May-August, 2024
“The only safety lies in extending the Holy Spirit, because as you see His gentleness in others your own mind perceives itself as totally harmless. Once it can accept this fully, it sees no need to protect itself. The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever. The perfectly safe are wholly benign. They bless because they know that they are blessed. Without anxiety the mind is wholly kind, and because it extends beneficence it is beneficent. Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack. No compromise is possible in this. Teach attack in any form and you have learned it, and it will hurt you. Yet this learning is not immortal, and you can unlearn it by not teaching it.” (T-6.III.3)
There is only one way I will feel safe in this life. As I let go of the belief that I am anything less than what God created me to be, I remember my true Self. I become gentle and loving, wholly kind and harmless. Knowing myself as God’s Son, I know God’s protection. There will be no desire to defend or attack. So, I know what I am to do.
May-August, 2024
We have traditions in which gifts are often given. God has gifts as does the ego. The ego’s gifts include such things as anger, depression, conflict, and pain. The only way to get the ego’s gifts are to choose them.
The Holy Spirit’s gifts are peace, love, and joy. The only way to experience them is to choose them. If you decide you don’t like your choice, you can choose again. The problem is you choose based on what you value at the moment. Who would not choose love, peace, and joy?
Everybody who wants to be right maintains that they are this ego body and that the world is real. Furthermore, they want to believe they are not responsible for their misery, someone else is to blame. Guilt is valued. To get the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you must decide that only innocence and love are real, everything else is not.
May-August, 2024
I’m watch’d over by My Shepherd,
and am guided by His word,
Where’er He leads, I follow,
whene’er I pray, I’m heard.
Tho’ my path at times be rocky,
and seemingly quite steep,
He guides me, perfectly, each day,
and even when I sleep!
Green pastures are aplenty,
my soul is fed with care,
and when I seek clear waters,
He always leads me there.
Meadowlands and babbling brooks,
He leads me to those spots,
leading where I need to go,
(tho’ I may know it not!)
May-August, 2024
Imagine yourself as a child living in a big, beautiful home. Imagine this home is God‘s Home, God‘s Kingdom of formless, eternal Love. This Home contains everything you could ever want: endless joy, protection, warmth, care, love, kindness, and strength. There is nothing lacking in this Home. There’s complete trust in the Father who provides this Home for you and all is well, beyond measure.
Now, imagine that you decide one day to wonder what might be outside of this Home. The child imagines a window to look out of, where there is another world, another place to be outside of this perfect, loving Home. The child imagines a world that is quite different from the Home they are accustomed to. There are sights and sounds and smells, there are playgrounds, classrooms, dangers, pleasures: All the unique, specific elements that make up the imagined world of form outside of this big loving Home of eternal Love. The curious child imagines an outside world as attractive and interesting.
January-April, 2024
January-April, 2024
“Hear, then, the one answer of the Holy Spirit to all the questions the ego raises: You are a child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of Him. Nothing else exists and only this is real. You have chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real and God calls you to awake. There will be nothing left of your dream when you hear Him, because you will awaken. Your dreams contain many of the ego’s symbols and they have confused you. Yet that was only because you were asleep and did not know. When you wake you will see the truth around you and in you, and you will no longer believe in dreams because they will have no reality for you. Yet the Kingdom and all that you have created there will have great reality for you, because they are beautiful and true.” (T-6.IV.6:1-8)
Here is what happens each time I bring a grievance to the Holy Spirit. I sit with Him and tell Him all about it. I show Him why I believe the problem is real and has serious consequences. I let Him see my rage. Or I let Him see how frightened I am or how hurt. Then I ask Him to heal my mind and He says, “It’s OK, Honey. It’s just a bad dream. You are sleeping and in your sleep, you dreamed this happened. It’s time to wake up now.”
