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Common Ground Mini-Series: Martha Creek – Part 2 of 4

January 15, 2017 By Dawn Fernandez

SELF DIFFERENTIATED LIVING AND LEADING

Listen to the recording

This 4-week training is open to anyone on a path of self-realization with an interest in developing awareness and skills in the following areas:

Persons follow an inner compass. They are guided by their own clear and coherent beliefs, principles and life goals.
Persons take responsibility for self. They are aware of their own feelings, and neither blame others for them nor require others to share those feelings. They ask themselves regularly “What can I learn from this situation?”
Persons respond to anxiety. They anticipate and recognize heightened anxiety (due to change, loss, crisis, etc.) and accept periods of tension as they address issues and complete tasks.
Persons are challenged. They allow persons to work through times of stress or pain. They tolerate the discomfort that can go along with the stresses and strains of both significant mission and individual growth.
Persons respect boundaries. They recognize and respect where one person ends and another begins. Agreed upon roles, structures and procedures are respected. Individual thoughts and feelings are respected. There is little pressure to “Go Along” with the group.
Persons stay in contact. They resist tendencies to distance or cut off from those with whom there is disagreement. They work together for a sufficient amount of time to maintain relationships.

Martha also addresses some things to QUIT including:

8 Quits

1) Quit Being Afraid of What Others Think

Anchor your wholeness in the love of God/Creator. Quit relying on the approval and acknowledgment of others for your sense of self worth.

2) Quit Lying

Live truly free to unrelenting honesty with yourself, God and others. Quit pretending everything is fine, when it is not and change your life.

3) Quit Dying to the Wrong Things

Receive the many gifts god has provided for you that nurture and delight your soul. Quit dying to those things that bring you life.

4) Quit Denying Anger, Sadness and Fear

Embrace your God given humanity by paying attention to your “difficult” emotions and discerning how God wants to come to you through them. Quit ignoring feelings.

5) Quit Blaming

Take responsibility for your own life and happiness. Quit giving away your God given personal freedom and power.

6) Quit Overfunctioning

Don’t do for others what they could and should do for themselves. Quit trying to control people and situation.

7) Quit Faulty Thinking

Choose to live in reality and truth rather than with distorted thinking. Quit making assumptions that will leave you powerless and in unnecessary pain.

8) Quit Living Someone Else’s Life

Take up the challenge of living your God given, unique, unrepeatable, life and destiny.

Martha’s website: marthacreek.com

Awakening Together Satsang with Mary Reed

January 15, 2017 By Dawn Fernandez

Listen to the audio or watch the video below.

Rev. Jacquelyn Eckert interviewed Mary Reed. Mary is an “accidental” mystic who, following eleven years of profound, involuntary visions and insights into divine realms, surrendered her executive life in Washington, DC to explore her spiritual gifts in a remote Buddhist nunnery in India. She grew up without any interest in religion but with an innate knowing that humans had more ability to access greater wisdom than most seemed to realize.

When not immersed in silence and contemplation in the Himalayas, Mary inspires audiences far and wide with her story and perspectives. Using the unique lens of mysticism through which she has been viewing both Divine and earthly realms for fifteen years, Mary’s 2016 tour focused on the answer to a single question: If Love is all we need, then why hasn’t it ever been enough to make our suffering go away? In her words, “If we want a world in which Love really is all we need, then we need to know what Love really is. And if we as individuals want to be part of the awakening experience that is manfiesting that world, then we need to know what it is to BE that Love.”

Mary’s Book: Unwitting Mystic

Mary’s website: UnwittingMystic.com

Awakening Together Weekly Gathering – 1-15-17

January 15, 2017 By Dawn Fernandez

“My Life As A Ransom for Many”

Rev. Regina Dawn Akers explains how Jesus’ life was “a ransom for many,” Buddha’s life was a ransom for many, Ramana Maharshi’s life was a ransom for many, and your life can be a ransom for many.

Reading: Rev. Share Murphy read “The Ego is Not the Devil,” scribed by Regina.

