To Infinity and Beyond

Posted on May 25, 2012 by

Your imagination is bigger than
your world.

“Beyond this world there is a world I want.”  Beyond where?  Should I be visualizing outer space while I meditate, something to the left of the Milky Way?  Not quite.  Hold your arms out to your sides; stretch your fingers as far as you can.  Ramtha says that’s exactly how big the universe is for you, that nothing you experience–see, hear, taste, touch–is beyond this soap bubble of energy that surrounds you, exactly your size.  (As projectors, we’re a bit on the dim side.)  So to us, “beyond” where we’ve gone before means “within.”  We’ve explored the entirety of the limits of our shell.  The only reason we think we haven’t is because we keep changing the projection.

A few words about the ego from today’s chapter: “Guilt remains the only thing that hides the Father . . . The ego’s laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished . . . The ego rewards fidelity to it with pain, for faith in it is pain . . . The world can give you only what you gave it, for being nothing but your own projection, it has no meaning apart from what you found in it and placed your faith in.”  We’re stuck in a little push-me/pull-you, going nowhere fast. We could do–and have done–this for eons.

“Guilt is always in your mind,” says section IX of chapter 13.  It doesn’t matter if you can’t find the guilt within yourself.  If you can see it at all, in anyone, then it exists to you until you forgive it.  Picking at my brother just means I’m afraid to look at myself.  “You are afraid of what you would see there, but it is not there.  The thing you fear is gone.“  Got that?  We fear our dark closets, but the closets are really empty. No sins, no skeletons; we’re just afraid of the unknown.  But who should know you better than you?

I had my first “awakening” experience just that way.  I was tired of dragging along, encumbered.  I wanted to lighten the load.  So I sat in focus and went looking “inward,” which just means at myself and no one else.  I wanted to sink as deeply into the sadness as I could, and find and fix whatever it was about, once and for all.  I swam down through the darkness rather quickly–and discovered there was nothing there.  No sick lump in my stomach, no tightening along my spine, no knot at the back of my throat.  Nothing!  I sat and laughed and cried uncontrollably for half an hour, feeling as insubstantial as a beam of light. The really great news is that I’m not so afraid of the dark anymore.   Now I’m happy to abandon the limits of the bubble and search within instead.  I’ve got inner housekeeping to do.

“Do not be afraid to look within,” Jesus tells us.  “Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your Father has in you . . . Can you see guilt where God knows there is perfect innocence? Look, then, upon the light He placed within you, and learn that what you feared was there has been replaced with love.”  ACIM T-13.IX and Lesson 145.

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Learn, Apply, Rinse and Repeat

Posted on May 24, 2012 by

“All healing is release from the past. That is why
the Holy Spirit is the only Healer.”

There has been a slight shift in my perception–again.  I’ve been concentrating on taking in only what is happening in the Now moment.  With the Now being the focus for me, it is also becoming my “experience.”  The instructions on each step of the journey remain the same: Take in knowledge, apply it to your life, experience the result.  So from the perspective I’m experiencing now, it seems surreal to think that anything could have ever “happened.”  There was no time for it to have happened in!  As with every perceptual shift, this is difficult to explain.  But just like the change from thinking God is something “out there” to realizing that God is “in here,” you know it when you experience it.

God doesn’t think about the past.  He doesn’t think about the future either.  There has always only been Now for God.  Having lunch with God would be like having lunch with Peter Sellers:  “Did I order this? I don’t remember ordering it.”  And a few moments later, “Did I eat this? I don’t remember eating. Did I like it?”  You get the idea.  The Course tells us that “The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, with no effect at all.”  So time is not real, the separation is not possible, and God doesn’t eat lunch.  But miracles, those ongoing shifts in perception and mindset, allow that “Aspects of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of unreality.  Aspects of reality can be seen in everything and everyone.”  So as we apply what we learn, those mental shifts happen and we begin to get real.  That is exactly how this Work is supposed to be done.

