In my teachings, I have shared many times that I used “helpful self-talk” in order to move through the purification process and allow healing to occur. I call this self-talk process, “active resting from the mind.” In other words, I didn’t want to listen to or believe the wrong mind, but often the emotions were intense and the mind was promising that it knew the answer. It was easy to slip into listening to and believing the mind. So, I needed an active way of resting from the mind. Self-talk was that active way of resting.

Recently someone asked me to share some of the self-talk that I used when going through purification. Here are some of the self-talk messages that I remember using frequently:

Breathe.

This story in the mind is the cause of my upset. I can let go of listening to this story.

This is coming up now because I want healing. I will stay out of the way and let this feeling/belief arise so it can be healed.

I want truth/awakening more than I want to take control.

This too shall pass.

If I wait and do nothing, this will pass and clarity/willingness will return.

If I act on this fear/guilt/unworthiness, I will only reinforce it. I do not want to reinforce it, so I will not do what mind is telling me to do.

In my defenselessness my safety lies.

If I defend myself, I am defending a false self as if it is me. I want to realize my true Self, so I will not prop up this false self with defense.

If I cling to this personal value, I cling to the personal self. I want to be free of the personal self and know truth, so I will not cling to this value.

If I believe these thoughts I cling to attack/fear/guilt/hate/unworthiness/worry. I do not want to cling to that, so I will let go of these thoughts.

I believe I am guilty but the Holy Spirit says I am innocent. I choose to trust the Holy Spirit more than me.

I believe that fear will kill me, but fear will not kill me. It is just energy in the body. I can watch this energy without interfering, and I will be safe.

I want awakening more than I want safety/to be liked/things my way.

I am willing to let everyone abandon me if that is to happen. Awakening is my priority.

I am willing to let everyone believe false stories about me/misunderstand me if that is how it is going to be. Awakening is my priority.

I want to follow intuition more than I want what I think I want.

Surrendering to this moment as it is, is the highest form of devotion.

Let it be.

Be quiet and be undone.

Etc.

On February 27th I was honored to become an ordained Awakening Together Minister. My certificate says that I completed 72 weeks of classroom study, and I remember somewhere in that long stretch of weeks that we can get attached to concepts that often lead us astray as we travel our spiritual paths. Before I started the Minister Preparation Program (MPP) my concept of being a minister held that I had to somehow maintain a level of purity in the classical sense of being sinless. As I progressed through the course I often ran up against this concept and felt like an outsider that would eventually be discovered and publically scorned for aspiring to become something that I could never be because of my sinful secrets.

Needless to say, and as a great comfort to me, this concept is gone. Why is it gone? It is gone because I learned from my classmates and our teacher that our feeling of unworthiness is a common core belief we all have, and during those 72 weeks the awakening to our reality dissolves the concepts we held when we entered the program.

Upon my signing up for the program I mentioned to Regina I was not necessarily interested in becoming a minister and I can now see where that resistance came from. Now that I have finished the course I am beginning to feel quite proud of my accomplishment and my new title. I am awakening to the understanding that as I minister I am providing the ministered and myself the opportunity to awaken to our reality. The teacher is also the student.

The Minister Preparation Program is clearly a gift to anyone seeking to come to know themselves and I cannot give enough thanks and kudos to Regina for being the instrument that brought this program to fruition. It was extremely interesting, educational, and deeply spiritual.

Have I reached the pinnacle of purity? Hardly. Even as I seek to allow these words to flow from spirit I sit in the suffering of this physical body. Even as I have experienced overwhelming emotions of love during the 72 weeks, I still experience suffering from this defective sack of skin and bones. I have highs and lows, the highs coming from guiding people to the truth of their being to the lows of the constant reminder of physical suffering. Who, therefore is the minister? Can I be both a minister of truth and a suffering human being? Only if I maintain my belief I am this body. It is of course not enough to adopt the belief we are not this body, but quite another to come to know this.

There are more than a few of us that entered the MPP with physical defects that we live with daily or moment to moment. It is probably why we are on this spiritual path as we seek relief from our suffering. All of us come to the realization that books, words on paper, hours of classroom, do not alleviate us from this suffering and we often grow despondent. Where is our refuge, our relief, our healing that is promised if we simply forgive? Our healing comes from our ministering to others, our service to others, which leads us away from self to knowing Self. I know this to be true because when I am in service to others I feel only joy, and when I am not, I feel only suffering.

