RESPONSIBILITY 9

RESPONSIBILITY 9

DAY SIX

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P. 79-80

I found the material covered today to be both profound and beautiful. It is almost a short yet complete narrative of Mankind's life on planet Earth.

We are introduced to a new Concept and that is the concept of “density.” Density is another expression of what we have referred to as low vibration. In the physical or material world the lower the vibration the denser the material; the more dense the material, the more inertia it contains. ( I am not physicist, so please know that I am speaking in the language of metaphor rather than science.)

We can apply this same principle to our spiritual and emotional world. The more dense or heavy or low our vibration might be, the more energy it will take to move it in a more positive direction. A simple example would be If you want to move a rock, you push and you push and you push, seemingly getting nowhere, and then there is a slight amount of forward motion, and once that forward motion begins, the rock is more easily moved. This working space between the Rock in stillness and when it begins to move, is referred to as inertia.

In the spiritual world for instance, the more we are attached to something, for whatever reasons, the more difficult it might become for us to release. The stronger the attachment, the stickier it becomes, and the more work might be required for the release or letting go to be accomplished. A balloon tethered to the ground by the weight of many sandbags—the more bags, the more work to get it free and flying.

Without going into too much detail, I recall when I was attempting to give up smoking. I was able to do practically anything or everything I could think of except not smoking. I prayed about it; I forced myself to quit for a while; I worked the 12 steps with it and yet there it was again and again. In desperation I prayed again and listened for the answer. The way I received went something like this. “Gerry, you are in the process of quitting. Continue to practice and to use all of those positive tools at your disposal, and do not beat up or condemn yourself for your seeming failures. There will come a time in the near future when your willing and loving efforts will become manifest in the material world.

 I went with that-- One day, I noticed that I did not smoke nor did I smoke the next day. I did not say to myself, “Oh I am free of that.”  I just simply allowed myself to be grateful for each day that passed that I was free of my addiction. The initial stages of that surrender and its manifestation in the material world had a huge amount of inertia behind it, so much so that it did not seem that my efforts were producing any kind of results at all, and yet those efforts were producing results without me consciously realizing it.

So here we are with this book again, realizing that on some level our intellect is being fed and guided, and yet also we are aware that this is a journey beyond the intellect. As a meditation teacher likes to say at the beginning of each process, “You have a body but, you are not your body; you have emotions and feelings, and yet you are not your emotions you are not your feelings; you have a mind and you have thoughts, and yet you are not your thoughts, you are not your mind. You are more than all of that. And so are we all.

In that first part of the reading, I am reminded of the parable of the Prodigal Son and the realization, on a metaphysical level, that the prodigal never left home. The Prodigal never lost the love of the Father. No matter what the son might have been doing, gambling, whoring, or feeding the pigs, he was loved unconditionally by the father even if he did not realize it.

“We respond to you as you need to be responded to. Each one of you who reads our text goes into relationship with us as the listener. And as you listen you receive, and as you receive you grow, you enlighten, you respond to yourselves in a higher way. The journey that you are on now is one of manifestation, the manifestation of the self as can be realized in the Christ vibration held in physical form. Now, this is an enormous journey you’re on. It’s a reclamation of self. It’s a triumphant return to who and what you have always been intended to be.”

We are all unconditionally loved, in fact, we might even say we are all unconditional love, but we are the ones who choose how open we are going to be to that Love. It is like turning on a faucet. It can go drip, drip, drip, into our being, or it can totally surround, absorb and flow through the truth of Who We Are in fact it can Define Who We Are.

“Why have you gone so far from yourselves? Why was it allowed? Why did mankind create for himself the separation from his Source? In fact, you have never been separated. But the density of vibration that you have created and assist in creating and re-creating through thought-forms, through beliefs, through systems of control that have adhered in such a way that moving beyond them has been a process. The process is here now to be received in a new way as we have given you a technique, a way of operating in Source vibration that you may know.”

The questions asked, “Why have you gone so far from yourselves? There is no adequate answer for the intellect here and so in some ways the answer is rather meaningless. 

