Fixing everything

I’ve been journaling a lot lately on my computer where I ask Jesus a question, and then listen for the answer.  I don’t claim that what I’m hearing as an answer is coming through 100% from the right mind (of which Jesus is only a symbol), but I do know that it’s been VERY helpful for me.   Anyway, here’s the latest Q&A session:

Erik: I seemingly have a strong urge to fix everything.  I want to fix up NLC (Note: NLC stands for New Life Clinics, the hypnotherapy organization I’ve been working for as a director for several years) so that we are a “perfect” organization, with perfect therapists, perfect CDs, and perfect methods which will be enormously helpful to the Sonship.  What’s the deal with this desire?  And why can’t I seem to ever actually do anything that I think will make it more perfect… like create new and improved CDs for example?

Jesus: It’s because of a tug-of-war going on in your mind between the two teachers.  Creativity and helpfulness flows naturally from the right mind, but the ego is very invested in taking those resources and twisting them for its own purposes, i.e. to make itself “better” or to reinforce guilt.  The guilt that you feel from this interference from the ego (which is happening very quickly in your mind, and then being denied in an instant) is what is preventing the free flow of creative helpfulness.  If you truly want to heal the Sonship, you must only heal your own believe that separation is real.  The desire for a perfect organization or perfect CDs is the ego’s defense against the perfection in your right mind.  It wants to take the idea of perfection and make it about form. 

So here’s what I suggest.  Every time you find yourself craving a more perfect anything in form, ask me for help in remembering the perfection that already exists in content.  Rest there, and forget about the form; it was made by the ego to try substituting for God’s perfection, yet it made everything imperfect so that you’d constantly be running on the hampster wheel trying to perfect it.  It’s a great strategy for staying on a meaningless hampster wheel.  But believe me… there’s nothing to do in form that will make any difference for the Sonship.  The only way you can truly be of service is to accept the Atonement for yourself. 

I know you are still addicted to the ego, and you’ll have to forgive yourself for that.  Practice remembering that you have an addiction to the ego; being honest with yourself about that will help you heal it much more quickly.  And relax… it’s not a real problem, just an imaginary one!  In truth, you’re already healed and safe in heaven with God and all your brothers in Christ.  Peace is with you now.

See the problem as it is…

If I’m feeling conflicted about what to do, then it must be because I chose the wrong teacher.  That is all I have to remind myself of… that I chose the wrong teacher and that is why I feel conflicted.  If I feel overwhelmed because of lots of tedious busywork that seems to need my attention (taxes, paperwork, etc..), all I have to remember is that my overwhelm must be because I chose the wrong teacher.  And that is all I need to remember.  As the Course teaches, all we have to do is see the problem as it is, not how you have set it up.  We don’t have to try choosing the Holy Spirit; all we have to do is realize that the pain we’re feeling is because we chose the ego.  To realize this means that in that instant we chose the Holy Spirit.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t have remembered why I was upset!  The ego would never let you realize that your pain is because you chose it.  Therefore, if you remember the truth, it’s because in that instant, your decision-making mind chose the Holy Spirit. 

Realize that you as a person cannot choose the Holy Spirit.  If you ever think that you as a person are choosing the Holy Spirit, then you’re deluding yourself. So long as you think of yourself as a person, all you can do is try reminding yourself as often as possible whenever you’re unhappy, that your unhappiness is solely because you chose the wrong teacher.  Seeing this fact is what will cause you, as a decision-making mind, to stop choosing the ego.

Simply say to yourself, “I’m in pain right now because I chose the wrong teacher.”  Then be silent and let that sink in.  There’s nothing else to do but really get the truth of that.  Again, once you really get that deep down, you’ll automatically stop choosing the ego, at least for a moment or two, and experience a moment of peace.  And each time you remember that you’re in pain because you chose the wrong teacher, you’ll become less and less tolerant of making that choice again.  This is what will lead you to finally give it up once and for all.  

