Inside

Outside,

the world

is noisy and chaotic,

full of voices

calling out my name,

hands

grabbing at my flesh

as they cling to me

in desperate need

of something

I don’t know

how to give.

 

Outside,

the world

is fast and pressured,

with clocks

reprimanding me with

their sharp ticking speeches,

“Get moving!

Keep doing!

Get it done!”

 

Outside,

the world

is a blurry collage

of faces

that rush past me

with their grievances

and their pleas for help.

My hand is so weary

it trembles

when I lift it up

to wipe away a tear

from one of those lovely cheeks.

 

Outside,

the world

is not accepting

of the fatigue and pain

that is claiming

my body

and my mind,

telling me

to just push past it

so that I do not complicate

the constant momentum

of things.

 

Inside,

the world

is different.

 

Inside,

the world

is quiet and peaceful.

 

Inside,

the world

is slow and still.

 

Inside,

the world

is full of  abundant Love.

 

Inside,

the world

is accepting of “what is”.

 

Inside,

is where

everything is real.

 

Inside,

is where

I want to be.

 
 
Dale-Lyn 2010

It is funny how I am running into all these poems now that I wrote so long ago.  They speak to the same issues I am dealing with now...the same learning.  :)

The Gift of Challenge

"This is the gift I give you," Life says. "A tailored made set of challenges, just for you."
-Eckhart Tolle (from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWx1JJTaGa4)


Turning Our Noses Up at Free Tuition

Hmmm!  I love this idea that each of us are given a set of challenges in which to process through, learn and grow.  If we were given free tuition to the university of our choice, would we not be grateful?  We would more than likely accept that it will be challenging and down right difficult at times but we would look at this opportunity to learn and emerge victorious on the other side as a blessing, wouldn't we?  Why then do so many of us complain and blame life for being difficult when it offers us challenges?

So often we look at life as this unfair punisher that is randomly throwing unfavorable circumstances at us, sabotaging us, "picking on us" while favoring others in the class. We look at the circumstances it offers us, sometimes, as unfair punishment.  "Why are you doing this to me?" we may shout out to the universe.

Curriculum Design

We don't get it.  We don't see that every life challenge we encounter is a gift, a precious gift that was picked out thoughtfully by a loving parent of many, many children, just for us. Each of us, each unique expression of the One source that is Life, are given a tailored made set of challenges to process through.  What I am given to experience may be different than what you are given.  Some individuals on this planet seem to suffer excruciatingly painful and difficult challenges, while others seem to pass through life with so few.  Why?  Because what I need to express Life fully and to bloom like the crocus does in spring...is different than what you need, what the person on the other side of the globe needs. Each of us have a different curriculum design to help us achieve the same outcome.

The Real Challenge is in Our Resistance 

The greatest difficulty we have with life is not the circumstances but  our resistance to the challenges or life lessons they offer us. We tell ourselves that life should be a particular way; we compare with others who seem to have it easier; and  we dismiss the thought of others who may have it worse.  We say, "No! It shouldn't be this way.  That person shouldn't be that way.  Life should be easy!!!!"

Life, like a challenging degree, is not meant to be easy.  In fact, it can be down right difficult! But it is difficult for a reason.  Each challenge we encounter is a growth lesson.  If we resist the lesson ...it won't stop the Teacher from rattling on...it won't make the lesson go away.  We will still need to learn what is being offered...and the lesson will not go away until we do. Sigh...we need to stop resisting.  We need to settle in our seats and accept the gift of challenge being taught.

That doesn't mean we have to like it or say it is easy when it is not.  Accepting "what is" is the first and most necessary step into learning, growing and changing life circumstance.  Accept first.  Appreciate next...and then you will be shown when, how or if change is required.

All is well!

Ego Hisses

Man, I found this from a few years back and it kind of speaks to what I have been writing about recently.  I think I wrote it way back when I went off work the second time after getting sick again. I was so frightened then ...knowing the insurance company  wouldn't support me for their own ego reasons and terrified over how I would manage. At the same time, I knew I had to go. I was being pulled away into something greater, regardless of my fear.  Illness was simply the catalyst as it is now.

I went through the door then but I didn't stay there.  I found myself pulled back into ego's world with its senseless demands that take me away from health, rather than toward it. Now I go through the door again, knowing that I won't come back once I do.  No more fighting and struggling on this side of it. I am going home. I am going to be with the peace I long for, the peace we all deserve :)

Ego Hisses

whispers from that place of secrets
become screams in my ears
twisting, turning messages that
express the truth I fear
I suddenly decide to listen
to stop, head stilled to the side
while I decipher all the wisdom
and put away my pride

ego hisses at me with its
desperate pleading cries
to ignore the truths I’m offered
calling them foolish, new age lies
it warns me of the darkness
the desolation I will face
if I go forward with these directions
and leave this warm, familiar place

yet I find myself moving onward
pushing ego’s carcass to the floor
and taking slow, hesitant steps
I move through the open door

I don’t know what I will be facing
what is on the other side
but I know the door has been opened
and it is open very wide.

Dale- Lyn, Nov 2013

 

All is well.

 

It is all good.

For what is life except to be yourself, and what but you can be alive instead?
-ACIM W-139

A bit sad today.  This morning  would  have been the last morning  I taught if I didn't give the students independent study...so I may not see them again.  I will still have time in the office for the next few weeks. Others will be in clinical.

I will make my leaving quiet and unnoticed. When all others are away at clinical, I will walk around and say a proper good bye to the place that I spent so many hours in over the last 14 years.  I will miss it and I will so miss the teaching.

It is a loss, but a necessary one.  The pain I had over the last few days was validation for the necessity of this loss. I don't need anyone else to validate that for me.  I know. 

And it is okay.  It really is.  What is so cool about all this, is that I am learning to be okay with loss and the "big,"bad" things in life.  :) That right there says a lot.

