Musings: What’s Valuable?
“Nothing is so easy to recognize as truth.”
Regardless of what state I am in right now there is a river of peace underneath all of it.
It goes with me wherever I go, in spite of everything going on in my ordinary life. It is not subject to any of it. It cannot be harmed or hurt. It cannot die; it was never born. It is eternal. It is what is looking through these eyes right now. It is what hears the sound of the night and it is the sounds themselves. It is what writes these words.
It is so very close to me that I am not apart from it. It is what I am.
It is arrogance, not humility, that won’t accept what I am. It is arrogance that asserts I am something else—worried, anxious, fearful—when it has tasted what can only be recognized as real. It is arrogance that thinks it can make itself some way other than the way it is.
It is what I am apart from anything I might call myself: sick, a failure, powerless. It is not affected by any of the disappointments I have endured or any of the awful things I have ever done.
It is what (not who) I am prior to any role that I have played: mother, teacher, wife, lover, liberal, woman, artist, friend, writer.
Why haven’t I noticed it as more than just a passing state before? Why haven’t I noticed that it is always there? Why haven’t we all?
Might it be that I have not paid it the slightest bit of attention and so it went unnoticed. Yet this alone is worthy of my full attention.
“Nothing is so easy to recognize as truth.” T. 137
This that I am goes on while shopping, doing the dishes, writing, sleeping, going for walks, being with friends. Sometimes I get caught up in a dream and I lose contact for a while. I start to feel out of sorts before long as a reminder that my attention has wandered from what is truly valuable because it brings me peace.
I can’t outrun it, hide from it, overcome it, rise above it, get around it, or go below it. It is with me wherever I go, whatever I do. Even when I forget it is there waiting for me to return.
This that I am has no weight and no dimension. It has no past and no future. It doesn’t have problems and it isn’t afraid. It doesn’t have moods. It doesn’t suffer. It has no need to plan. It does what needs to be done when the time comes to do it. It thinks when necessary and then it is still. It enjoys everything and resists nothing.
When A Course in Miracles came into my life many years ago it made some things very clear to me: that I was miserable; why I was miserable; and how I could leave misery behind.
The change didn’t happen overnight (in fact it continues to deepen). My misery had become very familiar. Who or what would I be without it? The emptiness was frightening each time I saw through some painful story I was telling myself and let it go. Would something come to fill the space that opened up when fear didn’t occupy every corner of my mind?
I waited impatiently, and then one day I waited patiently, with the certainty that something–I knew not what– would come to me. I didn’t care any longer how long I needed to wait. It was certain. And it did. It is never ending.
We suffer. But it doesn’t need to be that way. It is a choice. We can learn to make a different one that points us straight to what we are. It is there waiting for us to recognize, to bow down to in ourselves; in everyone.
It is possible that the only real desire I have left is help others come home to the Self they never left but only forgot for a while. It is the only thing that interests me when I meet someone or am with my family or friends and they have not yet turned to the constant source of joy within. I find myself silently saying turn, turn. It is so easy once you see it.
There is a point where you know “a happy outcome to all things is sure.”
Do you know it? Would you like to?
Musings: A Little Willingness
“Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give right now.” – A Course in Miracles, Text, page 382
It is of enormous relief to know—finally, and with certainty—what our only function is. We should be looking one another in the eye and winking the “we’ve got a secret” look of lovers in love.
The secret is that we have the key to our happiness in our very hands. It is nowhere else.
The key to happiness is forgiveness. It is the simplest thing you will ever learn because it requires nothing of us that we cannot give right now. How do you like them apples? Do I have your attention, or did you turn away again? From the bottom of my heart I hope not, because this is the “pearl worth any price.”
The key is in your hand: guaranteed!!!! Think mind when you read hand. Hopefully you will learn here and now how to turn it: also in your mind. Learning requires that you be right-minded as opposed to wrong-minded.
Wrong-mindedness fears change. It fixates on what it thinks it knows. It thinks happiness is getting what we want. It thinks a whole lot of things are real, all of which turn out to be illusions.
Right-mindedness is willing to question what it thinks it knows, including where happiness comes from. It is willing to learn another way of seeing. It is willing to turn away from all assumptions of what reality is and walk the razor’s edge where our true education can begin.
The choice is yours. You have the willingness; it has already been given you. Don’t let fear hold you back. Give it to the One Who gave you willingness instead. Daily, a thousand times a day, you make this choice.
In order to learn from the teacher of forgiveness who knows the way to happiness, you must resign as your own teacher. This is signified by the little willingness. This is the only way that you can ever be happy.
