The Tao Te Ching ~ Verse 15, “Resting in Stillness”.
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A universal assembly for true discernment
Steady our feet, our Father. Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still, and speak to us. We have no words to give to You. We would but listen to Your Word, and make it ours. Lead our practicing as does a father lead a little child along a way he does not understand. Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.
So do we bring our practicing to You. And if we stumble, You will raise us up. If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering. We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back. Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You. And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.
Review Lesson 172:
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(153) In my defenselessness my safety lies.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(154) I am among the ministers of God.
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Paul presented a special 2-week mini-series. During the first week, he delivered his basic message, which is the only message he feels he ever has to share. In the second week, he answered questions and provided more clarity regarding his message.
Paul Hedderman is a favorite of many from the AA community because he has been active with the recovery community since 1988. Paul has exceptional clarity and a rather unconventional presentation style. Rev. Jacquelyn Eckert interviewed Paul for our March Satsang.
Paul’s website: ZenBitchSlap.com
Pauls’ Books:
Under A-Rest
The Escape to Everywhere
Kathy Smith explores the quotes from Experience Your Perfect Soul and shares from her contemplation of them.
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Rev. Kelly Barber discussed “Deciding how and when to use my time”.
The reading was from Way of Mastery. Kelly did her own reading
Today we begin our fifth review period. The review introduction says, “This time we are ready to give more effort and more time to what we undertake … that we may go on again more certain, more sincere, with faith upheld more surely.”
There is a beautiful prayer in the review introduction, one you may want to read at the beginning of each day of this review period:
Steady our feet, our Father. Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still, and speak to us. We have no words to give to You. We would but listen to Your Word, and make it ours. Lead our practicing as does a father lead a little child along a way he does not understand. Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.
So do we bring our practicing to You. And if we stumble, You will raise us up. If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering. We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back. Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You. And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.
And then we are asked to contemplate this thought as we review lessons 151-170:
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
Here is my recommendation for this review:
Trust whatever comes to you. Remember you have prayed for guidance to lead your practice. Remember that guidance is always individualized to fit each person perfectly, and then trust the guidance that comes to you each day of this review period.
For your convenience, I will provide links to my tips for each lesson that is reviewed throughout this review period.
“Let us raise our hearts from dust to life” as we let intuition guide our individual practice throughout this review period.
And now for Review Lesson 171:
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(151) All things are echoes of the Voice for God.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(152) The power of decision is my own.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
No one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion and from fear.
How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack! For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it grow and swell and rage. And thus is fear protected, not escaped. Today we learn a lesson which can save you more delay and needless misery than you can possibly imagine. It is this:
You make what you defend against, and by your own
defense against it is it real and inescapable. Lay down
your arms, and only then do you perceive it false.
It seems to be the enemy without that you attack. Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an “enemy,” an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are.
If you consider carefully the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds on its imagined way, you will perceive the premises on which the idea stands. First, it is obvious ideas must leave their source, for it is you who make attack, and must have first conceived of it. Yet you attack outside yourself, and separate your mind from him who is to be attacked, with perfect faith the split you made is real.
Next, are the attributes of love bestowed upon its “enemy.” For fear becomes your safety and protector of your peace, to which you turn for solace and escape from doubts about your strength, and hope of rest in dreamless quiet. And as love is shorn of what belongs to it and it alone, love is endowed with attributes of fear. For love would ask you lay down all defense as merely foolish. And your arms indeed would crumble into dust. For such they are.
With love as enemy, must cruelty become a god. And gods demand that those who worship them obey their dictates, and refuse to question them. Harsh punishment is meted out relentlessly to those who ask if the demands are sensible or even sane. It is their enemies who are unreasonable and insane, while they are always merciful and just.
Today we look upon this cruel god dispassionately. And we note that though his lips are smeared with blood, and fire seems to flame from him, he is but made of stone. He can do nothing. We need not defy his power. He has none. And those who see in him their safety have no guardian, no strength to call upon in danger, and no mighty warrior to fight for them.
This moment can be terrible. But it can also be the time of your release from abject slavery. You make a choice, standing before this idol, seeing him exactly as he is. Will you restore to love what you have sought to wrest from it and lay before this mindless piece of stone? Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms. Another can be found.
Yet do not think that fear is the escape from fear. Let us remember what the text has stressed about the obstacles to peace. The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing, and a seeming obstacle with the appearance of a solid block, impenetrable, fearful and beyond surmounting, is the fear of God Himself. Here is the basic premise which enthrones the thought of fear as god. For fear is loved by those who worship it, and love appears to be invested now with cruelty.
