PRECIPICE 6

P. 122-123

In sitting with this lesson I reflected that I could have gone a bit further in the book and helped bring some of these ideas together. BUT I also felt that we needed to do an experiential piece/meditation/imagery. So here I am again being reminded of a piece of worldly wisdom, as long as we are part of the material world, “You can have anything you want,  but you can’t have everything you want.” OR as the Stones put it so well, and perhaps even better, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”

Although a good bit of today's material seems somewhat repetitive of lessons previously learned what all of us need to realize is that although a lesson shows up that appears identical or quite similar to one we have already explored, we are continually given the opportunity to delve deeper into the learning that we have called to us.

Just as a for instance, we are all aware that we are Divine children of God and yet each one of us, in our own ways, can fall into forgetfulness. We need to be reminded of that truth again and again and realize that just as a growing plant sinks its roots deeper and deeper into the Earth, so also do we allow our awareness to grow deeper and deeper into the Truth of Who We Are. The truth of who we are just not change, but our awareness and our ability to keep that awareness within our consciousness is continually growing and evolving.

It is only through the limited vision of the small self that we think we are repeating a lesson again and again. It is only the small self, the personality, the ego consciousness which allows itself to become frustrated in it's learning.

Again, what we experienced so often is what A Course in Miracles refers to as a “confusion of levels.” We find ourselves continually evaluating or judging ourselves through the limited perception of our personality. We also think, somehow or another, that it is our personality self that is going to become divinized. The Divine self the Truth of Who You Are already exists. It is not something that is coming into existence in some future time. It is the Truth of who you are in this moment.

Now the personality self, f\or the ego consciousness will become spiritualised, will realize its true nature and will eventually and docily become aligned to the truth of the Divine as who you are. it will eventually release its struggles and it's clinging attachments and it's attempts to accomplish the Impossible. In other words it will allow itself to be loved simply as it is.

And so here we are on this continuing Journey of Discovery and Recovery. Knowing Who We Are; affirming Who We Are; aligning to the Truth of Who We Are and yet, still, at times, falling into forgetfulness. And then forgiving ourselves again and again and again 70x 7 so that our forgetfulness, instead of being a fault or a failing or a sin or an error, simply becomes another part of our learning.

In our last outing, we mentioned the mysterious nature of our continuing growth and evolution. There are times when we might experience a miraculous healing for ourselves or for another, and there are other times when a disease or an illness or a particular life circumstance does not seem to change, at least from external appearances. The personality will then question the self and think that because its goal has not been reached that it must have done something wrong. The picture that the personality paints and perceives is only a tiny piece of the whole tapestry.

If it is true that we travel in and through this Earthly sphere any number of times as we are continuing and completing our education, then it is also true that the soul not only creates life circumstances in this moment to learn from, but that it is also agrees, before this incarnation, the lessons that have been chosen to learn.

This sometimes is a very hard saying because from the point of view of the personality anything that is difficult or painful or harsh or even out of balance, I don't want it; I fight it; I resist it. I certainly have a tremendously difficult time believing or claiming that I have created it (this troublesome thing in the first place).

We suggest however what other choice do you have? Is life simply a series of incidences and experiences that are all occurring to you and me from some outside force? How do we explain that good things happen to bad people and sometimes bad things happen to good people? How do we explain or even explore the seemingly unfairness of it all? Is it the luck of the draw or is it more than that? 

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

What I have in front of me right now in my life is exactly what I have (what my soul has) wanted. I might not know or perceive that in my limited personality self, but there are different reasons why I might have created something or a situation that I find myself in. For sure, one of the most important reasons is that I have created it to learn from, but that learning might take different forms. I might be being asked to heal something; I might be asked to let go of something; I might be asked to do something differently. All of those varied choices and more are what I become aware of when I am conscious of the life situations or experiences I find myself in at this moment.

Perhaps you can even come up with some of the reasons yourself, not as blame or shame, but as a way of working through of why I might have created this. You will notice, if you make this part of your practice, that it will be difficult at times. It will be easy or almost natural for you to fall in to blame or self-condemnation and obviously this is not the point of the awareness we are speaking of. And so perhaps that is a lesson by itself. When you find that you have created something difficult then realize you have also created the difficulty to learn from. “How can I see this differently? How can I hold this more gently? how can I be a little bit more compassioate and understanding towards myself? 

If all of this seems rather open-ended, it is. We cannot tie all of this up in a neat little package and smack our hands together and say “Well we've learned that one. Let's move on,” because the learning we are speaking of here is continual, just as your awareness of your Divine self continues to grow and evolve. 

“Now we get worried sometimes, when we reach you, that you misunderstand our teaching, that we are telling you that you think you caused your pain, and then you use that as an excuse to harm yourself once again. That is not our teaching. But our teaching is very clear. You have choice. What you claim, you hold and are in accord with. What you hold is your frequency and aligns you to a reality that out-pictures the very thing you say you don’t want. So how can it be not your choice?”

One of the things that happens within our forgetfulness is that we forget we have a choice. I have a choice of how I respond to the life situations that I have created for myself to learn from. We will say that again “I have a choice of how I respond to the life situations I have created for myself to learn from.”

In grace, love, healing and gratitude.

PREDIPICE 4

p. 120-121

Wow! Diving deep today.

I believe an aspect of our chosen journey here on Planet Earth is that the is no such thing as “Instant Enlightenment.” Our growing, learning and evolvement is not a “one shot deal” nor is it meant to be. (Even those recorded events that appear to be sudden (like Bill Wilson’s “white light” experience or Paul being knocked off his horse on the way to Damascus are not rally sudden. They may appear so to our outsider consciousness, but there is always much internal preparation for the soul to enter into that kind of awareness.

