Workshop Comments
This page is provided for commenting on the transcribed notes sent in by workshop participants at Ken Wapnick’s teaching institute. It is also the place to post notes that you have made and would like to share with everyone.
For access to the workshop notes, just click on “Workshops” on the purple navigation bar at the top of the page and you will find a list of the different academies and seminars.
Dearest Lisi –
What an outstanding piece of writing that is.. so happy that you mentioned it, and that our friends here were direct enough to ask you for it !! (:
love..
Oh Lisi -we need a Ken like person in your life to pick up the scraps of poems you are disgarding!!!
I guess that it is up to us to ask you to forward them here. Thank you for heeding the call.
Good point Bernard about wondering what the ones that didn’t make it had to say.
I think the line a “joyful silence” is such a great way of describing the undescribable.
Dearest Village friends, just thanks for your generous and so loving comments. I really feel overwhelmed and in this moment really happy because just a few minutes ago, when I finished reading your posts, a really nasty voice whispered on my ear: “oh god, you don´t deserve this. You know you don´t.” And in that moment I recognized a very malicious voice that have accompanied me since my early childhood, after a painful event,that I, very craftily (as an ego mind), forgot, and I built a colossal defense that I am just beginning to see. But no doubt that looking at our defenses weaken them. In this moment I can say to you, in complete sincerity, and humility, thank you. I am very happy that you liked it. And I want to tell you also that I really love you all, lots. And I am very grateful that we have here, at Bernard´s Village, such a beautiful meeting place.
Hugs to you all,
Lisi
Lisi(and everyone with nasty voices) just by shifting you attention away from the voice to how you are feeling inside – and allowing that – will make the defense-wall crumbles. isn’t it incredible to ponder how much energy we are constantly using to sustain those massive walls.
I love you
Nina
What a beautiful poem ! _ Lisi truly you are a gift to us ….. Like Annie i love the “joyful silence” but especially i love that the joyful silence came out of ” no where” [no when/ no how]… We love you so much !
And Nina….your post about your willingness to be open and subsequent disappointment at lack of results. Then you “gave up”… and the next morning, the “incredible problems” were solved… I loved it. Big hugs to you and all.
~ Death and Dying ~
March Academy 2011 Part 15
When you believe part of the ego`s system, you believe all of it. A slight twinge of annoyance is exactly the same as intense fury in the mind. It`s all or nothing. This is what you believe each and every time you have an unkind thought. You should say “this is not okay.” The holy instant is the window to eternity. The unholy instant is the window to hell. Being mildly judgemental or even slightly unkind is the same as torturing and blowing up people. It opens up the entire wrong-minded thought system which believes that God is dead.
The world is insane. It believes it exists. Why ask the one thing in all the world that does not know to tell us what reality is ? Be vigilant for God and his kingdom means be vigilant for your ego. Don`t judge it but know where it is coming from. It is no longer okay. Maybe I can`t help it at the moment, but that`s a nod to God. You don`t have to lie prostrate on the floor. Above all recognize that it is costing you the peace of God when you judge others.
Helen`s poem “Good Friday” uses the symbols and mythology of Christianity as a starting point to bring in a new mythology. The last line is based on the Gospel story about the two thieves who were crucified at the same time. One of them knew Jesus and Jesus said he would “remember him” {in Heaven}. He obviously didn`t like the other thief because he didn`t tell him that he would remember him too….[lots of laughter]
Helen was a very visual person. Jesus wanted Helen to see that he wasn`t there {on the cross}. I kept trying to help her but she never could.
We are not afraid of resurrection. Our real fear is of redemption.
GOOD FRIDAY
There is no death. But there is quietness
Beyond the reaches of the world; a peace
Which only life can give. It is the life
That is the gift of God. All conflicts cease
Within this life. It beats in harmony
With all creation, beyond any sound
The world can hear. It sings a different song,
And where it reaches, there is holy ground.
There is no death. Whom God created whole
Is whole forever. Who can crucify
Eternal life? And who can bring to dust
Whom God has willed immortal? Can he die
Who rises past the universe, to rest
At one with his Creator? So are we
Ensured to life. There is no death because
God’s Son belongs to Immortality.
This is a day of joy. Today the world
Lays down its dreams beside a cross that was
Itself a dream. Behold the dream of death
And waken, seeing that it had no cause,
And so did not exist. What never was
Can not be now. Today we pass it by,
For this the purpose of this day should be:
What is made whole is whole, and cannot die.
Do not confuse the cross with sacrifice,
Nor death with life. The Will of God is one,
And knows no differences nor opposites.
In love it has created but one Son,
In whom the whole creation still remains.
How can his name be changed who bears the Name
His Father called as His? He does not change,
Because his will forever is the same.
What does he yearn for but his Father’s house?
Had he a different will his death might be
Reality. But when he reconciled
What never had an opposite, then he
Could never die. His life is not his own,
Being of God. This day arise and come
With Me. For there is life. It is God’s Will.
Today shall you be with Me in our home.
By Helen Schucman,
March 20, 1978
From “The Gifts of God”© 1982, p. 106-107
Published by the Foundation for Inner Peace
[Here endeth 27page Wednesday… tee hee]
What a so nice experience Nina, and I loved your last line: “A little trust goes a long way”. That is all what Jesus is asking from us. Really a good reminder.
Winnie!!! Thanks, again, and again and again. I have it all file in a beautiful folder. Each afternoon I enjoy being in Ken´s presence.
And what a marvellous way to bring those 27 pages to an end, dearest Winniekins. Blessed was that Wednesday that it opened another window in my heart.
love.
~ Death and Dying ~
March Academy 2011 Part 16
To correct something i said yesterday, it was Mueller who wrote the words to The Linden Tree. [ Someone yelled out “Please no more mistakes” – and everyone laughed].
Q………………… I am becoming very aware of the 4th and 5th laws of chaos playing out in my life. I saw cannibalism and thought, ” wow, this is good, this is what Ken wants me to see. I woke up with swollen feet and began to understand that I don`t have them for the reason I think….that it is my resistance?
Ken………………….I have this effect on people. [ more laughter] What you describe is normal. You are coming into a full recognition that the person you think you are doesn`t exist. It`s not a happy thought to the extent that you still identify with your self. There has to be anxiety.
I`m very wary of people who just waltz their way happily through this course. Perception of worth and worthlessness are inevitable consequences of working with this course.There is going to be pain. There is a great deal of pain in working through special relationships. Tp51 You have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful. As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you as if is were the fear of death. There is no death, but there is a belief in death…………………………………….The world is not left by death, but by truth, and truth can be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits.
Looking at the ego puts the fear of God into you which translates into pain. The source of pain and suffering is not the body. When you begin to recognize that, it is as if the solid ground beneath you starts wavering. In the initial stages, this shift is disconcerting. This is a time for faith. It is helpful to have an overview of the whole journey when the dark nights appear.
The Development of Trust has six stages . Four of these six are painful. Looking is painful because of our resistance, not because the ego is fearful. The ego is nothing. This does take time because fear gets in the way. These are not literal stages.
An overview of the journey is that the ego gets vicious. We are thrown back into the darkness of the ego thought system. This is not like Christianity where suffering is good. This is not meant to frighten you but it is meant to help you understand where your pain is coming from so you won`t think that you`re failing the Course. You`re doing wonderfully well.
Q…………………………….I still believe in death. Should I look at it with love?
Ken………………………Well who with the choice of miracles or murder would find that decision hard to make? When I choose the ego, I am giving up God`s peace. It is no longer okay to tolerate mind-wandering. If that`s what you mean, that`s ok.
