Don't Hold Your Breath As You Step Into Life

This is the most valuable moment.  Why? Because it is the only moment.

Eckhart Tolle

Hmm! The following came to me as I was listening to Eckhart Tolle's video on the present moment (see link below). 

We are always looking for the big moments up ahead aren't we? We overvalue that moment up there (in our heads only) and devalue the present moment we can actually experience.  We do not see that life isn't just about the big moments, or the future ( which can only be a mental projection...never real) ...infact most of life is about the little moments we overlook: 

• Sitting at the table in the morning, while the sun is streaming in and sipping on hot tea, feeling the cup warming the palms of the hand, tasting the tea, experiencing the swallowing of it, the warmth in the belly.
• Taking a shower, feeling the streams of water on parts of the body that are seldom exposed, the smell of shampoo or soap, the relaxing heat, the sound of water hitting the tub
• Washing dishes in the sink , listening to the gentle clanging, feeling the warm bubbly water on the hands, the appearance of the plate or cup, or fork emerging from the water covered in bubbles. The gentle wiping of it, rinsing, putting it down gently
• Talking to someone...or should I say listening.  Just watching them as they talk, the expression on their face, the look in their eyes, the sound of their voice, the emotion in it...paying attention to the content of that speech, more importantly attempting to see beyond it as we ask, "What does this person really want me to hear?" Feeling whatever emotion that arises in us as we listen and feeling  the connection...knowing that whatever is in them, beyond all the apparent differences, is in us. 
• Throwing the stick for the dog.  Feeling it leaving the hand and the muscles in the arm and shoulder, that just performed the task, beginning to relax again. Watching the dog run so excitedly toward the stick, catching it and bringing it back, tail happily wagging as she drops it at your feet for you to throw it again. How intent and in the moment she is.  The feel of her fur as you bend to pat her head and how she responds. (If she is like my dog...she will back away from the hand so that she or I don't lose focus on what is really important...throwing that stick!) 
• Just sitting or walking in nature...feeling the sun on your face, hearing the breeze through poplar leaves and the sounds and smells of life around you...looking up at the sky...be it cloudy or clear and seeing the vastness of it...

I could go on and on here...The point is: This is life.  This is what I am truly learning life is all about:  a series of small ordinary moments.  

Too often, much too often, we fail to notice and fully experience these moments because we are intensely trying to get something "done", to reach another moment up there.  We don't have time for these small moments in our endless quest for bigger and better moments up ahead.  We measure our lives by all the big moments we are attempting to be apart of, the reaching of goals, achievements and destinations and we tramp on, trod over and smother all the real moments on the way to getting there. Sadly, we often look at the moments on the way as being in the way. Wow!

Once we start becoming more mindful, we become more appreciative of the journey than we do of the destination. 

Hmm! This came out. Like my entries, my videos, most things I do... it is far from perfect...but it is real.  :) 

All is well!

don't hold your breath

don't hold your breath and wait for glory

as you take the first step to the end of  story 

don't overlook, ignore, trod over  or smother 

this tiny step you take now toward the other

it is in the space between point A and B

that you must awaken and learn to see

that this is your life, right here, right now

embrace this step, accept, allow

put aside your wish  for this moment to leave

place your foot gently, then gratefully  breathe

© Dale-Lyn (Pen) September, 2020

Eckhart Tolle (June, 2020) Being at Peace/The Present Moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-HWfAZlAbI

ACIM Lessons Continued: What is Salvation?

We are one, united in this light and one with You, at peace with all creation and ourselves. 

ACIM-W-Part II:2:239:2:3

My Bad: I meant to be done the entire workbook by now but have not looked at the lessons since July 28th.  I tell myself there is some reason for that I may never be able to understand with my limited little mind.  Andersen's book landed on my lap, as well as Tara Brach's, Rubert Spiro's, and Jon Kabat-Zinn's.   All exactly when they were supposed to. 

So here we go:

Part II : 2. What is Salvation?

Salvation is simply remembering who we really are.  We tame the mind when we see beyond it to what is; when we realize we are all part of the One Mind; that there never was such a thing as seperation; when we realize the only time there is is 'now",  and when we are able to replace the the thought of conflict with the Thought of peace.