Take off the virtual reality headset

One of the metaphors I sometimes find helpful for understanding the Course’s metaphysics is by imagining one of those virtual-reality video games.  You know those 3-D virtual reality games they have now where you can put on a headset and experience the video game as if you were really inside of it?  Even if you’ve never experienced one of those games, I’m sure you can imagine what it would be like.

Well, that’s what this world is like.  It’s like nothing more than a virtual reality video game, in which there are a fixed number of choices, and every game ends in the death of our video-game character.  It’s a game we never win.  And it’s a game in which we are constantly afraid, to some degree or another.

In that original, insane instant when, as a Mind (before time and space seemed to exist) I chose the ego over the Holy Spirit, it’s almost as if I got so scared of being punished by God that I quickly put on a virtual reality headset to try and hide from God.  I began playing an imaginary video game inside the headset, pretending I was something called a human being, hoping that God would be fooled.  I hoped that He would either not find me in the headset, or if He did find me, that He’d be fooled by my new “appearance” as a pathetic human being and take pity on me.  

This “escape technique” would be ridiculous enough if my fear of God was based on truth, but the fact that it’s based on an erroneous fear makes it quite tragic.  There’s never been any real threat, and I’ve been hiding for what has seemed like eons for absolutely no good reason at all.

All I have to do now is realize how erroneous my fear of God has been, and be willing to let the Holy Spirit remove the virtual-reality headset for me.  The video game inside the headset is meaningless and has never brought anything of value to me.  Within the game, I have absolutely no power whatsoever.  Withn the game it’s as if I’m nothing but a robot with limited choices, playing a meaningless game against no one but myself.  

It’s time to stop playing against myself.  It’s time to allow the headset to be removed.  It’s never really satisfied me anyway.  Only God’s Love can do that, and He’s waiting to embrace me with it fully the moment I choose to listen to the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit knows I’m still afraid of that Light, and so I can trust Him to remove the headset gradually, allowing my eyes to adjust to the Light gradually and without any pain whatsoever…

Daily thoughts

I haven’t posted anything on this blog in quite a few months, but today I felt inspired to start again.  I realized that one of the reasons I stopped was because it felt like too much work to write a whole article.  Also, I’m somewhat of a perfectionist so even when I do write down some thoughts, I find it hard to publish them unless I think they are really, really good.  But fortunately, I’m beginning to take myself a little less seriously as I used to (I still take myself VERY seriously though, mind you), so I thought I’d start writing again and not worry so much about whether it’s “really, really good”… 

And as far as it feeling like too much work, it occurred to me that I really don’t have to write that much.  It’s not like I work for the New York Times and I have to pump out a 400 word article everyday or something.  I could just write down one helpful insight that had occurred to me, and that would be enough.  If nothing else, it would be another opportunity to watch how invested my ego gets in the personal identity thing, “MY” blog, etc..  

So today, I thought I’d just start small by sharing some things I typed up a few days ago after a very deep meditation.  I was at my good friend Carin’s house in Austin, and was trying to get some work done on my laptop.  But it was feeling too much like walking through mud, so I just decided to give myself a break and just commune with God a while.  So I sat on her couch and got into a very deep meditation in which I began to have a very profound experience of my decision-making mind at work.  It felt like I could actually watch the inner process of how I begin to disappear into the Light… and then quickly choose the ego by projecting some worrisome thought outside myself as a distraction.   At some point during the experience I got on my computer and typed out some of the thoughts I was having, and here’s what came out:

Instructions to Self:

God.  That is the Goal.  Nothing else will satisfy you. 

Anytime you believe you are in a body, you are by definition believing that you are a sinner, that God is a Sinner, and that He wants to kill you.

 I MUST return to My Source.  No more projection.  No more thinking about frivolous things.  It’s time NOW to go to the Source and disappear into it, once and for all.  Nothing else is worth wasting time on anymore.

