My return.

Wow,so long since I created an entry.

I have felt the urge to put more effort into A Course in Miracles. It is always there for me. As I may have said before, I cannot loose it no matter how hard I try to shake it off.

Recently my avoidance level has been high. So I have started re-listening to Kenneth Wapnick and his recording called Living a Course in Miracles. It has been very rewarding.

Returning to the basics is something I find very useful every time I do. There is usually something that leaps out and pulls me up. I sense it as a jarring that shifts something deep within me. So often I go back and re-listen, or read, but it never has the same effect. I know I am going back to try and catch whatever it was so I can formulate it. To grab hold of it so I can find a way of manipulating it. More fool me. I just need to try and trust that I have it and I do not need to worry about it.

Anyway back to Wapnick and ACIM. Whilst listening I had a couple of those Aha moments. 
Probably the most poignant was around my relationship with Jesus. I have always struggled with this aspect of ACIM. Personifying what ultimately is a symbol. In some ways I have felt more comfortable with the Holy Spirit, but even then I was at a loss as to how I could develop the relationship.

What happened whilst listening to Wapnick was a sense of Jesus standing before me, in a way like a mirror. But this mirror would not reflect anything that was not True. So if I approach and offer up an issue I have, a judgement, then because there was no reflection I saw it for what it was, nothing. It then became something that I could not hold on to. This maybe briefly, but it has value and I feel that I will hopefully get into the habit. 

I have on occasion heard a voice saying something that reveals the truth. So that any energy I have for this issue just dissipates. 

So my challenge now is to stay with it and stay diligent. 

Retreat Return

So I have returned, refreshed. What a pleasant experience. It was conducted on a Franciscan Friary, which upon entering I immediately felt myself relax and feel totally at home.
I am not sure that I had a very concrete idea of what I wanted from it. However I found myself very focused on ACIM, with ease.
After a group session - where we were told that that the focus was on the symbiotic relationship of forgiveness, my forgiveness is yours and yours is mine - I retired to my room to read and focus on a lesson. The intention was to stay with lesson 132 that I have been with for a good while now. However I found myself listening to lesson 125 "In quiet I receive Gods word today" So as synchronicity appeared to be at work, I went with it. It could not have been clearer.
What was I to hear? Up came the fear that I would be asked to do something painful or frightening. Then immediately I get a voice reminding me that I will never be asked to do anything that would engender fear. I was focused on the form not content.

Next day, found myself drawn to The Voice for God (P75) which linked in with my lesson. Then drawn to "The Fear of Redemption" (P242) linking nicely in with my resistance.
In the morning session found myself talking with someone about our resistance to returning to the outside world. I then found myself being aware of how small I had made myself. Remembered the words "There is nothing outside of myself".
Lesson 169 was read out. "By Grace I Live. By Grace I am released" There it was again, the nudge towards opening, trust and letting go.
In the afternoon found myself disturbed by the recounting of my discovery of my "I am a mistake". Obviously touched on something as I found myself getting con fussed.
Then I get T 14:4:5.1 "Before you make any decisions for yourself, remember that you have decided against your function in heaven, and consider carefully whether you want to make decision here. Your function here is to only decide against what you want, in recognition that you do not know".

The last day I have in the forefront of my mind the thought "I am not ready". Symbolised by resistance to going home.

There were a lot of thing tying in with each other, which felt easy and relaxed. Almost an effortless process, for which I am very grateful.

Now the real challenge to stay with it in the outside world.

Retreat

I do too much of that, retreating from the world. But this time I am off for weekend. It is Course in Miracles based and comes recomended. I have resistance to it as it does feel I am running away, when their is so much to do. However I do feel I need the space even though I not long come away from a spa weekend. So much of my stress comes down to me getting distracted from truth. Take responsibility, its avoidance.

What do I want from this weekend? Re-centering and peace.