Lesson 231: Father, I will but to remember You

What we truly seek is not the many things 'out there' but reconnection to and renewed awareness of the Love of God.  We seek that Love which will set us free.  We too often are unconscious and confused seeking a myriad of things with different names but in truth what we are seeking in these things is that which cannot be neamed... the Love of God.

Lesson 232: Be in my mind, my Father,through the day.

This lesson appeals to us to have Faith and trust in God as we pray to Him to be in our minds throughout the day and night.  We pray that we are constantly reminded and grateful of God's presence in our life, His Love and protection.

Lesson 233: I give my life to God to guide today

Here we vow to  give up our life to God's guidance and Will.  We trust in His thought not our own. We let go of our futile goals to find what we are looking for 'out there' when what we really want is in the One who Guides.  We pledge to follow, even when we cannot comprehend the Way He works and to trust in that Love He offers.

Lesson 234: Father, today I am Your son again

We anticipate the Holy Instant that allows us to see that the Peace of God and the safety and blessing provided to us did not leave us...it was always with us and that the memory Of God, we will never lose. We realize with this awareness that we are saved.

Lesson 235: God in His mercy wills that I be saved

We see in this lesson that God wills we be saved...and by saved we simply realize the illusion of sin and ego...how suffering disappears when we see clearly the truth that God wills us  Love and peace, not punishment for the illusion of sin. 

Lesson 236: I rule my mind, which I alone must rule.

This lesson is about the mind and how we are the ones that rule it.  Instead of allowing ego to take the reins, we can instead give those reins to the Holy Spirit so that we serve , doing God's will instead of ego's.  We can go beyond the thinking ego is trying to convince us is our reality to the truth. Instead of getting lost in ego's thinking...we go to stillness and silence and open ourselves to God's Thoughts.

Lesson 237: Now would I be as God created me

Here we announce that we know who we really are.  We accept that truth of Self and we share that truth with the world through our acceptance of it. We come to God through Christ.

Lesson 238: On my decision all salvation rests

Reminded of how we are united with all as one Self, and therefore how our salvation will lead to the salvation of all, we are also reminded of our worthiness for this task, how God loves and trusts us.

Lesson 239: The glory of my Father is my own

We are asked in this lesson to denounce our false humility and to be thankful for the gift of glory God has given us...for the light [of unity] that shines forever in us.

Lesson 240: Fear is not justified in any form

In the final lesson in this section we are told that fear is not justified because it is only a deception. When we fear we are attesting that we are seeing ourselves in a way we could never be and seeing a world that is impossible.  How foolish are our fears!

In Other Words:

Okay these are beautiful lessons with beautiful messages ...whether you are Christian or not; whether you are Christian and see ACIM as a blasphemous take on Christianity or not; whether you see it all as new age woo-woo nonsense or not...the underlying message resonates with a knowing  that is familiar.  This knowing is one that goes beyond conceptual knowledge and conditioning...beyond what we were taught to believe and perceive and what we have learned or chosen to believe or perceive over our life times.  Though this message is spoken with terminology that may be comforting to some, off-putting to others...the message is simple, universal and healing. It is not meant to please your ego.  It is meant to awaken your spirit. The message is Love.

Huh? 

We really need to get beyond words at some point...beyond concepts and ideas that seperate and support our egos to determine the One  truth...that is the background of most true teachings. All these teachings, whether it is from ACIM, more traditional Christianity (and its many, many different sects), Buddhism, Hinduism,  Islam, other religions, science, philosophy, psychology, allopathic medicine or some other field of thought.... point to a knowing that cannot be taught, only remembered. 

Too often we get stuck in the field of thought and cannot see beyond it.  Many of us, personally or collectively, are so busy trying to protect and support our ideations, terms, words and convictions that we don't even look to see what the teacher or teachings we follow  are pointing   to. For example, in Christianity, we may get stuck on building up, supporting and protecting our version of  Christ and the words He used as the messenger, creating different , seperate sects of belief  under the title of Christianity...In each sect we may be so convinced that our way of believing is right, and all other ways are wrong , using "The Word" as our weapon..."Salvation" is such a word. We may get so caught up on determining who gets saved, when they get saved, how they get saved , from what they are being saved...that we fail to see what salvation really is.

So we do need to get beyond the different intrepretation of words, the different ideas ...to the truth that we are being pointed to.  

We are being taught, in one way or another, over and over agian...that we are more than this!

