alysia
Ex Member
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Roadsign 16..attempting to share a little of my spiritual journey from one roadsign out of 25. lets all toot our horns..lets all write books! lol. I know we all have one. maybe we can get back in the spirit of love. thanks for the read. alysia
The first words out of his mouth made my mouth fall open. I knew I had been answered by ACIM’s introduction: Quote:
“This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time in which you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.” This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists
<Herein lies the peace of God. > Later I thought about this momentous occasion of seemingly stumbling unto this material but really not. First, I had been given years before a mantra “expect a miracle.” Spirit whatever that was, could always play me like a yo-yo and I had fairly danced with only these words in my empty but willing head. Therefore I went through life with the word miracle running in my subconscious, like an old record, an oldie but goodie. You could barely hear it’s subtle tune yet it stayed with me. Second, “this is a required course” made me listen up as well. I had thought nothing was required of me here in any shape or measure, least of all disapline and training of the mind along the vein of what belief systems I harbored, nursed and defended. Third, I was impressed with what Jesus was saying about free will, and that we would not be able to establish the curriculum here, implying that I was not in control of this place I had found my lonely and battered ego within. Fourth point to be taken is that Jesus was telling me I could elect to take this course in a time period of my choosing, but I would not be able to decline this course in an eternal sense as it was required for graduation. Graduation was always an attractive idea. Fifth, and perhaps of most importance the Course told me straight out I was looking for love but that the Course would not teach this to me, as the meaning of love was quite beyond the mere words which offer guidance, yet not the product of what only experience can supply. Sixth, the Course states it’s intentions up front to remove the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence which means that which I am searching for is the thing that is all around me and I notice not due to perceptional blocks to that awareness; then I am at once reminded of a universal law “to have the thing you crave, give that thing to another.” Our inheritance is love. This could only mean one thing. We can find our meaning, our essence, our home, in the kingdom DP preached on as it was our premise to do so. The opposite of love is fear, yet what is all encompassing can have no opposite gives a directly safe feeling to the material, as nothing that is real can be threatened, therefore fear is not real and is in place operational as an illusion, alluding to something substantial which we construct in our minds to be harmful. If you believe that only love is real there is no cause for alarm or fear to exist, therefore I was home free and awaiting God to take the final step knowing that this too was part of the illusion that I was separated from my home while I abided within what I perceived as a body, with all it’s pains and it’s need for nourishment and attention. The more I listened the more I entered a trancelike state, lulled by the peaceful sincere voice of this teacher of God who received no monetary value for rescuing me from misery. I was in awe not only at the material, but because I had yet again received an answer from the universe, just by asking, and there was no doubt whatsoever in my mind that this was it. My ultimatum to the universe had worked because I’d thrown a bit of a hissy fit in hopes of getting spiritual attention. Perhaps I had only attracted my own attention, of higher self who might have uttered in consternation; “quickly now the quickening, she is about to do something quite rash.” this was a different kind of miracle; this one would require some allowance from me to reprogram my mind to perceive differently. Trust was difficult. DP would be there with his warming blanket about the shoulders. I bought the books of which there were three. A text, a student’s lesson plan, and a teacher’s manual. There were 365 lessons, one for each day of the year. From the very first moment I had opened the book, DP was on LR like a fly on, well, you get the picture. He asked for the commitment to the study as a priority before he would assist me; in return he would teach me how to hear the word that was written. He was a little stern. After all, why should he waste his time if I were not to follow through to the end? When the floodgates of knowings came forth, DP would back off just a little so I could recuperate from the feelings, then he’d whomp LR again with another “aha!” piece of the puzzle. Without DP I would have just been reading lovely words and the books would have gone on the shelf to join many others, basically of no further use. Hours would be spent sobbing on a single paragraph as a cleansing took place. How can you cry just from reading something in a book? Because every word was setting my tired self free. There was joy on the one hand, that at last I had found my path, and grief on the other that I had taken so long to find it. Inside the powerful grief was residing a substantial gratitude related to the joy. DP, of course had no problem with the Christian path when presented as ACIM presented it. He would mention the days Moses and Jesus had spent in solitude for enlightenment whenever LR complained she was not earning a livlihood and therefore must be of worthlessness just as mother had suspected all along. I had lots of time. I had given up my need to rush through books