When you have issues with death that don`t make you feel entirely peaceful, you know you have chosen the teacher of death. There are no exceptions. This doesn`t mean you shouldn`t feel what you are feeling. Just be honest with yourself and call it what it is. Freud said that if you don`t undo a form of neurosis, it will continually regenerate. All thinking produces form on some level. The law of the split mind is that is what is in the wrong mind will project and what is in the right mind will extend. If I`m not aware of my guilt, it will ALWAYS project. I won`t know where it comes from unless I am aware. Freud was brilliant in explaining that projection comes from repression. Jesus would say the same thing. When we don`t see it for what it is, we preserve and protect it. There would not be a Holy Spirit, if there was no ego. The ego says “Do not look within, for if you do, you will die.” A wrathful, maniacal, despotic God will destroy you.
There are no memories of the past. We are making it up right now behind a curtain. The curtain is an iron curtain. When we have one catastrophe after another, it is because we are choosing the teacher of catastrophe. Like a Hallmark card, guilt is the gift that keeps on giving. Murder is the name of the ego thought system. The name of Jesus` game is -> Look. What if you looked within and saw there is no sin ?……………….. That`s our fear!
What can we do to ensure that we never do that ????…………………..Remain mindless. Be a body.
Bodies are always in danger. The only thing that will strengthen your immune system is forgiveness. The ego is the mother of all lies. Another name for forgiveness is Christ vision or true perception. When you look through Jesus` eyes, everyone will look the same. You look not with the eyes, but through the eyes. Don`t trust the brain or your senses.
Tp 341 In looking at the special relationship, it is necessary first to realize that it involves a great amount of pain. Anxiety, despair, guilt and attack all enter into it, broken into by periods in which they seem to be gone. All these must be understood for what they are. Whatever form they take, they are always an attack on the self to make the other guilty.
We don`t realize that we revel in pain.
I think I answered your question.
beyond smiles to deep gratitude not just to Winnie but to All that makes these notes possible. that so doesn’t even come close to conveying what i mean yet no other words would either.
~ Death and Dying ~
March Academy 2011 part 17
TMp66 Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, losing vitality, and dying in the end? ……..It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. The “born to die” bit is straight out of Freud. That’s why this course rings true. It’s not about sweetness and light. It’s about looking at the cesspool and then saying that this is not true. This is regarded as “the way of nature”, not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the “natural” law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path, – all this is taken as the Will of God. And no one asks if a benign Creator could will this.
In this perception of the universe as God created it, it would be impossible to think of Him as loving. For who has decreed that all things pass away, ending in dust and disappointment and despair, can but be feared. He holds your little life in his hand but by a thread, ready to break it off without regret or care, perhaps today. Or if he waits, yet is the ending certain…………Where there is death is peace impossible.
Death proves everything in the wrong-minded box is true. Love is forever destroyed. Painful as the thoughts in the wrong-minded box are, boy do we welcome them !
Death is the symbol of the fear of God……. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is “laid to rest” in devastation’s arms, where worms wait to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature’s “law of life.” God is insane and fear alone is real.
This world is horrid. Everything devours everything else.
Before you can say that this is an illusion, you first have to look and see it for what it is.
Guilt is the Big Bang.
I am the vermin of life because for purely selfish reasons, I destroyed God. I don’t care. I want what I want what I want. Bodies are awful but we try to pretty them up – make them smell nice etc..
Bodies are rotting prisons. Before you can get to the love, you must look at the hate. We are savage dogs ready to pounce on anything and anyone. This is not a nice place, but you have been a willing participant in it. You want people to suffer. Pain shrieks that sin is real.
The same instant we are born, we die. We just think there’s an interval of time.
It always astounds me when people get upset when others lie to them. Truthful people don’t come here. It’s really important to read passages like this and take them to heart. The world is not a nice place.
………………………………..
big fat snuggledy hugs to all my fellow scurvy worms….{ wipes off slime first}
p.s. Beautifully put, dearest Pammy
Thanks again lilwin, and yes, beautifully said Pam. The message is heartfelt received.
Lots of love to all
I haven’t had much of a chance to stroll through the village lanes lately. I’ll hopefully have an hour or two tomorrow to work on our playground. Hope you all had a great weekend!
~Death and Dying ~
March Academy 2011 part 18
It is not your responsibility how love extends through you. It is not your concern. That`s the ego jumping in. Don`t ask Jesus what you should say in form.
When you live this course, no effort will be required. The words will just come. The body does. We`re always doing. This is not a path that wants us to do anything.
Tp373 For truth brought to this could only remain within
in quiet, and take no part in all the mad projection by which this world was made. Call it not sin but madness, for such it was and so it still remains. Invest it not with guilt, for guilt implies it was accomplished in reality. And above all, be not afraid of it.
How do I look ? – By taking the bedrock of the ego thought system and seeing it as mistake. We are asked not to be afraid of the ego. We are asked not to be afraid of death, one of our most frightening concepts.
Even when you are mildly annoyed, you are believing in the biblical God. We are the biblical God. Woe be unto you if I don`t like you.
Historian Charles Beard talked about United States policy as “perpetual war for perpetual peace”.
Love has to be sacrificed so I write a book in which my saviour has to be sacrificed. Then I forget that I wrote it and the guilt stays buried. It is okay to be a student of ACIM and judge other students and other teachers. Guilt festers like an infection.
Everyone’s ego is the same. Everyone’s Holy Spirit is the same. Most important of all, everyone has the same power to choose.
Don’t tolerate even the slightest thought of unkindness. It is not okay. Don’t justify giving the ego reality it doesn’t have. WBp119 All temptation is nothing more than some form of the basic temptation not to believe the idea for today.
You are so much a part of love that there is no place where you end and love begins. How could you lose love ?
I warn you that this will be the worse part of the class, so if you want to leave for an early lunch, that`s ok. I cannot emphasize enough that this world is not a nice place. You won`t be motivated to practise forgiveness if you think this is a nice place. This part in the Teacher’s Manual p66 – > Death is a symbol of the fear of God. His love is blotted out in the idea, which holds it from awareness like a shield held up to obscure the sun…is stolen from Hamlet.
In Hamlet, Claudius kills Hamlet`s father because he wants Hamlet`s mother to be his wife. Hamlet can`t bring himself to kill Claudius. Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius. In Act 4 Scene 3, he is confronted by Claudius and asked where Polonius is. Hamlet replies “At supper” Claudius says “At supper ! where?”
Hamlet :
“Not where he eats, but where he is eaten:
a certain convocation of politic worms are e`en at him.
Your worm is your only emperor for diet:
we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots:
your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table.
A man may fish with a worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed off that worm.”
Says Claudius – “What dost thou mean by this?”
Hamlet: ” Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.”
All special relationships feed off each other. We are all the same. Even when we are alive, we feed off each other. Nobody here is nice. We are always thinking of ourselves. The body cannot exist without taking from outside because Ideas leave not their source. We fed off God so we have to feed of something else. We need special relationships to make us strong. In order for us to survive, something has to die. We have to die so worms can eat. It`s Shakespeare`s genius that I talk about Hamlet as if he was real and not a character. The world is not left by death. The miracle looks on devastation and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. Don`t believe anybody who tells you that they love Jesus. Don`t believe them. That is one of the great reaction formation stories of the world.
Why do we hate Jesus?
Because he has innocence. He`s the one that God loves. Clearly I`m not. He`s God`s “only son”. He`s “without sin”. Well I`m not without sin, so where did he get it from ? – He stole it from me. Read the New Testament. Everybody hates everybody. The disciples hated each other. Helen got upset soon after the Course was published when factions sprang up almost immediately. I said to her “Why are you surprised ? It`s the first century all over again.”
The biblical Jesus is special. Something was really rotten in the state of Jerusalem.
We walk around killing and devouring, if not physically, then psychologically. It`s really important to see the world as it is. Why are sentences like these here ? ->
Tp509 And both will walk in danger, each intent, in the dark forest of the sightless…………..to lead the other to a nameless precipice and hurl him over it……….Yet is it joy to look upon decay and madness, and believe this crumbling thing, with flesh already loosened from the bone and sightless holes for eyes, is like yourself?
How can you choose against hate if you don`t see it ?
