JPE GH Tips Archives - Page 35 of 38

Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Tip for Lesson 39

March 22, 2019 By Jacquelyn Eckert

LESSON 39. My holiness is my salvation.

Yay!!!!! Here we go!

If this was an aerobics class, lessons 1-38 were the aerobic warmup; we were increasing intensity to get our heart rate up into the aerobic zone. Now our heart rate is up there, and it’s time to throw ourselves whole-heartedly into this activity.

Of course, we aren’t here to burn off fat or calories. We are here to burn off ego.

As you begin exercise 39, My holiness is my salvation, start by remembering how important healing/awakening is to you. Find your motivation. Realize your excitement about giving yourself fully to today’s workbook lesson. Feel your inner motivation. (That will come from the heart, not the mind.)

Once you are aware of how valuable this goal and its means (the workbook lesson) are to you, create a plan for accomplishing the longer practice periods. Set a stretch goal … aim to do more than the minimum … but stay with wisdom and do not set a goal that is beyond what is reasonable for you (and therefore possibly self-defeating.)

Also, take advantage of the flexibility in the instructions for today’s longer practice periods to rest with the lesson, allow related thoughts into the mind and to sit quietly paying attention to awareness. At our next Gentle Healing meeting, we will read the awareness-watching-awareness instructions from Michael Langford’s book, The Direct Means to Eternal Bliss. In a nutshell, Michael Langford describes it as: “My present awareness watching my present awareness. Awareness watching awareness. Not some unknown awareness labeled the Infinite Self. This awareness, my awareness, here and now watching itself, while ignoring thought, the body, the world, etc.”

Let’s begin putting at least a little awareness-watching-awareness into each practice session, either starting today or next week after we read the instructions. When the instructions for the ACIM lesson allow flexibility, like today, it can be interspersed anywhere during the practice session. If the instructions are more specific, you can linger a little longer after the practice session for a bit of awareness-watching-awareness. If you decide to include it in today’s practice, a few seconds to 2 minutes of awareness-watching-awareness is enough. Longer is also okay if awareness-watching-awareness is comfortable for you.

Regina coined the term, “divine greediness.” Be divinely greedy by being excited to practice the day’s lesson. Be excited to say it to yourself 4 or more times per hour today, like someone was handing you a gold coin 4 times per hour and all you had to do was remember to stick your hand out to receive it. The longer practice periods are worth a one ounce bar of gold!!

Be divinely greedy and love today’s lesson. We only have this lesson for today, and then it is gone. Eat it up while it is here!!!

Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Tip for Lesson 38

March 21, 2019 By Jacquelyn Eckert

LESSON 38. There is nothing my holiness cannot do.

The workbook lesson, “There is nothing my holiness cannot do,” may give the impression that the mind can pick a problem or form of suffering and then decide to ‘heal’ it miraculously. This is not the best way to understand the lesson. There is too much ‘me’ and what ‘I perceive as wrong’ in that.

A better way to understand the lesson is along with the teachings from NTI Ephesians, Colossians and Luke 9: As we contemplate our truth, the clean energy of our truth goes into the world as grace. As grace, it will do what it does to correct misperceptions and miscreation. However, we are not to select the miracles or even look for their evidence. We simply continue our role of contemplating our truth, and we let grace take care of the miracles.

One thing is for sure: Since you receive what you give, you will experience corrected perception if you contemplate truth instead of focusing on false perception and its stories.

Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Tip for Lesson 37

March 20, 2019 By Jacquelyn Eckert

LESSON 37. My holiness blesses the world.

Wow! This lesson clearly states our function within the world: “Your purpose is to see the world through your own holiness. Thus are you and the world blessed together. No one loses; nothing is taken away from anyone; everyone gains through your holy vision. It signifies the end of sacrifice because it offers everyone his full due. And he is entitled to everything because it is his birthright as a Son of God.”

To bless the world with my holiness is to see it through the eyes of wholeness rather than to see it from my partiality. The world is the belief in limitation and lack. The mind that clings to the belief in its own limitation sees itself as a part only, and, therefore, can only see from that perspective. If we give partially, we receive partially. If we receive partially, there is a sense of loss—a sense of sacrifice. There is always the choice between a lesser of two evils. There is a lack of wholeness, fullness, oneness.

What we are being taught to do is to begin to see from the perspective of the whole. In wholeness, there is no lack. To begin to recognize the truth of this statement, we must become determined to reject the idea of lack wherever we see it. When thoughts whisper the need for self-protection, we are to see them as an invitation to affirm the truth. We are only limited by our own beliefs–by those thoughts upon which we choose to cast attention. When we see thoughts of limitation and partialness, we are to give our willingness to loosen our grip on those beliefs.