Quote from THE IMPERSONAL LIFE:

“It is well if your personality with its intellect impels you thus to question and rebel against authority you do not yet know to be Mine. It is really I Who cause your personality thus to rebel; for your personality with its proud sense of individuality is still needed by Me to develop a mind and body strong enough that they can perfectly express Me. Until you have become prepared to know Me it is but natural for your personality thus to question and rebel. Once you recognize My Authority, that moment the undermining of the authority of the personality has begun. The days of its dominion are numbered, and you will more and more turn to Me for help and guidance.” (The “ME” that is referred to is your won Divine Self. Quire often we are hampered by the limitation of language which , for the most part, speaks in the language of duality.  

We were asked the question in class this morning regarding “How do I love unconditionally without being a victim; without being passive; without ignoring Injustice. How do I approach injustice with unconditional love.

Believe me, I do not deny the conundrum or difficulty in that. I struggle with that daily. The intellect is looking for a formula, a set of rules or guidelines that will always tell me what to do under certain circumstances, “Well if this happens, then here is what you do.”

There is no such rule book. What we do, however, is continually be aware prayerfully aware of asking our higher self, “How can I approach this situation in the highest vibration in the most loving way?” And then be open to the answer that will come to you, because it always will. And the answer to your prayer might not be the same as mine, because each one of us is unique manifestation of the Divine, and each one of us will express that Divinity in a unique way.

“When you claim “I am the Word,” you are self-identifying as the aspect of the Creator that can be manifested in form. Can be is the operative word here. You are not incarnating in your higher vibration without work on your part. And to believe that we are giving you language that would solve all your problems and move you into a higher dimensional reality without you taking responsibilities for your creations would be misguidance. We would not do that for you. Mankind is responsible for his creations. What you have created is your responsibility and you are being attended to now by us in our authority, who may support you as you grow and change and reclaim your manifestation as the Creator embodied in form.”

RESPONSIBILITY 8

P. 77-79

So let's begin with that image of you standing in a circle with all of those objects— material, emotional, spiritual— all of those things you claim as yours being within the circle. And then outside of the circle, and we do not want to ignore the material things, but the primary purpose of this exercise is to examine those emotional and spiritual values or gifts that we think we are yearning for and imagine ourselves not having.

I would suggest that everyday we might do an imagery somewhat similar to this and consciously expand the circle we are standing in especially to encompass those spiritual and emotional gifts we desire and sense that we need on this aspect of our journey.

We have been told “Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you, but what happens on a deeper reality as we seek, we realize that what we have been looking for is already here.

It was suggested this morning that we could keep things very, very simple by consciously working on the truth of remembering Who We Are and I could not agree more. I would suggest, also, that remembering Who You Are also means being in the experience of Who You Are. In other words, recognizing that you are an expression, in this moment, of Divine Light and Divine Love. This is much more than a thought or remembering an idea or even remembering a truth. It is about being in the experience of that truth. Any one of us can say to ourselves, “Let's remember who we are,” and then immediately get back into our compulsions, addictions, and attachments and our general overall forgetfulness.

I believe that the work we are doing here not only involves honoring our intellect and it's continuing search, but also honors the divine within us that already knows. I recall the guides pointing out in the first book that they could have provided or created this work as simply standing in a different or a higher vibrational energy field. No need for book or words. But at the same time, they honor the truth that we are, at least, in part, living in a material world, and that we can feed the mind as well as feeding spirit and to work with ourselves without confusing the two.

The words “I am word…” and whatever follows that is a way of claiming your Divine truth in numerous ways. One is to realize then what you are claiming as your truth cannot be completely grasped or understood by the thinking mind. In other words, even though you are using your voice to claim this is true, the truth of what you are claiming goes far beyond what your mind can comprehend.

I recall, even in the first book, we were encouraged to say a phrase such as “Word I am word through my anger; word I am word.” At first glance it might appear as if I am claiming to reinforce my anger, which would not seem to be a very healthy thing. What is happening here is happening on many levels. First I am not denying my anger, I am accepting it as being a part of what is going on with me at this moment. By putting it “in the Word,” I am raising the vibration of what I am calling anger and giving myself the opportunity to see it differently. I am not getting caught up in the emotion of anger, nor am I judging it as being right or wrong. What I am noticing is that anger is a lower vibration than the one I would normally choose to live in. By raising the vibration of my anger I am giving myself the opportunity to transform it.

