"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel."-- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section VIII, 1:1-2
Do you regularly find things about yourself or your surroundings that are lacking, or should be different? Are you ashamed of things you have done or even are doing? Are you judgmental of what others are doing, mentally shaming them? All of these mental attitudes and actions are part and parcel of the guilty identity we learn as part of a separate self, living in a separate body in this world. Do you know anyone who is free of this?
Even very happy people react and become apologetic if someone else is upset. This is the conditioned guilty response. "I am so sorry," we say, as if we could do something about it. Or as if we should.
A Course in Miracles helps us understand that guilt is how a sense of body awareness and a separate self is maintained. Without the judgment and guilt, there is only the unified Mind, where all things exist in the Light of Awareness and Love, pure transparencies for God. Without judgment and guilt, there is an Awareness of Oneness, which is All Good and only Good. Perfect Oneness is our natural state, which is always and only God, reflecting and radiating the Light of Goodness and Love.
It's interesting, don't you think, that a small upset or affront to our egoic identity can send us into a seeming tail spin, can make us so agitated and fearful that it seems as if a huge thing has really occurred. When in such a state, it's impossible to conceive of a unified Mind that radiates peace and joy. And yet we are always and only reacting to our own judgments and guilty verdicts, the story of a separate body-self and the fearful 'others'. And even in the midst of this story of separation and loss, all we have to do is forgive our judgments and let them go. Right where all seems hopeless or angry or sad or lost or any other version of guilt, there is pure joy and perfect love. Right where the problem seems to be, there is only Love, which is the only Law of God.
"There are no laws but God's... there is no loss under the laws of God. Payment is neither given nor received. Exchange cannot be made; there are no substitutes; and nothing is replaced by something else. God's laws forever give and never take." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 76, 9:1, 3-6
The story of the crucifixion and resurrection of God's Son is the story of everyone's life. The guilty identity that we have carefully protected for so long is not real. It can only seem fearful and shameful and wrong when we hang on to our 'laws' of judgment and refuse to forgive. A Course in Miracles gives us many ways to approach forgiveness, and all of them involve letting go of human laws of judgment and thus realizing what has always been true. The guilty identify was all made up, and has never been at all. This realization is the resurrection of the Son of God.
"Learn then the happy habit of response to all temptation to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words: I am as God created me. His Son can suffer nothing. And I am His Son. You are as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, regardless of the images you see. What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain, in every form, wherever it occurs, but disappear as mists before the sun."-- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, VIII, 5:1-4, and 6:1-3
Showing posts with label Listening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Listening. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Self to Self
Wow, it's been nearly a month since I posted last. I have had many inspired thoughts, but no inspiration to write about it. This morning I read a great quote from Margaret Laird that expresses this perfectly: "There was a time I believed that I read or listened to others to find out what others thought. Now I know I read and listen to another's speaking to discover what I am [the I AM] thinking. We cannot expect to find Truth outside of our own awareness." This past month, I spent a lot of time looking inward, listening to the Voice of I Am, and inquiring deeper into the appearance of things. It's been fruitful, though challenging.
The challenge is the deeper recognition that duality in all its forms is only appearance, and that appearance is always and only my own conceptualization of what appears. Mary Baker Eddy said, "Can you see an enemy, except you first formulate this enemy and then look upon the object of your own conception?" Without those concepts, duality (subject and object consciousness) dissolves or resolves (words are inadequate here) into Truth, which is experienced as Oneness, a unity, a whole, with no opposites or contraries or negations.
This going deeper involves seeing that everything we perceive in the phenomenal world is a duality: I perceive goodness, but it is my concept of goodness, which is based on the opposite of what I perceive as badness. I perceive supply, or income, but it is my concept of income, based on the opposite of what I conceive as lack or poverty. I perceive kindness, but it is my concept of kindness, based on what I conceive of as unkind or hateful or spiteful. I'm really just wandering around in a world of concepts, rather than experiencing Goodness, Supply, or Kindness (Love), which are a unity without opposite because they are All-Inclusive. We can't conceive of Oneness. But we can become Aware of It, since It is the Truth of everyone and everything.
A Course in Miracles puts it this way: "When you decide upon the form of what you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose. Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited." In duality thinking (which is all thinking), what we lose is the Awareness of Wholeness. And as we gradually glimpse the deeper meaning of the oft-misunderstood Biblical statement: "Take no thought," we become explorers of this dawning Awareness, which includes everything but is not defined by any of it. It heals and blesses, but not for any reason we could give conceptually. It simply IS the Reality of All.
How do you write about this? How do you speak of It? Which is why I haven't been inspired to write much over the past month. And then I read Margaret Laird this morning, as she explained that the only reason anyone writes is to know their own mind. So I'm writing this morning, to clarify for myself this deepening Awareness of Self.
To paraphrase Margaret Laird again, the individual living Self-consciously as Mind (Unconditioned Awareness, Oneness... concepts fail here) evolves an apparent ego-image never afraid for itself, never taking thought for itself as 'I', as well as a physical body that is self-restoring as long as it is apparently needed. The ego-image which evolves from this Awareness (that the only 'I' is the Mind of Unconditioned Awareness, our very Self) never reacts to concepts and situations, but always acts with intelligence. It has no power to save itself, fix itself up, or transcend itself. The Mind (the Unconditioned Awareness of 'I' that is Self) is its existence and its power for constant newness and freshness. In this Light everything takes on the loveliness of perfection, beyond all concepts.
Of course, all of this exercise in giving voice to the unspeakable is just a smokescreen... the inclusive Reality is that only the 'I' is writing and reading this, and only the 'I' knows its Self. There's only One.
"The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by... It is to this unsealed and open mind that Truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is Truth revealed exactly as it is." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section V, 17:1-4
The challenge is the deeper recognition that duality in all its forms is only appearance, and that appearance is always and only my own conceptualization of what appears. Mary Baker Eddy said, "Can you see an enemy, except you first formulate this enemy and then look upon the object of your own conception?" Without those concepts, duality (subject and object consciousness) dissolves or resolves (words are inadequate here) into Truth, which is experienced as Oneness, a unity, a whole, with no opposites or contraries or negations.
This going deeper involves seeing that everything we perceive in the phenomenal world is a duality: I perceive goodness, but it is my concept of goodness, which is based on the opposite of what I perceive as badness. I perceive supply, or income, but it is my concept of income, based on the opposite of what I conceive as lack or poverty. I perceive kindness, but it is my concept of kindness, based on what I conceive of as unkind or hateful or spiteful. I'm really just wandering around in a world of concepts, rather than experiencing Goodness, Supply, or Kindness (Love), which are a unity without opposite because they are All-Inclusive. We can't conceive of Oneness. But we can become Aware of It, since It is the Truth of everyone and everything.
A Course in Miracles puts it this way: "When you decide upon the form of what you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose. Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited." In duality thinking (which is all thinking), what we lose is the Awareness of Wholeness. And as we gradually glimpse the deeper meaning of the oft-misunderstood Biblical statement: "Take no thought," we become explorers of this dawning Awareness, which includes everything but is not defined by any of it. It heals and blesses, but not for any reason we could give conceptually. It simply IS the Reality of All.
How do you write about this? How do you speak of It? Which is why I haven't been inspired to write much over the past month. And then I read Margaret Laird this morning, as she explained that the only reason anyone writes is to know their own mind. So I'm writing this morning, to clarify for myself this deepening Awareness of Self.
To paraphrase Margaret Laird again, the individual living Self-consciously as Mind (Unconditioned Awareness, Oneness... concepts fail here) evolves an apparent ego-image never afraid for itself, never taking thought for itself as 'I', as well as a physical body that is self-restoring as long as it is apparently needed. The ego-image which evolves from this Awareness (that the only 'I' is the Mind of Unconditioned Awareness, our very Self) never reacts to concepts and situations, but always acts with intelligence. It has no power to save itself, fix itself up, or transcend itself. The Mind (the Unconditioned Awareness of 'I' that is Self) is its existence and its power for constant newness and freshness. In this Light everything takes on the loveliness of perfection, beyond all concepts.
Of course, all of this exercise in giving voice to the unspeakable is just a smokescreen... the inclusive Reality is that only the 'I' is writing and reading this, and only the 'I' knows its Self. There's only One.
"The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by... It is to this unsealed and open mind that Truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is Truth revealed exactly as it is." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section V, 17:1-4
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Waiting for God
"I have no cause for anger or fear, for You surround me. And in every need that I perceive, Your Grace suffices me." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 348
We're conditioned from an early age to listen to our parents, our teachers, our friends, our church... in other words, we look to the outer world for information, direction, and validation. Learning to listen within and wait for God's appointments and direction seems counter intuitive, and even crazy. Interesting defense, isn't it? The ego (the fictional aggregate of mental constructs we call a self, imagining we're separate from God and each other) is the very definition of insanity... a delusional defense against the whole. So it calls what is true, false, and insists that the unreal has substance and validity. That's how projection works. It's also the justification for fear and anger and all the insanity the ego insists is real.
Only take a moment to consider rationally... God, the very Ground of Being, is everywhere... pure and eternal Life and Love without form or condition. We live and move and have our Being in God. So how could we look anywhere other than God for what is essential and true? How could we look anywhere other than God for Who We Are? There is nowhere else. There's nothing out there but projected ideas based on a mistake... the mistake that somehow walling ourselves off from the whole will give us what we want and keep us safe. And when has that ever been the truth? Safe from what? What else is there but God, the All in All?
Waiting for God doesn't involve the future... it involves a present willingness to be still, to listen each holy instant in unceasing mindfulness. This doesn't involve effort or struggle or even a technique or practice. Once the willingness is given by the mind, the beauty of our true Self takes over. Stillness, one-pointedness, awakened awareness, pure joy and unshakable peace... these are all attributes we find to be our own, as natural as breathing. More so.
Waiting for God means we're willing to release the false and embrace the True. And we at last remember the Grace that enfolds and surrounds us and suffices us in all things.
We're conditioned from an early age to listen to our parents, our teachers, our friends, our church... in other words, we look to the outer world for information, direction, and validation. Learning to listen within and wait for God's appointments and direction seems counter intuitive, and even crazy. Interesting defense, isn't it? The ego (the fictional aggregate of mental constructs we call a self, imagining we're separate from God and each other) is the very definition of insanity... a delusional defense against the whole. So it calls what is true, false, and insists that the unreal has substance and validity. That's how projection works. It's also the justification for fear and anger and all the insanity the ego insists is real.
Only take a moment to consider rationally... God, the very Ground of Being, is everywhere... pure and eternal Life and Love without form or condition. We live and move and have our Being in God. So how could we look anywhere other than God for what is essential and true? How could we look anywhere other than God for Who We Are? There is nowhere else. There's nothing out there but projected ideas based on a mistake... the mistake that somehow walling ourselves off from the whole will give us what we want and keep us safe. And when has that ever been the truth? Safe from what? What else is there but God, the All in All?
Waiting for God doesn't involve the future... it involves a present willingness to be still, to listen each holy instant in unceasing mindfulness. This doesn't involve effort or struggle or even a technique or practice. Once the willingness is given by the mind, the beauty of our true Self takes over. Stillness, one-pointedness, awakened awareness, pure joy and unshakable peace... these are all attributes we find to be our own, as natural as breathing. More so.
Waiting for God means we're willing to release the false and embrace the True. And we at last remember the Grace that enfolds and surrounds us and suffices us in all things.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Will to Awaken
"The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear. Instead, there is a wish to understand all things created as they really are. And it is recognized that all things must first be forgiven, and then understood." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 30, Section V, 1:1 & 4-6
I've been thinking a lot this year about the seeming process of awakening, and the shedding of the false self that is required. As St. Paul put it, "I die daily" so that "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." This beautiful thought is beloved in Christianity, but is also largely revered as a poetic and idealistic sentiment, not as a literal process that requires our willingness. Even those charismatic Christians who see it as literal still hang on to the notion of a little self that is saved by the God/Man, Jesus Christ. They don't see that this simply perpetuates their false view of themselves as separate from God, weaker and imperfect.
And whose will was it that these imperfect creatures exist? Certainly not God, Who creates all things in His Holy Mind and so eternally extends HimSelf. The Spirit of God did not and could not create imperfection. How could the imperfect exist in the absolute harmony and perfection of God, the eternally One and Whole? So what seems imperfect must be an imperfect perception only, a false sense of what eternally IS.
The will to awaken is the willingness to constantly release each and every perception that arises, and give it to the part of our mind that remains aware of our eternal Oneness with God... the Holy Spirit. This is what forgiveness is... and this is the process of Atonement, the interlocking chain of forgiveness that results in the Awakening of the One Son of God, even within the dream separation.
So what is the will to awaken? And why do so very few seem to have it? ACIM tells us that "The Call is universal. It goes on all the time everywhere. Many hear it, but few will answer. Everyone will answer in the end, but the end can [seem] a long, long way off." -- (ACIM; Manual for Teachers 1.2:4-5 & 7-9) In other words, we have a vested interest still in the dream. After all, it's our dream... and we continue to question how these very beautiful and desirable parts could need our forgiveness and release. Can't we just forgive all the bad stuff and keep these parts we like, the parts that we're comfortable with, the parts that speak to us of tradition and continuity within the dream?
Our teacher and guide is uncompromising. Jeshua said, "A man must lose his life in order to save it." Yikes. This is not what our egos want to hear.
