Thursday, October 28, 2010

Intentions

Having an intention is a way to combine having a goal and not having a goal. An intention is more open, wider and spacious, less narrow and specific and time-bound, more preferential. My intention is to live in a such a way that my life contributes to a world that works for everyone.

We hear two things about intentions: the road to hell is paved with good intentions and, your good intentions are not enough. The second idea antidotes the first. If I have only good intentions and do not act in accord with them, I’m on the road to hell. The intention is merely a framework that I honor with my thoughts, feelings and behavior. Intentions allow me to be gentle with myself and others, more forgiving. If whatever I intended doesn’t get done this minute, no sweat. There will be another minute, and another after that. With intentions I can come from a centered, spiritually connected place, realizing my identity doesn’t depend on what I accomplish, when.

Intentions create less stress and encourage a longer time frame, a greater more compassionate and inclusive vision allowing me and others to bring their full attributes, skills and talents to bear. With preferences, perfection is a process, not a result, and failure is not an option because failure only happens when I say I’ve failed and give up. Preferences enable me to see that there are more ways to skin a cat than I may be aware of in a given moment, and that if I stop, take a break or pause, without judging myself and others a ‘failure,’ new and better ways to proceed will be revealed.

Intentions are life scale, about the purpose and meaning of my entire life, not about what I’m going to do this weekend or with this job or relationship. When I look at this weekend, job or relationship in the context of my intentions, my life’s purpose and meaning, deciding and choosing are richer, more enjoyable, and more effective. Intentions put me in charge, make me responsible and enable me to stop being a victim. They are MY intentions, I set them and I can change them.

Trouble with intentions comes when they’re not mine, when they’re somebody else’s; when I’ve adopted them unconsciously and uncritically and my actual life experience conflicts with them. My parents, church, ethnic group, political party, work organization all have intentions for me. If they’re in line with my own, what life has taught me, and what I’ve come to understand of spirit, metaphysics and reality, all well and good. If other people’s intentions that I’ve internalized are out of alignment with my own deepest intentions and preferences, I experience conflict. To the extent that this conflict remains unconscious and I fail to take responsibility for it, I blame, become angry and hurt myself and others. But if I find myself blaming, being angry and hurting myself and others, take responsibility for that and look inward, I may be able to resolve the conflict.

Where are your own intentions and preferences in conflict with those of your parents, church, ethnic group, political party, and work organization? What can you do to resolve the conflict, and if you’re angry, blaming and hurting yourself and others, what would happen if you paused, took a moment and realized how nice it would be to stop doing that and experience that life does not have to be that way?

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Paradox

The big, metaphysical idea is not to need or have to have an effect in the built manifest world. The idea is to go for a connection with Source first. Let go of the need and have to because they are of the material ego world and instead, connect with the primary reality of being a spiritual being having an earthly experience. Go from the inside-out.

Because the Source is in and through everything and everyone, when I connect with Source, I am connected with everything and everyone, and as I realize this and allow this power to guide me and work through me, the result or effect I seek in the ego world manifests. Provided I am congruent and fully aligned spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. It’s a paradox.

If I must have something, or need something, I’m most likely coming from fear and lack, am not aligned and not feeling centered in Source. But if I don’t need something and don’t have to have it, I am not in fear and lack, but feel my connection with Source, and the thing I want manifests. It’s about having a preference, instead of an addiction.

Addicted, the thing or experience, usually something outside myself, rules me. If I have only a preference, I rule the thing or experience; I can take it or leave and be fine whichever way it goes.

This is counter intuitive because the predominant way of being and thinking is: have a clear cut goal – some thing or some experience you really, really want and must have and pursue it vigorously with single minded devotion. Do whatever it takes; focus on it, eat, sleep and dream it; persist; overcome resistance; win because winning is the only thing. This outlook is especially strong in the U.S.A today.

There’s lots that is incorrect and ineffective about this way of being, from lack of awareness of the larger picture and context to unanticipated consequences or side-effects, but let’s cut to the chase. What happens after you win, have your experience, achieve the goal? What happens? What’s next? Remember, the song, “Is That All There Is?”