 And yet I can watch how my fear causes me to run away from that Empty Silence.  It is the Peace there that attracts me, but then as I feel myself disappearing into That Silence, I quickly conjure up meaningless images in my mind and make them mean something.    Somewhere in those images is always an image that I call my self.  It seems to be the thinker suddenly.  It seems to be “me”.  It seems to be the one who’s “messing up this enlightenment thing”.  And of course, that is its purpose that I gave it.  I designed that ‘self’ for the sole purpose of deceiving my Mind so I’d forget my reality as Christ.   Here is the process by which that seems to occur:

 As I’m disappearing back into the Light of Perfection, I suddenly get scared of disappearing, and then poof… a worldly “problem” shows up in my awareness that demands immediate attention.  It always is a problem having to do with the little self that lives in the world that I identify with.  In an instant, I’ve forgotten all about my desire to remember God, and temporarily can’t think about anything else but that worldly problem and my perceived need to find a solution to it.  Sometimes, a series of problems pop up into awareness, just to make sure my Mind stays preoccupied.  Anything to keep me from disappearing into God…

——

Never underestimate your fear of disappearing into God.  It is the cause of everything you perceive, and of all your suffering.  But the good news is that the moment you become honest with yourself, and admit to Jesus or the Holy Spirit that you afraid of disappearing into God, the fear lessens, and peace becomes possible once again.  They will shine unconditional love into your mind which reminds you that your fear was unfounded…

Turn up the brightness!

I was just sitting here reading Workbook Lesson 91, “Miracles are seen in light” when this old NLP (neuro linguistic programming) technique came to mind that I’d like to share with you.  I found it to be very helpful in allowing me to access a miracle-minded attitude.

You know how on an old TV set they have those knobs on the front that can turn the brightness up and down?  Well, go ahead for a moment and just stop, close your eyes for a moment, and think of a situation or person in your life who’s bothering you.  Do this now, and then open your eyes again ONLY when you have a strong thought of that person or situation in your mind.  I’ll wait.

Okay, now for the next part, just imagine that what you’re seeing, hearing, or feeling is all coming from a TV – the TV screen of your mind.  You don’t have to see it clearly though.  Just pretend or imagine that what you’re seeing, hearing, or feeling is on a TV.

Now physically reach out and imagine that you’re turning up the brightness knob so far up that everything becomes pure light.  This is the light of love, and it is the only true reality there is.  Do this now and bath in that pure light for a moment or two, and then turn the knob back down so you can see what’s on the TV again.

Stop and do this now and then come back when you’ve had that experience.

So did you notice that when you turn it up all the way, it’s like you are remembering God?  It is the essence of true forgiveness – you are overlooking your false perceptions and seeing only the Christ.

Then, when you turn the brightness knob back down you can more easily remember that what you’re seeing is just a bunch of fluttering images on a TV screen!  They don’t mean anything, and in truth, they aren’t really even happening at all!

Now, if you really want to shift your feelings about a troublesome situation in your life, it’s important that you turn the brightness knob up and down repeatedly until a real shift takes place.  In other words, turn it up (see God), then turn it back down (see the false TV projection – i.e. the situation or person who’s bothering you).  Then turn it back up again, then back down, etc., etc..

Do this over and over again and you’ll start to notice that what’s on the TV will have less and less power to affect you emotionally.  You’ll remember that it’s just a projection coming from your mind, and that in truth, it doesn’t even exist!

I just did this exercise with my projections about my girlfriend, Melissa.  Lately, we’ve been going through sort of a rough period together, and it’s been on my mind a lot.  So here’s what I did:

1.  I brought to mind the situation with her and all the feelings of doubt, confusion, and guilt that I’ve been experiencing.  I pictured her in my mind, and also ran through some of the recent memories we’ve had where things weren’t going well.  These are what I would call “unresolved memories” – bad memories that keep resurfacing because of the mileage my ego gets out of them to keep me stuck in its game.