How do we find the will to awaken? How do we release the mental resistance that flails about and questions our very sanity? I'd like to tell you there's an easy way through this passage, but the Truth is that the only way out is through. You will pass through this fire, and you will not be burned.
On the other side of all seeming turmoil is the perfect peace of realizing that there never was a problem... we have always been right here, safe in God. On this side, we simply keep giving our perceptions to the Holy Spirit and following the directions of the Voice within. This perfect trust will be reinforced as we are willing to follow the Holy Spirit's Voice instead of our own fearful imaginings. Forgive and follow the Voice. Forgive and follow the Voice. This is the will to awaken.
"A major hindrance in this aspect of learning is the teacher of God's fear about the validity of what he hears. And what he hears may indeed be quite startling. It may also seem to be quite irrelevant to the presented problem as he perceives it, and may in fact confront the teacher with a situation that appears to be very embarrassing to him. All these are judgments that have no value. They are his own, coming from a shabby self-perception which he would leave behind." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers 21. 5:1-5
I've been thinking a lot this year about the seeming process of awakening, and the shedding of the false self that is required. As St. Paul put it, "I die daily" so that "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." This beautiful thought is beloved in Christianity, but is also largely revered as a poetic and idealistic sentiment, not as a literal process that requires our willingness. Even those charismatic Christians who see it as literal still hang on to the notion of a little self that is saved by the God/Man, Jesus Christ. They don't see that this simply perpetuates their false view of themselves as separate from God, weaker and imperfect.
And whose will was it that these imperfect creatures exist? Certainly not God, Who creates all things in His Holy Mind and so eternally extends HimSelf. The Spirit of God did not and could not create imperfection. How could the imperfect exist in the absolute harmony and perfection of God, the eternally One and Whole? So what seems imperfect must be an imperfect perception only, a false sense of what eternally IS.
The will to awaken is the willingness to constantly release each and every perception that arises, and give it to the part of our mind that remains aware of our eternal Oneness with God... the Holy Spirit. This is what forgiveness is... and this is the process of Atonement, the interlocking chain of forgiveness that results in the Awakening of the One Son of God, even within the dream separation.
So what is the will to awaken? And why do so very few seem to have it? ACIM tells us that "The Call is universal. It goes on all the time everywhere. Many hear it, but few will answer. Everyone will answer in the end, but the end can [seem] a long, long way off." -- (ACIM; Manual for Teachers 1.2:4-5 & 7-9) In other words, we have a vested interest still in the dream. After all, it's our dream... and we continue to question how these very beautiful and desirable parts could need our forgiveness and release. Can't we just forgive all the bad stuff and keep these parts we like, the parts that we're comfortable with, the parts that speak to us of tradition and continuity within the dream?
Our teacher and guide is uncompromising. Jeshua said, "A man must lose his life in order to save it." Yikes. This is not what our egos want to hear.
How do we find the will to awaken? How do we release the mental resistance that flails about and questions our very sanity? I'd like to tell you there's an easy way through this passage, but the Truth is that the only way out is through. You will pass through this fire, and you will not be burned.
On the other side of all seeming turmoil is the perfect peace of realizing that there never was a problem... we have always been right here, safe in God. On this side, we simply keep giving our perceptions to the Holy Spirit and following the directions of the Voice within. This perfect trust will be reinforced as we are willing to follow the Holy Spirit's Voice instead of our own fearful imaginings. Forgive and follow the Voice. Forgive and follow the Voice. This is the will to awaken.
"A major hindrance in this aspect of learning is the teacher of God's fear about the validity of what he hears. And what he hears may indeed be quite startling. It may also seem to be quite irrelevant to the presented problem as he perceives it, and may in fact confront the teacher with a situation that appears to be very embarrassing to him. All these are judgments that have no value. They are his own, coming from a shabby self-perception which he would leave behind." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers 21. 5:1-5
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Real Freedom
"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws you have set up to save you. There are no laws except the laws of God. This needs repeating, over and over, until you realize it applies to everything. There is no loss under the laws of God. Payment is neither given nor received. Exchange cannot be made; there are no substitutes; and nothing is replaced by something else. God's laws forever give and never take. Hear Him Who tells you this, and realize how foolish are the 'laws' you thought upheld the world you thought you saw." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 76, 3:1, 6:1-2, 9:3-6, 10:1
How did your day begin today? Is your mind clear and clean of all thoughts of what has been or what will be? Is your mind free? The realization that none of our man made laws or rules has any real effect or hold on us is the beginning of real freedom.
Jesus walked the earth with this liberated awareness. He didn't always wash his hands before he ate. He healed on the Sabbath, to the horror of the other rabbis. He hung out with people who were social and political outcasts. He precipitated food and coin and wine out of thin air when needed, seemingly from out of nowhere. He didn't work for a living, and told his disciples that to follow him meant "the son of man has nowhere to lay his head." He didn't need to own anything, because he knew that the Allness of God is omnipresent. He knew that God's laws forever give, and never take. He knew that in the awareness of Allness, whatever is needed is already present.
Questions arise for us: "How can I be expected to live like this? I have to be practical, don't I? It's not freedom to live in fear of what tomorrow will bring, is it?" The Voice of Christ speaks quietly but firmly in answer to our fears: "Peace, be still. Beloved, I am with you always, and all that I have is thine. Not some, but ALL that I have, infinitely and forever, unchanging and always."
Each of us must face these conditioned fears of lack and loss in our own lives, in our individual circumstances. Some might look bigger or scarier than others... some might seem inconsequential in the scheme of things. But don't be fooled. There is no hierarchy of illusions, and there are no projected beliefs that are more or less important than any others, or any more or less true or real. They are all made up, learned, conditioned... all mental constructs without any substance. We may live and move in the world as if they were true, but when we remember God and our true life in God, we remember the infinite freedom in which we live and move and have our being. We are always safe, always fulfilled, and always home. Where else would we be, since God is All?
Every day my prayer is to return to the Truth of Being... that there is only God, and God is All and only Good. That God is Love, and only Love. My prayer is for a deeper awareness of what the omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence of Spirit IS... and for a deeper knowing of the nothingness of all our projected fears and lacks and limitations that make up the so-called laws of the projected world... an illusory world of thought-forms, dreams and imagination without substance. In Reality there is nothing but God, and we live and move and have our Being in God's Oneness. What does that make us?
"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's. I am constantly tempted to make up other laws and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all. I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of Love and Freedom." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 88, 3:2-8
How did your day begin today? Is your mind clear and clean of all thoughts of what has been or what will be? Is your mind free? The realization that none of our man made laws or rules has any real effect or hold on us is the beginning of real freedom.
Jesus walked the earth with this liberated awareness. He didn't always wash his hands before he ate. He healed on the Sabbath, to the horror of the other rabbis. He hung out with people who were social and political outcasts. He precipitated food and coin and wine out of thin air when needed, seemingly from out of nowhere. He didn't work for a living, and told his disciples that to follow him meant "the son of man has nowhere to lay his head." He didn't need to own anything, because he knew that the Allness of God is omnipresent. He knew that God's laws forever give, and never take. He knew that in the awareness of Allness, whatever is needed is already present.
Questions arise for us: "How can I be expected to live like this? I have to be practical, don't I? It's not freedom to live in fear of what tomorrow will bring, is it?" The Voice of Christ speaks quietly but firmly in answer to our fears: "Peace, be still. Beloved, I am with you always, and all that I have is thine. Not some, but ALL that I have, infinitely and forever, unchanging and always."
Each of us must face these conditioned fears of lack and loss in our own lives, in our individual circumstances. Some might look bigger or scarier than others... some might seem inconsequential in the scheme of things. But don't be fooled. There is no hierarchy of illusions, and there are no projected beliefs that are more or less important than any others, or any more or less true or real. They are all made up, learned, conditioned... all mental constructs without any substance. We may live and move in the world as if they were true, but when we remember God and our true life in God, we remember the infinite freedom in which we live and move and have our being. We are always safe, always fulfilled, and always home. Where else would we be, since God is All?
Every day my prayer is to return to the Truth of Being... that there is only God, and God is All and only Good. That God is Love, and only Love. My prayer is for a deeper awareness of what the omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence of Spirit IS... and for a deeper knowing of the nothingness of all our projected fears and lacks and limitations that make up the so-called laws of the projected world... an illusory world of thought-forms, dreams and imagination without substance. In Reality there is nothing but God, and we live and move and have our Being in God's Oneness. What does that make us?
"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's. I am constantly tempted to make up other laws and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all. I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of Love and Freedom." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 88, 3:2-8
Friday, April 17, 2009
Being True to what is True
"Everyone stumbles over the truth from time to time, but most people pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." -- Winston Churchill
"What can correct illusions but Truth? And what are errors but illusions that remain unrecognized for what they are? Where Truth has entered errors disappear. They merely vanish, leaving not a trace by which to be remembered. They are gone because, without belief, they have no life." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 107, 1:1-5
How often in this world have you stumbled onto the truth about something or someone, and yet continued on as if it weren't true, in complete denial? How often have we ignored what we know to be true in order to fit in, or to please someone else? How dearly we have paid for our unwillingness to face the truth in the dream. Yet the real Truth is the real issue. Our sacrifice of self in the dream is nothing. The seeming sacrifice of Our True Self is why we all seem to suffer.
Our serial dreams and stories, our serial relationships, and all that seems to occur... these are simply the smokescreen, the projection to cover our real denial. We have denied Who We Are and Where We Are. We have all had moments of remembering God. And yet we pick ourselves up and promptly forget about it, and act like nothing happened. We remain true to our stories and our addictions. We have not been true to what is True. Our attention and our time return to what is false, again and again. And so we suffer. We suffer until we WILL to remember. We suffer until we return our time and attention to what is True. We suffer until we cease to value the false.
We will continue to walk in dreams and their stories for a while. But when our love and attention remain on what is True, the stories have a different meaning. And our projections are returned to Oneness, to Truth. Now the Awakening of the Son of God is what all dreams are for. We go where Self leads us, and listen to the Voice of Truth within us. We value our Awareness of God, of Good, of Oneness... and the stories of the dream are simply many ways to forgive and return to this Awareness.
There's nothing difficult or complex about it. Being true to what is True is the only simple, natural thing in all this seemingly complex dream.
"Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all He knows is One? He knows of One Creation, One Reality, One Truth, and but One Son. Nothing conflicts with Oneness. How, then, could there be complexity in Him? What is there to decide? For it is conflict that makes choice possible. The Truth is simple; it is One, without an opposite. The Truth makes no decisions because there is nothing to decide between. What is Everything leaves room for nothing else." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 26, Section III, 1:1-8, 10, 12
"What can correct illusions but Truth? And what are errors but illusions that remain unrecognized for what they are? Where Truth has entered errors disappear. They merely vanish, leaving not a trace by which to be remembered. They are gone because, without belief, they have no life." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 107, 1:1-5
How often in this world have you stumbled onto the truth about something or someone, and yet continued on as if it weren't true, in complete denial? How often have we ignored what we know to be true in order to fit in, or to please someone else? How dearly we have paid for our unwillingness to face the truth in the dream. Yet the real Truth is the real issue. Our sacrifice of self in the dream is nothing. The seeming sacrifice of Our True Self is why we all seem to suffer.
Our serial dreams and stories, our serial relationships, and all that seems to occur... these are simply the smokescreen, the projection to cover our real denial. We have denied Who We Are and Where We Are. We have all had moments of remembering God. And yet we pick ourselves up and promptly forget about it, and act like nothing happened. We remain true to our stories and our addictions. We have not been true to what is True. Our attention and our time return to what is false, again and again. And so we suffer. We suffer until we WILL to remember. We suffer until we return our time and attention to what is True. We suffer until we cease to value the false.
We will continue to walk in dreams and their stories for a while. But when our love and attention remain on what is True, the stories have a different meaning. And our projections are returned to Oneness, to Truth. Now the Awakening of the Son of God is what all dreams are for. We go where Self leads us, and listen to the Voice of Truth within us. We value our Awareness of God, of Good, of Oneness... and the stories of the dream are simply many ways to forgive and return to this Awareness.
There's nothing difficult or complex about it. Being true to what is True is the only simple, natural thing in all this seemingly complex dream.
"Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all He knows is One? He knows of One Creation, One Reality, One Truth, and but One Son. Nothing conflicts with Oneness. How, then, could there be complexity in Him? What is there to decide? For it is conflict that makes choice possible. The Truth is simple; it is One, without an opposite. The Truth makes no decisions because there is nothing to decide between. What is Everything leaves room for nothing else." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 26, Section III, 1:1-8, 10, 12
Thursday, April 16, 2009
The Thunder of the Meaningless
"Listen, and hear your Father speak to you through His appointed Voice, which silences the thunder of the meaningless, and shows the way to peace to those who cannot see. Be still today and listen to the Truth. Be not deceived by the voices of the dead, which tell you they have found the source of life and offer it to you for your belief. Attend them not, but listen to the Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 106, 2:1-4
"All things are included in the Infinity of God, not separate and apart from God. And so it is impossible to demonstrate them. The only demonstration we have to make is the demonstration of God, and then we find all things added to us, included in us. Abundantly made manifest. So it is that the first step in this direction is to thoroughly clean out the old house. Cleanse the temple and rid it of all its desires until there is no longer a desire for anyone or anything in the outer plane; until the heart cries, "My soul thirsteth only for thee, O God." -- Joel Goldsmith
I love the phrase, "the thunder of the meaningless." It encompasses everything that passes for life in this dream world. Learning to be still in the midst of it all, to listen to what is True even in the midst of the dream... this is the challenge. Everything that goes on in us and around us on a daily basis is based on one premise: that there is something in it for us, that there is something out there in the world we need to do or be. This keeps us endlessly spinning, endlessly reacting, endlessly striving, endlessly caught up in the seemingly all-consuming meaningless details of life. It's irrelevant whether those details are supposedly physical or spiritual... if we think our good depends on how we act or what we do, then we are caught in the dream, looking for answers in the dream.
