RESPONSIBILITY 5

P. 71-73

Essentially, the metaphor of widening your circle is to realize that you are moving beyond your self-imposed limitations. You are not even creating something new, all of your gifts and qualities already exist. To use the language of this book—what you are doing now is to claim them as your own.

The difficulty for some of us might be that this kind of stretch seems scary. It’s like a trapeze artist letting go and flying into the arms of another. Here we are “hanging out int the dangle” not quite sure where we are, how we got there, and whether or not we are going to to caught and brought to the other side. (“My Lord, God, I have no idea where I am going…”)

“What you are doing right now is making a decision that those things that exist beyond the self can be inherited as you, in your field, and as you express them as in your field, you can call them into manifestation. Every time you think of something as a possibility, you create a new offering for your soul to express itself in a new way.”

We come to that concept again of “possibility.” I know I have emphasized this before, but it touches me as being very important right now. It seems to be a missing step in our transformation. We hear about a spiritual truth or we read about it in a book like this, and we sense the deep desire of our soul to move in this particular direction, but then what happens is we try to create this quality we are after with our mortal mind—and it doesn’t work. It lead to frustration, feeling like I am doing it wrong or I am not enough, etc.

What we need to be doing here, is allowing the thinking mind, my mortal self, to bring me as far as it can—I open myself to the possibility, let us say for example of “I can see peace instead of this.” I open myself to the possibility -that it is as far as my mind can take me, then I let the divine in me take over. I have no idea how my divine self is going to work or how this deep awareness of peace is going to show up. I let go of the form I think it is going to take, or anything else my mind like to come up with—and then I practice affirming it is so—“I could (possibility) see peace instead of this.”

“As you know yourself as the creator of your world and you understand that you have responsibility to yourselves, you will understand that this responsibility extends around you, not only to your own creations but those creations that are shared by all men. You all share the same landscape. You all drink from the same well. If the water is poisoned in the well, none of you will benefit. So you must decide today that what you are doing on your own behalf you are also doing in attendance to the needs of your fellows.”

We have explored this area of creating reality many times, but let us go back to our basic understanding. If I am walking down the street and I am hungry, what do I see? I see restaurants. If I am walking down the same street and it is raining and I have a hole in my shoe what I might see now are shoe stores or shoe repair shops, or someone selling umbrellas. Essentially, nothing on that street has changed,  but my perception and my needs create the reality that I live in.

We also share and awareness with many other beings, since we are not just individuals, we are also part of the group consciousness, and that group consciousness creates as well.

Now here is a sticky thing. I could choose to blame the group consciousness or I could accept my part in that contribution. Nazi Germany is an example. Some relied on the “I am just obeying orders” philosophy and others took on responsibility for the horror that was being created and decided to do something about it.

What seems to hold us back so often is the fear that there will not be enough— Enough money, enough food, enough love. It was so often, when I was doing couple’s counseling, that what would happen unconsciously is that people in a relationship would begin to withhold love or praise or even politeness out of an unconscious fear that sometimes there would not be enough. Is illogical as that seems and sounds, we might all find ourselves in that predicament occasionally, especially if we are not feeling very good or are hurt or angry. In that realm of thought and emotion it can be quite difficult to be loving, to be compassionate, to be open.

I recall when John D. Rockefeller was asked how much is enough money he replied “Just a little bit more.” In other words, with all the billions that I have it's not enough. Now here is an interesting thing about manifestation, here is an individual where is created great wealth for himself and yet still is not satisfied.

I had a thought about the TV show called “Hoarders.” What I discovered was that practically all of these people who are living in filth and chaos had unresolved issues around grieving. And so collecting or continuing to collect all of this stuff was an unconscious way of attempting to fill up emotionally what was missing. And, of course, like Rockefeller it would never be enough.

I was also reminded of that wonderful Rubbermaid commercial where a family is up in the attic surrounded by piles of junk and saying, “We've got too much stuff!” and then somebody has the bright idea and buys all of these Rubbermaid containers and they pack all of their stuff up and now they have a huge part of their attic free from clutter and of course one of the kids says “Hey we need more stuff?”

And so as we closed this morning we were asked to take a look at our stuff. What could we let go what no longer serves us. What am I saving? For what am I saving it for?