2.  Once I felt in my body a really strong association to this whole situation with her, I then put a big TV frame around it all and reached out (physically, to make it more real) and turned up the brightness knob until it all disappeared into the light…

Ahhh, such beauty.  There is only God, only the Light of Christ shining back at me, showing me my true reality…

3.  Then I turned it back down and saw again the whole “mini-series drama” going on with my girlfriend in what I perceive to be my life.  But this time, it didn’t seem as serious.  It was more like a silly soap-opera, but I still felt most of the negative emotions surrounding it.

4.  So I turned up the brightness again.  Pure light.  Pure God.  That’s all that there really is in reality… perfect love.

5.  Then back down.  What a strange pseudo-reality I’ve created here!  There’s this character named Erik and this other character named Melissa, and they are like these two egos having this strange conflict with eachother.  What a weird fiction!

6.  Then I turned it back up.  Nothing but pure white light.

So I did this back and forth, several times just now.  I’d spend a few moments in the light of truth; then a few moments in the darkness of illusion.  And each time I’d return to the darkness of illusion, it would seem less and less scary/real to me.

Right now, I feel sort of like laughing about the whole situation with my girlfriend actually!  It’s really not that serious at all, and in fact, has never even existed…

I think this exercise might seem a bit more difficult if you were using it to let go of negative emotions on a past trauma (like a rape experience or something that, in the ego’s world, is more serious), but not necessarily.  In truth, miracles are all the same, for there is no hierarchy of illusions.  An illusion is an illusion is an illusion.

If you feel so inspired, I invite you to make a short list of several people or situations that you haven’t yet forgiven, and then practice this exercise with them.  You can even turn up the brightness on any “present moment” in the illusion as if its a TV show.

It really IS possible to be at peace with everyone and everything. It’s always only a choice away…

How can dream people be guilty?

This morning, as I’m sitting here at my laptop drinking some coffee, I am suddenly struck by another metaphor I find very helpful in terms of how to think about the Course’s brand of radical forgiveness.

The image that came to me was that of a mural painting. Imaging a huge mural that’s been painted on the side of a building, and its theme is “People in life”. It’s a painting of all sorts of different people, doing what various types of people do in life, being the various ways that people can be. Some are painted to look like happy people, some like angry people, some look like “good” people, some like “bad” people, etc..

Now imagine that one day while walking by, the artist of this mural stops to look at his painting and admire it for a few minutes before moving along. Perhaps he painted this mural not too long ago, and he enjoys coming to look at his work of art from time to time. His eyes first rest on all the “good” people he painted – the people who were painted with smiling and happy faces – and it makes him happy.

Then his eyes move to some of the people whom he painted to look like “bad” or even “evil” people – those who have sinister looks on their faces who perhaps are portrayed as committing crimes and being cruel to others. Suddenly, the artist starts getting very angry at these people in his painting. Standing there on the sidewalk before his mural, he starts yelling at these painted people, shouting obscenities, and telling them to “Go to hell, you bastards!” He then gets so worked up that he starts picking up rocks and throwing them at the “bad people” in the mural, screaming at the top of his lungs that they are not worthy to be in his mural!

Sounds like the artist isn’t exactly playing with a full deck of cards, right? Lol…

Yet, we are all like that insane artist. If you’ve studied the Course for any length of time, I’m sure you can see how this is a metaphor for what we are all continuously doing here in this “mural painting” called the physical world. The moment we chose to betray our Christ Self by taking the ego’s thought of separation seriously, we felt so ashamed by our choice, fearful that God would exact revenge on us, that we suppressed this shame and “painted” a whole fantasy world we could hide from God in. Then we went even further into denial by suppressing the fact that we were the “artist”, so we could blame God and all the fake “people” that we had painted for all the horrible ways we now feel.

