A universal assembly for true discernment
Anne Blanchard guides a group of committed students through year 2 of Gentle Healing who would like to make consistent, gentle progress toward genuine peace, joy and love. This group meets weekly and all members are committed to specific assignments and practices between group meetings.
Everyone who has completed year 1 Gentle Healing and is willing to make a commitment to deepening even further into healing/awakening is invited to join this group.
Please read and contemplate quotes #683-685 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
The nature of enlightenment is known only by direct experience.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Reading A Course in Miracles and repeating the day’s lesson to yourself hourly is not the path to freedom. Putting the teachings into practice is the path to freedom.
Today we are given another practice to add to our very useful repertoire.
I place the future in the Hands of God.
This isn’t something that we say to ourselves. This is something that we do.
Today’s lesson says, “Today’s idea takes another step toward quick salvation, and a giant stride it is indeed! … If you can see the lesson for today as the deliverance it really is, you will not hesitate to give as much consistent effort as you can, to make it be a part of you.”
“I place the future in the Hands of God,” means ‘I do not know what is in my best interest or in the best interest of others, and so I let go of worry and control, and I trust the unfolding as it is.’
Again, this is not something that we say. This is something that we do. We need to actually let go of worry and control, and trust the unfolding as it is. The way to do this is right-reason, through realizing that we do not know what is in the best interest of others and ourselves.
Thinking we know what is best and thinking we are right is the problem. With a little bit of right-reason, we can see that we are wrong about both of those assumptions.
As of this writing, there are more than 7,400,000,000 people in the world, each with a unique point of view. How can any one point-of-view out of 7,400,000,000 points-of-view be right and know what is in the best interest of everyone?
You might agree that you can’t know what is in the best interest of everyone, but still feel that you know what is in your own best interest.
Is that true? Have you ever been wrong about that?
I remember when I was 17 years old. I met this sweet boy who I thought was the love of my life. His name was Scott. Scott and I were separated when his mother sent him to another state to live with his older brother. At the time, I thought she ruined my life. We loved each other so much!!
A few years ago, I became reacquainted with Scott through Facebook. We are so different from one another now that I felt grateful our lives went separate ways when they did, although I couldn’t see that at all at the time.
I’m sure you’ve had those types of experiences too.
If we become really honest with ourselves through right-reason, we see that we don’t know what is in our best interest or in the best interest of others. With this genuine realization, we can let go of worry and control, and simply trust the unfolding as it is.
I place the future in the Hands of God.
“As it becomes a thought that rules your mind, a habit in your problem-solving repertoire, a way of quick reaction to temptation, you extend your learning to the world.”
The lesson says, “Who entrusts himself to God has also placed the world within the Hands to which he has himself appealed for comfort and security.”
Pause and contemplate that for a moment. Doesn’t it make more sense to entrust the world to the Hands of God than it does to try and take control ourselves?
“For in God’s Hands we rest untroubled, sure that only good can come to us.”
Here’s a fun song that will help us remember that we are wisest when we trust the unfolding as it is:
https://youtu.be/9GuA5PZx3K4
Please read and contemplate quote #682 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is a portion of that quote:
When consciousness devoid of notions of objectivity merges in itself losing its separate identity as it were, it is pure being.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
The main point of today’s lesson is of the utmost importance to those who truly want to heal the mind (i.e., undo conditioning that is based on false premises).
The lesson teaches that all distress (all upset) is because of unforgiveness. The key word in that sentence is “all.”
Most people who study A Course in Miracles accept that some upsets are due to unforgiveness, but few accept that all upsets are due to unforgiveness. If you really want to heal the mind, this is a teaching you must accept, because where you decide this lesson does not apply is where your mind will not heal.
As today’s lesson stresses, “[Unforgiveness] is the content underneath the form. It is this sameness which makes learning sure, because the lesson is so simple that it cannot be rejected in the end. No one can hide forever from a truth so very obvious that it appears in countless forms, and yet is recognized as easily in all of them, if one but wants to see the simple lesson there. … How can you tell when you are seeing wrong, …? Does pain seem real in the perception? If it does, be sure the lesson is not learned. And there remains an unforgiveness hiding in the mind …”
This is where the lesson gets very exciting to me.
First it says, “Morning and night, devote what time you can to serve its proper aim, and do not let the time be less than meets your deepest need.”
I often used to journal twice a day, morning and night, just as this lesson recommends. The purpose of journaling was to look at my mind and practice forgiveness.
What is forgiveness?
It is letting go of every thought process that causes even the tiniest feeling of upset in you.
How do you let go?
Through one or another form of self-inquiry. Through right-reason. Through rest, accept and trust. These are all tools that are used to let go.
I love that the lesson says, “do not let the time be less than meets your deepest need.” That means, take all of the time you need to make sure forgiveness is complete. Forgiveness doesn’t always happen fast. That’s okay. Speed is not the issue. Genuine release is what is most important. (According to the Book of Mark, Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray three timesbefore he felt complete.)
I also love this:
“Each hour, spend a little time today, and in the days to come, in practicing the lesson in forgiveness in the form established for the day. And try to give it application to the happenings the hour brought, so that the next one is free of the one before. … Let no hour cast its shadow on the one that follows, and when that one goes, let everything that happened in its course go with it.”
