A universal assembly for true discernment
Please read quotes 997-1000 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Renounce fatalism and apply yourself to self-effort.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
What is the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit is a term that points to spiritual intuition. Yesterday we read about spiritual intuition in an excerpt from The Teachings of Inner Ramana. That excerpt said:
One who listens to guidance … realizes truth even as he experiences perception. He listens to knowledge because he knows that one who sees perception cannot truly see, but one who is not attached can be guided. Non-attachment and realization are one.
While contemplating our last special theme, we learned about equanimity. Equanimity is abiding in the qualities of Christ-consciousness—acceptance of what is, openness, non-attachment, and unconditional trust.
When we accept that we are consciousness, we abide in equanimity, because we realize we are unaffected by the outside world.
When we abide in equanimity, we are able to feel spiritual intuition more easily, because “one who is not attached can be guided.”
I live in the high desert of Colorado. Tumbleweeds are common here. However, we only see tumbleweeds in the winter. During the summer, tumble weeds are rooted firmly into the ground. The wind cannot blow the tumbleweeds about when they are attached to the ground.
In the winter, the tumbleweed’s roots die. That frees the tumbleweeds from the ground, and then the wind can blow them about freely.
Spiritual intuition is like the wind. When we abide in equanimity, we are like the tumbleweeds in the winter. We allow spiritual intuition to guide us without any attachment to the ground of our thoughts.
This is the goal of the Holy Spirit’s teaching. It is to free us from attachment to our thinking.
Once we are freed from our habitual thinking, we can be guided by spiritual intuition, and the Holy Spirit “becomes the means to go beyond itself, to be replaced by the eternal truth.”
As we’ve already seen, the Holy Sprit is the means to awakening. Once we awaken to truth, we are beyond the Holy Spirit. What we are is the home of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual intuition emanates from awakened consciousness.
Although what we are is the source that spiritual intuition emanates from, until we genuinely awaken to our Self, we do well to be surrendered to spiritual intuition. Through surrender, we let our true voice guide us back to the realization of what we are.
One mistake that people make when they understand intellectually that the Holy Spirit is their true voice, but they don’t have the genuine experience of themselves as consciousness, is listening to the ego thought system while saying, “But the Holy Spirit is me.” In other words, they think their thinking and their will is the same as the Holy Spirit’s thinking and its will.
Your thinking and spiritual intuition are not the same thing. Thinking is the voice of the ego, and it will keep you attached to the idea that you are a person in a body.
If you really want to awaken to your truth, it is critical that you put your own thinking aside and tune into spiritual intuition. Spiritual intuition is the means to awakening, not your thinking. You need to free yourself from the ground of your thoughts in order to genuinely follow spiritual intuition.
My true identity abides in You.
The prayer in today’s workbook lesson begins with, “Father, I made an image of myself, and it is this I call the Son of God. Yet is creation as it always was, for Your creation is unchangeable. Let me not worship idols.”
Most people do not call themselves the “Son of God.” Most people in the world today think of Jesus as the “Son of God.” Yet, they may think of themselves as the children of God.
Why is it an error to think of yourself, the person, as the Son or child of God?
When you think of yourself, the person, as the Son or child of God, you remain identified with yourself as the person. You remain identified with the mind’s thoughts as your thoughts. You are not the person, and the mind’s thoughts are not your thoughts, so the error is a mistake in identification.
It is much more helpful to think of yourself as consciousness, and to realize that consciousness is the Son or child of God. Consciousness is the direct creation or extension of the source.
Nisargdatta Maharaj said:
Keep on remembering: I am neither the mind nor its ideas. Do it patiently and with conviction and you will surely come to the direct vision of yourself as the source of being—knowing—loving, eternal, all-embracing, all-pervading. You are the infinite focused in a body. Now you see the body only. Try earnestly and you will come to see the infinite only.
Today, we will take Nisargadatta’s advice and “keep on remembering” by noticing repeatedly throughout the day that we are awareness.
We will also practice the Loving All Method today. As we do, we will remind ourselves that the essence of everything is the essence that we are. As our lesson says, “Now are we One in shared Identity, … And so we offer blessing to all things, uniting lovingly with all the world, …”
If you have 30 minutes for meditation, I recommend this meditation today:
or
Weekly Gathering with Rev. Beverly Toporowski
Title: “The Gift of Understanding through One Choice.”
Please read quotes 993-996 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
One should never yield to laziness but strive to attain liberation, seeing that life is ebbing away every moment.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
What is the Holy Spirit?
Our special theme says, “The Holy Spirit mediates between illusions and the truth. Since he must bridge the gap between reality and dreams, perception leads to knowledge through the grace that God has given Him, to be His gift to everyone who turns to Him for truth. Across the bridge that He provides are dreams all carried to the truth, to be dispelled before the light of knowledge. There are sights and sounds forever laid aside. And where they were perceived before, forgiveness has made possible perception’s tranquil end.”