Joel Goldsmith points out that the Allness of God IS our completion. We have no need to keep looking for happiness and fulfillment. We have no need to try to change ourselves or the world. What we have a great need for is to be still and listen to the Truth. Only by doing this can we cleanse our minds of what is untrue, and remember Who We Are.
We all seem to lead different lives, with so many different stories... stories of happiness, stories of sickness, stories of stress, stories of relaxation and pleasure, stories of fear and suffering... we could go on and on, for the dream winds on and on, the wheel of samsara turning and turning. But there comes a time for all of us when we cry from our heart, and mean it: STOP! NOW!! I want to wake up!!! This true prayer is the beginning of listening. Then we are led to be still and listen to the Truth. There is no other way to hear truly.
When all the voices of the world become valueless to us, we find that pearl of great price, the treasure of the ages, within our very own Being. And as we rest in the Love that We Are, the thunder of the meaningless becomes only a cry for this Love. And we know this Love is what each and every being longs to remember. May we be still and listen to the Truth, so we can allow Truth to extend through us.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls; who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it." -- The Bible; Matthew 13:45-46
"All things are included in the Infinity of God, not separate and apart from God. And so it is impossible to demonstrate them. The only demonstration we have to make is the demonstration of God, and then we find all things added to us, included in us. Abundantly made manifest. So it is that the first step in this direction is to thoroughly clean out the old house. Cleanse the temple and rid it of all its desires until there is no longer a desire for anyone or anything in the outer plane; until the heart cries, "My soul thirsteth only for thee, O God." -- Joel Goldsmith
I love the phrase, "the thunder of the meaningless." It encompasses everything that passes for life in this dream world. Learning to be still in the midst of it all, to listen to what is True even in the midst of the dream... this is the challenge. Everything that goes on in us and around us on a daily basis is based on one premise: that there is something in it for us, that there is something out there in the world we need to do or be. This keeps us endlessly spinning, endlessly reacting, endlessly striving, endlessly caught up in the seemingly all-consuming meaningless details of life. It's irrelevant whether those details are supposedly physical or spiritual... if we think our good depends on how we act or what we do, then we are caught in the dream, looking for answers in the dream.
Joel Goldsmith points out that the Allness of God IS our completion. We have no need to keep looking for happiness and fulfillment. We have no need to try to change ourselves or the world. What we have a great need for is to be still and listen to the Truth. Only by doing this can we cleanse our minds of what is untrue, and remember Who We Are.
We all seem to lead different lives, with so many different stories... stories of happiness, stories of sickness, stories of stress, stories of relaxation and pleasure, stories of fear and suffering... we could go on and on, for the dream winds on and on, the wheel of samsara turning and turning. But there comes a time for all of us when we cry from our heart, and mean it: STOP! NOW!! I want to wake up!!! This true prayer is the beginning of listening. Then we are led to be still and listen to the Truth. There is no other way to hear truly.
When all the voices of the world become valueless to us, we find that pearl of great price, the treasure of the ages, within our very own Being. And as we rest in the Love that We Are, the thunder of the meaningless becomes only a cry for this Love. And we know this Love is what each and every being longs to remember. May we be still and listen to the Truth, so we can allow Truth to extend through us.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls; who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it." -- The Bible; Matthew 13:45-46
Thursday, January 1, 2009
A Year Without Blame
"Only the ego blames at all. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as much an ego-defense as blaming others. You cannot enter God's presence if you attack His Son." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section IV, 5:4-6
"Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity." -- The Bible; Habakkuk 1:12-13
Happy New Year to everyone! I love the way I'm seemingly led to a topic. Today is New Year's Day, and I'm at peace with the world. There's no one I seem to be struggling with or blaming at the moment. And yet this topic chose me. Thank goodness the Holy Spirit knows better than I do what's needed.
The fact that only the ego blames at all is important. I woke up yesterday morning after a fearful dream, in which I felt personally responsible for the evils happening to others in my night-time dream. This type of self-blame is the source of all guilt and all projection of guilt and blame in the dream we call the world. And while it remains unconscious, we just keep projecting and experiencing the dream of it, night and day. It's the product of a deluded mind that imagines it's separate from God and thinks it's creating stuff in opposition to the Goodness of God. Rationally we can agree that if God is All, then what else exactly could we be creating that is other than All? Rationally we can agree with this.
Yet our eyes keep beholding iniquity. Habakkuk tells us that God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil," and that God doesn't even see iniquity. So what are we seeing? If God doesn't see it, it can't exist. GOD IS ALL. That means ALL. When ACIM tells us we can't enter God's presence if we attack His Son, that means we can't experience our Oneness with God and each other if we attack ourselves. The buck starts and stops with self-condemnation. Because all seemingly external blame and attack comes from projected self-guilt and self-blame. Because deep-down, in the part of us that remembers Who We Are, we know that God is All, and that we are One with All. We know we can't have a power that opposes or rebels against what is Whole-ly Self. And so we feel guilty for wanting to be separate and autonomous, and project it all as a huge holographic dream universe of imagined opposing forces, and attempt to lose ourselves in a haze of dreaming and forgetting. All because we fear our own imaginary and illusory rebellion against the inclusiveness of Self.
So here we are on the first day of the imaginary year of 2009. Years are, of course, a human construct. We have tried our darnedest to segment the eternal into a progression of years, and to label and judge them all. The good news is that as we give this holy instant and every holy instant to God, our perception (projection) is released and healed. The miracle of sight is returned. For a holy instant, there is no blame, no judgement, no problem at all in the endless Oneness that We Are. This is the Peace of God. And this is the hope of 2009 and every other year... that we remember we are One, and that we don't need to look so hard for solutions to the problems that seem to appear, that are actually our projections. It's the observation (projection) of iniquity that keeps it in our dream experience. Kind of like it's people going to movies that keeps the industry going. We're the producer and director and viewing audience of this film. To behold the world without iniquity... to see self and each other, including Israelis and Palestinians, as innocent and as my Self, is to behold a year without blame and without blemish. This is my prayer for us all.
"All power is of God. What is not of Him has no power to do anything." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section V, 3:6-7
"Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity." -- The Bible; Habakkuk 1:12-13
Happy New Year to everyone! I love the way I'm seemingly led to a topic. Today is New Year's Day, and I'm at peace with the world. There's no one I seem to be struggling with or blaming at the moment. And yet this topic chose me. Thank goodness the Holy Spirit knows better than I do what's needed.
The fact that only the ego blames at all is important. I woke up yesterday morning after a fearful dream, in which I felt personally responsible for the evils happening to others in my night-time dream. This type of self-blame is the source of all guilt and all projection of guilt and blame in the dream we call the world. And while it remains unconscious, we just keep projecting and experiencing the dream of it, night and day. It's the product of a deluded mind that imagines it's separate from God and thinks it's creating stuff in opposition to the Goodness of God. Rationally we can agree that if God is All, then what else exactly could we be creating that is other than All? Rationally we can agree with this.
Yet our eyes keep beholding iniquity. Habakkuk tells us that God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil," and that God doesn't even see iniquity. So what are we seeing? If God doesn't see it, it can't exist. GOD IS ALL. That means ALL. When ACIM tells us we can't enter God's presence if we attack His Son, that means we can't experience our Oneness with God and each other if we attack ourselves. The buck starts and stops with self-condemnation. Because all seemingly external blame and attack comes from projected self-guilt and self-blame. Because deep-down, in the part of us that remembers Who We Are, we know that God is All, and that we are One with All. We know we can't have a power that opposes or rebels against what is Whole-ly Self. And so we feel guilty for wanting to be separate and autonomous, and project it all as a huge holographic dream universe of imagined opposing forces, and attempt to lose ourselves in a haze of dreaming and forgetting. All because we fear our own imaginary and illusory rebellion against the inclusiveness of Self.
So here we are on the first day of the imaginary year of 2009. Years are, of course, a human construct. We have tried our darnedest to segment the eternal into a progression of years, and to label and judge them all. The good news is that as we give this holy instant and every holy instant to God, our perception (projection) is released and healed. The miracle of sight is returned. For a holy instant, there is no blame, no judgement, no problem at all in the endless Oneness that We Are. This is the Peace of God. And this is the hope of 2009 and every other year... that we remember we are One, and that we don't need to look so hard for solutions to the problems that seem to appear, that are actually our projections. It's the observation (projection) of iniquity that keeps it in our dream experience. Kind of like it's people going to movies that keeps the industry going. We're the producer and director and viewing audience of this film. To behold the world without iniquity... to see self and each other, including Israelis and Palestinians, as innocent and as my Self, is to behold a year without blame and without blemish. This is my prayer for us all.
"All power is of God. What is not of Him has no power to do anything." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section V, 3:6-7
Monday, December 22, 2008
Listen
"Listen, and hear your Father speak to you through His appointed Voice, which silences the thunder of the meaningless. Hear, and be silent. He would speak to you. He comes with miracles a thousand times as happy and as wonderful as those you ever dreamed or wished for in your dreams. His miracles are true. They will not fade when dreaming ends. They end the dream instead; and last forever, for they come from God to His dear Son, whose other name is You. Be still and listen to the Truth today." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 106, 2:1, 4:2-7, 9:1
"Let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your belief. Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt, because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its face. Accept His Word for what you are, for He bears witness to your beautiful creation, and the Mind Whose Thought created your reality. Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 151, 7:1, 8:1, 9:2, 6, & 7
Listen. What do you hear? Your heart beating. The hum of the furnace or the crackle of a fire. The soft cadence of your own breathing. Perhaps the breathing of a companion lying next to you. As your listening deepens, you may hear the silent settling of the house around you, and an occasional sound from beyond the house, cars in the street or the distant roar of a highway. Deeper still, and even with all the many sounds, cradling them all, there is a well of holy Silence. This Silence is so vast, so endless, It holds everything within Its Love. We fear the Truth of It, and so we focus on busyness, on mental distractions, on constant mind chatter. We fear simply being still and listening to the Truth. And yet it calls to us, like Home. It is Home. And out of this holy stillness, the Voice for God speaks to us.
Why do we fear the silence? ACIM reminds us that when we shut up and listen, the Voice will help us see through illusions, to recognize what is true. We are told that the Voice will remove all faith that we've placed in pain, disaster, suffering, and loss. "You will no longer doubt that only Good can come to you who are Beloved of God." Wow. What is it we fear, then? The loss of our littleness, our limitations, our pain and suffering and loss? We guard them as if they were our treasure. As Jesus told us, where our treasure is, there our heart will be. Our hearts have been totally committed to the illusion of a little, separate, suffering self. We are married to our illusions.
We seem to be a world of little, separate, suffering selves. Thank God it's just a bad dream. God is All, and God is One. We live and move and have our being in God... and so we are One with each other and safe in the Oneness of God. My prayer for us all this Christmas is that we take time to be still and listen, to let God's Voice be heard in the silence. This One simple act will completely transform our perception of the world. "I will be still and listen to the Truth." What could be more important?
"Give Him your thoughts and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 151, 14:1, 15:2
"Let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your belief. Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt, because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its face. Accept His Word for what you are, for He bears witness to your beautiful creation, and the Mind Whose Thought created your reality. Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 151, 7:1, 8:1, 9:2, 6, & 7
Listen. What do you hear? Your heart beating. The hum of the furnace or the crackle of a fire. The soft cadence of your own breathing. Perhaps the breathing of a companion lying next to you. As your listening deepens, you may hear the silent settling of the house around you, and an occasional sound from beyond the house, cars in the street or the distant roar of a highway. Deeper still, and even with all the many sounds, cradling them all, there is a well of holy Silence. This Silence is so vast, so endless, It holds everything within Its Love. We fear the Truth of It, and so we focus on busyness, on mental distractions, on constant mind chatter. We fear simply being still and listening to the Truth. And yet it calls to us, like Home. It is Home. And out of this holy stillness, the Voice for God speaks to us.
Why do we fear the silence? ACIM reminds us that when we shut up and listen, the Voice will help us see through illusions, to recognize what is true. We are told that the Voice will remove all faith that we've placed in pain, disaster, suffering, and loss. "You will no longer doubt that only Good can come to you who are Beloved of God." Wow. What is it we fear, then? The loss of our littleness, our limitations, our pain and suffering and loss? We guard them as if they were our treasure. As Jesus told us, where our treasure is, there our heart will be. Our hearts have been totally committed to the illusion of a little, separate, suffering self. We are married to our illusions.
We seem to be a world of little, separate, suffering selves. Thank God it's just a bad dream. God is All, and God is One. We live and move and have our being in God... and so we are One with each other and safe in the Oneness of God. My prayer for us all this Christmas is that we take time to be still and listen, to let God's Voice be heard in the silence. This One simple act will completely transform our perception of the world. "I will be still and listen to the Truth." What could be more important?
