me. When I hear something meant for me I feel a kind of vibration deep within myself. The truth in me recognizing the truth in her, I think. So I began that process and prayed for this woman asking that she be granted all the things I want for myself. Immediately I felt better, knowing I am finally going to come into a full willingness to be healed of my disturbance.
Then I spoke to another mind healing partner and though I had not planned to mention this situation it came up. I was trying to explain what it is about her that I don¡¦t like, even though I had never been able to do this before. I mentioned that it was hard to like her because she put up a wall that was impenetrable, just no way to get close to her. I had not realized before that this was bothering me, but as I talked to her about it I thought about what it feels like to hug her, kind of like hugging a tree, smoother bark but just about as responsive. As I spoke I started feeling some recognition in my mind. I used to be pretty closed off. I hated hugging and didn¡¦t want people too close. It was just a little flash of recognition and nothing I wanted to think about because there is still some of that in me.
Then I told my friend I didn¡¦t like her voice because it sounded like a helpless little girl and was ridiculous coming out of this grown woman. Oh my, as I said this I heard myself. The venom in my voice indicated how strongly I hated this about her. I know I have a scared little girl in me that I have spent a life time ignoring and shutting up. She only shows herself masked as something else. She steps out as the trusting and loving person who gets victimized in the name of spiritual sacrifice. She slips out in relationships and acts as if love is sacrifice. She is like a fearful dog that rolls over to show her belly in hopes that submissiveness will ward off attack. I am very ashamed of her and have been for many years. That is why I hide her and pretend she doesn¡¦t exist. She was born to be a victim and I don¡¦t want to be identified with her.
I don¡¦t hate this other woman; I hate this part of myself. She just shows me the parts of myself that I loathe the most. Is this classic projection or what? My prayers for her have taken on a new quality. I know what I most want for her and I really want her to have it. I want to look at her and see, not the weak and fearful child victim, but the wholly loved and accepted child. I want to embrace her child and so embrace my own. I have begun to see this woman differently. I hid my child but she honestly put hers forward. She is playing an important part for me, and so is facilitating a healing in my mind. For awhile now I have been accepting healing in little small increments for my little girl, and this feels like a chunk. Woohoo!
Finishing up Lesson 3
Inspiration
Each moment in which you choose forgiveness, you have literally saved yourself a thousand years of suffering! I mean that about as literally as one can mean it.
What I learned
I was so deeply touched by Jeshua¡¦s story of the roman soldier that I cried. Part of the reason I cried, maybe the whole reason, is because his forgiveness made a place where the soldier could also heal his life. When I read that I thought, ¡§I can do that. I already do that each time I truly forgive. This thought still makes me cry when I hold it in my mind. I wonder how many people I have touched with my forgiveness process and I am deeply inspired to continue forgiving. I am saving years of suffering for all of us whether I am aware of it or not. What better use is there for the times of my life?
Now that I have been practicing watching my reactions I notice so much more than I did before. I think I was sleep walking most of my life. I guess that is why they call this life a dream. I notice when I have even a minor feeling of contraction and my attention goes to it. I saw a picture this morning and felt an unspecified discomfort. I immediately stopped and let myself experience this. I was not really thinking about anything or trying to figure it out so much as just letting it float up in my mind.
As the reason for the discomfort came to me the ego immediately began to argue against it showing me logic that disputed it. It didn¡¦t matter because I was not listening to ego. I have learned to trust this process. As I allowed myself to just go with it I sat and cried for a few minutes and felt the fear that was elicited by the picture. The ego continued to argue that this did not make sense, but I just ignored that voice. I thanked the Holy Spirit for helping me be aware and for being part of this process. As I thanked Him the reason for the tears became clearer and I asked the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking. Then I just went on as if nothing had happened. I am grateful for these healing moments in my life. I am so glad that I started this process those years ago and that it has been enriched by this chapter on forgiveness. This chapter is the most important one I have read so far and I have listened to it on CD many times.
Inspiration
I release and forgive this day. It has been perfect. And it is done.
What I learned
When my house has been finished I move in I am going to put these words on a poster and frame them. Then I am going to hang it next to my bed so that I never forget to say them. I know from past experience that sleep can be an important learning time for me. Nearly every night I ask the Holy Spirit to use this time to help me learn and it has gotten so that my dreams are less symbolic and more literal. Sometimes I will wake up and realize I had just been listening to an explanation of something I needed to know, as if I were listening to a lecture or someone was answering a question for me. Sometimes it will be symbolic and I don¡¦t entirely understand it or even remember much of it, but I know that I got something I needed.
The idea of forgiving and releasing my day had not occurred to me before. But I can definitely see the value. Believe me, I have days that are definitely sufficient unto themselves. I absolutely do not want to carry that energy into my sleep! I also like the idea of declaring its perfection and not making a difference between the days. If a day seemed especially hard or upsetting it was still perfect. It brought with it exactly what I needed and wanted to experience that day. I created it and so it was perfect. I may decide to create differently the next day, but creation is creation and so is a success whatever it looks like. I like the idea of ending my day by reminding myself that this is true.
[0] comments (225 views) |
[0] Trackbacks
[0] Pingbacks
Lesson 4
Lesson 4 Following the Thread of Desire
Inspiration
You live, yet no longer you, but Christ dwells as you. …There is a mystical translation that occurs in the depth of the soul, which is merely a shifting of where you perceive your sense and source of identity.
What I have learned
When I woke up this morning I thought of getting some coffee and then I thought that I would pay attention to the act of making the coffee and drinking the coffee. This thought simply came into my mind and it was not random. It is interesting to me that I did not do this although I got up with the intention to do so. It is clear that I experience much of my life with little awareness of what is happening. I sleep walk. I think that in order to live as Christ I am going to have to live with awareness. I think that is why I was given that thought. This is going to take some practice and vigilance. I desire to live in full awareness. I desire to live as Christ.
Probably my very favorite quote from this book is the answer to the question, “Who are you?”
Who am I? I am the extension of Love in form.
I have never been born and I will never taste death.
I am infinite and eternal.
I shine forth as a sunbeam to the sun.
I am the effect of God’s Love.
And I stand before you to love you.
I don’t know what to say about that except that it speaks to my heart and my heart answers. It brings tears of recognition and longing. I want to live this and I want to write that I want this more than anything else. And yet, if that were true, then I would have it. So evidently I want to be the creator of my self more than I want to be the extension of Love. Holy Spirit, I am willing to change my mind. I ask you to correct my thoughts about self creation. I take full responsibility, but I also assert my right to decide differently by deciding for God.
Lesson 4 Desire Is Everything
Inspiration
You have learned, therefore, to fear desire because that fear is the effect of fearing yourself, and that is what cripples you.
What I learned
This section is helping me to look honestly at my fear of desire. Before I read this I did not even realize I had a fear of desire. I just never thought about it and could not understand what the big deal was. Now that I am paying attention I see what I had been pretending did not exist.
It seems that desires have been getting me in trouble all my life. When I moved into puberty I experienced a desire for sexual experience. I was Catholic and was told that this was a sin, not just to do it but to desire it, if I was not married. This was not the first time I was taught to be ashamed of my desires, but it was such a big deal for so long that it really made an impression on me.
I love Haagen Dazs ice cream and every time I read this section and he talks about ice cream I start to desire it. I began noticing how I was suppressing the desire for ice cream. This is because I don’t trust myself to want ice cream without acting on that desire. I have bought my favorite flavor and kept it in the freezer for a long time just eating a bite now and again but then sometimes I buy it and eat the whole thing. Then I feel out of control and weak. It was helpful to read this phrase: “…YOU decide whether or not you will act on it.” I am encouraged to take a moment between desiring and acting on that desire to decide if I want to do this. It is important that I understand that I am not controlled by Haagen Daz, but by my own decisions. Who makes the decision? I do! Can I decide differently? Absolutely!
Inspiration
The only relationship that holds any value at all
is your relationship with God, your creative Source,
the depth of the ocean.
What I learned
I understand this next axiom and I have no argument with it. I am uncertain how this applies to the subject at hand. If anyone has a thought on this I would be interested.
Lesson 4 Releasing Judgment of Desire
Inspiration
Your authority is the voice for God that dwells within your heart and within your mind! God is not limited and does not require His children to be limited.
What I learned
This section is trying to help me break the patterns of my life in which I shut off desire. Awareness is a good place to start. I think one of my problems is that I am afraid to desire because I am afraid I will give into my desires even when it is not appropriate to do so. I have learned to fear myself. Another way I have learned to fear myself is that I might desire to have something so much I crave it and can’t stop thinking about it and then will be unhappy that I have not got it.
In answer to that I am learning I am the source of all I have and my desires are being answered every minute of every day. What I am attempting to do is really no different than what I always do, except I want to now do it in a conscious manner. It doesn’t make any sense to be afraid of my desires. I cannot be without desires; I can only refuse to acknowledge them.
As I work on breaking old patterns of automatic behavior I am becoming frustrated with myself. I will receive a prompt to pay attention to what I am about to do, and I notice that prompt because it is so extraordinary. Where does it come from? But shortly after noticing what ordinary activity I am doing, washing a dish, making coffee, I lose interest and before you know it several hours have passed and I only have a vague idea what has happened in the interim. Oh I know I finished the coffee and drank it and read emails, and so on, but I have no awareness of what it felt like when I did those things, and no awareness of having desired to do them. I can’t believe how hard it is to pay attention.
I am going to work on this today, again. I am going to pay attention to what I am doing, and be a hundred percent involved in whatever it is. I am going to do this each time I am prompted to do so. I want to break the habit of sleep walking. I am also going to notice my desires. I am going to notice what I try to do with them. Do I dwell on them, or try to pretend they did not happen. I am going to ask the Holy Spirit to look with me and to let me know what he wants me to know about each desire.
Lesson 4 Desire Links You to the Will of God
Inspiration
If you have decided that there are certain energies that are demonic, evil or have the power to distract you from your union with God, you have already decided there is something beyond the reach of your power. And that is what disempowers you.
What I am learning
Jeshua seems to be telling me that I don’t need to be afraid of my desires because I get to decide whether or not I act on them, and the desire itself is not to be feared. In fact it is to be embraced and allowed to flow freely so that I can see where it is going. Even if a particular desire is not taking me anyplace, it is still important not to fear it. Fear is what disempowers me. I can see where this is very important.
I also understand that fear of desire and fear of my power run very deep. There is within me the memory of desiring to see what it would feel like to be unlike God. That did not turn out so well. From that one desire I have experienced more like desires, separation in its many facets and they all seem to have taken me further from God. I feel like it would be safer not to want anything and yet, I cannot get out of bed without wanting to.
Like everything else I have done since getting on this path, I can see that the only way to approach this is to trust that Jeshua knows what he is talking about and just dive right in. I started with little things that don’t really matter except as the denial of these desires add to the weight of my littleness. I look at a piece of cake and ask myself if I desire it. In the past the safe answer has been no. I don’t want that cake and then would go over all the reasons cake is evil, like calories, fat etc.
