You first forgive,
then pray, and you are healed. Your prayer has risen up and called to God, Who
hears and answers. You have understood that you forgive and pray but for
yourself. And in this understanding you are healed. In prayer you have united
with your Source, and understood that you have never left. This level cannot be
attained until there is no hatred in your heart, and no desire to attack the
Son of God.Song of Prayer, S-3.IV.4
It’s not about looking at the
world through rose colored glasses or about candy coating the world.
Thoughts create our reality. And our beliefs tend to
guide our thoughts. But what I’ve discovered is some of our beliefs were
instilled relatively early in our childhood. That’s not bad. It’s good. Because
if we can look back at our belief and think back we can see that our belief was
postulated due to our reaction to something that happened. Parents,
grandparents or peers, there was some situation that we perceived incorrectly. If
I felt I was never accepted by someone was that true. No. It’s how I viewed it.
Maybe they did accept me. Do I or did I need be accepted by everyone. No, I’m
me. I accept myself the way I am. I change my habits of judgement, worry and
guilt and I remember my oneness, ONE-ness. ACIM says ATONEMENT. Cramer and Brooks spelt it at-ONE-ment. We've been programmed from birth to believe it's okay
to be guilty.
We are the dreamer of our dream. We are not victims. We
created the universe. We created the universe to hide out from God but there is
no world. We’ve created a dream of separation and we’ve never left home.
WE ARE AWESOME. The “Busting Loose …” books have a great
analogy. WE created that restaurant we love to eat at. WE cleared the land, dug
the foundation, designed the building both inside and out, picked the fixings,
did the decorating, selected the food and hired the person to cook it. WE ARE AWESOME.
And WE get a great meal and WE sit there reflecting after dinner about how
AWESOME WE ARE. But the waitress, who doesn’t know all this says something
negative and we get thrown for a loop. We always do.
And there’s no reason to feel guilty. We have been
conditioned to feel guilty. There isn’t supposed to be any guilt. I had someone
on the street ask me for money for a coffee. I said “No, sorry”. And the got a
few steps past them and realized what I’d said. We are conditioned to feel
guilty.
My brother got mad pushed my face into the carpet when I
was little. I ended up with a scab but went on playing. Years later my dad
mentioned it and said he was surprised I didn’t hit him back. He had responded
according to his "rules of engagement"/"map of the territory"/beliefs, not mine. ACIM teaches us to look at
things and see them from a different perspective. And, as we do, we become more peaceful
in the process.
Do we carry the weight of the world on our shoulders?
Some say yes, but I realized this week it’s on our chest. Where is the heart? In
the chest? If we’re supposed to remove the blockages of loves awareness all
around us then there is a lot we have to get off our chest.
A part of us starts to get it. And part of us doesn’t want
to (the ego). The “Song of Prayer” talks about a ladder. I was reminded today
of how people will cycle into our loves and may or may not drag us down a few
rungs. It’s not them but it’s our inner turmoil that hasn’t quite grasped the
ideas. Our new beliefs haven’t fully rooted. At least, not yet. But we get
stronger the more we practice. Old habits die hard? Actually, according to “The
Work” that’s a limiting belief. Take it to inquiry.
It helps to heal relationships
between you and others people by inviting the into your circle of Atonement.,
making them part of our circle of light. Some people write letters. One of the
steps of the AA program is to make amends. Whether you physically do it or
mentally do it depends on circumstances. Would you want someone contacting you
or would you rather hear they’d turned their life around. You action should be
determined by whether you feel peaceful.
The more we let go the LIGHT-er
we become.
As the heart opens there is an inner warmth and inner
peace. External vibrations are a belief in something outside of the body.
As
long as you remember ALWAYS that you never suffered anything because of
anything that anyone ELSE did, past memories are not dangerous.(Urtext,CH1)
Sit in quiet
meditation and ask to be shown what belief is weighing heavily on you, whatever
it may be. Let it rise slowly to the surface like a sunken ship being raised to
the surface of your awareness. Ask to be shown and trust that you will be
shown; create the space and willingness to be shown, and you will be. Ask, what
is the belief are YOU harboring within YOUR-self that is keeping YOU from YOUR
joy and peace?’
As you wait words
or images may come to you. Simply notice them without censoring or judgment.
