Lesson 6 of A Course In Miracles keeps hitting home on the same topic. It is another angle at your mind telling your mind that everything it sees is full of crap!
The instructions are to search your mind for any form of upset and say "I am angry/upset/worried at _____ because I see something that is not there."
The Course is still taking a full-on radical approach to my current reality. That really appeals to me. The "meaning of life" and all the idiotic things that I read and see on the news (when I can stand to watch, which is almost never) make it very clear that "things" are screwed up.
Hearing the news and advice that what is internally upsetting does not actually exist...that doesn't sound like such a bad thing to me. I am not clear on the alternative just yet, but I am open to consider that the world as it appears is not as it seems. That makes me happy actually.
Lesson 5 of The Course In Miracles tells me that "I am never upset for the reason I think." I like to think of myself as quite level-headed and justified if I get upset. Everyone probably feels this way! So why would a spiritual course tell me that I am wrong about this?
The text for the lesson says that "...until you learn that form does not matter, each form becomes a proper subject for the exercises for the day. Applying the same idea to each of them separately is the first step in ultimately recognizing they are all the same." Hmmm, so you are telling me that if I am upset because:
a.) I had to leave Maui
b.) I blew off a workout
c.) I am behind on my website action items
then it is all the same? They sure look like different things to me. But the goal of the lessons is not to question their validity and opt-out if I don't see the point. It is to practice them regardless of how they may rock your little world's perception. So I practiced them as directed, scanning my mind and saying to myself "I am not [worried/upset/angry] about ____ for the reason that I think" whenever I found something that was not copacetic.
There was no magic veil to reality lifted after doing this. It is the cumulative effect of the lessons over the 1-3 years that does the work. Since this is my 2nd time through the lessons, I can offer what this means to me this time around. Keep in mind it was not clear the first time I did the exercise.
Your ability to be in awareness and in tune with divine love is the overriding factor in how you will feel in a given day. In any situation, an event happens externally and then feelings and emotions either happen subconsciously or get chosen consciously. The more in touch with higher awareness and the present moment a person is, the greater the ability to notice emotional feelings being fired off internally.
When the feelings are noticed in the present moment, the conscious individual can determine to feel and experience the emotions, or let the initial feeling drift away and choose a different emotional response. Someone who is in great alignment with divine love will be much more likely to correct their response to situations.
Looking at things that upset me in the short list above, "leaving Maui" was not fun. I felt sadness and irritation at having to leave the island. Noticing these emotions, I consciously agreed that "yes, it does suck terribly to leave Maui." But I then let go of the feeling and focused on what was in front of me instead of running a subconscious script in my head that was triggered by leaving Maui.
There have been times when I am not so present in the moment I feel something I don't want to feel. I may suddenly "wake up" and be staring off into space feeling like crap. I have to piece together the clues and thought-chain that went from one bad thought to another and another to an awful daydream that gave me a pit in my stomach!
For now, simply do the lessons and trust the process will work on you. Here is where you can find lesson 5 of A Course In Miracles.
Lesson 4 of A Course In Miracles instructs me to scan my thoughts. I am to apply the following to each thought I find - "This thought about [whatever thought is] does not mean anything. It is like the things I see in this room." It does not matter whether the thought is "good" or "bad." The lesson is to be applied arbitrarily regardless of how I feel about the thought.
Fortunately I was having mostly what I felt to be "good" thoughts. Of course, in typing that previous sentence, I see that my interior judge is hard at work as usual. In just a few days of re-taking the Course, it has shocked me how much I judge everything that goes on.
It doesn't happen consciously, there is just a seemingly constant need to decide how I feel or think about everything that passes by my vision or mind.
But at this point it doesn't even feel like a need. It just happens. Thoughts arise but they have no trigger from what I consider to be "me." And then ancillary thoughts fire off to debate the value of the previous thought.
I am glad that the text portion of the Course In Miracles repeatedly assures me that I am not alone in having incessant monkey brain chatter. Because observing how little control I have over my thinking, and judging, is very embarrassing. I cling to the thought (once again, thinking) that awareness is a first step to change.
Lesson 3 builds on the first two lessons, instructing me to look around the room I am in. While I am doing that, whatever comes in my vision I am to tell myself "I do not understand anything I see in this room."
At first I thought this exercise was too similar to the previous two lessons. But when I looked around the room, the lesson's effect was quite dramatic. I realized that the lesson was right! I am not sure if it was because I was tired, my mind was not thinking much when I started the exercise, or the lessons are already taking effect.
When I looked at inanimate objects such as the wall-length mirror and my nightstand, there wasn't that much of a trigger. But when I looked at my dog, wife, and myself, all while saying "I do not understand", it was shocking.
Do I really understand my dog? She is a wonderful and sweet old girl. But I don't know her purpose for being alive, why she is in my life, and why she is snoring (and farting quite nastily) in my bedroom. Somehow along the way I have determined and accepted beliefs about her existence that I can't prove our true.
For my wife and myself, of course I like to think that I understand the two of us. However, loving someone with all your heart and understanding their reason for existence are two entirely different concepts entirely. I feel that she is teaching me how to expand true love to its fullest. I type this, it feels great, I am certainly going to continue to think and believe this.
But I don't understand that...or at least I'm willing to admit that what I think and believe to be true about any relationship in my life is something that I may not understand. For the people that come into my life, be it family, friends, pets, business partners, whoever - why did this happen?
The 2nd lesson tells me to glance around the room and say the following:
I have given everything I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] all the meaning that it has for me
This lesson is pretty jarring if you really stop to think about it. When doing this exercise for a few minutes as instructed, it made me feel both foolish and happy. Foolish that there is so much in the world and how it works that I have read about but still often forget to apply. Happy that I am being reminded again so that I can live today and the future with a more corrected mindset.
I've heard a lot of esoteric concepts over the years that physicists are now proving. Everything is energy that we perceive as objects is a concept that I feel like I can accept easily. Energy has a radiation, I look at that energy, it takes the shape of the objects or people in the room.
So this makes the objects simply energy. When I decide, "that is a nice table" or "we really need to upgrade our bedroom set", it is a judgment I have made over a neutral energy form. The feelings that get generated, and the beliefs I decide to carry forward from those judgments and feelings, are completely up to my whim.
The first lesson of the Course In Miracles is a radical beginning. I am instructed to look around my surroundings and affirm that everything I see does not mean anything. Literally, I am to look around the room and say "That door does not mean anything", "That window does not mean anything", and so on.
Its definitely not the sort of pious, fear-wielding, guilt-causing orders that you might think of when considering other religions. This is one of many differences of the Course In Miracles, it is not a religion. It is a mind re-training, teaching you to re-perceive reality in a correct manner.
This lesson was a good reminder that I see objects and they actually have no meaning. It is only when my mind makes a decision, based on beliefs that may or may not be true to me or anyone else, that any object suddenly comes to acquire meaning.
This makes me wonder. What beliefs have I acquired simply due to a decision I made in the heat of a moment in my past? Am I even conscious of them? Would I agree with them now at this present time in my awareness?
You can read the first lesson online by clicking on this link.
As usual I have a whole ton of goals for the year. One of them is make sure I keep writing. I had slacked off on writing due to the workload of http://www.TheMeditationMind.com and don't want to use that as an excuse anymore.
I also missed the daily practice of A Course In Miracles. I went through the daily exercises over a two and a half year span. I felt great while going through the lessons but feel disconnected from it over the past 6 months. Time to revitalize that spiritual link.
Read about A Course In Miracles here.
The result - I'm going to blog about going through the Course In Miracles lessons. There are 365. Will I perform the lessons every day and also write about them every night? I am sure life will get too fun and hectic for that. But this public commitment will keep me returning to the lessons and this blog on as regular a basis as possible.
My 30-day trial of early rising and quitting caffeine is over. There is a lot of value in giving a new lifestyle change 30 days to evaluate. It gives a true picture of how the change will affect your life. After applying a change for 30 days, it becomes a habit. I intend to continue life as an early riser that does not drink caffeine.
My head feels a lot clearer without daily caffeine. It is not that I was walking around like a zombie all day before the trial. However, there is a noticeable difference in brain clarity. I find myself getting in productive zones of focus through my intention to do so. Pre-trial, I needed my 11am and 2pm double mochas to get truly clear-headed.
My days have a lot more productivity. I am not only referring to work. Getting up at 630am, I am able to spend one hour on my morning mental routines of meditation, affirmation, visualization, and neural reconditioning. Then I can grab a workout of some kind (most days), screw around on the internet, eat breakfast, hang with TheWife if she’s around, and it is only 10am after all of that time. Pre-trial I would wake up at 945am, work until lunch, and come home after lunch, find it to be 130pm, and I hadn’t done any of those things yet except jerk around on the internet. It is very gratifying to have workouts and all my mental mojo going before 10am.
Additionally, I am waking up before 7am whether I like it or not. If I have drank or ate like a pig the previous evening, I can go back to sleep until a little after 8am. But either way, I can’t sleep until 10am even if I want to, unless I was on a 3am bender. That only happened once on the trial. This appears to be a good thing.
I am no longer a slave to caffeine and will continue to avoid drinking it. Unless I feel like drinking it of course. This may sound like a cop-out. I had a mocha at Gallery Café while I was writing this. But I drank it because it sounded tasty and I had a headache, not because I needed any caffeine. I could re-name the “quitting caffeine” to “not being beholden to caffeine” and it would serve my point better. I no longer need or rely on it, but reserve the right to have a cappuccino on a hotel terrace in Italy and enjoy it.
One problem with the trial is that I can’t stay up as late as I used to. Caffeine early in the day continued to affect me late in the evening. Weeknights I have been in bed by midnight. I don’t like this. But the increased satisfaction at getting things done has kept me waking up early and will continue to so.
It was a major life change to commit to 30 days of early rising and quitting caffeine. I performed this trial during my destination wedding, moving buildings for the first time in 5 years, and 2 weeks on an overseas honeymoon. The changes have met my expectations and early rising with no caffeine is now a habit.
Tuesday, September 16th 2008 The cleaning ladies were scheduled at my old place for a move-out cleaning at 8am. In the past this would’ve been the cause for much distress and consternation, why have the damn cleaning service so early in the morning? I probably would’ve schedule them for post-lunch.
Today it was no big deal that the appointment was at 8am. I’d already been awake, done my morning metaphysical routines, surfed the internet, and had breakfast. It struck me on the way to my old apartment that early rising had become a habit if I didn’t think it was notable that an 8 am appointment wasn’t too early.