Month: February 2020

Lesson 40: I am blessed as a Son (or Child) of God.

I knocked a full glass of my morning iced coffee onto the floor sometime last year, and watched as the glass shattered, spattering coffee everywhere like a caffeine crime scene.

I burst into tears. I wasn’t crying over spilled latte as much as the shattering glass and coffee explosion reminded me that life hadn’t really panned out the way I imagined it would when I was a kid. I was in the midst of a divorce and had just moved into a new house. All the ideas and plans I had conjured up for my life – the fame, the fortune, heck, even just a bit of recognition and enough money in the bank – had not seemed to appear as I thought they should have.

My life felt just as shattered as the glass I now had to clean up off the floor.

In that moment, the last thing I felt was blessed, as a Child of God or otherwise.

We all have these moments when life overwhelms us, when we feel like our dreams are cracked or obliterated, and our sense of self-worth hits zero. In those moments of stress, depression and anxiety, it’s easy to feel worthless, to feel defeated by life and count the ways we have failed in this world.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 9, 2020 — Saved by zero”

Lesson 39: My holiness is my salvation.

As a Southern Baptist kid, I was taught that hell was an actual place, with actual fire, actual demons with actual horns and pitchforks where you actually were burned alive each day but not consumed by the fire. You went there because you were a bad person in your life – or you danced, drank or wore your hair long as a boy or wore pants as a girl.

It was a scary place to think about, especially as a pants-loving girl.

When I came out as a lesbian, hell was most often the threat that was used against me. If I had a dime for every time someone told me that my sexual orientation would send me to hell, I could have bought Joel Osteen’s stadium church a million times over. That would be me, living my best life.

It took me a long, long time to overcome my fear of hell – to realize that if it truly is a literal place, I’m already there, because I have put myself in hell by believing all those stories about hell in the first place. As A Course in Miracles points out in this lesson, hell is a choice we make whenever we accept the ego’s idea that we’re guilty of something.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 8, 2020 — Oh, Hell no!”

Lesson 38: There is nothing my holiness cannot do.

In her book, A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson writes: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.”

Today’s lesson tries to help us wrap our mind around this concept that our greatest fear is that we are “powerful beyond measure.” We, honestly, don’t want to be that powerful, because with power comes great responsibility. We prefer to play small because that way, while we may lose the adulation of the world, we will definitely escape its scorn if things go sideways.

If we actually embraced the Reality of our holiness, we could transform the world. Our holiness, this lesson says, “is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind.”

Who we really are isn’t limited by time, or space, or anything we see in this outside world. Instead, the lesson says, “Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available.  And there is nothing the power of God cannot do. Your holiness, then, can remove all pain, can end all sorrow, and can solve all problems. It can do so in connection with yourself and with anyone else. It is equal in its power to help anyone because it is equal in its power to save anyone.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 7, 2020 — Nursing the Universe”

Lesson 37: My holiness blesses the world.

In Matthew 9:13, Jesus makes it clear what lesson we are here to learn in this bodily world: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'”

The Greek word used for “mercy” in this passage means “kindness or good will.” The word used for “sacrifice” means “victim.” We have already learned in an earlier lesson that we are not the victim of the world we see. We only learn that when we begin to be willing to see the world differently and understand that what has been created out here was first created in our mind.

The world of fear, despair and greed we perceive together is a misuse of our creative powers. We have created a world where “sacrifice” is seen as a good and noble thing. We’ll sacrifice our lives for others, we’ll sacrifice our time, our belongings, our peace of mind. It sounds so generous. But we are not called to sacrifice, this lesson tells us, because sacrifice creates separation. It creates a sense of specialness.

You know plenty of people who take pride in the sacrifices they have made for others – for their kids, their family, their friends and their bosses. They can recount everything they’ve given up for the pleasure and comfort of others. It makes them feel special – and it makes them feel like a victim – a doormat taken advantage of by others.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 6, 2020 — Be Thou My Vision”

Lesson 36: My holiness envelopes everything I see.

Today, I should feel outraged, angry and justified in feeling that way. My “side” of the political aisle appears to face an insurmountable amount of what I perceive to be hatred, fear, greed and cruelty from those on the other side of that aisle.

Just last night, the partisan pot boiled over with a president giving a State of the Union address filled with outright lies about the state of our nation, snubbing the House leader who led his impeachment and then her retribution as she tore up her copy of his speech after it was all over.