Now I look at the cake and just give myself a moment to really notice how I feel. I try not to use the thinking mind to do this. I don’t go down the list of pros and cons, but rather get in touch with my feelings about it. I have been surprised to see that sometimes I don’t even want it. Other times I do want it and then I have to decide if I will eat it or not. There are a number of things I desire and I choose not to act on that desire. This is the hardest part of desire. It is the reason I pretend not to desire. I am afraid of myself and of course this fear teaches me that I am weak.
I am practicing noticing how I feel rather than how I think I should feel. I am practicing allowing the feelings and desires to simply wash over me without judging them. I am practicing making decisions about whether or not to act on my desires without judging that outcome either.
Lesson 4 An Exercise in Trusting Desire
Inspiration
What do I truly desire?
What I learned
When I first started doing this exercise I thought it was easy and was surprised when others said they had a hard time with it. I want to awaken from the dream. I want to walk the world as Christ. I want to live in total forgiveness. I guess I must just be more spiritual that all these other people. Ha ha. Ok, that is probably not it. I did the exercise for awhile and quit.
Later as I had done more work with TWM, I went back to the exercise and found I was ready to be honest. I do want those things, but I had not allowed myself to write down all the other things I want. And if I only wanted spiritual enlightenment, if I did not want anything else then I would have spiritual enlightenment. So I sat with the Holy Spirit and started my lists again. I will tell you the hardest thing for me to write on that list; I want to win the lottery.
I could not understand why I didn’t want to write that down. Obviously I want to win because I buy a ticket twice a week. Sometimes I think what I would do if I won. So why did I not want to write it down? I felt guilty for wanting it. I felt silly and foolish. I thought that people would think I was shallow and not very spiritual. Once I broke through my resistance on this one thing, I was able to write down what I wanted in any particular moment.
I also felt guilty for putting on my list that I want to lose weight and keep it off and never have to worry about it again. Want to lose weight just feels so un-spiritual. Here is another one that I only had the courage to write once: I want to speak to and hear the words or thoughts of Jeshua Ben Joseph.
I noticed the things I desired over and over: financial support to the end of my life, to be financially able to be a full time minister, to be a healthy weight. I also desired each time to walk the world as an awakened Christ, to be empty, to feel Love move through me. So what do all these desires tell me? One thing they tell me is that I am conflicted in what I want. They tell me that I am not consistent in my desires and that I am not sure what it is that will make me happy. I learned that I am afraid of desires and judgmental of myself for having certain desires.
Recently I have recommitted myself to the only thing that matters. I asked the Holy Spirit to use me in every moment. It does not matter what I seem to be doing in the world, it can be done with the Holy Spirit and so done to awaken the mind. I am still learning from doing the exercise in trusting desire. If anyone has had an experience of their own or if anyone has wise words to help me get more from this I would love to hear them.
Lesson 4 An Exercise in Trusting Desire part 2
Inspiration
How much of God am I willing to receive and allow to be expressed through me?
What I have learned
So what is the point of looking at my desires without judgment? Why do I need to practice trusting desire? I want to know experience God. I want to express God through my Self. As I continue to do the exercise and see the thread that runs through them I can then follow that thread to the, “Heart of God.” On page 52: And along the way, everything unlike Love would come up for you to release it. During the process, you would go through a metamorphosis that would culminate in your being the living incarnation of the power of Christ – your soul would realize the fulfillment that it has always sought. This is the purpose; I intend to release all that keeps me from living as Christ. And before I can do that, I must release fear in all its forms including the fear of desire.
This morning I expressed the desire to be used by Holy Spirit in whatever way He needed me. No restrictions. I began to notice some things. When I went down to the hotel lobby for coffee (which is a big deal for me) the clerk had not made any. I felt a bubble of anger coming up. How could she forget coffee? I mean what is the purpose of breakfast if not as an adjunct to coffee? Am I still in Louisiana; how could there not be coffee?
It is pretty funny when I think about it but that may be because I got my coffee and with it my sense of humor. But I got to see that having coffee was more important than having peace, and that my sister was only worthy if she fulfilled that need for me. I got to see where I am placing value and I was sad to see that I valued coffee more than Love. On the other hand, I was glad to see, because now I can change my mind. I desire coffee but I desire the Love of God more. I desire to be an extension of that Love more than I desire coffee or anything else. I look forward to becoming aware of those things on which I have placed false value, so they can be released.
I have done the exercise for a number of days. I see a thread of fear running through them. I desire my house to be finished. Behind that desire is a fear of not having a place to live. I desire to lose weight and behind that desire is the fear of myself, that I will not choose to do this, but instead choose to feed the ego appetites. I desire to win the lottery and the fear behind that desire is that I will be unable to support myself now that I am getting older, and that I cannot do what I really find joy in doing because there is not enough money without work and not enough time with work.
I am very grateful to see the thread of fear running behind these desires so that I can release it. Do I want to live in love or in fear? It is simply a choice. It seems hard to let go of fear because it would mean letting go of my smallness; it would mean letting go of being a seeker and become found. Jeshua says: “You were birthed to be grand. You were birthed for greatness. You were birthed to shine forth such light into this world that the world remembers that light is true, and darkness is illusion. Be you, therefore, that which you are – you are the light of the world.”
I see this thread going through my desires as well. I desire to be what I am created to be and to know what that is. I desire to be an empty conduit through which the Love that is God flows through me unimpeded by any part of me that wants to be something else. I want to serve my brother by accepting the Atonement for myself. I want to walk the earth as Christ incarnate. I see this thread all through my deepest desires. As I release the fear of desire I receive vision with greater clarity and I know what to release and what to nurture.
[0] comments (227 views) |
[0] Trackbacks
[0] Pingbacks
Lesson 5
Lesson 5 The Keys to the Kingdom
Inspiration
Therefore, understand well that The Way of the Heart requires the willingness to commit.
What I learned
In lesson 4 I recognized my desire to awaken, to follow The Way of the Heart. To accomplish this Jeshua is telling me that I must commit my willingness to this decision. Total commitment guarantees that I will succeed. It would be easy for me to become discouraged as I see signs I have not made that full commitment. I am aware of anger, fear, and suffering in my life. My body expresses my lack of commitment to my decision as pain and disease. But I also notice that Jeshua said, ¡§¡Kthe way to which you devote the whole of your attention by granting your WILLINGNESS that the way be followed.¡¨
Willingness is what is being asked of me. It is not expected that I make a decision to awaken and then it is done. If that were the case there would not be A Course in Miracles with many pages and 365 lessons. If that were the case The Way of Mastery would not contain three parts, each intended to be studied a year a time. Rather than be discouraged when I see that my decision is conflicted, when I want both to maintain my ego creation, and to awaken from it, I choose to be grateful to have seen the conflict. Because I have become aware of the conflict, I am able to make a choice and each time I choose right-mindedness, I become stronger in my commitment.
Inspiration
And when you change your mind, you literally change what you experience in the world or the solar system in which your self spins.
What I learned
This jumped out at me because it seems to say that it is not the circumstances that change, but my experience of them that changes.
Inspiration
It culminates with the recognition that you do not live Life at all, but rather that Life is living you.
What I learned
I have never thought of it this way before; that life is living me, but this feels right. Jeshua goes on to talk about developing the witness, the part of me that watches from a place of non-attachment. I have been trying to do this and I understand even more how important this is. It takes some vigilance to put this into practice. I have to stop and allow myself to feel this and that is a habit I don¡¦t yet have. It feels like work right now, but only the part where I pay attention, and lend my willingness to witness what is happening around me and through me without judging it. I visualize myself as rising above the situation and watching what is happening as if it were a movie. I am aware of Myron¡¦s feelings and actions, but I know it is just a movie. Often I get pulled into the drama and temporarily forget it is only a movie. I get caught up in the emotions and forget to be the witness. But because I have made a commitment to this Way, I eventually pull my attention from being Myron to watching Myron. It just takes willingness to practice and it gets easier.
When I master this way of being I will know peace. Jeshua says, ¡§In that peace, the breath of God will move through you. And you will become as the wind, knowing not where you came from or where you are going, but you will abide in perfect trust and perfect rest. The world may not know you, but your Father will know you - and you will know your God.¡¨ Later he says that I will be as a conduit through which mystery lives itself and through which Love pours forth.¡¨
I don¡¦t know what to say about that except it has changed my life. I seem to have gained an understanding from it that I was unaware of before. What must it feel like to know yourself, not as a separate being, but as that through which God lives. I don¡¦t know, or rather I don¡¦t remember, but I am willing to. Jeshua says to imagine, ¡§¡K a force and a Source that knows how to express itself through you in such a way that it is constantly and only serving the atonement, the awakening of all of creation to the truth of God¡¦s presence.¡¨ Dear God, I have trouble even imagining and I find it hard to conceive of such an existence, but I feel compelled to open myself to the possibility. I want this and I cannot imagine anything in life of more value.
Lesson 5 The First Key Is Desire
Inspiration
First, desire is everything. Without it, not a thing can arise. Therefore what you desire is of utmost importance. Desire, then, perfect union with God.
What I have learned
I admit that at first Jeshua threw me with all this emphasis on desire. Though I had not been aware of it, desire, in my mind, was the enemy. It was what seemed to keep me in trouble all the time; the desire for another cookie kept me in constant battle with my weight; when I was young the desire for sexual gratification kept me in the confessional; not knowing what it is that I truly desire keeps me, still, in conflict. It was desire that got me into this whole mess, the desire to know myself differently than I was created.
Now that I have worked with Jeshua on desire a bit, I begin to understand that desire is everything, that I would not lift my body from this chair without the desire to do so, therefore, since I cannot avoid desire it is imperative that I master it. And to master it I must first learn not to fear it. So the exercises I have been learning make perfect sense now.
There are certain truths that are so basic to my awakening that I never get far from them. There is only one problem and that problem is my belief I am separate from God. There is only one solution and that solution is the Holy Spirit Which is in my mind. These truths help me to keep a unified purpose. Everything seems different, but everything is the same. It either keeps me in fear or it awakens me to love. So whatever is happening in my life I apply these principles. If I am not happy, I recognize that the purpose of the situation is to allow my mind to be corrected so that I can awaken. If I am happy, I recognize that the purpose of the situation is to awaken me. There is only one purpose in my life, and everything contributes to that purpose in one way or another.
Jeshua began this section by reminding me that it is important to desire perfect union with God and this is another way of keeping a unified purpose. As I get in touch with my desires I begin to see that they are all part of that purpose. I think I desire all sorts of stuff, but I learn that this stuff is only a poor substitute for the gifts of God. I really want to feel the power and the glory of my Self as God moves through me.
As I surrender my own efforts to be the maker and doer in my life, I surrender my desires as well. It is not that I do not have desires, but I do not direct my desires. This is not a sacrifice; quite the contrary. When I was trying to rebuild my house on my own, that is, by listening to the ego voice, each thing I did was a struggle. I felt that I knew what I desired to happen and how to make that desire take form. But then I noticed what I was doing and surrendered my desires to the Holy Spirit. I held no desire back; I gladly gave Him even the desire to have a house. Since that moment everything has moved smoothly. For awhile there I forgot my unified purpose. I thought that the purpose of rebuilding my house was separate from my purpose of awakening.