Consistency is key. We cannot give willingness to loosen our grip only upon those thoughts, beliefs and ideas which seem to limit our freedom, but to welcome them when they seem to work in our favor. All gain or all lose. Yes, of course loss is impossible. But it is this impossibility which seems to continue to support the turning of the world. If all do not seem to gain by a contemplated teaching, action, thought, let that thought go. Release the idea of winners and losers, better than and less than.

It is only our commitment to see through the eyes of wholeness that releases the world. As the lesson tells us:

There is no other way in which the idea of sacrifice can be removed from the world’s thinking. Any other way of seeing will inevitably demand payment of someone or something. As a result, the perceiver will lose. Nor will he have any idea why he is losing. Yet is his wholeness restored to his awareness through your vision. Your holiness blesses him by asking nothing of him. Those who see themselves as whole make no demands. Your holiness is the salvation of the world. It lets you teach the world that it is one with you, not by preaching to it, not by telling it anything, but merely by your quiet recognition that in your holiness are all things blessed along with you.

Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Tip for Lesson 36

March 19, 2019 By Jacquelyn Eckert

Lesson 36. My holiness envelops everything I see.

Today’s lesson begins with “You are holy because your mind is part of God’s [therefore], your sight must be holy as well.” This I can follow and grasp. Jesus is saying my godliness envelops everything I see because the truth of me is my godliness and as Jacquelyn pointed out in yesterdays tip, “We are being invited to experience ourselves and our world in a way we have blocked our selves from experiencing it in the past. We are being invited to take the person out of the experience.” And as NTI Colossians 1 says about this experience, “You are beyond concepts and differences and form, and within the Life Force that is all things.”

It is this next part of today’s lesson that Jesus wants us to examine that had me scratching my head. Jesus seems to go on about something that initially appeared unrelated when he says: “’Sinless’ means without sin. You cannot be without sin a little. You are sinless or not. If your mind is part of God’s you must be sinless, or a part of His Mind would be sinful.” I got a better understanding of why he began talking about sin when I read ACIM’s section on Sin versus error:

It is essential that error be not confused with “sin,” and it is this distinction which makes salvation possible. For error can be corrected, and the wrong made right. But sin, were it possible, would be irreversible. For by [sin], God Himself is changed and rendered incomplete.

Sin is the belief in the reality of separation. Sin is the belief that things outside of you have the ability to affect you.

Let’s look at Brent Haskell’s book Journey Beyond Words. In the chapter entitled “Holiness,” Jeshua says:

You will know, in your holiness,
That all of life is your own creation.
God is your source.
You are very holy.
In your holiness, you are the God of your own life.
And you experience that life in your oneness with God.
Apart from God, you cannot see.
Apart from Him, you but imagine your apartness.
Apart from your holiness,
You imagine that you are separate,
That beings are different from you.
You will imagine that they are not your own creations.
You will imagine that your pain is pain.
You will imagine that things can happen to you
From outside yourself, not by your own choice.

So, as you can see if sin were real, (w)holiness would not be. You could and some might say you did imagine something less than wholeness, but it isn’t real. Sin isn’t real and therefore I am free to experience my truth and the truth is that my holiness envelops everything I see.

Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Tip for Lesson 35

March 18, 2019 By Jacquelyn Eckert

Lesson 35. My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.

The lesson for today begins with a description of its aim:

Today’s idea does not describe the way you see yourself now. It does, however, describe what vision will show you. It is difficult for anyone who thinks he is in this world to believe this of himself. Yet the reason he thinks he is in this world is because he does not believe it.

You will believe that you are part of where you think you are. That is because you surround yourself with the environment you want. And you want it to protect the image of yourself that you have made. The image is part of it. What you see while you believe you are in it is seen through the eyes of the image. This is not vision. Images cannot see.

Today’s lesson encourages us to begin seeing from our truth rather than from the habit we have of looking “out” on the world from the perspective of the persons we have imagined ourselves to be. If we continue to look on the world from this perspective, we reinforce the image of ourselves we have created.

There are two ways of looking at this lesson (and other ACIM lessons) that allow the error in perception to persist. The first is that which we are likely to experience if we have done the ACIM lessons (in whole or in part) before: we practice by rote, use the idea of the day as a mantra, but don’t drop contemplatively behind the words themselves to allow them to resonate within the heart, where they are known. The second error we might make in doing the lesson is to assume we know what the words mean. In this lesson, for example, we might assume we know what is meant by God, by vision, by holy or even “my mind.” For example, we might have some intellectual concept of God as the source of the world that we learned in our religious traditions, and then proceed from there to impose this understanding on what we see in ourselves or in our field of vision. This is not what we are being asked to do. We are being invited to experience ourselves and our world in a way we have blocked our selves from experiencing it in the past. We are being invited to take the person out of the experience.

