What is healing?

Feb 6th, 2012
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“The Holy Spirit
speaks to you.

He does not speak to someone else.”
Text. 576

Only you can be healed.
You are a mind, not a body and not a brain.

“At no instant does the body exist at all.”
The body is a dream figure in a mind that has not yet awakened from its sleep.
When the mind is healed, love will extend from it to all minds because minds are joined; bodies are not. A Course in Miracles must be learned entirely or not at all because it is an uncompromising teaching in non-duality. It foretells the end of the ego which becomes suspicious and then vicious when it hears any message of non-specific, indivisible love.  

Attempts to heal others are avoidance strategies. By focusing on others  we escape the only healing there can be– our own. “Others” , or better, the idea of otherness, exists only in the unhealed mind. When it is healed there are no “others”. Beingness is all-inclusive. There is no specialness in being, therefore the ego hates it.

 We can’t do love. We can only be love.


When we want to be healed our single purpose makes it possible not only for ourselves but for everyone because minds are joined. 
If it is that simple why do we not want to commit to our own healing? Because we are afraid.

And why are we afraid? Because our idea of love is an attack in which we, a separate person, give our own version of love to another or other separate persons. We are not the author of love.We are afraid because we feel guilty for “doing” love on our own terms instead of surrendering to the Love that is our Source. Special love (the ego’s idea of love) brings guilt and guilt demands/expects punishment. The guilt, of course, is denied and buried, but we remain fearful without knowing why.

The answer to love as an attack is in the holy instant where there are no others, because the holy instant is the recognition that you are free of the past, the future, and the body. It is here and only here that you are healed and love is welcomed. In welcoming love you are blessing the world.


Your own healing is all that is required to heal the world of all its suffering.
True healing offers love without attack. You don’t heal or help someone else. You accept it for yourself by coming to this instant and laying aside all questions, longings, wanting, everything you think you know about yourself and others. In the holy instant everything is done for you and you will remember the real world in which there is nothing to fear.

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Self Sabotaging Behavior

Oct 4th, 2011
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Once we heed the call to wake up from the ego thought system we begin to see the world differently.

It becomes a classroom in which everything can be used to learn to make a different choice that will lead us out of the dream of separation instead of deeper into it.

Until we understand what we a choosing between, choice is meaningless. We but choose among illusions, which can hardly be called a choice.

“There is a choice that you have the power to make when you have seen the real alternative. Until that point is reached you have no choice, and you can but decide the better to deceive yourself again.”

Self sabotaging behavior is behavior that we know is not in our best interest, yet we do it anyway.

We eat foods that hurt us. We drive people away with behaviors that cause them difficulty. We spend our time doing things that we don’t even respect. We don’t exercise when we know that we should. We drink too much, spend more than we have, smoke, gamble, and generally overindulge.

Self sabotage is a classroom that most of us share. Fortunately, it provides an excellent opportunity for changing our minds because we are aware of our need for change every time we indulge. And we are convinced it is the behavior that needs to change.

On Saturday, October 22, from 10 a.m. to noon,

at the Rocky Mountain Miracle Center, The School of Reason will offer another alternative to trying to change behavior. Self sabotaging behavior will be the subject of Changing Our Minds, a series of short workshops on life’s challenges, viewed from the perspective of A Course in Miracles.

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The Abundance of God

Oct 1st, 2011
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“Whatever suffers is not part of me.”

Lesson 248

What is in pain is but illusion in my mind.

No matter what befalls you in life: sickness, poverty, aloneness, abandonment, betrayal—you cannot suffer because love accompanies you. Love is total. If there is suffering, there is not love. If there is love, there can be no suffering.

Most activity in life is dedicated to avoiding suffering.

We don’t understand that suffering is a choice in the mind. There is only one way to become truly comfortable and that is to look upon our grievances and forgive them.

When things aren’t working, the place to look for the cause is in the mind. What is the grievance; who is to blame?

Let go of all grievances, and you cannot suffer under any circumstances. What suffers is not a part of you, because you are part of God. Forgiveness teaches this.

You could be blind and you would see.