We are more than this body, this personality, the things we do, the things we have, the way we think or feel.  All that is just a superficial and flimsy front over the space of what we really are.  We are not the foreground of form...we are the background of  formlessness. When we see this...when we know this...when we reconnect to the awareness, the essence of Love we have been erronously searching for "out there"...guess what?  We will be saved. 

Salvation is About Remembering

So many teachings point to this one truth: we are saved when we remember who we are and from Whom we came.  We are saved when we see that in our true essence we are all One...a part of and operating with One Mind...what Andersen referred to as the  "Universal Subconcious Mind"...other fields of thought may call it Tao, or Self...Atman, Budha Nature...The field...and A Course calls it "God's Mind" "God's Will". 

What we are saved from...is the fog, illusion and dream like state we are in when we operate under ego, when we believe everything our thinking  is telling us. Basically...salvation comes when we see beyond the  seperate mind and reconnect to the One Mind.

Hmm! Well that is my intrepretation of an intrepretation. Knowing truth cannot be explained or reduced to words. It is the words and individual intrepretations that often block the knowing. 

All is well!

ACIM (2007) A Course in Miracles; Combined Edition-Workbook. Foundations of Inner Peace: Mill Valley

Typos

 Excuse the typos on the recent entries.  The spell checker isn't working...and I miss it lol. I am a self taught typist, typing very quickly to keep up with the thoughts in my head, on a key board that has many letters worn off the keys .  For some reason...my tapping fingers prefer to put the e before the h in "the" , the e before the i in words like "experience".  And there is a host of many other typos you will be able to find.  I try to eventually get back to them but for now please excuse them if you notice.

Watch What you Are Telling Yourself about What Is

 

Watch what you tell yourself.  You are likely to believe it.

Russ Kyle (https://7summitpathways.com/blog/what-is-positive-self-talk/)

Hmmm! There is one gaurantee in Life that you can always depend on...there will always be something that will go "wrong".  That is if you think in terms of right and wrong.   Life is going to be challenging...there is no escaping that.  No matter what  expectations you have flittering around in your head about how life "should" be....Life won't be able to meet all of them the way you think it "should".  

Most of us got it all wrong...we spend all this time, energy and effort into trying to make Life different so it meets our expectations...only to find that it seldom does...and even when it does...something always tends to go "wrong" eventually. We get angry, frustrated, fearful, anxious and depressed because Life cannot keep up with these expectations of what is "good", "right" and "pleasant". 

Let's face it...we can't change what is ...but we can do something with those expectations of ours.  

1. Take that "should" and chop it up into pieces, burn it into ash or throw it in the compost heap where it belongs! "Should"  is "crap"! I have come to see it as the most peace destructive word in the English language. Things, circumstance, other people "should" not be a certain way.  They simply are what they are! When we place a should on something we allow ego to take the reins of our lives and provide some false evidence about why we should be anything but peaceful.  "He should treat me better." "She should do this or that, be this or that." "It should not be raining."  "This should not be happening."  "Should" creates a certain expectation that can never be met by Life. People are imperfect in their realness and often will never meet our unreal expectaions of them. And  Life is only able to do what Life does. 
2. Notice and allow the "isness" to be what it is without adding to it.  Replace that "should" with...it is what it is. Make that your mantra.
3. Go without the judgment or interpretation  of what is happening. Remember this famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet : Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Avoid the "right" or "wrong", the "good" or "bad" discrimination  here.  Remove teh adjectives. It just is what it is! Look at the experience through neutral, non judging eyes.
4. Seperate the experience from the mental commentary. Stop telling yourself a story.  Stop narrating every experience that comes your way. Or at least be aware of your tendency to do that. Just try, as Eckhart Tolle suggests, removing the story from your experience.  So you stubbed you toe and it hurts like the dickens.  That is the what is of your experience.  Now watch yourself here...notice...if you are adding anything to that sudden bout of physical pain. Are you jumping around cursing and swearing at whomever left that piece of furniture in the middle of the floor?  Are you saying things like, "Oh, I am so stupid.  " or "See...life is out to get me!" or "Why is life always doing things to cause me pain?" If you are like the majority of us frequent toe stubbers, you are likely saying to yourself or others, in one way or another, "This should not be!" Be aware of that...notice what the pain is like on its own and what it is like with the narrative attached to it. The pain is enough, right? Why add to that the story, the mental resistance when it only makes the pain expereince ten times worse.  We go from experiencing the challenges of life, which are there to make us grow and evolve, to full blown and unnecessary suffering, all because we added a story to it.
5. Live, honor and appreciate the present moment for being exactly what it is regardless of what is in it.  Stop making an enemy of it...learn to simply be in it.  So...in this moment  as you are frantically trying to finish some task, you  get  a headache...Instead of automatically going to "This shouldn't be happening.  Why are these things always happening to me.  I can't take this! I can't deal with this now. I want this moment to be over!" Simply allow this moment to be what it is...a moment with a headache in it.  Breathe! Accept that you have a headcahe, experience it a bit without resistance...decide if there is some action you can take and take it without drama or story.  Get yourself some Advil if need be. Then take it a step further. Say to this moment Life offers you, "Thanks for everything.  I have no complaints what so ever." And mean it...after all...regardless of what is in it, each moment is a gift.
6. Notice what you feel, what you tap into from this place of acceptance of what is. Notice the presence, the spaciousness within you.  Notice how the "otherness of the other" disappears.  Notice the peace that was once hiding  under all that unnecessary drama emerge into your awareness.