A chapter in my life ends today.  It certainly was an interesting one, let me tell ya.   :)  A lot goes on in fourteen years: divorce, leaving, new homes, children growing up so quickly you can't keep up, illness, health seeking that only turns against you, a sudden loss of a beloved sister, the opportunity to care for a father in the last years of his life and to be there when he made the final transition, cancer in a younger sister, heart attacks in two others, seeing the beings you love the most and were so committed to protecting loose themselves in drugs, recovery, slips, recovery, relationships that begin and end leaving so many life lessons behind, pets that come and go, money in bank accounts and then money no where to be found, hope than a severing of a trust in ego- systems that one believed were there to support, and so many winters and so many springs as the faces of the students who sat in front of me kept changing.....And it was all so good because it just was.  It just was.

Now I move on and not so much literally.  I remove another veil of ego illusion and see a little clearer at least what lay beneath it. I find what is really important. No one can take that away from me.

It is all good.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on!
- Robert Frost


The Veil

I am fully aware that there is still a veil between me and Self...as flimsy and tattered as it may be getting. :)  It is still there.  I am still allowing mind and body to rule at times.  I forgive both though I work hard to get past that veil ego holds up.  I am not "succeeding" at the moment.

Right now body is shouting and screaming...and mind is creating story around it. Sigh!!!

I am working very hard to finish this course I am teaching knowing that it is my last course.  I have not much to offer these days to nursing students...being that I am no longer a "Registered" Nurse but I do have some hard earned writing wisdom I can share (as well as some hard earned life wisdom...sometimes they go together.:)) So it is fitting that the last course I teach in this context is Critical Reading and Persuasive Writing.

Anyway...I made a commitment to put in extra hours to assist my last bunch of nursing students to write a very good paper.  They wrote an emotional one together to keep them inspired and motivated on the rest of their professional journey. This task  required editing on my part and lots of extra hours but I felt it was important.  Now they are writing a technical paper and I made a commitment to review each draft before final submission...that is 24 papers and each review takes over an hour.  24 hours I am not getting paid for or rewarded for in any external way. Sigh!!! lol.  I want to uphold that commitment. I want to help.  I want to leave knowing that I did all I could to help.  That is my nature.  Pathological? Maybe.

It is not going smoothly. Body and mind are obstacles for me.  My arm throbs after a few minutes typing.  (There is something definitely going on in there.)  And the chest pain started yesterday.  I knew I was doing too much...but I ignored the "4" the "5", the "6" warnings and skipped right up into a 9 last night before bed so I could continue reviewing these student papers until late in the evening. It was bad but the whole mental thing goes on when I have it, you know?  "What's wrong with you?  They don't think there is anything wrong with you so stop it...suck it up...keep going...stop being such a wimp"  I have to get past all that before I will allow myself to take the nitro.  Well I did manage to weave my way through the mental chatter...the body was determined to be heard.  The pain  got really loud so I took the nitro and it worked on the first shot...thank goodness. As usually happens when I have these "clusters", I woke up with it again in the morning and took the nitro again...relief.

There is a little battle going on in me ...What do I listen to when spirit can't be heard? Body or mind?  Body won those two battles but if mind can't beat it, it joins it. It steps in to build story around the body.  "Crazy fool!  Look what you are doing. Chest pain again!  And you are all alone in this...you can't even tell anyone about it. No one is helping you with it...and here you are helping others.  What is wrong with you? You are allowing others to take advantage.  You must see yourself as valueless. etc etc" On and on and on it goes. Oh man.

On top of that I have family obligations.  Trying to get my daughter into university.  The residence fee was due yesterday and we put it off til the very last minute because I had no way to pay for it...had to use credit again.  Yuck! And issues with my son showed up.  I need to drive D.'s son today between the bouts of chest pain and I am worried about that.  All this while I review all these papers...It feels like  too much for my body and my mind.

Truth is...I am just tired of all the battling and struggling going on in me and around me. I am tired of the loss ( I am actually very sad about leaving the classroom).   And all I want is peace.  I would take the pain if I could do so peacefully.  :)  I would take the loss if I could do so peacefully. I would work myself to the bone if I could do so peacefully. This veil seems to be waving between me and the peace I want. Man I just want peace.

Anyway...I vented...and I will post today ...just to vent.  I will remove it tomorrow.
All is well.
.

Locked Up?

All this freedom, but I still feel like I'm locked up.
Piper Kerman from Orange is the New black; My year in a Woman's Prison.

I see the sun coming through the clouds and it gives me hope. I am always looking for slices of hope and chunks of relief throughout my day.  I will take whatever I can get and am grateful for it. :)

Two Worlds

I sometimes feel overwhelmed by life on the outside....I am not only seeing  two selves in me but I am now seeing two worlds...the world out there and the world in here.  I like the world in here but I have to function in the world out there...well so my mind tells me.

Out there it feels like I am expected to carry a to do list around with me that is as long as the street I live on. I am told that I am a failure because I have so few things checked off on it.  The guilt, shame and fear sometimes settles over me like a dark cloud.

In here there are no lists and no need to do anything. I just have to Be and I feel this unconditional love and acceptance for that Being.

Prison on the Outside

Unlike the insides of Litchfield prison where Piper and the gang hang out, the outside world is the one that imprisons me, full of high walls, locked doors, bars on windows so I can't see clearly, a need to defend and attack, and many things to be afraid of.  The world in here is the one that frees me...full of expansive space and light.

Sigh...one world I know is just a figment of my mind and one is so very, very real.  I  still find myself stuck in the unreal one and that saddens me.  :)

I sometimes feel guilty for the crimes I committed that put me here and keep me here: My addiction to thought has led me to do things that I regret like get sick, get lost, become a member of the "mob" and do what I could to fit in, even if it was not what my heart wanted. I somehow dragged others down with me(my children)...and that saddens me even more.

Freedom

Yet in those moments when I find a way through the walls of this prison and can go in to the space of freedom...I suddenly  realize that I  have been innocent all along...there is nothing to serve time for. It was all just a scene from a Netflix binge.  I can take off the orange and be my Self.