So as I go about my day today and everyday, my overall lesson is always to remember that I’m living in a fantasy world of my own invention. I’m full of fear for no other reason than that I’M LITERALLY HALLUCINATING EVERYTHING I SEE. This is the meaning of Lesson 6: “I’m upset because I see something that is not there” (W-pI.6). Unless I’m willing to admit that I am the “insane artist” of this fantasy world I see and ask my Therapist to help me reinterpret it, I will see no other choice than to continually make it real and try to make it “better”.

Did you ever see any episodes of Star Trek where they go on the holodeck? If not, the holodeck was this area of their starship where they could run “simulation programs” of real life situations, where all the “people” were just holograms but would SEEM completely real. For example, you could run a simulation program of a “restaurant on some foreign planet” in order to learn another race’s customs and learn how to interact with them properly.  Very cool science fiction stuff…

Well, part of the Holy Spirit’s curriculum for me is to learn that the people I see in my hologram are not real people. They are like fake people in a holodeck. They are images I made up, and they cannot have any effect on me, nor can I have any effect on them, despite appearances to the contrary. Hologram images can seem to fight against other hologram images, but it’s all just a meaningless illusion that is completely fabricated in our split mind.

I learn this by asking my Therapist to remind me of the Love that is waiting for me outside this insane hallucination of a holodeck. I learn this by letting Him show me how miserable this hallucination is making me and how pointless it really is. I learn this by practicing true forgiveness, until my mind learns that I’m not really guilty and that it was just a bad dream…

God is waiting for us to wake up.  Our Therapist will not fail.  When We wake up from our hypnotic sleep, We will realize that we never left Heaven, but had merely had a bad dream. We will then celebrate in God in utter relief and happiness… laughing and playing in the ecstasy of Heaven’s Playground as the Innocent Child of God We Are…

Why wait?  Heaven is available Now…

The world is the ego’s playground

I think that one of the most important teachings from A Course in Miracles is that this world was not the creation of a loving God, but just an insane dream made up by an unloving ego. “The world was made as an attack on God” (W-pII.3.2:1) the Course teaches, and it is nothing but a “dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die” (W-pII.13.5:1).

The more I contemplate these things, the less I feel that heavy, burdensome obligation to “be productive”, “be responsible”, or “make something of my life”… all of which have been false ideals I’ve tried to live up to for far too long.

I’m no longer going to let myself get sucked into the ego’s playground. I’m no longer going to play those games. There’s a great book called “How to Win by Quitting” by a spiritual teacher named Jerry Stocking. How freeing that idea was for me.

There’s another great book I read recently called, “Busting Loose from the Money Game”, by Bob Scheinfeld which teaches a similar idea.

The game of physical life cannot be won. The game of trying to make money cannot be won. The game of trying to be responsible and make a good life for yourself cannot be won. It can be played for a long time, but have you ever noticed how there never seems to be a clear winner? And what would winning look like?

As far as I’m concerned, the game is won by quitting, which means realizing that the world is the ego’s playground, and that the only “game” worth playing is that of learning the Holy Spirit’s thought system. To others, it may still looks like I’m playing the worldly game, but that’s only because of Erik’s external behavior still being normal. On the level of the mind, however, I am playing an entirely different game called “waking up”. The only usefulness of this world in the waking up game is in being able to see that which is in my mind appearing as external symbols that I can practice true forgiveness with.

Earlier today I was sitting on my couch meditating, and since I haven’t really done much of anything that my ego would deem valuable today, I started feeling guilty. One of the thoughts I had, for example, was, “Hmmm… maybe I should start working on recording my hypnotherapy CD’s” but I really didn’t feel like it. I just kept sitting on the couch, and as soon as I noticed the guilt, I started thinking, “Okay, what’s a good spiritual idea I can use to remind myself of the truth.”

