A universal assembly for true discernment
Please read and contemplate quotes #217-220 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. This is the last quote today:
This villainous vast world so false that cheats and churns the minds of all, how did it come to be? By nothing else but by the fault of falling from the Self instead of clinging firmly to It.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
In yesterday’s tip, Regina gave us the following assignment:
As you look at thoughts today and tomorrow, try to see beyond the story being presented to the content of the thought. The content is the energy that the thought represents. Is it fear? Worry? Guilt? Unworthiness? Attack? Defense? Jealousy? Control? etc.
After you notice the content, ask yourself, “Is [content] what I want?” It will be easy to see it isn’t. Then you can genuinely go on to say, “This thought reflects a goal that is preventing me from accepting my function.”
Here is how I applied the lesson when I experienced an upset. The “story” was: I am upset because someone agreed to help me with a project, but now seems to be welching on her promise. Her actions make me angry because they result in a burden to me.
When I looked at the content of the thought, it felt as if the energy was anger at being overburdened. In looking more closely at that energy, I realized I was also angry at others for what seemed to be the same reason. I was led to look, however, at what being overburdened seems to say about me.
I realized that I am concerned that others might think I am unable to fulfill my own obligations. If I am unable to fulfill my obligations, I am not capable of being who I need to be to take on the role of President Minister for Awakening Together. I realized my fear of being incapable (aka, unworthiness or incompetence) is projected as anger onto others who seem to add to my burden.
I realized that this projection of anger only leads me to believe the truth of the fear that I am not enough and cannot be enough. I realized that I should let go my desire to do what is beyond my capacity to do. I asked, “What is here now that can be let go so that I do not continue to feed myself the energy that is generated when l believe that I am overburdened?”
I can see that I don’t want to feed the idea that “I can never do enough” back into the code. Is incompetence what I want? Of course not. I can see that this idea is false and that by continuing to believe it, I create multiple situations where that seems to be true. I can see that this thought reflects a goal that is preventing me from accepting my function. By being willing to let go believing it and recognizing that it is only code, my experience of my tasks and duties will change. In other words, if I keep insisting I am incapable of completing the work that needs to be done, that will be my experience. The higher vibration thought is, what needs to be done, will be done.
The purpose of this retreat is to help you take your next step with God (with Truth), whatever that next step may be for you. This retreat is for everyone on a spiritual path or embarking on a spiritual path, regardless of your current level of skill, insight or awareness.
At this retreat you will have ample time to go within through reading, contemplation, journaling and meditation while also having the opportunity to sit with Regina Dawn Akers in question and answer sessions each day. Private, personal guidance will be available for anyone who feels assistance is needed to reach a deeper quality of Truth/God awareness.
Through rotating periods of silence and purposeful conversation, you will have the opportunity to probe deeper into spiritual intuition, emerging from your exploration with greater clarity and insight.
This retreat is based on the teaching of Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi. At this retreat, you will learn the subtleties of self-inquiry. You will participate in guided self-inquiry, meditative self-inquiry, self-inquiry with a partner, journaling based on self-inquiry, and you will contemplate and discuss quotes by Ramana Maharshi.
The purpose of this retreat is to help you make advances in the process of self-inquiry in a very short time, so when you go home from the retreat you will be able to use self-inquiry more effectively to abide in the true Self and detach from the false self. Each participant will receive a book of Ramana Maharshi quotes about self-inquiry.
Please read and contemplate quotes #214-216 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. This is the last quote today:
The mind bewildered which mistakes the body for oneself conceives the transient world of names and forms, makes it seem real and lovable, and promptly entraps one in the strong, illusive bondage of desire.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
We are going to spend two days with lesson 65, because lesson 65 represents two important objectives:
1 – Realizing total commitment to awakening by realizing truth is the only thing we really want.
2 – Seeing that mind’s thinking is filled with other goals & desires, which distract from our commitment to awakening.
As we’ve learned from both NTI Ephesians and The Code, the thoughts that show up in our mind and seem like our personal thoughts are not really ours. They are part of the code. They are made up by totality’s deluded fascination with the dream. As totality involves itself with dream-thoughts, more dream-thoughts become manifest. We experience those manufactured thoughts as ‘my thoughts’, but they aren’t what they appear to be. That means the goals imbedded in those thoughts are not ours either.
Ultimately, it also means that we are not the character/person those thoughts tell us we are. The entire thought-driven identification is a hoax.
The word “salvation” as it is presented in A Course in Miracles means awakening from this hoax, from this deluded fascination with the dream, and awakening to our truth. It is called “salvation” because all suffering…ours, the suffering of others and the suffering of the planet…comes from the dream and is activated by attention on the dream.
Remember, the real is the father of the unreal. The unreal gets its apparent reality from our attention. The unreal seems real, because the one engrossed by it is real. It seems real because we are looking at it through our attention, which is real.
What are we? It’s time that we turn our attention from this temporal illusion to discover what we, the watcher, is.
“My only function is the one God gave me.” That function is determining the difference between what is unreal and what I am, removing attention from what is unreal and abiding as myself. Ultimately, abiding as myself—being who I am—is my function.
As you look at thoughts today and tomorrow, try to see beyond the story being presented to the content of the thought. The content is the energy that the thought represents. Is it fear? Worry? Guilt? Unworthiness? Attack? Defense? Jealousy? Control? etc.
After you notice the content, ask yourself, “Is [content] what I want?” It will be easy to see it isn’t. Then you can genuinely go on to say, “This thought reflects a goal that is preventing me from accepting my function.”
Shawna Summers shared about her recent insights into the April Dyad retreat that she attended in La Veta, Colorado that was facilitated by Anne Blanchard and Rev. Jacquelyn Eckert.
Kate shares her experience as she goes about the business of giving up her ideas about herself and the world on her journey toward purification and awakening. Kate shares with wisdom and humor and allows us a glimpse into the beautiful and sometimes messy blossoming of life examined with an eye on Truth.
Please read and contemplate the instructions to Step Two in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. This is an excerpt from the instructions:
Know that the world is a dreamlike illusion.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
It may be helpful to pick a few lines from today’s lesson that really jumps out at you, and write a few related thoughts about each of those sentences. I did that this morning after practicing the longer morning meditation. Here is my journaling:
“The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it.” The world presents many things to think about. I can see that the world is nothing but endless stimuli for thought. However, my purpose now is to ‘forget everything. Become the spontaneous moment and nothing else.’ I am heart-committed to my purpose. Therefore, I will recognize the world’s stimuli as temptation, and I will remember my purpose. I will do this, because I want to. I am ready to let go of endless attention on mind.
“Your function here is to be the light of the world.” The light of the world is the purity of what I am, untainted by story-focused thinking. It is the Self as it is. Nothing else.
“Only by fulfilling the function given you by God will you be happy.” The mind cannot be perfectly happy. The mind itself is fear energy. When the mind begins to wander, subtle to intense fear fuels its wandering. It promises happiness at the end of its search, but it never finds what it promises, because its basis is fear.
“Let not the form of the decision deceive you. Complexity of form does not imply complexity of content.” Every decision is one of fear or freedom. To let the mind seek for a solution is to choose the perception of fear. To watch and see how spontaneity unfolds is freedom. Fear hides being. Freedom reveals it.