I desire to become empty of ego based desire, that is, desire which I see as outside my one purpose. I want to become spacious and to become the unobstructed conduit for Love. I desire that each movement I make in each of my moments is in accord with the desire of my Father. I want, not to control desire, because control is fear based, but to master desire and so know how God would use me.
Lesson 5 The Second Key Is Intention
Inspiration
Desire, in time, is cultivated through intention.
What I learned
It is not enough to recognize my desire. In order to make use of this recognition I must grow it with intention. Intention sets it in the soil of my mind and fertilizes it. As I visualize this process I think of all the plants I have allowed to die because I did not follow up. I start with an intention to grow a beautiful plant and allow myself to become distracted by other projects and fail to follow through. This is also what happens to my intention to awaken.
I begin the day with my meditation and I think about my purpose. I journal, I talk to the Holy Spirit and listen as well. I am ready for the day and looking forward to more healing. Then life becomes a distraction rather than an opportunity for that healing. I forget the purpose of all those moments. I begin to believe that my purpose is to make the next appointment, to find a place to eat, to take care of my body, to get people to accept and like me and on and on. I forget that each of those activities have a single purpose; to become moments of healing; to help me awaken.
It doesn¡¦t matter how often I forget my intention. Forgetting my intention becomes my healing moment when I realize what I have done. The ego mind wants to use this moment to reinforce guilt, but the Holy Spirit uses it for my one purpose. All I have to do is turn my face to Him rather than to the ego. The more often I bring my focus back to my intention, the stronger that intention becomes. There is no failure, only opportunities.
Lesson 5 The Third Key is Allowance
Inspiration
For the egoic world does not teach you allow, it teaches you to strive. You must be the maker and the doer. You must find a way to manipulate or control your environment in order that it conform itself to the image that you are holding in your mind.
Allowance is the cultivation of a way of looking at the events in your life, not as obstacles to getting what you want, but as stepping stones. Each one presents you with a blessing of the lessons required to heal the obstacles ¡V not to success, but to the presence of Love as the Source and ground of your being.
Jeshua must have had me in mind when he talked about striving rather than allowing. ƒº I am a ¡§doer¡¨ kind of person and am very uncomfortable when I am not active. Allowing was a new concept for me and one I had trouble grasping for a long time. I¡¦m kind of getting into the idea now. In fact, I am practicing allowing everything, realizing that my resistance is judgment. How would I know that I want to resist unless I had judged it as unwanted.
Everything that comes to me, from me, by me, is perfect. In form it might seem like a disaster, but it is perfect. It is a message sent to help me wake up. It might be a shocking message if that is what I need to get my attention. It might be an upsetting message if I am judging it. I may not understand the message if I don¡¦t want it. But everything in my life is here because I called for it. The world is my servant, bringing to my life exactly what I asked to receive. It only seems like a hodge podge of unrelated stuff when I forget my one unified purpose. As soon as I remember that my purpose is to awaken I see the true meaning behind the symbol.
Allowance feels like another word for surrender. My life is not my own. I surrender it to my Creator to live through me as He would choose. I trust that He is Love and so can bring only love. I trust that in love, He wants only what is best for me and what brings me joy. So I surrender. I surrender over and over every day all day long because every day all day long I forget and start trying to live my life as my own little ego self. My Father is not upset about this. He waits patiently for me to experience striving and efforting and to remember why I chose against it. He waits for me to, again, surrender and allow. The ego mind, even now, resists the idea that, ¡§I live, yet not I, but Christ dwelleth as me.¡¨ Too late, ego, I already know how this feels and I know I want to cultivate allowance.
Lesson 5 The Fourth Key Is Surrender
Inspiration
Surrender means you know through every fiber of your being that there is no one living a life, there is Life flowing through the body mind personality, for as long as it lasts.
What I learned
Reading this has helped me really ¡§get¡¨ that I am not a body. I am not this body I have thought of as Myron. Life is living through this body. It is just a tool, something to use by me and is not, in any way, the body mind I thought of as Myron. It is hard for me to hold onto this important concept. I understand it intellectually but then it slips away from me. I feel like Myron. I feel weighed down by years and years of collected grievances and judgments, doubts and fears. I feel tired and ineffective by years and years of trying to control this life of Myron. I long to let go of it all and allow Life to live through me; to know that it means that: I live, yet not I, but Christ dwelleth as me.
I am also afraid to do this. Right now I am sick and know that this sickness is an attempt to remain in control. I know that not being able to succeed at little things I think I want and that should be easy to accomplish are just me trying to be in control. It looks like I have no control, but it takes real vigilance for the Son of God to masquerade as weak and helpless. I think for the first time I really understand eating disorders as control devices. One feels completely out of control of one¡¦s life and gains a feeling of control by simply not eating, and exercises ultimate control through death of the body. And yet, all the time one experiences the control as failure, a failure to achieve a body type even when one has done so. How insane we are when we live in the ego.
I keep doing this work because I know that I am supposed to succeed and that I can succeed at just getting out of the way and allowing Life to live me. I want to be empty. I want to allow the Love that is God to flow through me. The problem is I also want to be charge. I ask the Holy Spirit what I should do and when I don¡¦t like the answer, I make up my own. Even when I say that I want to be empty and allow myself to think what this means, that there would be no more Myron, that is no will apart from God, there is a spark of fear.
So I am conflicted. I am learning to overcome my resistance by looking at the symbols of the separation thought and choosing differently. For instance, I notice my feelings of lack, judgment, anger and other forms of fear, and ask the Holy Spirit how to see as He sees. It is a slow and sometimes painful process, but mostly it has become a delight as I live more happily and more peacefully. Eventually, there will be no more symbols of separation for me to look at.
Lesson 5 The Importance of Humility
Inspiration
Genuine humility flows from the deep-seated recognition that you cannot save yourself, that you are created and not Creator, that you are the effect and not cause (in an absoloute sense), that something called Life is not yours, that there is something beyond your capacity of containment and intellectual understanding. And if that something ever decided to give up loving you, you would cease to be.
What I learned
Up until this point, Jeshua has been helping me to accept my grandeur, to know that I am a holy Son of God and powerful beyond my understanding. Now he is telling me not to allow myself to move from grandeur to grandiosity. This is a real temptation and one that Jeshua said he, too, had to guard against.
The more this study is put into practice, the more my life shows the effects of it. Other people want some of the same thing and this is good. They come to me and ask questions, ask for help getting to the place that I am. It is easy to start thinking that I know something and to believe that I have done a great thing. But I have not done a thing. I did not make myself the holy Son of God. I did not create the vast mind of the Son. I did not create the potential and the ability to create (that is to continue the extension of Love). All that I have done is to remove that which blocks Love and allows me to express God. I am a conduit for God, and this is a glorious thing, but I am not the Source of this glory. It is absolutely essential that I remember this.
[0] comments (253 views) |
[0] Trackbacks
[0] Pingbacks
Lesson 7
Lesson 6 If You Would know Love, Know Your Self
Inspiration
Love cannot shine with specialness upon anyone at any time. For specialness, itself is a contraction; the attempt to take Love and make it shine only on one object, only on one person only on one being, only within one universe.
Therefore, whenever you recognize that you have singled someone or something out and said, “They hold a greater value,” you may rest assured that you are not in Love at all. You are in fear. And if that one were to leave you, where would you be? But if you are in Love as a fish within the sea, all beings can arise and pass away and you will bless them in their journey.
What I learned
The idea of giving up special love has been the hardest concept for me to embrace. First in ACIM, and now here in TWM, it is made clear that what I have treasured as true love has been nothing but fear. I think about my children. I love them so much. Or is what I feel something outside love?
What I feel for them leads directly to fear. What if something happened to them? I cannot imagine what that would feel like. When one of them is sad I feel like someone is ripping at my heart. How would I feel if one of them died? This is special love. It is fear based. It is an attempt to contract love into a very small thing and place it carefully on just this one person. If your child died I would be sad for you, but if my child died I would be devastated. If your child died there would be an awful, shameful and guilty piece of me that would think, “Thank God it was not my child.” Does this sound like love? It sounds and feels like neediness to the nth degree. I need this person to stay in their body and be in my life. I cannot be happy without them. This is not love. This is fear.
What makes someone my friend, while others are not? Why do I like that particular one? She supplies something that I feel is missing from my life. Perhaps she is good company, or we have certain things in common. Maybe she likes to discuss the things I like to discuss. Maybe I like her because she likes me. What happens when she no longer supplies my needs? Perhaps she loses interest in those things we had in common. Perhaps she becomes good friend with someone else and no longer comes around or invites me over. Perhaps they take up a behavior that I cannot abide. Do I stop loving her? Then I never did. I just loved what she provided me.
What if I swam in a sea of love, breathed love, knew nothing but love. Each person who swam with me would receive nothing but love because that is all I had to give. If someone swam away it would not matter because the love was not in them or dependent on them. I am the love and so I cannot lose it. I simply continue to be love and the next one who swims by becomes the recipient of my love. As the love flowed from me to them I received it as well. I am swimming in it. I have it even when no one is swimming with me.
When I think some special person is the holder of my love that love is always tainted with the fear of loss. If I know that I am love living in Love, then I have no fear of loss. It makes such perfect sense, and yet, I still notice a spark of fear at the idea of giving up special love. Holy Spirit, I am willing to be transformed. I am willing to let go of the idea of special love. I am willing to give up my insane idea of contracting something that is infinite and eternal. I am ready for this. I don’t know what it would feel like to know only love and to not have special objects of love, but I am ready to find out. Thank you.
Lesson 6 The Primary Characteristic of Mastery
Inspiration
Fearlessness is the primary characteristic of mastery. Mastery is not having great power to make things happen. It is only the recognition that what is true is true always and there is no other choice.
What I learned
I have moments when I am even afraid to let fear go. All of the illusion is built on a foundation of fear. People move into relationships because they are afraid to be alone. They choose their partner because they are afraid to be who they think they are and seek to become more by finding the one who can add to them. People work at jobs they hate because they are afraid of not having enough unless they do. People diet and exercise because they are afraid they will be looked down on if they don’t look a certain way. People take care of their body most often because they are afraid the body will turn on them and hurt them. The happiest moments in their lives is marred by the fear they will end or end badly.
This is what I want to master. I want to master fearlessness. I want to remember that I am one with God. Jeshua says that; “That is why when you truly pray from the depth of your soul, “God, bring me home,” you may rest assured, from that moment on it is fine to trust every little thing that unfolds. For though you see it not, what you call angels – friends that simply do not have bodies – are rushing about because you have given the command…”
God, I turn the whole thing over. I am ready to come home. I am ready to accept all the divine help that is available to me. I am ready to look at each moment as another step toward home. I wonder how many times I have refused help; how many times I looked at a circumstance in my life and thought it was cause for fear when it was simply an opportunity to heal. I am ready to be alert to those moments.