Barbara Deurwaarder served as Sanctuary Administrator.

Listen to this audio

The Ego is Not the Devil – Scribed by Regina Dawn Akers

January 15, 2017 By Regina Dawn Akers

The Ego is Not the Devil
Scribed by Regina Dawn Akers, February 13, 2005

The ego is not the devil. It isn’t a force outside of you that finds pleasure in deceiving you. It isn’t anything to struggle against or to fear, although it can feel as if it is.

The ego is a mistake that you believe in. The power of belief is undeniable. What you believe is real for you. Since you believe in separateness and attack, the world seems threatening to you. That is what you believe, that is what you experience, and that is what you fear. The experience of a threatening world seems real to you, and I don’t ask you to deny that seeming reality. I don’t ask you to step in front of a moving car and trust that it will not hit you, because it may. It would be dependent on the alertness and reaction of the driver behind the wheel. In this way, the world is real.

What I ask you to understand is that the “reality” comes from the belief. The belief is the cause of all that you experience. You make the world you experience.

Now you may ask, “If I change my belief about the world, will I see no more sickness, no more war and no more threat?” I’ve answered this for you before in many ways, but I will put the answers together for you now so you may see what seem to be pieces as a whole.

You are not an individual. Everyone that you experience in the world is a part of you. You are aspects of one mind. When I say that the world you experience is made by you, I am not referring to you as an individual. That would indicate that separateness is truth. When I say that the world you experience is made by you, I am referring to all aspects of the mind that believe in separateness. As one aspect of the mind lets go of the belief in separateness, more Light is brought into the whole mind. It helps to rouse the Sonship, but as the Sonship continues to sleep, nightmares of separateness continue in the world.

When I indicate that what you will see will change, the word “see” and the word “perceive” are synonymous. As long as you see a world, you perceive. I am not saying that a violent crime could occur around you and that others would see it and you would not. The body’s eyes will continue to show you the seeming actions within the world of illusion. When I say you will see differently, I mean that you will perceive differently, or to be even more clear, that you will feel differently about what you see. Your perspective will be different. Your feelings will be different and therefore, your action will be different. Remember the story of Jesus and the adulteress. Jesus saw the men that were preparing to stone this woman and he saw a woman who had seemingly broken the laws of Moses. His eyes did not show him anything different. But, Jesus did feel differently about what he saw. He saw the woman as innocent and he saw the men as innocent. So, he did not condemn the woman and he did not condemn the men. He acted in a way that was consistent with his perception and caused a change in events.

Peace Pilgrim also has many stories that demonstrate that her eyes showed seemingly dangerous situations, but her perception showed only a call for Love. Because she consistently reacted with Love, it caused a turn of events based on the introduction of Light into the situation.

On what seems to be a micro level, an introduction of Light into a seemingly dark situation can change the events as they were about to occur. This may appear to be a miracle of events, but it is not. It is Light within an aspect of the mind shining away darkness within the same mind, resulting in a change in form. The cause is in the mind. The results seem evidenced in form.

The same miracle can occur on what seems to be a macro level. This may look different in the world of form; it may seem that it takes involvement from more individuals in order to introduce lasting peace into the international situation, but if you remember that there are no individuals, you will see that it is the same cause and effect.

I’ve told you before that your only responsibility is to accept the atonement for yourself. Now, you must see how important it is that you let the Light come into awareness in your mind. You must also see how you do this on behalf of all of your brothers. Light within the mind is Light within the mind, and the entire mind benefits from the shining of that Light. There can be no exceptions.

I see that you are willing to do this for your brothers. I see that you are willing to let your perspective be changed from that of a seeming individual to Oneness, but you are finding it difficult. You are experiencing fear and you do not know what to believe. You aren’t certain what is truth and what is illusion. Even as you sit writing this with me, you wonder if you are making this up or if you are hearing the Voice for God, and you don’t know how to be sure.