Hmm! This is a practice, I believe,  that could make our lives a lot more peaceful! 

All is well.

Eckhart Tolle (May 2020) Opinions are Distractions in our Minds/ Awaken from Self-Talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzA2YyRs8XA

Karma: Ego's Echo

 The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.

Frederick Beuchner (https://everydaypower.com/karma-quotes/)

I don't know about you but sometimes I feel like I am caught in a big karmic loop and it aint pretty.

What is Karma anyway?  I liked Eckhart Tolle's definition in the video linked below. Karma is just the echo of our own conditioning.  Hmmm!

To understand Karma, we need to first understand the entity that creates it.  No, not God...our puny little minds.

The Ego

We all have these voices, these teachings, these memories and interpretations, these thoughts, beliefs and judgements   from our past stuck in us..They gather  and clump together forming a new growth that threatens to take over our very lives and does.  It  becomes a malignant personification, an ego entity...a thing that seems to have become something in itself, to have a life of its own and like a malignant tumour  it grows and grows.  

For many of us it is a very dense and heavy thing we have a hard time seeing through.  It covers up who we really are and it is the self we show the world.  It is the thing we tend to see when we look in the mirror as "me".  We become convinced of its solidity, its reality.  We truly believe that it is us and we are it.That there is nothing more than it and what it allows us to see.

What Tolle Refers to as the Pain Body

And for many of us it can be a nasty, nasty thing...dark and negative, hostile and seething like a volcano that could erupt at any time. It gets stronger by joining up with other entities like it, creating a collective force.  It is also a thing that suffers and makes others suffer.  It is, in fact the thing that is responsible for all the suffering in the world, all the violence, the hatred, the fear, the desperation, the lonliness, the illness and despair. It appears to be very, very  powerful and getting more so everyday!

Feeding It

We allow it to scream.  We allow it to temper tantrum.  We allow it to create a drama filled mess wherever it goes...by feeding it.  We feed it constantly with our beleif in it.  We feed it constantly with our unconsciousness...our inability or our refusal to look beyond it. We feed it constantly by seeing only its negative malignancy in self, others and by not being able to ( or refusing to) look at the glory and the good that exists beyond it.  We feed it with our judgements, our view points, our ideolgy. We feed it with this conviction that body lines seperate. We feed it with our refusal to accept life as it is (remember...pain is one thing...a necessary part of life...suffering, however,  is another). We feed it when we believe it, listen to it and follow its directions to react, defend, struggle agianst, resist or attack  any idea or holder of an idea that dimishes it, especially the idea that we may be more than it. 

Ego's Echo

When we do react, resist, struggle against the moment we are in...it gets stronger, we get weaker. Our worlds become limited, dark, unfriendly, punitive.  This is Karma: ego's echo.  The more we feed ego, the stronger it gets and the more it demands...it  screams for more, demands more and will lay down on the floors of our lives if we do not give it what it wants, making a scene. This egoic conditioning is echoed off the invisible walls around us and comes back to us in negative or chaotic circumstance.  We add teh element of suffering to the  necessary curves of life. We react; others react; ego clashes against ego. Ego creates a mess as if to say, "See! I told you it was this way!"