I have a beautiful Martin guitar in a closet hidden away in it’s case with a humidifier to make sure that the wood stays hydrated, but I hardly ever bring it out to play. What am I saving it for? I'm afraid it might get a scratch or a bump and then of course Margo asks me if that's going to change how it sounds, and we all know that it won't. But my fear of hurting or harming its beauty goes even further than my own fears because I found myself thinking what would someone think of me having this marvelous instrument and yet getting a scratch on it?

So you see all of this is my path as well, and I can be drawn into illusion and idiotic thinking as well as anyone else.

So here I am fantasizing about what I think somebody else might be thinking about me . And somehow holding onto those thoughts is being true even though they are at least five steps removed from reality.

“We want you to do this now. Make a list of things you do not need that you hold on to out of a belief in scarcity, that you must have it in your house because something or other could happen to you, and ask yourself if you are willing to leave it at the doorstep of the next place you see that attends to such offerings. You are not giving yourself anything. You are giving it to somebody else so that you may learn once and for all that what moves through you is gifted to all. “Well, I paid the money for it, it’s mine,” “I don’t want to share it,” is your right, but when you claim things in this way, you attach to scarcity and you lack inclusiveness.”

Peace!

RESPONISBILITY 4

p. 70-72  Lesson synopsis: Widening The Circle

The message for this morning is rather simple and that is to open yourself to the truth that the desires of your heart can and will be made manifest.

Last week we spoke of the work here you do with your mind, your thinking mind, and then going beyond your mind. When I asked the questions on page 68, “What is one thing in your life that you would change if you could? What is one thing you would claim if you were allowed, if you believed it could be? What is one choice you would make a new if you believe there was a possibility that it could be in manifestation? My answer to those was that “I could see peace, always.”

I realize each one of us could have a different response to those questions, and maybe even a different responses at different times so I am simply using my choice as an example.

What I do first is to open myself in willingness and intention to allow this truth of peace to manifest in my life. This, at least in part, is the work of the thinking mind, my conscious intelligence. I am encouraged not to get caught up in judging or measuring my willingness. It could be that today I am willing or that I am willing to be willing. No matter how far back I have to trace my willingness, I am simply being asked to embrace and accept where I am at this particular moment. If, for instance, I am willing to be willing to be willing I embrace myself in that perceived state of mind, and by accepting it rather than fighting it, I allow myself to move to a deeper level of willingness.

Once I have become aware of my willingness and my intention, that is essentially as far as the mind can take me. Then it is up to me, the decider, to allow my Divine self to take over, letting go of whatever form I think this manifestation might need to take. Letting go of the process I think needs to happen. After willingness and intention has been established, the how’s and the why’s are taken care of by the divine within me.

The human side of myself is waiting and looking for clues that this could be will demonstrate to me this is happening, but I usably wind up looking over there when the manifestation is happening right here. The difficulty is the the manifestation takes place in a much deeper level than my intellectual knowing.

From the material presented this morning,  we entered into a discussion about prayer. You might notice that all of the text above is a description of prayer without our even knowing it.

Most of us, including myself, can find ourselves inundated with an old model of prayer that we have simply have taken on without being conscious of it. I call it the “triangular” model of prayer. (I am on the left side of rehab base, God is the apex, and the answer or the object of my prayer is not e right side of the base.)  I am down here on planet Earth needing or wanting something for myself or for somebody else and I pray for it. I direct my thoughts upward to where God is, and so God os sort this being in the sky bombarded every second with prayer requests and then somehow makes a decision about how it is going to be answered by sending down a force or energy that will answer my request in some way— either “yes, no, maybe, wait a while.” To conjure another image it's almost like a Magic Eight Ball.

If we were praying that our team would win the game, well let us suppose that the other team is also praying that they win the game. What happens here? He who has the most prayers wins? Do I put these requests on a scale and measure them?

The model that fits our work today is more one of allowing the divine self within me come in contact with the divine self within you. It is very much reflection of the Hindu greeting Namaste— the divine within me honors the divine within you. But here we have a specific request in mind and here is where the difficulties begin. What I am requesting for myself or for another might not be in their best interest. It might seem to be to my thinking mind, but that is not necessarily the truth. So, for instance, if I were praying that my granddaughter get well, that might or might not align itself with her soul’s choice. It might be far better for me, when I think of her, to hold her in the light that she is. To know that by holding her in light, the barriers and resistance that might be present in her and in me, begin to dissolve, and because she's being held in the light, her ability to receive and absorb the light becomes a process that is easier and more simple. It flows.

