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

What's my assignment?

A Course in Miracles talks a lot about our function.

Our function is our purpose, it's why we're here, it's our assignment.

Are we here to get rich?  To raise beautiful children?  To see the world?  To enjoy our lives?  To be nice to other people?

Although there's nothing wrong with any of these activities, they have nothing to do with our true function, our true purpose, our true assignment.  We're here for so much more than all this.

"Forgiveness is my function as the Light of the World".   --Workbook Lesson 63

What does it mean to choose forgiveness as our true function?

It's not just forgiving the guy that stole your parking place.  It's more than forgiving the person who deeply and truly broke your heart.  It's more than forgiving your parents for the overall permeating sense of rejection they created in your life.  It's more than forgiving what's going on right now in the Middle East.  It's so much more than any part of this alone.

Our true function is to forgive ALL of this.  We are here to forgive the WORLD.  All of it!  Yes, every single bit of pain, hurt, difficulty, frustration, lack, murder, sin, guilt, upset and fear.  The whole enchilada is what we're here for.

"Feel what you have created as a substitute for the truth.  Own it, look upon it, and then let it go.  Learn that regardless of what choice you may have made in the past, once you have embraced it, once you have felt it, you remain perfectly innocent and imbued with the power to choose again, to feel, to learn once again to feel the glorious warmth that permeates the Kingdom of Heaven."  --Way of Mastery p. 81      

We are here to accept every single bit of fear we see in the world around us.  Every bit.  We must see it, feel it, forgive it, accept it and release all judgment of it.  And as we do so, we transmute our feelings about what we see into love.  With acceptance comes love.  And with love comes peace.

"There will not be a molecule of beingness within you that will feel any resentment, any longing, any anger, or any remorse for anything.  All of your experience will have become wholly acceptable to you.  For it was by such experience that you were finally driven to want only the Truth." --Way of Mastery p. 81   

That's why we're here folks.  Nothing more and nothing less.  To forgive, accept and embrace with love all that exists.

Allowing, Accepting, Trusting

Some beautiful words on allowing:

Allowance is not a passive acceptance of things as they are, but a recognition that there is something quite beautiful at work.  There is an intelligence, a love, that knows you better than you know yourself and is presenting you, moment to moment, with jewels and gems and blessings and lessons that something is weaving the tapestry of your life, and nothing is happening by accident.  -- "The Way of Mastery", p. 68

A Course in Miracles tells us that we never know what anything is actually for.  This means that many of the events in our lives are planned behind the scenes for us.  Sometimes, when we are in the midst of one of the painful events that come up during the course of our lives, it's really hard to understand that this was gently planned for our greater good.  In fact, often, we simply just can't see anything about the situation that feels that any good can come from it at all.

However, as they say, "time will tell".  As the years pass, we can look back on our most painful events and understand the why of it.  We see what we learned.  We see how we became a stronger, better person because of it.  Or, we see that we had the opportunity to learn, but didn't accept it.

No worries.  When we don't learn our lessons the first time, they come around again.  And again, and again.  They look and smell a little differently, but they are just another version of the same darn lesson giving us yet another go at it.  We keep getting the lesson until we get it.  

Life really is a classroom and it's all there for us.  Trust the process.  Accept what comes up. Turn anything painful and all fearful thinking over to the Holy Spirit. As Jennifer Hadley likes to say, "Let the Holy Spirit do the heavy lifting".  Turning it over is an act of allowing.  It's the miracle in action, that moment when we choose love over fear.

Then examine these events to see how you can learn and grow from them.  Try to keep your acceptance level high, your loving attitude intact and your mood in the positive.  This is how we grow.  This is how we become who we were really meant to be.  This is how we uncover our real truth.  We are spirit.  We are really only love.

The Judger Always Feels Judged

"The Judger Always Feels Judged."

I've had this statement taped to the inside of my medicine cabinet door for the past four years at least.  I'm not sure where I found it, perhaps it's from A Course in Miracles.

Regardless, it is an important reminder each day that what we give out is returned to us.  If I mentally criticize others on a regular basis, I know that I will feel like the world around me is watching me with disapproving eyes.

On the other hand, if I go about my day looking for the best aspects of everyone I meet, seeing them through eyes of love and overlooking shortcomings, I will be supported, valued and cherished by the world around me.

I once attended a seminar with Stuart Mooney, a self acclaimed American Buddha, who says he is enlightened.  I love what he had to say about the people in his world, "I just love everyone I see.  To me they are just so lovable, even the unpleasant ones."  Isn't this is a perfect way to put it?

Of course, not everyone out there is making the best choices.  When I say overlooking shortcomings, it's not that we don't always see another's "unpleasantness", but that we do learn to accept it as what is.  It's our job to respect everyone's right to their own adventures in this world.  If they choose to be difficult or misled, we have to just chalk it up to the fact that they simply don't know better and they're doing whatever it is they think they need to do to make the best of this life.  As Course students, we often say that we all either living love or crying out for love.