How do we know when we’re there?  “There is nothing partial about knowledge . . . Perfect perception, then, has many elements in common with knowledge, making transfer to it possible.”  Eventually–any non-moment now–we will remember that we have always known everything, that we already possess complete knowledge.  If there is no time, then only that happy ending can be real, that single moment of Forever, inevitable because it already Is.  “Yet the last step must be taken by God, because the last step in your redemption, which seems to be in the future, was accomplished by God in your creation.”  It’s over.  It’s Now.  And it’s about to be your experience.  ACIM T-13.VIII, Lesson 144. 

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The Burning Truth

Posted on May 22, 2012 by

“The truth is true, and nothing else is true.” ACIM W.158

“I would listen to a burning bush if it spoke truth to me,” says Ramtha.  But would we?  Do we listen to what our own bodies are telling us?  And how many times have you responded to an event with a jaw-dropping, “I knew that was going to happen!”  At least twice a week something comes to light in my life, and I realize that a quiet voice had been poking at the back of my brain for days, trying to tell me the exact same thing.  “If only I had listened,” we whisper after the fact.  We should be shouting.  We’re asking God to speak to us, Guide us, give us help and hope and direction.  But are we listening?  “Would you recognize a holy encounter if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your own past?”

“To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present.”  That should silence about 90% of the ruckus we hear in our heads.  “The miracle [a change of mind] enables you to see your brother without his past, and so perceive him as born again . . . And since his past is yours, you share in this release.”  In the soft silence of this freedom of non-judgment, we listen to hear something different, something more.  “In this one, still dimension of time that does not change, and where there is no sight of what you were, you look at Christ.”

All we have to do to go Home is to listen.  Within.  With a quiet mind.  “Christ is still there . . . You wait but for yourself.”  We say we want to go Home, and then we pretend we don’t know the way.  And yet, like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, we have carried the Truth with us through our entire journey.  She closed her eyes, focused on Home, and went there, just as we can do.  We discount our guiding Voice because it sounds so much like our own voice.  It is our voice!  We look for a phenomenal sign, an unbelievable demonstration like crop circles or burning bushes or a channeled guru for what God planted within us so it could never be denied–except by a conniving, controlling and determined mindset of lies, the convenient, cacophonous ego.  A distraction if ever there was one.  A lie if one were ever told.

“The peace of God passeth your understanding only in the past.  Yet here it is, and you can understand it now . . . For all else you have lent yourself in time, and it will fade.  But this one thing is always yours, being the gift of God unto His Son.”  If you don’t see peace in your life, if you don’t see increasing peace at all, you’re not listening.  It is impossible to be Guided and be lost at the same time.  Even if you’re not Home yet, you know whether or not you draw close.  You know whether you visit that place or not.  “You will first dream of peace, and then awaken to it . . . Love waits on welcome, not on time.”  Maybe Moses’ burning bush was within.  Maybe the awe and embrace he could not describe except as fire that did not consume came from the inside, from drawing close to God with a childlike mind and a listening heart.  “Your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost.”  ACIM T-13.V, VI, and VII.

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This is Your Brain on Software

Posted on May 21, 2012 by

How many of our thoughts are really
worth holding on to?

I used to explain computers to new clients like this:  Everything you you pull up or type on the monitor is like “holding information in your head.”  It’s just thoughts floating there, and the computer won’t remember them unless you tell it to write them down.  Then the info goes from the computer’s “head” to a “file” stored away in the hard-drive file cabinet.  That is why you must remember to save, save, save when you work on a computer.

Your computer came, I would tell them, with just basic vital commands already in its “written down” memory–the operating system.   You “personalize” it (give it an individual ego?) by adding software programs of your choice.  Your computer now “specializes” in trigonometry, literature, social studies or Angry Birds.

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”  When you surf the Internet, read a tweet or download photos, the computer isn’t generating those things.  From a non-geek perspective, it’s pulling them out of thin air!  All of that information is just floating out there, and you can pull it into your computer for consideration.  You then let it go back to the ether and someone else will consider it too.  We are asked to “open [our] mind, and clear it of all thoughts that would deceive.” Reboot. Clear out the working memory, the thinking mind.  “. . . place His Mind in charge of all the thoughts you will receive that day.”  Give up control of the mouse.  Let the Mind of God “shareware” with you what He wants you to know.

