What six years in captivity taught me about fear and faith (English subtitles) | Ingrid Betancourt
This group was facilitated by Rev. Jacquelyn Eckert.
A universal assembly for true discernment
This group was facilitated by Rev. Jacquelyn Eckert.
Topic: “Becoming the Holy Spirit”
Description: Rev. Billy talked about how the awareness of the relationship with Holy Spirit has changed through inquiry, purification has become one with Source – with this, helping to continually decide what to bring down to Earth and thus making Heaven and Earth One.
Reading: Rubye Nasser read the poem Ithaca by C.P. Cavafy.
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Come join and be with us for an inspiring hour of sharing where the recent participants from the Letting Go of Fear retreat will share about their experience, insights, breakthroughs, and how being at the Letting Go of Fear retreat has enhanced their Awakening to Truth. Join us at 7 pm ET/5 pm MT for this discussion facilitated by Anne Blanchard.
Please read quotes 1425-1428 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
The Self itself is pure consciousness.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Before beginning today’s reading, it will be helpful to spend at least 5 minutes watching awareness. As you watch awareness, do you find any human concerns in awareness, or are the human concerns in mind? Do you find guilt, anger, worry, or any other human emotions agitating awareness? If you do, look again. Is the emotion agitating awareness or is awareness aware of the agitation?
If you look at a human emotion (or the memory of an emotion, if there isn’t one present now) and compare it to awareness, which one is more intimately you? Are you the emotion or are you awareness?
Once you feel clarity about the previous questions, you are ready to continue with today’s reading. If you read from the state of clarity, it will be easy to see what NTI means when it refers to guilt, fear and denial as foreign purposes. After all, guilt, fear and denial have nothing to do with awareness. Guilt, fear and denial are mental activities only.
In his book, The Transparency of Things, Rupert Spira wrote, “Ego is not an entity. It is an activity.” Another way to say this is that the false self is not an entity. It is an activity, a mental activity. This is why many masters call the false self, “mind”.
Most people believe they are the body-personality-mind they appear to be. When they feel guilty, they believe they are guilty; when worry thoughts mull around in the mind, they believe they are worried, etcetera. However, mental and emotional activity are not the beingness. They are activity within the beinginess. The human is the beingness itself.
Please read today’s reading in this way:
1 – Practice the brief awareness-watching-awareness exercise in this tip.
2 – Read Matthew 27:1-37 in the Bible.
3 – Read today’s reading from NTI.
Thoughts of Awakening #26
Be quiet today.
Rest in Me.
All is well.
You are safe.
Be at peace
in all things.
Amen.
~From our Holy Spirit
Plan to join us for a special meeting hosted by Rev. Regina Dawn Akers on Sunday night, April 5, at 8 pm ET/ 6 pm MT. At this meeting, we will discuss how ministers and members can come together to support Awakening Together and each other as our Association moves in a new direction. Those of you who attended this month’s movie discussion group know that Regina discussed the transition of our Association from what has often been a leader driven group to one that is led through the inspiration and innovation of its many ministers and members. Plan to join us to help us envision our path and your part in that journey as we step forward into this exciting next phase of Awakening Together.
Please read quotes 1421-1424 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
As the mind becomes more and more inward-turned, it becomes gradually freed from external desires, and when all such desires are fully eliminated Self-realization is completely freed from obstruction.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Just as the scribe was coached directly in yesterday’s reading, the scribe is coached directly in today’s reading. When I was the scribe of NTI Matthew, I had Jesus on a pedestal. Because of that, it was hard for me to see him as imperfect (in my eyes). It was hard for me to read about people mistreating him. All of these ideas came from conditioned thinking—from the way I had been taught to think during my upbringing—so all of this thinking had to be let go.
As you read today’s reading, it is okay to keep in mind that I was being coached directly. Since your mind was conditioned differently, you may not need the exact same coaching that I needed as I read the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and as I read the story of his arrest and trial. Look to see what is helpful for you in today’s reading. For example:
Ask inner wisdom to guide you through today’s reading so you can find conditioning that needs to be seen and undone in your mind. If the coaching in the reading is not perfect for your needs, journal with inner wisdom and receive your own coaching.
If you are not familiar with the stories from the night of Jesus’ arrest, please read those stories in the Bible.
Thoughts of Awakening #25
Love is not absent from me.
I am love.
Love is within me.
All I need do is accept it
and embrace it
as my truth.
This, I am willing to do.
I need not seek for love.
I am love.
I need not bargain for love.
I am love.
I need not earn love or fool love
into coming to me.
I am love.
I am love,
so all that I need do
is be.
~A prayer of awakening given to us
by our Holy Spirit
Please read quotes 1417-1420 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Absence of a barrier is finally unquestionable when there is no longer any distraction caused by illusory objects.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Today’s reading opens with, “Now you must choose where you will decide to look. Your decision will show you what you will see.”
Judas is a symbol of one who believed his thoughts and then saw what his thoughts told him to see. According to NTI, Judas turned Jesus in for arrest simply because he did not have the wisdom to see his thoughts as meaningless.
How often do we act from belief in our thoughts? Are we ready to learn from our brother’s mistake? Are we willing to let Judas’ mistake be a precious gift that leads us to make a different choice?
When I was the scribe of NTI Matthew, I was not able to see Judas as giving us a gift by showing us what not to do. I saw Judas as the evil betrayer. I still believed in betrayal at that time, so my scribing of this section is not as pure as it could have been. You’ll notice that inner wisdom coaches the scribe directly by saying, “… it is attack and hatred you see and feel through this scripture. Remember what I have told you. Fear will keep you from Me. Trust that these feelings of anger are intended only to hide your fear of Me. …. Choose now to let your anger, attack and hatred go. They serve you not. Rest with Me in faith instead.”
After reading verse 25 in the Bible—which reads, “Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, ‘Surely you don’t mean me, Rabbi?’”—I got it. I saw that in that very moment, I believed my thoughts just as Judas had believed his. I hated Judas for the same reason that Judas distrusted Jesus; we believed our thoughts.
This was a ‘eureka’ moment for me, and I have been madly in love with Judas ever since. I now see his ‘betrayal’ of Jesus as a great gift to us. He demonstrated just how bad things can get when we believe our thoughts, and that provides us with the opportunity not to make the same mistake.
Here is one of my favorite songs. I have listened to it many, many times over the years. It reminds me not to believe my thinking. I listen to it with gratitude and with love for our brother, Judas. I think it’s funny that the song begins with Judas singing, “My mind is clearer now.” It shows that we can be deeply deceived by our own thinking.
Thoughts of Awakening #24
You are perfect.
Whenever you think
that you are not,
you are listening
to the voice of the ego.
It is a voice of denial,
and what it denies
is your truth.
You are perfect,
and you can never not be
perfect,
because you can never not be
whole
and just as God created you.
You are perfect.
~From our Holy Spirit