A universal assembly for true discernment
Weekly Gathering with Rev. Shawna Summers
Title: “Gratitude: How We Receive and Give Thanks.”
Please read quotes 965-968 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Questioner: What is the experience which comes nearest to the Supreme?
Maharaj: Immense peace and boundless love.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
What is the Christ?
Our special theme says, “Home of the Holy Spirit, and at home in God alone, does Christ remain at peace within the Heaven of your holy mind. This is the only part of you that has reality in truth. The rest is dreams. Yet will these dreams be given unto Christ, to fade before His glory and reveal your holy Self, the Christ, to you at last.”
A dream is defined as “a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep.”
In today’s excerpt from our special theme, “dream” is an analogy. Certainly, we are not in the human sleep state as we walk about in our daily lives. However, we are still living a dream when we believe we are affected by the “series of thoughts, images and sensations” experienced throughout the day. We are not affected by thoughts, images and sensations, because we are untouched consciousness, the witness of the human experience.
Today, continue to check in with your untouched present nature. Continue to notice that it is more intimately you than anything else you might call you.
God’s healing Voice protects all things today.
Healing is awakening to our true nature.
Today’s lesson says, “Let us today attend the Voice for God, which speaks an ancient lesson, no more true today than any other day.”
What is true today that has also been true on every other day?
Do not look to your mind for the answer to this question. Look to your consistent nature. It is here, present now and “no more true today than any other day. … It is in this that all things are protected.”
The prayer from today’s lesson is:
Your healing Voice protects all things today, and so I leave all things to You. I need be anxious over nothing. For Your Voice will tell me what to do and where to go; to whom to speak and what to say to him, what thoughts to think, what words to give the world. The safety that I bring is given me. Father, Your Voice protects all things through me.
The best way to live this prayer today is to stay focused on our untouched nature. Let the world be as it is. Ask for nothing from the world, and practice surrender as it is taught in The Teachings of Inner Ramana.
If you have 30 minutes for meditation, I recommend this meditation today:
Title: “Gratitude: How We Receive and Give Thanks.”
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 961-964 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Beyond the mind there is no suffering.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
What is the Christ?
Speaking of Christ-consciousness, our special theme says, “Your mind is part of His, and His of yours. He is the part in which God’s Answer lies; where all decisions are already made, and dreams are over. He remains untouched by anything the body’s eyes perceive.”
That means that Christ-consciousness is untouched by anything that occurs in the human experience.
The best way to discover that you are Christ-consciousness is to check in with consciousness (awareness) frequently, and notice it is always the same. As the human that you seem to be goes through different experiences today, repeatedly check in with consciousness. Notice its sameness for yourself. Notice its untouchedness.
Also, take the time to notice that this present untouched nature is you. Notice that this present consistent nature is actually more intimately you than anything else you may call you.
Today belongs to love. Let me not fear.
As you go through the day today and different experiences come and go—some the mind may consider favorable and some the mind may consider unfavorable—continue to check in with awareness. Continue to notice your untouchedness.
The end of fear lies in the direct realization that you are untouched by everything that happens in the world.
If you have 30 minutes for meditation, I recommend this meditation today:
Please read quotes 957-960 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
It is a matter of actual experience that the Self has being independent of mind and body. It is being-awareness-bliss. Awareness of being is bliss.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
What is the Christ?
Speaking of Christ-consciousness, our special theme says, “Your mind is part of His, and His of yours. He is the part in which God’s Answer lies; where all decisions are already made, and dreams are over.”
While we were on Lesson 267, we spent the day with a visualization plan. It might have been Lesson 267 as it was written, the visualization plan you wrote earlier in Gentle Healing, or a new visualization plan. This is the plan I was with that day:
I forget about anything I am not called to by God. I joyously answer all of God’s calls, no matter how big or how small. I am completely surrendered, completely in love, and awakening to truth at the perfect pace, God’s pace.
My visualization plan is in the same vein as the excerpt I have quoted from our special theme today. Today’s excerpt and my vision point to the easy path, the path of being completely surrendered in trust to spiritual intuition.
From our human perspective, awakening is not complete. However, from the perspective of Christ-consciousness, it is complete. In fact, from the perspective of consciousness, non-awakeness has never happened.
Realizing the perspective of consciousness, a wise human relaxes into the current experience. Relaxing necessarily includes tuning into and following spiritual intuition, since the wrong mind is agitation.
From a human point-of-view, what we know about everything is extremely limited. The wise human becomes comfortable with not knowing and lives in the mystery in joy by following intuition in the moment. The wrong mind, which thrives on agitation, worries, tries to figure things out and tries to control everything toward an outcome that is decided upon in the mind.
If we see Christ-consciousness as our truth and the human as a temporary experience, we relax and enjoy the ride. If we see humanness as our reality, we tend to struggle against the unknown and undesired.
The stillness of the peace of God is mine.
As today’s lesson says, “Perhaps we are now ready for a day of undisturbed tranquility.”
Are you ready to trust that consciousness is your reality? If so, you can relax, and watch the human dream from the stillness of reality.
The lesson also says, “If this is not yet feasible, we are content and even more than satisfied to learn how such a day can be achieved. If we give way to disturbance, let us learn how to dismiss it and return to peace.”
It is helpful to pause whenever disturbance arises. Notice that you are aware. Notice awareness is always present, regardless of the current human experience. Happy or sad, at peace or agitated, healthy or sick, in love or lonely—awareness is always present as you.
If you have 30 minutes for meditation, I recommend this meditation today:
Please read quotes 953-956 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Laziness and restlessness often stand in the way and until they are seen and removed, the progress is slow.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
What is the Christ?
Our special theme says, “Christ is the link that keeps you one with God, and guarantees that separation is no more than an illusion of despair, for hope forever will abide in Him.”
This sentence is an invitation for us to become clear on the difference between what is true and what is not true.
Let’s look at the definitions of true, or real, and not true, or illusion.
Yesterday we learned about consciousness, which is the realm of creation and the ability for creation. Consciousness is the direct creation of source. Therefore it is an extension of source and the same as source.
“True” and “real” point to that, to the essence of consciousness and source, which is changeless and eternal.
Temporary appearances are made of consciousness. They are an extension of consciousness just as consciousness is an extension of source. Yet on the surface, they appear to be something other than consciousness. They appear to be thousands upon thousands, actually billions of different names and forms. The temporary things they appear to be are “not true.” They are “illusion,” because each of these things is actually more than it appears to be. Each thing is not its temporary appearance, but the eternal essence of its source.
To become clear on what is true and what is illusion, we will continue to focus on awareness in ourselves and on life in the living things that we encounter throughout the day.
How can illusions satisfy God’s Son?
Today’s lesson asks, “Can dreams content me? Can illusions bring me happiness? What but Your memory can satisfy Your Son?”
Temporary appearances occupy the mind. Temporary appearances give the mind something to think about. Since things are always coming and going, shifting and changing, the mind remains very occupied. This is life to the mind.
However, we are not the mind, and what is life to the mind is actually agitation or suffering for us. It’s like keeping our attention with the restless waves on a stormy sea, fearing what will happen to the wave, while ignoring the changeless nature of the sea at its depths. Focusing on the surface is suffering. Realizing and abiding as the depth is peace.
The practice we have already committed to today is also the practice that will bring us to realize peace. It is the practice of focusing on the depth instead of the surface. We will focus on awareness in ourselves, and we will focus on life in each living thing that we encounter today. It doesn’t matter if the people we encounter seem happy, angry, or afraid. The life in each one is the same. Life-awareness is the changeless depth of our source.
If you have 30 minutes for meditation, I recommend this meditation today:
