Month: May 2020

Lesson 138: Heaven is the decision I must make

We choose hell all the time. Every moment that we worry. Every moment that we assert our personal preferences over what the universe is offering us in the present moment. Every time we judge, every time we complain, every time we perceive something is wrong with the world. We choose hell because that’s all we know, and the ego wants to keep it that way.

In this world of form, we are convinced we are separate from others and it’s every man, woman and child for themselves. The ego convinces us that resources are limited and we must compete with one another for even the most basic needs for our survival. We’re good at this game, so good we do it without thinking.

This is the problem. We spend most of our lives unconscious – following the egoic game plan that we have collectively created and called “proper society” or “how things work in the world.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 17, 2020 — Seriously?”

Lesson 137: When I am healed I am not healed alone

Today’s lesson is trying to remind us of who we truly are – one within the Mind of God. We are not these bodies. We are not our ego. We are not the mind that sees only other bodies and creates categories to separate and divide the world around us.

Healing is simply remembering that we are all one – and in that oneness we are whole – no healing is required. If we are not “healed” alone, then we are never alone in the first place, no matter how our senses tell us that I am over here and you are over there. Our minds are joined in oneness as they always have been.

When we are driven by our ego, however, our minds become sick. We are convinced that the world we can experience with our bodily senses is the real world and the spiritual world we can only sense with our true, Divine Self is an illusion. Healing puts us in our right mind – back in the oneness that we share with one another whether we are consciously aware of it or not.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 16, 2020 — We are never alone”

Lesson 136: Sickness is a defense against the truth

I used to get sick on a regular basis. A change in the weather from cold to warm or vice versa: head cold. Fall hits: sinus congestion and possibly a chest cold. It happened with regularity. I could tell you what time of the year it was by whatever illness I was experiencing.

That doesn’t happen to me these days, and hasn’t since one turning point in my life: my ability to finally forgive my father. It was like, well, a miracle. When I was in an unforgiving state over my father’s perceived abandonment of our family, I was angry. I was cynical. I was living in such negativity, you could almost see the cloud of anger, cynicism and turmoil swirling around me like the Peanut’s character Pig Pen.

I got sick a lot, and while A Course in Miracles has been poo-pooed as so much New Age, spiritual-bypass claptrap, science proves that our emotional state can most definitely take a toll on our bodies. Anger is linked to all manner of illnesses from high blood pressure, to migraines, to strokes and of course heart attacks.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 15, 2020 — Be healed!”

Lesson 135: If I defend myself I am attacked

I am rereading Michael Singer’s book, The Surrender Experiment. I read it a few years ago and it truly touched my heart. In the book, he describes how he came to lead what he calls a life of surrender.

The rules of this experiment, he writes, are simple: “If life brought events in front of me, I would treat them as if they came to take me beyond myself. If my personal-self complained, I would use each opportunity to simply let him go and surrender to what life was presenting me.”

Seems simple enough, right? Singer struggled with his experiment, though, as the book chronicles, but he learned what today’s lesson seeks to teach: stop planning your life and let it unfold.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 14, 2020 — This was not the life I planned”

Lesson 134: Let me perceive forgiveness as it is

One of my favorite techniques to use when I get caught up in feeling offended, hurt or otherwise slighted by the people around me is a phrase Brene Brown talks about using when she has a conflict with her husband: “The story I’m telling myself is …”

We all get caught up in our “somebody done me wrong” stories. Our ego eagerly fabricates all kinds of reasons why someone would treat you badly and tells you how right you are to be offended, to hate them, to scold them for being such awful humans and why they should come groveling back to you begging for your forgiveness.

Ah, forgiveness. The ego uses it as a powerful weapon. We deign to forgive others to show how spiritually superior we are to them and we beg others to forgive us because we feel they are spiritually superior to us. Such forms of “forgiveness,” this lesson tells us, are a distortion “that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 13, 2020 — Weaponizing forgiveness”

Lesson 133: I will not value what is valueless

As I write today’s reflection, my 7- year-old German Shepherd dog, The Lord, (because, “The Lord is my shepherd), is undergoing surgery to remove a dead tooth. I have been an anxious fur-baby mama all day, on pins and needles until I heard from the vet. The extraction is underway, but I will still be a bit of a wreck until I have her back safe and sound at home.