The body could fail and you would feel strong.

You could be betrayed and you would know you are loved.

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Making Our Weak Commitment Strong

Sep 26th, 2011
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“An untrained

mind

can

accomplish

nothing.”

The ideas shared in lessons 181 to 200 of A Course in Miracles are designed to help us in “firming up our willingness to make our weak commitment strong.” In other words, we know we want to change our minds, but we are dealing with the entrenched thought system of the ego which is set as the default mechanism for our thinking and decision making. The ego rules when we are not certain of our goal and the means to accomplish it.

Each of these lessons will lead us home, but first they will expose our mistaken choice for the ego so it can be seen and gone beyond. What remains unseen is still there, functioning beneath the surface of our awareness, where it remains only to be projected outside the mind.

Lesson 181- I trust my brothers who are one with me.

This lesson is not about trusting other bodies to do what is honorable, fair and good. Your brother is not his body or its behavior, although the ego, whose triumph over God is the body, would love you to think so. This lesson is referring to the sinlessness of the Christ mind which we all are and which is always worthy of trust. The ego, whose mantra is “one or the other”/”kill or be killed”, can never be trusted.

Students of A Course in Miracles, trying to do the spiritual thing, will often take a lesson like this—I trust my brothers who are one with me—and try to trust the body and its behavior even though it is ruled by the tyranny of the ego.

It is entirely possible, in fact it must be practiced vigilantly, to trust the One Self that we are while not denying the harmfulness of the ego’s decisions which are always based upon self interest. The distinction lies in understanding that the lessons in the Course, are about the content of your mind, and the content you believe to be in your brother’s mind, and not the forms that we seem to take, along with the form’s behavior. The basis for practicing forgiveness is  understanding the difference.

A Course in Miracles is written to the mind that has the power to choose. There is a choice to be made and only you can make it. Only the time you choose to make it is up to you. Eventually everyone will make it because it is the only real choice. The alternatives are not up to you either. (See the Introduction to A Course in Miracles below).

The power to choose is meaningless unless you know what you are choosing between. The alternatives can be expressed in different ways: dreaming or waking; fear or love; illusion or truth; death or life. The choice is always the same: to place your mind under the true Authority or the tyranny of the ego.

The purpose of every lesson is to make the alternatives clear to you so you can make the better choice.

Introduction to A Course in Miracles

“This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.”

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A Little Willingness

May 12th, 2011
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“Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give right now.”

A Course in Miracles, Text. 382

It is of enormous relief to know—finally, and with certainty—what our only function is. We should be looking one another in the eye and winking the “we’ve got a secret” look of lovers in love.

The secret is that we have the key to our happiness in our very hands. It is nowhere else.

The key to happiness is forgiveness. It is the simplest thing you will ever learn because it requires nothing of us that we cannot give right now. How do you like them apples? Do I have your attention, or did you turn away again? From the bottom of my heart I hope not, because this is the “pearl worth any price.”

The key is in your hand: guaranteed!!!! Think mind when you read hand. Hopefully you will learn here and now how to turn it: also in your mind. Learning requires that you be right-minded as opposed to wrong-minded.

Wrong-mindedness fears change. It fixates on what it thinks it knows. It thinks happiness is getting what we want. It thinks a whole lot of things are real, all of which turn out to be illusions.

Right-mindedness is willing to question what it thinks it knows, including where happiness comes from. It is willing to learn another way of seeing. It is willing to turn away from all assumptions of what reality is and walk the razor’s edge where our true education can begin.

The choice is yours. You have the willingness; it has already been given you. Don’t let fear hold you back. Give it to the One Who gave you willingness instead. Daily, a thousand times a day, you make this choice.  

In order to learn from the teacher of forgiveness who knows the way to happiness,  you must resign as your own teacher. This is signified by the little willingness. This is the only way that you can ever be happy.

“If you listen to the wrong voice, you have lost sight of your soul.”

A Course in Miracles

There is a silent voice in you that will show you the way. Every second that you do not plan is an instant made available to the one who can give you your function. Your function is your happiness. To learn that your function and your happiness are the same is the simplest thing you will ever do. Any effort that you make will interfere. The following prayer from The Little Willingness, shows us how small our part is.