Today, I would like to share how The Teachings of Inner Ramana shares the same teaching:
Fear comes simply from not knowing reality. Therefore, the only answer to fear is to let go of what is false and to remember reality as true.
Discarding the world is as simple as remembering that it isn’t true. This is as simple as living from within instead of from without.
One who is forgetting the world takes his cues from within. When observed, he may seem to respond to without. He may even seem to respond to his thoughts, which are still without, but this is only if you observe him from without. Without will see without. Within will see within.
One who is awakening to truth is also discarding the world, which includes discarding his thoughts about the world, so this one is learning to take all of his cues from within . . . from beyond the clouds of his thoughts.
True perception is a bridge. Guidance is a bridge. To feel that one is awakened or living outside of mind when one is experiencing perception or guidance is an error. To say that one lives outside of mind when one experiences perception is to remain deluded.
But to listen to guidance and to say that one is guided by mind outside of mind is not to be deluded. It is merely to describe the experience in words. It is merely to recognize that mind is needed to experience perception, but guidance is the echo of knowledge filtered through mind.
One who listens to guidance may be said by others to be awakened, but this one will only say he is realized, because he realizes truth even as he experiences perception. He listens to knowledge because he knows that one who sees perception cannot truly see, but one who is not attached can be guided. Non-attachment and realization are one. Seeing truth is to be awakened.
World-focused thought is always an error. It is attachment. Therefore, it is dreaming or remaining deluded.
To help people with world-focused thoughts by providing world-focused solutions is assisting one to dream. Therefore, the Awakened One, who has accepted the role of continuing the awakening, will not assist in world-focused concerns by providing world-focused answers. The Awakened One will assist world-focus by observing the filter with the one who has a desire to awaken.
When one is not world-focused, guidance within the world occurs naturally. Non-attached activity within perception is not a hindrance to awakening. Attached activity is a means of clinging to the dream.
Tomorrow, we will begin looking more closely at these words from The Teaching of Inner Ramana.
I will not be afraid of love today.
“Love” is a symbol for the openness of consciousness and its source. It is also a symbol for the oneness of consciousness and its source. The ego is afraid of openness and oneness. The ego is more comfortable with control and individuality, although the ego is never completely comfortable. Fear is an inherent component of the ego. As the previous excerpt from Inner Ramana teaches, “Fear comes simply from not knowing reality.” Since the ego does not know reality, fear lies at its foundation.
Regarding, “I will not be afraid of love today,” our special theme says, “This the decision not to be insane, and to accept myself as God Himself, my Father and my Source, created me.”
Basically, we have two choices: We can identify with the ego or we can identify with life-awareness-presence (consciousness). Whatever we identify with, we also act and speak from.
This is not the first time we have contemplated the question, “What will I identify with?” This question is contemplated repeatedly because one who is identified with ego is afraid to identify with awareness, even if there is a desire to do so.
The ego will not tell you that it is afraid of your truth. It will not separate itself from your truth in that way, because then you will see that the ego isn’t your truth. In that seeing, you are set free.
Instead, the ego will provide everyday objections to identifying with awareness. For example, it might say:
All of these objections, and other objections similar to them, are expressions of the ego’s fear of love.
When we decide, “I will not be afraid of love today,” we decide to be our Self. We decide to abide as life-awareness-presence instead of the body-personality-mind. We also decide to listen to and follow intuition instead of giving excessive attention to the chattering mind.
If you have 30 minutes for meditation, I recommend this meditation today:
Please read quotes 989-992 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Love is boundless.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Before beginning our new special theme, let’s review each of the special themes that we’ve already contemplated.
What is Forgiveness? Forgiveness is recognizing yourself as the unaffected Self. Therefore, “what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred.” Forgiveness “looks, and waits, and judges not.”
What is Salvation? Salvation is healing by “failing to support the world of dreams … it lets illusions go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust. And what they hid is now revealed …”
What is the World? It is a “false perception” where “mechanisms of illusion … go to find what has been given them to seek.” Yet, “all perception can be given a new purpose. … Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete.”
What is Sin? Sin is ignorance or outward focus. “Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined issuing from thoughts that are untrue.”
What is the Body? “The body is a fence” that seems to separate us from everything else. It makes duality seem real and makes it seem as if we experience duality directly. Therefore, it is a device of deception. However, it is also a neutral device, which means its purpose can be changed if we choose to change its purpose.
What is Christ? Christ is consciousness. It is the process of creation and the unaffected witness of creation. It is what we are. It is our Self. It is as it says in NTI Colossians:
“The Christ is your truth.
It is the law of Love.
It is the process of creation.
It is That Which is you.
What are you, then, if you are the Christ?
You are the flow that is the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the creator of all things within time. 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 separate from nothing that is Life, for that which flows through them is the process that you are. You are beyond concepts and differences and form, and within the Life Force that is all things.“
What is the Holy Spirit?
