FREEDOM 21

P. 168-175

Let me emphasize a concept that I sometimes forget. The work that we are doing together, and one of the reasons why it is so important that we are doing this together, is that our learning, our knowing, comes from experience. Not simply a thought or an idea, not even a radically different idea that we might have been influenced by in the past, but an experience and inner knowing an inner awareness or what the book might call a resonance with the Truth. Specifically, the truth of Who You Are.

I realized that since we speak in the language of thoughts and ideas, and that information that primarily comes to us through our five senses, that we sometimes begin to think if this is where the truth lies, this is where the learning is. We do not deny the learning that takes place through the intellect and the five senses, but far beyond or deeper than that. This is where we might say the real learning takes place, beyond that which the intellect can grasp or explain. 

“How do you know what you know? How do you know that you know? At this moment, are you in your knowing?” Questions such as these sort of jar us into another reality or another dimension. Even though there might not be an answer in words, we do know the truth as we are experiencing it. There is no denying it even though it cannot be comprehended.

Many of us experience, at the end of our gathering, when we take a moment to quiet the mind, and open ourselves, we recognize we are experiencing what I tend to call a “spaciousness.” Interesting that vibration of spaciousness has always been there, but it seems as if the contribution of our willingness and intention together is somehow the key that unlocks our awareness into that deeper reality.

“As we teach you to triumph over fear, to lift beyond the agreements fear has made, we are also going to invite you to say yes to what can be without, and your agreement to be without will become the basis for the next chapter of your life. “If I am no longer frightened of this, what am I? If I was no longer frightened to be this, who will I be? If I can, will I? If this can be claimed, may I? May I know? May I be? May I be in this encounter with the Divine that I know in my heart is present in all manifestation?”

Many of our fears are remnants of past learning. One of the things we are being asked to do here, certainly outside of the realm of judgment, but certainly to become aware of those fears that we have outgrown or that might appear to be seemingly meaningless to our present selves.

Now it seems to me that the essence or at least an essential aspect of this work is not to get into a struggle with our old fears, our old ideas or our old beliefs, even though we might recognize they no longer serve us. We are not throwing them out like yesterday's garbage. First of all, for whatever the reason, these fears probably served us well for awhile in our lives, but now they have become like old clothes that we have grown out of. Notice what happens if you try on a coat or a jacket it no longer fits or, let us say, the color no longer suits us, or we have outgrown that particular style. We do not become angry at the piece of clothing, we recognize that it has been useful to us for some time and now, to play on words a little bit, it has “outgrown” its usefulness. This awareness opens us up to that essential piece of work I spoke of a moment ago, and that is the continual teaching here is to raise our vibration. Not simply to do something because we think we should do it, but that from a point or “purview” as the book says, of a higher vibration, we can look at our fears, old patterns of thought and behavior, in a way that might not have been available to us before.

A Course in Miracles expresses the same message, if we can call it that, by reminding us of such things as “I could see peace instead of this.” “How could I see this differently?” “I must be mistaken for I'm not at peace.”

One of the teachings that our books make quite clear is that the way we answer those questions is through our experience and our action by moving to a place or an aspect of higher vibration. When we are there, we can view all of what is going on in a very different way. It does not condemn the old ways, but once I become aware that there is a better or less painful way of dealing with particular aspects of life, then in my awareness, I will begin to choose those ways.

How do you raise your vibration you ask? Each one of us has developed ways of doing that--listening to a piece of music, recalling a piece of poetry, playing with a child, watching your favorite TV show or movie, snuggling in a warm blanket, being in nature, picking up a favorite book that has been like an old friend. These are not just memories we speak of, these are not just thoughts and ideas, these are experiences that already live inside you-- experiences of joy, of peacefulness, of unity, of harmony, of love, of gratitude, of graciousness. When we push the button or tap into these internal resources, we do not have to force anything to happen, but, almost like magic, we are propelled to a higher vibration or a higher level of awareness. From this higher state of mind, our perception of ourselves, our interaction with others and our ability to see old fears or patterns of behavior, we can be aware in ways that we could not previously.