This is a trap also. Sometimes I’ll get caught in trying to overcome my guilt or heal it myself by thinking of a spiritual idea. It’s like the idea in my last post that there is a spiritual solution to every problem. That’s true, but I’ve noticed that when I start frantically searching my memory for such an idea, it often just increases my anxiety. It’s only when I “quit” and simply ask the Holy Spirit or Jesus to help: “Please help me learn the truth. What is this? How do You look at this?” that I start feeling the peace wash through me.

So as I was sitting on my couch feeling guilty for not being motivated to do anything, this was the process I was going through. Then I was reminded by the Holy Spirit of one my favorite thoughts which comes from a section in the text entitled I Need Do Nothing (T-18.VII).

Now, I realize that Jesus is never talking about behavior in the Course, and it’s really meant to be applied at the level of the mind, YET… if its helpful, this idea can be applied to the body. In truth, it really wouldn’t matter if I just sat on my couch for the rest of my life. Why? Because this life isn’t important. It’s not my real life. It’s a parody of my real life in heaven which is eternal, unchanging, unthreatened, and infinitely blissful.

I just re-read some of that section in the Text (“I Need Do Nothing”) and read these lines in the second paragraph:

“There is one thing that you have never done; you have not utterly forgotten the body. It has perhaps faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet completely disappeared. You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant, yet it is in this instant that the miracle of Atonement happens. Afterwards, you will see the body again, but never quite the same. And every instant that you spend without awareness of it gives you a different view of it when you return.” (T-18.VII.2:1-5)

Mmmm… such freedom. In the moment that I completely forget about my body (I like to visualize it as a hologram, and then imagine it flickering out of sight along with everything else…) I have accepted a miracle of Atonement, and perfect peace returns, if only for a second.

But this second is enough. It shifts my entire awareness. It heals guilt from my mind that I can’t even see that would otherwise have played out in many painful ways. This one holy instant may have collapsed years of suffering for me – allowing me to skip over lots of ego scripts that may have included painful accidents, diseases, and problems that I otherwise would have had to learn from. In the holy instant, I see that there’s nothing I need to do to save the world… I simply see that there IS no world. Salvation already is.

THIS… is the only game worth playing.

There’s a spiritual solution to every problem

This (or something close to this) was the title of a Wayne Dyer book he wrote several years ago. At the time I saw this book in the bookstore, I thought it was a nice idea, but I was much more into using “mental” solutions to every problem. I considered myself to be spiritual, but I was far more attracted to things like hypnosis, NLP (neuro linguistic programming – a “cousin” to hypnosis), emotional freedom techniques, and other self-development tools.

I finally see, after 4 years of studying the Course, how true that title is. For every wrong-minded belief I hold in my mind that is causing me to see problems “out there”, there is a right-minded idea to correct it.

For example, as my life seems to be moving in the direction of being a spiritual teacher in the formal sense, there is one ego pitfall that I seem to continually fall into: trying to figure out what should I say at my seminars. You see, the problem that I perceive when I’m hypnotized by the ego is that it seems like there are all these people out there who are suffering but who all are suffering from their own separate illusions. Some of these people are more open to radical ideas such as what the Course teaches, and others are less open to ideas like that.  Some already believe they are only spirit and that the body is an illusion, while others very strongly believe that they are an innocent victim of the world at large (and they are not open-minded about this).  Therefore, in a mixed crowd, what can I possibly say that will be helpful to everyone??

When I conduct a hypnotherapy seminar to help people stop smoking, for example, a part of me wants to tell them that they shouldn’t concern themselves with their physical health, but only with their spiritual health. I want to tell them that they are not bodies, that this world is an illusion, and that the only way out of their suffering is to start practicing true forgiveness.  I want to tell them that it ultimately doesn’t matter whether or not they stop smoking, keep smoking, lose weight, gain 100 pounds, start smoking crack, etc… regardless of their behavior, they are still perfectly innocent in the eyes of God.

