What Am I?

Our special theme says, “We are the bringers of salvation. We accept our part as saviors of the world, which through our joint forgiveness is redeemed. And this, our gift, is therefore given to us. We look on everyone as brother, and perceive all things as kindly and as good.”

Yesterday I addressed a confusion that forms in the minds of some students of A Course in Miracles. The confusion is that one is a divine individual, and the projection of the world comes from the divine individual mind. (For example, the idea that Sally and Sam are projections of Maria’s individual mind.)

We are not divine individuals. The individual is part of the projection of consciousness. That means that the healing of one individual mind does not end the projection of suffering in the world. That is why our special theme says the world is redeemed through our “joint forgiveness.” However, our special theme goes on to say:

And this, our gift, is therefore given to us. We look on everyone as brother, and perceive all things as kindly and as good.

Even though the world will continue with its ego projections for humans who still believe the ego thought system, the one who awakens beyond the ego thought system will see God in all projections. This is what the Course calls “true perception.” It is as Holy Spirit shared with me in one of my first scribal messages, a message that has been named, “The Ego is Not the Devil.” In that message, Holy Spirit said:

Now you may ask, “If I change my belief about the world, will I see no more sickness, no more war and no more threat?” I’ve answered this for you before in many ways, but I will put the answers together for you now so you may see what seem to be pieces as a whole.

You are not an individual. Everyone that you experience in the world is a part of you. You are aspects of one mind. When I say that the world you experience is made by you, I am not referring to you as an individual. That would indicate that separateness is truth. When I say that the world you experience is made by you, I am referring to all aspects of the mind that believe in separateness. As one aspect of the mind lets go of the belief in separateness, more Light is brought into the whole mind. It helps to rouse the Sonship, but as the Sonship continues to sleep, nightmares of separateness continue in the world.

When I indicate that what you will see will change, the word “see” and the word “perceive” are synonymous. As long as you see a world, you perceive. I am not saying that a violent crime could occur around you and that others would see it and you would not. The body’s eyes will continue to show you the seeming actions within the world of illusion. When I say you will see differently, I mean that you will perceive differently, or to be even more clear, that you will feel differently about what you see. Your perspective will be different. Your feelings will be different and therefore, your action will be different.

This message points to true perception, which is still perception, but it feels the presence of God, and it sees the reflection of God in all projections. Bernadette Roberts called this “unity consciousness.”

The Bible teaches that God is in all projections. In the opening of the Book of John, it says:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

When an individual awakens to consciousness, the world itself may not be healed, but the individual mind is healed. Therefore, it is able to see the light that “shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” This seeing is the essence of true perception. Although the world may not be renewed to the point of yesterday’s scripture from Isaiah, the one awakened to consciousness sees the real reflected in the world.

We stand together, Christ and I, in peace and certainty of purpose. And in Him is His Creator, as He is in me.

Please read today’s workbook lesson in full. Notice a phrase, sentence or excerpt that you feel particularly attracted to and go into it more deeply through writing.

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What Am I?

Our special theme says, “We are the bringers of salvation. We accept our part as saviors of the world, which through our joint forgiveness is redeemed.”

If we look very carefully at this excerpt from our special theme, we will see that one answer to the question, “What am I?” is, “I am not a divine individual.”

Some students of A Course in Miracles make the mistake of thinking of themselves as a divine individual. In other words, they believe the world is a projection of their individual mind. When they believe this mistaken idea, they also think that as they heal as an individual, all ego appearances will disappear from the world.

However, let’s look closely at what our special theme says:

We are the bringers of salvation. We accept our part as saviors of the world, which through our joint forgiveness is redeemed.

When I was a young teen, my favorite Bible scripture was Isaiah 11:6-9. It says:

The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

My religion at the time was Jehovah’s Witnesses. They taught that Satan would be destroyed in a battle described in the book of Revelation. After Satan’s destruction, the Earth would become the paradise that God intended in the beginning, before Adam and Even ate of the tree of knowledge. Jehovah’s Witnesses called the renewed paradise the “new world.” I was taught that this scripture described what the new world would be like.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are not that far off with this portion of their religious understanding.

Since the ego is the cause of all suffering, all suffering must end when the self-centered ego ends. However, the self-centered ego is not in the mind of one individual alone. The self-centered ego is in the mind of humankind. It is our “joint forgiveness” that could result in the reflection this scripture points to.

We each need to participate in our individual awakening, because humankind’s “joint forgiveness” appears to happen one individual at a time. As an analogy, let’s imagine the individuals in humankind as cells in one brain, the brain of humankind. As healing and awakening spreads through the brain, individual brain cells are renewed and freed of cancerous darkness. When the healing has spread through the entire brain, healing and renewal are complete.

As individuals, we are each like a cell in the symbolic brain of humankind. We have been called to the spiritual path, because it is our turn to be healed and renewed as part of the broader awakening. However, the awakening isn’t complete until all cells have been healed and renewed. As long as ego remains in some cells within the mind of humankind, the projection that comes from the mind will continue to include appearances that come from the ego.

My eyes, my tongue, my hands, my feet today have but one purpose; to be given Christ to use to bless the world with miracles.

Please read today’s workbook lesson in full. Notice a phrase, sentence or excerpt that you feel particularly attracted to and go into it more deeply through writing.