Transformation

I am caught up with the idea that there is something to transform.
Last weekend my wife and I spent 3 days transforming our living room. A new carpet was arriving on the Tuesday and Thursday we decided to change the colours of the room totally. Fortunately it was not the best of weather for spending outside, so after a day of angst we settled on some nice Eco friendly paints, very different to what was up. The room was to be changed from a strong orange, to more subtle greens. It has worked and after 4 layers of paint on the walls, along with filling and gloss. Of course there are repercussions. We then have to paint the fireplace and the bookshelves.
It appears that whatever we change will reflect on something else, then that needs changing. Puts me in mind of something from a book by Bartholomew. He described changing things being similar to seeing a crease in a curtain, straitening it out only to create another wrinkle.
That image has stayed vividly with me. Life is full of those apparent wrinkles we have to sort out. More fool us. When am I / are we going to learn there are no wrinkles? There is only one place a question like that can come from, that is the ego. From the space of truth there is nothing to learn.
Back to the lesson I am working with at the moment. Number 132.

I who remain as God created me would loose the world from
all I thought it was. For I am real because the world is not,
and I would know my own reality.

Bigger Picture

Just had this realisation that I have lost the bigger picture.

I get these emails from something called the Tipura Foundation. Something I subscribed to a good while ago because I admired their efforts to help people. The latest one that came through fostered a surge of admiration and jealousy. The whole idea of giving myself up to something greater felt so appealing. It was something I also recognised that I used to do of a matter of course. This I have to admit may have been to my detriment at times.

So what on earth has happened to this altruism? I feel I have become too self centred.
Even to the point that it has become a matter of my enlightenment. That is little me. Forgetting that in truth there is no little me.
My awakening is truly every bodies awakening.

As the course says:
................let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed, along with you.

You need not realize that healing comes to many brothers far across the world, as well as to the ones you see nearby, as you send out these thoughts to bless the world. But you will sense your own release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could never be released alone.

My salvation is the "apparent" worlds salvation.

I loose the world from all I thought it was.

I was dwelling on this lesson the other night. It is number 132 in A Course in Miracles. Being aware of how anything I percieve is illusionary and how hard I work at making it real and important. When suddenly, I get a momentry sense of loosing this world I believe in. It was a beautiful sense of release. Then just as suddenly I find a huge wave of fear rise up, fear of being totaly lost to this emense space.

This is sumed up in this piece from the lesson -
There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.
I had that sense of back and forth. A step along the road - Yes then no and a step back. But at least I got a glimps. Of both the release but also the huge bank of fear that holds all this dear and will do whatever it can to hold on to it.

So how do I treat it? How do I relate to it? Forgiveness, remember it is as much part the illusion as anything. In truth there is no fear. No matter how big I experience it, and this was big.

So now I find myself stuck with this lesson at the moment. It is staying with me effortlessly and for that I am gratful.

Through the other side - nearly!!

So, now I am 4 months the other side of my 50th birthday and feeling a little better. The sense of imminent doom has lifted. I do have moments when for a day or so it comes back, but then that is to be expected. But the intensity of these times I find so overwhelming that my gut reaction is to flee them, one way or another, Which I very often do. Any sort of distraction will do, TV, computer, poker, drink, the list goes on.

Quote from Seeing-Knowing

This moment of writing these words is exactly the same moment that they are being read ‘there’ wherever that may appear to be in space and time. Hundreds of apparently different eyes may scan these words and within apparently different moments in space and time.
There is only One Moment and this is THAT moment. It is timeless.

Anticipation

I have come across what I feel is a gem of a DVD. It is called Broken Saints. It was originally a series of short films released on the Internet.

It has become one of those things I do not want to end. I am savouring the anticipation. We seem to have so much of that taken away from us nowadays. Previews are so prevelant. We see it so often with TV programes and Cinemas. It can sometimes feel that a trailer gives me so much that I can think that there is not much point in seeing the film. Our family has taken to shutting down or changing channel to avoid trailers. What happened to the element of surprise. Are people so fearful that we will not watch? Oh the joy of surprise.

A little distraction there. I will come back to Broken saints soon.

Resistance

This has been with me for many a year. It is a piece by Rabindranath Tagore from the book Gitanjali. It struck a cord all those years ago and still does now if not more so!

Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them.
Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed.
I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room.
The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet cover it in love.
My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.