“Indeed, beloved friends, there is only one question you need answer:
What am I choosing in this moment?”
I can choose to look with the ego on the circumstances of my life and see fearful consequences, or I can look on the same circumstances with the Holy Spirit and see the next step home. It is up to me. Looking with fear is just a choice, an old habit. I can choose to do this differently.
Lesson 6 The Primary Characteristic of Mastery 2
Inspiration
When you have experienced in relationship with anyone or anything a moment of bliss, a moment of a peace that forever passes all understanding, a moment of fulfillment so sweet and so sublime that no word could touch it, much less express it, what you have experienced is only the flow of the Love of God through you. That person or thing did not cause it. I was caused because, for just a moment, you stepped out of your drama, you stepped out of your dream, and allowed the Truth to be lived.
Then, of course, you tricked yourself into believing, “God, that was so sweet! That was the best thing I’ve ever tasted. It must have come from you. Get over here! I need you!” If ever you believe you need anything or anyone, rest assured, in that moment you are living in delusion. Jeshua, The Way of Mastery
What I learned
As I read this I thought of my daughter, Susan. She was just home from the hospital and so tiny and so precious. I was holding her against me so that I could feel her warmth and soft, soft baby skin, and at the same time, I could look at her little head covered in downy hair. I began telling her how much I loved her and how I was going to take care of her and be a good mom to her. I had shifted her to my shoulder. She rested in perfect stillness on me and when I stopped talking she turned her head and her lips brushed my cheek. I was so touched that I just sat and cried. She was not old enough to turn her head. She shouldn’t have been ale to do that. It was as if she were saying to me that she loved me too and that she knew I would be a good mother to her. It was one of the sweetest most loving moments in my life.
Then, of course, I decided that Susan was the cause of that moment, and that the overwhelming sense of love I felt came from her. I decided that I needed her to be in my life, to keep her body and her love near me. From that need arose fear. What if something happened to her? What if I wasn’t a good mom? What if she didn’t love me anymore? What if she went away? And of course, she did. She fell in love and moved away.
When she fell in love it was very hard for me to be accepting of her partner, Jen. Jen seemed to be the thief in the night who stole the love of my daughter. Suddenly Susan was busy and had little time for me. She gave all her attention to the thief. I was left bereft of that sweet love that I thought came only from her. I had my other children and each of them offered their own form of that same sweet love, but it was tainted now because I knew how fragile it was.
It took a long time for me to release the resentment I had for Jen and learn to love her as much as I do Susan. In the process of doing this I gained an understanding of the meaning of special relationships. I also have begun to realize that I will never be one who is awake as long as I continue to see individuals as the source of love and joy. Now when my little granddaughter holds me tight and kisses my cheek, I know that this is Love passing through her and through me and onto the next one who stands before me and on and on. Love is eternal and unlimited. It does not bestow itself on certain ones but flows freely through all. And it never stops flowing. I will never run out of love because I am love created by Love.
I don’t need any one person, nor any thing, to feel love. When I think I do, I am delusional and I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind.
Lesson 6 All You Need is Love
Inspiration
….when you look upon another person or another situation or another thing and realize that nothing in this world has the power to hurt you and nothing in the world has the power to take anything from you, you are free.
What I learned
Relationships can feel like imprisonment. When I divorced my last husband I felt like I had served my time and was finally released. And yet, as Jeshua says: “Accept the truth, that what you desire above all things is the living experience of love.” I was married three times and each time I escaped from the prison of that relationship. What happened to the love I was seeking when I married these men? What happened to make me flee from these marriages and seek freedom outside the relationship?
What I can see now is that I began each relationship by looking to the other person for love; the love that I felt was missing in myself. I was not in the relationship to give love or even to share love, but to get love. I felt unloved and unlovable, but was going on the idea that if I could find someone who loved me enough I could use their love to become loveable.
I am reminded of this passage from chapter 6 in the Way of the Heart.
“In truth, you are like the one who has been given a perfect treasure, a priceless jewel. You have placed it into your pocket and forgotten you possess it. So you run around trying to look into everybody else’s pocket.”
I cannot find the love I am in someone else. There is only one place to look and that is within. If I don’t see it then I need to remove the blocks to its presence.
I remember toward the end of my marriage thinking how miserable I was. I felt trapped in a relationship that was never going to work and that caused me only misery. When the relationship was new it seemed like the answer to my prayers. He seemed like the answer to my prayers. Eventually it seemed he quit answering my prayers and then I was not so happy. I tried to change his behavior; I tried to change my behavior; I tried to change the relationship. Nothing worked for me and that is when I began to feel trapped and wanted out. I was not trapped by my husband or the relationship. I was trapped by my decision to look outside myself for the answer. I couldn’t find the answer there and didn’t know what to do or even what was wrong. I wasn’t really trying to escape from him; I was trying to escape from myself.
Jeshua says that I cannot possess love until I set it free. I have tried to make love into something small, something I can control and direct. I want to find it in some special person, and take it as mine. I want love to look a certain way and when it fails to look that way I feel cheated. I also feel afraid because it seems so easy to lose love. After all, if I can control love and direct it, I can also lose control and it can be taken from me.
Can I free love to simply be itself? Can I get out of the way and let love live me rather than me trying to control love? God is Love and I am created Love. If I will let go of my grip on an idea of what love is and what it looks like, Love will simply flow through me. Then I will not feel the need to get love from someone else because I will be love. I won’t be afraid of losing love when someone leaves my life because they will not take love with them. How could they? I am love. They are love. Love simply is and it cannot be lost.
Lesson 6 Feeling Is The Doorway To Love and Freedom
Inspiration
Deny not the role of feeling in this dimension, for feeling is everything! …Feeling – unbridled, unblocked, unobstructed feeling – is the doorway to that Love that sets you free.
Therefore, when you say, “I don’t want to feel this,” rest assured you are truly saying, “Yes, the doorway to the Kingdom of Heaven is right in front of me, but if you think I’m going to open it, you are crazy!”
What I learned
This is a section that makes me uneasy. I have never been comfortable with strong emotional responses. I would much rather think about how it would feel if I were to actually feel it. I am very comfortable describing how it would feel and using this as a substitute for actually feeling. I will argue that I see no point in feeling. I just don’t get this. I will bargain; I’ll do all the other stuff, I don’t care how hard it is, and I will just skip this one little part.
This morning while I prepared for my meditation, I noticed my resistance to this particular journaling. I wondered why this is such a problem for me and then I went into my meditation. Very quickly the word control came into my mind. I’ve been given this guidance before and not paid a lot of attention. It is time to make a new choice. I want to feel the presence of God, and yet, I have shut off feeling. I have judged everything and found it wanting. And since I have created everything in my experience, I find myself unworthy and am ashamed to be in the presence of God.
I still feel enormous resistance to the idea of feeling. As I write I hear the voice in my ego mind insisting that this is ridiculous. If I start feeling everything I will just stay in the drama. Isn’t that what the drama is all about, feeling rage, feeling self satisfaction when I am proved right, when I win? I thought this is what I am trying to get a way from. It is not very spiritual to feel these things. What if I like it too much and can’t remember how to get out? What if I don’t want to come back?
I have another Voice which gently reminds me that this is a judgment and my judgments are holding me prisoner, keeping me paralyzed in a state of non feeling, moving neither backward or forward. In my effort not to feel any more than is necessary, I have shut out both hatred and love. The ego has its clammy hand on my heart and it is clutched in the icy grip of fear. I seem to fear that if I accept rage and allow myself to feel it all hell will break lose and I may never get it back under control. What if I loved without limit, no boundaries? What if not one little thought or fear crept in to bar the flow of love? Would I drown in it? Would I be punished for daring to enter the domain of God?
I am willing to live differently now, Holy Spirit. I am willing to trust that I will survive my feelings and they will not crush me under the force of their power. I am willing to let go of judgment and accept that all things I experience are created by me and they are good. I will not pick and choose among my experiences, but will trust myself because I trust the One Who created me. I am willing to release all fear to the Holy Spirit to be transformed. I do not know how to do this. Show me my part.
As Jeshua says, I say: I am now committed to Love. Bring on whatever I must experience to bring up from the depth – the places where I’ve hidden it within me – every obstacle that must yet be dissolved by the light of the grace of perfect Love. Even as I make this commitment, I feel fear. My thought is, I don’t want to give up this peace I feel now. And I hear the Voice tell me that I don’t know peace. I only know the absence of feeling, and it is taking all my energy to hold back feeling. This is not peace, but a pale, pale shadow of peace. I can have real peace if I let go, release the control that is not really control, anyway.
And, yes, Jeshua I will do whatever I can for my part “to open up those places, to feel those places, to embrace those places, to love those places, to claim those places as wholly self created.” I trust that I can surrender into feeling and that it will not destroy me, that I can feel and yet at the same time, choose love. And as I let go of the fear of feeling, the fear of experiencing my creation, that which I was using to block God will be let go.
Lesson 6 Only Through Feeling Do You Awaken
Inspiration
Feel what you have created as a substitute for the truth. Own it, look upon it, and then let it go.
What I learned
I practiced feeling yesterday, or rather I practiced noticing when I was trying to cut off the feeling and changing my mind. I see that I was equating peace with no feeling and trying to make myself peaceful. Like Love peace is not something I make. It is something I allow.
I also realized that fear binds me to the world, and fear of feeling is no different. If I am afraid of my feelings I am teaching myself that I am what I am not. What I teach myself is not discreet. If I am less than Christ in this way, I am less than Christ in all ways.
I want to experience myself as a body-mind. That is why I am here. I open to the total experience which is one of feelings. I step out of denial, out of fear, and own all that I have created. Then I decide what I would keep and what I would release.
Jeshua says: “All your experience will have become wholly acceptable to you. For it was by such experience that you were finally driven to want only the Truth.” And so I am newly determined to stop blocking my path to the Truth by blocking my feelings.
Inspiration
In the Way of the Heart, we will speak ever more directly and even more forcefully to you. For the time comes quickly when this planet will not be willing to tolerate untidy house guest that are not willing to vibrate at the frequency of being toward which the planet herself is preparing to move. Therefore, be not caught by coming home one day and discovering the landlord has changed the locks and you have not a place to rest your head.
What I learned
Jeshua makes it clear in The Way of Mastery that I have misunderstood the way “the world” is used. The world is my experience. This is created by me. Mother Earth and all universes was created through God and is of the same substance as am I. It “evolves” as do I. There is a place in the Course that speaks of Us creating the universe alongside God, but I cannot remember where that is. I wonder if someone else does.
There is a Jeshua CD that goes into more detail about the coming earth changes and is very interesting. It speaks of great upheavals in the earth itself as it makes these changes and I am reminded of the upheavals within myself as I am laying aside my ego thinking and am learning to accept knowing instead.
I was listening to The New Earth yesterday and Eckart Tolle mentioned the coming upheavals of the earth. He said that they have already begun. I think he must be referring to the hurricanes, tsunami, strange weather patterns, etc. Jeshua says that the more of us who move into peace the less difficult this stage will be.