Again there are a number of pathways we could travel here using anger as an example, and please note it is only one of many examples we could use. First of all I could remember the words of the famous teacher who said, “It's okay to be angry at someone but never put them out of your heart.” That is one level of awareness. Another level comes about when we realize that I am never angry about something that I do not love or care about.

Let us say, for instance, I am angry at a public official. If I sit with my feeling for a moment, I will realize that a value that I hold dear seems to be threatened, and so I respond to that threat with anger. 

If a tree falls on my car I will probably be angry. I could discover all sorts of reasons for that anger, but on a deeper level I can discover that even though this is a material object, I care about it, I am grateful to it for getting me from one place to another. The anger that I feel, or the depth of the anger that I feel is usually in direct proportion to the love I feel for that person or that object.

Now when I realize this and I choose to raise the level or vibration of my anger it can be transformed into love, into acceptance, into gratitude. I still have to get my windshield fixed. That part does not go away, but the energy that I use in doing what needs to be done in the outside world can be very different and have a much higher vibration then the anger that first got me there. After a time I can even begin to be grateful for my anger that help me to wake up to a deeper truth.

And so all of what follows in this paragraph below from the book is about claiming truth and climbing the highest vibration of that truth that we can claim for ourselves.

“As we gift you with the frequency we work with, we do this for one reason: so you may work with yourself and your fellows. “I am Word through my body, I am Word through my vibration, I am Word through my knowing of myself as Word” is the attunement to the frequency we work with. But how you attend to the frequency in your life will always be your claim.

“I am Word through my witnessing of my fellows,” “I am Word through my choices,” “I am Word through my alignment,” “I am Word through my freedom,” “I am Word through my love” will support you in claiming these things in your worth. “I am Word through all that I know to be true” will support you in realizing the truth in any and all situations you may encounter. When you claim, “I am Word through all I know to be true,” it states very simply that you have moved into resonance with truth and what is not in truth will not be in adherence to your field. It will not resonate with you as truth, so it will fall away. So many choices to make, we say, may be made in a new way once you realize you can. That your choices are made in authority and that you are responsible to your choices.”

The next section in the book addresses giving away or sharing not only what it is in your life that you no longer need but also recognizing the needs of your brothers and sisters and helping those needs to be filled. Although the book seems to focus on material realms, we are also reminded that this giving and the sharing takes place on a level of emotions and spirit as well. Along with a cup of coffee or a decent meal, my brother or sister might also need to be affirmed as a human being and as a Divine Child of God.

I am reminded of that wonderful scene out of the Acts of the Apostles. When Peter and John were going through a gateway to the temple and a crippled man was asking for alms, Peter spoke by saying “Gold and silver I have not, but what I have I give you in the name of Jesus the Christ get up and walk.” WAhat a beautiful thing.

There is another biblical instance that I'm thinking of at the moment was when a number of people brought a paralytic to Jesus with the intention that he be healed. Jesus looked at him and said, “My son, your sins are forgiven you.” I often wondered what it was like to be that man on the palate, paralyzed, and hear those words. At first I might have thought “that's not what I came here for I want to get up and walk; I really don't care whether my sins are forgiven or not.” But in the long run, what is it that I truly seek wholeness of body or peace of mind? Of course, I do not need to trade those off; it is possible to have both, but I also remember Ram Dass relating that after his stroke he was taken to John of God and he said at the moment of being in touch with those healing beings that channel their energy through John, that he knew at that moment that he was healed, but he was not cured. In other words his body was still paralyzed or dysfunctional, and yet in his mind and his heart he was perfectly okay.

It is probably been mentioned many times that this journey is not necessarily one of feeling good. Now please do not get that confused with thinking that you have to feel bad, that is definitely an old message. The truth is we are not focusing just on feelings or emotions, we are focusing on a deeper reality.