The person is the veil that blocks our vision. By looking without the concept of ourselves as person, we are free to simply experience. We are free to experience our inner self without labels, concepts, needs and other “baggage.” By looking without the concept of ourselves as person, we remove the boundary between what we “look from” and what we look upon. If we look from our holiness, and not from our person, we can begin to capture the essence of the source-ness of all that is without the need to distinguish it from what we are. While this lesson specifically asks us to look at our inner definitions of ourselves, it is a beginning step in seeing the sameness of all things, including what we have previously delineated as inner and outer.

A helpful exercise in this regard is to look at a picture in which many objects appear. Pick out the separate objects in the picture and focus on them one at a time (e.g., a barn, a cow, a dog). Now allow your focus to shift a bit. See that the objects in the picture all occur within the one picture—see the picture as a whole. Now, do the same thing with the objects in the room or on the street where you are. Pick out the individual objects, then shift your focus to see the whole picture. Then, if possible, include your hands, legs or whatever part of you is visible. See that the body is also part of the overall/whole picture. It is only your thoughts about your self as “a self” that block you from including yourself in the whole picture.

We will revisit these exercises as we go forward, but as we proceed, just remember to try not to bring with you any ideas about what anything means, including your previous formulations of yourself and spirituality. Be openly willing to experience what you cannot imagine, and you will come to experience the lessons in a way which might (and should!) surprise you.

Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Tip for Lesson 34

March 17, 2019 By Jacquelyn Eckert

Lesson 34. I could see peace instead of this.

In today’s lesson we learn, “It is from your peace of mind that a peaceful perception of the world arises.” Our perception of the world arises from within and that is why Jesus instructs us to close our eyes to do today’s lesson. “It is your inner world [your perceptual world] to which the application of today’s idea should be made.” Why? Because less than peaceful situations like “fear thoughts, anxiety-provoking situations, ‘offending’ personalities or events, or anything else about which you are harboring unloving thoughts” are located there in your perceptions. Trying to pin the blame on the world has been likened to yelling at the movie screen when you want the movie chacters to act differently than they are in the movie.

NTI Colossians 2 says “do not look at the world letting it tell you what to think. To make this mistake is to participate in illusions, which are not the motive you seek to have served.”

In today’s lesson and yesterday’s lesson, as well as the day previous to that, Jesus tells us, should any distressful situation come up, then say to yourself “In this situation” I can apply the lesson (goal) of the day to it. ACIM Chapter 17, Setting The Goal states:

The clarification of the goal belongs at the beginning, for it is this which will determine the outcome. In the ego’s procedure this is reversed. The situation becomes the determiner of the outcome, which can [Read more…]

Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Tip for Lesson 33

March 16, 2019 By Jacquelyn Eckert

Tip for Lesson 33 and beyond:

Today we are doing the meditation, “There is another way of looking at the world.” As you do the meditation, the ego may utilize a trick. The trick is letting the lesson slide back and be repeated in the background of attention while thoughts sneak forward to reclaim the foreground of attention. Be aware of this and do not let it happen. Put your heart on the lesson so it remains in the foreground as you survey thoughts, which should be at a further distance.

Lesson in the foreground. Thoughts at a distance.

It is as if you are at the movies. The lesson is closer to you, a part of you. The thoughts are out there on the screen. This promotes genuine healing.

Also, take this tip from NTI Colossians 3 with you for all of our workbook lessons:

May you practice your lessons in this way:

~Be grateful for the truth that you know.
~Practice it with Wisdom, and pray that more truth be given.
~Be grateful to your brothers who show you what you have learned.
~Welcome your lessons in vigor, that you may grow in mastery of the way.
~Embrace all that you see, knowing it comes from you.
~Correct that which needs correction.
~And immerse the mind in the reflection of truth.

Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Tip for Lesson 32

March 15, 2019 By Jacquelyn Eckert

Lesson 32. I have invented the world I see.

Yesterday’s lesson was “I am not the victim of the world I see.” Today’s lesson is “I have invented the world I see.” Jesus explains in today’s lesson, “You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it (the world you see).”

The practical application comes at the end of today’s lesson when Jesus says, “The idea for today should also be applied immediately to any situation that may distress you. Apply the idea by telling yourself “I have invented this situation as I see it.” This seems much more practical in application than “I have invented the world I see.” I can see how I could have invented this present situation that I find myslf in. For example, the arguement that I had with….I can see how I might have created or invented that situation. Seeing it from that perspective pulls us into the present time where we can change our thoughts and thus our experience or better understand the cause and effect relationship between our thoughts and our experiences.