Lesson 7 Birthing the Mind of Christ
Inspiration
When you give unto another that which alone is true, because all minds are joined, you have offered unto them the only gift that holds value. When you give another the truth – perhaps even without saying a word – because all minds are joined they recognize what has been offered and say to themselves, “The one before me knows the truth of me and is looking right through every one of my attempts to be less than who I am. Therefore, I see that it is safe to choose again.” That is when miracles occur.
What I learned
This is the only way to heal, and as I heal another I am healed as well. This is what it means to see with the eyes of Christ, or what is called Christ Vision. I was concerned for my son and asked the Holy Spirit how to pray for him. He told me to simply allow the love that I am to flow to my son. As I did this, I saw him as he truly is. In my mind I spoke to him of his perfection and it was like a cloud lifted from my mind. I was no longer fooled by his story. I knew who he was. Something shifted within me and I will never be the same. I will never quite believe in his story, my story, or anyone’s story in the same way I have before. There will always be the memory of this moment of truth to call me back to sanity.
Lesson 7 The Shadow of Fear
Inspiration
So what do you want? Creation or mimicry? Peace or the ability to simply drug yourself with triviality?
Also:
Give the body to God. God knows how to use it; you do not.
The whole of creation is waiting to move through me,
and I want to be aware of it. I want my experience,
my lived consciousness, to be blissfully absorbed in
observing the flow of Love through me.
What I learned
In this section Jeshua talked about the tiny shadow of a blade of grass to help me understand the powerlessness of the ego separation belief. While in the experience of the illusion it is easy to allow the focus to become so contracted that I fail to see the bigger picture. Just as the shadow of a blade of grass cannot affect the turning of the planet, the illusion of separation cannot affect creation, no matter how intently I focus on it.
It seems to be important that I fully experience this life I imagine I am living. That is how I use it as a tool to awakening. However, that does not mean I will benefit from giving it power. There is no power in the shadow of the single blade of grass in the center of the forest on a planet in a universe. Unless I give it some value and name it as powerful. The only way anything in the illusion, even the illusion itself, gain power is if I place value on it and thus give it power.
The way to undo that error is to notice it is going on and to decide differently. Jeshua says that my resistance to healing is a result of fearing that shadow. I think that if I accept healing the shadow will punish and crush me, and that it is in recognizing the utter laughability of such a belief that I learn to master fear.
My granddaughter, who is nearly two, turned on my hairdryer and the sudden noise and blowing air scared her badly. She came running into my arms so that I would save her from what she had done. It was funny to me because I knew there was no danger, but very serious to her because she believed in the danger. As I held her I realized that this is no different than my reaction to what happens in the illusion. I do something that seems to create a frightening effect. Then I run to the Holy Spirit or to Jeshua and ask for comfort and safety.
They must feel just as I did when I was comforting my granddaughter. They know that I am utterly safe and that the scary incident was meaningless. Never the less, I receive the love and comfort I need and if I ask, the Holy Spirit helps me see the incident differently. Enough of these incidents and I begin to get the bigger picture. I am creating my own fear. There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
Holy Spirit, I am willing to take a step back and allow you to show me how small and insignificant is this world of perceptions that I made.
Jeshua said: You will learn what it means to trust what is birthed of the heart. And you will arise and you will go forth without fear – with no story at all. You will accomplish whatever creativity wishes to express through you. And the whole while you will know that of yourself you do nothing, but the Father, through you, can do anything.
Could I be willing to give up my story and stop pretending that I, on my own, do and make? Could I be willing to know that there is no me, on my own? It is a little scary to think so. Holy Spirit, I am willing.
Lesson 7 Birthing the Christ Mind
Inspiration
As long as there is a trace of energy within you in which you are striving to get from any perceived thing or object around you what you are sure you lack inside yourself, you cannot know the love of Self.
You are busy birthing Christ!
What happens when that really occurs? First – and listen well – nothing will be unacceptable to you.
What I learned
Last night I called to me exactly what I needed to demonstrate today’s reading, and to emphasize it in such a way that I would not simply read through it and go on. I enjoyed my morning but failed to notice that I had to drive a long distance that day, so I got a late start. It put me on the road until 9 pm. I was very tired when I got to the hotel and when the clerk handed me the room key I was disappointed to see I was on the fourth floor. I made a comment about it and the clerk was defensive replying that he is not the one to assign rooms.
The toilet in my room was running and wouldn’t quit until I removed the top and jiggled something in the works. This had to be done every time it was flushed. When a train passed it was like I could feel it shaking my bed. There was some kind of loud noise that woke me. It seemed that there was one thing after another and I was feeling resentful. I stay here often and I imagined myself telling them that you would think they could do better for a dependable customer like me.
While this was happening I did notice what was happening in my mind. I realized I was judging and that it was making me unhappy. This awareness is nearly automatic now because I have been practicing it for a long time. And the simple awareness is valuable because it helps cultivate the witness. But I was unable to sustain the idea of releasing judgment. It made for a restless night.
This morning when I read this section I had to laugh at myself. How perfect last night was! It presented me with a clear example of not allowing. It helped me to see the effects of judging rather than allowing. I revisited last night in my mind and thought about how different my experience of it would have been if I had simply allowed. The long drive had given me a chance to listen to more of The New Earth on CD which was very helpful. I could have simply accepted the trip and not judged it at all in which case I would have been fully grateful for my quiet time with Eckhart Tolle. I wonder how much more open I would have been to his words if my mind had not been crowded with resentment and resistance to what is.
When the hotel clerk assigned me my room allowance would have cleared the way for gratitude. This is a nice hotel with friendly personnel but that was lost to me in that moment because I was judging the placement of the room.
Jeshua says: Judgment is the opposite of forgiveness. It lives on the side of the fence with fear. Forgiveness lives on the side of the fence with Love, and only Love can heal this world.
I had been presented with an opportunity to heal when I walked into that hotel, but in my resistance, I declined that gift. Instead, my words invited the clerk to join me in judgment and resentment. When I meet someone it is an opportunity to remember who I am and to remind that one who he is. The Christ I am can greet the Christ he is, or, as in the case last night, the ego in my mind can call to the ego that is in his mind.
Each step of the way last night I was presented with the opportunity to accept and allow. I did not often choose it, but this morning is an opportunity to forgive last night and once again, an opportunity to accept last night exactly as it happened. In that acceptance I am able to feel gratitude for what it taught me. There are no small or ordinary moments in my life. They are each opportunities to awaken. In this way, no matter how different in form they seem to be, they are all the same.
[0] comments (301 views) |
[0] Trackbacks
[0] Pingbacks
Lesson 8
Lesson 8 Dropping Pebbles Into the Pool Of Awareness
Inspiration
While it is very true that you have selected out of aspects of creation to focus your attention on, yet underneath – in the depth of the wave that is unseen by your physical eye, unseen by your conscious awareness or your day-to-day mind – you have remained in perfect communication with all of creation.
You are, therefore, in relationship with all created things, and there is a communication that occurs without ceasing. Imagine being able to look into the air of your planet and to literally see the radio waves, the television waves, and all the electrical waves that keep bouncing back and forth across your planet. This is what you swim in daily. Your consciousness pervades this field of vibrations.
What I learned
Slowly, lesson through lesson, Jeshua is re-introducing my self to my Self. I am rising above the little mind to become the witness and in so doing. I am learning to see at life from a broader perspective. This perspective places me, not in the world, but, rather, the world in me. It is a perspective from which I continually fall as the world compels my attention, but one to which I return again and again. Sometimes the view is so vast and so beyond anything I had ever imagined that my heart races to think of it, and I have only glimpsed some small part! What is clear is that there is perfect communication with all that is. I am not, I never could be, alone, separate, small, or helpless. I could never be stuck. I could never be confused or uncertain, or full of self doubt. All that is, is in my mind at all times, and when I am unaware it is, quite simply, because I do not wish to be aware.
I have practiced this diminished awareness for a long time and am resistant to the truth. I am broadening the scope of my conscious awareness a little at a time to allow my self to adjust and not become too fearful. The following exercises and the encouraging words from Jeshua, are opening my mind to the truth that is true always, and showing me a long forgotten vision. I have taught myself, through maintaining a very narrow perspective, that I am a small, separate being rising for a brief period to suffer awhile and then to die, and all the time I am in constant relationship with all of creation. I have simply chose to turn my awareness from all of that. Daily, I practice changing my focus, broadening my focus, and a little at a time, I allow into my awareness more and more of what I am. And what I am has always existed and always will.
Each time I have a thought that I am in trouble, that I cannot do something I want to do, that I wish, or that if only, I am further contracting my awareness. I am teaching myself that I am something I am not. Life offers me everything and I say. “Oh no, I only want this one little thing, maybe that little thing as well. Take from my vision everything else.” And the world complies because that is what I asked of it. And so I sit here, ruler of a vast kingdom, dressed in rags, hungry and cold and wishing I could be free from my prison of littleness, wishing others would stop hurting me and taking from me the little I had thought to claim.
In these following lessons Jeshua is offering me ways to take some small simple steps out of this prison. To take them I must first recognize I am imprisoned. Even in the brief moments when I feel prosperous and powerful, I am still imprisoned within the imagined boundaries I have set for my kingdom. If I do not recognize that I am always in communication with all of creation, I have imprisoned my mind.
I must also recognize that I have placed myself in this prison of lack and I hold the key to unlock the door. This means giving up my favorite crutch; blame. No one put me here. No one holds me here. Not the person who mistreated the little girl I was, not the boss who fired me back when, not a slow metabolism, or bacteria invading the body. If something makes an appearance in my kingdom it did not batter down the walls to do so; it came invited. I communicated the desire to experience its effect and so there it was. There is no other possibility. There is no way it just happened, or was done to me. Always and only I did it to myself because I wanted the experience.
It is essential that I take full responsibility because it is pretending that someone or something else is responsible that are the bars to my prison. I seem to change the view from the prison window from time to time as I allow into my awareness better, or worse, illusions, but even a pretty prison is still a prison. And shifting dramas can entertain only for so long. Holy Spirit, I am ready to stop pretending I am flotsam tossed upon the waves. I am ready to stop pretending I did not make this and have no way out of it.
Already I have begun to express this desire as I refuse to fall unresisting into ego fears as I have so often done in the past. I am willing to consider that I am not the flotsam being blown by an unknown wind, but rather that I am directing the wind. I ask for help in learning to accept my long denied responsibility. I will pay close attention to what I am bringing into my life. I ask that you show me the broader perspective. Please show me what I could be experiencing. I am ready and willing to be corrected. I am ready to quit playing small. I am ready to drop some new pebbles into my pool of awareness.
Lesson 8 You Only Experience What You Have Chosen to Create
Inspiration
You are a web of relationships out of which you have selected certain pebbles – whether they be thoughts or perceptions or experiences - and you have dropped them into the still clear pool of your awareness in order to create even more ripples. Then, you have chosen which ones will have the greatest value for you. These you lock in to your being and they become your emotional field. The emotional field is the first level of crystallization of the body.