I turn to write today’s lesson and my ego gets in a bit of a pique. “Are you calling my dog valueless, you snooty excuse for a spiritual teacher?” it snorts. “My dog is valuable to me. Priceless, even.”

Of course she is, but not because of her form. Instead, her value turns on the Love I carry for her – the love that is eternal, the Love that gives birth to compassion and joy within me – two more eternal qualities that are priceless. My Love for her, and for all my other precious pets, gives me a window into the eternal nature of Love. I still Love all the pets that have preceded her. What I feel for them has not died or even wavered for one minute in its strength. They are not here in form, but they remain with me because my Love for them was real and continues to be real.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 12, 2020 — Only empty hands can be filled”

Lesson 132: I loose the world from all I thought it was

Here’s the part where I throw this book across the room.

I have struggled for the past two days to write something about this lesson that doesn’t make me sound like a woo-woo, new age freak. I may, indeed, fail at that task, but hear me out. I think if I could actually internalize this lesson, I would instantly become enlightened. Sadly, I am still too wrapped up in my belief in this world to do that, in this moment.

The Course, of course, understands. It even says so in this lesson. Some of us are not ready to accept that this world is an illusion … that we truly are in a dream world of our own making. We weren’t plopped down into this world as it was going on. We created it from the moment we believed it was real. That’s what this lesson says, anyway.

I’m not sure I’m on board – but that’s why I’m still here, dreaming the dream, playing my role in the world I’ve created. You’d think I would have chosen a better role, but here we are, dreaming together a crazy, mixed-up, mean, cruel and often beautiful and generous world.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 11, 2020 — Ok, you lost me …”

Lesson 131: No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth

By every measure of this ego’s world, I am a failure. I am not famous. I am not rich. I am not powerful. I have not accomplished all that much in the grand scheme of things. There are people half my age who accomplished fame, fortune and achieved powerful offices in government, entertainment and other institutions.

I am not one of those.

I used to worry about this. I used to berate myself for being lazy. “Yeah, you got ONE book published, but what about those writers who turn out a book every year, ore even every six months? What a loser.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 10, 2020 — Break your jar of God”

Lesson 130: It is impossible to see two worlds.

If it’s true that this world is not our home, why does it feel so damn real? Today’s lesson has an answer: fear. When the tiny, mad idea that we are separate from God entered our thoughts, fear tagged along behind and overtook our mind.

We are so convinced this world of our physical senses is real that any suggestion that it is an illusion is dismissed as utter insanity. Of course, this world is real. I can touch it, I can smell it, I can taste it and hear it and see it. The thought that there is something beyond this physical reality is so alien to us, we tend to lock people away who constantly seek to look beyond this physical field of existence and call them crazy.

It’s not crazy, it’s reality. Buddhism and other Eastern religions have recognized the illusory impermanence of the world we live in. Even Jesus said it was crazy to store up worldly possessions when our bodies all meet the same fate in the end. We see what that kind of preaching got him.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 9, 2020 — Becoming the noise”

Lesson 129: Beyond this world is the world I want.

The ego’s gravitational pull on us is strong. This is why A Course in Miracles is so long … and so repetitive. It says the same thing over and over again, using different words and examples. It has to, because we are so tethered and dedicated to this ego world that it seems strange – crazy, even – to consider wanting something else, especially something as seemingly nebulous as God’s realm.

The Course speaks the truth, however – there really is nothing in the world that will truly satisfy us. The ego keeps offering up alternatives – wealth, power, possessions, relationships, jobs, homes, exotic vacations. It’s all a fantasy. We truly could have everything we want in this world – everything the ego tells us we should want, at least – and we would still find it all fleeting and impermanent.

We store up our earthly goods in bank accounts and investments these days and not in barns like the old days, but they still rot away and disappear at some point.

Continue reading “AYoMW: May 8, 2020 — Connect with your inner nag”