We realize that there are times when you might find yourself in higher or lower vibration without even being consciously aware of how you got there. What I find fascinating, to myself, is that if I discover I am in a lower vibration of anger, fear, resentment, being right, getting even, that I can usually be aware of a pattern of thought and behavior that might have gotten me there and I have the opportunity to change that. However, when I am in a state of high vibration or higher vibration and have no reason or no conscious reason for being there. I might find myself questioning that state of mind. “What did I do to get here?” or in that weird mode of self-protection that weird destructive mode of self-protection, to wonder “when is the bottom going to fall out.” “When is this joy or this high vibration of life going to come crashing down around my ears?” I better be ready for that. I know that sounds like the height of ridiculousness and yet here I am.

To apply today's learning, I am being asked not to beat myself up, to be grateful for my awareness, and instead of trying to erase, change or run away from these lower vibration thoughts and feelings, to focus on raising my vibration so I can both receive and work with these things if necessary, in a way that I could not if I was still in the swamp. 

“Each of you comes with the ability to transform your world through your encounter with it. Understand these words. You have the ability to transform your world through your encounter with it. Everything you see and encounter is there to be seen, and perhaps re-seen in encounter is there to be seen, and perhaps re-seen in the higher octave that the True Self abides in.

What does it mean to re-see? To re-conceive or re-perceive what you thought was to what is and can only be in the higher octave that you have aligned to. When you see something and you bring your ideas to it, you make it good or evil. You decide its merit, or worth, or lack thereof. You decide what things mean through your prescriptions and identifications. When you see something anew, you are being invited to release the history that you have endowed the ideas with. “This is good or evil, right or wrong.” These are things that are known by you. Some may be true, perhaps, but many of them are prescribed for you.”

As a wise teacher of mine once reminded me, “You are the meaning maker of your life; you are the one who decides.” Or you can choose to let others decide for you. “Don't worry, your leader might say, “I will explain it all to you; I will tell you what it means.” Strangely enough, that is a consolation to the small self that is now relieved of the responsibility. 

Erich Fromm in his book Escape from Freedom  suggests such horrific things like the Holocaust can be allowed to happen because people are willing to give up their freedom so they will not be held responsible.

“When you look at an example of war or conflict, you are immediately siding with one group or the next, depending on where you stand. And who is good or evil or what the outcome should be is still being prescribed by you in relation to the ideas you hold. What if you could look at a war as an event in neutrality? What would become of the reason you see? How would you invest in the picture you see if the outcome wasn’t required to be any certain thing? Now we are not lauding war. We are neutralizing it only for the purpose of this exercise. To see something and release your investment in outcome or ideology to simply see it as it is gives you “the opportunity to re-perceive it. And by re-perception or re-seeing, we are actually telling you that you may reclaim it and your relationship to it in a way that will not only transform it, but its repercussions upon the world before you.”

The reference in the paragraph above concerns itself with war, but I am going to suggest that we use the same or a similar motive reflection on ourselves. “Who or what would I be like without this thought, without this presumption, without this loyalty to a particular political party?” Who would I be without this fear? Who would I be without this relationship? Who would I be if I perceived myself differently?”

 

Peace

FREEDOM 20

P. 160-167

We began by exploring again that statement from A Course in Miracles, “You are always creating; you are either creating by default or creating consciously.”

I kept reviewing that concept in my mind, especially after watching the news, and asking myself, “How the hell did I create this mess?” And I was not getting into blame so much as I was puzzlement. I have not experienced such a sense of separateness, intolerance and sometimes downright hatred, within our country (and within myself) in a very long time. It almost appears as if we are living in two different realities or what Kellyanne Conway called “alternative facts.” As ludicrous as that sounds, we seem to be in a space where communication is almost impossible between one side and the other. Not only are beliefs and ideas so polarized, but we look at one another with bafflement having no grounds for understanding how or why another can hold the beleifs that they do.