A Course in Miracles says that "we don't know what anything is for."  Therefore it's important not to judge what we see around us.  Since we are all here to get our forgiveness lessons so that we can grow and purify ourselves--until we eventually awaken, it is quite necessary that we have forgiveness opportunities.  That means someone has to play the bad guy so that there will be something to forgive. The person that you love to hate just may be a soul who has come here in this lifetime with an agreement to be annoying so that you can have the opportunity to forgive him and grow.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that we allow murders and child molesters to roam freely harming others at will.  When people behave in a manner that is dangerous to others, we need to protect the innocents.  However, even criminals are deserving of our loving forgiveness.

 Healing one's mind of the habit of judging is not something that happens over-night, at least in my experience.  I've been working on it for some years now and although I've made a lot of progress, I still find my mind thinking critical thoughts occasionally.  It really is only a habit though and if you stop and notice it, over time it will lessen.

I think it's very important that we carefully watch television, listen to the radio, read the papers or browse the internet.  We need to making sure that we are not judging people that we don't actually know (or even judging characters in TV shows or movies).  Just because we don't know someone does not give us the license to judge them.  Remember that all minds are linked and on some level, you are attacking these people.  Also, this habitual indulgence of judging people and characters that "aren't real" will make it all the more difficult to stop the habit of judging the people that you actually know or meet up with.

Available at:

Amazon.com

Barnesandnoble.com

Choose Acceptance for Peace

There is a larger plan for us and our lives are carefully orchestrated to lead us to love.  In every decision, choice and pathway, love is always an option.  In fact, our ultimate and true purpose here is to learn to make that choice for love every time.

And, as it says in A Course in Miracles, we don't really know what anything we see in the world around us is for.  Sometimes life seems confusing.  It may not always look like we are being taken care of.  In our human smallness, there is just too much that we cannot know.  However, if we always look for that choice for love, we can know that we are on the pathway to peace and happiness.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?" --A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 135

Sometimes that choice for love is in simply accepting the world around us as we see it.  We drop our defenses, quit battling with life and just breathe and accept.  It is never going to be the world our egos want it to be.  And, in fact, our egos don't have our higher interests are heart anyway.  What the ego wants is not necessarily the best for anyone involved.

So stop desperately wanting to get ahead.  Stop the constant wishing for a thinner body or a lottery win.  The answer is not in a fancier car, lower cholesterol, a fatter pay check or a better love life.  All the worldly things you desperately long for will never bring you the life you actually want.  Putting all your energy into planning, controlling, spinning, lamenting, begging and nudging the details of your life to become the life you wish it was will never work.  And here's the proof of this...has it worked so far?

The life you actually want comes through acceptance, forgiveness and love.   The world around you is the one that has been chosen for you, by you and with you.  It is the world that is very best suited to lead you to peace.  Make that choice for love in every moment you can today.  Just love and accept what you see around you today.  No need to judge it.  It's all good.  Forgive what bugs you and accept the rest.

And when you wake up tomorrow, make that choice for love again.

Available at:

Amazon.com

Barnesandnoble.com

It All Leads to Acceptance

"What if the very life you are living, and each and every experience that is coming to you now was being directly sent to you of your Father because your Father knows what is necessary to unravel within your consciousness to allow you to awaken?  What if the very things you are resisting are the very stepping stones to your homecoming?  What if you achieved a maturity along this pathway in which you were finally willing to let things be just as they are?" --The Way of Mastery p. 7

Is it possible that we could just trust the world we see around us, knowing that we don't know what anything is really for, that there is a larger plan unfurling in our lives, that everything that happens is for our higher good?

 

If we just could come to forgive our perceptions of this world, our interpretations, our labeling, our judgments.   We look at everything we see and we decide that it is good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly.  Why can't we just recognize that what we see simply just "is"?  For it is when we are finally able to accept what "is" as the way of things, that we are able to release the resistance.  And this is where the peace comes in.

Available at:

amazon.com

barnesandnoble.com

How to Reduce The Guilt in Our Lives

"For to forgive means to choose to release another from the perceptions you have been projecting upon them.  It is therefore, an act of forgiving one's self of one's projections".  --The Way of Mastery p. 25

All things are neutral.  All people, all events, all experiences, all words ... all of it is, simply, neutral.

We are the ones that put our own personal spin on everything.  We are the perceivers and we project our own opinions onto all we encounter.

We decide whether what we see in the world around us is "good" or "bad".  We decide whether what we see is "beautiful" or "ugly", "interesting" or "uninteresting", "right" or "wrong".

And yet, everything in our worlds, simply is.

When we see something and decide it is "bad", we are creating a judgment about it.  This judgment will, ultimately, have to be forgiven.  But before we forgive it, it will cause us much pain.  What we give out comes back to us.  When we judge others harshly, we will suffer.  Judging always leads to feelings of guilt.  Sometimes we are acutely aware of the guilt and sometimes we repress it.  But judging always creates guilt, even if it is only in our sub-consciousness.  And guilt, especially sub-conscious guilt, causes us to feel restless, unhappy, empty and deeply dis-satisfied.