And we just keep feeding it and believing in it and doing what it tells us to do. It seems to be  easier to feed ego than it is, for some reason, to see the illusionary nature of it. To see that we, in a sense, are causing our own suffering...our own Karma.

Breaking Up With Ego

Ego is an abusive lover...seeking only to keep itself strong by making us weak and limited, victims to its unpredicatble nature. It wants us weak.  It wants us totally dependent on it.  It does not want us to see who we could be without it...what life could be without it.  So it is constantly screaming for us to follow our thoughts, to depend only on what we can pick up with the five senses as our reality...to see the world the way it wants us to see it. To avoid...at all costs...the deeper awareness that comes with presence. For presence, it knows, will make it seen for what it is.  In that awareness, ego will simply evaporate as the nothing it is. 

It seems so solid, so real. 

Yet it is nothing, nothing more than smoke and mirrors, an illusion, a creation of our minds.  Therefore all that it creates in the world, all that we expereince in terms of circumstance and suffering is nothing more than an echo of its screaming and temper tantruming. We need to stop feeding it and seek instead the awareness , the truth of who we really are.

Karma Guides Us Inward

Sometimes it takes this karmic suffering...be it personal or collective...to make us see how ego isn't real, how we are allowing it to rule our lives.  When we see this...then we may be willing to go deeper and discover who we are without ego and what life can be like from an egoless perspective.

Hmmm! Something to think about. 

All is well!

Eckhart Tolle (May 2020 ) Futility of Egoic Reaction and Navigating Our Awakening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9DCVEwd6Lw

We Are Just Acting

 All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.

William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII

Hmm! How bang on was Jacques' statement here? I thought about that today as I istened to Eckhart Tolle.  He brought up this famous line in his discussion on disguises...on how Life/Universal Mind...what I refer to as God... disquises itself in many forms. (see video link below).  Everything of form is an expression of God in a different disquise.

Just a Disquise

Each human is an expression of God, a player on this stage we call Life. We are all wearing costumes and heavy make up: our bodies and personas, as we play our parts here: our roles, our doings and creation of outward appearances.  But they are just that...disguises we are wearing and roles we are playing.  These things we have come to believe are us, what we have come to see as "others'...are just that...disquises.  Too often we are so convinced the  disquise is real that we do not see beyond it  to who we really are...expressions of divine Intelligence. One intelligence...many forms...entering and exiting, playing seven acts from birth to death.

Getting Lost in Character

We are just acting under the most brilliant of direction. What is created seems so real  that we get lost in character and foregt all about the script writer and lose touch with that gentle direction as if we can now control the way the play turns out.  We lose touch with who we really are beyond the costume and the makeup. We do not see beyond the disquises in others either. If they are playing the part of the villian...we see them as the villian and defend or attack accordingly. If they are playing the part of a loved one, we will claim and cling. 

Reminder: We Are Just Acting

We are here to enjoy the role without getting lost in it, without believing it is all real. We have to remember that we are just acting...just playing a part and wearing a disquise.  Who we are is much grander, much more spacious and beautiful than any mask or robe we can cover ourselves in. There are no villians and opponents; no special lovers and friends.  There is just One United Self flowing through everything.  

Play the game...play your part, enjoy it but seek to see through what appears to be ...to what is. See through the disquise in self and others to find that truth that makes the need for mask, make up or costume obselete.

United Under the Supreme Director's Command

We are not seperate in anything but this play.  In truth we are One and our seemingly seperate  bodies and egos are simply disguises we  wear while we act on this stage which is only the superficial platform of our existence.  Life is so much more than this stage and  we are so much more than the seperate  parts we are playing. We are all united under the Supreme Director's command. See through the disguise to the truth!

Hmmm! 

Some Correlating Ideas from the Bible

For as in One body we have many members, and the members don't all have the same function, so we , though many, are one  in body in Christ,and individually members one of another. Romans 12:4-5 ESV 

Or do you know that your body is the temple for the Holy Spirit within you? You are not your own...1 Corinthians 6:19 ESV

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret,intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me,when as of yet there was none of them. Psalm 139:15-16 ESV

Some Correlating Ideas from Andersen

Other people see me not; they see but my body. It is only I who know myself, and this knowledge returns, to me in my health and in the things of my life. Location 4076