And so the answer became a little bit more clear as I realized that much of our separation and conflict is the result of unconscious creation or creation by default. If I am asleep or unconscious, then it is my fear and my personality and my sense of separateness that is contributing to creating the world around me. At this point in our evolution, I must be conscious in order to create Unity and Love. Perhaps that will change at sometime, but for now, at least, what I observe is that the sleeping mind will create from a sense of fear and separateness, and it is only the mind that is awake that can create from the power of Unity and Love.

It also occurred to me that those of us who are awake and continuing to work on awakening and awareness have a responsibility here. We do not just claim personal awareness or personal enlightenment.

The image, or the metaphor, that came to mind was being on a boat that is sinking and I know how to swim but many others do not. Do I just save myself?

The question came up, “Okay, what do I do? I know we are in trouble as a country or a racial consciousness. I know that we are divided and even many awakened beings are living with a sense of fear and separateness. So what do I do to begin to change that?”

First it is to know that each one of us is probably being called to respond in our own unique way. When we respond from Love and a sense of Unity, we also respond with a sense of the gifts and talents we have that are the vehicle for raising the energy or the vibration of the world and those around us. And for each one of us that vehicle or the expression of higher vibration might be different from moment to moment or day today.

A simple example: Your special gift might be cooking, and so the brownies you make or the cakes you bake for a class on Thursday night or a big sale at church might be the expression of your special gift to raise the vibration of the world around you. The catch is that you need to be aware of that and to reinforce that as your Truth. To say all this is “only a cake” or this is “only a casserole I'm bringing to my neighbor” limits the vibration that you can create with that act of love. It is perfectly okay to know that on an exterior level what you are doing or what you are giving does not seem to amount to a whole lot, but on an internal level you can embrace it as a valuable and unique expression of Love. It is your intention behind the gift that truly gives it life. The personality self would like to measure it in terms of size or quantity or money, but the True Self can know the value is limitless if whatever is given is given with an open heart.

There might be things we are called to do in the external world-- go ahead and do them knowing that they have importance and value, but that the energy of transformation around those acts comes again from your willingness in your intention.

Prayer, not just asking God for something, but using your connection and your realization of the Divine Nature that you participate in, to raise the vibration of your thoughts, to raise the vibration of your perception as to how you see yourself and others. All of this contributes to Conscious Creation.

We all noted that even though we know all of this is true, and we practice it occasionally, when we can remember, that the negative side or the dark side sometimes seems so seductive or so much more real in scope and in power in the positive loving side of our nature.

It is difficult, some days, to see through that veil of Illusion but that is part of our learning and part of our challenge.

Can you see beyond the illusion of separation and fear that you yourself have created? Can you realize that you created it to participate in this false sense of safety and security that predictability seems to bring?

But there is no such thing as predictability. Helen Keller once said so beautifully, “Security is but a myth; life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.”

Many of our institutions, especially the religious ones, after their creation, spend most of their time and energy in attempting to keep themselves intact. The original intent and the energy that created this entity in the first place, soon gave way to the need to organize and control.

Many of us identified with the church or religion that was so far away from the axiom of “loving my neighbor” and the truth and power contained in The Sermon on the Mount that the religion of our upbringing carried little or none of that meaning. All that seems to occur was a growing dependence on this organization in order to be able to be OK; to be OK in our own eyes, in the eyes of others, and in the eyes of God. Without realizing it, we had given our power away to an illusion.

“If you decide today that you can access new levels of expression, new levels of experience, you can rely upon the new to support the claims you make and understand history as what it is—just an idea. Read your history books for an hour and you will see that they are slanted to the culture that dominates, and the history book seeks to affirm their view of what happened, where and when. If you look at a church and its investment in its politics, its desire to survive has created dogma that was never implicit in the original text. You are being used by confirming them to claim an idea that was just an opinion a long time ago.”

