everyday alchemy

All Things Are Within You

2011-08-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

All things are within you.

You manifest in your life whatever you give permission:

No matter how much you understand love, you must give it permission over anger.

You must give permission to strength over intolerance and discouragement.

You must give permission to good judgment over irrational impulse.

You must give permission to faith over appearances.

These abilities are all at your command, but you must give the command. You give permission to that which you give your attention.

Silence Yourself to the Gift to Activate the Gift

The best way to give your attention to a particular gift is to silence yourself to it.

Silence Yourself toward Strength and divine energy will flow through you.

Silence Yourself toward Power and you will feel your consciousness move to a Higher Level.

Silence yourself toward Faith and your Good will flow from the invisible into your living experience.

-Excerpted from William Warch’s How To Use Your Twelve Gifts From God (emphases added)

True Charity, Giving to Get; the Strength of Spirit; and the Vulnerability of 'Self Esteem'

2011-07-23T09:29:00.000-07:00

"Only those who have a real and lasting sense of abundance can be truly charitable. This is obvious when you consider what is involved. To the ego, to give anything implies that you will have to do without it. When you associate giving with sacrifice, you give only because you believe that you are somehow getting something better, and can therefore do without the thing you give. 'Giving to get' is an inescapable law of the ego, which always evaluates itself in relation to other egos. It is therefore continually preoccupied with the belief in scarcity that gave rise to it. Its whole perception of other egos as real is only an attempt to convince itself that it is real. 'Self-esteem' in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality, and is therefore temporarily less predatory. This 'self-esteem' is always vulnerable to stress, a term which refers to any perceived threat to the ego's existence.

The ego literally lives by comparisons. Equality is beyond its grasp, and charity becomes impossible. The ego never gives out of abundance, because it was made as a substitute for it. That is why the concept of 'getting' arose in the ego's thought system. Appetites are 'getting' mechanisms, representing the ego's need to confirm itself. This is as true of body appetites as it is of the so-called 'higher ego needs'. Body appetites are not physical in origin. The ego regards the body as its home, and tries to satisfy itself through the body. But the idea that this is possible is a decision of the mind, which has become completely confused about what is really possible.

The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it thinks it originated. This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos and try to unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength. It is not free, however, to open the premise to question, because the premise is its foundation. The ego is the mind's belief that it is completely on its own. The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the spirit's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are useless. Spirit in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does not attack it; it merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of spirit, it does perceive itself as being rejected by something greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms must be delusional" - ACIM T.4.2.6-8

Wherever you are

2011-07-12T22:48:00.000-07:00

"Wherever you are is the entry point" - Kabir

Be really tender with thought

2011-07-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

Be really tender with thought. The pressure we put on it is extraordinary. It's only because thought is also the great mystery of emptiness that it is able to function with all that pressure of disapproval and dislike and aversion...

That is why in all the great spiritual traditions, at their heart is tenderness - just to be kind inside, and then everything rights itself. Fear rests. Confusion rests. Everything that was perturbing the system rests. Because they know that when you are tender inside you no longer need their services, because you have returned to your true nature.

-Pamela Wilson

Calls For Love

2011-06-04T08:32:00.000-07:00

"Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, but to your interpretation of it. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you. If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond as if he had actually done so, having made his error real to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this you will overlook truth.

The analysis of ego-motivation is very complicated, very obscuring, and never without your own ego-involvement. The whole process represents a clear-cut attempt to demonstrate your own ability to understand what you perceive. This is shown by the fact that you react to your interpretations as if they were correct. You may then control your reactions behaviorally, but not emotionally. This would obviously be a split or an attack on the integrity of your mind, pitting one level within it against another.

There is but one interpretation of motivation that makes any sense. And because it is the Holy Spirit's judgement it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a brother's plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and only this is what he is asking for. Offer him anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack his reality by interpreting it as you see fit. Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent. If you believe that an appeal for help is something else you will react to something else. Your response will therefore be inappropriate to reality as it is, but not to your perception of it.

. . .