“I who am host to God am worthy of Him.

He Who established His dwelling place in me created it as

 He would have it be.

It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only

 that I do not interfere with His plan to restore to me

 my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal.

I need add nothing to His plan.

But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my

Own in place of it.”

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Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously

Mar 19th, 2011
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“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.”

A  Course in Miracles, T. p. 381

Here are some suggestions to get over yourself:

1. Do not compare yourself to anyone else because there is no one else. Your talents and skills are best used in serving others. These two statements– serve others and there is no one else– appear contradictory until you realize you presently appear in many pieces (bodies). Serve all and know The Self.

“Don’t worry about anyone else. It’s all you.”

2. Don’t use your talents and skills to hold others hostage to a personal self. Use your talents and skills for the good of all and make sure those who come to you are encouraged to do this same.

3. Have no expectations. If others recognize your contributions, so be it. If others do not recognize your contributions, so be it.

4. The less you compete the more desirable you become. Give attention and admiration to others instead of looking for it for yourself. Competition does not evolve into mighty companionship.

5. Resign as your own teacher and admit that you have failed to come up with a design for your life that works. You are not in charge of what you mistakenly call “your life”. Admit that you are in over your head and don’t know how to get out. Relax and learn that you are already out.

6. Commit to work that has nothing to do with your personal gain or advancement. Working with others toward common goals that transcend special interests reveals your grandeur. Grandeur is of God.

7. Discover who you by not adjusting yourself to meet others needs. Let beingness reveal itself to you. This Pearl Worth Any Price is what is wanted and needed first and foremost. Any action that comes from here will be truly helpful.

“I thought the problem for me was you. Then I realized the problem for me was me. The next thing I knew I was free.”

8. Take frequent short breaks and remember to breathe.

9. Take time to connect with people. It doesn’t need to be a spectacular event. The reason to connect is to express appreciation. An earnest smile at seeing yourself will do.

10. Stop trying to get somewhere. It’s a waste of time. You are already whole and complete.

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The Teacher

Mar 7th, 2011
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“Resign now as your own teacher, for you have been badly taught.” 

To the one who takes pride in the quality of their dream I say, I will wait until you change your mind.

This is not said to be cruel. It is simply a waste of time to talk of waking when it is sleeping that is wanted. The quality of the dream matters not. A dream, is a dream, is a dream.

The purpose of dreams is to please yourself. They are personal and private.

The source of all dreams is fear. Yes, even the lovely ones. The fear comes from guilt; the guilt comes from wanting to be separate and special, because it is a lie.

The awakening dream, referred to as the happy dream in A Course in Miracles, has a different purpose. Its purpose is forgiveness of guilt so the dreamer can awaken and accept the Love of God. For this The Teacher, Who comes from outside of dreams, is needed.

The only real power we have in this world is to make one choice: to learn from The Teacher. All other uses of will take us deeper into the dream.

“Resign now as your own teacher.”  T-12. V.8:3

It is The Teacher’s job to show us reality. This we cannot do for ourselves because we already beleive in unreality. We must invite The Teacher in order to learn who we are. That invitation is the little willingness. It will change the direction of your thinking and your life.

Reality is impersonal. Only one who has seen beyond the world can teach what we are. Without these teachers there would be no hope of salvation for special persons who think they are living in a world.

We need help. The first step beyond the limited and personal view is to look with the impartiality of The Teacher at our character and the other characters in our dream. Both are shadows of projected guilt. The Teacher shows us how to undo our belief in them through forgiveness.

 “Forgiveness….is still, and quietly does nothing……It merely looks, and waits, and judges not.”

From: What is forgiveness?  Workbook, p. 401

You already are spirit: complete and healed and whole. You cannot become what you already are. No amount of effort will take you there. Instead, cease imagining yourself to be what you are not. You are not a person that was born into a world that will eventually die and leave. Anything that comes and goes cannot be real.

You brought the world with you when you came. You are not in the world. The world is like a tiny spec of dust in the mind that is you.