What I learned
Jeshua has drawn a very clear picture for me with this metaphor. I can easily imagine mind as a vast pool, and I see myself dropping into that still pool a thought which causes a ripple to move across the pool even as I drop in another thought which creates its own ripples, some which join with or interact with the ripples from the previous thoughts. They are joined by the ripples from other thoughts, from my perceptions, from my beliefs.
Some of those ripples make only a small disturbance within the pool of my awareness because I do not give them much of my attention, but some of them seem to make small waves and last a long time. This is because I have placed value on those beliefs or those thoughts. They make a deeper impression on me and so I call more of the same to myself. No wonder Jesus told us, through A Course in Miracles, that we are too tolerant of mind wandering. He told us that we need to start paying attention to our thoughts. And here in The Way of Mastery he is telling us the same thing.
There are millions of thoughts, feelings, reactions, judgments, fears, and perceptions at anytime which come into my field of awareness, but it is up to me which ones I focus on, which ones I choose to give my attention to, and which ones I choose to value. In this way I make up my physical, third-dimensional reality.
At one time the pebbles I dropped most frequently into my pool and the ripples upon which I placed the most value were the thoughts which proved that someone else was to blame. And so my world took the form of attack and defend. Everywhere I looked someone was doing something which caused me grief. The world was full of victimizers and I spent all my time trying to protect myself and in trying to change and fix others so that I could finally be safe. It seemed terribly important that I keep this protection in place and so it was very valuable to me. Therefore I chose pebbles which supported it and so it became a never ending cycle of being attacked, defending through attack, and then doing it again. This was my life, and I created it through the thoughts and beliefs I entertained. As Jeshua says, I select what is going to make an imprint upon me.
At some point I made a different choice. I decided that there had to be a better way to live and so I dropped that pebble in and a new ripple was made. I gave it value and so chose like pebbles such as “This was not done to me, but was chosen by me. There is no one to blame.” I chose forgiveness thoughts such as, “I forgive you for what you have not done.” As I chose these thoughts more and more my creation became more peaceful and happy, and I learned to value these ripples. Soon they became the predominant ripples in my pool of awareness, and so I chose them more and more often.
What I learned is that it is absolutely necessary to own the pebbles I toss into my pool.
Jeshua suggests this thought:
I am the one who chooses the effects I experience.
I, alone, interpret all neutral relationships or experiences.
I, alone, place the value upon objects, things, thoughts, and belief systems.
I, alone, am the literal creator of my moment to moment experience.
This, as you can see, changes everything. … Never again can the energy of blame be projected from you to be dumped upon another.
He says: This thought, this one singular pebble dropped into the still pool of your awareness is absolutely essential if you would decide to awaken wholly.
I began changing the pebbles I dropped into the pool slowly and without fully realizing the magnitude of the change I was making. I started out with only a desire not to be in pain anymore. This began the change that made it possible for me to accept full responsibility for everything in my life and so to envision living an awakened life. What a pebble that is!
Lesson 8 You Are Not a Victim of the World You See
Inspiration
You can hold on to the hope that you are still a victim of the world that you see; that events hold some value in themselves that do not come from what you place upon them. And as long as you choose to deny the world, you cannot be free.
For the mind that chooses, in even a small part, to perceive itself as a victim of its world of experience, remains powerless.
What I learned
I am not a victim of the world I see is a familiar lesson. I have been studying this lesson for a very long time. Over the years I have peeled that onion until I am nearly to its core. I understand that I call to me everything that makes up my life. There is no one to blame and I waste my time looking for the guilty party. I also understand that my experience of my life is a choice. Never is the experience of it outside my ability to choose. There are no exceptions to either one of these facts.
I have also been practicing this lesson so I am generally willing to be fully aware of what I am choosing. Victimization is so pervasive in the ego thought system that I have not yet been able to move completely out of it, but I tend to notice when I am in it. I can then give my willingness to seeing the situation differently and so become stronger in my belief that I am never a victim of the world.
Sometimes victimization is not so obvious and I have to be very alert to its more subtle forms. Once I begin to look, however, it shows itself. For instance, this morning I checked my bank account to see if my commission check was in it yet. Since I get paid commissions on my accounts and they vary from month to month, I never know how much money I will make. Generally it is within a certain range, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. About once a year it is much lower than usual because it is affected by the seasons as well as other things.
This month turned out to be a small commission month. It is always a shock to see such a small check deposited in my account, and it brings up for me my fears of not being able to support myself, my belief in lack. At first I just felt the unease and move on since it is not going to devastate me, but then I realized that not to look at this with the Holy Spirit would be a lost opportunity. So once again I am able to look at my belief that I am a victim of the world I see. I think I can only be happy if I make a certain amount of money so I believe my happiness is dependent on my paycheck. I think I am safe only if I am financially secure and so am victim to the world of finances. I think that I am worthy only if I am successful in my job and the measure of success is the size of my commission check, and so when it is small I feel less than.
Whew! It is amazing how thoroughly I still believe in victimization. No matter how much I reason with myself that this is just one month out of twelve and that I still have enough money and will not starve or even be truly uncomfortable, I still feel like a victim. And my ego mind starts frantically searching for the responsible party. I notice uncharitable thoughts about my competitors and customers who quit buying. I notice thoughts about my boss and my company that are wild attempts to find them responsible. I even notice angry thoughts toward the people I owe money to as if my discomfort is their fault for wanting their money. In my fearful mind I see mother nature as working against me. I sell chemicals for water treatment and this rainy month has meant far less water used and so far less chemicals used.
At one time I would have felt the panic, looked for someone to blame and focused my attention there. Now I just notice what is going on in the ego mind. I notice the fear, the blame, projections, and anything else that pops up. I notice it and ask the Holy Spirit to show me another way to see. I notice and become willing to allow all of it. I notice and am willing to accept the situation just as it is. This is a very different way to be.
It is as if the thoughts and feelings wash over me and then drain away. I feel the emotions, but at the same time, I am watching and witnessing and that part of my mind is not involved in the emotional reaction. That part of my mind knows that I called to myself with my beliefs and desires exactly the circumstances I am experiencing. It also knows that seeing the situation as a problem and fearful was just a decision I made and is not the only decision available to me. The witness knows that this is a neutral event and that all of those emotions stem from my decision to give value to certain ideas and beliefs, including the belief that I protect myself when I make someone else to blame or when I give my energy to controlling the situation.
I get to decide how I want to be in this situation. I can stay in fear and see myself as victim to the world, or I can use this moment to remember the truth. And in fact, just noticing what is happening is helping me to wake up to the truth. This noticing is breaking the old cycle of thinking, and allowing new thought patterns to emerge. My day is filled with opportunities to do this and each one is a blessing if I care to use it as such.
Lesson 8 Creating as Christ
Inspiration
Can I begin now, to drop a different pebble into the still and infinite clarity of the pool of awareness that is what is alive about me always?
What I learned
I am learning to recognize the pebbles I don’t want. I notice when I am holding thoughts of judgment, fear, suffering, anger and limits. I see the ripples that form when I hold those thoughts in my mind. They appear as the circumstances of my life. I am willing to stop dropping those pebbles into my mind. I see that it takes vigilance to stay aware of my thoughts. It takes practice to notice the thoughts that I no longer want and to let them go.
One way that I speed this process along is to practice active and conscious creation. I used to practice with things, that is, choosing to manifest abundance in the form of certain relationships, money, health. It was good practice and helped me to realize that the same power with which I made ill health and other forms of lack could be used to make their opposite. But this form of manifesting falls far short of potential.
I am learning to unify my purpose and this simplifies my process. My one purpose is to awaken from the dream of separation, so each thing in my life is for that purpose. It either points the way to salvation, or shows me the need for healing. Now, instead of practicing tossing in pebbles which represent a desire for more money, I am tossing in pebbles that represent a desire to experience the abundance of my true nature. Sometimes this manifests as money or other forms within my story and sometimes not. It doesn’t matter.
Lack of any kind is the result of separation thoughts, the belief that I am no longer whole and that something is missing. A new car is not going to make me whole. As I consciously choose thoughts of natural abundance, thoughts that remind me of my true nature, I begin to experience the ripples, or the effects of those beliefs. Just as entertaining thoughts of lack create a life which reflects lack in many ways, holding thoughts of abundance create an abundant life.
When I think of abundance as an aspect of Love, then I understand its true meaning and my mind opens to the many ways it is expressing in my life. I have an abundance of friends and the love and support that friendship brings. I have an abundance of love which is expressed through my friends and children, but also through perfect strangers. The world is reflecting back to me what I know to be the truth of my nature. When this abundance is not my experience, I know that I am experiencing the effect of mistaken beliefs.
The point is, I am not a victim of the world I see. I am a creator because my Father created me like Himself. If I am creating something which does not make me happy, I am free to use my power differently. I am free to drop into my pool of awareness a different pebble and experience the effects of that one. As I am learning to live consciously, I am also learning to ask my Holy Spirit for guidance about which pebbles I choose.
Lesson 8 Creating Mastery
Inspiration
Mastery comes when fear has been completely dissolved. Fear is dissolved not by fearing it, not by hating it, not by judging it. But by being looked upon with perfect innocence.
Mastery is a state in which you have embraced yourself as a ceaseless creator and assumed complete responsibility for everything that comes into the field of your awareness without judging it, so that you can simply decide whether it is going to stay or be dissolved in its effects. Mastery is fearlessness. That is, you no longer fear the infinite, creative power of your perfect union with God. “I and my Father are one!” is one expression of mastery.
What I learned
Watching myself drop pebbles into the water and watching the ripples that are the effect of dropping that pebble in is a very helpful image. I am a visual person and so being able to see a picture of what is happening makes it easier for me to understand, and it also helps fix the idea in my mind. Now when I notice that I am giving attention to certain thoughts I automatically envision the rippling effect of those thoughts.
Yesterday my son was talking to me about some financial difficulties he is having and I noticed that I was feeling anxious. As I looked I paid attention to my feelings and the thoughts and beliefs behind those feelings, I realized that I was experiencing “yesterday’s” ripples. In the past I taught myself, through placing value on certain ideas, that it is my job to fix things and especially when it concerns my children. Focusing on that belief, that is, entertaining thoughts about what I should be doing to fix his problem is like tossing in the same pebble over and over, and so creating tomorrows which are just like today.
I looked at the effects of yesterday’s choices without judging them. I decided that I no longer desire them. I was not wrong for having them; I just don’t want them anymore. I asked the Holy Spirit for new thoughts, new beliefs that I could toss into my pool of awareness. I had the thought that Toby is calling to himself what he most needs to learn a particular lesson. I even saw clearly what that lesson was and how his situation today is going to lead him to an awakening of his own.
It was just a momentary flash of insight, but it helped me to reinforce the new thought. For a moment I saw Toby, not as my child in need of my help, but as a creative force, making this and making that, then deciding which creation he favored, coming to his own “aha!” moment. If he feels great discomfort right now that is good. It is helping him realize that limitedness is not a belief that he wants to keep.