It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand. No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth to him has become what he wants it to be. If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as what it is, it is because you are unwilling to give help and to receive it. To fail to recognise a call for help is to refuse help. Would you maintain that you do not need it? Yet this is what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognise a brother's appeal, for only by answering his appeal can you be helped. Deny him your help and you will not recognise God's Answer to you. The Holy Spirit does not need your help in interpreting motivation, but you do need His.

Only appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude is due him for both his loving thoughts and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into your awareness if you perceive them truly. And all your sense of strain comes from your attempts not to do just this. How simple, then, is God's plan for salvation. There is but one response to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all. There is but one Teacher of reality, Who understands what it is. He does not change His Mind about reality because reality does not change. Although your interpretations of reality are meaningless in your divided state, His remain consistently true. He gives them to you because they are for you. Do not attempt to 'help' a brother in your way, for you cannot help yourself. But hear his call for the Help of God, and you will recognise your own need for the Father.

Your interpretations of your brother's needs are your interpretation of yours. By giving help you are asking for it, and if you perceive but one need in yourself you will be healed. For you will recognise God's Answer as you want It to be, and if you want It in truth, It will be truly yours. Every appeal you answer in the Name of Christ brings the remembrance of your Father closer to your awareness. For the sake of your need, then, hear every call for help as what it is, so God can answer you."

~ Excerpted from A Course In Miracles, Text, Ch 12. Pt 1

Choose Once Again

2011-05-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, 'My brother, choose again'. He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created altar unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your mind from everything that hides His face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the only Power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self That God created as His only Son. He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created altar unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your mind from everything that hides His face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the only Power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self That God created as His only Son.

True Integrity

2011-05-29T22:18:00.000-07:00

True integrity is not about upholding or preserving the ego's sense of self; it's the radically selfless and loving expression that arises, naturally and inevitably, from knowing one's Wholeness in Spirit.

"Be a candle, or the night, Padawan: but choose!"

2011-05-04T11:40:00.000-07:00

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

"No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try."

"Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship."

"[Luke:] I can't believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail."

"Named must your fear be before banish it you can."

"You will find only what you bring in."

"So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?"

"Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."

"Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin. The fear of loss is a path to the dark side."

"If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are ... a different game you should play."

"But when the day comes that even old Yoda does not learn something from his students-then truly, he shall be a teacher no more."

"Honor life by living, Padawan. Killing honors only death: only the dark side."

"To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night, Padawan: but choose!"

Happy Star Wars Day!

You do not ask too much of life, but far too little

2011-04-27T17:05:00.000-07:00

You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. There are no satisfactions in the world (ACIM Workbook-pI.133.2; italics added).

It is impossible that anything be lost, if what you have is what you are .... Here [in this world] does the Son of God ask not too much, but far too little. He would sacrifice his own identity with everything, to find a little treasure of his own. And this he cannot do without a sense of isolation, loss and loneliness. . . . (ACIM Text 26.VII.)

The answer that will take away all questions

2011-04-22T16:17:00.000-07:00

"Remember, the mind likes to window shop. It fancies the life in this boutique, then wants to try on the boots in another. But the soul invests all of itself. It's not as casual or as distracted by fashion, sales, promises or ease of acquisition. It's not interested in possibility. It pitches toward destiny. That's why you will never know a sense of ease, even when you come up with answers, unless you choose to listen to the answer that will take away all questions." ~ Tama Kieves

Today's Rules for Decision

2011-04-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

Sipping my morning coffee, I pulled up this passage from A Course In Miracles. It is a profound reminder of what is taught in the Song of Prayer ("You cannot, then, ask for the echo. It is the song that is the gift.").

While our false selves / our egos work tirelessly purportedly to protect us and ensure our Good, it actually does the opposite. It delineates our Good, distorts it, corrupts it. We do not experience Reality because we have boxed it out, created an impossible labyrinth around ourselves, a framework built by the specific questions we ask. Our 'intention', however empowering (and even necessary to the moment) that it may feel, being about anything less than the awareness of our Oneness, serves as a mere detention -- keeping us in a perpetual hallway to our God, our Good.