This reminds me of Byron Katies clear explaination of enlightment. Katie says,

People think that they need to get ‘enlightened’ in ordermto be free, and nobody knows what enlightment is. Yes, it’s in the sacred texts, and yes, this guru or that lama says he has attained it, but that is just a concept, it’s a story of the past. The truth is there is no such thing as enlightenment. No one is permanenetly enlightened. That would be a story of a future. There’s only enlightenment in the present moment. Do you believe a stressful thought? Then you are confused. Do you realize that the thought isn’t there? Then you are enlightened to it. It is as simple as that. And the next thought comes, and maybe you’re enlighted to it as well, and maybe not.

There is only enlightenment in the moment because that in reality is the only place we can be. So if I can understand how “I have invented this situation as I see it” then I am able to understand or at least get a glimpse at how “I have invented the world I see.” I invented it one thought at a time. This realization illuminates our power and our true relationship with cause and effect.

NTI Colossians 3 explains it like this

Look on all that you see and love it, but do not identify with it. It is not your truth or your reality. It is a reflection of your thought. Be grateful for the love that you find. ‘Embrace it. But also be grateful for the reflection that seems not to be love, for it is what it seems not to be. It comes to you in love and grace to show you what you have thought, that you may choose again.

“I have invented this situation as I see it.” And “I have invented the world I see.”

Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Tip for Lesson 31

March 14, 2019 By Jacquelyn Eckert

LESSON 31. I am not the victim of the world I see.

“Today’s idea is the introduction to your declaration of release.” It is a reminder that we create the world we see by casting believing attention upon the thoughts that come into our minds.

You may see the tendency toward denial of this truth in your mind. You do not wish to be responsible for the world’s ills. You do not wish to be responsible even for your own intersection with the perceived evils of the world. This lesson empowers us to transcend the world we see by withdrawing the belief that there are attackers and victims. We do so by denying that something outside of us could impact the Son of God without any creative input from him. The world of attack and defense, perpetrators and victims, is what we have chosen to experience. That choice can be revoked at any time by recognizing it as choice. Denying the possibility of victimhood frees us from the belief in the reality of the world we see.

You may say that this sounds like blaming the victim. The truth is that there are no victims. This does not mean that there is no suffering in the world. This simply means that to transcend suffering, one must transcend the world. One does this by choosing where to place selective attention. To see the world’s problems as puzzles to be solved by taking action within the world is to believe in the reality of a world separate and apart from the thinker.

This does not mean that you are to take no action in the world. Those who suffer must be met where they think they are. But know you need not join them in their misperception. Nothing has gone wrong. This is the choice that was made. Know that, in truth, the One does not suffer; the One merely experiences.

As NTI Colossians 2 tells us:

Although you do not seem to be aware of all experiences, you live all experiences because you are all elements of experience. This is why you are called “one mind.” All things that seem to happen, happen through you because you are the process of creation. Creation is made through communication, and the basis of all communication is faith plus desire. Or to state it more clearly, where there is passion, there is creation.

This is why I have asked you not to look at the world. When you look at the world and fear it with the passion of belief, fear travels through you to all things seen and unseen. Fear becomes a basis of communication, because fear was put forth with faith and desire. And so without judgment or partiality, that which was put forth is shared. And that which is shared comes back to you, just as you have put it out. Circumstances arise through the flow of Life that is you to teach what you have asked to learn. If you seemed to seek fear through your focus on fear in the mind, circumstances of fear shall be given into your holy awareness. Therefore, do not look at the world letting it tell you what to think. To make this mistake is to participate in illusions, which is not the motive you seek to have served.

Thus, what is required is the withdrawal of the belief that anything occurs separate from or without regard to you or your choices. The belief in perpetrators and victims is the “reasoning” that fosters the illusion that we are what we are not—separate, alone and vulnerable. Indeed, as ACIM tells us, this is the belief that keeps us from even inquiring into the cause of what we experience.

The “reasoning” by which the world is made, on which it rests, by which it is maintained, is simply this: “You are the cause of what I do. Your presence justifies my wrath, and you exist and think apart from me. While you attack I must be innocent. And what I suffer from is your attack.” No one who looks upon this “reasoning” exactly as it is could fail to see it does not follow and it makes no sense. Yet it seems sensible, because it looks as if the world were hurting you. And so it seems as if there is no need to go beyond the obvious in terms of cause. ACIM T-27.VII.3.