Having a preference and going for what you want by being centered and aligning with Source works better, has less let down and fewer side effects. Go within and let your connection with the Source of all work for you. Stop struggling, blaming and hating and allow the Source which is love, peace and compassion guide and work through you and experience what happens. You’ll be quite pleased and proud.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

A World that Works for Everyone

Yesterday, as I have before, I posted about wanting to build a world that works for everyone. I mean this to be understood as a way of being, of living as an individual and member of a society, community, nation and planet, so that I do as little harm or evil as possible and as much good as possible. Living this way is an ideal which I very much want to actualize. It gives me hope and purpose and a sense of optimism. But when it seems things are not changing and we’re not building a world that works for everyone, but are in fact going in the opposite direction and building a world that works for the few and the wealthy, I get very sad, deeply disappointed, depressed and angry.
Joseph Campbell is optimistic about the world. “It’s great just the way it is,” he says. “And you are not gong to fix it up. Nobody has ever made it any better. It is never going to be any better. This is it, so take it or leave it. You are not going to correct and improve it.”

Wow! So doesn’t that lead to a passive attitude in the face of evil?

“You yourself are participating in evil,” he says. “Or you are not alive. Whatever you do is evil for somebody or something. This is one of the ironies of the whole creation.”

And what of the conflict between good and evil, the forces of darkness and of light?

“That is a Zorostrian idea, which has come over into Judaism and Christianity. In other traditions, good and evil are relative to the position in which you are standing. What is good for one, is evil for another. You play your part, not withdrawing from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but seeing that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder, a mystery. All life is sorrowful is the first Buddhist saying, and so it is. It wouldn’t be life if there were not temporality involved, which is sorrow – loss, loss, loss. You’ve got to say yes to life and see it as magnificent this way.”

Yet it is “joyful just as it is, too. I don’t believe there was anybody such as God who intended it, but this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line: ‘History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.’ To awake is not to be afraid, but to recognize that all of this, as it is, is a manifestation of the horrendous [neutral] power [neither good nor evil] that is all creation.”

So, you wouldn’t fight any battles or strive for any ideals? Isn’t that the logical conclusion from accepting everything as it is?

Yes, it’s logical “but not the necessary conclusion. You could say, ‘I will participate in this life, I will join the army” or the peace corps. I will do the best I can. “I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera – except that it hurts. Affirmation is difficult. We always affirm with conditions. I affirm the world on condition that it gets to be the way my ideals want it to be. But affirming it the way it is – that’s the hard thing.”

Rituals help us with that. “Rituals are group participation in the most hideous act, which is the act of life – namely, killing and eating another living thing. We do it together, and this is the way life is. The hero is the one who comes to participate in life courageously and decently, in the way of nature, not the way of personal rancor, disappointment, or revenge.”

So wanting to build a world that works for everyone is a hero’s journey, fraught with disappointment and joy.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Seeming Evil

I keep on thinking that at some point, I’m going to have to, be forced to, do something I don’t really want to do or believe in. As the situation deteriorates, I’ll have to get a gun and some Krugerands and some survival food. But then I think, what good will that do? It might buy my wife and I some time, a few weeks or daze, but then what? When the amo, gold and food are gone, then what? Where will the drinkable water come from, and the toilet paper?

Our society is incredibly fragile and our ability to survive outside it is practically nill. Think about it: everything comes in by truck. When the trucks stop running, it’s over. And electricity, what would we do without electricity? How many candles have you got? And matches.

This kind of thinking scares me and makes me humble and very grateful for what we’ve got, messed up, destructive, heedless and dangerous as it is. Sure we can do better than we’re doing, but we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We’ve got to transition from where we are to where we want to be – transition. Husband, conserve, love and protect and transition as rapidly as we can without making things worse.

It’s easier and more effective to do this if we come from a heart-centered, mindful and holistic place, from inside-out. When I’m thinking at some point, I’m going to have to, be forced to, do something I don’t really want to do or believe in, I’m not thinking from that place. I’m thinking with the ego mind, the carnal mind, the place of fear and doubt. While human reasoning and political decisions by individuals, communities and nations have value and are important, it’s what’s in our hearts that counts.

