The Key to Happiness

“You made this up.  It is a picture of what you think you are; of how you see yourself… Have you not wondered what the world is really like; how it would look through happy eyes?  The world you see is but a judgment on yourself.  It is not there at all.” – A Course in Miracles; Chapter 20, Section III, 4:3-4, 5:1-3

A friend recently asked me about the practice of forgiveness as the Course teaches it.  It’s not really forgiveness as the world thinks about it, because it’s not about anything ‘out there’ at all.  It’s a mental process, because everything I experience is in my mind, and then projected outward.  And while our minds appear to sleep, there is a great need for reminders that the nightmares we project have no real effects.  “What God has created follows His Laws, and His alone.  Nor is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results of any other source.” (ACIM 20, IV, 3:6-7)  This means our insane projections, though scary, can have no real effects.  Of course, as long as we’re asleep, we’re stuck in a nightmare thinking it’s really happening.  So forgiveness is the way out of the dream.

Forgiveness as the Course teaches it makes use of the Holy Instant, the “little breath of eternity that runs through time like golden Light that is all the same; nothing before it, nothing afterwards.”  The reality of God and the Holy Spirit (which is our reality) is always, now, and forever.  “The past takes nothing from it, and the future will add no more.  Here then, is everything.  This gift returns the laws of God to your remembrance.” 

Because our reality in God is already perfect, whole, and complete, there really is only one purpose to everything… to awaken from the dream we made up.  So the Course reminds us repeatedly that forgiveness is our only function.  Don’t bother judging the seeming situation, since trying to judge a dream is insane… it’s all made up.  Practice forgiveness, and wake up to Perfection.  Practice forgiveness, and be Happy.

“God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.” --  A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 101

Here is an example of how the function of forgiveness unfolds in the mind.  Use your own words, and be specific and thorough with each individual person, situation, or feeling you are examining.  Once you experience the deep peace this process brings, don't try and fill the clean and open space with concepts and stories again.  Remember that it’s the false concepts and beliefs in your mind that project as the world you think you see.  So step back and let Truth arise and lead the way.  Ask the Holy Spirit whenever you need to make a decision.  BE peace.

This feeling (fear, anger, hurt, pride, jealousy, frustration, pain, hopelessness or whatever the unsettling emotion may be) that I feel toward and about you and this situation seems to be about:

(Take time to be honest about this, in detail)
 

I see that every aspect of this is a projection of my belief that I am separate from God and everyone and everything, which means I think I’m separate from this situation and from the All, the Everything that is God, which includes all Goodness and Love and Perfection and Completeness.  Because I think I’m separate, I’m projecting false images of conflict and pain and lack instead of radiating the Wholeness and Peace that I am.  I’m projecting false images of lack and limitation instead of radiating the perfect Love and Completeness that I am.
 

I see that it’s impossible to be separate from the Love of God, which is Everything and All.   I have never been separate and my fear is all made up and projected as false images.  Everyone and everything that seems to be involved is also eternally One with the Love of God, and so everyone and everything that seems to be in conflict is actually all Good and only Good, Perfect, Innocent and Complete.
 

And so I forgive myself and everyone and everything for what never even happened!  I let it go, and overlook all the seeming ‘evidence’ of lack and pain and suffering.  I look instead to the Holy Spirit, and I give all these images to the Holy Spirit to be dissolved in my perception throughout imaginary space and time.
 

I know that as I release these images to the Holy Spirit, they are completely undone throughout the dream (past, present, and future… which are all made up, too)... the false concepts and images dissolve in the Light like the dreams they are, and now I know none of it ever happened in reality.  All that remains is the Holy Instant of Light and Love.  There is only God, only innocence and peace, only the clean and open space of Spirit… the Light, Perfection, Peace, Love, and Joy that is our eternal Home. 
 

By being honest about our thoughts and feelings in this way, and giving them to the Holy Spirit, we let Truth correct all such errors in our minds (which is where it all appears to be happening!).  We can then step back and let our Wholeness (holiness) lead the way, and the symbols and projections in the dream we call life begin to reflect this Wholeness.  Innocence and Peace, Joy and Happiness… these are the Reality behind everything.  And forgiveness is the way to remember the Reality behind it all. 
 

“Forgiveness is the key to happiness.”  A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 121
 

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Give All to All

"Only those who have a real and lasting sense of Abundance can be truly charitable.  This is obvious when you consider what is involved.  To the ego, to give anything implies that you will have to do without it.  When you associate giving with sacrifice, you give only because you believe that you are somehow getting something better, and can therefore do without the thing you give." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 4, Section II, 6:1-4

Whoa... this is really true, isn't it?  I pay my cable bill because I think I'm getting something for it.  I buy feed for the horses and dogs and cats because I think I'm getting a sense of satisfaction taking care of all these animals.  I give to my children because I think it gives me a sense of satisfaction and connection. 