I realize I am paraphrasing here but I recall the guides saying at one point “we really could care less how you feel—this is not the object of our work. The object of our work is to help and guide you into remembering the truth of Who You Are.

And because we are all in this together there is no way that I can grow if I ignore my brother's needs. Just as we ask in the Lord's Prayer that we might be forgiven as we forgive. What that means is that this is not a black-and-white issue, it is to the degree then we are able to forgive that we receive forgiveness, and this is true for all aspects of our spiritual growth. he degree to which I can love myself is the same degree that I can love others.

“We love you each at whatever level of learning you stand in. We accept you each at whatever level of knowledge you may have attained. We understand that for some of you going on this journey is a confusing act because it means defying what you were taught and holding yourself accountable in ways you thought would never have to.”

“But the days of convenience really are over. And those of you who would claim a spiritual path while leaving your brother on the roadside to starve must wake up to your own accountability. “But they created that,” you may say. For whatever reasons you may not know. But if they created that, they have also created the opportunity for you to serve and you must say thank you to them for this gift. You know who you are. Act upon it, please. You cannot bear witness to the perfection in your fellows and not house him, not keep him fed, and not keep him loved.”

RESPONSIBILITY 7

P.76-77

A passage from another book I read recently. It describes an extremely important part of the process. 

I found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard “new things” that is the things that they have never heard before.

They did not formulate it for themselves, but in fact they always try to contradict this in their minds and translate what they heard into their habitual language whatever happened to be.

I know that it is not an easy thing to realize that one is hearing new things. We are so accustomed to the old tunes, and the old motives, that long ago we ceased to hope and ceased to believe that there might be anything new.

And then we hear new things, we take them for old, or think that they can be explained and interpreted by the old. It is true that it is a difficult task to realize the possibility and necessity quite new ideas, and it needs, with time, a revaluation of all usual values.

I cannot guarantee that you will have new ideas, that is, ideas you have never heard before, from the store, but if you are patient, you will very soon begin to notice them. And then I wish you not to miss them and to try not to interpret them in the old way.

As I was reminded in class, what is spoken here is very similar to Jesus analogy of putting “new wine in old wine skins.” Without realizing it, we find ourselves attempting to fit a new piece of information into our old system of knowing. This is a reflection the compulsivity of the mind. It not only wants to understand and control, it also wants to categorize, to pigeon hole everything, to create its own internal Dewey decimal system which everything must align to. It was also mentioned the mind can only create an image or belief that is really created from past information. It is very clever in disguising past ideas as new ones.

Again, what we are attempting to work with is not to destroy or devalue the intellect. It is obviously an extremely important and necessary aspect of our being, however, when we begin to deal with aspects of spirituality we must begin realize that there are many facets to our learning that cannot be completely understood by the thinking or the immortal mind.

When using the term “mystery” we do not necessarily mean the unknowable. We can know through our Spirit, through our intuition, through our imagination. We can  know an idea or belief that might not be known through thinking mind. In someways this is the stretch we are making. It is not a blind leap, but it is a leap beyond knowing with the tangible proof seeking intellect. It is the deeper realization that we can know on various levels of our being beyond our thinking mind.

The image that came to my mind was from the story of Cinderella. You might recall that her sisters would go to any lengths to try and make the shoe fit, even cutting off a toe or the back of their heel. This is what the mind does with new ideas, to try and make some fit within the old framework. No judgment here, simply be aware that this subversive process of the intellect can happen to any of us without our even realizing it.

*************

“We will draw the circle again with you at the center. And on the outline of the circle you will imagine that the abilities you need to demonstrate, to move you forward, are all written out for you. “My ability to learn,” “My ability to see,” “My ability to know,” “My ability to maintain myself in my high vibration.” Imagine that these things that you need are just outside the border. Now we draw the circle once again so that they are included in your field. You are the chooser here. This is not just a symbolic act. This is a choice you make to claim yourself in dominion. “In dominion” means in authority, and “in authority” means you are responsible.”

I keep forgetting , I am not doing this all any myself. 