"Give Him your thoughts and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 151, 14:1, 15:2
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Mistaken Identity
"The whole separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego has the power to do anything. The ego is fearful to you because you believe this. Yet the truth is very simple: All power is of God. What is not of Him has no power to do anything." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section V, 3:3-7
"Understanding is the line of demarcation between the real and the unreal. This understanding is not intellectual, is not the result of scholarly attainments; it is the Reality of all things, brought to Light. God's ideas reflect the immortal, unerring, and infinite. The mortal, erring, and finite are human beliefs. Therefore matter, not being the reflection of Spirit, has no real entity. Understanding is a quality of God." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Pages 505-506, Lines 21, 26-30, & 3-5
On one of the many e-mail lists I subscribe to, I encountered this thought: that all seeming tests in the external world are actually simply mistaken identity, or self-doubt. This simple statement condenses the essence of all our struggles and ills in the world... we are not who we think we are. How delusional we are... and how mistaken to entertain the imaginary fears of a delusional thought system. As A Course in Miracles puts it, "When we look at the ego, we are not considering dynamics but delusions. You can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any effects if its source is not real." (ACIM; Chapter 11, Section V, 4:1-2)
Self-doubt is a big part of this delusional thought system. We are never sure of ourselves, because the sane part of our true Mind knows we are not a separate, ego self. The attempt to split our Self into self and other is the source of the entire delusional world. "The ego's goal is quite explicitly ego autonomy. Its purpose is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power except its own." (ACIM; Chapter 11, Section V, 4:4-5) And because there really isn't any power apart from God, this is a very doubt inducing predicament, no matter how delusional the mind, no matter how enamoured of illusory power and ego-control one becomes. It's an endless bad dream, with many detours and false perceptions that we choose over and over again. Such is the world of individual false identities.
So how do we Awaken from the dream of a false and separate self? How do we remember Who We Are? ACIM says that the way to undo the illusion of a separate ego is merely to recognize that it is not natural. "Yours is the independence of creation, not of autonomy. Your whole creative function lies in your complete dependence on God, Whose function He shares with you. By His willingness to share it, He became as dependent on you as you are on Him. Do not ascribe the ego's arrogance to Him Who wills not to be independent of you. He has included you in His Autonomy. Can you believe that autonomy is meaningful apart from Him? The belief in ego autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, in which your freedom lies. The ego sees all dependency as threatening, and has twisted even your longing for God into a means of establishing itself. But do not be deceived by its interpretation of your conflict." (ACIM; Chapter 11, Section V, 6:1-9)
Mistaken identity and self-doubt. The dynamic duo that produces a dream-world of seeming suffering and separation. You can easily see then that all of this stems from mentally dissociating from Self, from not loving Self. Whatever seems to separate us from God is always and only this dissociation, which masquerades as fear in one form or another. "Whatever seems to separate you from God is only fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from how the ego wants you to experience it." As we admit to ourselves how alien and unnatural this state of consciousness is, we discover that "if you overlook love you are overlooking your Self, and you fear Reality because you have denied your Self." The suffering, the struggles, the pain... all the delusion of false identity and self-doubt.
The good news is that there is no power in Reality to do any of this. It's all a story, all made up... who you think you are is just a constellation of concepts and judgements held loosely together by the desire to experience the story. It's a bad dream, and has no real power to change anything Real. "If the ego's goal of autonomy could be accomplished, God's purpose could be defeated, and this is impossible. Only God's purpose can be accomplished, and it is accomplished already." It IS. We Are as God created us, forever One, Whole and United in purpose and in peace. No dream of mistaken identity can change what Is.
"You will awaken to your own call, for the Call to Awaken is within you. The whole power of God is in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small. What does not exist has no size and no measure." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section VI, 9:1 & 10:6-7
"Understanding is the line of demarcation between the real and the unreal. This understanding is not intellectual, is not the result of scholarly attainments; it is the Reality of all things, brought to Light. God's ideas reflect the immortal, unerring, and infinite. The mortal, erring, and finite are human beliefs. Therefore matter, not being the reflection of Spirit, has no real entity. Understanding is a quality of God." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Pages 505-506, Lines 21, 26-30, & 3-5
On one of the many e-mail lists I subscribe to, I encountered this thought: that all seeming tests in the external world are actually simply mistaken identity, or self-doubt. This simple statement condenses the essence of all our struggles and ills in the world... we are not who we think we are. How delusional we are... and how mistaken to entertain the imaginary fears of a delusional thought system. As A Course in Miracles puts it, "When we look at the ego, we are not considering dynamics but delusions. You can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any effects if its source is not real." (ACIM; Chapter 11, Section V, 4:1-2)
Self-doubt is a big part of this delusional thought system. We are never sure of ourselves, because the sane part of our true Mind knows we are not a separate, ego self. The attempt to split our Self into self and other is the source of the entire delusional world. "The ego's goal is quite explicitly ego autonomy. Its purpose is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power except its own." (ACIM; Chapter 11, Section V, 4:4-5) And because there really isn't any power apart from God, this is a very doubt inducing predicament, no matter how delusional the mind, no matter how enamoured of illusory power and ego-control one becomes. It's an endless bad dream, with many detours and false perceptions that we choose over and over again. Such is the world of individual false identities.
So how do we Awaken from the dream of a false and separate self? How do we remember Who We Are? ACIM says that the way to undo the illusion of a separate ego is merely to recognize that it is not natural. "Yours is the independence of creation, not of autonomy. Your whole creative function lies in your complete dependence on God, Whose function He shares with you. By His willingness to share it, He became as dependent on you as you are on Him. Do not ascribe the ego's arrogance to Him Who wills not to be independent of you. He has included you in His Autonomy. Can you believe that autonomy is meaningful apart from Him? The belief in ego autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, in which your freedom lies. The ego sees all dependency as threatening, and has twisted even your longing for God into a means of establishing itself. But do not be deceived by its interpretation of your conflict." (ACIM; Chapter 11, Section V, 6:1-9)
Mistaken identity and self-doubt. The dynamic duo that produces a dream-world of seeming suffering and separation. You can easily see then that all of this stems from mentally dissociating from Self, from not loving Self. Whatever seems to separate us from God is always and only this dissociation, which masquerades as fear in one form or another. "Whatever seems to separate you from God is only fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from how the ego wants you to experience it." As we admit to ourselves how alien and unnatural this state of consciousness is, we discover that "if you overlook love you are overlooking your Self, and you fear Reality because you have denied your Self." The suffering, the struggles, the pain... all the delusion of false identity and self-doubt.
The good news is that there is no power in Reality to do any of this. It's all a story, all made up... who you think you are is just a constellation of concepts and judgements held loosely together by the desire to experience the story. It's a bad dream, and has no real power to change anything Real. "If the ego's goal of autonomy could be accomplished, God's purpose could be defeated, and this is impossible. Only God's purpose can be accomplished, and it is accomplished already." It IS. We Are as God created us, forever One, Whole and United in purpose and in peace. No dream of mistaken identity can change what Is.
"You will awaken to your own call, for the Call to Awaken is within you. The whole power of God is in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small. What does not exist has no size and no measure." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section VI, 9:1 & 10:6-7
Friday, October 10, 2008
Power and Love and a Sound Mind
"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." -- The Bible; 2 Timothy 1:7
"You who are dedicated to the incorruptible have been given, through your acceptance, the power to release from corruption." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 19, Section IV-C, 6:1
Wow, these are powerful passages. How can I read them and not be moved to move fearlessly in the world, to make a difference wherever I find myself? How can I read them and continue to indulge, even for a moment, in pandering to the alleged safety and security of a false, separate self?
A Course in Miracles reminds us that by accepting our true Origin and Source as Sons of God, we have the power to release from corruption... which is defined by Webster as a "departure from the original or from what is pure or correct." By remembering Who We Are, we remember the power and love and sound mind that are ours already, as emanations of the One Mind. God did not give the spirit of fear, and so it does not exist. What God did not create is simply not, and never was.
What does this mean for us in these turbulent times? So many are caught up in the currents of divisive election issues and economic fears. I have heard very well-meaning people say that none of it is real, so why bother to try and change any of it, or to actively participate? This is fear disguised with a not-so-effective defense mechanism of avoidance. "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear..."
Gangaji, one of my mentors along the path, tells this story about her teacher, Papaji: "In 1947, India was in extreme crisis. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were killing each other. Enforced mass migration was causing anger, fear, and despair. The country was in chaos. At the same time, Papaji sat in bliss at Ramana Maharshi's feet, by the holy mountain of Arunachala. One day, after reading in the newspaper about the horrors, Ramana asked Papaji about his family and the dangers they were facing as they were forced to leave the Punjab and relocate to Hindu governed Lucknow. Papaji replied, "That is all just an empty dream. I am here, in the awareness of reality and the bliss of your grace." Ramana looked deeply into Papaji's eyes and said, "If it is all a dream, then what is the problem with going and taking care of your family? Go now and help them." Papaji left that very night for the Punjab, and was able to get all his family out in the nick of time. He got them on the last train allowed out."
Ramana peeled away the egoic defense mechanism of separation by avoidance. If you're avoiding something, you fear it, and you've made it something separate in your own deluded mind. "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear..." We are called, each in our own way, to listen to what's going on in the world. We are called to listen to clients and friends and family, and we are always led in beautiful and surprising ways to act in the world with God's power, and love, and sound mind.
"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." -- The Bible; Philippians 4:13
"You who are dedicated to the incorruptible have been given, through your acceptance, the power to release from corruption." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 19, Section IV-C, 6:1
Wow, these are powerful passages. How can I read them and not be moved to move fearlessly in the world, to make a difference wherever I find myself? How can I read them and continue to indulge, even for a moment, in pandering to the alleged safety and security of a false, separate self?
A Course in Miracles reminds us that by accepting our true Origin and Source as Sons of God, we have the power to release from corruption... which is defined by Webster as a "departure from the original or from what is pure or correct." By remembering Who We Are, we remember the power and love and sound mind that are ours already, as emanations of the One Mind. God did not give the spirit of fear, and so it does not exist. What God did not create is simply not, and never was.
What does this mean for us in these turbulent times? So many are caught up in the currents of divisive election issues and economic fears. I have heard very well-meaning people say that none of it is real, so why bother to try and change any of it, or to actively participate? This is fear disguised with a not-so-effective defense mechanism of avoidance. "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear..."
Gangaji, one of my mentors along the path, tells this story about her teacher, Papaji: "In 1947, India was in extreme crisis. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were killing each other. Enforced mass migration was causing anger, fear, and despair. The country was in chaos. At the same time, Papaji sat in bliss at Ramana Maharshi's feet, by the holy mountain of Arunachala. One day, after reading in the newspaper about the horrors, Ramana asked Papaji about his family and the dangers they were facing as they were forced to leave the Punjab and relocate to Hindu governed Lucknow. Papaji replied, "That is all just an empty dream. I am here, in the awareness of reality and the bliss of your grace." Ramana looked deeply into Papaji's eyes and said, "If it is all a dream, then what is the problem with going and taking care of your family? Go now and help them." Papaji left that very night for the Punjab, and was able to get all his family out in the nick of time. He got them on the last train allowed out."
Ramana peeled away the egoic defense mechanism of separation by avoidance. If you're avoiding something, you fear it, and you've made it something separate in your own deluded mind. "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear..." We are called, each in our own way, to listen to what's going on in the world. We are called to listen to clients and friends and family, and we are always led in beautiful and surprising ways to act in the world with God's power, and love, and sound mind.
"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." -- The Bible; Philippians 4:13
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The Inner Voice
"The experiences that come to us when we live in obedience to the inner Voice are miracles of beauty and joy. Let us not be afraid to follow that Voice even if at first we are so poorly attuned to it that we do not hear it correctly. There is no need to be afraid of mistakes or even of failures. Any mistakes which may be made by a person who is obedient to the still, small Voice will be few, and he can quickly pick himself up again and soon be wholly immersed in the Spirit of God. Mistakes of the personal sense are not fatal; not one is forever. Success in God is forever, but human failure is only the illusion of a day." -- Joel Goldsmith
"The 'Divine Ear' is not an auditory nerve. It is the all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to Whom each need of man is always known and by Whom it will be supplied." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 7, Lines 23-26
Oh, what a misunderstood and abused phrase: the Inner Voice. It is a made-to-order tool for the ego, a perfect way to do what we want by 'following guidance.' We can follow our fears and say, "I heard a 'no,' so I am not doing it." Or we can indulge in fantasy and say we are following our hearts. The personal self is a maze of vested interest and self-justification. Which voice are you listening to? How can you know?
The Inner Voice is not personal. It is closer than personal. It never indulges the personal self, yet it always leads us in ways of utter fulfillment. Yes, this seems like a paradox. But if we can even for a moment release all need to define or justify or weave a story about whatever the Voice says, the transmission is clear and we can simply trust that within the big picture, even the little self is fulfilled.
One way to know which voice you are following is this: how much of your time and attention goes into the comfort and indulgence of the personal self? In other words, how much time and attention goes into taking care of the physical body (this includes your 'personal' environment, care of the home, gardens, and yard, your car, your family, your animals, your stuff), of the emotional body (intimate relationships, talking on the phone to friends, e-mails, escapist reading or watching movies, recreational eating and drinking, even playing music and other artistic endeavors, wanting to be humanly good or successful, etc.), or of the mental body (our work, our so-called spiritual reading, study, thinking, trying to figure it out, rationalizing, etc.)? All of these are feeding aspects of the illusory notion of a personal self. All of these take up pretty much 100% of the time in our dream, even those of us who are supposedly on 'spiritual' paths.
