Weekly Gathering with Rev. Deloris Mabins-Adenekan
Topic: It’s a fact that you feel, but feelings aren’t a fact.
Reading: Rev. Shawna Summers read from I Am That, Chapter 1, by Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Gentle Healing Year 3 ~ Daily Contemplation #200
Please read and contemplate quotes #663-664 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is a portion of the last quote:
Consciousness free from the limitations of the mind is known as the inner intelligence: it is the essential nature of no-mind, and therefore it is not tainted by the impurities of concepts and percepts.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Lesson 185
Lesson 185. I want the peace of God.
Our current goals:
- Widen the horizons of our vision
- Take direct approaches to uncover the blocks that keep our vision narrow
- Lift those blocks, however briefly, in order to experience the sense of liberation that comes when the blocks are removed
- Intensify our motivation for freedom
Before commenting on today’s workbook lesson, I’d like to say something about the practice we’ve used for the last two days, repeating the Name of God.
There are many things that we do each day that have become well wired into our brains, so that we do not need to pay full attention in order to complete the task. Examples include showering, housework, exercising, and even driving. Because these activities do not require the full attention of our brains, our minds tend to wander a lot when we are busy with these types of activities.
If it feels helpful to you, you can replace mindless mind wandering with the Name of God mantra when you are engaged in activities (or non-activity) that do not require the full attention of your brain. This is not a new assignment for the Gentle Healing Group, but some of you may recognize value in this practice and may want to add it to your other practices. If that’s the case, you may find it helpful to read, “Instructions for Using the Mantra” from The Teachings of Inner Ramana.
Now, let’s look at today’s lesson:
“I want the peace of God. To say these words is nothing. But to mean these words is everything. If you could but mean them for just an instant, there would be no further sorrow possible for you in any form. … To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams. For no one means these words who wants illusions, and who therefore seeks the means which bring illusions. He has looked on them, and found them wanting. Now he seeks to go beyond them, recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others.”
“Today devote your practice periods to careful searching of your mind, to find the dreams you cherish still. What do you ask for in the heart? … Consider but what you believe will comfort you, and bring you happiness.”
This is what we are asked to look at today: Do we really want our dreams or do we want the peace of God, which is awakening from dreams entirely? What is it that we truly seek?
It occurs to me that today’s lesson is a lot like the chapter on Unconditional Happiness in Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul. Having made a commitment to happiness, you don’t trade that for anything. What would you trade it for? As he illustrates in that chapter, we do “trade” our happiness for what we think will bring us happiness. By making the commitment, you get to see what ideas of happiness you are willing to trade your actual happiness for. He uses the example of someone saying, “When I made a commitment to unconditional happiness, I didn’t know my wife was going to die.” There are no conditions on unconditional happiness.
The question is really, what do you value most and why? I value the peace of God most. The concept becomes difficult because we think we know what will bring us peace and happiness. So, when we make the unconditional commitment to the “Peace of God,” we are still focused on the end results. We confuse ends and means.
If you look at your dreams and preferences, ask yourself why the object of your desire is important to you. Isn’t it because you believe that the dream or preference will bring you peace and happiness?
Part of the reason we are still looking at outcomes is because we are seemingly hardwired to believe that our state of mind or our peace of mind is the result of or caused by peaceful outcomes. This is where we have confused cause and effect. Hear this well, “outcomes” do not cause states of mind.
Inner Wisdom told me many months ago that the means and the ends are always the same. In relation to unconditional happiness, it’s obvious that I am making a commitment to being happy no matter the outcome. The same is true of the peace of God. I am making a commitment to rest in the peace of God regardless of outcome–regardless of what I think would result in peace.
I truly do not know what will lead to the peace of God. That is because it is beyond the thinking mind. It is beyond anything that the character can conceive. To be led to peace of mind, I have to surrender. I have to surrender outcomes, or what you might call “dreams.” I have to surrender the desire to manipulate people, places, things, and circumstances in order to “gain” happiness or to gain peace of mind. The peace of God that I seek is inherent in the surrender, not a result of the surrender and certainly not a result of any circumstance.
Regina asked me to use an example of a dream that might need to be surrendered in order to become aware of the state that is the constant peace of God. What comes to mind is the idea of financial security. The thinking mind says, “you feel relatively financially secure, so you can’t use that as an example.” But, a sense of peace regarding my financial security did not come from achieving financial security and then surrendering. It came from surrendering all of those things that I thought that I needed in order to be financially secure.