I find that when I come from a heart-centered, mindful and holistic place, from inside-out, acting in tune with my guidance and surrendering to the mystery, I get better results. Giving it over, letting go of the fear and ego’s shrieking, is the first step. Do I really have to do something? Perhaps. Is getting a gun and Krugerands the thing to do? Probably not. What should I do then? Well, I can’t know as long as I’m fearful and listening to the ego. If I let go of that, allow myself to be guided, accept the mystery of being a spiritual being having an earthly experience, I will know.

Pressures of the world frighten and seem to divide us into separate individuals, communities, religions, political parties, nations. But if we really are spiritual beings having earthly experiences, the seeming divisions are not the truth about us, but merely seeming divisions. “At all times and under all circumstances, overcome evil with good. Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you. The cement of a higher humanity will unite all interests in one divinity.” Mary Baker Eddy wrote.

I would add that we do not “overcome” evil, we do not buy guns and vote to take the country back, that this is fearful ego thinking and only serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy to make the evil seem real. We perceive the evil, realizing that if we are perceiving evil we are perceiving with our ego minds, give it over and ask to see things differently in the light of spiritual holistic reality. Doing this will in fact, allow us to see things differently and act from that place; not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but transitioning from a world that works for a few, sometimes, to a world that works for everyone, most of the time.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Inside Out

If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. In other words, if I’m unhappy and I want things to be different, I have to be different. Until I adopt a fresh perspective and change my behavior and my thinking, nothing will change. It’s inner work first; from the inside-out. I can blame others: democrats, republicans, jews, born-agains, the media, the tea party, the immigrants, the horrible communist gov’t in Washington all I want until my heart’s content – if blame can really make one’s heart content, or I can take responsibility, look in the mirror and as Pogo said 40 years ago, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

Come on friends, enough already! We have the power, right now, you and I and the person next to you; its always been there within us. We can make things different and fulfill the ideals Joseph Campbell was talking about. But we’ve got to face our fears, claim our power and take responsibility, and that’s difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. In fact as we begin to do that - face our fears, claim our power and take responsibility, not only do we feel better, but the results are instantaneous.

It isn’t a matter of some people being better than others. Rather it requires a willingness to think and act in new terms, to point to spirit’s abundant love and care for each and every one of us, sinners and righteous, black and white, gay and straight, dem and rep. Jesus said God makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike. “The true theory of the universe,” Mary Baker Eddy said, “including humanity, is not in material history, but in spiritual development. Inspired thought relinquishes a material, sensual and mortal theory of the universe, and adopts the spiritual and immortal.”

Awareness of our reality as spiritual beings first, having an earthly experience, can help us overcome the fear that keeps us locked into always doing what we always do, and always getting what we always got. Matter can never truly define anyone, because it is blind to spiritual and essential qualities such as honesty, compassion, brotherhood, wisdom, joy and love. These and qualities like them, define our true power. They are the true substance of our being and they enable us to transcend material limitations. No one can be cut off from the light of spirit, it shines 24/7, everywhere and on everyone. Access the light that you are, that everyone is, and the darkness disappears. When you put on a light in a dark room, the darkness does not resist, it simply disappears.

If I’m unhappy and I want things to be different, I have to be different. If I always do what I always did, I’ll always get what I always got.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Joseph Campbell, 5

The fact that most of the Founders were Masons and would have studied ancient Egyptian lore explains many of the symbols on the dollar bill. In Egypt, the pyramid represents the primordial hillock. After the annual flood of the Nile begins to sink down, the first hillock is symbolic of the reborn world. That is what the pyramid on this seal represents.

The pyramid also showed the Founders that one has to distinguish between reason and thinking.

Reason is one kind of thinking. But thinking things out isn’t necessarily reason as the Founders understood it. The mouse that bumps its nose and figures out there’s another way to go, is figuring things out the way we figure things out. But that’s not reason. Reason has to do with finding the ground of being and the fundamental structuring of order of the universe. When these men talked about the eye of God being reason, they were saying that the ground of our being as a society, culture and people derives from the fundamental character of the universe.