So how is it possible in this world to hear a different Voice? We are so accustomed to the strident demands of the illusory self, the contrived fears and lusts and indulgences, the fragmented and split allegiance and attention, that we mistake them for the real. In A Course in Miracles Jeshua ben Joseph tells us: "The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Joy. He is the Call to Return with which God blessed the minds of His separated Sons. It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn this. Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching you. The Holy Spirit is the call to Awaken and be glad." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 5, Section II
You see, the alleged personal self is never glad. It is reactively pleased when it gets something it wants, and reactively displeased when it doesn't. But it is incapable of joy. Joy has no edges, no boundaries. It's not attached to anything. It IS. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Joy, is the Voice that is your True Self. It is not personal because YOU are not personal. Who you are has no edges, and no personal interests. Who you are is not limited to the vested interests of one tiny speck of creation. Who you are is Infinite, Limitless, Omnipresent Love.
So which voice are you following today? The illusory personal, which always weaves deeper illusion as it goes, until we don't know where we are or how we got there? Or the only real Voice, the Voice for God, which brings Peace and quiet Joy and utter certainty of Self? The choice is not hard; but as Jesus said, it takes effort and great willingness to reverse ourselves in this way. The momentum has been in the direction of illusions for so long. The Inner Voice leads us in a new direction, and is the only trustworthy guide out of the pain and forgetfulness of the personal dream.
"Our meditation is a quietness, a stillness, a state of receptivity, in which we open our consciousness to the impartation of the Spirit. Then, when the Spirit answers--when we receive the impulse that gives us that sense or awareness that God is present--the Spirit which we have touched, lives our lives." -- Joel Goldsmith
"The 'Divine Ear' is not an auditory nerve. It is the all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to Whom each need of man is always known and by Whom it will be supplied." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 7, Lines 23-26
Oh, what a misunderstood and abused phrase: the Inner Voice. It is a made-to-order tool for the ego, a perfect way to do what we want by 'following guidance.' We can follow our fears and say, "I heard a 'no,' so I am not doing it." Or we can indulge in fantasy and say we are following our hearts. The personal self is a maze of vested interest and self-justification. Which voice are you listening to? How can you know?
The Inner Voice is not personal. It is closer than personal. It never indulges the personal self, yet it always leads us in ways of utter fulfillment. Yes, this seems like a paradox. But if we can even for a moment release all need to define or justify or weave a story about whatever the Voice says, the transmission is clear and we can simply trust that within the big picture, even the little self is fulfilled.
One way to know which voice you are following is this: how much of your time and attention goes into the comfort and indulgence of the personal self? In other words, how much time and attention goes into taking care of the physical body (this includes your 'personal' environment, care of the home, gardens, and yard, your car, your family, your animals, your stuff), of the emotional body (intimate relationships, talking on the phone to friends, e-mails, escapist reading or watching movies, recreational eating and drinking, even playing music and other artistic endeavors, wanting to be humanly good or successful, etc.), or of the mental body (our work, our so-called spiritual reading, study, thinking, trying to figure it out, rationalizing, etc.)? All of these are feeding aspects of the illusory notion of a personal self. All of these take up pretty much 100% of the time in our dream, even those of us who are supposedly on 'spiritual' paths.
So how is it possible in this world to hear a different Voice? We are so accustomed to the strident demands of the illusory self, the contrived fears and lusts and indulgences, the fragmented and split allegiance and attention, that we mistake them for the real. In A Course in Miracles Jeshua ben Joseph tells us: "The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Joy. He is the Call to Return with which God blessed the minds of His separated Sons. It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn this. Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching you. The Holy Spirit is the call to Awaken and be glad." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 5, Section II
You see, the alleged personal self is never glad. It is reactively pleased when it gets something it wants, and reactively displeased when it doesn't. But it is incapable of joy. Joy has no edges, no boundaries. It's not attached to anything. It IS. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Joy, is the Voice that is your True Self. It is not personal because YOU are not personal. Who you are has no edges, and no personal interests. Who you are is not limited to the vested interests of one tiny speck of creation. Who you are is Infinite, Limitless, Omnipresent Love.
So which voice are you following today? The illusory personal, which always weaves deeper illusion as it goes, until we don't know where we are or how we got there? Or the only real Voice, the Voice for God, which brings Peace and quiet Joy and utter certainty of Self? The choice is not hard; but as Jesus said, it takes effort and great willingness to reverse ourselves in this way. The momentum has been in the direction of illusions for so long. The Inner Voice leads us in a new direction, and is the only trustworthy guide out of the pain and forgetfulness of the personal dream.
"Our meditation is a quietness, a stillness, a state of receptivity, in which we open our consciousness to the impartation of the Spirit. Then, when the Spirit answers--when we receive the impulse that gives us that sense or awareness that God is present--the Spirit which we have touched, lives our lives." -- Joel Goldsmith
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Stand Still
"Fear ye not; stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord." -- The Bible; Exodus 14:13
"Stand thou still a while, that I may show thee the Word of God." -- The Bible; 1 Samuel 9:27
"Ye shall not need to fight in this battle. Set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord." -- The Bible; 2 Chronicles, 20:17
I love walking in the woods. I've noticed that most people who hike do it with a body consciousness... they approach it as exercise and work. I walk a bit, but I spend a great deal of time standing still. I'll stop in the middle of the path and listen to the wind in the trees. I'll stop by the stream and listen to the trickling sound of water, and the rustle of leaves, breathing in the scents of the forest, and noticing how the light filters through the canopy of the trees. I'll laugh and appreciate the antics of my dogs as they run with sheer joy and abandon. All of these words are describing the five senses of the body. And if I was thinking in those moments (which I'm not), I would say that my body is serving its true function... a tool for communication within the dream. I am hearing and tasting and breathing and seeing Self in all Its glory.
My walks in the woods are metaphors for standing still. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, we can stand still and rest in Awareness ItSelf. These are moments of expanded awareness, where everything simply IS, and at the same time, it is all One, an interwoven tapestry of immeasurable beauty. It's easy to do this and see this in the silence of nature. We may have opinions that make us think that standing still in the middle of a noisy city is harder or impossible, but it is just the same. And standing still in the middle of a mental or emotional or physical battle is also no different. As A Course in Miracles reminds us, "All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is preference, not reality. What relevance has preference to the Truth? Illusions are illusions and are false. Your preference gives them no reality. Not one is true in any way, and all must yield with equal ease to what God gave as answer to them all. God's Will is One." (ACIM; Chapter 26, Section VII, 6:5-10)
Standing still has nothing to do with the physical self. It doesn't mean we have to literally stop the body. It is all about an inner stillness and alertness, the expanded Awareness of Wholeness. We stop thinking and doing from the consciousness of a separated self, and experience firsthand the salvation of the Awareness of the Oneness and Allness of God. There are an incredible number of passages in The Bible about standing still. As Jeshua ben Joseph said, those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will hear the inner meaning. It's not about bodies or illusory stories about battles and personalities. It's about the inner war we have set up between the illusory separated consciousness and the inevitable Awareness of Our True Self, forever and forever One with the Allness and Completeness that is God.
"The word "inevitable" is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the Spirit. God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him anymore than He can avoid you. The ego is afraid of the Spirit's Joy, because once you have experienced It you will withdraw all protection from the ego, and become totally without investment in fear." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 4, Section I, 9:10-11, 10:1
"Stand thou still a while, that I may show thee the Word of God." -- The Bible; 1 Samuel 9:27
"Ye shall not need to fight in this battle. Set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord." -- The Bible; 2 Chronicles, 20:17
I love walking in the woods. I've noticed that most people who hike do it with a body consciousness... they approach it as exercise and work. I walk a bit, but I spend a great deal of time standing still. I'll stop in the middle of the path and listen to the wind in the trees. I'll stop by the stream and listen to the trickling sound of water, and the rustle of leaves, breathing in the scents of the forest, and noticing how the light filters through the canopy of the trees. I'll laugh and appreciate the antics of my dogs as they run with sheer joy and abandon. All of these words are describing the five senses of the body. And if I was thinking in those moments (which I'm not), I would say that my body is serving its true function... a tool for communication within the dream. I am hearing and tasting and breathing and seeing Self in all Its glory.
My walks in the woods are metaphors for standing still. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, we can stand still and rest in Awareness ItSelf. These are moments of expanded awareness, where everything simply IS, and at the same time, it is all One, an interwoven tapestry of immeasurable beauty. It's easy to do this and see this in the silence of nature. We may have opinions that make us think that standing still in the middle of a noisy city is harder or impossible, but it is just the same. And standing still in the middle of a mental or emotional or physical battle is also no different. As A Course in Miracles reminds us, "All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is preference, not reality. What relevance has preference to the Truth? Illusions are illusions and are false. Your preference gives them no reality. Not one is true in any way, and all must yield with equal ease to what God gave as answer to them all. God's Will is One." (ACIM; Chapter 26, Section VII, 6:5-10)
Standing still has nothing to do with the physical self. It doesn't mean we have to literally stop the body. It is all about an inner stillness and alertness, the expanded Awareness of Wholeness. We stop thinking and doing from the consciousness of a separated self, and experience firsthand the salvation of the Awareness of the Oneness and Allness of God. There are an incredible number of passages in The Bible about standing still. As Jeshua ben Joseph said, those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will hear the inner meaning. It's not about bodies or illusory stories about battles and personalities. It's about the inner war we have set up between the illusory separated consciousness and the inevitable Awareness of Our True Self, forever and forever One with the Allness and Completeness that is God.
"The word "inevitable" is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the Spirit. God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him anymore than He can avoid you. The ego is afraid of the Spirit's Joy, because once you have experienced It you will withdraw all protection from the ego, and become totally without investment in fear." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 4, Section I, 9:10-11, 10:1
Friday, May 2, 2008
Intentions or Willingness
"Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this, and be not disturbed that shadows surround it. That is why you came. If you could come without them you would not need the Holy Instant. The miracle of the Holy Instant lies in your willingness to let it be what it is. And in your willingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as you were meant to be." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section IV, 2:1-6, 8-9
"The Holy Instant is the result of your determination to be Holy. It is the answer." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section IV, 1:1-2
There is a lot of hype about intentions in contemporary spiritual books. From Wayne Dyer to Lynn McTaggert to Harry Palmer, there is a collective belief (which is not new) that we decide the course of the dream through supposedly conscious intention. Like most persistent lies within the dream, there is a kernel of truth in it, though well-hidden because it's upside down and backwards. All our intentions show us is our ego-agendas. But the one power of decision that we do have as the dreamer of a dream is to align ourselves with what IS, beyond all dreaming. This is the determination and willingness to BE as God created us, without interference from our very human, illusory agendas.
Like everything that is True, this makes no sense to our list-making ego-selves. If we don't do it, who will? If I don't choose to do something, nothing will get done! Right? Well, it's amazing but true that if one ant in the anthill stops or dies, the anthill still goes on. It's the same in all aspects of this dream we call life. Forms of people, places, animals, and things all come, only to pass. Everything and everyone is expendable in the dream. Haven't you ever asked yourselves why we work so hard to be somebody, to be important, to have money, to have security, when all those who have gone before us and achieved supposedly 'great' things have one thing in common: they are all dead, and all their great achievements go the way of all things within the dream. Even if we still tell stories about certain of these people, that is only to justify our own insane search for meaning within the dream. Talk about your no-win situation.
The mystery is that when we let go of planning and intending and goal-setting, and forgive all our illusions, the dream unfolds as if we had done a great deal of planning and intending. It's so funny to see yourself being completely fulfilled and happy in unexpected and blessed ways. Who would have thought? A Course in Miracles tells us that "humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you." (ACIM; Chapter 18, Section IV, 3:1-2) And Jesus said that "of myself I do nothing." The effortless life is not one in which we do no work and sit gazing at our navels. It's one in which we don't decide from our false ego-perspectives. Instead, we are willing to stop, to listen, and to follow. We are willing to be nothing, so that we can remember we are Everything.
"Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what He does not ask, or you will add the ego to Him and confuse the two. He asks but little. It is He Who adds the greatness and the might. He joins with you to make the Holy Instant far greater than you can understand. It is your realization that your need do so little that enables Him to give so much." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section IV, 1:6-10
"The Holy Instant is the result of your determination to be Holy. It is the answer." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section IV, 1:1-2
There is a lot of hype about intentions in contemporary spiritual books. From Wayne Dyer to Lynn McTaggert to Harry Palmer, there is a collective belief (which is not new) that we decide the course of the dream through supposedly conscious intention. Like most persistent lies within the dream, there is a kernel of truth in it, though well-hidden because it's upside down and backwards. All our intentions show us is our ego-agendas. But the one power of decision that we do have as the dreamer of a dream is to align ourselves with what IS, beyond all dreaming. This is the determination and willingness to BE as God created us, without interference from our very human, illusory agendas.
Like everything that is True, this makes no sense to our list-making ego-selves. If we don't do it, who will? If I don't choose to do something, nothing will get done! Right? Well, it's amazing but true that if one ant in the anthill stops or dies, the anthill still goes on. It's the same in all aspects of this dream we call life. Forms of people, places, animals, and things all come, only to pass. Everything and everyone is expendable in the dream. Haven't you ever asked yourselves why we work so hard to be somebody, to be important, to have money, to have security, when all those who have gone before us and achieved supposedly 'great' things have one thing in common: they are all dead, and all their great achievements go the way of all things within the dream. Even if we still tell stories about certain of these people, that is only to justify our own insane search for meaning within the dream. Talk about your no-win situation.