The Universe awaits our claiming of our Wholeness and our Oneness, and instead of opening our eyes and looking within to receive ALL THAT, we are on our knees praying for something small and material: Spirit, give me a hand to hold.

This is not to say we should ever shame ourselves (or another) for asking for less than what is naturally, rightfully, eternally ours. To do so would be to simply propagate the error. Gentle. Gentle.

Gentle. Only soft and supple -- like children -- we enter the Kingdom.

***

ACIM Chapter 29: Rules For Decision

Decisions are continuous. You do not always know when you are making them. But, with a little practice in the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the rest. It is not wise to let yourself become preoccupied with every step you take. The proper set, adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead. And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. DO NOT FIGHT YOURSELF. But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way by which this very day can happen just like that. Then try again to HAVE the day you want.

1. The outlook starts with this:

"Today I will make NO decisions by myself."

This means that you are choosing NOT to be the judge of what to do. But it must ALSO mean you will not judge the situations where you will be called upon to make response. For if you judge them, you HAVE set the rules for how you should react to them. And then ANOTHER answer cannot BUT produce confusion and uncertainty AND FEAR. This is your major problem now. You still make up your minds, and THEN decide to ask what you should do. And what you hear may not resolve the problem AS YOU SAW IT FIRST. This leads to fear, because it contradicts what you perceive, and so you feel attacked. AND THEREFORE ANGRY. There are rules by which this will not happen. But it does occur, at first, to everyone who listens well.

2. Throughout the day, at any time you think of it, and have a quiet moment for reflection, tell yourself again the kind of day you want; the feelings you would have, the things you WANT to happen, and the things you WOULD experience. And say,

"If I make no decisions by myself, this is the day that will be GIVEN me."

These two procedures, practiced well, will serve to let you be directed WITHOUT fear, for opposition will not FIRST arise, and THEN become a problem in itself. But there will still be times when you have judged already. Now the answer will provoke attack, unless you quickly straighten out your mind to WANT an answer that will work. Be certain this has happened, if you feel yourself to be unwilling to sit by, and ask to have the answer GIVEN you. This means you HAVE decided by yourself, AND CANNOT SEE THE QUESTION. Now you need a quick restorative BEFORE you ask.

3. Remember once again the day you want, and recognize that something has occurred which is not part of it. Then realize that you have asked a question by yourself, and MUST have set an answer in your terms. Then say,

"I have no question. I forgot what to decide."

This cancels out the terms which you have set, and lets the ANSWER show you what the question MUST have really been. Try to observe this rule without delay DESPITE your opposition. For you have ALREADY gotten angry, and your fear of being answered in a different way from what YOUR version of the question asks will gain momentum until you believe the day you want is one in which you get YOUR answer to your question. And you will not get it, for it would destroy the day by robbing you of what you REALLY want. This can be very hard to realize, when once you have decided by yourself the rules which PROMISE you a happy day. But these decisions still can be undone, by simple methods which you CAN accept.

4. If you are so unwilling to receive you cannot even let your QUESTION go, you can begin to change your mind with this:

"At least I can decide I do not LIKE what I feel now."

This much is obvious, and paves the way for the next easy step, which follows like this.

5. Having decided that you do not like the way you feel, what could be easier than to continue with -

"And so I HOPE I have been wrong."

This works AGAINST the sense of opposition, and reminds you that help is not being thrust upon you, but is something that you want and that you need BECAUSE you do not like the way you feel. This tiny opening will be enough to let you go ahead with just a few more steps you need to LET yourself be helped.

6. Now you have reached the turning point, because it has occurred to you that YOU will gain, if what you have decided is NOT so. Until this point is reached, you will believe your happiness DEPENDS on being right. But this much reason have you now attained; YOU would be better off if you were WRONG. This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you further. You are NOT coerced, but merely hope to have a thing you WANT. And you can say in perfect honesty,

"I WANT another way to look at this."

Now you have changed your mind about the day, and have REMEMBERED what you really want. Its purpose has no longer been obscured by the insane belief you want it for the goal of being right when you are wrong. This is the readiness for asking brought to your awareness, for you cannot be in conflict when you ask for what you want, and see that it is this for which you ask.