Hmmm!

I am seeing the sun again and there is something so freeing in that light...like it offers the key to unlock the doors of the busy world so that we can enter the quiet space of the inner one.  Man...I am raving, aren't I? 

It is all good.

The Truth Behind Twisted Limbs

Sickness is a defense against the truth.
ACIM

My arm is bothering me to some degree.  I think it is meant to be for the learning. :)

I had told myself after my ER visit that I would not allow the discomfort to get me down...I would agree that it is just soft tissue injury and thus move and use my arm despite the pain certain movements cause. I have done that.  Now that the swelling is going down and the muscle is relaxing enough for me to actually palpate the bone effectively...I am feeling what may be  some "abnormalities". The pain, instead of easing is the same or possibly worse, especially when I touch those spots where the abnormalities are. Something is going on in there.

To add insult to injury, as I was getting out of the lawn chair yesterday...I and it fell backwards onto the ground. The  chair folded up around me accordion style and the arm of which slapped me right in the sore spot. It was probably a very funny scene to witness but Don knew better than to take out his phone to videotape me.  My swear words were probably warning him of the consequences. :)

I awoke this morning definitely feeling "it" more intensely.  What is this "it" I am feeling?  According to ACIM, it could be nothing more than a defense I am creating against the truth.

WTF (front door)  are you talking about?

I know...all this talk about Truth and Self...defense and attack... may sound like mumbo jumbo to many of you.  It may be flying over your heads or feel like banana peelings under your feet. You may be inspired by it...or you may be entertained by "the ridiculousness of it" or even insulted by it.  You may get it or you may be thinking , "There is something really wrong with this woman!" That will all depend on where you are in your own understanding of waking up. If you are not there...it will indeed just be crazy talk to you...feel free to laugh, or sign off.  :)  I am okay with that.  If, however, it reminds you of a bit of truth you may have inside...please read on.

Learning from Twisted Limbs

Illness and injury according to a Course in Miracles, like time  are defenses ego creates and uses to prevent us from understanding the Truth of who we are. As long as I feel physical pain and I focus on that pain...I am identifying my self with the body.  I believe I am this body and what happens to it is actually happening to me. Thus  is your true identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be. (ACIM W-136:8:4-5) I forget who I really am when my limbs get twisted.:)

Ego (the unhealed mind)  wants us reminded of the body, feeling it, and identified with it.  It wants us thinking we are the body.  So it creates sickness, injury and death.  Physical pain puts us back in body focus.  As we get closer to knowing who we are, ego gets frightened. It wants to pull us back and away from that Truth into 'physical world' things. Illness and injury become wonderful excuses. If we stay there in them, we do not have to experience the loss of the world we create in our minds and have become so pathologically attached to.  We may use pain, illness, injury as excuses for not going farther into our Self discovery. Sickness is a decision....It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall.  Now you are sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishment no more. (ACIM-W-136: 7:1,3-4) 

Isn't it ironic?

Isn't ironic, that as I was getting closer to discovering this Truth and feeling frightened of it...I have this fall where I actually felt I was being pushed down?  Isn't it ironic that I had to deal with very real visually validated  pain just as I was reaching these lessons in A Course? ?  There was a 24 hour period since the fall where all I thought of was my arm and whether or not it was broken. I was, for the first time in a long time, very, very body focused.  I actually questioned, during that time, if all this waking up stuff was nothing more than a bunch of crap. :)

I see the irony now as I read this lesson.

Healing

What will my healing entail? An x-ray to be sure there is no fracture?  A splint or cast to immobilize? I don't know.  That may or may not be necessary to help the arm to heal but it is definitely not what is needed in true healing.  Understanding what sickness and injury are is the first step into healing. No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve.  for then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all.  When this is seen healing is automatic. (ACIM-W-136:1:1-3)

I got it! I am not my body or what happens to it.  It is here to serve me, I am not here to serve it. I will be where I want to be when I don't feel the body at all...when I do not feel ill or well...when I don't feel pain or relief from it...when I don't feel the body at all Hmm! Man...I always tend to do my learning the hard way.  :)

All is well.

References.

ACIM(2007) Workbook for Students. A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume. Third Edition. Mill Valley: Foundations for Inner Peace.

 

Happy Mothers Day to All Mothers Everywhere!

 

 

Have a Wonderful Day!



What are you defending and from whom?

Innocence is its own defense.
-Ben Franklin

I wrote a big long spiel yesterday about a fall I had recently.  I deleted it because of the "poor me" nature to it but what I wanted to say, that might actually have some value, is that I learned a little something about my defenses from that fall. 

Defences?  The fall showed me that I was defending the valueless against  attackers that I created in my mind. This resulted in some less than positive consequences.

Most of us know that the more we tense up and resist a fall, the more likely we are to get physically injured.  That is why babies and intoxicated individuals seldom get seriously injured in minor accidents or falls.  Defense is synonymous  with resistance. While I was falling I was clinging to protect my camera...to defend it against the impact of the ground. I made the ground the enemy. I may have saved the camera but I, not the ground, did a number on one finger as a result.  I was fighting to defend my body too against the impact and "I"  seriously hurt my arm as a result.  Again I made nature the enemy when it was my resistance that was.

What we may not know, is that defending our identity or sense of personal story is another form of resistance that leads to a different type of injury. Yesterday's story was an attempt to defend my pride and my identity against personal and social opinion and I slipped away from knowing who I truly was when I did that.  I made the Self the enemy. I was clinging to what I thought I knew, creating a monster out of the universe when the monster was simply my expectations. I did not see the truth: that if I defend myself, I am attacked. (ACIM, w-135) Attacked by what? Myself.

Say what, crazy lady?