The mystery is that when we let go of planning and intending and goal-setting, and forgive all our illusions, the dream unfolds as if we had done a great deal of planning and intending. It's so funny to see yourself being completely fulfilled and happy in unexpected and blessed ways. Who would have thought? A Course in Miracles tells us that "humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you." (ACIM; Chapter 18, Section IV, 3:1-2) And Jesus said that "of myself I do nothing." The effortless life is not one in which we do no work and sit gazing at our navels. It's one in which we don't decide from our false ego-perspectives. Instead, we are willing to stop, to listen, and to follow. We are willing to be nothing, so that we can remember we are Everything.
"Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what He does not ask, or you will add the ego to Him and confuse the two. He asks but little. It is He Who adds the greatness and the might. He joins with you to make the Holy Instant far greater than you can understand. It is your realization that your need do so little that enables Him to give so much." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section IV, 1:6-10
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Words as Wands
"As says St. James: "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." Early had I learned that whatever is loved materially, as mere corporeal personality, is eventually lost. "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it," saith the Master. Exultant hope, if tinged with earthliness, is crushed as the moth." -- Retrospection and Introspection by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 31, Lines 19-21, & Page 32, Lines 5-9
"The fundamental principle for growth in Christian Science is spiritual formation first, last, and always, while in human growth material organization is first." -- Retrospection and Introspection by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 49, Lines 11-13
"At best, and the word is perhaps questionable here, the 'healers' of the world may recognize the mind as the source of illness. But their error lies in the belief that it can cure itself." -- Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process, and Practice (An Extension of the Principles of A Course in Miracles); Chapter 2, Section IV, 5:1
There is some irony in the choice of topic today, since this blog appears to be constructed of words, and to have as its purpose the deepening of Awareness of Truth. The words themselves, as always, are irrelevant. Like all maps, they are not the territory they point to. They are symbols that have no value in themselves.
We cherish the words that make up our stories. Our stories are as varied as mankind, but not one of them is true. Our devotion to them simply means that here is a story we want to be true. For whatever reason, we have an investment in keeping our story alive, good or bad, happy or sad. Including our spiritual stories, which become elegant wands we wave to disguise our continued devotion to an illusory, individual identity who is becoming 'saved' or 'enlightened' or 'wise' or... fill in the blanks. We have all the right words, but they cover a deep well of nothingness. We feel momentarily comforted by the stories, but this comfort comes and goes, and so it is not real. What is Real does not come and go, and has no story. It IS.
As we read in one of the quotes above, the fundamental error of the illusory individual mind is that it can correct or heal itself with the right stories, the right words. Nothing could be further from the Truth. How can what is Real and Eternal have ever changed, or moved at all? How could it need healing? "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it" is one of the hard sayings of Christ. As long as we continue with a story, even a spiritual story, imagining ourselves as someone who isn't, but is becoming (I'm working on it, we say).., then we are trying to save an imaginary self, the self of the story... and so we very literally have lost our Life, our Truth, our Self.
When will we learn? When will we hear? Whatever we want to save can only be lost. Whatever we want to fix can only be broken. Whatever we want to find we will find, only to lose it again. The story has no end... its very purpose is a closed feedback loop, and continues to feed on itself and spew new stories with new characters, in this life dream or another. Samsara, the wheel of suffering, has no end.
One of my teachers said to me once, "Let what can be lost, be lost." Like Jesus saying, "Let the dead bury the dead." Reality has literally nothing to do with the story. Spiritual or not, the words we use as wands have no meaning except to deepen our descent into illusion. "Exultant hope, if tinged with earthliness, is crushed as the moth."
We don't need a spiritual story to wake up. We can see this through such examples as Byron Katie and Eckert Tolle, who both experienced Awakening by simply going as deep into their suffering as they could go. Go deep enough into any story (including spiritual stories) and their illusory nature becomes apparent. All we need to awaken is to cease to judge who and what and where we are, and to stop, to be still. No story will awaken us, no words are the talisman to do the trick. We have to stop, to be still, and listen to the Truth that is always here. The Truth is very quiet, and always available. And it needs no words or story. It doesn't need anything at all that you don't already have, right here and right now.
Words and stories, spiritual or otherwise, are not wands. And they can become obstacles to Truth if we use them as such. Like all illusions, they are nothing at all. When Mary Baker Eddy spoke of spiritual formation first, this is what she meant. To the illusory separated self, material growth and organization is foremost, even in the guise of spiritual study. The study of words themselves can never bring us to Awakening. Only direct experience of Self, in the Silence without words, will restore us to the memory of Oneness and Life Everlasting.
"There is no world! How can God's Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgement. So must he judge not, and he will awaken." -- A Course in Miracles
"The fundamental principle for growth in Christian Science is spiritual formation first, last, and always, while in human growth material organization is first." -- Retrospection and Introspection by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 49, Lines 11-13
"At best, and the word is perhaps questionable here, the 'healers' of the world may recognize the mind as the source of illness. But their error lies in the belief that it can cure itself." -- Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process, and Practice (An Extension of the Principles of A Course in Miracles); Chapter 2, Section IV, 5:1
There is some irony in the choice of topic today, since this blog appears to be constructed of words, and to have as its purpose the deepening of Awareness of Truth. The words themselves, as always, are irrelevant. Like all maps, they are not the territory they point to. They are symbols that have no value in themselves.
We cherish the words that make up our stories. Our stories are as varied as mankind, but not one of them is true. Our devotion to them simply means that here is a story we want to be true. For whatever reason, we have an investment in keeping our story alive, good or bad, happy or sad. Including our spiritual stories, which become elegant wands we wave to disguise our continued devotion to an illusory, individual identity who is becoming 'saved' or 'enlightened' or 'wise' or... fill in the blanks. We have all the right words, but they cover a deep well of nothingness. We feel momentarily comforted by the stories, but this comfort comes and goes, and so it is not real. What is Real does not come and go, and has no story. It IS.
As we read in one of the quotes above, the fundamental error of the illusory individual mind is that it can correct or heal itself with the right stories, the right words. Nothing could be further from the Truth. How can what is Real and Eternal have ever changed, or moved at all? How could it need healing? "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it" is one of the hard sayings of Christ. As long as we continue with a story, even a spiritual story, imagining ourselves as someone who isn't, but is becoming (I'm working on it, we say).., then we are trying to save an imaginary self, the self of the story... and so we very literally have lost our Life, our Truth, our Self.
When will we learn? When will we hear? Whatever we want to save can only be lost. Whatever we want to fix can only be broken. Whatever we want to find we will find, only to lose it again. The story has no end... its very purpose is a closed feedback loop, and continues to feed on itself and spew new stories with new characters, in this life dream or another. Samsara, the wheel of suffering, has no end.
One of my teachers said to me once, "Let what can be lost, be lost." Like Jesus saying, "Let the dead bury the dead." Reality has literally nothing to do with the story. Spiritual or not, the words we use as wands have no meaning except to deepen our descent into illusion. "Exultant hope, if tinged with earthliness, is crushed as the moth."
We don't need a spiritual story to wake up. We can see this through such examples as Byron Katie and Eckert Tolle, who both experienced Awakening by simply going as deep into their suffering as they could go. Go deep enough into any story (including spiritual stories) and their illusory nature becomes apparent. All we need to awaken is to cease to judge who and what and where we are, and to stop, to be still. No story will awaken us, no words are the talisman to do the trick. We have to stop, to be still, and listen to the Truth that is always here. The Truth is very quiet, and always available. And it needs no words or story. It doesn't need anything at all that you don't already have, right here and right now.
Words and stories, spiritual or otherwise, are not wands. And they can become obstacles to Truth if we use them as such. Like all illusions, they are nothing at all. When Mary Baker Eddy spoke of spiritual formation first, this is what she meant. To the illusory separated self, material growth and organization is foremost, even in the guise of spiritual study. The study of words themselves can never bring us to Awakening. Only direct experience of Self, in the Silence without words, will restore us to the memory of Oneness and Life Everlasting.
"There is no world! How can God's Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgement. So must he judge not, and he will awaken." -- A Course in Miracles
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
An Unknown Future
"A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans that it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own. It waits until it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. A healed mind is relieved of the belief that it must plan, although it cannot know the outcome which is best, the means by which it is achieved, nor how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve. It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection, at the cost of Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 135, 11:1-4, 12:1, 14:1-2
The thought of an unknown future is one of those fear-filled images that plagues us. Where will I be? Who will I be? What will I do? What does that look like? How can I grasp it and hold it? How will I live? What will I do for income and health care? How can I know it will be alright? Who will be with me? Who will take care of me? Who can I serve? What is my purpose? How can I grow and become more... and on and on and on. Trying to figure out the future and plan for it is the preoccupation of the dream-self we each call 'me'.
ACIM tells us that "The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided for, unless it makes its own provisions. It overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course. The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. Its past experience directs its choice of what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the way." (ACIM; Workbook 135, 15:1-4, 16:1-5)
All of this is based on several illusory assumptions. First, that we are separate from God, from Good, and must somehow acquire our good because we don't have it. Second, that there are multiple forces or powers operating in the world that we must individually align with or defend against. And third (and the most difficult to see as the lie that it is), that we have to personally do it... that it's up to us to set goals and plan and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. People who don't set goals and reach for their dreams in our world are considered sorry specimens. We look on them with pity and wonder how life seems worth living. What nonsense it all is!
All of these lies can be answered with One simple Truth: God. God is Omnipresent, the Allness of Being. Good is a synonym for God. So Good is All-Encompassing, All-in-All. God is Omnipotent, the only Power. So there can be no other forces or powers to defend against or to align with. Finally, God is Omniscient, the only Knower. There can be no other who knows and does anything. This is not personally insulting, it's liberating. And it's what Jeshua be Joseph meant when he said, "Of myself I do nothing."
God IS. "What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present, and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your Good? Your present Trust in Him is the defense that promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy that constantly increases, as this life becomes a Holy Instant, set in time, but heeding only immortality. Let no defenses but your present Trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the Truth that only your defenses would conceal." (ACIM; Workbook 135, 18:1, 19:1-2)
God IS. There can be no unknown future when we remember this. For we are the Holy reflection of the Oneness, the Allness, the Goodness of God. There IS no other.
"Heaven asks nothing. It is hell that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. You give up nothing when, undefended, you present yourself to your Creator as you really are. What little plans or magical beliefs can still have value, when you have received your function from the Voice for God HimSelf?" -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 135, 24:3-5, 25:6
The thought of an unknown future is one of those fear-filled images that plagues us. Where will I be? Who will I be? What will I do? What does that look like? How can I grasp it and hold it? How will I live? What will I do for income and health care? How can I know it will be alright? Who will be with me? Who will take care of me? Who can I serve? What is my purpose? How can I grow and become more... and on and on and on. Trying to figure out the future and plan for it is the preoccupation of the dream-self we each call 'me'.
ACIM tells us that "The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided for, unless it makes its own provisions. It overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course. The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. Its past experience directs its choice of what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the way." (ACIM; Workbook 135, 15:1-4, 16:1-5)
All of this is based on several illusory assumptions. First, that we are separate from God, from Good, and must somehow acquire our good because we don't have it. Second, that there are multiple forces or powers operating in the world that we must individually align with or defend against. And third (and the most difficult to see as the lie that it is), that we have to personally do it... that it's up to us to set goals and plan and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. People who don't set goals and reach for their dreams in our world are considered sorry specimens. We look on them with pity and wonder how life seems worth living. What nonsense it all is!
All of these lies can be answered with One simple Truth: God. God is Omnipresent, the Allness of Being. Good is a synonym for God. So Good is All-Encompassing, All-in-All. God is Omnipotent, the only Power. So there can be no other forces or powers to defend against or to align with. Finally, God is Omniscient, the only Knower. There can be no other who knows and does anything. This is not personally insulting, it's liberating. And it's what Jeshua be Joseph meant when he said, "Of myself I do nothing."
God IS. "What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present, and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your Good? Your present Trust in Him is the defense that promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy that constantly increases, as this life becomes a Holy Instant, set in time, but heeding only immortality. Let no defenses but your present Trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the Truth that only your defenses would conceal." (ACIM; Workbook 135, 18:1, 19:1-2)
God IS. There can be no unknown future when we remember this. For we are the Holy reflection of the Oneness, the Allness, the Goodness of God. There IS no other.