Perhaps you will recall long forgotten incidents from an earlier time, or a
feeling will arise that is painful or brings with it tears. If tears arise, let them do their cleansing work.
The circumstances of your life will become
more friendly and welcoming to you as you become more friendly and welcoming to
yourself. Never judge your life or your Self as a failure. Never judge your
life at all. Simply welcome and befriend it as it is. Nothing grows nor thrives
on under the dark cloud of judgement. Accidents are not accidental. All that
happens in your life is for you, not against you. They happen to alter the
course of your life. We are to lovingly allow our lives to unfold and know that
we are greatly loved.
Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.discusses shrinking the gap between
cause and effect.
That was a thought I had Friday.
I’d listened to a tape from a ACIM practitioner this week. We worry
warts will invent something new to worry about when the old ones cease. It’s a
mstter of not being judgemental about yourself. When it happens to me I realize
I am making progress but at my own pace. WhenCadywroteLoose Him and Let Him Goshe never really provided a
means. That’s where faith comes in. I adopted a couple of prayers from www.FreePrayerBook.com to my needs and I don’t worry about a few people
anymore. It’s like a reprieve or breath of fresh air. We’ve been taught to feel
guilty and manifest from fear but what if we realize God is our source and
start manifesting from Love. Isn’t that more in line with the teachings of the
bible and certainly ACIM?
We’re like the “Lone Ranger”. Donning a black mask, mounting a white horse and
shooting silver bullets to make the world a better place. Instead of realizing
where we are, discovering our true identity and living up to our full potential
of what we Truly are.
Love
happily replaces all fear. Christ is the link that keeps you one with God, and
guarantees that separation is no more than an illusion of despair, for hope
forever will abide in Him. Your mind is part of His, and His of yours.Christ
remains at peace within the Heaven of your holy mind. This is the only part of
you that has reality in truth. The rest is dreams. Christ is the Self we share,
uniting us with one another, and with God as well. Christ is the Thought which
still abides within the Mind that is His Source. Christ has not left His holy
home, nor lost the innocence in which He was created. Christ abides unchanged
forever in the Mind of God. Stillness
is the peace of God and it is Mine.Through this the Truth will
enter where illusions were, light will replace all darkness, and We. your
children, will know we are as God created us.
ACIM lessons
271,272, 273, 274
“In my defencelessness, my safety lies.” (A
Course in Miracles.) “The meek shall
inherit the earth.”
We are slowly recovering our real power and letting go of fear. When someone says something
to you, when you don’t feel the need to defend or justify there is hope. You
have brought that on to test yourself. Have your beliefs aligned with your actions?
The interrogator/questioner/attacker is mirroring you former or current beliefs.
The Japanese Soldier – A Metaphor When we are faced with a difficult or traumatic situation — particularly when we are very young and have difficulty understanding
the world around us — we respond with the best survival options available to us at the time. As children, we all learn many “emotional habits” and knee-jerk responses in this way. Some of us may have learned to cut off our feelings, as an effort to avoid pain. Or we might have learned to throw a temper tantrum when it appears our needs aren’t being met. Or the habit of seeking approval, of finding fault with others, etc. Most of us recognize that the response patterns we learned in
childhood tend to persist into our adult lives, even though the challenges we face are different. This is true even when our automatic responses have serious negative consequences for us.
It’s easy to understand this idea with our conscious minds. Yet this
may have little impact on our unconscious behaviors. These tend to be
more responsive to narrative — a story that presents the same
understandings in a different way.
Prayer has no beginning and no
end. It is a part of life. But it does change in form, and grow with learning
until it reaches its formless state, and fuses into total communication with
God. In its asking form it need not, and often does not, make appeal to God, or
even involve belief in Him. At these levels prayer is merely wanting, out of a
sense of scarcity and lack.
***
It is also possible to reach a
higher form of asking-out-of-need, for in this world prayer is reparative, and
so it must entail levels of learning. Here, the asking may be addressed to God
in honest belief, though not yet with understanding.