((((*One of our group was asking about the idea of “original sin” and where that came from. I'm going to explore that issue a little bit more in another piece that I will send  along. It is more complicated than I originally thought, so I'd rather not muddy the waters too much. Not to say this is not an important concept since most of us grew up with it along with the sense of unfairness about how or why we should be saddled with someone else's mistake. Along with that the whole notion of our being “born in sin” seemed to affirm for many of us that sense of “not enoughness” we carried around beginning as a child.))))) 

We are being asked to move beyond our sense of personal history in defining Who We Are. Without spending a whole lot of time focusing on the weeds in our garden or attempting to root out or even transform limiting ideas or negative beliefs, we are being asked to continually, as long as we can think about it, to affirm the truth of Who We Are. And to continue to affirm that truth until it becomes a natural part of our awareness. 

“Again, the claim “I am “free, I am free, I am free” supports you in this realization that you are not bound by history, but please ask yourself where you seek to confirm it out of the convenience of relying upon the old.

Once again, we say these words: “Behold. I make all things new.” That is the True Self in its vision, in its expectation, so as you align to it, you may begin to receive its fruits. ”

***************

Day Eight

As I side with the next few pages wish we all seem to lovingly absorb there were a few Central ideas Edward Express need little or no commentary so I will just summarize for a moment: 

“the encounter with fear, which you have had with you since birth, must now be seen as something that can be moved beyond. But this will not happen if you don’t agree to it.”

“A decision made in fear will call more fear to it by energetic action and by agreement in vibration.”

“there is an aspect of you here who has always been, who will always be, who is unafraid and doesn’t react or condemn or claim a life in fear.”

“As you announce this—“I am free, I am free, I am free,” which is the freedom of the known and all that the fear has claimed—you announce yourself in a new world, a world that doesn’t agree to fear because the vibration you hold will not align to it.”

“As you announce this—“I am free, I am free, I am free,” which is the freedom of the known and all that the fear has claimed—you announce yourself in a new world, a world that doesn’t agree to fear because the vibration you hold will not align to it.”

“The True Self, you see, doesn’t care, and is unafraid, and in her love she will support you, the self you think you are, in a level of acclimation to a way of being that will actually support you in reinforcing her and her purview over everything you see.”

“You are literally lifting your world in vibratory accord through your presence and through your action of witness upon the world you see.”

“The Divine Self is who exists at this level, and the Divine as you, the manifestation of you in form and field in vibratory accord, is what supports the claim of agreement that allows your entry. The small self, who is invested in fear, cannot enter the Kingdom because she is not in alignment to it. The exercise we bring you in this teaching is a reconciliation with who and what you are as it exists outside of fear.”

“Paul is interrupting again. “But can we exist outside of fear? This is a proclamation I can’t agree to. I am afraid of many things. I can’t imagine myself without fear, fear of this or that, and I am not alone. We fear famine, we fear war. What becomes of us when we are old and alone or infirm? What do we do? And are you saying that these things can be rid of?”

Yes, we are. We are saying that. But we must say the list that you just gave was the small self’s agenda for keeping herself away, himself away, from her divinity and his True Self. Everything you listed was a denial of the Divine or the presence of God that can be known in form and agreed to in a higher way. By your list, you are saying, “There will always be war, there will always be famine, we may grow old alone and become infirm” as if these things cannot be met by you as the True Self in a vastly different encounter than you have aligned to thus far.”

A closing thought. I began with my reflections that were triggered by watching the news. And as I was sitting with this lesson, the realization came to me, “Who is it that is writing the news? Who is it that is listening? Who is it that is affected?” It's certainly not my Divine self or our divine self.

In fact my thoughts and feeling about the news and the source of all that--our personalty, ego, drama addicted little self) seemed so contradictory to the message of the Christ who says “I will make all things new.” “What am I saying to myself when I watch the news? I reinforce my own sense of cynicism, I become self-righteous, angry, smug, separate, better than or worse than, all attributes coming from my limited perception as a personality.

PEACE