Our new special theme says, “The Holy Spirit mediates between illusions and the truth. … The goal the Holy Spirit’s teaching sets is just this end of dreams.”
The term “Holy Spirit” is a Judeo-Christian term for spiritual intuition. All humans have intuition. However, not all intuition is spiritual intuition. For example, I could have an intuitive feel that the person I am talking to on the phone is a con artist. That intuition is very helpful, and I serve myself well by listening to that intuition and ending the telephone conversation. However, that intuition was not focused on helping me see the difference between illusions and truth. That means that intuition wasn’t spiritual intuition.
Spiritual intuition has a very specific purpose—awakening us to truth.
All humans have basic intuition. All humans who have some readiness for awakening have spiritual intuition. If a human is not yet ready for awakening, spiritual intuition lies dormant within them. It will awaken to its call, when they are ready to awaken to theirs.
When we practice surrender as it is taught in The Teachings of Inner Ramana, we are tuning into both everyday intuition and spiritual intuition. In fact, spiritual intuition guides us to listen to everyday intuition instead of the thinking mind, because when we listen to the chatter of the thinking mind, we enliven it. If we live by intuition instead, the thinking mind is not fed with our attention.
It might not be important to know that everyday intuition is the intuition that informs you that someone is attempting to scam you and spiritual intuition is the intuition that guides you to love even that experience, but it might not hurt to be clear on this difference either. Everyday intuition makes our life in the world simpler, if we listen to it. Spiritual intuition awakens us from the ego’s dream of the world.
I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts.
Today’s lesson says, “When I think I am hurt in any way, it is because I have forgotten who I am, … I will not hurt myself today. For I am far beyond all pain.”
This is a reminder that we are the unaffected Self.
What makes the unaffected Self believe that it is a body affected by duality?
Today’s lesson says that our thoughts are the culprit. However, that is not entirely true.
Thought is certainly deceptive, but just as you can hang up the telephone when a con artist calls you, and therefore not be attracted into a scam, you can turn attention away from thoughts.
Thoughts are not really the problem. The problem is choosing to give attention to thought.
If you like, you can change today’s workbook lesson in order to be a little more clear on the problem. Remind yourself throughout the day today, “I can be hurt by nothing but my choice to give attention to thought.”
When we are clear on the problem, the solution is also clear.
If you have 30 minutes for meditation, I recommend this meditation today:
This class is 6 weeks long.Ramana Maharshi was born on December 30, 1879 in a village in Tamil, India. His father died when he was twelve, and he went to live with his uncle. At age 16, he experienced a sudden and extreme fear of death to which he responded by immediately seeking the truth of the Self and became Self-realized. Six weeks later he followed an inner calling and ran away to India’s holy hill, Arunachala, where he remained for the rest of his life. For years he was a silent ascetic. He spent many hours each day deep in samadhi. Years later he emerged from silence to share the wisdom of the True Self with those who came seeking it. Before the end of his life in 1950, thousands of people had come to him from all over the world. Ramana Maharshi became known as one of the greatest saints to have ever graced this planet with Presence.
Join us as we contemplate the teachings of this great sage. We will also read stories about about him told by the people who knew him best.
In this class you will:
1. Consider the legend, the living example and the teachings of a great sage and determine what is most helpful to one’s own spiritual process.
2. Practice self-inquiry in order to distinguish between what is and is not the Self.
3. Practice removing attention from the non-Self and placing it with the Self using a spiritual practice that is most suited for you now.
Class Schedule:
Tuesday afternoons, January 14 – February 18, 2019 from 2:00-4:00pm ET (12:00-2:00pm MT). Homework begins January 7. Facilitator: Rev. Meg Reinhart
Specific Information:
Cost is $120.
Textbook needed is The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi.
Class is offered in Zoom. Familiarity with Zoom is helpful.
Registration closes on January 5.
For more information on this class, click here.
Title: “The Gift of Understanding through One Choice.”
Revs. Glen Ganaway and Yolanda Mapes share a delightful, funny and inspiring hour of A Course in Miracles. Come join in on the fun, the laughs, and the music while unlearning the ego through the lessons and chapters of ACIM.
Rev. Jacquelyn Eckert facilitates this program, in which Awakening Together members and friends join together to watch and discuss TED talks that reveal the Truth of ourselves and our universe based on the actual experience of ordinary people. Their insights are genuine—not based upon theory or dogma—and give us a “man on the street” perspective on what we are coming to learn through Awakening Together.
Regina Dawn Akers reads selections from books by Bernadette Roberts. The purpose of this inspired book study is to learn from one who walked through the final doorway to no self, no world, no God–Only Reality.
Please read quotes 985-988 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Relinquish your habits and addictions, live a simple and sober life, don’t hurt a living being; this is the foundation of Yoga. To find reality you must be real in the smallest daily action; there can be no deceit in the search for truth.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
