Wednesday, April 1, 2015

I See You

I stumbled across this section in my reading of The Way of Mastery this morning:
"All minds are joined, and I see not a stranger before me, but one who walks as I walk, who feels as I feel, who longs as I long, who is humbled as I am humbled, who prays for peace as I have prayed.  
Therefore I will give them what they seek.  And in that giving, I receive it."  Way of Mastery p. 122

This is how forgiveness begins.  It occurs in the moment when we see others as being the same as ourselves.

All minds are joined and therefore, in many ways, they are, actually, us.

I found myself contemplating the line from the quote above, "therefore I will give them what they seek".  Just what do they seek?  Well, just as I do, everyone ultimately seeks love.  Everyone longs to be loved, to feel love and to give love in return.  It's our basic nature.  Love is what we are and we all seek to return to it.

What makes us feel loved?  Being loved is being recognized.  We feel loved when others acknowledge our existence, our worth, our truth.  When others accept and acknowledge us, we feel valued.  We all simply want to be seen.

In the movie Avatar, I love the way they say hello to each other. They stop and face each other and look directly into one another's eyes, "I see you."



I see you, is what it's all about.  Seeing and accepting the existence of another human being is the act of extending love.  Forgiveness happens in this moment. The miracle happens in this moment.  When we shift our thinking from fear to love, from confusion and opposition to acknowledgement, forgiveness happens.

We are simply knowing the truth, that ultimately we are all the same, despite the crazy things we all do here, despite the crazy dreams we follow in this insane 3D world we call earth.  At our core, in our joined minds, we are all, each and every one of us, simply love.
"Forgiveness is an act through which you learn what Love is, that carries you into a transcendence of the world.  Sharing only loving thoughts, supportive thoughts -- as you look gently upon the Christ in another is a way that takes you into the transcendence of the world.  Looking upon all things of this world and seeing their perfect harmlessness, their lack of ability to constrain you or harm you or imprison you, is a way that takes you beyond the world." --Way of Mastery p. 127-8

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

The Past is Over

These days, Robert Holden is my favorite author.  In December I read "Loveability". I was so impressed with it that I immediately bought a stack of copies and gave it to everyone I know for Christmas gifts.  My friends and family are just as impressed as I was.  

The day I turned the last page, I closed the book, set it aside for a month, opened it back up and started reading and studying it all over again.  I am now reading "Shift Happens!:  How to Live an Inspired Life" and I love it, too.  Robert Holden has been A Course in Miracles student and teacher for many years, but his explanations and point of view are very easy to understand and he relates so well to anyone's everyday experiences.  

Here's a little bit from a short section in Shift Happens about forgiving the past:

Forgiveness releases you from the past.  When you meditate on forgiveness, you learn that, in fact, there is no past in the MIND of God.  In other words, your past is never held against you unless you make it so.  Guilt is a choice and so is forgiveness.  When you choose guilt, you bury your gifts, you live in fear, and everyone misses what you could offer.  When you choose forgiveness, everyone can win.  
How do you know if you are holding on to your past?  You are unhappy!  When you are struggling, ask yourself, What am I holding on to from the past?  What old thought, old block, or old fear are you still clinging to?   
Holden encourages us to ask ourselves these important questions:

I am afraid of _______because in the past I _____________.
I have given up on ___________because in the past I ____________.
I am depressed now because in the past I ______________.

What are some of the areas in your life where you feel unhappy or unproductive, stymied, thwarted, victimized or stuck in lack?   Spend some time pondering those areas with these questions in mind.  Watch what comes up.  Then let it go.  It's the past.  It has nothing to do with the you of today.  It's holding you back in unhappiness.  It's nothing you need.  Guilt is nothing you need.  Rejection is nothing you need.  Lack is nothing you need.  Let it go.   Know it, feel it, love it and gently let it go.

One way to let these things go is to imagine that the Holy Spirit (your soul, your higher self) has given you a beautiful white light altar and it is right in front of you. This gorgeous marble light altar transforms everything upon it into pure love.  It's the love altar.