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”  That is a command we give, a command to “save” only the important info, the God-Approved files He inspires our mind with today.  All of the thoughts and info files floating around out there would be just white noise if you could “receive” them all at once.  You’re not generating them.  You’re just plucking thoughts out of the communal pool and letting them drift back out again, just like a computer does.  You really don’t think on your own.   “Nothing that you think are your real thoughts resemble your real thoughts in any respect” (W.45).  Only the thoughts we “think” with God are real thoughts, and only those will we hold in our holy minds.  So give up the mouse and, honestly, nobody will get hurt.  No crashing, no freezing, no lost important files.  Just divine Christ mind communing with holy Father Mind.  Let’s get with the program.  ACIM  Introduction to Review IV.

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Mosey Monster Mirror

Posted on May 19, 2012 by

Love me, love my cat.

I was thinking this morning that there are issues–three of them–I’ve been asking for Help with for a while now, but I haven’t yet placed symbols of those issues on my prayer table.  Whenever I do, change happens rapidly.  So it’s time, I sighed to myself.  Time to strap myself in and rock the boat once again.  Happy sailing!

Then my fluffy gray cat climbed into my lap, as he often does during my meditation.  We’ve had Mosey for about a year.  He spent his first year in a cage at a shelter, surrounded by hundreds of barking dogs, wailing cats, fluorescent lights and that infamous shelter smell.  He didn’t know what grass was, sunshine, or good manners.  When I returned home once from a few days away, he met me at the door.  He wrapped all four paws around my arm and promptly buried his teeth in my elbow.  We affectionately call him “Monster.”

As I stroked Mosey’s beautiful head this morning, in his rare moment of sweetness and purr, I realized I that held in my arms the perfect symbol for my prayer table.   Feisty Mosey is a revealing mirror of the self-talk issue I’ve been trying to resolve.  I am loving enough on the inside but aging on the outside.  Mosey is gorgeous on the outside but the obvious result of bad programming on the inside.  I can use Mosey as a symbol of how my inner self must feel when I moan, “Omigod, these jeans are tight! And there’s not enough makeup in the world . . . .”  Well, you get the picture.  The longer I talk to myself like that, the snarkier my self must really feel.  I’m sure a little tenderness with myself would have the same effect that tenderness has had on Mosey.  He hardly ever bites anymore.

“Uncertainty about what you must be is self-deception on a scale so vast, its magnitude can hardly be conceived.”  My beautiful friend Kelly said on her Facebook page this morning, “Spending time noticing the body lately, noticing what is ‘asking’ for attention acceptance & love–the freckles, the shape, the color, the texture–all deserving of love, all lovable.”  Self-criticism is the ego’s best tool for keep us prisoner in our own mind.  It’s a habit that really needs to be broken, with Help, as beautifully as Kelly has done.  Just as I said yesterday that I’ve watched my husband change as I have changed, it is impossible for us to bloom on the inside and not see the beauty reflected in our world.  That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be wearing a size smaller jeans and my wrinkles will go away.  It means those things will no longer matter.  It means I’ll be doing my healing on the inside, where it does matter.  It means a happier dream for husband and Mosey and me.  Lesson 139.

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The Counter-Dream

Posted on May 18, 2012 by

His ultimate dream: Looks like Heaven to me!

I think we Course students live in a kind of counter-dream, a different reality (a better reality? a happier one?) than we used to project, but not quite Heaven yet.  Part of what makes my dream seem different from the illusions of the masses is how much effort it sometimes takes to leave their dreams alone.  “If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive, and what we think is real.”

Since the beginning of the year, my husband has been quite focused on buying a house.  I really have no hook on the issue; as long as I’m not on the street, I’m happy.  And if I were on the street, my job would be to find a way to be happy with that, wouldn’t it?  So I’ve been letting him put the energy and visualization and verbiage into the house dream; I’m sure he can manifest his dream with no help (or interference) from me.