This is how you become a master of forgiveness, a master at reprogramming the brain so it is based on truth instead of based on falsehood. You look at each upset. You don’t let any slide by.
Today’s lesson recommends a really good practice. Since most people let many upsets pass everyday without looking at them, it is a good idea to pause each hour, look at the upsets that occurred in that hour, and practice forgiveness on them. Eventually you will become very sensitive to even the smallest upset, and you won’t be able to wait until the end of an hour to practice forgiveness, so you will practice it immediately. However, in the beginning your body is not well tuned to your purpose of forgiveness. Its sensitivities are dormant, and you are likely to miss hundreds of opportunities to practice forgiveness if you do not actively pause and look regularly.
Several Gentle Healing participants have told me that this group takes a lot of time. Yes, it does. But as this lesson points out, this is the purpose of time.
The way that I got to the current state of healing that I have achieved is by making healing my fulltime job andthe most important thing in my life. It is what everything else is about. If you really want to achieve healing, your commitment cannot be less than this.
When healing is a priority in your life, something in you is motivated toward the tools and practices that help you heal. It isn’t something you have to do because someone outside of you told you to do it. It is something you are intrinsically motivated to do.
That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. It isn’t. There can be great resistance during this process. But remember what NTI said. The means for overcoming great resistance is great willingness, and great willingness comes from remembering what you want.
Footnotes:
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.
Kate shares her experience as she goes about the business of giving up her ideas about herself and the world on her journey toward purification and awakening. Kate shares with wisdom and humor and allows us a glimpse into the beautiful and sometimes messy blossoming of life examined with an eye on Truth.
Topic: Living Life as a River.
Description: Life always presents situations that are not predictable, and seem to be directly placed in the path of the flow of our life. We have a choice to continue the continuity of our peace, moving in the new direction presented, or hold on to our past expectations and experience turbulence. We can learn to move like water throughout life, easily around all the rocks in the path of life. It is our choice if we want to see a block or just be in the moment and experience peace.
Reading: Susan Bacon read NTI Acts Chapter 4 (pgs 219-222).
Please read and contemplate quotes #680-681 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Since all delusion has come to an end, since the mind has ceased to be and all evil thoughts have vanished, I rest peacefully in my own Self.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Our current goals:
The false self is nothing but thought. It isn’t a self at all. It has no life. Only awareness-life-presence has life. Only that which has life can be a genuine self. However, when the attention aspect of awareness-life-presence becomes engrossed in thought, it appears that life and thought are one. This creates the illusion of the false self.
In order to claim awareness-life-presence as our identity, we need to release the illusion that we are thought. A good way to release the illusion that we are thought is to observe thoughts without getting hooked on them.
Let me demonstrate:
Let’s imagine I am in a work relationship with someone. I am working with this person on an important project that has many challenges. We are working on one particular challenge that needs to be resolved before we can move to the next set of challenges. A deadline is looming. I begin to notice that my co-worker isn’t doing his part of the research. My mind begins to tell me that we are going to fail because he is avoiding his share of the work.
As someone who is embracing my true identity, I say to myself, “I see that thought, but I don’t know what is supposed to happen here. I don’t know what is going to happen here. My only role is to do my part and watch the rest.”
With that, I ‘unhook’ from thoughts that were asking for attention.
That’s how forgiveness works. Forgiveness doesn’t deny thought and it doesn’t believe thought either. It acknowledges the presence of thought, but doesn’t give it meaning.
Reason is the ability in the mind that enables humans to make decisions using logic. In the example above, I used logic to convince myself to let go of a particular line of thinking. This use of reason could be called right-reason.
Today’s lesson talks about how we misuse reason. It says, “Without [the kindly light of forgiveness] we grope in darkness, using reason but to justify our rage and our attack.”
The purpose of reason is to enable us to make decisions that are in our best interest. But when we misuse reason, “what we think we understand is but confusion born of error. We are lost in mists of shifting dreams and fearful thoughts, our eyes shut tight against the light.”
We need to return reason to its proper function.
The Yoga Vasistha is a Hindu text named after a Vedanta sage, Vasistha. A quote from The Yoga Vasistha says, “So long as one does not subdue the mind with the mind, one cannot attain Self-knowledge.”
That quote points to the importance of the proper use of reason. We can use reason to justify our attachment to thought or we can use reason to unhook from that attachment. The latter is using the mind to subdue the mind. It’s how we practice forgiveness, which today’s lesson describes as the “function God would have me fill.”
Here’s something important to know about the right use of reason. When you use right-reason, thought may argue that you are using reason to deny the truth. In the example above, it might argue that I am denying the truth that my co-worker is a lazy butt.
It’s important to remember what today’s lesson says, “Forgiveness represents your function here. It is not God’s creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone … the means to let illusions go.”
In other words, right-reason is not the truth itself. It is an illusion used to release a greater illusion. So if thought argues that right-reason is not true, realize that’s okay. Letting go of the greater illusion is the current task at hand. That brings us closer to truth.
Right-reason is the means to right-dreams, “a kind so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, … and leaves the world a clean and unmarked slate on which the Word of God can now replace the senseless symbols written there before.”
“The way is simple. Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head. And it will fall or be averted as you choose to be condemned or free.” You make the choice to be condemned or free through your use of reason. You will use it to justify thought or to unhook from thought. The latter is the choice for freedom.
