Many years ago a friend of mine introduced me to the book “Stepping Free of Limiting Patterns” written by a wonderful lady named Pat McCallum. What Pat wrote was a discovery of how to identify limiting patterns in one’s life and to re-pattern them to remove the limits imposed by the old patterns. I used her process very successfully for many years and often coached others in how to use it for themselves. I was so pleased with this process and how well it worked for me that I did not realize until this day that I assumed it was pretty much the same as “Root Cause Inquiry” (RCI) presented by Regina Dawn Akers. I was so enamored with Pat’s process that when I was introduced to Regina’s process I simply did not think I needed it and glossed over it as it was presented in the MPP class, True Discernment. As I was looking back at the lesson that presented RCI I found to my astonishment that I hadn’t answered the questions, and basically had never used RCI because I thought Pat McCallum’s process to be sufficient for self-inquiry.

But as things go I felt a need to take another look at RCI today because of something that was triggering in me a sense of failure and an inherent weakness. I found the audio and a handout at Regina’s web site under “A second dozen classics”. As I began to read the print out I began the inquiry by writing the upset I was experiencing. I didn’t get very far because in the printed instructions it says we must first accept an assumption that “If my mind was perfectly healed, nothing would upset me, not even this.” Now I’m sure there are many of you reading this that had no problem with an assumption, but I was stopped in my tracks. Having performed self-inquiry for many years, now I immediately recognized resistance. I reread the sentence many times and could not see what the resistance was. Even though ‘assuming’ was a bad word in the military, I fully understood what Regina was doing using this word in her instructions. Still, there was an underlying resistance but I convinced myself to go forward with trust that it would work out in the end.

I began the question and answer procedure and drilled down to the root cause after a few iterations and sure enough, my resistance floated up into my consciousness and exposed itself in all its shinning glory. The root cause was the very thing causing the resistance. My upset was because I thought a certain behavior (sub-consciously believed to be a sin) on my part needed to be let go in order for me to become of perfect mind. The suggested assumption held that I was already of perfect mind – and there was the resistance. I could not be, nor assume, a perfectly healed mind unless I changed my behavior first. And this was my upset. I held the belief that I was preventing my mind from healing by my behavior, so I couldn’t possibly put the cart before the horse and assume a perfectly healed mind before the behavior was changed. I was experiencing what is described in A Course in Miracles as being caught up in circular reasoning.

Looking back at why it took so long to utilize Root Cause Inquiry and how simple it was to clear away an upset that I have had for many years, I see that Stepping Free of Limiting Patterns is not the same as stepping free from guilt.

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Hal Seeley serves on the Awakening Together Board of Directors and will be ordained as an Awakening Together Minister on February 28, 2016.