After all, I just experienced that very same thing. The anxiety I felt when Toby expressed his concerns about his financial situation was uncomfortable for me. But it was that discomfort that called my attention to the belief I am holding that says I need to fix Toby. I am still experiencing the effects of those ripples. Even as I write this I feel the tug of those old beliefs. My ripples go on until they lose their momentum, but I don’t have to be upset by their effects. I can see them for what they are and use them to practice a new way of thinking. They only upset me when I judge them.
[0] comments (249 views) |
[0] Trackbacks
[0] Pingbacks
Lesson 9
Lesson 9 All Events are Neutral
Inspiration
All events are neutral. You are the one that places the value upon it.
What I learned
All events are neutral. Cancer is neutral. My friend calls me an unkind name; that event is neutral. I get fired; that event is neutral. My child dies; that event is neutral. The ego mind which names these things and so gives them different values, screams out that I must be insane. Cancer is not neutral it says. Cancer is horrible, painful, deadly. Getting fired is frightening. What would I do if I got fired? How would I feed myself? Where would I live? My child dying is neutral? My child dying would be so catastrophic that I don’t even want to think about it much less talk about it.
And yet, all things are neutral. I give them all the meaning they have for me. I read an article once in which the author was quoting some people who were fighting cancer. Some of them said that it turned out to be a gift in disguise and helped them to live a better life. Someone else said that it really pissed him off to hear people say that having cancer turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to them. How could some people have such completely different experiences of the same disease? It is because cancer is a neutral event. Each gave it all the meaning it had for them.
Even a child dying is a neutral event. If a child in Bangladesh dies of starvation it is a neutral event. If my child dies it is not a neutral event. That is because I gave the meaning to those events and I have not awakened to Universal Love yet. I still think that some children are more special than other children. I still think that the horrible pain I would suffer at the loss of my child is the effect of lost love. Obviously it isn’t since love is the same regardless of where I look and love cannot be lost. I must not be feeling love for my child, but something else. What I have done is placed value on having this precious body-mind in my life and so have given it special meaning. In truth, it too, is a neutral event, and so its death would be a neutral event.
Inspiration
The events, then that you experience are always neutral. What you see occurring in the world around you remains neutral until you make the decision what it will be – for you. You will name it and, therefore, you will define it. When you define it, you call all of the associations of that to yourself.
This is why I once taught it is very wise to forgive seventy times seven times. It was for a very selfish reason. If one wrongs you and you spend your energy convincing them that they have wronged you, that you have a right to be angry and to be attacking in any way, you call to yourself - even into the cells of the body - the energy of conflict, judgment, war, death disease, unhappiness and separation instantly!
What I learned
What I am trying to do with this is to simply remember that the event is neutral. How I experience it depends on the definition that I give it. If I don’t like how I feel when I experience the situation then I ask the Holy Spirit to show me a different way to see it. I ask Him what He sees, how He defines it.
Lesson 9 Look with Innocence on What You Value
Inspiration
Where can freedom be experienced, save within a consciousness that has learned how to transcend the contraction of fear? And fear is the result of your attachment to the values you have placed upon the events you experience, which are made up of events, persons, places, and things. All of these are actually just events.
What I learned
Why is it that some things which happen in my life are easy to see as neutral events, and others are nearly impossible for me to view in this way? What I am learning is that the difference in these events is that within my mind I am giving value to something and this value creates within myself the notion that the event cannot be seen differently.
Jeshua says: Look well then, to see where you have placed a value, and insisted that that value be unshakable. I place value on my relationship with my children. I think to myself that if something happened to them I would be devastated. If something happened to my relationship with them I would experience a great sense of loss. I place value on my job and see it as my salvation from poverty. If I lost my job I would feel intense fear. I place value on the healthy functioning of my body and if it became terribly sick or damaged, I would be afraid. I have noticed in the past I have placed value on having my body be whole and thinking about losing part of it caused fear. (The symbolism in that one is pretty clear.)
Then Jeshua says: Be careful what you decree. Look to see where you are emotionally enmeshed with the value you have placed upon anything or anyone. He says look at all relationships, the one with my children, my money, or my body. All of these relationships are neutral events but when I place value on one of them they no longer feel neutral for me. My emotions get involved and fear becomes part of the relationship. Now I believe my happiness exists outside myself and so can only fear the relationship will change or end and thus affect my happiness.
Jeshua says: Every web of relationship comes to you perfectly neutral. You decree it by naming it and defining it. So my relationship with my children came to me perfectly neutral and then I defined it by naming it. They are my children and I am their mother. What does that mean to me? What is my definition of this relationship? This relationship is very complex in my mind and influenced by what I was modeled as child by my parents. It is influenced by what I learned from TV sitcoms, by what I read in Parenting Magazine, what I learned from Dr. Spock, from Mr. Rogers, from my friends. My definition of this relationship is not my own, but a hodgepodge of influences I have never bothered to examine.
I have been given pebbles and simply accepted them without question, tossing them into the pool of my awareness and creating the effects which are witnessed in my relationship with my children. I have been creating; I must create because I was created a creator. But it has been unconscious creation. It is this blind acceptance of values that causes so much trouble when children grow up. How then do I function as their mother? All the rules change and I am left with the same values I decided on when I defined motherhood, and no way to be that mother. This is why it can be so confusing and painful when the relationship changes.
What if I accept that my relationship with my children isentirely neutral? I hardly know how to think of this? How would I know how to act, what to feel? I notice that Jeshua talks about being emotionally enmeshed with the value I place on anything or anyone. He also talks about insisting the value be unshakable. So let me revisit the relationship I have with my grown children. I will use my relationship with Toby so that I can get very specific and understand this. When Toby was young I defined my relationship as mother. Being his mother meant that I kept him from hurting himself. I told him what was safe and what wasn’t. I set rules and he had to follow them. He learned to look to me for guidance and to think of me as wise.
Now Toby is grown. When he calls to share his life with me and tells me what he is doing, if I cling to that old definition of our relationship I am going to start telling him what he should do and how he should act. He is not going to look at me as his guiding light, but see me as interfering. What used to feel loving and comforting will now feel insulting. He will not call me so much, and he will stop sharing deeply because he doesn’t want to hear that I have no faith in his judgment. If I continue to cling to the old definition I will begin to feel hurt and abandoned. I will resent his behavior and feel lost because I no longer have his attention. I will feel at times, angry, and at other times, depressed. I will feel confused.
Jeshua says: Here is the doorway to wisdom. Do not create unconsciously and then just walk away. But learn ceaselessly from your creation. For in this way you begin the process of dissolving the creation of an un-enlightened being and you begin to build the creation of a Christ – here and now, in this moment.
I can start paying very close attention to my relationship with Toby. I can notice how it feels. I can become aware of the thoughts and beliefs, the definitions I have imposed upon it and decide if I want their effects to continue in the future. It requires vigilance to do this, and it also requires that I accept that my relationship with Toby is perfectly neutral until I decide what it means. I can always decide differently. I used to toss in the pebble that said, “Toby is helpless without me.” Now I can toss in the one that says, “Toby is unlimited.” How would that affect our relationship? If I began to believe in his unlimitedness I would begin to express that when I spoke to him. How would that change our relationship?
I used to toss in the pebble that said in order for me to feel worthy my son must love and respect me. What if I tossed in the pebble that said God created me worthy and it cannot be questioned? How would that affect our relationship? If I was no longer coming to him with open hands hoping he would fill them for me, how would that change the dynamic of our relationship? I have the freedom and the power to define this relationship in any way I choose, and I can change how I am in this relationship as long as I remember it is a perfectly neutral event, and do not become unwilling to see it differently.
Jeshua reminds us that we are creators and asks what it is we will create in each moment. He says: Far beyond the great thrill of the magic of creating events or objects in third dimensional reality are the qualities that you create, such as peace, unlimitedness, forgiveness, compassion, and wisdom. These too, are creations. What am I willing to create right now in my relationships with my children? I can create peaceful unlimited relationships if I am willing to let go of old values and old definitions. I can only do that if I remember that all events are neutral.
Lesson 9 The Power of Your Thoughts
Inspiration
Never, ever believe that your thoughts are neutral. I said earlier that events are neutral but your thoughts are not. For your thoughts literally are imbued with the power of creation. They do not create neutrally. That is, every thought reverberates a quality of vibration that spreads out from you, touches the shore of manifested reality, and comes back to you. That is what you experience as the positive and negative events of your life.
…as you expedience the reverberation, the coming back of the ripples you have sent out, in that very moment you are not a victim of what you have created. …You are free to choose how you will experience the effect of that ripple.
What I learned
Once again Jeshua speaks of my infinite freedom as God’s Son. Even in experiencing the effects of my own creations I am not a victim. I am free to experience them however I choose. And in choosing to view them differently I am creating a new tomorrow, one without the negative effects of today’s ripple. I watch today’s ripple play itself out, but I watch it with love, fully embracing it as my creation, knowing it does not change who I am. And, as Jeshua says, as I embrace it and transmute it I am already engaged in a process of creating a whole different kind of vibrational ripple that will create my tomorrows.
I am still experiencing the effects of a certain ripple that I caused. As I sit here feeling itchy from poison ivy I sometimes think how miserable I am and how much I hate poison ivy. As quickly as I notice this thought I realize that it has its own vibrational quality, and it is not one I want. So I choose again. I become willing to see the mystery of creation and to embrace it fully. I remember that it is my intention to allow and accept. It is what it is. I feel the tension drain from my body and my mind dissolve into peace. How I experience the poison ivy episode is up to me. I am not a victim; not on any level.
Lesson 9 Five Minutes a Day – The Foundation of Mastery
Inspiration
Understand that the very body that seems to have a heart within it beating Life for you is the effect of decisions you have made. That the very chair that you are sitting on is the result of your attracting a web of relationships that is quite unique into your field of awareness called the physical universe.
Give yourself five minutes to practice choosing how you will experience sitting in a chair. Will you do so with a mind full of worry, or a mind full of peace?
Five minutes sitting in a chair as an infinite creator of exactly what you are experiencing in your emotional field. Just that. You might even want to play with what it would be like to sit in a chair as a Christ.
What I learned
At first I did not know how to sit as Christ. I still don’t, really, but I continue the practice and I notice that I am shifting slowly, but steadily. What seems to work for me is to spend time just being aware. Noticing how I feel, physically, mentally, emotionally. Because I am giving this quiet time to myself, I usually spend the first part allowing stuff to come up and asking the Holy Spirit to help me see differently, then I go into the actual meditation. I keep a card with useful prompts for those times when ego is most uncooperative. They help me to stay focused. After I spend a couple of minutes just bringing my awareness to my experience, I remind myself that I caused this. I chose this neutral corner of the universe to have this experience. I chose this family, these friends, this job. All of this and more make up the web of relationship that I experience as my life.