It`s so important to not see the world as a pretty place. Don`t trust your good intentions. They are hateful. I met a southern fellow years ago who told me of his passion to have ACIM in every motel room. This course is meant for one person – you. Don`t try to make the world a better place. It is important to look at your fear and guilt and remember L5 I am never upset for the reason I think. Look at the horror of the world and then say “There must be another way.”
If this world works for you, then don`t do the Course.
One day when Freud was walking with his daughter Anne, he said to her “Look at the pretty buildings. Things are not so nice behind the facade.”
A major purpose of the Course is to help you see that things are not so pretty. Why are you happy? Because you have food on your plate, a healthy bank account and a warm body to lie beside? Jesus would say “no – you feel good because you triumphed over God.”
Do you want to know a secret about Jesus? He hates people who believe in God. He loves atheists. He can`t get through to people who think they are happy. He can get through to people who feel hopeless and alone. The first task of Jesus is to teach us that we are not happy. WB p339The world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. The body is tailor-made to house guilt. The body is a perfect engine of destruction, but it doesn`t fit ourselves very well. It`s like trying to fit a size 6 shoe on a size 8 foot. It hurts. It doesn`t fit.
Sometimes people tell me that they want to give a copy of the Course to a loved one and I say ” Why ? Don`t you like them”?
This is a horror story.
The ego is always in competition with God. I`m not interested in seeing “resplendant light” – “Do not disturb me” – lines from one of Helen`s poems.
The body is in the mind. The idea of the soul living on is a compromise. TMp66 The curious belief that there is part of dying things that may go apart from what will die, does not proclaim a loving God nor re-establish any grounds for trust. If you believe that your body lives on by some kind of magical hocus pocus, then you believe that ideas leave their source.
Teacher of God………. accept no compromise in which death plays a part.
You are not in your body. This is a non-dualistic course. The word “dualistic” is not used in the Course. If death frightens you then you are saying that God is not real. Compromise is not possible. We don`t deny the body and the body`s experiences of two and two equaling four. But at the same time, don`t believe it. You can have the experiences but not believe them. You can become a lucid dreamer. Have your experiences but step back as you go through your day and know that it is not true. Do what your roles call for but another part of you knows it is not true. You`re playing make-believe. I go through my ego day in my right mind. The operational definition of right-mindedness is to be in your wrong mind but don`t judge it.
Try not to make up stories in the world. If you think you`re studying ACIM, then you`re not studying it. If there is no world, then ACIM is in your mind. You are studying ACIM in your mind. What is ACIM ? – a symbol of right-minded thinking. Don`t get caught in spiritual specialness. The world took the figure of Jesus and made him special. ACIM is not a book. It is a symbol of the Son of God`s decision to be right-minded. See it any other way and you are setting yourself up for trouble.
This paragraph on Tp343 is a very veiled criticism of Christianity. Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is content, and not form of any kind. The special relationship is a ritual of form, aimed at raising the form to take the place of God at the expense of content. There is no meaning in form, and there never will be. Love is not form. Jesus is not form. ACIM is not form. People go crazy over words that Helen took down. For God`s sake, they`re just words. People think that the words of this course are sacred.
The whole problem of death is that it is a triumph of form over content, the ultimate triumph. Love is gone. I destroyed it. You`ve confused symbol with source. Isaac Stern talked about the silence in between the notes of music. You`ve confused the words (notes) with the silence between the notes. Worship this course and you are inviting death.
Winnie, thanks, with these notes we remember you on daily basis, and feel permeated by all the love you put on these so great notes.
Finally got around to creating pages and formatting all those excellent
notes from Winnie. You’ll find all of them under the ‘Temecula’ tab.
I’ll have to find a special way of showing my gratitude to you, my dear Winnie, for this most fabulous work. I still find it incredible how much you were able to take down, and how you managed to capture the atmosphere at the same time. Again, all my love and all my thanks for your hard and love-filled labour. I hope you get this message, wherever you are, and wish you the company of angels on your journey into the wild beautiful beyond.
Oh boy – thanks for all the love guys !
~ Death and Dying ~
March Academy 2011 part 19
[After Lunch Thursday……Just before Ken started speaking, someone yelled out “The worm has returned”. Without missing a beat, Ken retorted “ I told you not to drink”……(lots of laughter) ]
I am going to be telling you the same message over and over again.
Tp316 But remember that understanding is of the mind, and only of the mind. Knowledge is therefore of the mind, and its conditions are in the mind with it. If you were not an idea, and nothing but an idea, you could not be in full communication with all that ever was. Yet as long as you prefer to be something else, or would attempt to be nothing else and something else together, you will not remember the language of communication, which you know perfectly.
The one single principle to remember is that Ideas leave not their source. In Heaven we are an idea in the mind of God or a thought in the mind of God. The separation never happened.
To the ego, ideas do leave their source. It`s all downhill from then on – to sin, guilt and fear and on and on and on. Since the principle that ideas leave not their source negates the separation, then that is the principle that the ego must draw upon. The strategy of the ego is to get us to believe we are mindless – to believe in the idea of sin, guilt and fear – to believe that projection works. If you get this and nothing else this week, then you will have got the whole Course.
Ideas leave not their source. That`s why I am never upset for the reason I think. Myths are not true. Learning this course requires willingness to question every value you have. The core question is – who are we?
There was an enlightened Hindu master who didn`t write anythng down or teach anything, but he asked everyone – “Who are you?”
The formula for the Course is to see the face of Christ in my brother when I forgive. The memory of God dawns on you because Ideas leave not their source.
WB p318 You think that death is of the body. Yet it is but an idea, irrelevant to what is seen as physical. A thought is in the mind. It can be then applied as mind directs it. But its origin is where it must be changed, if change occurs. Ideas leave not their source. The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you are one with God.
You must apply Lesson Five to the most difficult experience of all – death. Don`t deny the anger, grief and loneliness, but don`t believe those feelings either.
I keep saying this over and over again.
You came here to remember, I won`t say learn. The only thing to ask of anything is “What is it for?’
Plato`s theory of education, and the etymological meaning of the word “educate” is to remember what you already know.
This is the Course`s theory of education too……. to remove the veils of amnesia.
The miracle doesn`t do anything. It undoes.
You are students of ACIM because you want to remember who you are. That`s why you are in this world. That`s why you are in this room. Don`t justify your feelings. Step back and look at them.
If you don`t have peace of mind before you die, you won`t have it after you die. If you want to die in a peaceful way, do your work now.
Don`t tolerate any unkind thoughts. Wake up every morning and remember that it is not okay to have unkind thoughts. Perception is how you interpret what your eyes see. If you do have unkind thoughts, be kind to yourself by realizing that you got afraid of love, that`s all.
Being unkind is not natural. It`s natural to love everybody. Kindness created me kind.
When you are unkind, be kind to yourself. Don`t judge or justify your feelings.
Tp646 The lessons to be learned are only two. Each has its outcome in a different world. And each world follows surely from its source. The certain outcome of the lesson that God`s Son is guilty is the world you see. It is a world of terror and despair. Nor is there any hope of happiness in it. There is no plan for safety you can make that ever will succeed. There is no joy that you can seek for here and hope to find. Yet this is not the only outcome which your learning can produce. However much you may have overlearned your chosen task, the lesson that reflects the Love of God is stronger still. And you will learn God`s Son is innocent, and see another world.
Whenever you feel terror or the slightest trepidation, go back to the cause. It`s because I believe I am guilty. A corollary to ideas not leaving their source is projection makes perception.
But secretly I do want to be guilty. I see a vicious terrible world. I see a vicious terrible world of death. I want to believe that Jesus died on a cross.