and life along with all ambitions. “This is not your home.” These words hit me hard and fast. I hadn’t known I was but on a journey. I had thought there was something wrong with me for foisting myself through my mother’s womb. Love, the meaning of such seemed to become ever more related to the first human contact a spirit makes after emerging from the birth canal. Of course DP had not the personality conflicts of LR to deal with. I could understand the value of rebirthing which had just arrived on the scene in the 80’s for me. It was all being explained to me in one fell swoop and it was overwhelming in a good sense. There was so much rewiring being done I was sure I was nothing more than a robot upstairs. DP stayed. I would stare at the book and just think about the feeling I got that it held a sacred message for me and I couldn’t believe that anything as physical as a book, that anything physical was sacred here. Equally sacred had been my prayer and my wish to be transformed. I was being told I couldn’t read this book in the manner in which I had read all my other self-help books. If I got stuck on a section of it which would produce conflict and a wish to reject the material, I was to set aside my objections until later, when more reading and study would clarify those objections. I told the master I would commit to do this as I implicitly trusted my feelings I had been correctly led to just this material in this time frame. My physical body was involved in the reading. My hands were hot, the book was hot and my head was exploding with hot to trot. It had become the last self-help material. It was poetic and required an abstract type of thinking. It was enhancing my powers of concentration requiring discipline. To look at life differently, a miracle was defined as being a simple change of mind, a decision to do so. The words were Jesus’ words coming through the pen of Helen Schucman, a psychologist. ACIM explained everything that the bible had failed to explain about the human mind, the ego and belief systems we labor under and defend unto death. It was made for my generation. It was about me, not about the sons of Abraham and it wouldn’t take an entire lifetime to understand, just a number of years that I wouldn’t even notice go by. As I progressed in the material, ACIM would stress that to not accept that you are healed, whole and perfect just as you were meant you were attacking God, because then it meant that you would be denying your perfection and wholeness as a son of God, which is your inheritance. ACIM spoke of the ego, an aspect of man which had the cause of separation and division to make unto itself a thing of power. I knew nothing but that I wished to not be attacking God by attacking my brothers with judgment for we were as one and while on this level of waking consciousness I had not the entire picture. Let not the man who lives in a glass house throw a stone DP said. I trust my brothers who are one with me were the incredible words. These words I had trouble with, but stowed them in a retrievable drawer. Perhaps they were true. What an incredible thing to say; as if everything that was good in life was a thing I wished to deny because of unworthiness my ego would impress upon me, thus somehow proving to God that we could make death real, that we were powerful enough to do so. Death was not real, and we could not make it so. It had no power over us in truth and was an illusion we used here. We could never be separated from God, only that it was He that gave us the freedom to believe we were separated, and accomplishing of death. And so strong was the illusion that death was real that we all at once agreed it was true, therefore it had become so. Together, we had power to be creating of our mutual reality, because together we were God. Yet only one savior was needed to save the world. One single person. Me, it was after all, me own arse I was saving by the getting of knowledge and application of knowledge. Jesus had come and gone. We would be the ones to do the deeds that he had said we would do. We would do it one by one. He had known we would, centuries ago. DP said too many of us thought about the crucifixion and not enough of us celebrated that he rose right back up and took his body with him. Can’t blame him for leaving could you? It began with accepting your own self as savior of your soul. And this was to be in balance in the heart and was in no way to be coveting God’s power, quite the opposite, as nothing that you did was being done through ego juice. ACIM made you aware of the ego’s ploy for attention. We were all equal in the regard that there was no favorites in the eyes of God, on the other hand there were enough guides, helpers and master teachers on the inner planes to make the journey interesting while you pulled yourself up by your boot straps. You could of course, get into a fixation on power if you forgot to include others as contributing to and sharing your power. We would have to look after one another then as relationships mattered. They were the only things we could take with us into the next life. DP reminded LR how guides in the life review would always ask the shy and angry faint lights who had exited their bodies “and how did you treat your dog? Or it might be another question such as “why did you steal your mother’s car, crash it and then laugh?” All sorts of embarrassing questions would be asked which you had no idea somebody was keeping a record of every single interaction. DP intercepted with Jesus’s words of old, that we love each other. He couldn’t give us a clue what love meant though, but he did return in ACIM, or his spirit did and instructed that teaching the meaning of love was not His job. Only experience could teach what love was. From another viewpoint others would reflect back to you