As two people who have each started over more than once, we’re aware that most couples our age have second mortgages for putting the kids through college, and we’re still laying down a large chunk every month to rent a house.  That’s as aware as I’ve been.  Last night I got greater insight and a long speech about: he hates his job, how are we going to put Travis through college, what if something happens to him as breadwinner and we lose our medical insurance, there’s a very once-in-our-lifetime window of opportunity coming up for us to get a house, once we get financed he can look for a happier job, and how devastated he’s going to be if we can’t pull it off.  My immediate internal reaction was what it always is in my own head:  Neutral is a great place to be.  That way I can handle whatever happens and enjoy whatever Is.  But I can’t tell him that because he doesn’t see the world that way.  The best I can ever say to him, without sounding like I just don’t care (which is how people seem to interpret my refusal to worry when they worry and cry when they cry), is “But things always work out.  We’ve paid our dues, and there’s no reason why we should have to do things the hard way any longer.”  That’s my honest Pollyanna/Byron Katie stance.  If I’m not afraid of “difficult,” things won’t BE difficult.

All of this is just a lengthy way of saying that “Heaven is the decision I must make,” and what a great chasm there is between the way I now see things and they way someone as close as my husband (and my past self) would see the same issues.  I feel sorry for mere humans who believe they are mere humans.  Ramtha asked his students once where we would be if we hadn’t found the teachings.  My immediate response was, “Dead.”  I couldn’t have lasted much longer in that stress.  As dark as the dark night was, Gratitude is now my attitude, every single moment of my day.

I realize that my husband is my mirror.  I have watched his attitude change as my attitude has changed over the years.  That’s why the tough place he’s in is the tough place I used to live in.  And yet:  “The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as the ending of the fear of hell.”  In the next moment the dream and the counter-dream might both disappear as I make that decision for Heaven, “and will not change my mind, because it is the only thing I want.” And hopefully my mirror will come to make that decision too.  ACIM Text 13.V, Lesson 138.

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Two Seconds Ago

Posted on May 17, 2012 by

Our dreams seem silly when we awaken; so does earth seem silly to Heaven.

I’ve learned that when Ramtha says, “What if?” he really means, “It is.”  When he said to his students, “What if you’re already dead, and this is a life review?” he really meant, “This life is an illusion and you are merely the Observer of it.”  So when he said, “What if you were only born two seconds ago?” what he really meant was, “Amnesia is a wonderful thing.”

It is entirely possible that I popped into this illusion only two seconds ago, complete with false memories of a nonexistent childhood and an assumed ego-identity.  And two seconds from now I might appear in that same childhood, or maybe in a moment ten years forward from today.  The Holy Spirit’s purpose for this life is for us to learn, and we could do it in one-second increments, flashing in and out like we do in our nighttime dreams.

An amnesiac would have no problems and no responsibilities.  He would recall no job experience, no debt, no relationships and no bad memories.  People have been known, after a thunk on the head, to be free of former dire diseases, or of something as simple as the need for reading glasses.  All needs are of the mind, not of the body.  And so all escape is also of the mind. “The separation sickness would impose has never really happened.  To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been.”  In other words, there is only Now.  Even two seconds ago doesn’t exist.  There are no past hurts except in your false memory, and there is no future figment to your imagination.  Neither is there an ego to your identity.  There is only Now.  God is not asking us to remember our creation in eternity, or the moment we first thought of separation, or even why we think we came here.  We’re only asked to remember what Is.  And that is that we remain as God created us.

Time is an idea, made up by the ego, which is also an idea.  If we take a stance directly in the middle of no-time and no-ego, we are empty, unattached–Free.  We can run around like happy amnesiacs, literally without a care in the world.  This would be our natural state, joyous and carefree.  God offers a “reference point beyond illusions, from which you can look back on them and see them as insane.  But seek this place and you will find it, for Love is in you and will lead you there.”  That point is an unencumbered Now.  Love is what will remain.  ACIM Text 13.IV, Lesson 137.

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