The outcome of the lesson that God’s Son is guiltless is a world in which there is no fear, and everything is lit with hope and sparkles with a gentle friendliness. Nothing but calls to you in soft appeal to be your friend, and let it join with you. And never does a call remain unheard, misunderstood, nor left unanswered in the selfsame tongue in which the call was made. And you will understand it was this call that everyone and everything within the world has always made, but you had not perceived it as it was. And now you see you were mistaken. You had been deceived by forms the call was hidden in. And so you did not hear it, and had lost a friend who always wanted to be part of you. The soft eternal calling of each part of God’s creation to the whole is heard throughout the world this second second lesson brings.
In Japan right now the world will sparkle with gentle friendliness. The world we see is a direct result of which teacher we chose. You want to learn this so well that you will integrate it so it becomes a part of your life.
People disassociate the Course. They understand the theory and then don’t practise it. That’s what disassociation is – splitting off.
You bring the darkness to the light. You bring guilt to forgiveness. We blindly continue, we study the Course, we read it, but we don`t apply it. Stop with the baby business.
Everything is a idea, and every idea is purposive. Jesus is saying that this course will bring you home. Why don`t you follow it? Don`t tell me that you can`t follow this Course. Look what you have learnt ! Don`t tell me that you can`t learn this simple course. Moreover what I am teaching you is already in you. I`m reminding you that it is already there. I`m alerting you that you will be resistant and fearful but I will help you. Please let me help you. Why wait for Heaven? Shall we not put away our sharp-edged children`s toys? How long Son of God ? How long??
Absolutely wonderful this message is Winnie – as are all of your notes with this workshop. A heartfelt thank you so very much. 🙂
I have been catching up and “really reading” instead of skimming the posts as I’ve done while away. Wow. They are so heartfelt and profound, Winnie’s process, Nina’s dream…..the comments from all….A wonderful Easter gift to enjoy before joining family later (including seven little ones under six years of age) and this is with Jaimee and family in California!
Thank you all – all of you – for all of your fun comments about our antics of playing baseball in the kitchen while the parents were away! The time spent with Jaimee, Eric, Austin and Kain (another addition to come in October) was wonderful!
Happy Easter with Love and Gratitude to all of you,
melody
Thanks Winnie again for the notes!!! and this last advice as Melody well said is absolutely wonderful, I am going to paste it here as a reminder. I already copied in a card to have it at sight day in and day out. It’s the most beautiful motivation a father could give to his children:
“You bring the darkness to the light. You bring guilt to forgiveness. We blindly continue, we study the Course, we read it, but we don`t apply it. Stop with the baby business.
Everything is a idea, and every idea is purposive. Jesus is saying that this course will bring you home. Why don`t you follow it? Don`t tell me that you can`t follow this Course. Look what you have learnt ! Don`t tell me that you can`t learn this simple course. Moreover what I am teaching you is already in you. I`m reminding you that it is already there. I`m alerting you that you will be resistant and fearful but I will help you. Please let me help you. Why wait for Heaven? Shall we not put away our sharp-edged children`s toys? How long Son of God ? How long??”
Thanks to Ken and to Winnie to bring this here.
Lots of hugs
Wow, thanks Lisi for bringing those words of Winnie’s to my attention. Powerful stuff. Now that’s a great beginning for our Easter resurrection, methinks.
Hope you all enjoyed lots of chocolate bunnies ‘n eggs ‘n stuff!
~ Death and Dying ~
March Academy 2011 part 20
Most of us have read -> Tp29 The correction of fear is your responsibiilty. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate…..but this section is so important. This was specially for Helen who was complaining.
This section obviously didn`t take hold because a day or two later,Tp31 Jesus says You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. I have already indicated that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. I know it does not exist, but you do not.
We`re not talking about the historical Jesus.
If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is.
Thoughts are in the mind. Jesus would be taking the only power in all the universe that could help you. Jesus can`t help us. This course can`t help us. God can`t help us. He`s telling Helen – you`ve got the wrong boy.
I am not a dream that comes in mockery. Don`t confuse me with the biblical Jesus. Don`t ask me to enable you.
Edgar Cayce, a great American psychic, started each reading with “The mind is the builder.”
The purpose of this course is to have you appreciate the power of the mind.
You are not afraid of death. You are afraid that there is no death.
Devote each day from the moment you wake up til the moment you go to sleep, and even your dreams to this course.
ACIM is a pictorial representation of your love thoughts.
When you get to the fourth Obstacle to Peace, you can choose to either pass through the veil or wander off.
I don`t want to wander off any more. I want to go Home. Jesus takes our hand til we remember that we are Jesus. The song is each of us. It`s the song you want, the content. We need the forms but only to get beyond them. Enough already, I don`t want to keep disassociating. The introduction to the Workbook says A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful. Yet it is doing the exercises that will make the goal of the course possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing.
Whenever you are tempted to be upset, stop and say L5 and it is no longer okay and L34.
In this world there appears to be a state that is life`s opposite. You call it death. Yet we have learned that the idea of death takes many forms. It is the one idea which underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy. It is the alarm to which you give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the merest frown, acknowledge death. And thus deny you live.
You think that death is of the body. Yet it is but an idea, irrelevant to what seems physical…….Ideas leave not their source.
And all the while our egos are chortling in glee – ever seen an ego chortle in glee [ all laugh – and i think the joke was on us]
There`s a line taken from Job – “Curse God and die.” That`s what we say to the ego god – “you lied to me.” The ego is absolutely brilliant, absolutely brilliant. It has fooled practically everyone.
The people who really knew Jesus were muffled, not heard. They never got a mention historically. The gospel writers went from soup to nuts, emphasis on nuts, without having a clue. Don`t believe the voices of the dead.
Hi All, Melody asked if she could post my “Tidbits” here and after a couple back and forth notes to both she and Bernard, I decided it’s just easier for me to post them (though I will send a copy to you, Bernard, for the next two months) Then I return to NY. But I do think I’m ready and my time out here has helped me immensely!
April Seminar: Love without Needs
• If you are not in perfect Oneness then you are in separation.
• Defenselessness says that the spark in me is also in you.
• None of this is possible until we have a relationship with Holy Spirit or Jesus – a presence in our mind to which we can go that is not ego’s voice.
• Intimacy begins with an intimate relationship with our inner teacher. We became an ego because we love our individuality. This became our beloved.
• The only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness; to remember Jesus.
• Ego talks all the time about our needs. We are always needy, always seeking to meet our needs, whether physical, emotional or psychological.
• This Course is not about the body but about the mind. We will get off ‘Course’ if we don’t make this shift.
• When we find ourselves in a relationship with another person, we have to be clear about our neediness coloring it. Generally, the purpose of our relationships here stem from our neediness.
• Remember that the ‘world is a delusional system of those made mad by guilt.’ We made the body as a huge sense of need. Why? Because it keeps us focusing on these needs of the body so we forget about the mind.
• My simply existing is not enough – I need to prove I am innocent and someone else is guilty. We are in search of evil doers (no, George Bush did not invent this phrase – he just perfected it!).
• When our need for intimacy is focused on Holy Spirit/Jesus, we won’t have the neediness we grew up with. There will be no ego, no judgment.
• When we don’t choose Holy Spirit/Jesus as our friend, we are friendless.
• When we are true to this Love, we can’t hold an unkind thought for anyone.
• When we step outside the arch or leave the garden, we make judgments.
• The Bible Jesus never smiles. He is serious. Never tells a joke. You want the ACIM Jesus who sees the ego thought systems as silly and laughs.
• Recently everyone is writing about intimacy – as if one person could be truly intimate with another person.
• If you want love without needs look to the mind and realize you have two choices. When you choose the ego you become the ego. This is the meaning of intimacy – becoming one with the ‘other.’ Who is your beloved?
• When I choose Holy Spirit as my creator everyone is my beloved.
• We are all different on the level of bodies, but not on the level of mind.
• In Jesus’ world there is no difference between torture and an unkind thought.
• Anger is a basic human emotion. But why do you want to be human?
• In Truth you are always in a state of intimacy.
• Our inner teacher sees that everyone’s interests are the same.
