FREEDOM 10

REMINDER--We will be taking off the months of July and August and returning after Labor Day. Next Tues. (6/26) will be our last meeting for the summer.

P. 76-86

Some additional thoughts re: these questions.

“Q: The Guides spoke a little bit on your past choices don’t go away, but you understand them from the higher octave. Can they speak a little to guilt and exactly what that is and how to get past that.”

  Someone once mentioned that guilt serves a purpose for the first 30 seconds or so that we are aware of it. In other words, we became aware that we made an error. When we are aware of an error we can begin to create a correction, even if that correction is simply self-forgiveness. To the small self, however, holding onto guilt is a way that it thinks will provide a mechanism for not making the same mistake again. In other words, if I feel really bad about it I won't do it again. Unfortunately that only seems to work for a time. It is never a complete solution.

I might also add that most of what we call mistakes  are really an additional piece of information we did not have before--if we had that piece we would have responded differently. Both joking and serious, an author once suggested that “all of our decision making requires more information than we have.”

The answer here also alludes to what we sometimes referred to as the law of karma or the law of cause and effect or as Jesus put it so succinctly “you reap what you sow.” It is not about judgement, it is simply the truth that all thoughts and actions have consequences.

The higher level with a higher vibration of my awareness the greater my ability to avoid unwanted consequences .

As A Course in Miracles points out “I can choose differently” or “I can choose once again.”

“Q: They also spoke about not seeing yourself as above another because in doing so you’re actually below, but I’d like to ask a question about this difference in vibration because we’re all operating at different octaves, depending on our choices. If you have a family member and you recognize that they’re choosing alcoholism and that that affects you . . . I never feel better but I also don’t like what they’re choosing, and I don’t like the way I feel around this person, so it’s a tricky road to walk to protect yourself and not feel superior, but also to understand that you’re operating at a different level.”

The answer that the guides give to this question is absolutely wonderful. It contains tremendous wisdom and the directives that are expressed are applicable to many life situations. I would encourage us all to read this answer numerous times and to notice how we can free ourselves from judgment as well as to guide us into right thinking and right action.

“A: No, you’re not. In fact, you think you are and you’re actually above the other only in your own idealization of your own behavior. You are not above them, they are not below you. They are having a different encounter with themselves, and perhaps learning through it, and perhaps giving you the opportunity to learn as well. If you assume “that someone is not where they are supposed to be, you have decided for them based upon what you think they should be, or perhaps where or how they should behave based upon your idealization of behavior. Now, if someone is being harmful to themselves, you may offer them help. You may support them or not. You may distance yourself from them, if you wish, if that is the best gift you can give yourself and them. This does not make them wrong. Do you understand this? It doesn’t make you wrong, either, but it certainly doesn’t make you right. The idealization—“I am the healthy one, they are not so healthy”—has implicit separation inviting itself in the announcement. If you can understand that everyone has come to learn—how they learn their lessons is in some ways decided by them at a higher level—you learn not to judge. You don’t have to enable, you don’t have to agree, you don’t have to drink with them, you don’t have to give them money to buy booze. Do you understand this? You can say, “Thank you, no.” In some cases, what they are learning through will be what brings them to the light, and no other way would be found. Do you understand this, yes?”

“Q: The Guides were talking about receiving the Christed Self, and wouldn’t it just be perceiving it, wouldn’t we already be the Christed Self, but our beliefs are in the way and we’re not perceiving it?”

Here is another piece to ponder and meditate upon perhaps one of the simplest and most profound expressions in this book.

“You do not become the Christ. The Christ becomes you.”

“Q: They spoke a little bit of time about seeing lights and a puff of smoke as if we’re seeing in a different octave. Could they explain that a little more?”

I recall when the book made reference to seeing lights, etc. that I found myself becoming attached or self-judging. “What if I am not seeing lights? What if there are not little visions out of the corner of my eye? Am I doing it wrong? Am I not as advanced as I think I should be?” and on and on.

Again the guide's answer simply and profoundly. I am reminded of the beginning stages of the workbook in A Course in Miracles which opens with the  claim “I don't know what anything means.”

What is being encouraged in each one of us more than anything else is to know that our perception of people, places and things goes far beyond the limits of my five senses.

When I say “I see the Christ in you,” that does not necessarily mean that I see a halo around you, although that would be nice. What it does mean is that I see beyond (or I am willing to see beyond) what my physical senses are telling me, and that at a level beyond my human understanding, at this moment in time, you are a perfect reflection of the Divine being that you are.

“Q: For a person who is empathic, when you are in another person’s field and you immediately, automatically, feel what they’re feeling and you feel they’re in a physical pain or an emotional pain like guilt or sadness or control, the very fact that you are perceiving that level, does that suggest that you are operating on the lower level, and if so, if you are operating only in the higher octave, would you only perceive their True Self empathically?”

This is another beautiful answer it contains all sorts of Divine and Supernatural wisdom.

So I will simply present you with the answer again and encourage us all to absorb this wisdom at our own pace.

“A: We have two things to say because it is a good question that has not been asked before. You are not confirming the negative by recognizing it. To pretend it’s not there would be doing a disservice. “Well, she’s a divine being. It doesn’t matter that she wants to jump off the roof.” That’s ridiculous. She is a divine being, and she’s so frightened she wants to jump off the roof. The recognition of the Divine will support you in claiming her back, but you don’t pretend that the other issue is not present. You don’t have to agree with it, which means to move into vibrational accord to it and confirm it for them, which is what they may be wanting. “Tell me it’s not worth living.” “Well, if you don’t want to live, you don’t have to” is actually an honest response, “but the idea that you are not worthy of living is preposterous because the Divine as you is here, no matter what you think.” You should all understand this. The claim “I know who you are, I know what you are, I know how you serve” is always true because it is claimed at the level of the True Self to the True Self of the one you witness. Do you understand this? You are not making them happy. You are not convincing them to be wrong about what you think they are. You are actually bypassing that and claiming what is always true. At this level the transformation may occur in ways you cannot even imagine. It’s the difference between realizing another as capable of change and deciding they cannot change because that’s all they are. Period. Period. Period.”

Whenever I discover myself telling myself a story or pulling up a script (kind of a ready-made set of responses) about you or a life situation that I have experienced before, I begin to realize that I am not in the present moment and I am most likely creating information that is useful to my smaller self, but probably not terribly relevant at all to my Divine consciousness.

Obviously this takes a tremendous amount of awareness which is a state of consciousness I am not always in.

“self-justification, we would say, is always the small self seeking to be right. When you release that need, the need to be right and for another to be wrong, you move toward a kind of liberation in your relationships. You are no longer bartering for who is right. You are no longer playing games of power. You are no longer deciding that your well-being is dependent upon another’s behavior. Nobody has to be right, nobody has to be wrong, but everybody has the right to be.”

So summing up, awareness is the key, but it is quite easy for me to turn awareness into self-judgment--and that’s not it. Awareness does not judge, nor is it about right or wrong, but it is not passive either.

“The claim “I know who you are, I know what you are, I know how you serve” is always true because it is claimed at the level of the True Self to the True Self of the one you witness. Do you understand this? You are not making them happy. You are not convincing them to be wrong about what you think they are. You are actually bypassing that and claiming what is always true. At this level the transformation may occur in ways you cannot even imagine. ”

And that other sublime message:

“You do not become the Christ. The Christ becomes you.”

Peace--have a wonderful week