An outline of the process might look like this: 

The essential piece of growth is put in front of me, and I choose whether to widen my circle and claim it as my own or to stay stagnant where I am. Choosing stagnation is allowing my fear-based ego and personality self to dominate my life. Choosing to expand my circle pushes me beyond fear to a deeper sense of consciousness and awareness. Just as fear creates the contraction of spirit, so does my yearning for wholeness push me towards expansion.

Whether I consciously realize it or not, there are beings in my life who are guiding and directing me towards my soul's purpose. Just as a parent takes a child's hand as she learns how to walk, catches her when she stumbles, holds gently until she finds her balance, so do our teachers do for us, whether they have bodies or not.

Along with this guidance and direction there's also the sense that others have walked this journey before and therefore it is possible for us to do the same. Not only that, not simply our willingness or the awareness of others who have gone before ,but there is also this rather mysterious Energy that we call grace. It can be described and recognized in various ways. Ultimately it is the awareness of God's unconditional love.

“Now who are you anyway? What do you think you are? What can you imagine yourself to be? These are all important questions to ask yourselves. And the desires you have to be known by us is simply a reflection of the desire to be known by yourself in your true merit. You are obligated to yourself, first and foremost, to hear your own voice, your own requirements for change and choice. As you listen, you will be taught by yourself and you will move toward these things you need one at a time.”

So here we are standing in our own circle surrounded by those things those beliefs, those ideas, those points of identification that we have grown comfortable with.

We are looking beyond the boundary that we have drawn around ourselves and seeing those qualities that we are drawn and attracted to but seem to be just out of our reach.

Our self-centered fearful ego tells us, “Let us be comfortable with what we have.” Fearfully, it's says, “If you try to embrace what is outside the circle of safety, you might lose everything.” That is one force that is pulling us.

On the other side, pulling us towards growth and unity consciousness comes first our yearning for wholeness/completion; then comes our deep willingness to grow, to transform; then then there is that part of us that embraces the possibility of going beyond our self-imposed limitations; then there is those loving guiding beings, those teachers who we have attracted to ourselves who are gently holding and guiding us on the way; and finally there is grace, the unconditional love of God that continually allows us to claim our Truth and to be who we are.

“No one is waiting for you, you know, to change. You are the only one here. You are the only one who can decide this. You live your life as you claim it. You are the authority you seek. And as you don’t want to be, you find others to fill the role. We are not that role. We are teachers, and any teacher worth merit has one goal in mind: the learning of the student so the student may attend to herself.

As we gift you with the frequency we work with, we do this for one reason: so you may work with yourself and your fellows. “I am Word through my body, I am Word through my vibration, I am Word through my knowing of myself as Word” is the attunement to the frequency we work with. But how you attend to the frequency in your life will always be your claim.”

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

RESPONSIBILITY 6

P. 73-76

 It seems as if we ended up last week with that wonderful Rubbermaid commercial where everything gets cleared out of the attic and there's more empty space and one of the kids says “We need more stuff. And all our stuff is baggage. It might be interesting to note that the the Latin word for baggage is  “impedimenta” or freely translated “something that gets in my way.”

Now baggage can take all sorts of forms. It could be physical things that we cling to for whatever reasons, sentimental value, or scarcity thinking or even actually perceiving that I need something at this particular moment. It might be difficult to make a distinction between having and enjoying some material thing without being attached to it. We have spoken of this before, but one of the reasons why attachment to a material thing is so extraordinarily draining is that our attachment is not to the thing itself, but our idea of the thing (which always exists in the past) For example, I am attached to my new car, but my new car has ceased being new, but I am still attached to the car as it was. This happens quite unconsciously for most of us. An attachment to whatever it might be actually drains us of energy. I wonder how many things I am unconsciously attached to that are draining me of energy today?

Attachment can also take the form of ideas, beliefs, values— many, many intangible manifestations in material world. It is probably much more these that we are being call to examine. Because these can also drain us of energy, produce unconscious conflict, and produce feelings and emotions t that can sometimes be quite disturbing and confusing.