• Choose to see yourself more and more as the dreamer, not the dream figure.
• Jesus is not talking about forgiving a person out there, but letting go of my ego’s need for it to be different
• It’s not about changing the other person. (Refer T.15.8.6.5)
• The only real relationship is between Holy Spirit and the mind. I am to use my relationship with you as a means to get back to the mind.
• If you want to teach this Course you have to realize you can’t become intimate with a book!
• Ken shared his own experience in listening to Beethoven. He could listen to the symphonies, but found the quartets he was not quite ready for. This was his striving for intimacy, so there would be nothing between him and the beloved (the music).
• Where are your blocks to the beloved? It’s the intimacy with the love the Course leads to that you want – else it’s just another special relationship.
• Intimacy with Love is intimacy with every person.
• We need each other to learn we are not each other to learn we are each other.
• Future loss is not your fear but present joining is your dread (joining with H.S./Jesus. (Refer T.26.VI.2)
• Pleasure and pain are the opposite sides of the same coin. You cannot have a relationship with anyone outside yourself.
• We want to take what is nothing (world) and make it special.
• We embrace special relationships to keep us from our True Friend.
• Without the Holy Spirit you are friendless. The ego is not your friend.
• Bible, Koran and Torah were made ‘divine.’ Don’t do this with ACIM. Don’t worship a book or the people responsible for the book. Look to the altar the book leads us to.
• Love inspires everything – scripture, Shakespeare, Peyton Place are books.
• Don’t listen to the voices of the world (the dead). Don’t make anyone or anything special.
• Be a Son of God who is in love with his Beloved.
• God appointed Holy Spirit/Jesus as our teacher. Accept no substitutes.
• Why embrace your anxiety or bodily pain when you can embrace your Friend, instead?
• Our decision for guilt is the cause of our suffering.
• Observe how we choose things here to keep God’s Love away. By choosing ego we are treating ourselves unfairly.
• In Jesus there is no judgment, just pure and gentle Love.
• There is nothing in this world that can console you. Focus on yourSelf. The work is in the mind, not in the world.
• Do you want to make a relationship with a puppet work?
• Use relationships in the world as a springboard to return you to the mind.
• Many people stay with ACIM by changing what it says. There is only the mind. Use everything here as a way to return to the mind.
• Physicists say that matter is an illusion and the result of thoughts. They don’t go so far as to say matter is a result of thoughts of guilt, however.
• The dream seems so real because we are sleeping. Jesus sees that it is not real, however, so ask him for help.
The following are the Academy notes for April:
April Academy: 11A4 – “One Brother Is All Brothers” 4/17-419
• Title of this workshop is from WB.161.4.1.
• As long as we think we are here, we can’t transcend our experience here.
• Words of ACIM are difficult to understand because we have learned to think specifically. World of specificity was made to conceal perfect oneness. Once we perceive form we blind ourselves to perfect oneness.
• We are all part of that one error and are still one son, but think we are many.
• We can be taught we are all the same by ‘seeing a little to learn a lot.’
• How can a world that doesn’t exist be a problem? We are all trapped in a world made by the ego thought system. So we are all the same.
• Everything a person does is a shadowy thought that ‘I exist because I triumphed over God.’
• We keep trying to find a special something that will fix this, whether it is an addiction to alcohol or drugs, or even a certain blue book!
• ‘Make this year different by making it is all the same.’ (T.15.XI.10.11)
• We like the freedom separation gave us and want to be in control. (T.22.VI.1)
• Our Self has no freedom – no thought apart from God.
• I exist to prove that separation is reality and Oneness is illusion.
• We spend time and money to come to the FACIM, but how can you like it when it is denying your very existence?
• I like being a separated self that is reading a separated book that is better than your separated book, and being guided by a separated teacher that is better than your separated teacher.
• Jesus can’t stand a serious ACIM student or one that says they love him. If you don’t look at your resistance to this Course you will never learn it.
• If your goal is to be a body your guilt will assure this and you will project it.
• What is your goal? To become a kinder person or to realize you are not a person at all? Realize that kindness comes from the mind.
• Bible states ‘Seek and ye shall find.’ It depends what I want.
• Do I want to be a mind or a body? Came into the world to be mindless, so it takes looking, work, because it is not natural here.
• I people my world with victims and victimizers. (Refer WB.161.7)
• Being different means one is innocent and one is sinful.
• Every person comes into the world believing someone else did this to them. If you don’t realize this you can’t choose differently.
• It is not comfortable to be told you are not here. Begin by seeing there is another way of being here.
• See all experiences here as a mind and not a body. Who is the you that is living in this world?
• We want to put the world ‘front and center’ and ACIM in the background.
• Jesus told Helen ‘The thing to do in the desert is to leave.’ Same is true with the ego thought system.
• Knowledge is not the goal of this Course, peace is.
• It’s no longer o.k. that I continue to judge or find fault with people. Having these thoughts is not bad, but there should be none that I would keep.
• Truth in this world is sameness. See what you see but don’t uphold it.
• You will really understand this is a dream when you don’t give anything power to effect you.
• Don’t deny the little steps He asks of you. (Refer WB.193) Don’t judge your brother for 15 seconds. Then for 20 seconds. Continue like this and soon you won’t be here! Quantitative changes for qualitative shift.
• When you change your mind and enter Oneness, everyone must come with you because there is only One!
• Can’t have private thoughts because others will sense your feelings about them, and even if they don’t, you will know and this affects the mind. I can’t be affected by your ego thoughts, however, unless I want to be.
• If you only want to be with right-minded people you are actually reinforcing the ego thought system and trying to let others do your work for you.
• To want to ‘dropout’ from the world can be a defense. (Refer WB.184.9) To be a teacher of God speak the language of the world but don’t identify with it.
• Learning ACIM is like learning to read and write. The challenge is not to think these skills are special. Be ‘in the world but not of it.’
• ACIM is particularly helpful for our world at this point in time. It may not be so in 500 years or so.
• I don’t know I’m part of everything. We need this classroom to learn there is only one real relationship.
• No matter how well meaning we are, we cannot ask Jesus to fix our screens. We need to ask Him to take us back to the projection booth (our mind).
• A dark spot on the lens of the projector will contaminate everything on the screen.
• This Course has NOTHING to do with the body. Don’t believe that Jesus tells you things about being here. He is only telling you to come home.
• A special relationship is form over content.
• Do not confuse symbol with source or content with form.
• If you believe you are a body you will believe what the ego thought system tells you.
• Don’t deny your experience as a body, but don’t believe it as true.
• Your unforgiving thought protects projection. Like a veil of amnesia it protects the unforgiveness in the mind.
• Question every single thought you have. If it doesn’t embrace every single person it is of ego.
• Form always excludes and throws Jesus away. The ego is embraced due to guilt. (Refer WB.136.1-5)
• Be attentive at how you exclude.
• We revel in the thought that we have power over God.
• When I judge you, I am pushing you down and I go up.
• Jesus asks us to look at our judging, unkindnesses, gossiping, or harboring of prejudices with Him. He doesn’t want to take them away from us but is offering us the whole song. Why do we want to settle for a little crumb?
• Don’t force yourself to disengage from the lie while you still believe it.
• The first obstacle to peace is our desire to be without it. Why? Because we want to maintain our specialness.
• When we see with our eyes we are seeing form. When we see through our eyes we are seeing with vision.
• Don’t believe what people tell you or what the world tells you. Believe what Jesus tells you.
• Only fear will drive us to be unkind.
• Some people are better at fooling other people. Don’t judge spirituality by form, but rather by content.
• The goal is to be mindful, not mindless.
• How can the world be doing anything to me when it is not out there?
• Jesus is a symbol. He no more existed than you do. Use the symbol to help you get back to the mind.
• To give something to the Holy Spirit means to look at it with Him. “..together we have the lamp that will dispel it..” (T.11.V.1.3)
• All things in the world are symbols. The purpose we give them is to keep us mindless. The purpose the Holy Spirit gives is to lead us back to the mind.