To use a physical image, I might have to physically struggle to climb over a 7 foot wall, but if someone were to give me a boost my work would be made much easier.

“Now what we would like you to do once again is see yourself in the center of the circle. And imagine that around the circle is the line that you have drawn, the perimeter, the border that keeps all things from you. And we want you to extend the circle to include all those things you wrote. So what was outside of the perimeter is now included in it, within the circle you have drawn.

What you are doing right now is making a decision that those things that exist beyond the self can be inherited as you, in your field, and as you express them as in your field, you can call them into manifestation. Every time you think of something as a possibility, you create a new offering for your soul to express itself in a new way.”

There was a lot going on this morning sth was beyond words.

You might want to check out the recording.

It’s class 32 on:

http://christintraining.com/oct_21_2018.mp3

RESPONSIBILITY 3

RESPONSIBILITY 3

We began from the added information from our last email, expanding a little bit on this model of the self. Without going into a lot of detail, let us just assume that most of us have learned and been taught to identify with our personality selves. Because of that, we do not even realize that the personality self is simply a creation of our own mind, made up of all the should’s and shouldn’t's, all of the fears and all the vulnerabilities, and created in such a way that it attempts to protect us from hurts that might come our way.

The question that haunted me as I was doing this work was, “How does this imperfect and limited self become so wrapped up and compulsive about being perfect?” Setting a goal for itself that is essentially impossible and the result of which is just more frustration. Here is the outcome of my process, and please know this is simply a model and may not even be true.

This personality self that we have created, at some point, almost in a flash, like the shutter of the camera gets a brief glimpse of the divine perfection that you are. The personality self has no means of comprehending what this is, but the sense of perfection that is revealed to it spark the compulsion to achieve that perfection itself. And so we have, what I believe the course calls, a confusion of levels. My personality self is seeking the perfection of the divine self that it cannot reach or cannot comprehend.

It is only when we realize the perfection we seek is in embracing of the divine perfection we truly are good we begin to consciously move in the direction of our soul’s purpose.

The way the Dalai Lama put it was that “In the Western world we attempt to get our spiritual needs met through the material world we live in. Again setting the stage for confusion and frustration.

To add the seeming confusion, the should, this reflection of the divine self is also “driven” to a deeper and deeper realization of its Truth. Augustine once became aware of this inner drive of the soul by saying “You have made our hearts restless and they will never rest until they rest in Thee.”

And Jesus spoke this very simple lesson, “Store up for yourself treasure in heaven where neither rust nor moth consume.”

It is so easy for me to lose track of these divine directives. How often have I attempted to think myself into a spiritual state of being. To figure things out; To get an answer I could grasp and hold onto and continually remember that would somehow receive the pain of my yearning? Being in the present moment is not only grooving on this Holy Instant. It is also standing on that razor’s edge of embracing the Divine within and also opening to more.

You see the paradoxical nature of some of the statements above. They all require a sense of surrender of letting go of our attachment and our identification with our personality selves and allowing the divine self that we truly are to do its mysterious work. The image I used Sunday morning was picking up a block of ice and putting it in the sunshine. I need to do the work of picking up the ice and carrying it to the proper place, but after the I need to let go and allow precess unfold.

I have noticed that much of my prayer is asking for things. Good things. Help comfort, nurturing, peace, love, acceptance— all of those things. And yet they all come with the prerequisite that somehow or another I know what I need.

How subtle that is. The “me” that thinks I know what I need is not my spiritual self but my personality that has learned how to disguise itself as my spiritual nature.

More often, these days, when I remember it, my prayer is “Lord help me to be open to the grace to let me realize and be open to what it is that I truly need. Even here, I do not want to get caught up in judgment because how easy that is as well. Merton said is so wonderfully in his marvelous prayer “I hope that the desire to please you doesn't fact please you.” How beautiful. Within that prayer is continually expressed the wonderful paradox we are both connected to the divine and yet sometimes lost in the personality and the masks that we have created.