January-April, 2024
Central to the idea of forgiveness is stepping out of the dream and knowing what is true and what is untrue. My ego tells me I need to do things that are not true. Some examples: The ego tells me I need to understand someone else or a situation I find disturbing. This is not true. “Today I will judge nothing that occurs. I will not think I understand the whole from bits of my perception, which are all that I can see.” (W-243.1:2)
Fact is, I do not have a clue what someone else is working on in their life. It is not up to me to interpret where they are in their spiritual progress. I may live with them, or be a parent, or spouse, but their spiritual development is not my business. My business is to allow the Holy Spirit to change my perception of how I see them and the circumstances. Stepping out of the dream is being willing to go above the battleground with Jesus and look beyond the ego personality. Therefore, “Today I will judge nothing that occurs.”
The ego also tells me I need to do or fix things. Neither is this true. The Holy Spirit tells me the opposite. I need do nothing. Forgiveness does not twist things around to how the ego likes them. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not.
January-April, 2024
Over the years I’ve collected many useful tools that have helped me create a life that is peaceful and happy. Here are some of my favorites:
Holy Instant — Whenever I notice I have a fear or judgment, I step back and give it to the Holy Spirit for healing. I say, “Holy Spirit, heal my fear based thoughts” and the fears and judgments disappear. That’s the Holy Instant. The more vigilant I am for my fears and judgments and hand them over, the less they come back into my mind, and the more peaceful I become.
See the best — When I meet friends, family, neighbors, I focus on their best qualities… their kindness, gentleness, patience, humor, peacefulness, generosity, creativity… and compliment them. This lifts them up out of the ego world of fear and self judgments to a world of love and appreciation. And when they are lifted, I’m lifted up with them.
January-April, 2024
Early in the Course we learned that we rejected the fact that God created us as one with Himself because we wanted to be special, separate, unique and alone. We wanted to make decisions on our own and believe that the direction of our own creation is up to us.
In Chapter 2, section I of the Course we learn about the origins of our belief in separation. Jesus tells us, “These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the separation, or the “detour into fear.” None of this existed before the separation, nor does it actually exist now. Everything God created is like Him.” (T-2.I.2:1-3)
Over our years of joining to study the Text and practice the daily Lessons of A Course in Miracles, we have come to understand that on our own, we know nothing. We are learning that God gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit to help us return to the truth that we still are in the one Mind of God as as He created us.
January-April, 2024
According to the Course, forgiveness is my function, and forgiveness looks and waits and judges not. This means forgiveness is the act of looking and suspending all judgment. It is looking at all things in my awareness, both within and without, from a place of calm observance and of detached watching, absent of all need to form opinions or condemn what is being observed.
When I first started studying the Course and attempting to apply it in my life I thought that Awakening would be reached by clearing my mind of all extraneous thoughts and all negative emotions. This led me to go down a path of denying the full experience of my feelings, fears and doubts because I thought it was “not spiritual” to have thoughts or experiences of suffering and that the goal was to somehow eliminate them from my mind and my awareness. But my Inner Teacher; the wise Voice deep inside my mind, has given me a very helpful symbol to use to apply the teachings of A Course in Miracles.
January-April, 2024
During a phase of peace, I asked Holy Spirit to join me to help me remember that I am Love, not a judge sputtering out assumptions. Whenever I start to judge others or judge a situation, I remind myself that I really don’t know, I only think it! I am now making it a habit to start my assumptions and judgment statements with “I think”…… which tells me: “I imagine…. which then leads to: It’s not real; I don’t know!”
I now practice adding the prefix words of “I think” or “I imagine” attached to my judgment sentence or thought and replace this thought with a self-question of, “Do I know this for a fact?” If not, move on, let judgment thoughts go and evaporate into the air. I am taking this activity a step further by replacing any judgment thoughts or false assumptions with a kind thought for the person or situation I started to judge or thinking a self-mantra of “I really don’t know — no false assumption!”
January-April, 2024
In the year 2000, I rented a large home that would be big enough for my brother Ed from Vienna to stay with me when he came to visit twice a year and have his own space in the upper part of the house.