“We are all one.” Even on this material plane when we appear separate from one another because we have distinct bodies, still what we do and what we think affects all beings. The Course points out that there are no neutral thoughts. The language we use in this book is “thought, which is the manifestation of energy, either raises or lowers the vibration of the planet, of all beings.

Do you see in the midst of the confusion, chaos, and seeming negativity in your world today, how anger fear and outrage, instead of changing things for the better, actually produces a lower vibration that is even more difficult to break away from. It is as if you are thrashing around in quicksand, even though your desire is to get your self free, you are becoming more and more entangled.

One of the many results of your focus on negativity and separation is that it enhances those sensations, thoughts and old beliefs of unworthiness. You see, the trap here again is that you have a vision of perfection and somehow expect your imperfect or personality self to reach that perfection, and when it does not, you look at yourself with condemnation and disdain. And of course when you perceive yourself that way you are creating more and more perceived distance between you and the Kingdom.

“You do not hand your brother the kingdom. You witness him as being wealthy from it. You see him in his inheritance so he may align to it himself. But that will be his claim. However, you cannot deny that same man a hamburger that you would bless in Christ. The hypocrisy of this has gone on for far too long and those who attend to themselves as religious and decide the merit of another based on a scripture that they do not know or practice is a heresy. If you damn your brother, you have damned yourself. And we underline this: When you damn your brother, you damn yourself. When you feed your brother, you are fed. When you love your brother, you are loved.

“Well, I can’t love my brother, I don’t know him.” Yes, you do. When you claim “I know who I am, I know what I am, I know how I serve,” you have been given the key to know who he is as well. You are all cut from the same cloth, made of the same frequency, vibrating at different levels. As you align to your worth, you align to your responsibility as “the one who may claim himself and his fellows in the kingdom.”

Perhaps it is just part of my own story and maybe even yours that I am continually drawing back to the parable of the prodigal son. That being who became lost in his attachments and finally hit bottom, so to speak, and discovered himself sitting with the pigs in a foreign land. He came to his senses and realized he had a choice. That now he had a choice, he could go back to his father or he could stay where he was. Deciding to go back, he created a little speech for himself, but the father would hear none of it. He simply welcomed him to the kingdom; no excuses or explanations, simply “Welcome.”

In a Spiritual sense each one of us can probably identify with the prodigal. In someways he never really left the kingdom. Behind all of the props and the stories we created for ourselves, behind all the illusions, is the kingdom of God.

Because we are not alone in our search or in our discovery, when you claim your truth, you claim it for all beings. And when you deny your truth, in some ways you deny it for all beings.

“The belief that you are not worthy dictates that your fellows must not be worthy as well. And that is where you go into agreement. You can create a hell on earth very quickly this way, you know, and in some ways you have. The denial of your own gifts have caused you to create separation from the gifts that would be given to you. As you claim your inheritance, “I know who I am, I know what I am, I know how I serve,” you align to the gifts that would be gifted to you and you move into accordance with them.”

I go go back to that overly simplistic yet realistic choice we can continue to consciously make: “Does what I am thinking or getting ready to act upon, does it raise my vibration or does lower it; does it open my heart or does it close it.

The image that is being used here in the book it is to imagine yourself standing inside a circle. In the circle are of our all of those objects, ideas and beliefs and values that you have claimed as your own. You will notice there are some that add to the positive energy of your life and some that do not, and yet because you have claimed them as yours, they are part of this internal and external environment that you have created for yourself.

What we are being asked to do now is to expand the circle. Can I embrace the possibility that I can see myself in a truer way; that I can begin to claim more powerfully, “I know who I am I know what I am I know how I serve?”

“We will draw the circle again with you at the center. And on the outline of the circle you will imagine that the abilities you need to demonstrate, to move you forward, are all written out for you. “My ability to learn,” “My ability to see,” “My ability to know,” “My ability to maintain myself in my high vibration.” Imagine that these things that you need are just outside the border. Now we draw the circle once again so that they are included in your field. You are the chooser here. This is not just a symbolic act. This is a choice you make to claim yourself in dominion. “In dominion” means in authority, and “in authority” means you are responsible.”

Peace!