Now the Course is not telling us to stop paying our bills or giving to our children.  But it is pointing out the way the egoic mind works.  Our conditioned self only gives to get.  Because getting is what the ego does to maintain the illusion of separate self, and to make sure guilt stays repressed and hidden.

"The ego never gives out of abundance, because it was made as a substitute for it.  That is why the concept of 'getting' arose in the ego's thought system.  Appetites are 'getting' mechanisms, representing the ego's need to confirm itself.  This is as true of body appetites as it is of the so-called 'higher ego needs'." -- ACIM; Chapter 4, II, 7:3-6

What is giving out of Abundance, then?  Abundance is an attribute of God, and therefore of our true nature since we exist as extensions of the Mind of God.  God has given us EVERYTHING, because God IS EVERYTHING... literally.  There is no other.  All means all.  So what exists that could be lost, or needed?  Giving out of Abundance is just being natural.  The Course gives the first teaching of the Holy Spirit as "To have, give all to all."  We know that we have because we have it to give. :-))

How do we make such a shift in perception?  How do we change our minds to such an extent?  Our self-concept, our egoic notion of a self, says we are limited, with limited resources, and only those that are careful with their resources have enough in this world.  In other words, our egoic notion of self-esteem is tied up with what we think we have acquired by what the Course calls the 'getting' mechanism.  "Self-esteem in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality, and is therefore temporarily less predatory." (ACIM; II, 4, 6:8)  So we think we have by getting, and temporarily think we are safe, as long as we don't have to give.  Ha!

True Abundance is the Awareness of God.  The overflowing of Being that is our True Self, living and moving and having being in God.  By learning to listen only to the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit... by learning to walk in the Awareness of God's ever-Presence... we come to realize we are the Abundance of Spirit.  Giving is the only natural extension of this realization, because all giving is mental, and of the mind.  We are pure Spirit, reflecting the Mind of God.

"To have, give all to all." -- A Course in Miracles;  Chapter 6, Section V: A

The Other

I remember years ago when I attended Loving Relationships Training with Sondra Ray.  She had us all looking for our personal lies.  If we could let that one lie go, she insisted, then all our false beliefs about ourselves and the world would fall away.  She used the image of a hand (the personal lie) holding a bunch of balloons (our beliefs about ourselves and the world).  If the hand is released, the balloons are too.  It's a great image.  However, the reason it didn't appear to work for anyone for any length of time might be because it was based on belief.  A belief about beliefs is still belief.  What lies behind all beliefs?  What is the original lie?

What I mean is that Truth, being True, just IS.  It doesn't need belief to BE.  Who We Are in Reality must be True, because when every thought and belief is released, I Am.  The only accurate statement I could make about this is that I Am Awareness ItSelf.   So are you.  What has been termed the Christ of Our Being is Whole, with no other.  Oneness, Aware of ItSelf as I Am.

The original belief, the original lie that projects all other lies is that I am Other.  I am other than God.  I am other than you, or them, or it.  The Other belief is then projected onto the screen of the mind as a host of others, with a host of issues and problems and longings and sorrows.  The Other is never complete... how could Completeness be experienced in such a fragmented state?  When I am the Other, then everything is experienced as other.  Nothing is ever whole, never here, never complete.

A Course in Miracles tells us, "My function here is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made."  This is a way of taking back the responsibility for all the otherness we seem to experience, instead of the projected pretense that it's happening to us.  Once released, it's possible to return to the awareness of I Am, instead of I am with an otherly object.  In the Great I Am, there is no other.

When I recognize the Other in my life, I need only forgive and release.  Behind every seeming lies the perfection and holiness and beauty that we are... that I Am.  This is the Miracle.

"...Say, 'Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven' and you have said, 'I know what I Am'... " -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 3, Section VI, 11:8

Hoarding

"Hoarding: Amassing money or valued objects and hiding or storing it away, typically in a carefully guarded way." -- The New Oxford American Dictionary

"Hoarding: Gathering things together in the external. This is a vain effort to avert an imagined lack or shortage in the future." -- from The Revealing Word by Charles Fillmore

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." -- The Bible; Matthew 6:19-21

I didn't particularly want to write about this topic today.  It sort of chose me, as the topic of hoarding has been in my face lately, and there are no accidents in consciousness.  So I am looking more closely at the literal and metaphysical teaching here, because I know it's always pointing me to what is True.