The pyramid myth, with its suggestion that if you’re going to govern correctly, you’ve got to govern from the apex, from the eye, can still inform us today. It can contrast the current state of political ‘discourse’ with our nation’s ideals as envisioned by the Founders. It offers a venerable alternative of compassionate cooperation, inclusion and connectivity. Individually, most of us are now, politically and historically, on one side of the pyramid, one side of the argument, not representing the principle of the eye.

In fact we’ve fallen so near the pyramid’s base that we even distrust and mock those who attempt to pull us up toward reason. We need to get to the top, the eye, individually and collectively. It’s there in our history, our roots, and has been a part of human civilization for thousands of years. We don’t have to invent it, we just have to awaken to it, claim it, and live it.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Joseph Campbell, 4

So what you have here on the dollar bill is the eagle representing this wonderful image of the way in which the transcendent manifests itself in the world. That’s what the United States is founded on. If you’re going to govern properly, you’ve got to govern from the apex of the triangle, in the sense of the world eye at the top.

Washington outlined all of this in his farewell address. “As a result of our revolution,” he said, “we have disengaged ourselves from involvement in the chaos of Europe,” and he warned that we not engage in foreign alliances. We held to his words until WWI, then canceled the Declaration of Independence and rejoined the British conquest of the planet.

So we are now on one side of the pyramid. We’ve moved from one to two and are now politically and historically, a member of one side of an argument. We do not represent that principle of the eye. And all of our concerns are with economics and politics, not with the voice and sound of reason.

What destroys reason is passion, and the principle passion in politics is greed. That’s what pulls us down and why we’re on one side of the pyramid instead of at the top. We’ve ceased the forward motion begun in the great awakening in 500 BC with Buddha, Pythagoras, Confucius and Lao Tzu when humans began the transition to reason from being governed by animal powers, the planted earth and the course of the planets.

But the Founders were learned men and carried on the tradition of the great awakening. They opposed religious intolerance and rejected the idea of the Fall. For them, as it ought to be for us, all human beings are competent to know the mind of God and there is no revelation special to any people. They used Masonic symbols and other ancient symbols probably available in Thomas Jefferson’s library, to embody their eighteenth century Enlightenment ideals. We haven’t had men of that quality in politics very much. It’s an enormous good fortune for our nation that that cluster of gentlemen had the power and were in a position to influence events at that time.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Joseph Campbell, 3

If you look behind the pyramid, you see a desert. If you look before it, you see plants growing. The desert, the tumult in Europe, wars and wars and wars – we have pulled ourselves out of it and created a state in the name of reason, not in the name of power, and out of that will come the flowerings of the new life. That’s the sense of that part of the pyramid.

Now look at the right side of the dollar bill. Here’s the eagle, the bird of Zeus. The eagle is the downcoming of the god into the field of time. The bird is the incarnation principle of the deity. This is the bald eagle, the American eagle. This is the American counterpart of the eagle of the highest god, Zeus.

He comes down, descending into the world of the pairs of opposites, the field of action. One mode of action is war and the other is peace. So in one of his feet the eagle holds thirteen arrows – that’s the principle of war. In the other he holds a laurel leaf with thirteen leaves, the principle of peaceful conversation. That’s the way the idealists who founded our country would wish us to looking – diplomatic relationships and so forth. But thank God he’s got the arrows in the other foot, in case this doesn’t work.

Now, what does the eagle represent? What is in the radiant sign above his head – thirteen stars arranged in the form of a Star of David. There are nine feathers in the eagle’s tail, the number of the descent of the divine power into the world. When the Angelus rings, it rings nine times.

The Star of David is also known as Solomon’s Seal because he used it to seal monsters and giants and things into jars, the way genies were sealed into jars in the Arabian Nights. Each of the triangles in the star is a Pythagorean tetrakys; a triangle composed of ten points, one in the middle and four to each side, adding up to nine, the primary symbol of Pythagorean philosophy, susceptible of a number of interrelated mythological, cosmological, psychological, and sociological interpretations, one of which is the dot at the apex represents the creative center out of which the universe and all things have come.