Be a minister to yourself first and then you will become a true minister to others.

Many years ago a friend of mine introduced me to the book “Stepping Free of Limiting Patterns” written by a wonderful lady named Pat McCallum. What Pat wrote was a discovery of how to identify limiting patterns in one’s life and to re-pattern them to remove the limits imposed by the old patterns. I used her process very successfully for many years and often coached others in how to use it for themselves. I was so pleased with this process and how well it worked for me that I did not realize until this day that I assumed it was pretty much the same as “Root Cause Inquiry” (RCI) presented by Regina Dawn Akers. I was so enamored with Pat’s process that when I was introduced to Regina’s process I simply did not think I needed it and glossed over it as it was presented in the MPP class, True Discernment. As I was looking back at the lesson that presented RCI I found to my astonishment that I hadn’t answered the questions, and basically had never used RCI because I thought Pat McCallum’s process to be sufficient for self-inquiry.

But as things go I felt a need to take another look at RCI today because of something that was triggering in me a sense of failure and an inherent weakness. I found the audio and a handout at Regina’s web site under “A second dozen classics”. As I began to read the print out I began the inquiry by writing the upset I was experiencing. I didn’t get very far because in the printed instructions it says we must first accept an assumption that “If my mind was perfectly healed, nothing would upset me, not even this.” Now I’m sure there are many of you reading this that had no problem with an assumption, but I was stopped in my tracks. Having performed self-inquiry for many years, now I immediately recognized resistance. I reread the sentence many times and could not see what the resistance was. Even though ‘assuming’ was a bad word in the military, I fully understood what Regina was doing using this word in her instructions. Still, there was an underlying resistance but I convinced myself to go forward with trust that it would work out in the end.

I began the question and answer procedure and drilled down to the root cause after a few iterations and sure enough, my resistance floated up into my consciousness and exposed itself in all its shinning glory. The root cause was the very thing causing the resistance. My upset was because I thought a certain behavior (sub-consciously believed to be a sin) on my part needed to be let go in order for me to become of perfect mind. The suggested assumption held that I was already of perfect mind – and there was the resistance. I could not be, nor assume, a perfectly healed mind unless I changed my behavior first. And this was my upset. I held the belief that I was preventing my mind from healing by my behavior, so I couldn’t possibly put the cart before the horse and assume a perfectly healed mind before the behavior was changed. I was experiencing what is described in A Course in Miracles as being caught up in circular reasoning.

Looking back at why it took so long to utilize Root Cause Inquiry and how simple it was to clear away an upset that I have had for many years, I see that Stepping Free of Limiting Patterns is not the same as stepping free from guilt.

~ ~ ~ ~

Hal Seeley serves on the Awakening Together Board of Directors and will be ordained as an Awakening Together Minister on February 28, 2016.

• “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
• “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
• “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
• “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
• “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
• “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
• “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
• “A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
• “I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.”
• “God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
• “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
• “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
• “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
• “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
• “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
• “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
• “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.”
• “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
• “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
• “Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.”
• “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
• “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
• “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.”
• “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
• “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
• “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
• “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
• “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
• “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
• “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
• “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
• “Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.”
• “If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”
• “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
• “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
• “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
• “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
• “In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.”
• “The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.”
• “Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.”
• “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!”
• “No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”
• “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
• “Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.”
• “The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
• “Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
• “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
• “A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
• “The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”
• “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
• “You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
• “One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.”
• “…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.”
• “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
• “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
• “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)

Copyright: Kevin Harris 1995 (may be freely distributed with this acknowledgement)

I have heard you
And I have heard you say that
I don’t trust you.
But the truth is that
You don’t trust yourself.

You ask where I am
But I am with you.
Just trust that I am not separate from you.
I am part of you
And have always been here.

Just be…
Don’t think so much
And you will realize that
I am with and part of you.
I have just been waiting
For you to believe in me.

When you let go of the things
You hold onto,
You will find me.
For I am not
The past
Or the future.
I exist in the moment.

I don’t know what is best for my life. So how could I know what’s best for anyone else’s?

I’ve had this train of thought for a few weeks now. And I’m really happy to have it because it allows me to love my family no matter what. I’m not in charge of anybody, nor am I the advisor or the judge; I am doing the best that I can and I appreciate that the people around me are doing what they can too.