When we defend anything...we are operating from fear based illusion. Ego creates a vicious cycle of fear that we will be attacked, creating defense, more fear, more defenses etc.  Defense is frightening.  It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. (ACIM. W-135:3:1-2).  We believe that we are very vulnerable to attack and attack is all around us.  We must, we tell ourselves,  be prepared to protect and defend against such attack.  So we are always on guard, ready, waiting for the fall so we can resist and fight back. We seldom pause to ask ourselves this very important question:

What are we defending and from whom or what?

We lock our car doors as we leave the parking lot for the safety of the store.  We double lock our house doors at night. Some of us even have weapons tucked away in our bedside drawers, just in case.  We protect our family with the right amount of life insurance.  We pay taxes to ensure there is enough border protection between us and the country beside us and that our resources are kept away from all the "thems" of the world. We spend more time, more money, more energy on protection and defense than we do on creating healthier happier and more peaceful communities, and lives. Does that make sense to you?

It doesn't to me...especially when I see that each defence ends up hurting us in the  long run.

What are we defending?

We are defending things that are valueless and that will perish anyway: things of form, bodies, identities. We defend our material belongings, sometimes with weapons that will destroy life.  Hmmm.  We defend our bodies believing them to  be vulnerable and weak, at the mercy of life forces, when the only thing they are at the mercy of is our unhealed minds. And we defend our identities...who we think we are...even at gunpoint.  We cling to this idea that we are a certain religion, political affiliation, nationality, gender, social status, belief system that needs to be defended against all the other separate entities out there. We may "lay down our lives for the cause." When the cause is nothing more than ego smoke.

From whom or what?

We can tell ourselves we are defending against "our enemy"...but who is the enemy?  If we are all One...who can the enemy be?  The Self? God? Every time we attack someone else in the guise of defense...we are attacking ourselves. Why can we not get that?

Defenses are of the ego and the ego's enemy is the Self.  It will do what it can to deceive us and pull us away from the truth of knowing who we are.  So it creates and perpetuates fear so that we spend our energy defending and attacking.  That keeps us from the Truth.

What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present, and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? (ACIM W-135: 18:1)

The good news is, that if we catch ourselves defending...we can know that the defenses  have something ...not   valuable to defend...but valuable to hide.  What was hidden during my resistance to the fall was this simple truth: I am not a camera owner or photographer.  I am not this body.  I am not this identity.  I am so much more. It took a few nasty bruises to get that into my head.

Beyond each defense is the truth.  Let's put down our arms and see it. We need no defense against the truth of our reality.

All is well in my world.

(ACIM workbook ...Lesson 135)

The Fall

I had a fall on Thursday evening.  I was going into the house after a little running. I had seen a bald eagle over my neighborhood and ran into get my camera, only to find him gone when I got back. Disappointed, breathless and a little dizzy, I was on my way back into the house when the dizziness became undeniable.

With my camera tucked tightly under one arm and my hand around the lens(the way I carry it), IPad, phone and a plate balanced in the other, I found myself suddenly  losing my balance. Instinctively I tensed up to protect my camera.   That little maneuver prevented me from rebalancing myself . Everything else flew out of my hands as I headed for the deck. Beyond my conscious control, curse words poured from my mouth, as if they too were losing the battle  with gravity and falling to the ground.

It all happened so fast and in that brief second or two of clock time, I slipped away.  I was gone. Then I reappeared somewhat stunned, to  feel the camera, that  I fought so hard to protect, gently bouncing off my outstretched hand to safety somewhere on the deck, one little finger of mine breaking its fall so beautifully.  I reached out to caress  the lens  like a mother would a child's hair after waking up beside her. Then it registered in me that I had fallen.  

I am not sure how I fell exactly, what hit first or where.  I just found myself on my back shocked, and for some reason terribly embarrassed. I looked past my unscathed camera to see the plate shattered into  many pieces, and my IPad cracked more than it was.  My pride wasn't the only causality of this trick of nature

It was time to come back into myself. I slowly pulled myself from the powerless position I was in to a sitting one.   I knew I was experiencing pain but at first I didn't know where.  The hand that was only seconds ago clinging to my lens to protect it was throbbing fiercely.  That hurt.  My elbow on that side was burning too.  I looked at it to see that it was bleeding ...not profusely...but enough to add some gory to this little drama.   The back of my head was throbbing a bit. Had I knocked the wind out of my self?  I could breathe but my back was heavy. I looked down to see both knees were  scraped and bloody from the fall.  And then I lifted  my right forearm.  An odd circle of swelling was forming already in the center of it and the pins and needles feeling of a good bump in the funny bone was pulsating through that arm.  I was in pain.   Still I could not tell exactly what part of my body hurt worse or if anything hurt enough for me to even give it more than a second notice.  It all blended into something beyond what I could understand.

Had I done something to deserve this?

What was I thinking before I went down, I wondered, to deserve such a maternal slap on the back of the  head to send me reeling forward? I was thinking about my camera, and how to get students to understand the importance of the thesis statement.  I was thinking about missing a great photo op and how freaking dizzy I can get from a little exertion. I was not mindful obviously. Was I feeling sorry for myself? Was I lost in ego prior to the fall?  Maybe this was the teacher's  way of waking me up when I was caught slipping back into unconsciousness.  Is the universe that mean?  Will it pretty much  knock a person out just to wake them up?

Man, what was I to learn from this?

The learning would have to wait. I  was throbbing  in pain but I couldn't understand it.  What I could understand was that I was definitely awake ! 

Ego still calls...keeping me in my head with the thought, "It is probably fractured! You got dizzy, fell and broke your arm and nothing will be done...you wait and see."  That sickening feeling again stuck with me for 24 hours...I wasted 24 hours on that!

Physically,  I am fine now. I still get that funny bone feeling when I type or move my arm a certain way and the camera  protecting finger is swollen and black. The ribs were sore for a couple of days, but better now. I swallowed my pride and pushed aside my commitment to stay away unless I was unconscious and  went into ER this morning to get my arm checked.  I wanted to rule out an ulnar fracture....not because of ego's whining but because I thought I needed too...I got several other opinions before I did that said, "It's definitely broken! go in!'.  But all I managed to do was make ego  happy with it's I told you so attitude... The attending felt it was just muscle and nerve damage from the impact of the fall and didn't even feel it warranted an Xray.  I don't want to give into ego...so I will agree with the physician. A good bang on the ulnar nerve could cause such pain.