• When we deny our thoughts, Holy Spirit can’t use them to help us return to the mind. He doesn’t take them away from us, but transforms them – shifts them from a prison to a classroom.
• A question was asked about Jesus helping with specifics in the world. Ken explained that as we climb the ladder of understanding we take different things from it. On one level it can sound like Jesus can help us here. But as we climb the ladder we realize he can’t help us with anything in the world because the world does not exist. We need to see the ‘whole,’ however, so don’t take the parts out of context.
• The only reason anyone suffers is because they pushed love away.
• We think the world is the cause and my suffering self is the effect. The truth is that my decision for guilt is the cause. The miracle restores to mind its function as causation. This is a course in cause and not effect.
• When your heart goes out to the victims, this means you are seeing part of the Sonship as guilty or at fault. Jesus reminds us that everyone deserves our love. Suffering comes when the mind chooses the ego.
• The world you see is a pictorial representation of our attack thoughts.
• The more we get upset and the more people get upset with us, the more it reinforces our belief that it is not my fault.
• Two most important words of salvation: without exception.
• True empathy looks on everyone as the same.
• ‘I’m never upset for the reason I think’ doesn’t mean to deny what you are feeling. Just don’t believe it.
• When we choose to hate what goes on in the world we don’t have to deal with the self-hate in the mind so that we might choose again.
• A question was asked about the situation in Japan and this prompted Ken to use the analogy of fruit falling from a tree. Some fruit fall closer to the tree (like Jesus) and others fall farther away. Similarly, some land near each other in clusters. This is analogous to nations, races or genders. This is helpful in understanding that some of us review mentally as a collective.
• Intimacy is the ability to be fully present with no needs from another
• Having no needs makes room for love in everyone’s mind to manifest itself.
• Our needs block seeing the other; we only see our projection of differences; that they have what we don’t.
• Recognize it’s my neediness that is distorting my recognition of the other as they truly are. Just recognize this, without judgment.
• True learning is unlearning. Love must embrace everyone.
• If only certain people can fulfill my needs, I believe in a hierarchy of good.
• There is only one problem and one solution. (Refer WB.79 and WB.80)
• Through relationships I become aware of my needs and learn not to indulge; I see the forms of many problems to keep the one problem hidden.
• Salvation is the decision-making mind’s choice for Holy Spirit.
• The answer is where the problem is; not in the world but in the mind.
• I can’t have both vision and judgment.
• When I have uncorrected unkind thoughts, I want to be here.
• To overlook does not mean not to see something, but to look at it and then beyond it; to see ‘through’ it.
• First look, then look beyond to truth.
• I must understand the defenses that have me keep the body as real.
• Look at the judgments without judgment.
• It is more honest to admit how much I hate the Course than talk about how much I love it. Just look at the hate to get to the love underneath.
• One brother is all brothers means that I can’t forgive one without forgiving ALL!
• Don’t tolerate mind-wandering which is equivalent to projection and the mind’s decision to stay asleep.
• Jesus is the bodily symbol of a bodiless ego. Jesus is the great western symbol of love and hate. Jesus is the shining symbol of love. I can’t grow up and be like Jesus if I have an ego.
• The academy ended by reading ‘A Jesus Prayer’ from ‘The Gifts of God.’
Wow Jean – Thank you for these truly wonderful notes – very much appreciated …loving hugs xoxoxoxo
We need each other to learn we are not each other to learn we are each other.
Thank you Winnie! I enjoyed looking at your March notes, too. I started sending these notes back to some friends…..and I have been out in Temecula almost a year now and it is funny to look at my earlier notes and compare to the more recent ones. I feel like Helen!! At first, I couldn’t get half of the stuff and I didn’t even really get the true message…..some of it, but not as clear as I am now able to. Well…..I still can’t get it all….but what a vast improvement! So a year in Temecula really helps clear the clouds/cobwebs! I see you posted ‘We need each other to learn we are not each other to learn we are each other.’ Did you like this one particularly? I think I understand what he was saying but even as I typed it up I was thinking, ‘huh?’ I know it’s true……but why do we have to learn we are not each other so that we can learn we are each other? It’s a bit vague to me…….kind of like I probably get it on a deeper level but consciously it is hard to wrap my mind around!
Jean
Jean – Thanks for sending in these wonderful notes. I’m not going to attempt to explain that one, because I don’t have the words for it, but like Winnie – that was the one that stood out for me –
“We need each other to learn that we are not each other to learn we are each other”. Love it.
The other one I loved was “Don’t worship a book or the people responsible for the book. Look to the altar the book leads us to”
First of all, I’d like to publicly thank Jean again, as I was at both of these, and I just write down right in the blue book key things that Ken says. These notes for me, are an excellent and complete review of both workshops!
I’m going to take a stab at my perception of this and would be interested in others’, as I, too was baffled when Ken said this yet, just as you said Jean, I realized I understood it at some level!
I’m perceiving it means that we need each other to “see” that we are not all the same (as in my experience, honestly I like to be the one “on top” many if not most times) – most notably in my special relationships 🙂 to understand that at the mind level, outside of time and space – we are all the same. Same right mind, same wrong mind, same decision making aspect of that same mind. And on the level of form, we are all struggling in some way – no matter what appearances show.
Some of us have learned to appear to navigate this dream and make it positive – but *I continue to learn “not to be fooled by appearances” because no one *here is completely happy all or even most of the time. No one that I know has a “perfect life” without fears and issues about something. Again, I’d be most interested in hearing what everyone thinks.
I’ll copy a few paragraphs from Joe Jesseph, who posted a “Specialness” series when he moderated course talk many years ago, which seems to say the same thing.
This is it below:
One of the things that the Course teaches is, that all of time occurred
in one instant. And what appears to be linear time is simply a magic
trick, that the ego foists on us, so that we can think that the world of
time and space is real. In reality everything occurred in one instant.
And then as the Course later tells us, everything is already over, so we
are walking on a journey that is already done. What this means is that,
we all carry within us, however deeply buried it is in our minds, the
original special relationship with God that serves as the cause of all the other
specialness, that we demonstrate in our lives.
So that if we could really understand what it is we believe went on
between ourselves and God, we would then understand what goes on between
ourselves and everyone else. And therefore we would then understand, why
the focus on the Course, is so much on forgiveness. Because by forgiving
the specialness I see in you, I am forgiving the specialness I see in
me. Which means that I am also forgiving the specialness I put between
myself and God. Because it is all the same thing. And when that goes, then what
is left is the Love of God, that is underneath it.
Thanks for this reference from Joe, Melody! It does really explain more fully Ken’s comment…..and with the idea of forgiveness it makes it ever more clear for me. I also appreciate a’s comment that she wasn’t going to attempt to explain this, and yours also about getting it on another level. This is helpful for me to remember – that we are getting things even when we think we aren’t – at least at some level. I suppose that is why it is so helpful to listen, and re-listen and re-listen. How did you find the perfect Joe J. quote for this circumstance? I’m impressed!!
Love,
Jean
Jean and Melody, Thank you both, lots to ponder here.
I want to add to# 128 and only ponder for awhile then incorporate it and “live” it. I’ve noticed lately that I could get stuck studying for a long time if I’m not careful.
I know what you are saying about getting stuck studying – but I have come to the decision/realization – that it’s o.k. When I came to Temecula I said I felt I was ‘addicted’ to Ken’s stuff and people told me that was ‘good!’ So eventually I got to the idea that, like that saying in the Bible, ‘There is a time for this, a time for that…..’ it can be fine to just get buried in ACIM for a while……..I’ve learned here that ‘purpose’ is everything! So, so long as you aren’t using it to avoid other stuff……then it’s o.k. And even as I write this I think that maybe I have used it to avoid other stuff (at least a little bit)……but I do what has to be done…..so I think it is STILL o.k! When I don’t feel like using it to avoid other stuff, I will stop! (kind of like when Helen decided Jesus said she didn’t need to go shopping anymore!) Really, it is that easy…..and meanwhile, I keep solidifying the concepts by my repeated listening or reading. Of course, I think this has to do with where I am at in my particular dream – and isn’t meant that anyone else should do it this way. I have mentioned it to Ken, actually, feeling I was maybe a bit ‘over the top’ – but he didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with it, and that, it was actually good. So it is just funny/interesting how our thoughts will tell us stuff – sometimes to keep us away from what really would be most helpful for us.