Some invisible thinker merely uses the brain as a central reception station for sensory perception. Someone, something, is dwelling in your body, peering through the windows of your eyes, listening at the portals of your ears, using your brain to receive impressions. Invisible, hidden, gowned with your particular form but an instant in the eternity of its being, it uses your body as an idea, then discards it and departs to whence it came. This is immortal Self. Location 4230

I am not body; I am not Conscious Mind; I am not ego. I am sense of Self only, consciousness, awareness, unadulterated being. The presence that animates all life is within me, is altogether the real me. I am using my body for a purpose, as an expression of an idea, and when the idea in fully expressed, through mywork and my mission, I shall return again to unity with universal Self, leaving body and ego behind. I do not confuse my body and my ego with what I truly am. My body in simply an instrument for my expression, and my ego is simply memory of physical experience.Location 4351

Some Correlating Ideas from ACIM 

I am not a body. I am free. I hear the Voice that God has given me, and it is only this my mind obeys. ACIM-W-Lesson 199:8:7-9

All is well in my world!

References

ACIM (2007) A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume. Workbook. Foundatins for Inner Peace

Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . BN Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

Eckhart Tolle (September 10, 2020) Looking Through the Disguise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKQrPuRpW8w

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%20139&version=ESV

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+12%3A1-21&version=ESV

. 

Awkward Stream and Trusting the Great Power

 Man is spirit, clearly and without dispute. Man is the essence of the mighty intelligence that guides and controls the universe. Man lives in this intelligence; he is a part of it and the whole of it. He is as small as his temporal life and as great as his spiritual life, for the intelligence from which he comes is greater than all, greater than the far reaches of space, greater than the power that holds the planets in their courses. (Location 33)

Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . BN Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

Hmmm! I have hit a bit of an emotional bump as I, the convulted stream being taken to an ocean I cannot see, know or fully understand, flow awkwardly, crashing into one jagged peice of shore to the next. 

A Craggy  Shoreline

It is not that things have gotten "worse" or "better" in my life. It is still the same craggy shoreline it has always been, with circumstance occassionally  jutting out to cut into me...then retreating to offer sweet peace and relief...before jutting out again. It is not smooth! But that is just Life operating with an Intelligence far greater than my own.  There are many, many fractal shapes to my existence created by one simple formula. Though bumpy it is a sure and steady stream.

Life is taking me, albeit not so gently, to where I need to be...but I am once again resisting. I have allowed my mind to ruffle up the waters, speed up the currents, create rapids  and eddies  I am getting stuck in.  I am struggling! I am fighting the current and I am exhausted as a result.  I feel it in my body...I have been unwell the last few days. I feel it in my response to the circumstances, the suffering I see,  the words spoken by others and the dreams I have at night.  Things seem dark as the painful experiences keep pushing against me. My eyes are not always seeing the beauty that surrounds me. My thoughts are heading towards the negative. As a result, I have this urge to stop swimming and to just sink to the bottom.  I am tired!!! 

Stop Fighting! Relax Into It!

Then it dawns on me.  That is exactly what I am meant to do. Stop swimming against the current I created with my mind.  Stop struggling! Stop fightig it! I won't sink.  I will be saved.  I remember the wise words told to my raft mates and I by our river guide on a white water trip years ago...."If you fall in...don't fight that which you cannot beat! Just lay back...put you feet up and allow the river to take you. Trust it and relax into it!"

Hmmm!

I just need to lay back into the arms of Self...of the Life it is expressing...and trust that it will take me to where I am meant to be.  My expereince of exhaustion, darkness, feeling overwhelmned is just another sharp jagged peice of the shoreline I must flow through.  It is not causing the current.  I am. The current I feel I am swimming against...is just a mental concept...nothing more. I don't have to fight it.  I just need to surrender, trusting that this stream will take me to where I need to be. The perception of "rough water"  will disappear with the conviction,  "it is what it is and it is all okay!" 

I close my eyes and I lay back. I do my best to trust and relax into what is! 

All is well!

Student First; Teacher Second

 The question is not whether you will teach, for in that there is no choice....You cannot give to someone else, but only to yourself, and this you learn through teaching...Teaching is but a call to witnesses to attest to what you believe...Any situation must be to you a chance to teach others what you are, and what they are to you.

ACIM-M-Introduction: 2

Disclaimer: Not An Expert!

I want to begin by reminding you that I know nothing...okay. I am just writing what comes to me as I learn, as I read and as I grow into this new understanding of things. I do this to learn, just as much,  if not more so, than I do it to share. 