When I began this journey in earnest, I was making a six figure income and, had I continued on that path, I would have continued to make that income. In fact, I would have retired at full salary and continued to enjoy a six figure income for the rest of my life. When I received the call to leave my career, leaving seemed to threaten my financial security. It seemed to require that I walk away from financial security in order to find the peace of God.
However, what I am experiencing right this moment is financial security-plus. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Awakening Together next year or in the years to come. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Awakening Together when Regina retires. I don’t know that the financial support will continue to be there. However, I do know that there’s nothing that I need to do in order to attain financial security. I understand that financial security is a really just a preference. I understand that my peace and happiness are not dependent on being financially secure. I understand that my true desire is the peace of God. I understand that the only way I can remain in the peace of God is to identify the peace of God as my only goal.
As always, ends and means are always the same. To realize the peace of God, I need merely identify my goals or dreams as intermediaries intended to bring me peace and happiness. In so doing, I see the absurdity of placing these goals before the peace and happiness available in this moment.
Our lesson today says, “No one who truly seeks the peace of God can fail to find it. For he merely asks that he deceive himself no longer …”
We deceive ourselves when we think we want the object or circumstance that we dream of. That isn’t what we want. We want what we think that object or circumstance will bring us. So why dream about an object or circumstance that is an imagined intermediary for what we truly want? Why not ask for what we truly want directly?
Gentle Healing Year 3 ~ Daily Contemplation #199
Please read and contemplate quotes #661-662 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is a portion of the last quote:
The mind is the hub around which this vicious cycle revolves, creating delusion in the mind of the deluded.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Lesson 184
Lesson 184. The Name of God is my inheritance.
Our current goals:
- Widen the horizons of our vision
- Take direct approaches to uncover the blocks that keep our vision narrow
- Lift those blocks, however briefly, in order to experience the sense of liberation that comes when the blocks are removed
- Intensify our motivation for freedom
Earlier this year in our Gentle Healing studies, we were asked to set a spiritual aspiration. The one I came up with seems relevant to today’s workbook lesson. My spiritual aspiration: Conduct your daily activities with little to no agenda.
I experience this aspiration like this: It feels appropriate to head to work in the mornings with the intention of actually arriving at work, but to be consistent with this aspiration, it feels inappropriate to make getting myself to work a priority over anybody else’s priorities. So my getting to work should not be more important than the guy driving in front of me who might appear as if he were sight seeing the backroads to town at 7:30 a.m.
If we believe in what we value, and we act from this belief, then living this aspiration encourages me to consistently look at what I value and what my motivations are. Aren’t my basic motivations the same as yours? ACIM’s principles of Miracles #43 says, “You can not behave appropriately unless you perceive accurately. And “the way to perceive [appropriate] behavior is to look out from the perception of your own holiness, and perceive the holiness of others.” The text says, “Whenever projection is used inappropriately, it always implies some emptiness or lack exists …”
Humans have a tendency to focus on differences. In fact, we typically define a thing based on its differences from another thing. We also define circumstances based on their differences from other circumstances and behaviors based on their differences.
Conducting my daily activities with little to no agenda makes me aware through my experiences that I am not separate from my brothers, or for that matter, from life. I do not have a separate will. My will is to know who I am in truth.
Today, we are asked to focus on the “One Identity which all things share.” We want to use the ‘Name of God’ mantra as a transition to focusing on the one identity instead of differences.
My aspiration is an expression of inner awareness of Christ and the one Identity. From this state of awareness I am in a state of grace and I naturally become gracious. I feel joy and I feel peace when I experience this Oneness and I know this is my inheritance.
This Sunday in the Sanctuary ~ August 25th, 2019
Join us at 10:15 am ET/ 7:15 am PT for our Weekly Gathering with Rev. Deloris Mabins-Adenekan
Topic: It’s a fact that you feel, but feelings aren’t a fact.
Reading: Rev. Shawna Summers will read from I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj.
*Weekly gathering is held every Sunday morning at 10:15 am ET/7:15 am PT in the Awakening Together Sanctuary. Join us after the Gathering for our Fellowship Time, hosted by Rev. Jay McCormick
Join us at 7:00 pm ET/ 4:00 pm PT for The Guiding Light with Rev. Regina Dawn Akers
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.