Then I delve into that feeling of being the cause of my experience. This is where I begin to glimpse the Christ within. I consider how I might want to experience this life I have created in the future. I see myself dropping those pebbles into the pool of awareness that is me. I envision new ripples, new effects and know that if I am responsible for my life thus far, I can become conscious of what I am creating.
I don’t do the same thing every time as I do not want it to become rote. Sometimes I practice being Christ by allowing the Love that is God, the Love that I am to extend from me and move into someone else. During this process if it becomes difficult to maintain my attention, I speak to that person, saying to them what I would want to hear. All of this is done in my mind where it is most helpful. When we speak to each other body to body, words are so imprecise that little of what is actually meant is conveyed. And how do you send Love to someone with words?
This is a work in progress. I wonder how others do this.
Lesson 9 Planting the Seed that Produces the Desired Result
Inspiration
And while others marveled at his good fortune, and while others were jealous of his good luck, the farmer always knew that no magic was involved. He merely followed in the footsteps of the wisdom given to him by God.
What I learned
For some reason the first 49 or so times I read this parable of the farmer and the seeds I just didn’t get it. Then finally, that 50th time it became so obvious to me that I just had to laugh at myself. He was just telling me that I am a creator and the quality of my creations will be entirely dependent on the quality of the thoughts with which I begin them.
This is the reason I am sitting for five minutes every day and establishing the quality of those thoughts by learning to think like Christ. Probably it would be more accurate to say that I am reminding myself what it is like to think like Christ. Then I spend another five minutes dropping pebbles into the pool of my awareness. Or planting only the highest quality seeds in my garden.
[0] comments (234 views) |
[0] Trackbacks
[0] Pingbacks
Lesson 10
Lesson 10 The Way is Easy and Without Effort
Inspiration
Here I am free.
Heaven is now. The past is passed away, and I choose anew.
This day, I commit myself to teaching only Love
by sharing only loving thoughts.
This one day, I will look upon each one that comes into my experience
And I will breathe deeply the presence of the Holy Spirit.
And I will look out through eyes transformed
by the simple acknowledgment of the truth:
All minds are joined, and I see not a stranger before me,
but one who walks as I walk, who feels as I feel, who longs as I long,
who is humbled as I am humbled, who prays for peace a I have prayed.
Therefore, I will give them what they seek.
And in that giving, I receive it.
What I learned
When I sit with this prayer and this commitment early in the morning, before the day’s seemingly endless stream of people appear to pass before me, I am deeply touched and inspired. In this quiet moment I understand my purpose and I am dedicated to it. As the day goes on I am challenged to keep this certainty fixed firmly in my mind and usually lose it before the day ends. But the next morning, I am given the opportunity to remember, once again, and in practicing it during the day, to make it more surely mine.
Jeshua, could there be any other purpose to my day? I cannot, at this moment think what it could be. Each person I meet today is another chance for me to acknowledge the truth and to know that I am One Whole Mind with no separate and opposing parts. This simple exercise feels sacred to me, and when the day ends I am newly astounded at how often I forgot my purpose. But I choose not to dwell on the forgetful moments, but rather to rejoice in those times when I chose to join. And so I end my day in forgiveness of my forgetfulness and it gratitude for the day I just lived and the gifts it brought me. And I pray that in my dreams the Holy Spirit will prepare me for the next day’s lessons.
Lesson 10 Acknowledge the Truth That Sets You Free
Inspiration
Therefore, the only question that a seeker of truth really truly need ask him or her self is this:
Would I know conflict or peace? Would I be right or happy?
What I learned
It is funny to me now but all the time the Course talked about freedom I had no real idea what it meant. I didn’t understand how it was defining freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? I know what I want now. I want freedom from conflict and I want freedom to live in peace. I will get this freedom as I give up the absurd notion that I must be right.
I embrace the thought that I do not know anything. I deny the thought that I will somehow win if I am right and someone else is wrong. I happily relinquish the truly insane thought that I prefer what I made over what God created. I gladly accept that I was wrong about that. I happily, no giddily happily accept that I was wrong about that!
It’s been interesting, terribly dramatic, sometimes exciting and even fun. I have played in the sandbox long enough to know that I want to knock down all my castles and go home. And I do not feel guilty about it. Like a child at the beach being entertained by imaginative play, I had fun but it was just play and now I’m done. I decree it and it is so.
Lesson 10 Commit to Awakening to the Peace Already Within You
Inspiration
The mind of an enlightened creator does not arise in the morning and say, “How can I survive yet another day in this world? In the morning, when an enlightened creator arises, the question is:
How this day might I extend the treasure of the good, the holy, and the beautiful?
How can I, right where I am, experience these treasures
even within the space and volume of this body?
How can I look lovingly upon what my physical eyes show me,
so that I discern or extract the good, the holy, and the beautiful,
and therefore, give them to myself?
What I learned
The overall message from this section is that salvation is a full time job and that my motivation is to escape the pain of living an unenlightened life. I have tried everything else and none of it has worked. Getting better jobs, making more money, being a mother, a wife, a friend. I have tried travel, music, books, all sorts of entertainment. None of it has made me happy. None of it was enough. I have tried changing so that I would be a better mother to my children, so that I would be a better wife, so that I could help others, but the reason I want to awaken is so that I can return to bliss. I have no doubt that this will be helpful to everyone I know and to those I don’t know, but I am not doing it for anyone else; I am doing it for myself. I know that we all return together, but each one has to do this. I cannot awaken for you, only for myself.
And I understand that this is not something I do in my spare time. It requires a full commitment. Everything I experience is an opportunity to awaken more fully. And that is all it is. In the past I thought that it was about living in the world and that I could also use it to help me wake up. Now I understand that it is about waking up and the world is just a classroom in which I learn, my body a useful tool. It has no other meaning, unless I give it some other meaning. When I choose to give it another meaning I am just distracting myself from my only purpose.
Teaching only love is part of the process, but that does not mean I have another purpose. Jeshua says: "By the world teach, I mean simply that you choose to express Love in each moment." As I undo what is not love, I express what is left which is Love. As I release what is not love and as I do this more and more then more and more there is nothing within me to express except love. My life becomes a teaching tool. What a splendid thought!
Lesson 10 Recognizing the Presence of Christ Within
Inspiration
Your Self is calling out to be recognized for what it is – an awakened master, the presence of Christ in you that would inform every step, inform every decision, inform the quality of your perception, inform the very nature of your forever-expanding, transparent consciousness. For it is your consciousness, alone, that can reach out and embrace all created things, until you literally realize all things have arisen from within you!
That is how big you are! That is how grand you are! Why? Because that is all you are! You are the ocean from which waves and waves of dimensions and worlds have arisen. That Mind is what you are required to let be in you, even as once it was within me, as I walked upon your Earth. Do not make it difficult.
What I learned
All of my life I have known only my self, have focused on only my self, and now Jeshua is asking me to recognize and live as my Self. How do I make this hard? It should be the easiest thing in the world to simply be who I am. Yet, I have only glimpses of the child of God I was created.
One way I make it hard is when I defend my self. I have been spending this week meeting with customers and explaining why my product has increased in price. I started with the idea that I would meet great resistance and that I would lose customers. I thought of many ways to defend my position. I planned and schemed. I felt fearful. I was conflicted and out of peace. I stopped my self and asked the Holy Spirit to help me see this differently.
He reminded me of my true purpose and I realized that these people are not just customers. They are not potential problems or the cause of my unease. They are my brothers, one with me, and part of my one whole Self. I remembered that this is not a stranger before me, but one who feels as I feel, one who longs as I long, and prays for peace as I have prayed. This changed everything.
Before I walked in to see each customer, I remembered how sacred this moment was and I asked the Holy Spirit to show me how to extend my treasure in this moment. I was no longer defending anything, but seeking only to experience my Self as part of their Self. I asked how I might join with them, how I might be helpful. Then I simply said what needed to be said, but I said it out of love and not out of fear. This changed everything.
Lesson 10 A Simple Practice
Inspiration
The way is easy and without effort:
I am already That which I seek. I need only allow it to guide me.
While this body lasts, I will allow it to be a communication device
that extends the treasure of perfect Love, perfect safety,
and perfect peace to all who enter my house.
And your house is your field of energy, the expanse of your energy.
What I have learned
What a wonderful prayer! I am being asked to add an intention to my daily meditation. I will ask how I can extend my treasure this day. Sometimes it will feel like a small thing. Sometimes it will seem like a real project. I am learning to ask and I am learning to follow that guidance. I learning that it is my joy to follow my guidance.
I need a lot of practice. After reading something Regina wrote, I recently set an intention to ask the Holy Spirit what he would have me do next. My intention is to do this all day long. Sometimes I do, but mostly I do not even remember that I forgot. I can go for days not even aware that I had that intention. I am going to add this prayer to my morning meditation and maybe that will remind me of my desire to follow the Holy Spirit’s lead.
Lesson 10 Celebrate Your Rebirth as Christ
Inspiration
Death has occurred, and now the birth of Christ is at hand.
Father, I accept fully your will for me. Your will is only
that I be happy and use time to extend my treasure.
Now, I receive the warmth of your Light and your Love.
What I learned
In the last section, Jeshua asked me to add something to my five minute meditation. He asked me to look at the circle of my journey and see myself completing it. He asks me to do this for seven weeks and then to reaffirm that commitment to releasing everything unlike Love in myself on that last day. Jeshua gives me a simple ceremony to mark a new beginning. Until now I have been journeying to the kingdom and now I am preparing to journey within it. He compares this to graduate school.
I did this process last year. Spiritual ceremonies like this one can be very helpful in moving my mind from the everyday stuff of my life into the sacred life. Each morning for seven weeks as I sat as Christ I imagined myself taking another step around that ancient circle of life in which I have experienced all there is to experience. I saw myself coming toward the end of the journey. I imagined myself reborn. Then on Christmas morning I greeted the day as the sun rose and I made my commitment to Self. I will dedicate myself to my Awakening. I dedicate my time to releasing all that keeps me from knowing myself fully as Christ.
[0] comments (210 views) |
[0] Trackbacks
[0] Pingbacks
Thu Oct 02, 2008
Lesson 11
Lesson 11 A meditation into the Heart of Christ
Inspiration
Do not think on what you read, but allow it to pour through you, knowing that the vibrations of wisdom that these words carry will leave their trace upon you, without the least bit of effort on your part. You need only be as a lover to the Mind of God – opening, allowing, receiving – taking that which your Creator would bestow upon you.
What I learned
This is a beautiful, very effective guided meditation. I choose not to fall easily into meditation and often wind up spending most of a meditation in battle with voices in my head as I try to settle my mind. It was such a gift to me when I heard the words of Jeshua as he told me not to think but to allow what I hear to pour through me. I was able to stop caring about the voices and I stopped trying to “do” something with what I was hearing. I visualized the words falling over me like a gentle rain, and I imagined them (or rather what they stand for) being absorbed into the pores of my body and through the energy of my being so that they change the very vibratory level of my energy and even my body.
[0] comments (238 views) |
[0] Trackbacks
[0] Pingbacks
|