7. This final step is but acknowledgment of lack of opposition to be helped. It is a statement of an open mind, not certain yet, but willing to be shown:

"Perhaps there IS another way to look at this. What can I LOSE by asking?"

Thus are you made ready for a question that makes sense, and so the answer will make sense as well. Nor will you fight against it, for you see that it is YOU who will be helped by it.

It must be clear that it is easier to have a happy day if you prevent unhappiness from entering at all. But this takes practice in the rules which will protect you from the ravages of fear. When this has been achieved, the sorry dream of judgment has forever been undone. But, meanwhile, you have need for practicing the rules for its undoing. Let us, then, consider once again the very first of the decisions which are offered here.

We said you can begin a happy day with the determination not to make decisions by yourself. This seems to be a free decision in itself. And yet, you CANNOT make decisions by yourself. The only question really is with WHAT you choose to make them. That is really all.

The first rule, then, is not coercion, but a simple statement of a simple fact. You will not make decisions by yourself WHATEVER you decide. For they are made with idols or with God. And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose will join with you, and tell you what to do.

Your day is not at random. It is set by what you choose to live it with, and how the friend whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness. You always ask advice before you can decide anything. Let THIS be understood, and you can see there cannot be coercion here, nor grounds for opposition that you may be free. There IS no freedom from what must occur. And if you think there is, you must be wrong.

The second rule as well is but a fact. For you and your advisor must agree on what you want before it can occur. It is but this AGREEMENT which permits all things to happen. Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice of God. Decisions cause results BECAUSE they are not made in isolation. They are made by you and your advisor, for yourself, and for the world as well. The day you want you offer to the world, for it wilL be what you have asked for, and will reinforce the rule of your advisor through the world. Whose kingdom is the world for you today? What kind of day will you decide to have?

It needs but two who would have happiness this day to promise it to all the world. It needs but two to understand that they cannot decide alone, to guarantee the joy they asked for will be wholly shared. For they have understood the basic law which makes decision powerful, and gives it all effects that it will ever have. It needs but two. These two are joined before there CAN be a decision. Let this be the one reminder that you keep in mind, and you will have the day you want, and give it to the world by having it yourselves. Your judgment has been lifted from the world by your decision for a happy day. And as you have received so must you give.

The Holy Trinity: The Ultimate Love Triangle

2011-04-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

Have you bumped into the Holy Trinity lately? Based on our traditional notions of what the Trinity looks like—the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit as three distinct entities—most of us would answer ‘No’. Based on Unity’s conception of the Holy Trinity, however, we actually encounter the Trinity everywhere, at all times.
That’s because Unity construes the Trinity as emblematic of the tri-fold nature of what we call ‘God’. As Elizabeth Sand Turner wrote in Be Ye Transformed (p. 18):

The Trinity is not three separate gods but one God in three phases of expression. As the divine Creator, God is Father; as the Divine Self in humankind, God is Son; and as spiritual life and power in activity, God is Holy Spirit.

Father – In Unity, the ‘Father’ represents God in the Absolute; God as Divine Mind, Spirit, or pure Principle. Love, in this ‘phase’ of expression (as ‘Spirit’), is the idea of universal unity or Oneness. No different or distinct from God, Love simply is and is all there is.

Son – God as the ‘Son’ (aka the ‘Word’ or the ‘Christ’) refers to the Divine expressed at the personal (‘Soul’) level. Like Jesus, each of us has divinity within us. Also like Jesus, we have the innate capacity, which we can develop through prayer and meditation, to embody God perfectly—i.e., to be the ‘Christ’, or, in this case, to be Love. In Unity, we express this Truth about ourselves using “I AM” statements, such as “I AM Love” or “I AM Christ.”

Holy Spirit –God as the ‘Holy Spirit’ is God in expression or activity. This is the phase of God that expresses in and as the sensory world (‘Body’). In this phase, Love might express in a multitude of ways—as joining in prayer with another, changing a baby’s diapers, smiling at a stranger, or speaking supportive words to a friend.