I really needed a ‘time out’ though — and I did continue with caring for my daughter and pets, etc…but just needed a time to really ‘indulge’ or ‘dig down’ into this path…..so I could get to the answers I seemed to need.
Love,
Jean
Because of the abundance of your contributions, I had to reorganize the transcription notes off the scrolling menu (we reached the bottom of the page!) and onto one text page. You will now find a list of all the different workshops on the page under the ‘workshops’ tab on the navigation bar. However, for ease of commenting, I’ll keep the ‘Comments’ page open as a drop down under ‘workshop’. So if you want to comment on the notes or contribute your notes, just point your arrow/mouse on the word ‘workshops’ and then click on ‘comments’.
Nice thoughts, Melody and Jean on this tricky question. I don’t have anything to add myself. I know that eventually we see everyone as one and the same. Perhaps I’m missing something by way of an intermediate step.
Hi everybody, Jane so many thanks for your notes!!!!!! I really appreciate your kindness in sharing this treasure with us. I already printed them and will read them this afternoon. Again thanks!!!!
Great weekend to everyone
Lots of hugs,
Lisi
{{{{Bernard’s Video, Lisi’s Poem, Winnie’s Notes, Villagers comments on all, Jame’s yet to be read but certain to be treasured notes}}}}
I felt so lucky seeing and hearing Bernard’s Anniversary Video, with all of us loved and welcomed. I was going to leave it at that but I want to confess and admit and if it’s my ego well then I’m just going to look and not add on any more guilt…but I was mostly overlooked in a myriad of ways growing up and when Bernard said my name first, I just felt the overlooked and not cared about little girl being suprised and delighted and healed. Those poor assortment of folks in whose hands I was left (and chose of course) did the best they knew how, but here in my village family I got to be first named in this wonderful anniversary we share. i really should hit delete on this confession , but i won’t.
I’m on part 15 of Winnie’s Temecula notes, blown away by what is being revealed in such great detail on the lies of the ego and our DVD scripts and whatnot. Lisi your poem and the experience that preceded it…so beautiful and all that people expressed that they loved, Bernard asking again…and Annie saying you need your own scrap finder as Ken was….all these truly loving responses to you. Pam’s always direct and true responses.
Nina’s steadfast honesty and kindness. Each and everyone of us brings us all so much being on this path together and it helps all of our willingness
I have tears in my eyes for all the kind and courageous minds and hearts I call my family here. We know we have splits minds with vast hate and we feel safe exposing what we discover and have the true comfort of knowing the insane beliefs we share in the wrong mind and the path home that will always be there for each of us and the love we feel and recognize in each other in our right minds.
I still have lots of catching up reading just HAD to stop and tell you all Thank you xoxoxoxox
Michele dear –
So happy that you didn’t hit delete. Reading your honest comment “allows” me to get honest with my own thoughts. And allows me the possibility, the freedom to become aware of the subtle complexities of my personality/ego-self.
And that is what i interpret from the first phrase of the sentence that Winne, Jean, Melody n I have been touching upon earlier. “we need each other…….”
“We need each other” to come to terms with our own individual little egos, to observe its near-continuous stream of thoughts about ourselves, others, our inter-relationships, and to be able to say to ourselves n each other –“well, thats the way it is, or seems to be”, and that’s OK.
I remember watching that toast from Bernard wondering when my name was going to be called (:, n it kept going n going, n then I thought a-ha, it’s the girls first, then the guys, n i was suitably mollified (: but really, the most wonderful part of the video was the message of love @ the end..i felt the tears filling my eyes, a few moments of sweet lightness, and at least for that moment or two, there was no individual self, my closely-held identity disappeared, and there was just the sweet presence of…….
Watching that video was journeying from my little mind to some Thing, some Place Beyond….
Michele, a* – I am feeling the tremendous sweetness from your communication – something like, “we tell it like it is” and it is s i m p l e .
I am certain, dear Michele, that we all are grateful that you did not delete what you wrote – that means that this is a safe place for you to share all, and that you trust that we won’t overlook what you share. It feels wonderful to be betrothed these words from you, and healing.
Big loving hug to you
and Love to all
Nina
Having these notes to read and review has felt like we hit a treasure trove. The one degree of separation from Ken’s lips to your keyboard; well its a modern day version of receiving a letter from one of the apostles back in the day. I’ve romaticized and wished I lived in those days when I was younger and now that I’ve accepted the concept (well I’m pretty close to full acceptance) about time all happening in one instant and just being reviewed doesn’t leave me feeling like I missed anything. Any sense that the gap is closing (even if its an illusory gap) carries with it an excitement, a coming together vibration. Thank you Jean. And please feel free to continue submitting notes you have taken over this past year.
Melody: love the Joe Jesseph insert.
Michele our Belle! You keep it real and fun and playful in the classiest of ways. I love when you have the time to share. Think of you often and keep us posted on your job hunting.
a*…suitably mullified (: you’re just adorable
The line: “Intimacy is the ability to be fully present with no needs from another”
yes-I hear you sweet Jesus
I’m working on it.
{{{{{ M I C H E L E }}}}} ! ! If I had known, I would have looked you right in the eye (camera) and toasted you. And I’m tempted to do the whole thing again and do that for EVERYONE! You all need to know you are FIRST. You are the ONE. You are the blessed, wonderful presence that counts, that is sorely missed in Heaven, to whom Jesus looks to hold out your hand such that he might take it and remind you that you are his special one, as are we all.
That was a beautiful, honest post, Michele. And likewise also for A*. Thank you for making this the wonderful place of healing and sharing that it is. You are all truly my beloved friends, and those are not just pretty words said insincerely.
wow…. just beautiful the sincerity and love here…….
Yes that was just beautiful Michele. As i read it i felt like we were all snuggled up together in your big loving heart……xoxoxooxox
I am unable to watch the videos. The computer won`t let me download anything.
love to all
~ Death and Dying ~
March Academy part 21
Tmp66 <The world attempts a thousand compromises, and will attempt a thousand more. Not one can be acceptable to God`s teachers, because not one could be acceptable to God. He did not make death because He did not make fear. Both are equally meaningless to Him.
This course is one of thousands of different ways of getting home. Each one of those would get you home if you followed it perfectly. You can`t say <I am never upset for the reason I think, if you`re going to withhold if from the big one – death. The first thing on awakening I want to learn is that I am a mind.
Each of us has a grab-bag, like Santa`s sack. All the things that upset us are in it. Whenever we get upset, we reach in and pull something out.
Where did that come from ? I think – yummy, now I don`t have to go to my mind.
The “reality of death” is firmly rooted in the belief that God`s Son is a body. The most common Workbook quote is <I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
I can forgive everything except the “reality of death”.
The body/the ego is a parody, a travesty, a mocking of the glorious Self of God. If you get upset by anything, you are saying that you are a body. When you get upset, take it to your teacher.
Jesus is waiting in the classroom, saying – come on in. He gets very few students…… or He gets some, but they only stay 15 minutes……and then they say – Oh I don`t want this, I want that other Jesus guy.
And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real. But God would not be loving. There is no point at which the contrast between the perception of the real world and that of the world of illusions becomes more sharply evident. Death is indeed the death of God, if He is Love. And now His Own creation must stand in fear of Him. He is not Father, but destroyer. He is not Creator, but avenger. Terrible His Thoughts and fearful His image. To look on His creations is to die.