***
Let it never be forgotten that prayer at any
level is always for yourself. If you unite with anyone in prayer, you make him
part of you. The enemy is you, as is the Christ. Before it can become holy,
then, prayer becomes a choice. You do not choose for another. You can but
choose for yourself. Pray truly for your enemies, for herein lies your own
salvation. Forgive them for your sins, and you will be forgiven indeed. Prayer is
a ladder reaching up to Heaven. At the top there is a transformation much like
your own, for prayer is part of you. The things of earth are left behind, all
unremembered. There is no asking, for there is no lack. Identity in Christ is
fully recognized as set forever, beyond all change and incorruptible. The light
no longer flickers, and will never go out. Now, without needs of any kind, and clad
forever in the pure sinlessness that is the gift of God to you, His Son, prayer
can again become what it was meant to be. For now it rises as a song of thanks
to your Creator, sung without words, or thoughts, or vain desires, unneedful
now of anything at all. So it extends, as it was meant to do. And for this
giving God Himself gives thanks. God is
the goal of every prayer, giving it timelessness instead of end. Nor has it a
beginning, because the goal has never changed. Prayer in its earlier forms is
an illusion, because there is no need for a ladder to reach what one has never
left. Yet prayer is part of forgiveness as long as forgiveness, itself an
illusion, remains unattained. Prayer is tied up with learning until the goal of
learning has been reached. And then all things will be transformed together,
and returned unblemished into the Mind of God. Being beyond learning, this
state cannot be described. The stages necessary to its attainment, however,
need to be understood, if peace is to be restored to God's Son, who lives now
with the illusion of death and the fear of God.
PSYCHOTHERAPY: PURPOSE, PROCESS AND PRACTICE (ACIM supplement)
Psychotherapy is the only form
of therapy there is. Since only the mind can be sick, only the mind can be
healed. Only the mind is in need of healing. This does not appear to be the
case, for the manifestations of this world seem real indeed. Psychotherapy is
necessary so that an individual can begin to question their reality. Sometimes
he is able to start to open his mind without formal help, but even then it is
always some change in his perception of interpersonal relationships that
enables him to do so. Sometimes he needs a more structured, extended
relationship with an "official" therapist. Either way, the task is
the same; the patient must be helped to change his mind about the
"reality" of illusions.
***
Very simply, the purpose of
psychotherapy is to remove the blocks to truth. Its aim is to aid the patient
in abandoning his fixed delusional system, and to begin to reconsider the
spurious cause and effect relationships on which it rests.
***
To be a teacher of God, it is
not necessary to be religious or even to believe in God to any recognizable
extent. It is necessary, however, to teach forgiveness rather than
condemnation. Even in this, complete consistency is not required, for one who
had achieved that point could teach salvation completely, within an instant and
without a word. Yet he who has learned all things does not need a teacher, and
the healed have no need for a therapist.
***
No one can pay for therapy, for
healing is of God and He asks for nothing. It is, however, part of His plan
that everything in this world be used by the Holy Spirit to help in carrying
out the plan. Even an advanced therapist has some earthly needs while he is
here. Should he need money it will be given him, not in payment, but to help
him better serve the plan. Money is not evil. It is nothing. But no one here
can live with no illusions, for he must yet strive to have the last illusion be
accepted by everyone everywhere. He has a mighty part in this one purpose, for
which he came. He stays here but for this. And while he stays he will be given
what he needs to stay.
I ask but this;
that you be comforted and live no more in terror and in pain. Do not abandon
Love. Remember this; whatever you may think about yourself, whatever you may
think about the world, your Father needs you and will call to you until you come
to Him in peace at last.
Teach Us to Pray, by Charles Fillmore founder of Unity Church, [1941], atsacred-texts.com(see more of his books there too): “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee.(Mathew 6.6). It is difficult to improve upon this simple method. Quietly entering the inner chamber within the soul, shutting the door to the external thoughts of daily life, and seeking conscious union with God is the highest form of prayer we know. “. ACIM students may recognize the similarity to "Song of Prayer".
The Strawberry Story. http://preview.tinyurl.com/c6p63z This is a good experiment. If you can duplicate it then show the kids. Projects for guides , cubs, seniors etc. The list would be endless.
3 S3 Steps to CASL Compliance: 1. Review Your Email Address Collection Methods 2. Obtain Express Consent from Existing Canadian Contacts 3. Make Sure Ongoing Communications have the Appropriate Information