Unity teaches that every expression or activity of love that we experience arises from our laying hold of the Divine Idea of Love at the point of each of us. That idea is expressed through us or even as us at the level of the Body (Holy Spirit). Thus is the tri-fold nature of God, the “Trinity”, present at all times, in all things that we see, do, and experience.

Love goes awry only when we forget that God is the Source of all things and operate instead with a belief in finite resources. Spirit is infinite, but the material world appears to enforce lack and limitation. When we focus on what our senses rather than what our Faith perceives, we may conclude that there simply is not enough love to go around. Then we must hoard and maneuver for all the love we can possibly get.

This often begins in childhood as many of us vie for our parents’ attention and affection. At the level of sense conscious-ness, moreover, even giving love implies sacrifice—after all, if there is only a finite amount of affection or energy available, then giving anything means losing something.

A ‘Love Triangle’ is a classic example of a situation founded on the belief that there never seems to be enough love or resources to go around. Someone’s loss seems to imply someone else’s gain. And, if our consciousness remains at the level of the material world, this does appear true!

But, when we remember that God is our Source, we can lay claim to our inheritance of infinite Love. Not only do we thereby fill ourselves from within with peace, love, harmony, we also express and offer more love to a love-starved world. This is what it means to activate the Divine or Ultimate Love Triangle.

Whatever you see for your love, that it will draw to you, because as a magnet it attracts whatever you set your desire upon. To focus your love about self and selfish aims will cause it to draw around you the limited things of personality and the hollow shams of sense life. To focus your love upon money and the possessions of the material world will make you the slave of mammon, and will make your life a failure and a disappointment. To focus your love upon anything less than All-Good will eventually cause you to fall short of your highest aspiration, and will keep you outside the kingdom of heaven. (Charles Fillmore, Talks on Truth)

Another Take on Easter

2011-04-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

This is the first take on Easter that has ever made sense to me. It is excerpted from Chapter 20 of A Course In Miracles:

Holy Week

This week we celebrate eternal life, not death. And we honor the perfect purity of the Son of God, and not his sins. Offer each other the gift of lilies, not the crown of thorns; the gift of love, and not the "gift" of fear. You stand beside each other, thorns in one hand and lilies in the other, uncertain which to give. Join now with me, and throw away the thorns, offering the lilies to replace them. This Easter I would have the gift of your forgiveness, offered by you to me, and returned by me to you. We CANNOT be united in crucifixion and in death. Nor can the resurrection be complete 'til your forgiveness rests on Christ, along with mine.

A week is short, and yet this holy week is the symbol of the whole journey that the Son of God has undertaken. He started with the sign of victory, the promise of the resurrection, already given him. Let him not wander into the temptation of crucifixion, and delay him there. Help him go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own innocence lighting his way to his redemption and release. Hold him not back with thorns and nails, when his redemption is so near. But let the whiteness of your shining gift of lilies speed him on his way to resurrection.

Easter is not the celebration of the COST of sin, but of its END. If you see glimpses of the face of Christ behind the veil, looking between the snow white petals of the lilies you have received and given as your gift, you will behold each other's face and RECOGNIZE it. I was a stranger, and you took me in, not knowing who I was. But, for your gift of lilies, you WILL know. In your forgiveness of this stranger, alien to you and yet your ancient Friend, lie his release, and your redemption with him. The time of Easter is a time of joy, and not of mourning. Look on your risen Friend, and celebrate his holiness, along with me. For Easter is the time of YOUR salvation, along with mine.

Smart Hearts

2011-04-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

In Unity, we say that life is consciousness. We often refer to God as Divine Mind. We tout the Law of Mind Action: thoughts held in mind produce after their kind. We sing charming children’s songs about how thoughts become things.

All this talk about thought can be misleading. The ordinary use of the term ‘thought’ implies an abstract, intellectual idea. But Unity teaches that abstract ideas without emotional substance have little or no life force.