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What Am I?

Our special theme says, “Our use for words is almost over now. … The truth of what we are is not for words to speak of nor describe. Yet we can realize our function here, and words can speak of this and teach it, too, if we exemplify the words in us.”

Today I would like to contemplate the first phrase of this excerpt along with the last phrase of the excerpt. That is:

Our use for words is almost over now … if we exemplify the words in us.

Another way of looking at this is:

Our time of learning is almost over now,
if we are ready to live from what we’ve learned.

The “if” is interesting. It means that we need to make the decision to exemplify the teachings. If we make that decision, we no longer need metaphysical education. We’ve received enough metaphysical education. However, if we are not yet ready to live from what we’ve learned, more education is needed.

In other words, the purpose of education is to bring us to the willingness to live the teachings. Once we are ready to live the teachings, education has fulfilled its role.

The Teachings of Inner Ramana makes a similar statement. It says:

It’s time to go beyond everything you’ve learned.

Everything you’ve learned has been helpful. It’s been helpful toward willingness to take this next step. But without the step that we are taking together now, all that you’ve learned serves no real purpose toward awakening.

Our first year of Gentle Healing included a lot of learning. We’ve learned:

• The person that we think we are is not what we are. It is a false self, made up of thoughts, feelings and misperceptions. This false self, typically called the ego, is the cause of all human suffering.
• The truth of what we are is life-awareness. Awakening is the process of moving from identifying with the false self to knowing our true Self as a permanent direct experience.
• The desire to know truth is the most important motivator in the process of awakening. Without that desire, we will not apply ourselves toward that end. Therefore, anything we can do to increase that desire is helpful.
• At the human level, casting our attention on thought creates neural pathways in the brain. These pathways are the source of our habits, beliefs and way of seeing. Resting attention away from thought allows previously formed pathways to dry up, which undoes previously formed habits of thought, feeling, perception and action.
• Metaphysically, casting our attention on thought feeds energy into the creative principle, which in turn creates all appearances in the world. What we feed into the creative principle also returns to us as another thought or experience. It’s important to remember that like creates like, so focusing on fear creates more fear, focusing on anger creates more anger, etcetera. Unaffectedness (resting attention away from thought and in presence) generates Grace.
• Inquiry is a valuable tool as we learn to step out of our habituated (conditioned) way of being into a way of being based on clarity. We learned several methods of inquiry including Root Cause Inquiry, Byron Katie’s “The Work,” Diedriek Wolsak’s Choose Again process and self-inquiry as taught in The Teachings of Inner Ramana.
• There are two awakenings, the first of which is awakening from the self-centered self to a self that reflects truth. A Course in Miracles refers to the first awakening as true perception. What true perception sees is the real world.
• Abiding as the unaffected self is one key way of permitting the shifts that purify us of the self-centered self and move us toward true perception. Abiding as the unaffected self can be seen as rest-accept-trust as taught by Regina Dawn Akers, never closing the heart as taught by Michael Singer, remaining in noticing presence as taught by Gina Lake or the Loving All Method as taught by Michael Langford.
• Surrender, as it is taught in The Teachings of Inner Ramana, is a valuable tool as we move away from the self-centered self to movement that is not centered in the self. Surrender allows us to be moved by something other than personal will, so we can live in the world effectively without continuing attachment to our self-centered thinking.
• We come to know our true Self through focusing on awareness. We learned to focus on awareness using short glimpses throughout the day and through daily, sustained focus using Awareness-Watching-Awareness, Loving Consciousness and Abandon Release methods of meditation.
• The second awakening is an awakening beyond the self that reflects truth (true perception) to Truth Itself (beyond perception). This is the human’s final awakening, also known as the last judgment, the final end of the ego, manonasa, and nirvana. Beyond this point, there isn’t anything that words can express or mind can imagine. This awakening is the goal of the spiritual path.

We may have learned some other things this year, but these were the main points. These teachings were taught over and over again through different teachers using different words. Hopefully these teachings are now well embedded in our brains.

As our first year of Gentle Healing ends and our second year of Gentle Healing begins, we move from more education to less education and from some practice to living the teachings in all situations. The second year of Gentle Healing will be extremely beneficial, if you live from what you learned in the first year. If you are not ready to live from those teachings, more education is needed. In that case, it is better to go back and repeat the first year of Gentle Healing than it is to continue to the second year.

Repeating the first year of Gentle Healing may feel like being “held back” in the first grade while all of your friends go on to the second grade. However, the reason for holding a student back is to increase the student’s ability to succeed. Without a good foundation, the higher levels are often too challenging for the student—possibly out of reach—and time is wasted. Repeating the first year in order to get a good foundation may be the most effective way for some students to proceed.

I am not a first grade teacher who has the authority to pass first year students or hold them back. I will not make that specific recommendation for anyone. Please let intuition guide you. It may be a matter of whether you applied yourself well to the first year or spent a significant amount of time not applying yourself to our daily lessons and homework. As you review the bullets above, you may know if you effectively digested the education necessary to continue to the second year.

Judgment and love are opposites. From one come all the sorrows of the world. But from the other comes the peace of God Himself.

Please read today’s workbook lesson in full. Notice a phrase, sentence or excerpt that you feel particularly attracted to and go into it more deeply through writing.

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