Month: January 2020

Lesson 21: I am determined to see things differently.

In my 20s and 30s, I was a very angry person. My rage at the world and its unfairness began when I was 9-years-old and my Southern Baptist father, who had preached about the sin of adultery and divorce, cheated on my mother and then divorced her.

I could not square the circle in my head. I went searching for answers in the Bible, which my dad had always preached held the key to every problem you faced. What I found there was that my dad was a big, stinkin’ hypocrite who deserved not only God’s wrath, but mine. Thus, began a journey into anger and cynicism that became not just a way of life for me, but my very identity.

If you had read this lesson to me back then, it would have made me very angry. There was no way that I was willing to see things differently, especially when it concerned my father and his actions.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 21, 2020 — Catching light in a graveyard”

Lesson 20: I am determined to see.

The lessons up until today have been trying to turn our idea of the world upside down and inside out. The things in our world are not real, we’re learning. We have given them all the meaning that they have, we’re learning. None of our thoughts are neutral – they all create on some level, we’re learning. And, we’re learning that those thoughts aren’t just ours alone, but others around us experience the effect of our thoughts.

What does this all lead up to? A determination to see what IS real in this world, to see beyond the illusions and miscreations we have brought into being with our unconscious and untrained thoughts.

The salvation of the world depends on our ability to see rightly – to stop investing our thoughts and beliefs in the false projections we walk around calling “reality.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 20, 2020 — The ruby in your purse”

Lesson 19: I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.

We could stop reading and doing the workbook at this point if we just completely internalized and lived into this lesson alone. We, of course, don’t want to because we like the idea that we have our own mind and our thoughts and can think them anytime we want and keep them private. But, if it’s true, as the last lesson said, that “all minds are joined” then there’s not such thing as a private thought. What we think, on any level, becomes a manifested experience on some level.

Cause and effect are the same, the lesson tells us. Thoughts simultaneously result in the reality that we think we see. We like to think the two are separate – something I see in my world causes me to think something, or that I think something and then see it outside of myself. In reality, the Course says, these things happen at once.

The ego wants us to keep thinking cause and effect are separate so it can get us to play its game of competition, distrust, separation and fear. If we think we are at the effect of our own thoughts or the thoughts of others, we can justify staying separate from those who think differently than we do. If we understood the true power of our thoughts, we would awaken to the realization that changing our thoughts – changing our minds – would change the reality we lived in. We don’t have to be at the effect of our thoughts or others – we don’t have to feel fearful and vulnerable in the world. We created it – we can recreate it.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 19, 2020 — Alone, together, at last”

Lesson 18: I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.

So far, the previous lessons have focused on us as individuals and how we perceive – or misperceive – the world. Today’s lesson invites us to expand our view and know that what we experience out here in the world isn’t just for us alone – others are experiencing the world we are creating. Why? Because, as the lesson says, “all minds are joined.”

This is the big “collective consciousness” all the woo-woo purveyors speak of – except, of course, it really does exist. We humans are joined in our minds – and when one of us sees a world of fear, greed, hunger and war, we all experience it. Perhaps in different ways, but what has entered one mind has entered all minds.

The idea of “all minds are joined” is to say that there is a field of energy to which we all belong – a place of divine unity where we create on an individual level, but also at a collective level. Since we have free will, we choose what we create – a world of fear, or a world of love.

Sociologist Emilie Durkheim coined the term “collective consciousness” in the 19^th century in reference to industrial societies and explained it as: “The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society.” Societies displayed an “organic solidarity” he wrote, driven especially by religion and social infrastructure.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 18, 2020 — Do You See What I See?”

Lesson 17: I see no neutral things.

During Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, one of the chants at his rallies was, “Build that wall!” The candidate ran on a platform of securing the US southern border with a “big, beautiful wall” designed to stop the flow of refugees and immigrants from Mexico and other South American countries.

Even though the chant is about a literal wall, it is an example of the walls of separation that divide us as humans. While Trump’s supporters yelled for a barrier between countries, others felt that walls were unnecessary if proper immigration policies were in place, while still others questioned the value of walls at all, preferring open borders.

There were no neutral thoughts on the wall – and the wall itself, figuratively or literally, was not neutral either.

Where did these walls come from anyway? This lesson seeks to answer that by helping us realize that everything we have brought forth into this world begins with a thought. We believe that the wall caused our thoughts and subsequent division – but it’s really the opposite. We, collectively, believe in the goodness of separating by race and boundary lines and so we create them here in our collective experience.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 17, 2020: Build that wall!”

Lesson 16: I have no neutral thoughts.

In every moment, I am thinking. Right now, I’m wondering what to type next. A moment ago, I was thinking that I didn’t want to do any writing today, then I thought that I had made a commitment to do this thing, so I need to get to typing. One thought led to another, and here we are: still thinking about thoughts.

There are no neutral thoughts – all our thoughts drive us to either do, or not do, something. They may drive us to call that friend we’ve been thinking about. They may drive us to judge the person in line in front of us for using a check (“I mean, really! What century is it?”) to buy their groceries. They may drive us to make up stories about other people and how they may feel about us. They may drive us ‘pert near (as we say in the South) insane if we let them.

