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.