In Unity, we teach that to co-create more Good with Spirit, we must not just hold a thought in our brain-minds but in our heart-minds: For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. (Proverbs 23:7)

As British Educator Thomas Trowd once said: “Having seen and felt the end, you have willed the means to the realization of the end.”

As many of us have experienced, however, it is not merely having feelings—even very powerful feelings—in relationship to an idea. It is about whether the feeling actually supports the idea. Are you wanting a loving life partner but your idea of having such a life partner is filled with a sense of longing, lack, and want? Are you desiring respect, recognition, and ample compensation for your life’s work but that wanting is filled with bitterness or depression arising from the belief that “I am never recognized,” or “I can’t do anything right”?

In The Creative Life, Rev. Eric Butterworth reminds us:

No philosophy in the world can bring success to the person who is forever indulging his or her emotions with visions of inadequacy and limitation. To be ambitious for prosperity, yet to feel poor, to desire healing, yet always feel weak and afflicted, is like trying to reach east by traveling west. No matter how diligently you work, if you feel less than you desire yourself to be, that feeling is going to neutralize your efforts. The secret of achieving your dreams lies in so vividly imaging them that you literally exude the consciousness of them because you are vibrating with their reality. -Eric Butterworth, The Creative Life, p 56

The power of imagination is the power to join our thoughts and feelings so that one does not go east while the other heads west. The power of imagination is the power to direct our thoughts and feelings to join together in one magnificent movement that is the song and dance of the Good Life.

To live the Good life, we must exercise the fifth Basic Unity Principle, which pronounces that it is not enough to just know these Truth principles, we must live them.

To express the Truths that we have come to agree with intellectually, we must discipline the ego-mind, which wants to find depressing evidence everywhere of our old belief systems.
This is what it means to be “diligent for the Kingdom.”

We experience the Kingdom of God by making conscious decisions to see the Good everywhere, both within ourselves and without. That decision to see the Good, despite all appearances, is a decision to see with our “third” eye, our inner eye, our power of imagination.

Embracing our Shadow, Recovering our Wholeness, as a Society

2011-04-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I am compiling addiction/recovery stories of amazing people who have transformed their lives using 12 Step or other spiritually based programs and are 'giving back'. This is not a "for profit/business" venture. I'm just taking the next step on a very specific book idea/title I had and started a few years ago -- one way of helping our society to see and embrace its own shadow. Got a story? Know someone who does? Email me at nhienvuong@gmail.com

Be Still

2011-04-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God. ~ A Course In Miracles, W-pI. 189.7:1-5

The Face of God

2011-04-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

This post (and the below song by Karen Drucker) are dedicated to every person that I have ever judged or condemned, whether you are a stranger who once passed by, a former colleague, or my lifelong love. I apologize to you, I bless you, and I behold the Divinity that is the Truth of you:

May you be filled with loving kindness.
May you be well.
May you be peaceful and at ease.
May you be happy.

The Face of God ~ Karen Drucker

The alertness of the ego to the errors of other egos is not the kind of vigilance the Holy Spirit would have you maintain

2011-04-16T23:16:00.000-07:00

I've just been reminded of the importance of this teaching, from ACIM, Chapter 9:

III. The Correction of Error

The alertness of the ego to the errors of other egos is not the kind of vigilance the Holy Spirit would have you maintain. Egos are critical in terms of the kind of 'sense' they stand for. They understand this kind of sense, because it is sensible to them. To the Holy Spirit it makes no sense at all.

To the ego it is kind and right and good to point out errors and 'correct' them. This makes perfect sense to the ego, which is unaware of what errors are and what correction is. Errors are of the ego, and correction of errors lies in the relinquishment of the ego. When you correct a brother, you are telling him that he is wrong. He may be making no sense at the time, and it is certain that, if he is speaking from the ego, he will not be making sense. But your task is still to tell him he is right. You do not tell him this verbally, if he is speaking foolishly. He needs correction at another level, because his error is at another level. He is still right, because he is a Son of God. His ego is always wrong, no matter what it says or does.

If you point out the errors of your brother's ego you must be seeing through yours, because the Holy Spirit does not perceive his errors. This must be true, since there is no communication between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego makes no sense, and the Holy Spirit does not attempt to understand anything that arises from it. Since He does not understand it, He does not judge it, knowing that nothing the ego makes means anything.