But the problem I see with saying all this is that these kinds of “spiritual” ideas are not necessarily what these people came for, especially if its just at one of my regular hypnotherapy seminars for smoking cessation and weight loss.  And I mean that in two ways. Not only did they not come to my seminar in order to learn spiritual truths (rather, they came to get help with their smoking and eating addictions), but they didn’t come to this world for that either!  We all came to this world because we wanted to perceive ourselves as innocent victims. We are here because we want to remain asleep and hypnotized by the idea of separation and individuality.

Now of course the part of me I call my “spiritual ego” could certainly argue with that logic, and it could turn into a lot of “Yes, buts” between my “spiritual ego” and my “practical ego”:  “Yes, but more people are now wanting to wake up.”  “Yes, but there are no people – it’s just my dream.”  “Yes, but in my dream, I still have to decide what to say at my seminars and I want to express my highest truth!”  “Yes, but if you just connect with the Holy Spirit and let Him speak through you, you’ll say whatever is most helpful for everyone.”  “Yes, but what if I still am afraid of just trusting the Holy Spirit to speak through me – I need to know what I’m going to say in advance… I need a script!”  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…

So what’s the spiritual solution to this problem of what to say?

Well, when I simply quit trying to find the answer myself and ask the Holy Spirit, the Answer I get tells me this: there IS no problem. It’s just a movie. Stop worrying about such trivial things. There are no people to “enlighten”! They are merely your hallucinations which may LOOK like real people, but which are just meaningless images. It’s completely senseless to try teaching enlightenment to images you’re seeing in a dream…

It makes me think of the following analogy.   Imagine a clinically psychotic person at a mental ward who believes he is a “messiah” with many “followers”. Imagine that you work at the mental ward as a psychologist, and you regularly see this man having conversations with people who aren’t really there, preaching spiritual platitudes, and trying to “enlighten” these imaginary people he seems to see so they will become enlightened like him!! If you saw this kind of behavior as a psychologist, what would you think or do??  You could try to convince him that their is no one there and that he’s only hallucinating, but that would just piss him off. He would say, “No, YOU’RE hallucinating! Can’t you see these people need my help!?? I am their messiah, and I must enlighten them!” And you’d walk away shaking your head…

Well, I’m starting to see now that I’ve been like that psychotic man. I believe I am some kind of gifted spiritual teacher, and that I have “followers” who I must enlighten with my words. Otherwise, why would I be writing this article… ;-)

The funny thing is that when I truly realize how insane I am and ask Jesus or the Holy Spirit for help, I suddenly feel bathed in the peace of God. I no longer see any point in trying to heal anyone “out there”… but only to let my mind be healed by Love. That’s the only thing that will save the Sonship, for the Sonship is one, and I’m It.

LOL… God help me! I’m like a mad-hatter…

The movie is empty and meaningless

Perfect stillness. That is the experience I’m having as I realize that this movie I’m watching is completely empty and meaningless. My whole life I thought I was this character named Erik, and I thought that the other characters in the movie were significant. What they thought of Erik was important, and what “I” as Erik did was important. As Erik got more “spiritual”, he thought it was his job to help the other characters in the movie.

Now, as the silent observer of this movie, I realize how ridiculous all of that was and how deeply I was hypnotized by the movie. There’s no one in the movie to save or help. They don’t exist… literally. There is just this Infinite Awareness observing a movie about a guy named Erik, and I have no control over what Erik does or thinks. Nor do I need to.

I realize this is a movie that I wrote the script for. Somewhere in my unconscious mind, I know what is going to happen in the movie because I wrote it.  “The script is written.”  I’m just watching an old re-run, like an old nostalgic movie I’ve been addicted to for a seemingly loooooong instant.   Finally, however, I’m seeing that there’s nothing to get from this movie, nothing to obtain, and nothing to learn except the single lesson of the Holy Spirit which can be expressed in many ways: the movie isn’t real.  There is no world.  It’s just a hallucination. A bunch of meaningless images.  I’m not really here.  No one is.  God’s Love is waiting patiently for me.