After nearly three years as a student of A Course in Miracles, I feel my outrage muted by my desire to see peace rather than this, by my desire to go within my own mind and find the holiness that resides there and instead of filling my Facebook feed with outraged screeds, I want to use my mind, my words, my very life, to create a new world – a happy dream where the bridge to unity can be built.

For as much as my ego rejoiced as Nancy Pelosi ripped up that speech, my heart hurt. One more petty action provoked by another petty action. This is not how we display love in the world. What should she have done? Hugged his neck? Endured his arrogance and handshake snub?

Honestly, I don’t know. The fear and anger in this world appear to be insurmountable, but I know there had to be a better way to show the president a fierce kind of love in this moment of fear and hatred. Tearing up his speech wasn’t it. All that did was deepen the separation, strengthen the egos of all involved and made everyone feel justified in their hatred of each other.

Today’s lesson is a step toward finding a better way.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 5, 2020 — Pushing the envelope”

Lesson 35: My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.

I went off on myself last night. One of the things I can’t stand about myself is that I’m a bit clumsy. Without mindfully moving through simple tasks, such as giving my cats a treat, I will make a mess and do what I did last night – spill most of the contents of the container on the floor.

The cats, of course, didn’t mind. It was manna from heaven.

Me? I blew up at myself and called myself everything but a child of God.

I had to laugh out loud when I read today’s lesson: “My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.”

Yeah, right. Clumsy, self-abusing me is part of God and very holy. Tell me another one, Universe.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 4, 2020 — Panning for gold”

Lesson 34: I could see peace instead of this.

The first time I heard this phrase it was said by author Wayne Dyer in one of his TV programs that I watched. Dyer was my gateway drug into the metaphysical world so it was early in my learning when I heard him say this. I was immediately cynical.

“How in the world can we see peace instead of what’s obviously going on?” I thought.

Wars, rumors of wars, famine, greed, government corruption, the wealth gap, poverty, human trafficking, refugee crises, climate change. So much of the world is bereft of peace. Choosing to see peace instead of these very real dilemmas and tragedies is just so much spiritual bypass, woo-woo, head-in-the-sand spirituality.

That’s what I thought, all those years ago, and it’s what many people continue to think about metaphysical thought and practices. Deny reality and say your happy affirmations.

The Course, however, is far from advocating complacency or simple happy talk. It’s asking us, in all of these workbook lessons and throughout the text, to examine our thoughts about the world and discover what role we have played in bringing about the suffering that we see around us. It’s not an exercise in feeling guilty for the actions – or inactions – we have participated in that we believe caused the pain in the world. It’s a chance to change our mind and make it right – a chance to save the world and end the sense of separation from each other and God that all we feel in this world.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 3, 2020 — Peace, y’all”

Lesson 33: There is another way to look at the world.

There are two sides to every story, conventional wisdom tells us, but in reality, there are a million or more different ways to see whatever is going on around us. That’s because everyone perceives the world differently. Perception is reality, with a little “r,” for all of us.

No place is that truer than in traffic. On the way to Jubilee! Circle Sunday I nearly hit a guy turning left in front of me at an intersection. I braked and yelled, “Dude! Watch out!” while I honked. It was a huge improvement from my usual reaction to such near misses. In years past, when road rage had a firm grip upon me, I would have yelled expletives, given him the one-finger salute or even pursued him in an effort to let him know just how IN THE WRONG he had been.

My partner admonished me for my strong reaction and came up with reasons why the man may have been distracted – a family emergency perhaps or a rush to get to an important gathering. She was quick to point out other ways to see the situation besides than some dude driving dangerously for sport or to try to intentionally piss me off.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 2, 2020 — Pucker up”

Lesson 32: I have invented the world I see.

While we live in this dream world, it’s natural to see ourselves as a victim – even if we practice telling ourselves we’re not. Today’s lesson is another approach to that idea. Whenever we feel like the world is victimizing us, disregarding us, or trampling on what we see as our rights, we have to remind ourselves that this is the world we made.

“I have invented the world I see.”

We have done this by collectively misusing our creative powers. We do this all the time with both great and small effects on the world and lives around us.

All Adolph Hitler really wanted to do with his life was paint. He was a struggling artist when he began to misuse his creative power in service to his ego’s hunger for domination when it became clear he would never be honored for his art. The pictures he painted in the world became terrible, bloody and deadly to those under his sway.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 1, 2020 — Kissing the world”