"Heaven asks nothing. It is hell that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. You give up nothing when, undefended, you present yourself to your Creator as you really are. What little plans or magical beliefs can still have value, when you have received your function from the Voice for God HimSelf?" -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 135, 24:3-5, 25:6
Monday, March 24, 2008
The Different Way
"The Way is not hard, but it is very different. Yours is the way of pain, of which God knows nothing. That way is hard indeed, and very lonely. Fear and grief are your guests, and they go with you and abide with you on the way. But the dark journey is not the Way of God's Son. Walk in Light and do not see the dark companions, for they are not fit companions for the Son of God, Who was created of Light and in Light. The Great Light always surrounds you and shines out from you. How can you see the dark companions in a Light such as this? If you see them, it is only because you are denying the Light. But deny them instead, for the Light is here and the Way is clear." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 11, Section III, 4:1-10
"All inharmony of mortal mind or body is illusion, possessing neither reality nor identity though seeming to be real and identical... God is everywhere, and nothing apart from Him is present or has power." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 473, Lines 1-3, 8-10
The nature of our fragmented mind, and thus our fragmented perception, is that it is very hard to see through our own projections. It is very hard to reverse yourself by yourself. Impossible really. Because the Truth is, we are not by ourselves. We are not alone. We are, collectively, the fragmented mind that is hallucinating this world. As seeming individuals, we are lost. That's why the search for enlightenment is so futile. It's an endless search, a set-up with no real outcome, just dreams of spiritual teachers who know more than we do, books or movies or people that hold the answers, the keys to the prize of enlightenment. Maybe the next one will be the real thing! The spiritual search is just another twist on the endlessly selfish, ego-centered search for completion and fulfillment. Even in spiritual clothing, this is walking with the dark companions of self-seeking and illusory autonomy. The more we withdraw into our own story and see it in competition with other stories, spiritual or not, the more we sink into the darkness of story, dreams within dreams. And the ego will justify itself regardless of appearance, will rationalize so loudly and convincingly that the still, small Voice of God that is your Reality is ignored and unheard.
The answer to all of this is returning to our Right Mind, our Oneness with God. Forgiveness is the key to the reversal of projection, the great undoing of what never was. This is why we need each other within the dream. The appearance of illusory others as projections is designed to keep our spiritual amnesia firmly in place. Only by forgiving our own projections and forgiving ourselves for wanting to be separate can we truly join in Mind and Spirit with the Self that we have always been. We are All the Son of God, and can only Re-Member our Self and know Completion by realizing this.
As ACIM says, the way is not hard, but it is very different. Whenever we are tempted to withdraw into isolation, to judge the illusions we see outside ourselves to be in competition with the Truth we seek, it's time to forgive our own projections. Our stories and projections about ourselves and others and the world around us are all what ACIM calls the dark companions. They are imaginary substitutes, dark because they are a negation, non-being. Darkness doesn't exist... it's the seeming absence of light, only a seeming. Time to turn toward the Light in all, and let IT tell us what is True. No meaning we give to things will ever lead us anywhere but deeper into illusion... all stories lead to other stories. The different way is walking in Light... the end of story, the end of a separate self, the complete Remembrance of Oneness in the Love that We Are. Love doesn't need a story. It Shines forever as the clear Light of Truth.
"Real freedom depends on welcoming Reality, and of your guests only the Holy Spirit is Real. Know, then, Who abides with you merely by recognizing what is here already, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters [your stories and projections], for the Comforter of God is in you." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 11, Section II, 8:7-8
"All inharmony of mortal mind or body is illusion, possessing neither reality nor identity though seeming to be real and identical... God is everywhere, and nothing apart from Him is present or has power." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 473, Lines 1-3, 8-10
The nature of our fragmented mind, and thus our fragmented perception, is that it is very hard to see through our own projections. It is very hard to reverse yourself by yourself. Impossible really. Because the Truth is, we are not by ourselves. We are not alone. We are, collectively, the fragmented mind that is hallucinating this world. As seeming individuals, we are lost. That's why the search for enlightenment is so futile. It's an endless search, a set-up with no real outcome, just dreams of spiritual teachers who know more than we do, books or movies or people that hold the answers, the keys to the prize of enlightenment. Maybe the next one will be the real thing! The spiritual search is just another twist on the endlessly selfish, ego-centered search for completion and fulfillment. Even in spiritual clothing, this is walking with the dark companions of self-seeking and illusory autonomy. The more we withdraw into our own story and see it in competition with other stories, spiritual or not, the more we sink into the darkness of story, dreams within dreams. And the ego will justify itself regardless of appearance, will rationalize so loudly and convincingly that the still, small Voice of God that is your Reality is ignored and unheard.
The answer to all of this is returning to our Right Mind, our Oneness with God. Forgiveness is the key to the reversal of projection, the great undoing of what never was. This is why we need each other within the dream. The appearance of illusory others as projections is designed to keep our spiritual amnesia firmly in place. Only by forgiving our own projections and forgiving ourselves for wanting to be separate can we truly join in Mind and Spirit with the Self that we have always been. We are All the Son of God, and can only Re-Member our Self and know Completion by realizing this.
As ACIM says, the way is not hard, but it is very different. Whenever we are tempted to withdraw into isolation, to judge the illusions we see outside ourselves to be in competition with the Truth we seek, it's time to forgive our own projections. Our stories and projections about ourselves and others and the world around us are all what ACIM calls the dark companions. They are imaginary substitutes, dark because they are a negation, non-being. Darkness doesn't exist... it's the seeming absence of light, only a seeming. Time to turn toward the Light in all, and let IT tell us what is True. No meaning we give to things will ever lead us anywhere but deeper into illusion... all stories lead to other stories. The different way is walking in Light... the end of story, the end of a separate self, the complete Remembrance of Oneness in the Love that We Are. Love doesn't need a story. It Shines forever as the clear Light of Truth.
"Real freedom depends on welcoming Reality, and of your guests only the Holy Spirit is Real. Know, then, Who abides with you merely by recognizing what is here already, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters [your stories and projections], for the Comforter of God is in you." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 11, Section II, 8:7-8
Friday, March 21, 2008
Somebody's Story
"The Thought of God created you. It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from it an instant. It belongs to you. By it you live. It is your Source of Life, holding you One with it, and everything is One with you because it left you not. The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. Eternity and everlasting Life shine in your mind, because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you." A Course in Miracles, Workbook 165, 2:1-7
"The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 8, 2:1-4
"Your mind is really a blank. To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 10, 3:3-4
"What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with Reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 14, 1:2-5
"Scientifically speaking, there is no mortal mind out of which to make material beliefs, springing from illusion. This misnamed mind is not an entity. It is only a false sense of matter, since matter is not sensible. The One Mind, God, contains no mortal opinions. All that is Real is included in this Immortal Mind." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 399, Lines 23-28
As you know, we live in a world of story. We listen to our own stories with the greatest interest, but we also love to give great meaning to other people's stories, either by empathizing or by judging. And we dearly love books and movies, which are simply projected versions of our own stories. We're always in somebody's story.
It can be a shock to really notice this. The fact that there is absolutely no difference in any story because it's all made up... this is hard for most people to swallow. We think there are good stories that are worth living. But tell me, dear reader, what real difference can exist in what is unreal? If the mind is actually blank when we're in our own or somebody else's story, if there really isn't a me and a you as we imagine it... then what story could be worth living when it is the equivalent of a spiritual lobotomy? When immersed in our private world we have complete spiritual amnesia, the endless forgetting of the Son of God. We ride Samsara, the wheel of suffering. Around and around and around we go... like a sick parody, the amusement park from hell.
The Truth is, not one story told from the perspective of the world is true. Not one. ACIM says bluntly,"There is no world!" (ACIM, Workbook 132, 6:2) So who the hell is talking? Who is questioning? Who is wondering about all of this? Who, indeed?
Let's widen our awareness, letting it all breathe for a moment. Rest and breathe. We're not talking physical breath here... we're using a metaphor for allowing Spiritual memory to return, like opening a bottle of good wine and letting it breathe to allow its true flavor to emerge. The good thing about the dream we live is that the Holy Spirit, our True Self that always remembers our Oneness with God, can use every story as metaphor, can translate every illusion for Awakening. How could it be otherwise? Our Reality has always been safely in the Allness of God, Who is All Light and Love and Good... in Whom there is no darkness, no lie, no illusion, no lack, no mistake at all. We are Real. Our stories are not.
It is so funny when you really think about it. We Who Are One with All, Who ARE Everything, spend our dreaming lives imagining we're NOT. Either we imagine we're not and we struggle to achieve, or we imagine we're not and we loathe ourselves for our inadequacy, or we imagine we're not and they are, or we imagine they're not and we are, or we imagine we're not and so it means this and that and whatever... it really doesn't matter what version of not, whose story of not. We're always dreaming somebody's story. And in everybody's story, somebody is not.
God created us by extending His Being... and so we live and move and have our Being in and As Divine Mind. There can be no separation from this True and Only Reality. Again, don't take my word for this. Be still, and listen to the Voice that is always with you. It is very quiet, because there is no conflict in Reality. So we are advised in all spiritual traditions to be still, to breathe, to listen. Only illusions need constant stories. The Truth is quiet and perfectly clear. And our Real Thoughts, the Miracles of Love and Oneness that heal every perceived illusion, dawn on our clear and open minds.
In this world, we are always in somebody's story. So let's give all stories to the One Who knows how to translate them for Awakening.
"Be still and know that I Am God." -- The Bible, Psalm 46:10
"My mind is part of God's. I am very Holy." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 35
"Keep distinctly in thought that man is the offspring of God, not of man; that man is spiritual, not material." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 396, Lines 26-28
"The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 8, 2:1-4
"Your mind is really a blank. To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 10, 3:3-4
"What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with Reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 14, 1:2-5
"Scientifically speaking, there is no mortal mind out of which to make material beliefs, springing from illusion. This misnamed mind is not an entity. It is only a false sense of matter, since matter is not sensible. The One Mind, God, contains no mortal opinions. All that is Real is included in this Immortal Mind." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 399, Lines 23-28
As you know, we live in a world of story. We listen to our own stories with the greatest interest, but we also love to give great meaning to other people's stories, either by empathizing or by judging. And we dearly love books and movies, which are simply projected versions of our own stories. We're always in somebody's story.
It can be a shock to really notice this. The fact that there is absolutely no difference in any story because it's all made up... this is hard for most people to swallow. We think there are good stories that are worth living. But tell me, dear reader, what real difference can exist in what is unreal? If the mind is actually blank when we're in our own or somebody else's story, if there really isn't a me and a you as we imagine it... then what story could be worth living when it is the equivalent of a spiritual lobotomy? When immersed in our private world we have complete spiritual amnesia, the endless forgetting of the Son of God. We ride Samsara, the wheel of suffering. Around and around and around we go... like a sick parody, the amusement park from hell.
The Truth is, not one story told from the perspective of the world is true. Not one. ACIM says bluntly,"There is no world!" (ACIM, Workbook 132, 6:2) So who the hell is talking? Who is questioning? Who is wondering about all of this? Who, indeed?
Let's widen our awareness, letting it all breathe for a moment. Rest and breathe. We're not talking physical breath here... we're using a metaphor for allowing Spiritual memory to return, like opening a bottle of good wine and letting it breathe to allow its true flavor to emerge. The good thing about the dream we live is that the Holy Spirit, our True Self that always remembers our Oneness with God, can use every story as metaphor, can translate every illusion for Awakening. How could it be otherwise? Our Reality has always been safely in the Allness of God, Who is All Light and Love and Good... in Whom there is no darkness, no lie, no illusion, no lack, no mistake at all. We are Real. Our stories are not.
It is so funny when you really think about it. We Who Are One with All, Who ARE Everything, spend our dreaming lives imagining we're NOT. Either we imagine we're not and we struggle to achieve, or we imagine we're not and we loathe ourselves for our inadequacy, or we imagine we're not and they are, or we imagine they're not and we are, or we imagine we're not and so it means this and that and whatever... it really doesn't matter what version of not, whose story of not. We're always dreaming somebody's story. And in everybody's story, somebody is not.
God created us by extending His Being... and so we live and move and have our Being in and As Divine Mind. There can be no separation from this True and Only Reality. Again, don't take my word for this. Be still, and listen to the Voice that is always with you. It is very quiet, because there is no conflict in Reality. So we are advised in all spiritual traditions to be still, to breathe, to listen. Only illusions need constant stories. The Truth is quiet and perfectly clear. And our Real Thoughts, the Miracles of Love and Oneness that heal every perceived illusion, dawn on our clear and open minds.
In this world, we are always in somebody's story. So let's give all stories to the One Who knows how to translate them for Awakening.
"Be still and know that I Am God." -- The Bible, Psalm 46:10
"My mind is part of God's. I am very Holy." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 35
"Keep distinctly in thought that man is the offspring of God, not of man; that man is spiritual, not material." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 396, Lines 26-28
Friday, March 14, 2008
No Respecter of Persons
[For those that are interested, I hold a weekly ACIM conference call every Saturday morning at 9 a.m. central time. All are welcome. The call-in number is 605-475-4333, and the access Code is 101546.]
"Then Peter opened his mouth and said, "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons." -- The Bible, Acts 10:34
"All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though unrecognized, is faith in specialness. And difference of any kind imposes orders of reality, and a need to judge that cannot be escaped." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 24, Section I, 3:1, 6
While questioning the presence of a particular issue in my life, I was given the above guidance. The answer is abundantly clear. Why would this issue be different? Why would it have anything to do with what I do or don't do? The Will of God is One, and is endless Love and Substance and Goodness and Wholeness, Divine Harmony in the Allness of Being. How could there be an exception to Allness?
And then I turned to this passage in ACIM: "Those who are special must defend illusions against the Truth. For what is specialness but an attack upon the Will of God?" To think that my problem or issue or even my love is especially fascinating, especially good, especially hard, especially important, or unique in any way, is to keep the illusion of separation from Self intact. It's amazing how the ego creates the illusion of separateness, keeps the identity of specialness one way or another, in order to establish itself as god. Notice how often we describe things to ourselves or others as 'so good,' or 'so awful,' or 'so easy,' or 'so hard.' Anything to make it stand out as unique and special, worthy of attention, worthy of assumed reality. Ha!