This is the key to this lesson, and the beginning of the mind shift the Course is seeking to make within us with these lessons: We need to be more mindful of our thoughts – because they have the power to create and destroy worlds. Just look around if you want proof. We, collectively, believe might makes right – so we build a war-like culture that protects what’s “ours” against interlopers who may “steal” it. We, collectively, believe that there is a lack of resources to produce adequate shelter for everyone or provide enough food for everyone, so homelessness and hunger enter our experience of this world. We, collectively, believe that a person’s religion, race, age, sexual orientation or gender makes them either inherently more or less valuable in the world, so prejudice enters our experience.

None of these thoughts are idle – they have created a world in their likeness. Our beliefs have manifested a world of war, famine, poverty and prejudice.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 16, 2020: Grow only seeds of Love”

Lesson 15: My thoughts are images that I have made.

In 2015, a photograph of a dress posted on the internet went viral. It seems that people could not agree on what color the dress was in “reality.” The controversy went on for months with people taking sides and launching all manner of arguments about why they were right and everyone else on the internet was wrong. It became a dividing line – a point of separation – between those who perceived “correctly” and those who didn’t.

The photo underscores how our brains work, according to neuroscientist Beau Lotto, author of Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently, who told National Geographic:  

“When you say things like, we don’t see reality, people think you’re being a post-modern relativist. That’s not the case. There is a physical world. It’s just that we don’t see it. Red doesn’t exist, the note ‘C’ doesn’t exist. These are all things inside our heads that we project out into the world.”

Which is exactly the point of today’s lesson: Our thoughts are images that we have made. We project out onto the world our ideas of what color clothing is and whether notes such as “C” exist. Because we project those images outward, we don’t understand that they came from nothing and when we stop believing in them, they return to nothing.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 15, 2020 — Open a window. It’s stuffy in here.”

Lesson 14: God did not create a meaningless world.

When A Course in Miracles teacher and author Marianne Williamson was running for president of the United States, she met controversy early on from detractors who alleged that she harmed men living with HIV and AIDS by insisting on the Course principal that the disease was not “real.”

Never mind that Williamson was an early leader in helping gay men who were afflicted by the disease and founded Project Angel Food, in part, to help feed those in need. That mission alone should have been proof enough that Williamson found the crisis to be “real” enough to take action and help those who were suffering. But, it’s a common misunderstanding of the Course which springs from today’s lesson that directs us to think about the horrors we perceive in this world and say, “God did not create that war/airplane crash/disaster, and so it is not real.”

What this lesson is getting at is that here in this ego world, perception really is reality. My stepfather succumbed to dementia before my mother did and one day, as we were preparing to take them out to dinner, my stepfather kept insisting that they needed to pick up their cars from the mechanic. They had been living in assisted housing for several years and did not own cars anymore.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 14, 2020 — I don’t think this world means what you think it means”

Lesson 7: I see only the past.

If you’ve stuck with the workbook for the past six days, and not tossed it across the room with great force as I was tempted to do during the first time I dedicated myself to getting through the entire year of lessons, today is your payoff. The first six lessons are intentionally discombobulating because the ego likes order and it really likes having an agenda and a reason to do something. That agenda, of course, is usually self-serving, so it doesn’t care much for confusion. The ego likes clarity – mainly because it makes it easier to manipulate things, make excuses or find reasons to quit when the going gets confusing.

If you’re still with me then, your ego is confused and searching madly for something to hang its hat on. Today’s lesson seems to be that hat rack, but it’s also another maddening blow to the ego’s search for easy answers and clear understanding that it can twist to its own advantage. Be vigilant, though, because the ego will, of course, try to distort the message of today’s lesson – because it only sees the past and uses it to manipulate how we experience the present and subsequently what we create in the future.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 7, 2020 — Don’t let the past steal your present”

Lesson 6: I am upset because I see something that is not there.

One of the main things the Course teaches is that “only love is real.” Which means, if we are not experiencing love – then what we feel like we’re experiencing isn’t real. That, of course, doesn’t mean events are not happening in this bodily realm. They are – something is going on and we’re upset by it.

But, in Reality – with that capital R – there’s nothing in this world that can upset us on the level of our true, divine Self. Our divinity knows nothing of slights or offenses. It doesn’t not understand being offended or giving offense. It does not traffic in shame, blame, evasion or lies.

When we become upset, we are seeing things that only exist in reality – with a little r – and that reality is ruled by the ego, which loves to be offended, to give offense, to slight others, shame others, blame others, and evade consequences or lie about things. When we become upset, then, it is a reminder to us that we are living in the ego’s world of illusions and separation.

On this level, of course, we must tend to our relationships – repair them, abandon them, learn from them – but in Reality, the slights have not occurred because nothing can disturb the peace of our divinity – especially not dreams.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 6, 2020 –Upset by the absence of the real”