“If you listen to the wrong voice, you have lost sight of your soul.” – A Course in Miracles
There is a silent voice in you that will show you the way. Every second that you do not plan is an instant made available to the one who can give you your function. Your function is your happiness. To learn that your function and your happiness are the same is the simplest thing you will ever do. Any effort that you make will interfere. The following prayer from The Little Willingness, shows us how small our part is.
“I who am host to God am worthy of Him.
He Who established His dwelling place in me created it as
He would have it be.
It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only
that I do not interfere with His plan to restore to me
my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal.
I need add nothing to His plan.
But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my
Own in place of it.”
Musings: Perfect Happiness
“God’s will for you is perfect happiness. Why should you choose to go against His Will?
In a world of separate bodies going their separate ways, the self-centered point of view, aka ego, has its own plans for happiness.
Attached to personhood, residing in the body, life seems to be “the story of me”. Being, our true shared identity, is unrecognized while our time-bound existence consumes all of our attention. From this personal perspective, perfecting our story is what life is all about.
You can shift out of this self-centered perspective by recognizing your shared purpose with everyone you meet. This is the special means the Course is giving you for breaking out of the imprisonment of your specialness.
One purpose unites you with everyone in this world. This is your ticket to get on board the happiness train.
Do you understand that you can not have separate interests and true happiness? They are mutually exclusive.
Your function is to recognize that you have the same shared interest with everyone, without exception. “The “me”, “my”, “mine” perspective will be undone in the process, releasing the mind to look beyond the superficial distinctions that seem to separate us to what joins us and makes us the same.
What are your words for that?
For the interest(s) you know that everyone will join you in?
For me it is everybody wants to be happy.
Everyone wants the end of suffering.
Please let me know what yours are?
What are your words, dear reader, for the interest you know everyone shares with you?
Now, while we are in this world this is our ticket to happiness. It will take you to the gates of Heaven.
Lesson 100 of A Course in Miracles tells us that God’s Will for us is perfect happiness and asks us, why we would choose to go against His Will?
Here is what I am convinced of:
The very moment I accept God’s will for happiness, I see that I have asked for and received for everyone because I have recognized our interests are shared. This is the happiness we are talking about. It’s not personal. It’s shared.
My smile doesn’t belong to me anymore. It is not a smile possessed by anyone. It is the smile of Oneness recognizing Happiness.
The acceptance of Oneness beyond all appearances is my cause for joy…..and yours! It says that nothing has happened in the dream of separation that has interfered with the reality of Love. This happiness extends to all minds like a rising tide that raises all ships. It gives the unequivocal message that the One Self is guiltless.
Sadness is a sign you have chosen to believe that harm has been done and somebody must be to blame. It says you have chosen the ego’s plan over God’s.
No problem! Just a mistake!
Musings: The Seeker
There is something about a true spiritual seeker that sets them apart from everyone else, namely they are interested in going beyond what they presently know about themselves.
They are willing to pull up the anchor of history—their name, place, career, roles, and accomplishments up to now, and set sail across unknown waters for the Eternal.
Even the good days lived through the body’s senses are not enough to satisfy the seeker who more than likely has utilized them to the max, finally realizing that they change with the wind. Just a slight shift in the direction and a lovely mood is gone. He has learned the hard lesson that no lasting happiness is available through the senses.
Another quality of a seeker is a loss of interest in his personhood, that character that the world refers to by some name. There is some tarnish showing around the edges of his self concept, and some patches on his self esteem. No matter how lovely, successful, or happy his image appears to be there is a hollowness in it that he longs to have filled.
A true blue seeker is disillusioned with his plans for happiness for himself. Tired of convincing himself and others that his plans are working there is a weariness that tells the story of the many failed attempts. Perhaps there is another way to lasting happiness?
I set out on that journey almost as soon as I got here. I was very uncomfortable in my “skin suit” and didn’t much like the conditions. Of course, just like everyone else I didn’t know why until much later.
Becoming a learner is nothing more than admitting the following:
“I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself.” ACIM
“There is no statement the world is more afraid to hear than this.”
Many hands have been extended to help the seeker navigate the journey from here to here. A Course in Miracles, an invitation from the heart to the heart, is one of those hands. It takes us on a journey without distance, to a place we never left.
By the way, you already may know if you fit the profile of a seeker. You have a slight gentle smile on your face.
Musings: Three Things
I am not a scholar of A Course in Miracles. For a while I thought I might be but that’s not “the way of Lyn”. I’m glad to get that out of the way.