Try this:

Think of yourself as existing only in this moment, without a future or a past. Allow things to be exactly as they are. Don’t seek to change anything. Wait here and become a happy learner of The Teacher who can show you a different way of seeing that reveals the real world.

Do this regularly and your personhood will begin to dissolve.

Don’t fight yourself if you find yourself resisting. You might still like being you.

No problem.

We will wait until you change your mind.

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Your Way Will Be Different, Part two: Out of the comfort zone. Help is available.

Dec 8th, 2010
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“If you want to be like me, I will help you, knowing we are alike. If you want to be different I will wait until you change your mind.”

Jesus, A Course in Miracles T. 145

You may not be willing yet to be shown another way because you are not so sure it offers more than what you’ve got. Rather than set sail into unknown territory, almost everyone agrees to the lie of separation and specialness. To walk out of the dream would be like turning your back on the tribe. You may be considered a traitor.

In this post I want to let you know that,  a. stepping out of your comfort zone is not easy, and b. help is available.

I have become convinced of a few things on this journey and from time to time I will pass these on to you in the hopes of saving you time and unnecessary suffering.  Here is the first time saver:

You need a teacher to help you navigate this transformation. This teacher will act as a guide and a comforter, showing you how to distinguish truth from illusion, pleasure from pain, and loving you more than you presently love yourself. Because you don’t love yourself you cannot help yourself.

You need a teacher to motivate you to wake up. Only one who knows what is on the other side of the dream could promise that waking offers you everything and mean it.

Without teacher to show you how to train your mind you would stay on the battlefield, defend the little that you have, and die in the process. The teaching  of A Course in Miracles offers you resurrection, not death.

You need a teacher to show the cost to you of your choice to remain separate. You can’t see what you are doing because you believe it is reality.

You don’t know the way out of your self-inflicted suffering. But you can be shown by one who went beyond it and who offers to talk you through your own resurrection. In A Course in Miracles Jesus offers us his education and companionship in overcoming the world. Who better to teach us the resurrection of our mind than the one who accomplished it? By listening to what he has to say you can perhaps become a willing and coachable learner.

It is my pleasure to point you to the one who said, “If you want to be like me, I will help you, knowing we are alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind.”

Now that statement is certainty, is it not?

 That certainty is yours if you would learn how to join with the mind that could say such a thing. If you can, think of Jesus as a symbol of  love-without-opposite  in your right mind, and not what unhealed minds have made of him. That he died while suffering for our sins is a tragic misperception of a brother who only tried to teach us that we are loving and lovable by demonstrating it himself.

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“Your way will be different”

Nov 17th, 2010
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“Your way will be different……. A holy relationship is a means of saving time. One instant spent together with your brother restores the universe to both of you.”

A holy relationship! This is the means A Course in Miracles has given us for returning to the home we never really left, that quiet center of rest where we need do nothing.

Have you paid close attention to Jesus’ instructions for saving time and saving the world while saving ourselves by waking up together?  Here is the pearl worth any price, the keys to the kingdom, the goose that lays golden eggs, and the fountain of youth, and more.

If you have overlooked the possibilities I feel compelled to present them in a way that I hope will gain your interest, open your mind, and have you come away with a whole new appreciation for your brother and the opportunity he is giving you and you him, to awaken together. There is no sacrifice in this, although you may be thinking it.

 I want to help you to understand, feel and appreciate what a relationship is honestly for so that you can recognize the holiness of all relationships, without exception. I guarantee you it has nothing to do with what the ego plans for your relationships.

Some of this may be very difficult to hear because the sense of being a separate individual is threatened. When you truly join with your brother there will be no awareness of the body. It is left behind. That is called a holy instant and that is where a holy relationship resides. It is not here, in a body, in a world, although you will still appear to be here.

The ego cannot imagine you without a body. It is specialness that has you hold on to the body as if it is you. Wanting to remain separate is what the ego wants. It is terrified of Oneness, which is of the mind, because it is the ego’s demise.

The ego, individuality, and specialness are limits that you have placed on love. You chose to do that and you will eventually choose to turn away from those limitations when you understand the cost.