"Each time that you judge anything or anyone, you have literally elicited guilt within yourself.  Because there is a place within you, yet still, that knows the perfect purity of your brother and sister, and sees quite clearly that all things within the human realm are either the extension of love or a cry for help and healing."  --Way of Master p. 25

Why not skip all the pain and upset and just learn to accept everything as it is?  If we don't judge it, we won't need to forgive it, and more importantly we won't need to forgive ourselves.  Acceptance of everything in our world is the only way to create inner peace.

Available at:

Amazon.com

Barnesandnoble.com

Judgments, Expectations and Behaviors of Wanting

I really love Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms and I have used many to forgive people and events from my past.  There is an entire chapter on Radical Forgiveness in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", and I recommend them in my forgiveness workshops.  (The forms are available for free at www.colintipping.com under "Free Stuff").

If you are a regular follower of this blog, you know that I often encourage readers to "flip the switch" from fear to love as a part of the forgiveness process.  Flipping the switch occurs the moment we stop judging and condemning and offer any sort of love, understanding or compassion to our trespasser.

In Colin Tipping's form he asks a number of questions that build upon each other culminating in the flipping of the switch.  One of the questions I love is this (substitute your trespasser's name for the X):

"My discontent was my signal that I was withholding love from myself and (X) by judging, holding expectations, wanting (X) to change, and seeing (X) as less than perfect. List the judgments, expectations and behaviors that indicate you were wanting (X) to change."

So often, our hurt and pain occurs when we want either someone in our lives, or the world around us to be a certain way.

When we dis-attach ourselves from expectations, wanting and emotional needs, then we are free to live in peace and joy.

We often create "needs" in our minds.  We might think, "I can't be happy if (X) doesn't love me." Or, "My life is a failure if I don't get a job with an important company."  Or, "I need to live in a beautiful house to be happy."  Or, "I need to be healthy to be happy."  All of these kinds of beliefs are just things we tell ourselves. Think about each of these statements above.  Are any of them really true?  Happiness and inner peace come from  releasing judgments and accepting whatever is.

When we create desired outcomes in our minds and get attached to them, we are only setting ourselves up for failure and misery.  In fact, attachments of any kind only set us up for pain.  Attachments to people, to places, to things are what create most of the pain in our lives.  When we just allow what is to be and accept the world around us as it is, we begin the process of creating inner peace in our minds.

There is a great big, beautiful, joyful world right here in front of us and in our minds.  And it is "what is".  There is plenty here to keep us satisfied if we will only flip the switch from fear to love and allow ourselves to see the truth around us.

Available at:

amazon.com

barnesandnoble.com

Love Me For What I Am

I must be myself.  I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you.  If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier.  If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.  I will not hide my tastes or aversions.  I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self Reliance"

Love me for what I am and we shall be the happier.   Releasing all judgments and simply accepting what is creates peace in our minds.

Drop the habit of judging.  Just tell it to go.  Yes, habits are tough to break and it can take some time to change.  However, your intentions are everything.  Intend to see the world through eyes of acceptance.  Allowing others to be as they are is the key to your own peace.

Available at:

amazon.com

barnesandnoble.com

balboapress.com

Jennifer Hadley's Words on Non-Judgement

I get Jennifer Hadley's daily emails and prayers in my inbox every morning.  She is so clear-headed about seeing the world only from love and I really admire that about her.  This morning she had this to say:

"One of my favorite lessons in A Course in Miracles is #68,  Love Holds No Grievances. I honestly think if you work this lesson for a whole year you’ll be totally transformed.This lesson tells us “It is as sure that those who hold grievances will forget who they are, as it is certain that those who forgive will remember.” 

Forgiveness can seem so difficult, but the key is to realize that forgiveness is non-judgment. If we stay in a dedication to practicing non-judgment then we actually will never have anything to forgive. Forgiveness is releasing attachment to the negative meaning we’ve made of things. It’s releasing the opinion. It’s mind opening and mind-liberating."

Non-judgement.  Can we stay in a place of non-judgement today?   Can we release our opinions and just accept whatever comes up in our lives?  When we do this we are at peace. When we learn to live like this, then forgiveness truly becomes our lifestyle and we become happy.

Available at:

amazon.com

barnesandnoble.com

balboapress.com

When Other People Disappoint

We all do it.  We get attached to the idea that other people in our lives will be a certain way.  Perhaps we expect our spouses or lovers to be strong, beautiful and infallible. Or we might expect our children to be happy, liked and well-adjusted.  Or our friends to be easy-going, loyal and available.  And maybe we want our parents to be fair, loving and supportive.   

The expectations may differ from person to person or situation to situation, but one thing never changes...we get attached to wanting our family, friends and associates to be a certain way. 

Unfortunately, the world often does not meet up with our decisions about what it should be.  We get attached to these decisions and since we are attached to them, we feel disappointed and hurt when the world does not meet them.  

Releasing attachments to our decisions about what life should be like is a form of forgiveness.  Accepting others as they are, knowing that whomever they are and whatever they are doing is the right thing for them at this moment, is the most loving thing we can do. 

 

We are each here with our own unique set of lessons.  None of us know the entire truth about anyone else's overall soul intentions and pathway.  Forgive and accept the people in your life when they fail to be what you want for them.  Allowing the world is the key to your own peace.  

Available at:

barnesandnoble.com

amazon.com

balboapress.com