Please read quotes 1197-1200 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Consciousness is ever free.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
A universal assembly for true discernment
Please read quotes 1197-1200 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Consciousness is ever free.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Yesterday we saw that the false self is not a being. It is an activity. Today’s reading looks at one activity that upholds the false self, the activity of guilt.
Here is a summary of the cycle of guilt:
A baby is born. The baby is pure unconditioned awareness. As the baby grows older, it begins to crawl. Typically, once a baby becomes mobile, it begins to reach for things or do things that the caretaker does not approve of. Although a caretaker may sometimes say “no” to the baby with a kind voice, invariably the caretaker has days when she is caught up in her own mental concerns, and her tone of voice is not kind. The baby feels the vibration of the caretaker’s voice, and begins to develop the idea, “I am bad.”
As the baby grows into a child and then into an adult, this idea, “I am bad,” is reinforced by other caretakers, by teachers and by other children. The child’s religious training may even reinforce this idea. Soon the idea is fully developed in the brain, and it replays in the mind over and over, continually reinforcing itself again and again. However, this idea is unbearable. One cannot exist with any sense of peace, happiness or well being if he fully experiences the self-hatred that is caused by the “I am bad” thought. So, the child learns to see the “I am bad” thought outside of himself. He sees other children as bad. He may see the family pet as bad. By the time he’s reached adulthood, he has learned to see guilt and sin in many others, whom he perceives as separate from him. This alleviates his own feeling of guilt and self-hatred, and he is able to bear the belief, “I am bad.”
This is a sad story, because the “I am bad” belief is learned mental activity only. The original caretaker, suffering from the belief, passed it on to the baby. Others who believed it, reinforced it. Yet, there was never any truth to it at all.
If you can’t see that guilt is merely mental activity and not fact, practice the awareness-watching-awareness exercise from yesterday’s tip again. It doesn’t matter what the body does or how strong the feeling of guilt is, the fact remains that we are pure awareness itself, and pure awareness is completely unaffected, always only itself.
We cannot let go of awareness, because it is what we are, but we can let go of mental activity, because it isn’t what we are. That means you can let go of the “I am bad” belief. The “I am bad” belief is the root of many other false ideas. Let go of that one idea, and you will feel significantly freer than you did before.
I would also like to comment on another teaching from today’s reading. The last paragraph of the reading says:
You who feel safe within the illusion of form fear death. But there is a fear that is greater than your fear of death. It is your fear of Life. It is your fear of Self. It is your fear of truth. It is this fear that you protect, hidden beneath your fear of death, by accepting death as your final reward.
How do we live out our fear of truth? We do not give all of our time and effort to truth realization. We may give some time and effort to truth realization, but we don’t give all. Even though we know this body-personality-mind is mortal, we prefer to ignore that fact, waste time and die than dedicate ourselves to truth realization.
Please read Matthew 27, verse 38 to the end from the Bible before reading its interpretation in NTI.
The truth is always true, and so the truth is true now.
Do not worry that it cannot be true for you, or that it cannot be true at all.
Worrying changes nothing and it only hides the truth from you.
The truth is always true, and you are a part of that truth.
Nothing can change the essence of what you are.
Trust and follow your Self without fear, and that which is beyond fear shall be known by you.
~From our Holy Spirit
When I see the world through my individual point of view, I see an individual world. No one else sees a world exactly like the world I see. It is as if each of us is walking around with a box on our head. Our unique worlds are drawn on the inside of our boxes, and that is all we see. We argue that we are right about our points of view, but we are not right. We are blind. In order to see, we need to take the boxes off of our heads.
Whenever I am upset, it is because I am looking at the inside of my box. There isn’t a single exception to this statement. Some ideas may be drawn inside my box in bold colors, and I mistake them as important because of their boldness, but I am looking at a colored box. The box deceives me.
Some people may have a few ideas written on the inside of their boxes that are similar to some ideas I have written inside mine, and if we get together and compare what we see, we agree that we are right; but that does not change the fact that we are each looking at a limited colored box. Our boxes deceive us.
If we took our boxes off, cut them open and laid them flat on the ground so we could see everything written on them, and then we took all of the boxes on everyone’s heads and did the same, we would be amazed at the ideas and stories that colored the vision of each individual person. Instead of being angry at those who disagreed with us, we would have compassion. “Oh,” we would say, “That is why you felt that way. I see the writing on your box. I understand now.”
The writing inside my box started with a single idea scratched upon its surface. “I.” As I stared at the one idea inside my box, I bumped into someone, and another idea was scrawled inside my box. “Other.” I held something soft and pleasurable in my hands, and then felt the “other” take it from me. “Mine,” “victim” and “defend” appeared on the box. And in this way, the ideas multiplied until a complex web of ideas colored the inside of my box, all birthed out of the original idea, “I”.