Regardless, the teacher is waiting to evaluate my learning.  I don't know what to tell her. I need some time to think.  :)  I think that is why I focused on the arm for 24 hours...as a distraction from the lesson :)

I am also putting all this into a narrated story in hope that it will take me away from the learning I need to do. It worked. Once again I fed and soothed the ego before the teacher. I obviously have much more learning to do.

It's all good.

Pack Only What is Valuable

When your values are clear to you, making decisions become easier.
Roy E. Disney (https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/roy_e_disney_183365)

 Distinguishing the Valuable from the Valueless.

You are packing your bag for an amazing  journey. Looking out at your life, you have to make some choices.  You have to decide what to take with you as you move on into the next chapter, and what to leave behind.  You want a meaningful life...one filled with true joy, peace and love, therefore you want to choose only what is valuable.  You do not want to fill your back pack with heavy valueless things that weigh you down. How then do you ensure that you are making the best choice for yourself and the world? According to Lesson 133 in ACIM, there are four criterion to follow in deciding what is valuable enough  to take: choose what is timeless and eternal; choose what doesn't take from  someone else; choose only what ego doesn't want and finally, choose that which leaves you without guilt or fear.

Huh?

Will it last forever?

The first thing you want to ask  before you pack that item into your mental bag is, "Will it last forever? " Everything of true value is not dictated by the laws of time.  It is time less.  Do you want to fill your mind and life with things that will perish?  Do you want to concentrate on materiality that is constantly changing, weakening, dying like bodies, material gain, social recognition, and even our thinking itself? Do you want to live like that, valuing the temporary and perishable over the eternal?  So what is eternal?  Self...the real Self ... is eternal and timeless.  Joy is timeless; peace is timeless, Love is timeless; wisdom is timeless; God is timeless, What is is timeless. (Mooji, 2014)The timeless and eternal  has no form, no weight to carry. This is what you want to fill your bag with. "Things", on the other hand, aren't timeless.  If your choice  has a form...if it is of time, it is not worth the space it will take up in your back-pack. Put it down.  It will not serve you or the world. It will not last.  Choose only that which  is timeless to carry with you.

Am I taking it from someone else?

Secondly, you must ask: "Am I taking this from someone else? Whatever you choose should not be subject to loss of any kind...yours or someone else's. When you take from someone else you still do not see you are taking from yourself. There is no gain in that"  Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. Yet loss must offer loss, and nothing more." (ACIM,W-133:7: 4-5).  Do not pack your bag with things you felt you took from others.

Does the ego want this?

"Does the ego want this?" is the third question you should ask. Remember that what you really want is not what the ego wants.  What the ego cries for is something you do not need.  The ego actually doesn't even know what it wants but deep down you know what you want.  You want Love and joy and peace...and these are foreign to the ego though it pretends to know what things will bring this to you. Don't listen to ego.  As soon as you recognize ego is reaching for something it tells you to   pack...put it down and know it will not serve you or the world. It is valueless.

Will this choice leave me feeling guilty or fearful?

Finally you must ask, "Will this choice leave me feeling guilty or fearful?" If you feel anything remotely resembling guilt or fear know that you are giving ego what it wants rather than what will serve you best.  Any decision that is complex or difficult leaving you confused and ashamed...is not of Spirit.  It is of ego. "If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed ego's goals to come between the real alternatives." (ACIM, W-133:11:2) Choose again. Choose Love.

Is this valuable or valueless?

These four criterion will bring us to the only choice we have to make really.  " Is this valuable or valueless?".  If it is timeless, giving, empty, simple, egoless and without form or fear...it is the right choice to make.  Pack your bag with those things and you will be sure to live the life you were intended to...right here and now.

All is well.

References

ACIM (2007) Work Book for Students. ACIM: Combined Volume. Third Edition, Lesson133,pages 245-246. Mill Valley: Foundations of Inner Peace.

Mooji (2014) Set Your Heart Free Satsang. Retrieved from http://mooji.org.

Hope

Hope is like the sun, which as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burdens behind us.
Samuel Smiles (from Brainy quotes: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/hope)

 

Specs: 1/30 f 14, ISO 100...manual mode.

And no, this isn't one of my 3 % I discussed in yesterday's entry.  :)

 

Enough with the darn crocuses

 

Yes...I am a bit obsessed these days.  Why?  Because crocuses remind me of hope and we all need a little hope now and again.  I know I do. 

 

Though words are never adequate to explain Life, what beautiful message do these flowers speak of?

• "Keep reaching for the light." They constantly reach towards the sun even when they are hidden below earth and snow, even when skies are overcast with spring rain...they know the light is there and they reach toward it. We must remember that light is there even when we can not see it.
• "Nothing can keep you down for long."  These little guys were literally underneath 4 feet of snow.  They had to get through layers of earth, ice and pine needles to blossom.  Looking out at a wintery day, one would never guess the likelihood of these little guys overcoming such obstacles and they never doubted it. Their ingrained fortitude did not allow them to stay down.  If they can get through nature's obstacles we can get through our own.
• "We are all meant to blossom." These lovely little flowers add beauty and hope to the world.  That is why they are here.  And we are meant to blossom into our full potential so we can do the same.
• "Make the most of the moment you are in."  The life span of the crocus is very short. They emerge.  They blossom. They add beauty and hope and then they die. This is life for all of us.  Embrace the moment and revel in the beauty and magic of it, the sun and the rain, the joy and the pain...Let the things of this world   come and go gently into it and from it, just  as the crocuses do.

How lovely is that?

 

All is well in my world.



 

A Picture speaks a Thousand Words...