I’m really not here to pass judgement or make calls. In fact, I think I’m a little arrogant. So, with my own flaws on the plate, I don’t feel like criticizing anybody else. I’m pretty happy to just love my family because they support me and love me. They have to figure out their life just like I have to figure out mine.

On a contrasting note, when I am a teacher I assume the position of life role model. All I can say about this irony, this being the role model while not being perfect, is that I do the best I can.

Sometimes I’m not the best teacher, friend, or person (or co-worker, student, or employee), but I am what I am and these are the lemons that life gives me, and so I make lemonade. Perhaps I follow my gut, or my brain, whichever one I find more convincing, because these are the mediums that I have. But whichever medium I use to manage my life, it never works perfectly every time.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: If you’re somebody who is not doing perfect right now, then I hear you, and I see you, and I’m in the same boat with you.

Love.

David is a 19-year old Sophomore at Oklahoma State University, a student teacher and an Awakening Together Ordained Minister.

First, this mind believed it was a self in a process toward the goal of peace. Then one day it had an experience while meditating that Truth is right here. It was the Holy Instant and It was breathtaking. This mind realized that in meditation, and in everything else, it always reached for Truth. And in that reaching it over-reached Truth and missed It because Truth is right here. It was like when the self looks for the mustard in the refrigerator but does not see it because the mustard is right in front of it and the self is looking past it to find it.

And then the awareness of the immediate Presence of Truth was gone. Each day in meditation this mind tried to be present and experience the Truth again but could not. It could remember the experience but not conjure it. How long did this go on? Months? Years? Then it happened again and this mind would think, “This is it. This is all I need to experience. This is all I need to remember. Stop reaching. It’s here now.” And then…It couldn’t make it happen again. More months, maybe years, before this mind had the experience again. But then, over a long, long time, it began to happen more often. And this mind began to take the awareness that “Truth is here now” into the unfolding of each day. “It’s here,” it would remind itself throughout the day and it would just be with It. If this mind couldn’t experience Truth it still reminded itself that Truth is here. This mind does not need to experience Truth for Truth to be.

Over a long time this mind re-trained itself to stop reaching, to stop thinking in terms of a goal, to just stop and be present to Truth. If this mind reached for peace it missed peace because peace is here. If this mind set up peace as a goal it would obtain in the future it put distance between itself and peace because peace is here now. And, over that long time, all that reaching and goal-setting diminished until it finally ceased. The Truth is here now and so is this mind. This mind no longer has anything for which to reach.

But there is still something in this mind that is in a process and that still seems to be learning. This mind has come to understand that actually time was over for it many, many years ago when it first allowed Truth into its awareness. Since then all it has been doing is accepting this fact. And now that it has accepted it, it can see that the self and its story was only ever an effect. Originally the self’s life in the world was an expression (effect) of the idea of not-Truth. Then, when this mind allowed Truth into its awareness, the story of the self became an expression (effect) of the-undoing-of-the-idea-of-not-Truth. And that part of the story is still going on. But this mind is learning to no longer confuse itself with the story. The unfolding story of the self is just an idea in its mind that it observes while it rests in the present in peace.

Liz’s website

Sometimes I ask myself this: If this were to be my last opportunity to say something that might be of use, what might I say? What would I wish for people? 

That they not miss the moment. Not miss life, the very thing. The now of it. That the mental noise abate enough, some part of every day – some bunch of nows – that they really see, really feel, that they are here. That they are alive, aware of the moment they’re in – the moment that is what they are. Because all they have of themselves, really, is the deeply personal encounter with this fleeting bit of reality. However much it might seem to be otherwise, however compelling the impression of an ongoing self, having a history and opinions and aspirations (all of which live in the mind, not in life itself).

If I could bring this about for someone, the last time I were to open my mouth or put pen to paper, this is what I would do. It would be enough. Not missing your life is enough. Is abundant. Never mind if you have a big awakening.

But anyway, where else does awakening occur but in the now, in a moment of juicy, sumptuous life? Awareness feeling itself happening, tingly with apprehension of the smell or feel or taste of a thing. Where else but this moment can the revelation occur?

So it’s a win-win situation. You may wake up, really wake up: never resist again, never again get lost in thought, or be subject to mind-caused torment, finally knowing what you deeply are. You may not. Probably you won’t. Hardly anybody does come to this.