"There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not "harder" or "bigger" than another. They are all the same." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 1, Section I, 1:1-3
So the sameness of Good, the universality of Good, the duplicability of demonstration through the miracle of healed perception is not because we do anything to deserve it or do it right, but because God IS, everywhere, always, forever. It is hard at first to see that imagined problems are perceived specialness, just as imagined personal love is specialness... and that both have exactly the same goal. The goal is always separation, autonomy, something apart that is yours alone. And this can never be, in Truth. Oneness remains the Truth of Being, and in that Oneness, the Allness of Being is equal and free.
As soon as we stop generating imagined differences, we see that there are none. It's not that it's bad or wrong to generate and live by illusions... it's simply that there are none in reality, and so we suffer through our endless quest to make the illusory and ephemeral be real and eternal. It can never be. As soon as we stop respecting persons and all material illusion, we begin to see as God sees. For make no mistake about it, whether we awaken and see or choose to remain asleep, we remain together in the Oneness of Self, the pure and Holy reflection of God.
"Comparison must be an ego device, for Love makes none. Specialness always makes comparisons. Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of Peace." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 24, Section II, 1:1-2, 2:1
"You are not special. If you think you are, and would defend your specialness against the Truth of what you really are, how can you know the Truth? What answer that the Holy Spirit gives can reach you, when it is your specialness to which you listen, and which asks and answers? You can defend your specialness, but never will you hear the Voice for God beside it." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 24, Section II, 4:1-3, 5:1
"Then Peter opened his mouth and said, "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons." -- The Bible, Acts 10:34
"All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though unrecognized, is faith in specialness. And difference of any kind imposes orders of reality, and a need to judge that cannot be escaped." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 24, Section I, 3:1, 6
While questioning the presence of a particular issue in my life, I was given the above guidance. The answer is abundantly clear. Why would this issue be different? Why would it have anything to do with what I do or don't do? The Will of God is One, and is endless Love and Substance and Goodness and Wholeness, Divine Harmony in the Allness of Being. How could there be an exception to Allness?
And then I turned to this passage in ACIM: "Those who are special must defend illusions against the Truth. For what is specialness but an attack upon the Will of God?" To think that my problem or issue or even my love is especially fascinating, especially good, especially hard, especially important, or unique in any way, is to keep the illusion of separation from Self intact. It's amazing how the ego creates the illusion of separateness, keeps the identity of specialness one way or another, in order to establish itself as god. Notice how often we describe things to ourselves or others as 'so good,' or 'so awful,' or 'so easy,' or 'so hard.' Anything to make it stand out as unique and special, worthy of attention, worthy of assumed reality. Ha!
"There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not "harder" or "bigger" than another. They are all the same." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 1, Section I, 1:1-3
So the sameness of Good, the universality of Good, the duplicability of demonstration through the miracle of healed perception is not because we do anything to deserve it or do it right, but because God IS, everywhere, always, forever. It is hard at first to see that imagined problems are perceived specialness, just as imagined personal love is specialness... and that both have exactly the same goal. The goal is always separation, autonomy, something apart that is yours alone. And this can never be, in Truth. Oneness remains the Truth of Being, and in that Oneness, the Allness of Being is equal and free.
As soon as we stop generating imagined differences, we see that there are none. It's not that it's bad or wrong to generate and live by illusions... it's simply that there are none in reality, and so we suffer through our endless quest to make the illusory and ephemeral be real and eternal. It can never be. As soon as we stop respecting persons and all material illusion, we begin to see as God sees. For make no mistake about it, whether we awaken and see or choose to remain asleep, we remain together in the Oneness of Self, the pure and Holy reflection of God.
"Comparison must be an ego device, for Love makes none. Specialness always makes comparisons. Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of Peace." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 24, Section II, 1:1-2, 2:1
"You are not special. If you think you are, and would defend your specialness against the Truth of what you really are, how can you know the Truth? What answer that the Holy Spirit gives can reach you, when it is your specialness to which you listen, and which asks and answers? You can defend your specialness, but never will you hear the Voice for God beside it." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 24, Section II, 4:1-3, 5:1
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Being Nothing
"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There is no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream in which it acts as if it were a person to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, born into the world outside the body, lives a little while an dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different and can be told apart." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 1:1-8
Today's blog longer and is entirely about Chapter 27, Section VIII in A Course in Miracles. I urge you to read this entire section, and over and over. We know theoretically that we are not who we think we are. We know God created us in His Image, and that image is the reflection of pure Spirit. We know theoretically that our bodies are vehicles, a way to navigate in the world, like a car or a bicycle, and that the only real use for them is communication within the world. But what we don't want to see, don't want to acknowledge, is that the body is nothing at all.
"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not need and does not even want. It hires other bodies, that they may protect it and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looks about for special bodies that can share its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies that would hurt and torture it." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 2:1-7
Winner or loser, lover or fighter, consumer or consumed... there are no real differences in the serial adventures of this fictional object we call the body.
"Thus you are not the dreamer, but the dream. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that it contrives. That this is all the body does is true, for it is but a figure in a dream. But who reacts to figures in a dream unless he sees them as if they were real? The instant that he sees them as they are, they have no more effects on him, because he understands he gave them their effects by causing them and making them seem real." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 4:1-5
The whole point to the endless stories we call life is to make it seem like life is happening TO us. If we really see for one second that it is all made up, we cease to feel like the effect of the world, like the victim, like the winner or the loser. We recognize the subject we have been calling 'me' to simply be another object, another character in the dream... and we recognize that we are the dreamer. And the dream is nothing at all. A fiction.
"How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? Is it your wish to let no dream appear to be the cause of what it is you do?" -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 5:1
Ah, here is clincher. How willing are we? How willing are we to really SEE? How willing are we to take responsibility for creating a universe of smoke and mirrors, and living our lives as willing slaves to nothing at all?
"Into eternity, where all is One, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 6:2-5
What a joke! That we spend every minute of every imagined day taking ourselves and our imaginary world so damn seriously! We want so badly for our illusions to have substance that we think the seriousness and drama gives them weight and substance. And how's that working for us?
"A timelessness in which is time made real; a part of God that can attack itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a mind within a body; all are forms of circularity whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause. The world you see depicts exactly what you thought you did. Except that now you think that what you did is being done to you. The guilt for what you thought is being placed outside yourself, and on a guilty world that dreams your dreams and thinks your thoughts instead of you." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 7:1-4
Circularity indeed. It's no accident that many indigenous cultures depict the world as a snake eating its own tail. Everything we see 'out there' is some form of Karma. Karma is not what happens TO us. It's the reliving over and over of what we imagine we have done, in dreaming ourselves separate from the One, separate from God and the Allness of Good. And it gets bigger and more complicated as the dreaming goes on, since we have completely buried the 'original sin.' We think it is the characters in the dream that we do things to, or that do things to us. And over and over we think that we must relive and redeem these actions, or take vengeance, or somehow get it right. And so Samsara, the endless wheel of suffering continues to turn throughout imaginary births and rebirths, throughout imaginary heavens and imaginary hells.
"The world but demonstrates an ancient truth; you will believe that others do to you exactly what you think you did to them. But once deluded into blaming them you will not see the cause of what they do, because you want the guilt to rest on them. How childish is the petulant device to keep your innocence by pushing guilt outside yourself, but never letting it go! It is not easy to perceive the jest when all around you do your eyes behold its heavy consequences, but without their trifling cause." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 8:1-4
The heavier and more real the dream seems, the harder it is to see the joke. The only way to let it go is to forgive... we can't trust our own deluded sight and senses to know the truth from fiction. And so we have to forgive it ALL. And as we forgive and turn it all over to the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God that still resides in each of us in the midst of our delusion... as we forgive and let go, the Holy Spirit translates it all for the Awakening of all.
"In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects. How else could He correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely? He bids you bring each terrible effect to Him that you may look together on its foolish cause and laugh with Him a while. You judge effects, but He has judged their cause. And by His judgment are effects removed. Perhaps you come in tears. But hear Him say, "My brother, Holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur." And you will leave the Holy Instant with your laughter and your brother's joined with His." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 9:1-8
How comforting is this? To know that all we have to do is ask. To know that all we have to do is be willing to let it all be as it really is. Without the story, without the need to judge and blame and be right, without the need for anyone to be guilty (including ourselves), we can see the clear and simple Truth. We can breathe again and laugh at what once brought us pain. How is this possible?
"The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 10:1-6
Being nothing is the nature of a dream. When we identify with a character in a fiction, we are being nothing. No wonder we spend our lives wanting to BE somebody. The sane part of us knows Who We Are. The problem is that we can never be somebody in a dream. A fiction will never be true. A fiction will never give us what we really want.
"This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering whatever form it takes." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 11:1
Today's blog longer and is entirely about Chapter 27, Section VIII in A Course in Miracles. I urge you to read this entire section, and over and over. We know theoretically that we are not who we think we are. We know God created us in His Image, and that image is the reflection of pure Spirit. We know theoretically that our bodies are vehicles, a way to navigate in the world, like a car or a bicycle, and that the only real use for them is communication within the world. But what we don't want to see, don't want to acknowledge, is that the body is nothing at all.
"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not need and does not even want. It hires other bodies, that they may protect it and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looks about for special bodies that can share its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies that would hurt and torture it." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 2:1-7
Winner or loser, lover or fighter, consumer or consumed... there are no real differences in the serial adventures of this fictional object we call the body.
"Thus you are not the dreamer, but the dream. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that it contrives. That this is all the body does is true, for it is but a figure in a dream. But who reacts to figures in a dream unless he sees them as if they were real? The instant that he sees them as they are, they have no more effects on him, because he understands he gave them their effects by causing them and making them seem real." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 4:1-5
The whole point to the endless stories we call life is to make it seem like life is happening TO us. If we really see for one second that it is all made up, we cease to feel like the effect of the world, like the victim, like the winner or the loser. We recognize the subject we have been calling 'me' to simply be another object, another character in the dream... and we recognize that we are the dreamer. And the dream is nothing at all. A fiction.
"How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? Is it your wish to let no dream appear to be the cause of what it is you do?" -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 5:1
Ah, here is clincher. How willing are we? How willing are we to really SEE? How willing are we to take responsibility for creating a universe of smoke and mirrors, and living our lives as willing slaves to nothing at all?
"Into eternity, where all is One, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 6:2-5
What a joke! That we spend every minute of every imagined day taking ourselves and our imaginary world so damn seriously! We want so badly for our illusions to have substance that we think the seriousness and drama gives them weight and substance. And how's that working for us?
"A timelessness in which is time made real; a part of God that can attack itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a mind within a body; all are forms of circularity whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause. The world you see depicts exactly what you thought you did. Except that now you think that what you did is being done to you. The guilt for what you thought is being placed outside yourself, and on a guilty world that dreams your dreams and thinks your thoughts instead of you." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 7:1-4
Circularity indeed. It's no accident that many indigenous cultures depict the world as a snake eating its own tail. Everything we see 'out there' is some form of Karma. Karma is not what happens TO us. It's the reliving over and over of what we imagine we have done, in dreaming ourselves separate from the One, separate from God and the Allness of Good. And it gets bigger and more complicated as the dreaming goes on, since we have completely buried the 'original sin.' We think it is the characters in the dream that we do things to, or that do things to us. And over and over we think that we must relive and redeem these actions, or take vengeance, or somehow get it right. And so Samsara, the endless wheel of suffering continues to turn throughout imaginary births and rebirths, throughout imaginary heavens and imaginary hells.
"The world but demonstrates an ancient truth; you will believe that others do to you exactly what you think you did to them. But once deluded into blaming them you will not see the cause of what they do, because you want the guilt to rest on them. How childish is the petulant device to keep your innocence by pushing guilt outside yourself, but never letting it go! It is not easy to perceive the jest when all around you do your eyes behold its heavy consequences, but without their trifling cause." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 8:1-4
The heavier and more real the dream seems, the harder it is to see the joke. The only way to let it go is to forgive... we can't trust our own deluded sight and senses to know the truth from fiction. And so we have to forgive it ALL. And as we forgive and turn it all over to the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God that still resides in each of us in the midst of our delusion... as we forgive and let go, the Holy Spirit translates it all for the Awakening of all.
"In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects. How else could He correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely? He bids you bring each terrible effect to Him that you may look together on its foolish cause and laugh with Him a while. You judge effects, but He has judged their cause. And by His judgment are effects removed. Perhaps you come in tears. But hear Him say, "My brother, Holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur." And you will leave the Holy Instant with your laughter and your brother's joined with His." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 9:1-8
How comforting is this? To know that all we have to do is ask. To know that all we have to do is be willing to let it all be as it really is. Without the story, without the need to judge and blame and be right, without the need for anyone to be guilty (including ourselves), we can see the clear and simple Truth. We can breathe again and laugh at what once brought us pain. How is this possible?
"The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 10:1-6
Being nothing is the nature of a dream. When we identify with a character in a fiction, we are being nothing. No wonder we spend our lives wanting to BE somebody. The sane part of us knows Who We Are. The problem is that we can never be somebody in a dream. A fiction will never be true. A fiction will never give us what we really want.
"This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering whatever form it takes." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 11:1
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