In our recognition that we cannot be victims, we recognize our power to transcend the illusion and we communicate to the One Self those thoughts that are consistent with our True Desire.

Be in service to your motive through the consistent service of your mind. Separate yourself from what you see in order to connect to it through right communication, which is not erroneous or sleeping communication, but communication where faith and motive are thoughtfully put together through passionate desire for Self. Be at peace in your mind through consistent practice of desire through motive. Silent remembering is the way. Let your mind focus on the Heart, and your mind is focused on true desire and true motive. Let “Know thy Self in Love” be communicated on the current of Life through you and through your passionate love for all things. NTI Colossians 2.

This is the service today’s lesson calls us to perform. “Creation is made through communication, and the basis of all communication is faith plus desire.” We are to place our passion with our True Desire rather than with the belief that we could be victim. In this way, we communicate the desire to know ourselves as One Love to all the world. We relieve the world’s suffering and our own as we release the world from illusion.

Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Tip for Lesson 30

March 13, 2019 By Jacquelyn Eckert

Lesson 30. God is in everything I see because God is in my mind

When I did these lessons years ago I read everything as an admonishment, but now I see things differently. How reassuring it is to know that God is in everything because God is in my mind and there is nothing outside of my mind.

But what does it mean God is in my mind? It means God is the essence of my mind. And the life I live given to the purpose and awareness of that essence is the springboard for vision. A different kind of vision. Our lesson today calls it Real vision. “Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body’s eyes at all.”

NTI Colossians 1 speaks of our essence, “You are the heavens and the earth, the bees and the sunshine. You are the process that made all things and is all things, so that they live through the process that created them. You are the flow of Life and separte from nothing that is life, for that which flows through them is the process that you are.” NTI Colossians 2 continues in the same vein, “You are all things, and all things are you.”

So why don’t we know this? NTI Colossians 2 answers, “Your imaginings have cut you off from awareness of the Life Force that you are, but that awareness has not been cut off from you. We represent that awareness within your mind. Listening to our song brings that awareness back to you. Be quiet and hear our song. Feel its flow within you.” This is a reflection of Love and Union. The workbook lesson says, “Thus we are trying to join with what we see, rather than keeping it apart from us.” NTI Colossians says, “See that all things are one through you.”

What we want to remember is that this lesson is neither an admonishment nor an academic exercise. We are reprogramming the brain to remember that which we truly are. How do we bring the awareness of the Life Force that we are back into our awareness?

In his book, Shift Into Freedom, Loch Kelly provides helpful training exercises to do just that.

The open-hearted awareness approach focuses on uncovering or discovering our essential nature and then shifting our level of mind to live from open-hearted awareness. Because awake awareness is already here, there is no need to strive to earn it, create it, or develop it; nor is it effective to adopt the passive attitude of waiting for it to find us. Awake awareness, the ground of being, is equally available within each of us, as our essence. However, simply believing this—or intellectually understanding it—is not enough.

Loch writes that “In order to abide in awake awareness, we must glimpse it several times and become familiar with the view from this new level of mind.” What follows is an exercise Loch designed to give us one of those glimpses.

Glimpse 1: Seen, Seeing, and Awareness

In this glimpse, you’ll use your visual sense to become aware of awareness. You can use the words on this page as the object of focus while you’re reading, or you can learn the exercise first and then try it with another object, like a cup. [I found this exercise easier to do with objects than with the words.]

1. Become aware of the words on this page as objects.
2. Notice your normal way of seeing the words on the page: looking outward from subject (“I”) to object (words). Notice: “I am aware of seeing the words.”
3. Now reverse the process. Notice the words as the seen.
4. Next, be aware of light reflecting off the page and coming to your eyes as seeing.
5. Now follow your awareness back to rest as that which is aware of seeing.
6. Let your awareness move backwards from the seen … to seeing … and then through the “I” to rest back as that which is aware of seeing.
7. Let awareness move back from the page to discover the awareness behind and within that is already aware and looking.
8. Allow awareness to rest back until it discovers the awake awareness that is effortlessly reading the words.

We can also foster this awareness of our essence by reminding ourselves as we think we think, as we go about our day, “I am not separate from anything I see, from anything I hear, from anything I feel.” We are to hold God or Is-ness in our hearts and look for this essence in all things. Reach for God today and you will find him. Allow the spaciousness and you will come to see that there is no boundary between what you are and all that is. It is this imagined boundary that we would remove today. By opening to this spacious way of seeing, we soften the edges we would place on everything.

If we sincerely practice this lesson, we will see that everything is contained within the mind and that vision is seeing everything with the purpose of knowing God as our true essence.