As many of you know, I run an animal sanctuary on my farm.  I'm very careful not to take more animals than I can care for, and I've largely outgrown the notion that it's my job to save all the creatures of the world.  So I don't have the hoarding mentality of some animal rescue workers.  But recently a no-kill shelter nearby was shut down and all the animals taken because they developed a hoarding mentality... in other words, they kept taking animals even when they had no room for them.  They thought that saving their bodies meant something.  And I used to feel that it was about saving bodies, too.  

Now, I do stop for every turtle I see on the road.  And if I see an animal in need, I do my very best to find help for it.  If someone calls me with an animal that has been abandoned or abused and I don't have room, I help them find someone who does.  But the caring for these beautiful creatures has taught me that bodies don't mean so much... they come and go.  But the spirit, the divine idea of each creature is so perfect and permanent.  The divine idea of every animal that's ever lived or died here remains, in all its perfection.  Their being is my being.  Their spirit nurtures and teaches my spirit.  We are quite literally One.  I've come to realize that real Sanctuary is of and for the Spirit.  It can't be lost, nor can it ever be lacking.

Hoarding shows up in so many ways.  We are a culture of hoarders.  Our medical communities hoard bodies... keeping a body alive becomes more important than the Reality of Being, the Spirit that is the essence of each person.  It's easy to see this kind of hoarding in nursing homes and hospitals.  

Our financial communities hoard money, of course.  But not just money.  What is hoarded is the destructive idea of competition and winning, of having or being more because of what is accumulated.  Again, the form of hoarding is pretty secondary... it's the thought that I am more, or validated, or better because I've collected some paper or metal or some iou's.  We're like a culture of little children playing a really bad game of Monopoly.  And our sports and media cultures hoard everything from celebrity to information.

Even those of us without much money manage to hoard.  We may hoard friends or relationships, memorabilia from our families, old photographs, old books or writing or ideas that we think we might want to look at 'later.' We may hoard old musical instruments or guns or tea cups or anything in the name of 'collecting.'  I've seen street people with shopping carts full of hoarded junk that they think they might need sometime.  And those of us with clutter have to acknowledge that clutter is a form of hoarding.  If we're not hanging on to the clutter for some reason, why haven't we cleaned it up?  What is it for?  What is any of it for?

A Course in Miracles says that 'more' is the motto of the human ego... and that it doesn't even matter more of what.  Hoarding is the nature of the self that thinks it is a body.  And I've come to discover that the worst form of hoarding is the hoarding of concepts, because we don't see ourselves doing it.  We tell the same stories, using the same concepts of self, over and over and over... and these concepts we hoard are always false ideas about a self that's in a body.  We're carefully taught these stories, these concepts, by parents and teachers and media.  But we're willing slaves to this hoarding... we eagerly accumlate the false sense of identity it gives us, even when that identity is tied to a seemingly miserable or flawed self.  We hoard these false self-concepts because we think it's who and what we are, and that we would somehow be lacking existence and life without them.  That this fear is largely unconscious makes it the most insidious form of hoarding.

So by now we've all reached the same conclusion... that simply living in this world means we're hoarders.  We're all trying to accumlate a sense of self that is safe, healthy, financially sound, and autonomous... and in our efforting, we'll settle for a self that is fairly safe, sort of healthy, getting by financially, and isolated from other scary people.  It's this very efforting that Jesus referred to in the above quote from Matthew.  It's this very efforting that hides the Presence of the Kingdom from our Awareness, right here and right now.

A safe and autonomous self can never be.  Only bodies appear separate, and we are not our bodies.  Where would a separate self be, in Oneness?  Nothing and nowhere.  But our Self, our infinitely unique and varied Self, is always safe and whole and uniquely expressing, in and as each of us.  We are Spirit, and we are One, and we are individually unique and precious in this Oneness.  Animals can be animals and still be One with me.  You can be uniquely you and still be my Self.  I can let go of literally everyone and everything and still be One with it All.  Nothing is lost or lacking in Oneness, ever.  This is the nature of our God-Self, and of the Kingdom.  And this awareness is the end of hoarding, and the beginning of our Real Life in and as Spirit.  