The initial sound, the big bang, or the Word as a Christian might say, the pouring of the transcendent energy into and expanding through the field of time, breaking into pairs of opposites as soon as it enters, the one becoming two. With two, there are just three ways they can relate to one another: one is dominant, the other is dominant, the two are in balanced accord. Lao-tzu says out of the Tao, the transcendent comes one, out of one comes two, out of two three, and from the three all things in the four corners of space derive.

The arrangement of the triangles in the Great Seal suggest that from above or below, or from any point of the compass, the creative word might be heard, which is the great thesis of democracy. Democracy assumes that anybody from any quarter can speak, and speak truth, because their mind is not cut off from the truth. All they have to do is clear out their passions and then speak.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Joseph Campbell, 2

The Great Seal of the United States suggests the kind of new myth we need. Its on the dollar bill, a statement of the ideals that brought about the formation of the United States. Look at a dollar bill. There is the Great Seal. Look at the pyramid on the left. This pyramid has four sides, for the four points of the compass. When you’re down on the lower levels of this pyramid, you’re either on one side or the other. But when you get to the top, the points come together, and there the eye of God opens. And to the Founders, it was the god of reason.

This is the first nation in the world that was ever established on the basis of reason instead of warfare. The Founders were eighteenth century deists. It also says, “In God We Trust.” But that is not the god of the Bible. These men did not believe in a Fall. They did not think the mind of man was cut off from God. The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with the radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God.

Reason puts you in touch with God. Consequently, for these men, there is no special revelation in the Bible or anywhere, and none is needed, because the mind of man cleared of its fallibilities is sufficiently capable of the knowledge of God. All people in the world are thus capable because all people in the world are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy. Because everybody’s mind is capable of true knowledge, you don’t have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.

All the symbols the Founders used are mythological but arise from a non-biblical mythology that rejects the idea of the Fall in the Garden, and the idea that human beings are cut off from their source, must be redeemed and need a special revelation. For the deist Founders, human beings are not cut off from their source, need not be redeemed and need no special revelation.

Back to the Great Seal. When you count the number of ranges of the pyramid, you find there are thirteen. And when you come to the bottom, there is an inscription in Roman numerals. It is, of course, 1776. Then, when you add one and seven and seven and six, you get twenty-one, which is the age of reason. It was 1776 when the thirteen declared independence. The number thirteen is the number of transformation and rebirth. At the Last Supper there were twelve apostles and one Christ, who was going to die and be reborn. Thirteen is the number of getting out of the field of the bounds of twelve into the transcendent. Similarly, twelve signs of the zodiac and the sun. The Founders were very conscious of the number thirteen as the number of resurrection and rebirth and new life, and the played it up here, in the dollar bill, all the way through.

Of course as a practical matter there were thirteen colonies, and that’s symbolic and not simply a coincidental. That’s why it says, Novus Ordo Seclorum,” a new order of the world, and “Annuit Coeptis,” he has smiled on our accomplishments or activities. “He” being what is represented by the eye – Reason. In Latin you would not say “He” you would say “It.” So the divine power has smiled on our doings; and this new world has been built in the sense of God’s original creation, and the reflection of God’s original creation, through reason, has brought this about.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Joseph Campbell, 1.1

This is a modification of the yesterday’s post, worth reading even if you read it yesterday.

I’ve been reading Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, Doubleday, 1988. It is so clear and useful, I want to share some of it with you. As with the Course in Miracles, I will be quoting and re-arranging quotes, but the work is all fundamentally, Campbell.

Myth is the “commonality of themes pointing to a constant requirement in the human psyche for centering in terms of deep principles, for having an interior road map of experience,” that gives it meaning and allows us to live day-to-day and know we are part of an ultimate, mysterious Reality that transcends language and art. “Myth is a mask of God, a metaphor for what lies beyond the visible world.”