Since we are separated and we die, there is no God. The second and third Laws of Chaos say that God believes what his Son tells Him.
And the last to be overcome will be death. Of course ! Without the idea of death there is no world Without the idea of death there is no body – no world – no I.
When I am no longer afraid of death, I will feel the Love of God within me now.
People in pain do harmful, hurtful things. This is why practising kindness is so important. When Jesus is with you and it is his voice you hear, how could you not have “compassion for all living things”? Why would you not ask Him to help you to look another way?
There is a reason why the world embraces Jesus, why people always confuse the biblical Jesus with the Course Jesus. People love the scene in the temple where Jesus gets angry, because that justifies my anger. Jesus got angry so I can get angry. He yells at the scribes and the pharisees. The lovely parables come from the same mouth that condemns the jews, prefers John to Peter, curses fig trees and yells at people.
This world isn`t a battleground. It`s a madhouse. How could anyone in their right mind want to hurt anyone else? They don`t.
lovin’ the willingness to look at the yuckyness and to speak of it in order to get to the innocence.
Winnie, you have given us 21 presents and continue…thanks for your love and for these invaluable notes.
Lots of hugs, and much, much love,
Lisi
Michele, dear, thanks so much for your beautiful post. Your honesty, sincerity and love can be touched. And your answer a*, really a loving one, too.
Lots of hugs to you all,
Lisi 🙂
A huge thank you for another surprise this Monday morning Winnie~ wow Michele, *I too am glad you didn’t delete~ a* wonderful sharing~
With Love and Gratitude to all,
m
{{{{{{EveryONE}}}}} Phew….what a relief to read your responses.
{{{{{Thank you all for your understanding comments, encouraging me and loving me}}}}}
PS: I have a part time job taking care of a highly functioning, sweetest, kindest and supersmart 89 year old man with alzheimers. His super loving younger maybe a few years older than me not sure wife hired me, and just now 8 years later feeling like she’s dealt with the grief of losing him as they’ve been together 22 years. She told me she lost her 38 year old daughter to cancer some years ago and that this process this last 8 years with him has been soooo much harder. It’s only 12$ an hr, but she pays under the table and they live right here in Sausalito. They have two cars so I drive there and then leave mine and use theirs for bringing him back to my house or out and about, so no gas cost which is a huge benefit. We play scrabble where he always beats everyone! We play monopoly, and this neat game that is actually super hard called ” Deft itnitions” created by a woman here in Marin County. He loves crossword puzzles, which I thought I wasn’t in to, but he has a book of relatively easy ones, and I love it and our solving them together. His other caregiver lives down the street from me. I started just last week. I am looking forward to talking with the other caregiver to gtting some practical tips I’d like to learn from her.
I’m very grateful to have both of them in my life.
Hey – I have a similar part time gig – I care for a sweet little old couple.
It’s win-win…. they get me overnight!
So the (adult) daughter gets a break from caring for them
one day a week.
~ Death and Dying ~
March Academy 2011 part 22
Sin calls for punishment. Error calls for correction. Everybody is fighting the same hard battle. You want Jesus to be with you all the time. Be aware how quickly you turn away from him. See what you are doing. That’s the nod to God. ……. even if you don’t stop what you are doing…….even if you don’t want to stop.
TM p67 All dreams will end with this one [the idea of death] This is salvation’s final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die? The inconsistencies, the compromises and the rituals the world fosters in its vain attempts to cling to death and yet to think love real are mindless magic, ineffectual and meaningless. God is, and in Him all created things must be eternal. Do you not see that otherwise He has an opposite, and fear would be as real as love?
Teacher of God, your one assignment could be stated thus: Accept no compromise in which death plays a part. Do not believe in cruelty, nor let attack conceal the truth from you. What seems to die has but been misperceived and carried to illusion. Now it becomes your task to let the illusion be carried to the truth. Be steadfast but in this; be not deceived by the “reality” of any changing form. Truth neither moves nor wavers nor sinks down to death and dissolution. And what is the end of death? Nothing but this; the realization that the Son of God is guiltless now and forever.
The Course uses the same term as the Bible – “son of God” – a term fraught with specialness,to end all specialness.
Be very cautious of students saying they are “having a holy relationship” with someone. Don’t go near them. Don’t have lunch with them either…[ tee hee]
There’s only one Holy Relationship and it’s all inclusive. You serve as a memory jostler simply by your loving presence ……..But you have to want to do that. You have to want to let go of your specialness. Recognize your specialness is an invitation to death. When you argue about quotes and interpretations of quotes, you are saying that form matters. When you make a big deal, you’ve accepted comparisons, and you’ve accepted that duality plays a part.
Make this year different by making it all the same.
There is no room for differences in the Holy Spirit’s thought system. The answer to the first Law of Chaos that there is a hierarchy of illusions, is the first Principle of Miracles – There is no order of difficulty in miracles.
We’ll end today with Helen’s poem “Easter”. It took her 7 months to complete the trilogy of Easter poems. The third last line of the first stanza “Think not the Holy Spirit waits for death” is because of the typical view that the world has, that you don’t go to Heaven until you die.
In the second stanza, “The Son of God must rise above all dreams of fear”, means you must rise above the battleground, as opposed to denying it. The shadows on Plato’s wall are shadows. “I did not die” – It’s just a dream of sacrifice. Sacrifice is the ego’s dream.
EASTER
I did not die. In rising up I did
But stay the same. Eternity had come
To claim its own from the embrace of time
And bitter kiss of death. I but came home
After a journey so diminutive
That Heaven never noticed it began
Not ended. Unencumbered, changelessly,
The Christ united with the Son of man
And what belonged to God returned to Him.
Think not the Holy Spirit waits for death
To offer you the gifts God gave to Him
Or Heaven rests upon a failing breath.
I did not die. Appearances of hate
Enveloped Me. Illusions veiled My eyes
and stopped My heart. Earth’s dream closed over Me,
And that was all. The Son of God must rise
Above all dreams of fear. Would God allow
The Son who is like Him to separate
From life that is Himself? His Comforter
Came down to lift Me up within His great
And silent wings. The peace of God unbound
My hands and feet. For who can stop the Heart
Of God Himself, or veil the eyes that watch
His Son in mercy, or make Him depart
From what is but Himself.
Winnie, my ongoing thanks for your extraordinary work. We shall all be printing out your notes and making booklets for ourselves, veritable gold mines of wisdom. Blessings to you.
Death and Dying: Ending, Continuing or Awakening….the seminar continues.
So how timely for Osama to decide to leave the planet as I observe the world playing out the “Sin calls for punishment” card.
It is a kill or be killed planet.
I knew that and still I was surprised to see the glee and celebration of my fellow citizens on the evening news. I apparently want to stay here in this illusion and bring truth into this insanity. That has never been more clear to me.
Where’s Ken with that trolley of refreshments-I could really use a drink.
Annie –
I’ve been thinking of Osama more than I thought I would. And my interpretation of this event is that we have collectively decided in this script that his sybmol being present here doesn’t serve our path homewards anymore.
And perhaps the absence of his symbol on earth will be more beneficial for a lot of people. I read about widows and widowers who needed a closure, and I couldn’t help but feel for them. How can one really explain to anyone that they did not “lose” their loved ones on 9/11 ?
The stories I read spoke of relief, closure, (not necessarily of glee and celebration was my sense of it – but of course, we all know how individualized perception is, eh (:…. we have all become more tired, jaded, but also wiser, and closer for the experiences of the last 10 years perhaps ?
Anyway, I wish you (and all of us) deep peace, dear one. And a lovely song plays in the background as I write this out “Rhythms of Love” by the artist?group? known as Plain White T. (I can’t vouch for the lyrics – because I can’t really hear it (:- it’s too soft, but from the mood and the feeling of the song, I have to say it does feel like the “Rhythms of Love” – so imagine that song playing in the background while reading this (:
love,
a