I see now that the entire goal of A Course in Miracles and of practicing forgiveness is to get to this point where the movie is seen as a bunch of meaningless images. Oh my God… such peace. The experience is one of being truly One with the Allness. No fear. Simply the wholeness of Infinite Mind. God, what a ridiculous movie I was hypnotized by.

I know that it’s very likely within the next few minutes, few hours, or definitely within the next few days… I’ll forget this Vision and get sucked back into the plot. Doesn’t bother me. My mind is in the habit now of letting the Holy Spirit interpret things for me most of the time, and very soon I feel, I won’t see any value in the drama of this movie.

It reminds me of people who are addicted to watching soap operas or catching every episode of their favorite show. They are addicted to the drama, in the same way that I am still addicted to the drama of “Erik’s life”.

But more and more it’s losing it’s ability to suck me in. I see now that everytime I get sucked into the movie and get concerned about what might happen to “me”, I’m sacrificing the Call of God. I’m sacrificing Bliss.

Even now, I can feel my ego starting to get vicious. “Okay now, let’s finish this article and do something fun like check my email,” it says in my mind, posing as my own thoughts. It still attracts me, but not as much as it used to. All the guilt in my unconscious mind is being healed by the Holy Spirit, and my fear of God is diminishing. Great peace is returning, and I’m falling into such sweet surrender….

Thank you.

Forgiving my brother’s path

The last couple days I’ve been hanging out with a good friend of mine who I would say has attained a high degree of self-realization.  I wouldn’t say he is completely enlightened, but he definitely lives in a timeless realm a good deal of the time.  Ha…

At his place, we often sit out on his back deck conversing about metaphysical truths and the higher realms of understanding.  Over the past couple of days in our conversations, I started becoming hyper aware of “his flaws” in understanding.  He understands deeply the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta and lives it quite well, but because ACIM teaches something quite distinct although similar to Advaita, I noticed my ego-mind reacting a bit.

The temptation I was falling into was one of being the “holier-than-thou” teacher to this friend.  I started getting a bit smug and thinking, “Well, if he thinks he’s so enlightened then he’s just living in denial.  Too bad for him.  Perhaps someday when he’s meant to, he’ll finally realize how much he could have learned from me and will then come knocking.”  Ridiculous, right??  But only in hindsight unfortunately… ;-)

Fortunately, I’m learning to catch my ego in its act sooner than later, thanks to my almost constant daily practice of forgiveness for the past few years.

After our conversation had ended and he walked back inside, I was left sitting on the porch alone feeling guilty and anxious.  I hadn’t expressed my inward irritation too overtly (perhaps in my facial expressions and tone of voice), yet I’d tried to suppress it and it was now a perfect opportunity to silently learn another forgiveness lesson.

As I sat in my guilt and anxiety, allowing myself to feel them fully and knowing it was due to my own ego attacks, I asked the Holy Spirit for help.  After a few minutes of sitting patiently and listening I received a powerful thought that radically transformed YEARS of my erroneous ego thinking.  The thought was this:

“Nothing YOU do or say to another person will ever help them to awaken.  There’s no sense in trying to wake up a movie character.  It’s like trying to teach the figures in your dream that they aren’t really there.  Instead, join your brothers OUTSIDE the dream.  Then the Truth will speak through you to your Self.  But the dream characters will never awaken.  They aren’t really there in the first place.”

Wow.  All these years I’ve held myself in such high-esteem because I thought I was such a great teacher.  And yet, as I’m now learning, there’s no one to teach.  I am an eternal student, and never should I try to believe that teaching is my function.  To the degree that I give up my own specialness as a Course teacher,  I will make way for the Holy Spirit to speak through me… not for the purpose of waking up images, but for the purpose of teaching me to trust Him.  That is what leads to Joy.

Ahhh, what humility.  What peace.  What gratitude…