At its best, myth enables us to be healthy, viable individuals, group members and world citizens. At its worst, it is contradictory and exclusionary. “For example, the ten commandments say, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Then the next chapter says, ‘Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it.’ (Here) the myths of participation and love only pertain to the in-group, the out-group is totally other.”

Though the dictionary defines myth as stories about god, with god being a personification of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe – powers in our own bodies and nature, metaphorical spiritual potentialities of human beings, with the same powers animating our lives that animate the world, there are two totally different orders of mythology. One relates us to the natural world, the other is strictly sociological, linking us to a particular society.

The biblical tradition is socially oriented mythology. Nature is condemned. In the Bible, eternity withdraws, and nature is corrupt, nature has fallen. In biblical thinking, we live in exile. Nature religions, on the other hand, are not attempts to control nature but to help us put ourselves in accord with it. But if nature is thought of as evil, as it is in the Bible, you don’t put yourself in accord with it, you control it, or try to, and hence the tension, the anxiety, the cutting down of forests, the annihilation of native people, the separation from nature. We have contempt for nature, subjugate and dominate it because the Bible says it is merely something to serve us. We “don’t know how to apply religious ideas to contemporary life. It’s the failure of religion to meet the modern world.”

We need a new myth, one that will identify the individual not with his local, sociological group, but with the planet. A model for that is the United States. Here we see thirteen different little colony nations that decided to act in the mutual interest, without disregarding the individual interests of any one of them.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Joseph Campbell, 1

I’ve been reading Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, Doubleday, 1988. It is so clear and useful, I want to share some of it with you. As with the Course in Miracles, I will be quoting and re-arranging quotes, but the work is all fundamentally, Campbell.

Myth is the “commonality of themes pointing to a constant requirement in the human psyche for centering in terms of deep principles, an interior road map of experience,” that gives it meaning and allows us to live day-to-day and know we are part of an ultimate, mysterious Reality that transcends language and art. “Myth is a mask of God, a metaphor for what lies beyond the visible world.”

At its best, myth enables us to be healthy, viable individuals, group members and world citizens. At its worst, it is contradictory and exclusionary. “For example, the ten commandments say, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Then the next chapter says, ‘Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it.’ The myths of participation and love only pertain to the in-group, the out-group is totally other.”

Though the dictionary defines myth as stories about god, with god being a personification of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe – powers in our own bodies and nature, metaphorical spiritual potentialities of human beings – the same powers that animate our lives animated the world, there are two totally different orders of mythology. One relates us to the natural world, the other is strictly sociological, linking us to a particular society.

The biblical tradition is socially oriented mythology. Nature is condemned. In the Bible, eternity withdraws, and nature is corrupt, nature has fallen. In biblical thinking, we live in exile. Nature religions are not attempts to control nature but to help us put ourselves in accord with it. But if nature is thought of as evil, you don’t put yourself in accord with it, you control it, or try to, and hence the tension, the anxiety, the cutting down of forests, the annihilation of native people, the separation from nature. We have contempt for nature, subjugate and dominate it because the Bible says it is merely something to serve us.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Humor

You can retire to Phoenix, Arizona where
1. You are willing to park 3 blocks away because you found shade.
2. You've experienced condensation on your butt from the hot water in the toilet bowl.
3. You can drive for 4 hours in one direction and never leave town.
4. You have over 100 recipes for Mexican food.
5. You know that "dry heat" is comparable to what hits you in the face when you open your oven door.
6. The 4 seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot, and ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!

You can retire to California where
1. You make over $250,000 and you still can't afford to buy a house.
2. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.
3. You know how to eat an artichoke.
4. You drive your rented Mercedes to your neighborhood block party.
5. When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it will take to get there rather than how many miles away it is.
6. The 4 seasons are: Fire, Flood, Mud, and Drought.

You can retire to New York City where
1. You say "the city" and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan.
2. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can't find Wisconsin on a map.
3. You think Central Park is "nature."
4. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual.
5. You've worn out a car horn. (end note: if you have a car)
6. You think eye contact is an act of aggression.