Where does the totally insane belief in gods of vengeance come from? Love has not confused its attributes with those of fear. Yet must the worshippers of fear perceive their own confusion in fear’s “enemy”; its cruelty as now a part of love. And what becomes more fearful than the Heart of Love Itself? The blood appears to be upon His Lips; the fire comes from Him. And He is terrible above all else, cruel beyond conception, striking down all who acknowledge Him to be their God.
The choice you make today is certain. For you look for the last time upon this bit of carven stone you made, and call it god no longer. You have reached this place before, but you have chosen that this cruel god remain with you in still another form. And so the fear of God returned with you. This time you leave it there. And you return to a new world, unburdened by its weight; beheld not in its sightless eyes, but in the vision that your choice restored to you.
Now do your eyes belong to Christ, and He looks through them. Now your voice belongs to God and echoes His. And now your heart remains at peace forever. You have chosen Him in place of idols, and your attributes, given by your Creator, are restored to you at last. The Call for God is heard and answered. Now has fear made way for love, as God Himself replaces cruelty.
Father, we are like You. No cruelty abides in us, for there is none in You. Your peace is ours. And we bless the world with what we have received from You alone. We choose again, and make our choice for all our brothers, knowing they are one with us. We bring them Your salvation as we have received it now. And we give thanks for them who render us complete. In them we see Your glory, and in them we find our peace. Holy are we because Your Holiness has set us free. And we give thanks. Amen.
The sole purpose of today’s lesson is to encourage us to give up attack.
First, the lesson helps us look with clarity at why we attack. It’s because we are afraid, and we think we can protect ourselves through attack. (Note: Our attack could be acted out, like raising our voice with someone, or it could be internal, like thinking attack thoughts about someone.)
Second, the lesson points out that when we attack, fear is protected, not escaped. This is the same teaching as in The Untethered Soul. It says, “You’re locking your illness inside yourself, and it will only get worse … if you protect yourself, you will never be free. It’s that simple.”
Finally, the lesson recommends that we save ourselves “more delay and needless misery than you can possibly imagine” by giving up attack.
Attack is a habit, and like any habit, it isn’t easy to give up. However, we can give up attack. I am writing this as someone who has successfully given up that particular habit, and the habit of attack was as strong in me as it is in anyone. In fact, this workbook lesson was my least favorite workbook lesson, because I thought I was cruel. I thought cruelty was at the base of my nature. It wasn’t. There is no cruelty in my nature, and there is none in yours. All attack comes from attachment to thought.
How do we give up attack? First, we need the desire to give it up. Once we have the desire, we follow-through by doing our best each and every time the energy of attack arises in us. If we keep trying, eventually the habit of attack dies.
Remember, when you give something your attention and belief, it is increased. When you take away attention and belief, it dies. This means the more you give in to the energy of attack, the more the energy of attack arises. As you begin to resist the urge to attack by watching the energy with a centered state of mind, it weakens. If you keep up the practice of resisting attack as the observer, that energy eventually dies.
The desire to give up attack has to come first. It needs to be a heart-felt desire, not merely another thought. One way to evoke a heart-felt desire to give up attack is to pay more attention when you do attack. Pay attention to how you feel when you attack. Pay attention to the general energy that is occurring in the relationship when you attack. Is this the feel you really want in your life?
It’s important to look at attack with reason and to ask, “Is this what I want?” We attack because we think it serves us. We need to realize it doesn’t serve us. We want to be infused with the joy of God, not the feelings of attack.
It is also helpful to inquire to discover what is at the root of our attack episodes. For example, let’s assume we’ve done a root cause inquiry and found our sense of unworthiness at the root of one episode. Whatever we give our attention and belief to is energized and increased. Or as The Untethered Soul puts it, we lock that illness inside of ourselves, and it will only get worse. Is that what we want to do, energize and increase our sense of unworthiness? If not, we need to learn not to give in to it.
This is one example of how the movie, Little Buddha, was important to me. When rage would rise in me, and I felt the urge to attack, I would remember Buddha sitting under the tree watching all of the fury that Mara threw out at him. Buddha didn’t give in to those energies, and he didn’t run from them. He silently watched them. He watched them with the awareness that the energies were not his nature. He watched with the knowledge that he wanted to be free (purified) of those energies.
It’s important to realize that there is no cruelty in you. Attack is not a part of your nature. It’s an effect of attachment to thought. Learn to abide as your Self, the centered watcher, and the impermanent energy that was born through belief and involvement will die. Patience, compassion, wisdom and love, which are your nature, will arise naturally in its absence.
Here’s a 14-minute synopsis of the movie, Little Buddha. The inspiring scene that is mentioned above begins at 10 minutes and 30 seconds: