WELCOME 11

WELCOME 11

P. 48-49

We need to be vigilant in this chaotic time which seems to revel in a sense of separateness and exclusivity. I found myself the other day rejoicing in the discomfort of another. As soon as I realized what I was doing, I knew there was something wrong with this picture. If nothing else, I was living in a frame of reference of low vibration and inadvertently pulling others into the vortex.

It is the old but continually viable understanding that “I can love you and still object to your behavior.” One of the many aspects that is interesting here is that the part of me that does not perceive you as a child of God also cannot perceive anyone, including myself, as a child of God.

Meister Eckhardt once said, “The eye I with which I see God is the same eye with wish I see myself.” In other words if I see God as judgmental and punishing, I will most likely see myself as deserving of punishment. If I see God as conditionally loving, then I will see myself is a being who must somehow earn love, as a being who is not worthy of love.

I am not sure how this fits into the context of our work, but I was moved to share this experience with our class on Sunday morning. Saturday I was asked to perform the funeral service, the graveside service, for a young man who committed suicide. I was somewhat familiar with his family and circumstances. According to his parents even at an early age he struggled with depression along with anxiety and compulsion. He was in and out of therapy, on this medication or that, and finally from his own perception, the pain was just too great to bear anymore. 

Those of us who have dealt with depression and/or the helplessness and hopelessness that accompanies addictions can recognize that razor’s edge of keeping alive or letting life go. The lesson that was taught to me here, as I allowed the proper words and expressions to flow to me and through me, went something like this, “You are letting go of your old outdated image of (name) as a person weighed down with darkness, depression, and hopelessness to a vision of who and where he is in this moment, a shining light resting in the peacefulness of God finally touching in this other lifetime what are he could not reach here on earth.

I was blessed to become aware again the the power of perception and how much of a choice it truly is. I can choose to see you as an imperfect personality self or I can also see you as a child of God. I do not know how do you perceive yourself nor can I know that. Am I willing to let go of my limited perception of who you are?

Not only does our perception cloud who we think we are or who we think others are, but also clouds the perception my history. I think of my history as being a linear string of facts describing my past and leading up to today. But even in the histories of nations and the world, we are influenced by judgments, prejudice, my desire to be right and sometimes the desire to paint ourselves in the best possible light. You have heard it expressed “the winners write history.” And that is true. As an example, for people my age, especially men, we live in the mythology as children as we played cowboys and Indians that Cowboys were good and the Indians were bad And even in our history there was not much good to say about those conquered races. It is only now that we are broadening our concepts, our conceptual horizons. By the way, I think this is a real plus as a race. We are able to look more deeply and honestly at ourselves and even begin to take responsibility for the injustices we might have produced.

Many of us have had the experience when sharing family memories with siblings, realizing that we are speaking of the same event but each one of us holds it quite a bit differently than the other. In fact, it might seem that we are speaking or remembering a totally different event! But we are talking about the same event, but with different perceptions and sometimes even different outcomes.

What all of this is pointing to is that although there are facts in your life, what you consider to be your history is more of a string of interpretations then actual physical events. Thus we introduce the concept of illusion, not as something being bad or wrong but simply something that has no real basis in reality except in your in your mind.

We have a suggested homework assignment: One is to go back and to examine an incident or experience in your life and without judgment or pushing too hard asking yourself “How can I perceive this differently?”

Another suggestion would be to dwell on this wonderful one-liner from Crosby, Stills and Nash, “Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now.”

Closing with a sharing from one of our classmates with a pertinent selection from ACIM second edition:

Chapter 13, Section VII. Attainment of the Real World - Paragraph 9 Sentence 4:

"Knowledge needs no correction. Yet the dreams of love lead unto knowledge.  In them you see nothing fearful and because of this they are welcome that you offer knowledge.  Love waits on welcome, not on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost.”

Peace.