But meanwhile, you won’t miss your life! When it comes time to die, you won’t have missed the precious thing – the only thing you ever could have had. You’ll have paid attention, a good chunk of your allotted time, to what was right in front of you. Good and bad, the pain in the ass, all of it. You won’t have failed to pause to feel the wind on your face, to let it mess up your hair. You won’t have stopped your heart from breaking, when it needed to break. You’ll have allowed yourself to rest, when rest was needed. You won’t be sorry it’s come time to die.

All you have, or ever will, is this moment. It’s a jewel in your hand. But briefly, oh so briefly: because here, now, is another. Nothing lasts. You cannot experience anything later (however much your mind might try to get you to). This is the human condition, from which there is no escape. And why would you want to be someplace else? Why see life as being clamped into handcuffs, your fists at your back? There is no solace in fearing what’s ahead. Isn’t life a feast? It better be. It is restful to be here, to really be here, without lament.

In the play Our Town, the character known as the stage manager asks the audience this: Does anybody ever live a life fueled by the knowing that something in us is eternal? Not eternal as in outlasting death. Eternal as in not-caught-up-in-time. The stage manager is asking if we feel the ongoing stillness within ourselves, the timeless thing that’s devoid of content or motion or trouble of any sort. The now, really felt, is vast and motionless. It goes as far as the sky goes. He is pleading with us to get that, while we’re alive.

Feel that, and time isn’t a prison. Death isn’t a bad guy. Aging isn’t an enemy. Every day is your best friend, the most cherished thing, whatever it may bring. A heap of miracles, every one of them imperfect and ordinary and not to be missed. When you stop asking life to “make you happy” – when you sense, at least occasionally, this inner stillness – then life is allowed to be itself, as it comes, moment to moment.

Learn to savor the simple, the plain act that is just itself, without needing to have meaning, without needing to get someplace better. The simple gesture of running the sponge over the soapy plate, a round face without expression. There is no thought for being finished, for the next dish, or for what happens after the dishes are done. Walking up the stairs: just this step, this foot on the wood. It’s not about getting someplace. The exquisite pleasure of the flex of muscle (even if it’s sore), the pressure of the foot against the surface (even if the stairs need repair or sweeping). Even with the body in motion, always there is the stillness.

This is the thing we want. It’s how the presence of the eternal is felt to be alive in the ordinary reality of the lived moment. It’s not by trying to become different from how you are. It’s not (God help us) by trying to wake up! It’s about paying attention to what you’re doing. Laying a stick of wood onto the fire inside the stove, the feel of the cut surface against fingers and palm. Bending to put the scoop of cat food into the little dish. Pausing to watch the whiskered face lower itself to the fragrant morsel, as if in prayer. (Where do you suppose the cat is, ever, but in this precious moment?)

This is the whole thing. This is it, what life is for. This is the fulfillment, the encounter with the beloved.

Someone asked recently about the meaning of life. Don’t look in the usual places, I said. If you have to go looking in your head to find some meaning, that isn’t it. If there are words for it, that isn’t it.

Do you notice what the warm coffee feels like going down your throat? Do you stop to watch the cat enjoy its supper? Did you think it was supposed to be grander than that? What possible “meaning” could come near to feeling yourself be alive?

The best thing that can ever happen is when things stop meaning something. When whatever comes along, or whatever gets done, is left to be its plain self. Unelaborated, unadorned, unnamed. The end of infernal interpretation! The radical relief of it.

In the absence of all that familiar handling, the world floods the scene. Into the open palms come the feet of little birds. Everything is new, as if never seen before. Thank you is the only thing left to be said.

Jan Frazier’s Website

You are never far from healing,
for healing is not a destination.
It is more like a remembering;
a constant invitation.

It is like the Sun; always there,
yet sometimes hidden
by innocent clouds.

When you feel far from healing,
when doubt rages, and sorrow fills your being,
and pain stings and burns;
when yesterday’s joys seem so far away,
and tomorrow’s happiness is a distant fantasy;
when you feel like you’re living the wrong life,
and nothing seems possible,
stop, just for a moment.

Bring your attention out of past and future.
Invite curiosity into the moment.
Into the body, the breath.
This living scene. This day, this hour.

What’s it like to be alive, just for a moment?

Can you feel your feet on the earth?

Can you feel your belly rise and fall?

What if you’re not far from healing?

What if you’re not actually broken?

What if healing IS presence?

This timeless sense of being alive?

What if the future is unknown, and your fears are all in your mind?

What if the Sun never stops shining,
even as the storm rages?

– Jeff Foster