The scholar for the Course, in my opinion, is Dr. Kenneth Wapnick. His brilliance and dedication to the principles of the Course are unparalleled. He is the Founder of the Foundation for A Course in Miracles, along with his wife Gloria. Extensive scholarly material is offered at their website at FACIM.org.
Even though I am not a scholar I do not underestimate the importance of understanding the theoretical foundations presented in the text of the Course. Once you understand the two thought systems the Course presents—the ego’s and the Holy Spirit’s (The Teacher)—and their respective implications, you will be able to open to any page in the often complex material and know exactly what is being said. I owe that understanding to Dr. Wapnick.
Beyond the metaphysics, the more important awareness is on the content of the mind. Is it love? Or is it fear?
If it is love, the intent is to be truly helpful, to join with the other person on common ground, and to look beyond separate interests.
If it is fear, the intent is to attack or to defend (which is an attack), to separate, or to makes oneself special or different in some way.
It is easy to tell what our motivation is by how we feel. If we are basking in peace it was love in action. If we feel anxious and uneasy, then it was fear in action.
Although I have studied, taught and practiced the Course for 35 years all I can say with certainty is that I am a more willing learner now than when I began. That may be my sole qualification for offering our School for A course in Miracles.
Lyn is sort of a combination inviter/pointer with a little bit of cheerleader mixed in. I am not The Teacher. The 365 Lessons make way for The Teacher and I am inviting you to consider doing the lessons.
1. It takes humility to be a learner. Humility is for the ego, not spirit. A meaningful message from the Course in that regard is:
“Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you.” – T. 381
These are a few things that seem to have disappeared from my résumé in recent years:
I can’t find personal ambition any more. The possibility of being helpful to those who want to find inner peace is enough reason for doing this.
I don’t waste time and energy making sacrifices. I do what I am inspired to do.
Pessimism. Can’t find it any more. I always think things are going to work out, even when I know they are not. “A happy outcome to all things is sure,” just not according to my plan.
I am not “against” anyone or anything. I find being wholeheartedly “for” something to be much more invigorating.
2. Is the Course for you?
My intention is only to be truly helpful but I can’t guarantee that you won’t be offended by what you read and hear in these pages.
Spiritual paths are often treated like hobbies, pulled out of a drawer when you have some spare time. This just means that the learner hasn’t really decided what he wants to learn yet.
A Course in Miracles offers a real alternative and I hope to make that choice clear so that a would-be-learner can decide if he wants the outcome the Course is leading him toward. It is not for everyone. There are many paths that lead to truth.
No one can give you the desire to turn your back on the conventional wisdom of the world with all of its pains and pleasures. You have to see for yourself that it is the only answer that will save you and the world simultaneously.
How many teachers (learners) does it take to save the world? One. That would be the impersonal you, the one the Course is taking you to.
3. Bad Habits and Cures
Humans have bad habits that are inconsistent with what they say they want. If we knew what our bad habits were, they wouldn’t have us anymore. They are hidden and buried in someone else just so we might keep them. That’s how the fictitious ego preserves itself.
To recognize the illusions in which we believe, we need husbands, wives, parents, children, friends, lovers, authority figures, and enemies to show them to us. Salvation is a collaborative venture. We awaken “together or not at all.” For this reason we should be fully appreciative of everyone, our enemies as well as our friends.
I believe it is in our nature to lean ever so slowly toward love. We are terribly threatened by it for many reasons, one of them being that love is indiscrimate. It is given equally, to all, without exception. The ego only approves of special love.
I feel some urgency to share anything that can help us let go of our self-centered ideas of love and move on to the real thing. I also want to invite others to do the same. It does appear that time has about run out on our learning opportunity as a species.
We have the potential to transcend our self-centered viewpoint but it remains to be seen whether we will just continue squabbling as individuals and as nations.
The perpetuation of our species, another specialness idea, is not the goal here. It is the idea of separate interests in our mind that must be undone in order to save a world that exists only within our minds. I would prefer not to annihilate another thing.
Another bad habit of humans is that they always think it’s about the other guy. If these other folks would just change, the world would be a better place. No. It’s just you. When you leave separate interests behind and awaken to reality you may find that nothing needs to be fixed.
You can’t fix what isn’t real. What’s real doesn’t need fixing.
The behavior that follows a mind that has transcended separate interests is loving and kind to everyone. It doesn’t walk away from the chaos. It shines its loving light for all to see. That certainly can’t hurt the world. Then we will be able to say and mean “a happy outcome to all things is sure.”