the world you had created with your free will or reactionary thoughts. Man’s own ego with it’s limited perspective wanted to survive and be in control of this world, and it was not beyond viciousness to do so. There were only two emotions ACIM said, love or fear. This simplified it for LR as then she could determine whether she came from love or fear and she didn’t have to forever be dissecting feelings of sadness, anger, pity, impatience, all emotions which were not love, were fear originated, thus they could be traced to the thought system behind them, an automatic computer-like process. All of humanity were either screaming for love, fearful that it would not arrive, or we were offering love, and there was no in-between or shades of gray. It became an interesting study to remain in balance when others were coming from a place of fear, which in LR’s world was being observed as about 98% of all interactions. In the presence of love, fear, a product of the ego, could not sustain itself; which would be precisely why the material would be difficult to get through; fear of ego disintegration. I did not mind ego disintegration in the least. I saw nothing that the ego offered to me that I wished for. Yet I had gone only a short distance and would notice ego always distorts even the loftiest thought. It wishes always for self aggrandizement and would not be disappearing without a struggle, if then. We would have to just figure out which voice we were listening to, whether expressing a thought of connectiveness, or a thought of division. Now I knew why DP would remind me that to look into the face of God meant certain death, as if the ego consisted of but a shadow whereas God was a light within which the shadow became all but obliterated, but yet merciful was the light that would not destroy that which it had birthed. There would be a veil between the ego and the light which could obliterate it without that intention. It was always of course a cosmos based on mathematical and scientific principle also. Not just a religious morality viewing point. The Course said I was love. That my ego would love to differ on. All I could do was create a wish to see love, I could not create the substance of it in my life as yet but I could move in that direction, through a wish, and as ACIM said, a little willingness. I was to, DP reminded me, love myself; a difficult task without DP’s frequent sustaining spirit. LR moved with greater ease in that direction for she learned it was the intention of the soul. Not just my single soul, this undistorted love energy was becoming public property very quickly. There would be no taking pride in being on a love path. It might even be difficult but I would have help. When I turned the last page of ACIM, I had also turned the last page on my former depression. I now wanted to live, as I knew I was loved just as I was in all my fluffy nothingness. I was also healed of the lung pain that had been my ticket to die. I noted the physical healing as a by product of my study. I had not cared whether I should die or live, so the physical healing was as nothing to me, just a completely normal occurance signaling I would be staying here awhile yet longer. Only an act of love had created this material. ACIM had told me to “forget this book. Go and seek an experience.” The message that we were all the Sons of God, loved, just as we were, that’s all we needed to know. Calling myself a “son” of God didn’t even bother the feminine part of me, not at all, for I had often enough speculated I had slipped on this polarity to gentle and balance my totality being, back into the genderless spirit from which I had come. I ran out and bought copies for all my estranged family members, remembering how I had been instructed that each and every relationship was of paramount concern and importance in this life. My family must have thought I’d gone even further bonkers than ever before, as I’d not communicated to them in ages, and now a ponderous book arrives on their doorstep. None read it. I found out there’s other pathways to understanding our being as the nature of love, other pathways which would look like experience was the best teacher, which it was, as I possessed only a smattering of the mental comprehension, yet the comprehension had settled into the heart. I would need to experience the teachings, test it out for reliability. I would have to stop feeling defensive about ACIM, after all, nothing real can be threatened. And it was real. I stopped defending it. It would not become just another religion, distorted by the ego, not as long as I breathed and lived and vowing this meant I was not to become defensive when others tread on what had become so valuable to me. Now, I wanted to live. The journey was done. ACIM would not give a clue what this final step entailed. It was not death, for death was an ego fallacy, something we either rushed towards for relief, or held over the heads of others to control them with. Forgiveness was the way, ACIM said. So I set off to understand what forgiveness was supposed to look like, I had an idea, like non judgment, forgiveness was something we were capable of here, but seldom practiced. One would tune into the news on TV and see perhaps only once in a lifetime a victim claiming they had forgiven. With everyone else, your mind would go blank as if trying to remember something astonishingly true, but seldom practiced. You could hear lone voices crying in the night and you wondered where their courage had arisen from. Forgiveness was the closest thing to love here, the closest thing that would lead us to love, or back to love, as it was looking like we had been created out of that incredible love. Such a thing was unbelievable of course; we would have to prove it.
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