This box has become its own little universe. It is filled with so many ideas, that it entertains me all day everyday and all night every night. With so much entertainment coming from the box, I have lost the sense of curiosity about the outside world. I have become so accustomed to the dark that I no longer crave the light.
With the box on my head, I see only what is scrawled upon the box. That is blindness. Because I have accepted the box as my universe, and because I have become comfortable in my own little world, whether I am happy, upset or suffering because of what is written on the box, I feel sheltered by it. I don’t know what is outside of my box, and I don’t really want to peek outside to see. To me, the known is better than the unknown. I have become accustomed to the familiar scribbles inside my box.
Common sense can see that this spell, my fascination with my box, needs to be broken. It isn’t healthy. It isn’t true. … It isn’t true. … That’s the problem. I fooled myself into thinking that the world inside my box is true, but it isn’t true. The box deceives me.
The Gentle Healing Curriculum guides committed students to make consistent, gentle progress toward genuine peace, joy, and love. Year 3 is based on The Seven Steps to Awakening. This year 3 Gentle Healing Group is facilitated by Rev. Shawna Summers.
To Add This Program to Your Calendar
*To add a recurring program to your own calendar click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner, and then click “copy” and “save”.
Homework for this week:
Contemplations for Week 2.
Here’s a direct link to the helpful facilitator guide for Gentle Healing Year 3 that helps you to know what week you are on: Click Here
In this program, Reverends Jacquelyn Eckert and Glen Ganaway review and discuss A Course In Miracles from a non-dual, interfaith perspective. The two of them discuss the main themes and key principles of the Course and how they are lived in our shared lives.
Add to Your Calendar
*To add a recurring program to your own calendar click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner, and then click “copy” and “save”.
The Gentle Healing Curriculum guides committed students to make consistent, gentle progress toward genuine peace, joy, and love. Gentle Healing Year 3 is based on The Seven Steps to Awakening. The art and practice of contemplation are heavily practiced and reinforced as part of the curriculum of the ongoing daily homework that is assigned to this group. As part of the deep sharing of those contemplations, participants are asked to post on the Awakening Together Forum. This particular Gentle Healing Group is facilitated by Rev. Jacquelyn Eckert and Connie Poole.
Add to Your Calendar*
*To add this program to your own calendar click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner, and then click “copy” and “save”.
Homework for this week:
Daily Contemplations Week 51.
Here’s a direct link to the helpful facilitator guide for Gentle Healing Year 3 that helps you to know what week you are on: Click Here
During our time together, we will explore what it takes to live from an open, undefended heart. Naturally, any true exploration of living from the heart necessarily entails taking a deep and sustained look at what prevents us from keeping our hearts open. Grounded in the knowledge that the essence of us, our true nature, is the very lovingness within us all, we will explore how to recognize and release egoic energies by cultivating open-hearted awareness practices which support us in directly experiencing our true Self. By leaning into willingness, steeped in self-honesty, and with a consistent dash of courage, we endeavor to open to whatever life brings, as it brings it, that is, on life’s terms. In so doing, we trust that everything – absolutely everything – is here for us to use for healing, for purification, and for learning to live from the heart. We look forward to supporting each other in our individual explorations of how we truly embrace the entirety of this show we call life.
Please note: it may be necessary to download the audio to listen to it fully.
Add to Your Calendar*
*To add a recurring program to your own calendar click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner, and then click “copy” and “save”.
Plan to join us for a discussion of this month’s movie, “McFarland USA,” on Sunday, March 27 at 8 pm ET/6 pm MT. Laura Bedford will be facilitating this month’s movie discussion.
Inspired by the 1987 true story, McFarland, USA follows novice runners from McFarland, an economically challenged town in California’s farm-rich Central Valley, as they give their all to build a cross-country team under the direction of Coach Jim White (Kevin Costner), a newcomer to their predominantly Latino high school. Coach White and the McFarland students have a lot to learn about each other but when White starts to realize the boys’ exceptional running ability, things begin to change. Soon something beyond their physical gifts becomes apparent—the power of family relationships, their unwavering commitment to one another, and their incredible work ethic. With grit and determination, the unlikely band of runners eventually overcomes the odds to forge not only a championship cross-country team but an enduring legacy as well. Along the way, Coach White realizes that his family finally found a place to call home and both he and his team achieve their own kind of American dream.
The movie is available on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, and Itunes.
This evening (or tomorrow morning):
Read NTI 1 Peter 4 (v1-6) thru (v7-11).
Tomorrow:
Please read quotes 1193-1196 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
In that pure consciousness there is no sorrow nor death.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.