Choose Once Again:

“The planet that you live on is in a time of transformation. And the transformation, as we see it, is man in relation to her own identity as the aspect of the Creator manifested in form. As you attend to this truth, you become accountable to it as the creator of your world. The belief that you hold, that each of you hold, that this must not be so is where you get caught. It is the trip wire you fall over again and again as you scramble for freedom. “But I cannot go out the door. Out the door is something I don’t know. If I go out the door, I will not know who I am.” Now, we have told you who you are, again and again, and we will continue to as you allow us to. But you need the experience of yourselves as the one in choice to know that this is so.

Thank you all!

RESPONSIBILITY 2

P. 66-69

Awareness and acceptance (claiming) precede free choice. We are always choosing. However, quite often, we are choosing from a level of unconsciousness. We are choosing from patterns of behavior, reflexive or instinctual reactions we might have incorporated very early in life.

Rather than looking at this work as getting rid of something or even unlearning old stuff, the emphasis is more on acknowledging, rejoicing in, and participating with the creative energy that is already here within our higher consciousness. 

ACIM suggests it is not our weakness or our sense of lack that is frightening to us (we usually take those things for granted)—it is our light, our strength, our goodness that we are afraid of claiming. Perhaps we think that if we claim our power/our Truth, we will find out we really don’t deserve it or it will be taken away from us by some cosmic whim.

If it was not scary to claim our power then we would have done so long ago, but little do we realize, we are the ones who created the fear in the first place.

So, perhaps, this is also an ongoing lesson here for us—to see beyond our fears, to know there is more to us and more to life that what our limited fearful viewpoint shows us. 

ACIM also reminds us, “You do not ask for too much you ask for too little.”

“Now, authority and control are two different things. When you have authority, you know who you are in relationship to something. When you are in control, you are the decider of it. You are not always the decider, you know, but you are always in choice about how you attend to your creations.”

Other people are involved in making decisions that might affect us one way or another and certainly we are not in control of their choices. The emphasis here, in focusing on the energy of authority, is that no matter what the situation seemingly created by us or by another, that we have a choice of how we are to relate to it or how we are to hold it. In other words, I always have a choice of how I respond.

This is somewhat of an aside but it came up in our session Sunday morning. I rediscovered that I frequently focus on attempting to fix or correct or change all that I see that might be negative before I give myself to chance or the opportunity to appreciate the positive. The example that we found so humorous in class was, I was describing all of the things we might have to go through if someone decided to end a relationship with us—the sadness, the grieving, the anger the pain etc. And then someone mentioned it's very possible that we could feel a sense of joy and relief that the other person has decided to end this relationship. “Thank God that's over!”

There was also the discovery in the realization that each one of us chooses to deal with life and life's events in the best ways that we possibly can. Your way of transforming or healing the world might be to focus on transforming and healing yourself, and, in fact, that might be much more beneficial then organizing a march or a rally. With this and with all other aspects spiritual path, we are encouraged to trust your heart and the direction that we go in which is most loving, first of all, towards the self.

“Now understand this, please: When you know who you are, what you are, how you serve, your life must move into accord with this. This is a statement of truth. It does not preclude people doing things that you say you do not want. It does not change things that have been manifested by you in lower consciousness. It allows you to transform these things in awareness of your new frequency. “I know who I am” always, always, always is a claim of truth.”

We closed with a mediation relating to this last reading. I would encourage all of us to be continually open to this process of transformation.

“Now as your life is transformed in choice, as what you have gone into agreement with changes, what you are responsible to is transformed. Now we will ask you this: What is one thing in your life that you would change if you could? What is one thing you would claim if you were allowed, if you believed it could be? What is one choice you would make anew if you believed there was a possibility that it could be in manifestation? As you choose this thing now, as you decide the new possibility and claim your worth, “I know who I am, I know what I am, I know how I serve,” you align to the new possibility that may be created in your authority. If you decide right now that this one thing that you ask for that may be transformed is allowed to be transformed, you can look at a new choice”

It has been pointed out previously, but I am continually called to remind myself of this—POSSIBILITY. We open ourselves to the possibility of all this. That is as far as our conscious human mind can take us. The rest, the realization of all possibility, is manifested and taken over by our Higher Nature. 

It is so easy to get caught up in the thinking that “I” have to make all of this happen. None of these transformations happens through will power, force or any other mandate of the limited self. 

You open yourself to the possibility and then let the Divine within you led you to the Truth.

Thank you all. Have a wonderful week.

May all beings be at peace; may all beings be free of suffering; may all beings remember who they are.