A classmate made allusion to the idea of “process.” Life, growth, evolution is a process—it is meant to be a process—that is how we learn and grow in this stage of our education.

Even though it might seem we are learning the same lessons one rand over!!!!! Each time, we learn /experience on a deeper level.

I shared a personal insight and hopefully it will translate lovingly into the written word.

I discovered that one of the ways I was describing myself, and in fact I did this quite often, I would say, I am a person who is prone to bouts of depression.

My discovery was as long as I continue to describe myself that way then I will continually be and experience myself hat way. Now my mind will say something to the effect of yes that is true—you are a person prone to bouts of depression.

What I was not conscious of is that my mind will always define me according to its own limited awareness (and my mind always wants to be right). And my mind is very comfortable with its way of defining me—it makes life quite predictable.

And see what happened to me was I accepted that so much as being the truth, that I never questioned the validity of it nor did I even suspect that not only was I holding onto that description of myself but I was perpetuating the pattern.

We are being encouraged to explore and to be open in our awareness to patterns of thought and behavior that might have been with us for a very long time and which no longer serve us.

There is an understanding here to that even when I work on changing a pattern, that my emotions are not going to change right away. Let us suppose in that situation mentioned above that I choose to change my thinking and the begin to change that old pattern or description of myself. That does not mean that all of a sudden depression, sadness, anger of fear is going to leave. It is as if we turned on a light in a really dark room. I am not going to see everything clearly all of a sudden, it is going to take awhile for me to acclimate myself to this new vision. Even then, I might doubt whether or not I am seeing clearly.

We were reminded as well of that wonderful statement from Gurdjief, “You have to realize you were in prison before you can get out.” It was stated that perhaps, for whatever reasons, we might enjoy the prison bars of our own creation. I do not deny that one, however, once we begin to embrace the truth of Who We Are anything that limits us, whether it is in thought or in action, is going to begin to feel uncomfortable. The discomfort, if we sit with it honestly, is going to push us towards release, letting go, growing and evolving.

I could not help but be reminded of that wonderful quote from Augustine when his prayer was “Lord make me chaste but not yet.” What a beautiful, honest expression being aware of the desire of my soul and yet at the same time be aware of my human limitations.

He understood also then we cannot force ourselves to be somewhere that we are not or to try to be in a spiritual space, where we think we ought to be, rather than embracing who and where we are. And even then realizing that to is a perception of who I am. But also as I am embracing my perception of who and where I am at this moment, what we discover, as we did in our meditation this morning, is we are actually opening ourselves up to being embraced by our Divine Self.  We are allowing even our limited perception of ourselves be embraced by the unconditional of of the Divine.

This morning, we mentioned looking at our limited or small self as a child or as it curious puppy. When we speak about embracing that, we begin to realize that we are embracing our concept or our perception of self, our limited perception of ourselves; we are embracing that with our divine being. And in some ways that is all we need to do.

I do not mean that in a passive way, but as we open ourselves up to the Divine within, the movement and the growth and the evolution that the soul desires is set in motion.

As we have mentioned before, it is through my willingness and through my intention that I allow myself to move to a higher level of awareness and vibration. Much of my willingness and my intention comes from my personality or ego self. It pushes us to the edge and when we reach that point when our personality self can go no further, we allow our divine self to take over. We might not even be doing that consciously but we are doing it none-the-less. There was that marvelous sentence In our work this morning that said “And if you don’t want to climb, allow yourself to be lifted. ”

What a great description of Prayer. “Lord I don't know where I am; sometimes I don't know where I'm going; yet I know that you know the yearnings of my soul even more deeply than I know them myself. Let me be open to the movement, the growth and the evolution my soul desires at this moment in my life. Thank you. Amen.

“How do I live in infinite choice? Where do I go when the map I have called to me for the rest of my life no longer serves me anymore? How do I stand in my knowing when my authority is questioned? When the rules that I believe were told to me for a good reason may only be there to get me to behave?

Now you ask yourself these questions and you lie to yourself when you pretend you don’t know the answer. You know who you are. You are an aspect of the Creator manifested in form and the decision to be this in actions, in your words, in your deeds, will claim you in your worth as the one who may know what she needs. What is infinite worth but a true statement of each man and woman as they are designed and protected by the light that they are?”

“The designs you have held and known as your own have been agreements you have made with your history. The contracts you have signed, the decisions you made to be this way or that way, were agreements you made born in your history. Now why do you want to do this all the time? Why do you claim this for yourself? Why do you bring this upon you again and again? Because you think you must and because you do not know that there are other ways to be.

Now, if you want to lie to yourself and tell yourself that you are not in choice, you may go back to bed, you may go back to sleep, and you may stay there. There is no reason to read further. But if you can align to the possibility, each and every one of you, that you stand at the precipice of great change, of infinite possibility, the moment you are willing to relinquish who and what you thought you were supposed to be to become who and what you are, you will see that the cliff that you stand on the edge of is the launching pad for the rest of your life.”

Lastly, I addressed some comments to the idea of being a survivor. I feel as if I need to be more clear with my thinking here.

I do not want to discount or demean the work that survivors have done be that with working with a physical illness, addiction, or trauma. What I am suggesting is that we are more than that.

Although our addiction/trauma/abuse might have been a defining moment in our lives, we are still more than that moment.

Certainly we honor ourselves and one another for working through our stuff and our process of healing, and yet, I believe we are urged to go beyond the incident(s) and to know ourselves even beyond our life circumstances.

As we spoke this morning I had an image of you sitting with Jesus/Buddha/Quan Yen and asking Him/Her—“Who do you say that I am?”

In Love and Gratitude.