I will tell you how to be sure. I’ve told you this before. Pay attention to how you feel. Let the feelings of Light guide you. Do what you are told to do while you feel those feelings. When the feelings of darkness are upon you, take no action. Spend that time giving the feelings over to me. If you act with the Light and refrain from acting with the darkness, you will be acting in accordance with Truth and Light, and you will be moving steadily along the path to enlightenment. Know also that the end of this path is certain and enlightenment is a reasonable goal since it is the only goal that can truly be obtained. However, don’t crave the goal so much that it becomes an individual desire. That will delay the result, since the cause of enlightenment can never be the desire to attain for the individual.

The ego is nothing but a belief in your mind. When the belief is gone, you will see that the ego was nothing.

January 15, 2017 Daily Quote

January 15, 2017 By Dawn Fernandez

“If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the alter and go; first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.” Matthew 5:23-24

Letting Go of Blame – Satsang by Chris Celine

January 14, 2017 By Regina Dawn Akers

Barbara Deurwaarder has transcribed Chris Celine’s Satsang, Letting Go of Blame.

Here is an excerpt from this Satsang:

Blame keeps the sad game going. You can keep blame in your back pocket, ready to pull it out like an identity card when you believe it’s necessary. But it’s a game that you’re playing. It’s a game that needs to be recognized for what it is because it keeps the sad game going. It will keep you imprisoned in your own slavery to your own identity. In the world it feels actually somewhat delicious…to blame, because to blame and to judge has a distortion of a sense of power. Your righteousness feeds you in blaming and in being right. Blame feeds the separate self and feeds the righteousness of separation. It feeds that insanity that you really do know. And that sense of knowing gives you a sense of…it’s a distortion…but the ego makes it feel like power. There’s a certain power that comes from…it’s not real power because it has no value. But it feels like power.

… And in the belief that it’s real to you, you suffer with it, not making the connection of where the suffering is coming from. But the suffering is coming from the refusal to let go of blame. The refusal to let go of being righteous…that righteous indignation of being right about what you think you know, about what everybody has done and what everybody seemingly continues to do. When you believe that the past is the problem and you believe that the past is where all your pain comes from rather than it’s coming from your own mind and your own belief of the past that you made…. What happens is that you keep making the same story again and again and again and again and everybody disappoints you and everybody turns against you and everybody is suspiciously held and everybody is right on the edge of betraying you.

… When you believe in blame, you believe in separation. And there’s no healing possible there until you’re ready to truly surrender all the ideas of wrongdoing, of being unfairly treated, of blaming for anything, of believing the past and the goals that you gave to everyone. And, all the roles you’re giving to everyone now. It doesn’t matter what shape or form they take, you have to let go of the roles that you’ve given to them, so that you can let go of the roles that you’ve given to yourself, because it’s all the same. It’s all the pain and the suffering.

Read the Entire Transcript

Chris’s website

Chris’s YouTube Channel

January 14, 2017 Daily Quote

January 14, 2017 By Dawn Fernandez

“Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

January 13, 2017 Daily Quote

January 13, 2017 By Dawn Fernandez

“Truth comes to an innocent mind as a blessing and a sacrament. Truth is a holy thing because it liberates thought from itself and illumines the human heart from the inside out.” Adyashanti (My Secret is Silence)

Growing with NTI – 1/12/17

January 12, 2017 By Dawn Fernandez

The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament (NTI) is a scribed interpretation of the New Testament that teaches oneness as the only truth and surrender as the practice that leads to spiritual enlightenment. NTI has been described as a loving approach to letting go of ego. It leads us to direct experience of truth by teaching us how to release the obstacles that block that experience.

Listen to this recording

January 12, 2017 Daily Quote

January 12, 2017 By Dawn Fernandez

“Wisdom is being in the void. To be thoughtless. Only by being in the void can the light come through. As long as I have something going on in my mind the Light can’t come through. The Light can only come in when the mind is clear – – in a state of silence.” Hew Len, Shamanic Wisdomkeepers.