I am not an expert.  As you can surely tell, I am far, far from enlightened (again ...erronously using that distance analogy to explain this process) .  Of course, the imperfection of what I express here shows just how unevolved I am.  :) And now that the spell checker on this site is not working and  my words are reduced to typos for the mistake counter...one will see how absolutely imperfect and "underdeveloped" I am as a writer, teacher, student and human being.  

I am okay with that...this what I do here has little to do with my ego. (Or at least I don't want it to).  It is about the lessons  only.

Both Teacher and Student

I feel so compelled to share what I learn, as imperfectly as I learn it. What I learn from reading, listening, watching and most of all going inward comes out here. This platform is both  the white board in a classroom, like the one I scribbled my notes on when I taught (scribbled being the key word),   and at the same time it is the notebook on which the student takes notes. I am the student who constantly has her hand up, annoying the teacher to no end, and I am the teacher who constantly repeats to herself, "There is no such thing as a useless question. There is no such thing as a useless question":) 

I have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the cuirriculum design and very little input in the learning materials that landed on my desk. All I did was sign up for the courses: Starting with  the introducutory level course for new students, "How do I cope with this crapload of stuff life gave me? , then "What is really important 101? " and the post grad  course, "Like Who am I really?"  Then I went to class and I listened and I studied what showed up as it showed up. Whatever book I opened, video I listened to, expereince I had or any insight that came up...all seemed to be perfectly timed and ordered  in a perfect design. (Didn't think that at the time each thing showed up...let me tell ya...but as I look back I can see how it all fit together.)  

I questioned...a lot! I waited for the answers to come. I got tested consistently throughout the learning.  I passed some tests.  I failed others and had to do them over.  Sometimes the learning/teaching got to be too much to take...so I skipped class or called in sick.  But for some reason, the pull to master this learning was soooo strong...it kept bringing me back to the desk, and back to the front of the classroom to do my thing. 

It isn't me

When I taught in a front of a classroom...I felt like I was in the zone...you know...it just came out of me.  When I write poetry (and sometimes my other writing)  ...same thing...and when I come here...everything I am learning just comes out.  I realize what I think of as "me" is only the cannister of a pen...not the ink within it.  It is the ink that does the writing and the teaching, not "me'.  

Anyway...  I do intend to get on with Andersen's book and to finish the ACIM lessons but things showed up on my desk/lesson plan that I had to take care of first.  It is all good...even if it, as of yet, doesn't make sense.  It will. As I used to remind my students when I physically taught...be patient...the peices will all go together soon enough and it will all make sense then. Trust the process.

Hmmm!

All is well in my world.

Random Roughness or Order?

Your most effecient way of acting, learning, changing, growing and recharging will often seem chaotic until it is completed. But just because you can't see what the puzzle pieces in your life are pointing you to yet, doesn't mean there isn't a shape they are destined for. 
Rachel, Blog: Evolving Connection

Random and Ineffecient? 

Rough and Chaotic? 

What I learned about Fractal Geometry?

I can just hear all the friends and teachers who, with great frustration helped me to get through high school math deacdes ago,  saying, "You?  You actually learned something about geometry? How can that be?"


Yes...yes I learned that the basic blocks of the universe are simple, self-similar patterns that repeat themselves into infinity. It follows the simple formula Z=z2( as in squared)+C. And to boot...I actually know what that means!!! (well not the math part). I can relate it to life. Pretty impressive huh?

There is an Order, a Design and a Pattern

The universe that looks so chaotic and complex, or what Mendelbrot himself referred to as "roughness"  actually isn't all that mixed up.  There is actually a design, a simple repeating pattern to all that exists.  In 1980 Mandelbrot prooved that in  his experiments  on computers at IBM, creating beautiful eloquant designs of repeating shapes by using the simple formula above, inputing numbers of roughness on the plane rather than on the line. Each piece in the shapes created repeated itself, identical to the whole but smaller.

Bottomless Wonders

Good example of which, that occurs in the real world, would be a cauliflower...break away one piece of the cauliflower and it is just like the  whole cauliflower, one piece of that...again the cauliflower shape but smaller.  Take a piece off of that and there again the cauliflower but even smaller.  He called this pheneomena the "Bottomless wonder" because it seemed to go to infinitity.  The pieces in this equation either get smmaler and smaller or larger and larger until we cannot see them but still...they exist.  They never stop repeating.