"Take no thought, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'Wherewithal shall we be clothed?'  But seek ye first the Kingdom of God... and all these things shall be added unto you." -- Matthew 6:31-33

The Two Selves

In working with clients and with prayer requests (and with my own life) I have observed a persistent phenomenon that I will call the two selves.  This seems to be the delusion that all who walk the earth share.  We believe (and have a lot of sensory evidence to validate this belief) that we are human, weak, lacking, and subject to suffering.  At the same time, we believe we have infinite potential, that we are created in the image of the Divine.  So we all have a kind of split personality... there's the imaginary historical self that thinks we're a product of heredity and hierarchy and environment, that sees flaws in ourselves and every other living thing, that judges, criticizes, and condemns.  And there's the quiet true Self that loves and blesses, that takes joy in life, that gives of itself naturally and freely, that knows wholeness and freedom and love are all words for the same thing.

If you were suffering from multiple personalities, a good therapist would find a way to help you become unified again... because a house divided against itself cannot stand.  So spiritually, our task in healing and awakening is always a return to unified consciousness, to Oneness.  This is enlightenment... the realization that we are not two selves. 

To say we're created in the image of God is to perpetuate this split.  To say that we're a shadow, an image, a mere potential, is to put our becoming into the future, into perpetual process.  And where's the peace in that?  Where is the being?  If we are endlessly processing and becoming, we must still be incomplete, lacking in some way, still subject to suffering and failure.  This is the set-up we're born into.  It's a lose/lose proposition, and always has been.

There is good news.  We are not created in the image of a god... a mere shadowy image of some nebulous force that all are subject to.  We are living and moving and having our being in God, reflecting God, and nothing else.  Not a nebulous force that bosses us around, but the very Ground of our Being, and Source and Substance of Self.  There isn't anything but God. 

And what is God, my skeptical readers will ask?  GOD IS AN IDEA we share about the Source of all that is.  We can have false thoughts about this Source, but Source ItSelf can't be false.  We can have incorrect understanding of multiplication.  We might think that we can multiply ten thousand times a zero and still have ten thousand.  But the principle, the idea of multiplying anything with zero remains the same... it's always zero, no matter how you try to make it something else.  And anything multiplied by one always remains the same, remains itself.  Ideas are principles, and they are unchanging and true.  Thoughts are stories about ideas, they involve judgment, and can often be false, or at least only relative (two-sided, not unified).

Webster defines idea as "a transcendent entity that is a real pattern, of which existing things are imperfect representations."  Thought is defined as "the action or process of thinking, or something that is thought."  So we can say, as did Mary Baker Eddy, that GOD IS PRINCIPLE... the Idea that is the Ground of All Being, in Truth and in Love.  A Course in Miracles tells us that "God is Idea" and "Ideas leave not their Source." When we allow this transcendent Idea to take root, we realize that we cannot and have never left our Source.  We remain rooted and grounded in God.  And then our thoughts, our judgments and stories about the world begin to reflect the Truth of Being, rather than the weak and imperfect (and insubstantial!) image of self our stories have perpetuated up until now.   

We are not two selves.  This is the root of all our struggles.  No matter how we attempt to prove that our weak and human image of self is real, it's still multiplying by zero.  So take some time listen to the Real, the True, the God-Self that we all share.  It is very quiet, because It doesn't need to defend ItSelf, being wholly true and forever our Reality.  Thank God!

Love is Freedom

"Love is freedom. To look for it by placing yourself in bondage is to separate yourself from it." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 16, Section VI, 2:1-2

"Your self-deceptions cannot take the place of Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Part I, Review IV, 4:2

Have you noticed that everything about our lives is bondage? We're always struggling, efforting to do the right thing... or to avoid doing it. Same struggle. Or we're struggling to discover what the right thing is... or going unconscious to avoid discovering it. Or we're simply struggling and efforting to make our lives work the way we want them to. The right job, the right beliefs, the right body, the right mate, the right thoughts... how can we possibly know the freedom and grace of Love when our whole attention is focused on these ways of limiting ourselves, of placing ourselves in bondage? Can Love, which is infinite and unchanging, be dependent on any of these things and still be Love? Can Love, which is free of all limits, be dependent on person, place, or thing?

I notice this especially among my spiritual friends. Their limits and beliefs have morphed into spiritual principles, but they're still bondage, still limits on awareness. To think that your reality depends on your own thoughts and what you believe is a form of bondage, and no different than thinking that your job depends on your performance. How can what is infinite and unchanging be affected by you at all, one way or the other? This false sense of responsibility is simply another form of bondage.

A Course in Miracles reminds us that our reality is eternal and unchanging. We live and move and have our being in Awareness ItSelf, in Oneness without an opposite, in God, our true Self. Our individualities are infinite expressions of the One. We can't change who we are through our self-deceptions, anymore "than can a child who throws a stick into the ocean change the coming and the going of the tides." And yet our lives are dedicated to proving that we can. This is our bondage.