My memory from childhood was that I didn’t think he liked me very much. And it didn’t seem like there was much love in our relationship. So I really felt guided by Spirit to have this opportunity to live together and open to Love, a love that we could both enjoy. I invited him to stay with me and share the house when he would visit, and he agreed that it would be a good idea, and that he would also pay me rent.
During his visits, every morning he would greet me with a “Happy Good Morning” and it made my day and brought a lot of happiness to my mind. Our days were filled with going places together and enjoying each other’s company. I gave him his privacy and never went upstairs unless he invited me.
He was used to being alone and played computer games often in his living space upstairs, so I didn’t see him that much apart from our outings together. I learned to trust that all was well, and that he was spending his time as he wished to in a way that was comfortable for him, and so I learned to accept him as he was and to be okay with that. I opened my mind to see that he was my spiritual brother, and I became very comforted by having his presence in my home, right upstairs from me.
January-April, 2024
I don’t know about you, but I forget about this at least a hundred times a day (if not more).
What is it about life that gets in the way of this realization? Sure, it’s easy to remember when we’re in church, sweat lodge ceremony, or in a study group, but once we step into the ‘lab’ or the real world our light often dims and it can be very frustrating.
Usually, for me, it’s others’ inability to recognize or appreciate my light that dulls it, because, at the end of the day, we are all mirrors. Many times we reflect back on what is directed at us (commonly referred to as projection). While studying the Course assists us on our journey, I often wonder why it’s so hard to practice.
Here are some pointers to staying illuminated:
1. Remember that others are operating from their own capacity and that’s okay (not everyone is capable of doing such deep, inner work).
January-April, 2024
This is the song that never ends. Yes, it goes on and on my friends.
We are never truly satisfied whenever we achieve something in the world of form. We get what we think we want and after momentary relief, there’s now something else glistening out there, just off in the distance, enticing us and calling our name. A new shiny object luring us in with the promise of total fulfillment. Voila.. the ego scavenger hunt.
“When you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you. This is why the ego is forced to shift ceaselessly from one goal to another, so that you will continue to hope it can yet offer you something.” (T-8.VIII.2:6-7)
We set goals. Excited and filled with hope, that THIS time… THIS will do it. It will really bring the happiness, the peace. This one is going to be the cherry on top. The icing on the cake. The silver bullet. The goal to end all goals. Hallelujah! Then I can finally rest. Finally be at peace, with nothing to bother me. Nothing to infringe on my serenity. I can be safe now that nothing will disrupt me. Whew. What a relief. Cause I’m tired. Tired of being out here, trying relentlessly to keep myself safe. If this burned calories I’d be at my ideal body in no time.
January-April, 2024
When I first began studying A Course in Miracles seven years ago, every time I looked at that 2000+ page book, or even thought about it, huge conflicting energy waves of wonder and dread would pass through my mind. I’ve always had the mindset that if I felt resistance towards something, it was probably the road I needed to embark on! To me, it kinda felt like a second bible but way hipper!
The first time I heard David Hoffmeister say, “Holy Spirit, Knock my socks off!” I thought, “What does that mean?” I was so intrigued by the idea of asking Holy Spirit for anything, let alone to Knock My Socks Off! And, to be honest, it scared me! Well, clearly my intrigue caused enough momentum to usher an experience that changed my life and relationship with Holy Spirit forever.
At this time, I had been living in this very quiet and cozy community for about two years, where I pretty much knew everybody! I was singing (and still do) every Thursday evening at a Sushi restaurant located inside the community. One day, I was walking our German Sheppard back from the park and, as I was about to cross the street corner, a car frantically pulled up beside me. As I glanced over to see who it was, expecting it to be somebody I was familiar with and most likely would exchange pleasantries, the passenger window slid down revealing this very gruff and disheveled appearance of a man I had never seen before. He reminded me of Beatle Juice. A lot! (And definitely resembled some of my father’s vibe as well.)
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