When these memories and emotions from the past come up, spend a few moments with them, intensify them and experiencing them all over again.  Then gently and lovingly ask them to place themselves on the altar.  Let them be released, transformed and swept away out of your life forever.  Let go.  Forgiving is the act of letting love replace fear.  It is that point when the miracle appears.

Holden suggests that we can then affirm "The past is over" and "Now is new".  He says, "The moment you let go of your past, you stop projecting it on to the present.

His final paragraph in the section is this:

To let go of your past, do these three things.  First, be willing to forgive yourself for every mistake you think you ever made.  Affirm "The past is over," and let forgiveness wipe away all tears.  Second, if you want to be free of your past mistakes, free everyone from theirs.  In other words, forgive everyone.  Third, pray, "Dear God, I'm back!"  Now let yourself be innocent again, free again, and ready again to say "Yes" to new healing, new happiness and a new futures.
 
 
 

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

We all want the same thing...

Recognize all whom you see as brothers, because only equals are at peace. --A Course in Miracles

Power struggles happen because we think we are both separate and different from each other.  We forget that we are both made of the same love and that we both share the same basic interest, which is to love and to be loved.  --Robert Holden



We are both made of the same love.

Every one of comes from the same source.

We are all made in the same image.

Love is what we are.

And we all want the same thing here on earth.  We want to know that love.  We want to experience the truth of ourselves.  It's sometimes hard to remember that truth here.  There are so many blocks to it.  And, of course, we've created them all ourselves.

But all we really want is know love, be love, receive love and give love.  Every action we take, every thought we think, it all boils down to one basic desire, and that is to know love again.

When you see someone behaving badly, just know that he is blocked from understanding and seeing his truth.  His motivation comes from the desire to be loved.  He is simply confused about how to actually achieve that.  He can't see it.

Give him the love he needs in the form of your forgiveness.


   

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Judging Other People's "Conditions"

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr spoke at my church this morning.  He was excellent, deep and a fascinating speaker.  Much of what he said resonated with me.  I loved this on judging, especially.  He said that when we judge someone we are evaluating them for conditions that they never agreed to. 

What that means is that, we have created "opinions" and "beliefs" in our mind which are the conditions.  Our conditions are not necessarily someone elses conditions.   And yet, we look at others and judge them by our conditions.

We all have free will.  We are free to decide which experiences we want to have and which ones we don't want.

If we look at our lives here like a trip to Disneyland we can see that not everyone wants to ride on Space Mountain.  It's too fast for some people.  Some people just want to do the River Boat Cruise. They like slow.  They want to take their time and enjoy the sunshine.  It's dark in Space Mountain and the lights flash by in a jarring way.  On the River Boat Cruise you can listen to the sounds of birds in the trees.  You can watch the patterns the boat makes in the water as it passes through.

Who's right?  Is it the guy that likes fast, dark and scary Space Mountain or is it the one who prefers sunny, slow and peaceful River boating?

Of course, there's no right and wrong here.  We all get to choose our own adventure.  That's why we're here.  We choose an adventure and we learn some things along the way.  Our pathway and our learning is our pathway alone and no one elses.  We're all heading toward the same ultimate place, but how we get there is determined by each of us individually with our own free will.

Let's not judge anyone else's choices.  If they want to be the loud one, or the hairy one or the stubborn one, or the beautiful one or the deep thinking one, just let them be.  They never agreed to be a part of the group that thinks that beauty is important.  They never agreed to be a part of the group that loves to fight, or the group that likes living in the desert, or the group that wants to save the rain forest, or the group that thinks tattoos are cool.  Those aren't the conditions they adhere to.

They are learning just as we are.  Let's not judge what they choose to learn or how, where and when they do it.

What can we possibly know about why someone else chooses what they choose?  

It is when we begin to see that underneath, in mind, we're all the same anyway.  Strip away the loud, the hairy, the beauty and all that's left is mind.  Or we're all just alive, as Don Miguel Ruiz Jr liked to call it.  In essence we are only that life, that energy, that thought, that creator and nothing more.

We are not our bodies, our stuff, our professions, our skin color or any of our preferences.  We are all merely spirit, love, Divine.  Just the Divine having a little adventure here on earth.