When you react at all to errors, you are not listening to the Holy Spirit. He has merely disregarded them, and if you attend to them you are not hearing Him. If you do not hear Him, you are listening to your ego and making as little sense as the brother whose errors you perceive. This cannot be correction. Yet it is more than merely a lack of correction for him. It is the giving up of correction in yourself.

When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him only by perceiving the sanity in him. If you perceive his errors and accept them, you are accepting yours. If you want to give yours over to the Holy Spirit, you must do this with his. Unless this becomes the one way in which you handle all errors, you cannot understand how all errors are undone. How is this different from telling you that what you teach you learn? Your brother is as right as you are, and if you think he is wrong you are condemning yourself.

You cannot correct yourself. Is it possible, then, for you to correct another? Yet you can see him truly, because it is possible for you to see yourself truly. It is not up to you to change your brother, but merely to accept him as he is. His errors do not come from the truth that is in him, and only this truth is yours. His errors cannot change this, and can have no effect at all on the truth in you. To perceive errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you. You will not escape paying the price for this, not because you are being punished for it, but because you are following the wrong guide and will therefore lose your way.

Your brother's errors are not of him, any more than yours are of you. Accept his errors as real, and you have attacked yourself. If you would find your way and keep it, see only truth beside you for you walk together. The Holy Spirit in you forgives all things in you and in your brother. His errors are forgiven with yours. Atonement is no more separate than love. Atonement cannot be separate because it comes from love. Any attempt you make to correct a brother means that you believe correction by you is possible, and this can only be the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance.

The Holy Spirit forgives everything because God created everything. Do not undertake His function, or you will forget yours. Accept only the function of healing in time, because that is what time is for. God gave you the function to create in eternity. You do not need to learn that, but you do need to learn to want it. For that all learning was made. This is the Holy Spirit's use of an ability that you do not need, but that you made. Give it to Him! You do not understand how to use it. He will teach you how to see yourself without condemnation, by learning how to look on everything without it. Condemnation will then not be real to you, and all your errors will be forgiven.

Journey from One to Oneness

2011-04-16T00:29:00.000-07:00

Drumming down the sun during my 3-night solo, Unity In Marin Vision Quest 2009

We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us — the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The spiritual journey is indeed wrought with paradox. Just months into my 12-Step recovery, I came to what felt like my first semi-mature understanding of LIFE and my role in it. The bulk of my existence had been spent lamenting a universe in which I was the self proclaimed Loneliest Person in the World. To demonstrate this, I staged an on-going drama starring myself as a doe-eyed, tragically poetic victim of that lamentable truth.

But at the root of my suffering was a thirst for God. And my thirst for God was, in essence, my thirst for wholeness. And this 'wholeness' business was something I could not barter for or even earn by good works but merely come to know by trekking through the darkest, seemingly ugliest passageways of the labyrinth to myself.

Sitting in that 12-Step room, at the deepest level, I recognized and accepted that the journey toward that which I had sought all my life was a journey that I -- along with each and every person -- MUST take ALONE -- in the inmost parts of my own being. But, coupled with that, I also accepted a startling fact for a lifelong self-proclaimed self-reliant -- that it was not a journey I could possibly make alone. In that simultaneously 'AHA!' and 'oh-crap' moment, I experienced immense awe and gratitude for those who were also "working their own their Programs" as we called it in 12 Step rooms -- traveling their own journeys of awakening AND willing to share of those journeys with novices like me. Others' sharing of their fears and shame gave me permission to look through my own 'abominations'. Their sharing, too, of their experience, strength and hope helped me glimpse the 'god' that I should later find and forgive, and befriend and love. A god I am gradually coming to own and fully realize as the essential nature of ME. And, as importantly, as the essence of everyone else.

In this blog, I seek to continue on this journey with yet an even broader community. I hope that by sharing some of my own struggles and triumphs, I can help others who hunger to know their wholeness, and from that place of knowing, fully LIVE.