Two things define you. Your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.
-from my day planner that is telling me I am or will be late for blood work.  :)

Specs: shot in manual mode; 1/250; f8; ISO 100

Specs are not spectacular

You probably do not care how I shot this do you? My desire to put specs down is me  compensating ego for its effort.  It wants me to sound professional.  It wants others and myself to see me as something special because I carry a big camera around with some big glass on it, when I am nothing more than a person who likes to take pictures. It is often ego that gets me to pick up my camera, to plop myself down somewhere and to set the mode, choose a lens, frig with the dials and ISO and white balance. 

Ego often tells me how I must shoot if I am to maintain this "image" or this idea of myself as a photographer. I do not feel anything like a photographer unless I shoot in manual mode ( sometimes aperture priority) but what does a photographer actually feel like anyway. lol.  It is all image...until I begin shooting, that is.

Ego is not the One that takes the picture

Then something else takes over. I can't see well so I actually can't see what I shot...I can set up the composition, use the right technique at times and "luck in" but I am not taking the picture...not really.  I get absorbed right into the lens it seems and my very limited eye sight and photographic skill is replaced by something I cannot even begin to understand or describe.   Ego slips away so the world, in all its contrasting beauty, can slip into my camera to be stilled.   I just push the shutter release.  My willingness to Be there, does the rest.

Far, far from perfect or professional

I may shoot over 100 frames in one sitting of anything and everything around me...doesn't matter what.  I will usually delete about 15-20 % because they are absolutely horrid! (And for me to delete a pic means they are horrid because I  have hope I can restore almost every one of "my babies" with the magic of post processing.) I take the rest to light room for better viewing...the only time I can actually see what I shot clearly is on full screen. Then I do what I learned to do to develop. It is a labor of love.

When done, ego may slip back in to judge my work with a very critical eye.  I manage to supersede that with a "feeling" I get when I look at a particular pic.  Of all the 100 pics I shot, there may be 2-3 that speak to me, like this one did (and it required little editing). It was a pic meant to be taken and meant to be shared. 

I don't know why I like it, or the other 3% of my pics that I feel called to...but I know I do.  My eyes are drawn to it...I sense the light in it, almost feel it...almost see the movement towards the space in  2/3 of  the frame. It pulls me in.  It may not do that for anyone else at all lol...I don't know; it doesn't matter.  I just know it was a moment meant to be captured  and someone, just me maybe, is meant to be pulled into it.

I feel warm and grateful when I look at this pic with all its imperfections. Grateful for capturing a moment that touched me so; for being reminded how beautiful, in all its contrast, the world is and for knowing I am a witness to it and a part of it.  I am grateful for the reminder in every such pic I get that This moment is all there is...That reminder creates a peace in me. ...a peace which surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7 NKJV)

Hmmm!  So ego deserves a little gratitude too for getting me there even if it was for its own twisted reasons.  :) So I put my specs up and pretend to be something I am not.

That is much more than you needed to read, I am sure.

About the story of the little crocus that found itself far away from the crop?  Well I think I see a children's story in the making.  You will have to read more about it then.  :)

All is well.

Understanding presence is Being Present.

-Eckhart Tolle (From The Power of Now)

 

 

 

 

Getting There

Your life situation exists in time.
Your life is now.
Your life situation is mind stuff.
Your life is real.
(Tolle, 2004, page 63)


Getting There?

Wow! Understanding the difference between life and life circumstance is the process of awakening. I can see that I am getting there...it has been a long challenging road but I am getting there.  As soon as I say that or write that...I am aware that I am creating a distorted mental image.  This idea implies  that waking up involves movement, a journey, a path to some unknown destination outside the self.

Waking up is just the opposite of that, isn't it?  Instead of movement, it requires stopping and stillness. Instead of doing, it requires Being.  Instead of noise and narration of the journey, it requires quiet and silence. Instead of getting to a destination "out there" it involves going "in here". And it is not an "unknown destination" we are seeking...we are simply going home. Most importantly, the process of waking up  doesn't require "seeking." It requires accepting what is and has always been.

Satori

So technically and literally...I am not getting there...I am and have always been here.  I am just coming to that realization.  I am just opening the eyes of the "inner body" and seeing that I am home so I can revel in the experience of being in that wonderful, loving and comfortable space. I am having moments of what the ancient Sanskrit refers to as "satori."  They are sweet and precious moments that take me away from over identification with life situation, and make me say out loud, "I am getting there" lol.  I guess, what I really should be saying is that I am becoming more and more aware of what is really important.  :)

Ego Resistance

Ego of course...does not want me going there (man...it's hard to put aside the "going somewhere" descriptions lol). It taunts and teases me. As the reminders of my external circumstances come into my mind and the fear of what will happen "when" settles into mine and my loved ones' thought processes...I get pulled away from the realization of home. I have to face the facts.

The facts are facts. Life situation is about to change dramatically. I will soon be without all that once defined me, all that I once believed protected me and kept me safe, that I thought gave my life purpose and meaning.  I will be jobless, title less, eventually houseless and for all extents and purposes penniless.

I will have no real means of living in the physical world in the way that is expected unless I depend heavily on others which my independent nature will not allow me to do. (D. wants to "rescue" me from this mess. I will, however, not make a true commitment from this place of "need".  It would not be fair to our relationship.) So I cannot really even begin to address the question, What will I do?

I am reminded of the premise of Lesson 128 in ACIM...The world I see holds nothing that I want.(ACIM: w-128,pg 233) It offer me comforting relief.

The only thing I can think to do...is nothing. That is a concept so foreign to my "old ego based self" and to most of the population, I am sure.  I can already hear, "Oh my God!  What are you going to do?  How are you going to live?" 