You can retire to Buffalo, NY where
1. You only have four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup, and Tabasco.
2. Halloween costumes fit over parkas.
3. You have more than one recipe for deer.
4. Sexy lingerie is anything flannel with less than eight buttons.
5. The four seasons are: winter, still winter, almost winter, and construction.

You can retire to the South where
1. You can rent a movie and buy bait in the same store.
2. "Y'all" is singular and "all y'all" is plural.
3. "He needed killin'" is a valid defense.
4. Everyone has 2 first names: Billy Bob, Jimmy Bob, Mary Sue, Betty Jean, Mary Beth, etc.
5. Everything is either "in yonder," "over yonder" or "out yonder." It's important to know the difference, too.

You can retire to Colorado where
1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car.
2. You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home and so he stops at the day care center.
3. A pass does not involve a football or dating.
4. The top of your head is bald, but you still have a pony tail.

You can retire to the Midwest where
1. You've never met any celebrities, but the mayor knows your name.
2. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor.
3. You have had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" on the same day.
4. You end sentences with a preposition: "Where's my coat at?"
5. When asked how your trip was to any exotic place, you say, "It was different!"

AND You can retire to Florida where
1. You eat dinner at 3:15 in the afternoon.
2. All purchases include a coupon of some kind -- even houses and cars.
3. Everyone can recommend an excellent dermatologist.
4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state.
5. Cars in front of you often appear to be driven by no one.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Bridging the Little Gap

[This is written in first person – “I.” It is meant to be read in first person, with the “I” being you, the reader.]

Spirit builds a bridge to Itself across the little gap, but only in the space left clean and vacant by the miracle. The seeds of sickness and the shame of guilt It cannot bridge, for It can not destroy the alien will It did not create. If I let the gap’s effects be gone and won’t clutch them eagerly to keep them for myself; the miracle will brush them all aside, thus making room to bridge the gap and return me to Itself.

As I count the silver miracles and golden dreams of happiness as all the treasures I’ll keep within the storehouse of the world, I awaken to my reality. What is the world except a little gap perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months and years? And what am I who live within the world except a picture of a child of God, broken into pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay?

I will not be afraid but let my world be lit by miracles. And where the gap is seen to stand between my siblings and I, I will join them there. And sickness will be without a cause. The dream of healing lies in forgiveness, gently showing we never sinned. Like the sea rushing in to cover and smooth the ship’s wake, the miracle would leave no proof of guilt or bring witness to what never was.

And in my storehouse, will be a welcome for my siblings and God. The door is open so all those who have had enough of starvation, fear and anger may come and feast and no longer cherish illusions, dark dreams and sickness. It will be a feast like nothing the world has known. For here, the more that anyone receives, the more is left for all the rest to share. No one is deprived or can deprive. Here is a feast the spirit lays before its children, to share equally with them. And in their sharing there can be no gap in which abundance falters and grows thin. Here the lean years never enter and time waits not upon this feast, which has no end. For Love has set its table in the gap, the space that seemed to keep my guests apart from me.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Sickness and the Little Gap

[This is written in first person – “I.” It is meant to be read in first person, with the “I” being you, the reader.]

No mind is sick until another mind agrees they are separate. And thus it is their joint decision to be sick. If I withhold agreement and accept the part I play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without my aid in letting it perceive itself as separate and apart from me. Thus is the body not perceived as sick by both our minds from separate points of view. Uniting with another’s mind prevents the cause of sickness and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate.

The miracle does nothing just because the minds are joined, and cannot separate. Yet in the dreaming has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which are separated and cannot join. Allowing another to be sick, by not feeling our fundamental oneness, abandons them to their dreams because I’m sharing them with them. The others have not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and I have overlooked the gap between us, where the sickness has been bred. We are thus joined in sickness, preserving the little gap unhealed, where sickness abides carefully protected, cherished and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to It. I need to stop fighting Its coming with sickness, dreams and illusions, for it is Its coming that I want above all things that seem to glisten in this dream of living.