Join us at 8:00 pm ET/ 5:00 pm PT for The Movie Watcher’s Discussion Group
Jay McCormick will be leading the discussion of this movie called Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt and David Thewlis. Join us in the story of two friends mountaineering in British India where this biographical war drama is set in Tibet in 1944 after World War II. In the movie the two main characters are imprisoned by the British in a POW camp due to their German citizenship. They manage a daring escape from the prison, and cross the border into Tibet, traversing the treacherous high plateau. While in Tibet, after initially being ordered to return to India, they are welcomed at the holy city of Lhasa, and become absorbed into an unfamiliar way of life. They meet the 14th Dalai Lama, who is still a boy, and becomes their tutor! During their time together, the main character Heinrich becomes a close friend to the young spiritual leader.
Join us at 9:00 pm ET/ 6:00 pm PT for Fully Human Fully Divine Satsang with Craig Holliday
Craig Holliday continues his examination of what it means to be both free and human.
Gentle Healing Year 3 ~ Daily Contemplation #198
Please read and contemplate quotes #658-660 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
When the inner light begins to shine, the mind ceases to be, even as when there is light, darkness vanishes.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Gentle Healing Year 1 ~ Lesson 183
Lesson 183. I call upon God’s Name and on my own.
Let us remember our current goals.
- Widen the horizons of our vision
- Take direct approaches to uncover the blocks that keep our vision narrow
- Lift those blocks, however briefly, in order to experience the sense of liberation that comes when the blocks are removed
- Intensify our motivation for freedom
Today’s lesson gives us the opportunity to practice these goals in silence. Today’s lesson asks us to “Practice but this today; repeat God’s Name slowly again and still again.”
As we recently discussed, we use a mantra as a means of removing attention from thought and returning it to awareness of our true nature. We are asked to spend today repeating the Name of God, remembering that His Name is also our own. The best way to practice today’s lesson is to choose a mantra that will bring your attention back to the stillness within, if only for a moment.
You may want to use your spiritual aspiration. You may want to use the mantra given in “Inner Ramana,” “I am that I am.” You may want to start your day by asking Inner Wisdom to suggest a mantra for you.
Once you have chosen your mantra, keep it with you throughout the day. As you practice your meditation:
“Become oblivious to every name but His. Hear nothing else. Let all your thoughts become anchored on this. No other word we use except at the beginning, when we say today’s idea but once. And then God’s Name becomes our only thought, our only word, the only thing that occupies our minds, the only wish we have, the only sound with any meaning, and the only Name of everything that we desire to see; of everything that we would call our own.
Thus do we give an invitation which can never be refused. And God will come, and answer it Himself.”
It is this strength upon which we call today and each moment within the day. It is this focus upon truth that echoes the truth within our being. In this way, we welcome the Light of our being.
As we see in NTI John, Chapter 1, “The Light is in all men and with all men. The Light does not fade or wither, but the darkness that fills the sight of man does not see the Light or choose to know it. And so, the Light waits on welcome, that it may be known.”
It is this welcome we give today. Choose to be conscious of the light (truth) that the light be seen by you.
“God is welcomed into the presence of man by the desire to know God before man. The desire for truth beckons truth, and truth becomes manifest. For Love cannot say no to a request for Love. So where Love is welcomed, there it shall be.” NTI John, Chapter 1.
What You Can Expect While AT Sanctuary Director Is On Vacation
For Tuesday, August 27th the AT Radio will not be broadcasting Gentle Healing Year 1 & Gentle Healing Year 3.
You will have to log on to the Sanctuary via Zoom at the times when AT Radio is not broadcasting.
If you don’t know how here is a link: https://awakening-together.org/dev2/info-about-our-gathering-room/gathering-room-how-do-i-access-the-room-2/
If you need to log on with a phone or are having trouble with the Zoom here are the phone numbers:
Dial 1-408-638-0986 or 1-646-876-9923
You will then be asked for the Meeting ID, which is: 862 361 2484 followed by #
Note: You will be asked to hit # one more time before entering the Sanctuary.
Gentle Healing Year 3 ~ Daily Contemplation #197
Please read and contemplate quotes #654-657 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
When even the notion of the ego-sense has ceased, you will be like the infinite space.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
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