RESPONSIBILITY 1

What a great session. Thank you!

P. 64-66

RESPONSIBILITY—-OH, NO!!!!!!

As we mentioned before responsibility is the ability to respond. It is essentially the difference between our knee-jerk reflexive reactions to people places and things as compared to being aware of and practicing the ability to choose how we respond. We can also suggest that response is also about widening our perception about a person or an event.

Personally, and this might not apply to everybody, I still have many reflexive knee-jerk reactions, snap judgments you might call them, that I realize are reflections of my personality self—fears, prejudices, untruths that I've collected over the years, and even though I have the desire to change them, often times they are still here. If I take responsibility for them instead of blaming my parents or my church or any other aspect of my past, then when these seemingly instantaneous judgments occur, I can recognize they r mine and let them go without getting caught up in an argument with them.

I have spent a good amount of time and effort attempting to rid myself of these instinctual reactions. To my dismay, they are all still here. I realized I was like a person who spends all their time pulling up the weeds from their garden, but never giving themselves the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of the flowers. What I have come to learn, for me, is that perhaps many, if not all, of these reflexive internal snap judgments will continue to occur, but then I have a choice of what to do or how to respond after those knee jerks have taken place. I believe there will come a time, spiritually, for all of us, when we will be clear of judgment but I do not perceive myself being there yet. (Perhaps it would be wise of me to affirm, “I am free of all past learning that has contribute to my limiting judgements.”)

I also wonder what would be like if I were to follow the metaphor of the garden above,  what it would be like to know that the weeds are just as beautiful as the flowers????

The focus the the beginning part of this chapter is about accepting responsibility for our creations and that includes all of the things that we connect with through our five senses as well as all of the circumstances we find ourselves in. Essentially, we create in order to learn. That is a simple definition of our path at the moment. I do believe that there will come a time when our truth will be “I learn in order to create.”

For many of us, as we sit with this material, we might feel overwhelmed with what we considered to be the negative things that we have created our lives. And from that sense of being overwhelmed comes denial as well as blame, shame and guilt. Although this is a natural reaction coming from our limited personality self it is not a necessary one.

“Now this is not to frighten you. It’s about giving you freedom. When you have responsibility for something, you have a choice to deal with it in one way or another. You can be accountable to it in whatever way you believe. But what we would like to tell you now is that your choice to be responsible to yourself as the one in authority, who claims herself as worthy of what she says she wants, will create a new life for you. And what you claim will always call you forward.”

First of all, if our lives were so blatantly bogged down with negativity none of us would have survived as long as we have. Secondly, because we have identified with the limited part of ourselves, our personality consciousness, we have become attached also to a misperception of how the world is. How the world; it’s a pretty scary place. And so what has happened for many people is that they have gathered negativity around themselves as an illusory form of protection. Almost as if you were to say to yourself, “I will think about the worst thing that could happen and therefore I will be prepared, and if it does and if it does not happen as horribly as I might imagine then I might even feel a bit of relief.

Believe me I know that territory well, but does that thinking serve me in anyway? Does it really protect me from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” or does it simply create an illusion of safety against the illusion of fear. See how “sticky” it gets? I’m creating an illusion to protect myself from another illusion!

“Now we want to teach you today about what you are responsible to: Everything. Everything. Everything. And we would like you to understand this. You are responsible to everything that you claim. “I claim I am unhappy,” claims you as the one responsible for that choice. “I claim myself in my worth” makes you responsible as the one who claims his worth. What you are not accountable to is not in your purview, you have not agreed to, you have not chosen. But if you can imagine right now that everything you see before you you have agreed to because it could not be there without permission, you will understand the volume that your responsibility extends to.”

Through our being and our conscious connection to our soul, to our divine nature, we have also created monumental and exquisite beauty. In fact, the beauty that we have created is so profound, the ego or personality self cannot comprehend that this creation came from you. Here is where we are challenged to go beyond the limited perceptions of our personality self, not only to embrace the beauty that we have created, but also the beauty that we are.

“I am now willing to embrace the beauty of creation knowing it is my beauty as well.” My does not refer to an individual self; it is not mine as a personality, it is essentially the flow of divine grace through all beings. As if we were all together watching a beautiful sunset and being overcome by the beauty of the sunset and also realizing, at the same time, that this beauty is a creation that comes from our own divine self.

Peace