As long as I do not bring anyone down with me, it will be alright. I know the children will be okay...that's all that matters. They will have a place to go.  The rest, I will take as it comes. So if I were to answer other people's concerns with : "I will do nothing.  I will just allow it to be what it is.  I will simply continue to awaken." My answer will be deemed as irrational coming from a broken mind. I will be considered mentally incompetent and stuffed away somewhere.  (I joke with D. that at least there I will have shelter and food. )

The weird thing is...I don't feel like I am in dire straits though it may look that way to anyone who took the time to see where I was at. I don't feel the loss.  I don't feel anything but momentary pangs of fear here and there when ego gets busy in my head. I am realizing that I do not want any of this stuff anyway.  I don't need it other than for body survival...which, I know, is kind of important lol...but for some reason I am not worried.

I read this line today and it kind of explained what I was experiencing, This day we realized that what you feared to lose was only loss.(ACIM w-129:8:5,pg 236)

There is a world I want

I firmly believe that whatever I am doing is the right thing even though it looks so"crazy" from the outside. I want acceptance of what is which comes when I stop fighting my body and my life.  I allow my body to feel what it feels and do what it does ( or not do what I want it to do).  I just accept it where it is right now.  I accept the consequences of that as well.  Pushing myself to exhaustion in an attempt to prove to a world that "holds nothing that I want" that I can do and keep up to it is not acceptance.  It is not living. It takes me away from where I want to be.

Beyond this world there is a world I want. (ACIM-W-129, pg 235) I don't get there by "doing" anything...just by a willingness to be. I am not running away from reality in my attempt to wake up. I feel I am running into the only reality that matters.

I just trust, I guess, that the more I slip into Being, the more things will work out. So if I can use the phrase incorrectly one last time, "I am getting there..." .  I am becoming more conscious...

More consciousness means a lessening of the illusion of materiality. (Tolle;2004; page 123)

For what it is worth...I was well established on this journey (which really isn't a journey at all)toward embracing Life,   long before life situation changed.

All is well.

References

workbook ACIM: Combined Volume. Third Edition.

Tolle, E. (2004) The Power of Now. Novato: New World Library

Roving Reporter

Yesterday I wrote about the Steps to Waking UP.

What those steps fail to mention, is that on the road to recovery there are lots of obstacles to overcome.  The further down the steps we get, the more ego mind acts up: temper tantrums; mind attacks; resistance barriers galore to get through.  Just when we think we"got it"...the mind throws its punches and its lassos around us to knock us down and pull us back in to its recesses...as the Witness, the Observer...just watches...untouched and unblemished  by these ego assaults.

Roving Reporter

My mind has been so active in the last 48 hours, physical fatigue and menopausal hormone fluctuations adding to its bizarre reasoning for such attacks. Between the moments I am lost in the smoke of artillery fire, I see the battles going on in my head and like a war reporter I am standing on the sidelines reporting back to someone or something what I am seeing. At least, I am reporting, I exclaim to myself.  I am seeing it...I am recognizing it.  That is a very big step!!!!

But....I am still "reporting," using words and ideas and mental constructs to explain what doesn't need to be explained. When we are "explaining" anything we are not in presence. Presence is something that cannot be explained only experienced. If we are "reporting" we are not experiencing. 

We want to be in that stillness we are discovering, more and more...we want to stay with it for as long as we can.  As soon as the roving reporter is spotted prowling around... we can know we are out of it.  Well not out of it...It is always there...we are just in front of it, obstructing our ability to experience what is there and always will be there beneath this crazy activity of our minds.This is a good little observation  tip to remember and something Mooji uses in his "self-inquiry".

Self Inquiry

We have to ask ourselves at those times, "  Who is doing the reporting?To whom are we reporting?"  When we manage to see that it is ego mind, that which wants to keep us from experiencing presence, that is reporting and we know at point how mixed up in its perceptions ego is then we can become less threatened. And though it thinks it is reporting back to home base...it isn't.  The Observer already  sees everything but does not pay heed to our mental battles as anything significant.  Ego is really just reporting back to itself.

Realizing this brings us back to the recognition that there is the "little self" constantly on the go, threatened by our discovery of Self...and doing whatever it can to pull us back.  We also recognize the greater Self in the background waiting patiently  for us to come to it...in "quiet" with no need for thought or narration. Our reports and what we are reporting mean nothing to it.  We are not going to win any awards for our bravery and our skill of observation of what It considers insignificant.  We can only appease ego that way.

So as long as we are reporting, we are not experiencing the stillness and the emptiness of who we really are.  We are still somehow attached to the wars of this world and our minds. There is a better way.

All is well.

Steps to Waking Up

It's Been a Journey

I have been writing about this waking up thing for a couple of years, longer really...but in this blog it officially began in 2016, I believe.  I come here almost every morning to chart my progress in one form or another by sharing what I am learning and how.

I have this mind that likes to simplify things and put them in special order for easy processing.  So when I look at the journey I am taking I can see certain steps/levels of awakening that have and are occurring.  I would like to share those now.

Steps to Waking Up:

• Seeking and doing  to be happy.
• Powering the mind with story, past and future
• Becoming aware that it isn't working
• recognizing the fruitlessness of an "external" search involving judging and blaming
• questioning that methodology
• beginning a different type of seeking
• listening to the guidance that points inward
• looking at one's own mind
• recognizing the ego or "little self" within
• taking accountability and responsibility for one's own life
• determining that ego is not who we really are
• willingness to just sit
• knowing that something else is watching ego at work
• realizing that one knows nothing
• being willing to leave all thought and ideas behind
• finding the space beneath
• spending more and more time there
• realizing the Truth
• Loving from that space, that Truth