We seek for love through bondage in every aspect of our life. We think loving something means losing ourselves to it. We idealize those whose passions lead them to forsake all for their art or their work or their relationships... even when it's obvious they're prisoners of their own dysfunctions. We envy those with passionate interests and relationships... even though it's obvious how little light there is in them, and how much bondage. We place ourselves in bondage to diet and exercise and call it loving our bodies. Every obsession, every self-discipline is a form of bondage. Love is freedom.

Look at it this way... you are like an authentic masterpiece, a painting beyond price. But you're covered with layers of ghastly color and veneer. The truth of you remains hidden by all that appears... and you're truly revealed only by the removal (the letting go) of what is covering you up. All that you remain in bondage to is like the paint and veneer that hides your real Self. "Nothing you seek to strengthen in the special relationship is really part of you. And you cannot keep part of the thought system that taught you it was real, and understand the Thought that knows what you are." Now is the time to "learn how much awaits you for the simple willingness to give up nothing because it is nothing." (ACIM; Chapter 16, Section VI)

Which brings us to a final and important point... we can't know the freedom that is Love without letting go of our obsessions and control issues. ACIM calls them special relationships. "It is impossible to let the past go without relinquishing the special relationship. For the special relationship is an attempt to re-enact the past and change it." (ACIM; Chapter 16, Section VII, 1:1-2) In other words, all of our human relationships (whether with people or places or food or ideologies or music or art) are simply attempts to finally get it right, the struggles and efforts that keep us in bondage. Maybe this one will be different. Maybe this place will be the right one. Maybe this time we can work it out. But there is no getting it right at the level of form... for the simple reason that all form is special relationship.

So how do we live in this world? How do we remember the Love that we are? How do we have jobs or hobbies or relationships at all? ACIM reminds us that forgiveness is our only function, and offers everything we truly want. Forgiveness is the solvent that washes away all the layers of delusion from the masterpiece that we are. Forgiveness is the continual act of letting go of all judgments, obsessions, control issues, all false gods... and letting the Truth of Being light our way. What is left when everything false is forgiven? What remains when we realize that all of our stories are fiction? What is revealed then is the Real World, and the unchanging freedom of Love.

Beyond Belief

"Spirit is all-knowing; this precludes the need of believing. Mere belief is blindness without Principle." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 487, Lines 15 & 22

"It is, then, only your wish to change reality that is fearful, because by your wish you think you have accomplished what you wish. When you maintain that there must be an order of difficulty in miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you would withhold from Truth. You believe Truth cannot deal with them only because you would keep them from Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 17, Section I, 2:1 & 3:1-2

The seeming power of belief is a highly extolled and hotly debated issue in the world. The definition of belief is "assent to the truth of something offered for acceptance." This implies that we can believe anything is true or false, based on the evidence. Our criminal justice system is a good example of that. True or false? Right or wrong? This way or that way? Is he telling the truth or is he lying? The answer is what we believe. And we believe we can believe wrongly.

Remember in the last blog we talked about Principle, the unchanging, unmovable Truth that is the Source of everything. The realization that this is beyond belief is our first glimmer of awakening. That there is Being, utterly natural and unchanging, complete in all aspects, whole and perfect and infinite... and that this Being is Source and Substance of all that IS... and that this Truth is the Principle that shines through all true spirituality... this is beyond belief. It can't be believed. But it can be known. It can be experienced directly, as we let go of all relative beliefs and stories. This is what A Course in Miracles calls the act of forgiveness, our only truly active function in this world of many-storied dreams.

The process is usually gradual. There are exceptions of course, like Byron Katie's experience of seemingly instantaneous shedding of all stories and beliefs, leaving her as innocent as a newborn baby. She had to acquire the ability to live in the stories again, but this time without believing them. She now knows from direct experience that Who We Are is beyond belief.

For the rest of us, the shedding of stories and belief systems and identities, which are all fictional, is a gradual process. We learn to live in the stories of our lives, even in the belief systems and identities, without mistaking them for Who We Are. We learn to forgive and release every single aspect (whether it seems good or bad) to the Holy Spirit, the eternal and Awakened Voice within each of us, to be used within the dream of Awakening for all. And every single story, every belief, every identity will then have served its only true purpose. For this is a dream of Awakening to Self. And that is most definitely beyond belief.

"You cannot be faithful to two masters who ask conflicting things of you. What you use in fantasy you deny to Truth. Yet what you give to Truth to use for you is safe from fantasy." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 17, Section I, 2:4-5