Those costs will be pointed out to you here. What you don’t like or don’t want to hear will tell you who is reading, listening, and perceiving these words. The ego wants and promotes separate interests. It wants everything on its terms. It doesn’t want change. Notice when it arises. It is very useful information.

I am hopeful that I can illuminate the holy relationship so that you will find it desirable rather than something to run from. Perhaps it will be helpful to think whole when you read holy instead of conjuring up images of halos and doe-eyed faces.

 

Holiness (wholeness) is not something that can be possessed so the ego has a problem with it. The ego exists by possession of others to fulfill its needs and wants. Without others it can not exist. The ego is not going to like this.

 You on the other hand will love it! Now I am talking to your right mind that wants something different than what the ego wants. You may not know what it is, but you know what it is not. It is not possession, bargaining, manipulation, control. It is not doubt, fear, and guilt.

You want another way and you are willing to become a learner of that way. You are the chooser, not a body with a brain. The chooser resides between the right mind and the wrong mind; the part of the mind that chooses holiness and the part of the mind that chooses the body. It’s up to you.

 The Lie

 We are all living a lie here. Our very existence as separate bodies with a life and will of our own is a lie, and we re-enact this lie with “others” on a daily basis. It is here in our special relationships that we will heal the cosmic lie of being separate from our Creator, Oneness, Love and Eternal Life.

Why do we stay with the lie of our separateness and the few special relationships that seem to give us some comfort? It is to protect the ego’s thought system of separation. The ego asserts separation is real, I am real, and don’t you forget it!

 The purpose of our special (and not holy) relationships is to keep us mindless, fixated in the lie. There is a “me” and there is a “you” and let us take our comfort here in separation and never look for another way. It’s a strange sort of comfort, but it keeps our belief in individuality safe.

 Next time: Out of the comfort zone.

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Perfect Happiness

Nov 3rd, 2010
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“God’s will for you is perfect happiness. Why should you choose to go against His Will?

In a world of separate bodies going their separate ways, the self-centered point of view, aka ego, has its own plans for happiness.

Attached to personhood, residing in the body, life seems to be  “the story of me”. Being, our true shared identity, is unrecognized while our time-bound existence consumes all of our attention. From this personal perspective, perfecting our story is what life is all about.

You can shift out of this self-centered perspective by recognizing your shared purpose with everyone you meet. This is the special means the Course is giving you for breaking out of the imprisonment of your specialness.

One purpose unites you with everyone in this world. This is your ticket to get on board the happiness train.

Do you understand that you can not have separate interests and true happiness?  They are mutually exclusive.

 Your function is to recognize that you have the same shared interest with everyone, without exception. “The  “me”, “my”, “mine” perspective will be undone in the process, releasing the mind to look beyond the superficial distinctions that seem to separate us to what joins us and makes us the same.

 What are your words for that?

For the interest(s) you know that everyone will join you in?

For me it is everybody wants to be happy.

 Everyone wants the end of suffering.

 Please let me know what yours are?  

What are your words, dear reader, for the interest you know everyone shares with you? 

Now, while we are in this world this is our ticket to happiness. It will take you to the gates of Heaven.  

 Lesson 100 of A Course in Miracles tells us that God’s Will for us is perfect happiness and asks us, why we would choose to go against His Will?

 Here is what I am convinced of:

The very moment I accept God’s will for happiness,  I see that I have asked for and received for everyone because I have recognized our interests are shared. This is the happiness we are talking about. It’s not personal. It’s shared.

 My smile doesn’t belong to me anymore. It is not a smile possessed by anyone. It is the smile of Oneness recognizing Happiness.

 The acceptance of Oneness beyond all appearances is my cause for joy…..and yours!  It says that nothing has happened in the dream of separation that has interfered with the reality of Love. This happiness extends to all minds like a rising tide that raises all ships. It gives the unequivocal message that the One Self is guiltless.

Sadness is a sign you have chosen to believe that harm has been done and somebody must be to blame. It says you have chosen the ego’s plan over God’s.

 No problem! Just a mistake!

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