The end of dreaming is the end of fear, and love was never in the world of dreams. The gap is little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a wish to keep apart and not join. Thus it seems to give a cause to sickness which is not its cause. The purpose of the gap is all the cause that sickness has; for it was made to keep us separated, in a body which I see as if it were the cause of pain.

The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is only its effect. Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the empty place between the ripples that a ship makes in passing. And covered just as fast as water rushes in to close the gap, and as the waves in joining, cover it. Where is the gap between the waves when they have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate for a little while? Where are the grounds for sickness when the minds have joined to close the little gap between them, where the seeds of sickness seemed to grow?

Monday, October 4, 2010

Practicing Miracles

I get all this intellectually and am able to actually apply it to my life more and more and achieve better and better results: more peace, clarity, less conflict, and greater productivity. The problem is I frequently get stuck: some situation or condition arises and tho I know I don’t have to perceive it as I do and I can ask for help to see it differently, and I do ask for help, my heart and mind are stuck, just going round and round. Eventually, I’ll get the different perception I pray for and the peace and clarity that go with it, but until that happens, I feel awful and experience a lot of stress.

Part of my inability to let go arises from fear, my amygdyla - the primitive lizard part of my brain, gets triggered, adrenalin pours into my system and I get uncomfortably stuck. Deep breathing, going for a walk, meditation and prayer all help with that when it’s happening and as a preventative practice to make me less susceptible to it.

The fear driven need, frequently, the desperate need to be right, often camouflaged as ‘standing up for what’s right’ or ‘doing God’s will,’ also keeps me holding on to perceiving the situation or condition as the world, the unforgiven world, sees and defines it and keeps me from letting go and letting God and the goodness, peace, love and compassion that God is, flow into me and through me, into the situation. After all, if I’m right, if I’m doing what I’m ‘supposed’ to do, ‘should’ do, then I shouldn’t be afraid, right? Except who says what I’m ‘supposed’ to do, or ‘should’ do? The Bible? My parents? My boss? My political party?

The trick is to be mindful and aware, to feel the Presence in everything, no matter what, not take things so seriously, not need to be right, and stay empty – have no feelings, thoughts, beliefs and opinions, at all, but especially none that weigh me down and cause me to blame, judge, exclude, punish or hurt others. As soon as I start blaming, taking things seriously and need to be right, I want to become aware I’m getting stuck and ask to perceive and experience what’s going on as spirit would perceive and experience what’s going on, with love, compassion, joy, peace and inclusiveness. Do you know why angels fly? Because they take themselves so lightly!

Friday, October 1, 2010

Undoing the world

The world is ‘undone’ as the Course talks about undoing, first by being transformed in our minds. Ultimately, for the Course, the world is already ‘undone’ because it is not real – only what God creates is real. But since we are asleep dreaming we are in the world it is real to us, tho the Course says it is an illusion, not created by God. So we come closer to our reality and undo the world, by waking up to our own, and humanity’s, oneness with God, by first transforming our perceptions of the world in our hearts and minds.

We do this as a daily, moment to moment practice, by having the mental and emotional discipline to be aware of our perceptions, thoughts and feelings. We transform the world, not because we ‘saved’ it from anything, but rather because we actively participate in life, demonstrating our belief that God is good and acting from our connection to Its goodness with peace, love, compassion, wholeness and inclusiveness.

Since our experience of a thing is, for us, that thing, when we come from the inside-out, awake and aware that the world can be transformed for us by our own connection to spirit, by thinking, feeling and acting with spirit, the world IS transformed for us! When we control our experience of something, for all intents and purposes, it is the same thing as shaping the thing itself. It is in this way that we ‘undo’ the world.

And have you noticed that when you drop your resistance to unwanted conditions, how they change? That’s because they are free to change, no longer held in place by all the energy we’re pouring into holding them in place. It’s almost magical. It’s an inside-out thing. The connection between consciousness and the so-called material world is one of the last great frontiers of human knowledge and expansion. And you don’t need a Ph.D, a laboratory, or a wagon train to reach that frontier and explore it, you can do it right now, right where you are by waking up, taking responsibility for yourself and knowing there’s much more to Reality than meets the eye.