1. Full awareness of a  desire to be happy or at least to  relieve suffering leading to "seeking" and "doing" (For me that involved...jumping into a religious, psychology or social type of  understanding and redeeming myself through achievement, recognition,  owning, becoming more like others or better than.  It meant creating a socially acceptable idea of self.)
2. Powering the mind and ego with "story" built from "past" memory and anticipation for redemption in a "future" that will never arrive.
3. Becoming aware that what is being done in the search for happiness or the end of suffering is not really working. ...that one is not really where they want to be.(I began to see that these things I was doing and seeking were not taking me to where I really wanted to be.)
4. Recognizing that up until now "the search" had been conducted externally and that one was "blaming", "judging" external things for not making them happy when their  "expecting" "clinging" "seeking" "hoping" only created a certain pseudo contentment or relief that did not last. (As things seemed to be "taken" from me, I began to go through a process of seeing how they were not substantial enough anyway to sustain me)
5. Questioning that methodology and what one was taught to believe was real. Doubting  if it was the way to find this happiness or end to suffering. (I began to question everything I thought I knew and was conditioned to believe.  I began to look at this idea of "belief" very seriously.  To ask the question..."What is the Truth beyond conditioned belief?" about life and happiness.)
6. Beginning a different type of seeking that takes the mind away from its conditioned comfort zone ...may be looking at different ideas and possibilities that one was warned not to look at by those still in step one.  Maintaining a very "mental" connection to things, one partakes in a type of mental activity rather than a physical one, as they question and seek. (I began to look at other philosophies and religions which I was taught was "sinful" to do.)
7. Listening to the guidance that points inward as the direction to go for the answers.(I got that from many spiritual masters I read or listened to.)
8. Looking at one's own mind and belief system very thoroughly. (Though, I had a psychological understanding of things I looked a little further into what Patanjali called the "mental modifications." )
9. Recognizing the little self or ego  that we have allowed to take on so much of the control.(when I identified the ego created "little self" in me [thanks to Wayne Dyer, then Tolle and ACIM], my life  shifted dramatically.)
10. Taking accountability and responsibility for one's life and how one is experiencing it.  Seeing the reliance on past and future there as an escape from present moment awareness. (This was the hard part for me...taking ownership for my life  and putting away my story and  the victim status it honored me with.  Giving up my attachment to a past as a means to explain who I was and my reliance on the future to make it all better...was a challenging thing to do.)  
11. Having a very strong inkling that ego is not who we are and that something much greater exists within. (This helped.)
12. A willingness to just sit in the now of one's existence for at least a few moments a day, to become aware of what that greater Self might be. (I began meditating and partaking in mindfulness activities as the most important part of my day.)
13. Sensing that Something {which is no-thing}is watching, observing and witnessing ego at work with all it's mind games and senseless activity. (I do this as I go about my everyday life...When  I can make this observation I become aware of that higher Self and less identified with ego)
14. Realizing one knows nothing and being okay with it. (This was also challenging for me...to put away all I thought I learned over the years through extensive study and just rest with the idea that I really know nothing.)
15. Being willing to leave all thought, ideas about the little self , what we thought we knew at the door that leads to the greater Self.  (Tolle, Adyashanti, Patanjali and Mooji [to name just a few of the teachers that showed up in distant form when I was ready for what they could offer]helped me with that one)
16. Finding the space of stillness, quiet...nothingness...that exists beneath the veil of mental chatter and activity. (This just shows up when we lift the veil we created with our minds.  Satori. Right now I am only getting a few precious moments here and there throughout the day...still have some more lifting to do.)
17. Seeing the importance of spending more and more time there rather in the teachings and written words that point there. (This is where I am at now.)
18. Realizing the truth: one does not "become aware", one "is" awareness. Awareness is the Self where true happiness is expressed.
19. Loving from that space is why we are here I believe.

Seek not within the world to find your Self. Love is not found in darkness and in death.  Yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear love's Voice. (ACIM,W-127:6,1-3)

It's all good.

Everyone is suffering for a Kind of inner space....There really isn't anything, other than This.
-Mooji (Mooji TV    https://mooji.tv/freemedia/to-see-the-whole/)

Let me remember

Let me remember that I am one with God, at one with all my brothers and my Self, in everlasting holiness and peace.
ACIM W-124:12:2

Leaving It All at the Door

Would you stand outside while all heaven waits for you within? ....All the complexities of the world has spun of fragile cobwebs disappear before the power and the majesty of this extremely simple statement of the truth.
ACIM Lesson 122:6:1,7


Wow! Serendipity is a strange and wonderful thing.  As I was contemplating the Lessons in A Course that spoke to this idea of taking the "unforgiving mind" to the door of the higher Self where it would simply disappear and where once in with out it, we could sit quietly in the peace and happiness we long for....I came across a video.  In this video, Mooji, a spiritual teacher, during a Satsang is getting students to imagine walking into the room of the Higher Self but before they can come in they must leave everything about the ego identity, all that makes the "unforgiving mind", at the door. It is amazingly effective technique that helps bring us into the "isness" of our life. It just seemed so serendipitous that I should run across the video when I am writing about Lesson 121, Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

Let's look more at the "unforgiving mind" described in Lesson 121. :

• It looks upon the world with sightless eyes, and shrieks as it beholds its own projections rising to attack its miserable parody of life. (w-121:4:2)
• The unforgiving mind is in in despair, without the prospect of a future which can offer anything but more despair.(w-121:5:1)
• ...and does not see it has condemned itself to this despair.(w-121:5:2)
• It does not ask because it thinks it knows.  It does not question, certain it is right.(w-121:4:4-5)

What all this is saying is that the unforgiving or ego mind does not see clearly.  It looks out at a terrifying world and becomes afraid of what it sees.  It feels threatened and in despair not realizing that it created all that frightens it.  And it thinks it "knows everything, that it is right and that it knows for certain it is doomed.

Of course, we would want to leave something like that behind, wouldn't we?

The thing is, it is doomed when we show up at the door of the higher Self but we are not...because we are not it.  We are not this thing ego has created, identified with, named itself as. We are something beyond that, beyond the concept of "little self".  We will realize that when we open the door.  Forgiveness, according the Course is the key that will let us in to that Truth.

Hmm! All is well. 

Be sure to check out the video below.

References :

Foundations of Inner Peace (2007) Work Book For Students. A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume. Third Edition. Mill Valley: Foundation for Inner Peace.

Mooji (n.d.) Invitation to Freedom. Mooji TV . Retrieved from https://mooji.tv/freemedia/an-invitation-to-freedom/