Now, this repeating pattern seems "rough" and chaotic for sure when we look out at a craggy mountain scape or the coast line of an ocean.  That makes it very challenging to meausre it in traditional ways but if we measure it according to its practical roughness: D...than it changes everything.

Intelligent Use of Energy

Just because it looks chaotic doesn't mean there isn't some intelligent design to it.  There is a purpose to the rough shaping. If we were to look at the branching in the bronchioles of the lung all the way to the air sacs with our eyes ( which are so limited in percieving whole picture) we would probably view a rough, complex and chaotic mess that would seem to be a waste of energy and requiring more energy for the body in the long run.  Just the opposit is true...By that intricate branching system we create more opportunity for alveoli ...more air sacs to take in oxygen...more opportunity for mucous production which is extremely necessary for cleaning and warming air...more opportunity for the cilia to pick up debris before the air hits the alveoli. Perfectly, intricately but actually very simply designed...same repeating pattern....it just looks messy to our eyes.

Is the  shortest distance between two points a straight line?

Now if you were to look at a mountain stream pouring from the mountain peak to the ocean...most of us would say that the shortest distance is always straight but as Rachel, in her blog Evolving Connection,points out ...that doesn't account for obstacles along the way.  Straight does not mean it is the path of least resistance.  Nature is effecient! She chooses the easiest path. It would actually take much more energy for that water to get over the natural obstacles , burrow through the rock by going straight than it would in accounting for nature's grooves. Those grooves, those shapes are there to create ease and allow for efficient use of energy not to randomly complicate. They quickly and efficiently take us around the obstacles. As Mendelbrot states the most effecient measuring takes in account "the Forces of God" even if we are simply determing how our stocks are doing on a chart.

Wow! So what does all that fractal math stuff mean to us in our lives?

 I couldn't say it any better than Rachel in the above quote does. The chaos has a purpose, a shape and an intricate but simple design to it.  Trust that!

All is well.

Daniel Schmidt (2012) Inner World, Outer World. Amazon Prime Movies

Blog: Evolving Connection (March 2015) Fractal God: How Math Met SPIRIT and Had a Baby Called Destiny. http://www.rachelthor.com/blogposts/2015/8/4/fractal-god-how-spirituality-met-math-and-had-a-baby-called-the-universe

Benoit Mandelbrot: Fractals and the Art of  Roughness (July 6, 2010) TED Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay8OMOsf6AQ&list=FLjmYO8qecRJgz_y0ZCO-xng&index=17

Faith in the Ultimate Splendor

 Life has a grand and infinitely creative design.  We just need to look at a flower...truly look at it, see how its petals are perfectly and  numerically placed; or at a butterfly to see how the exisquite  shapes on its wings are constantly repeating themself as pattern- to know there is not only an intelligent  plan to the universe but  a Supreme All-Knowing Architech who designed it all.
-Me

Two things are coming to my mind as I write this morning: the words of Andersen's fifth meditation and a documentary that serendipity has brought to me when I literally just asked the queston it had answered.

I often question: Why am I here writing this blog? Why am I seeking to understand and know what all these philosphers, poets, scientists, writers, teachers, yogis, and spiritual teachers are teaching? What am I looking for?

I am being guided.

I am being guided towards the same thing all of us are looking for,  "joyful faith in the One Self that unites us all".  I came across this in a 2015 entry in my devotional today and that is what it reminded me of. All these teachings point me to this faith...by pointing me to the Self within and without me.

There is a divine order to life  that even scientists are picking out.  I always hated math becasue I was afraid of it, I think. I avoided it even those who love math would try to convince  me of how dependable, predictable and logical it was in explaining phenomena. To me...it just never made sense.

  Now I see how the universal design is based on mathematical principles that can be explained by formulas like E= MC2 or Z (2 arrows pointing in opposite directions) z2+C.  Wow!

There is a connection between science and spirituality that cannot be denied. Spirit is energy and energy is everywhere,  creating everything.

Hmmm!

How can I not have faith then - complete confidence in this ultimate splendor?

All is well.

Must See:

Inner World; Outer World. 2012 Amazon Prime Videos

Note: My spell check is not working.  Excuse the numerous typos please.  I write too fast to catch them.

Ordinary Weed

Note: This entry is not about marijauna!!! lol

Ordinary Weed

I caught a glimpse of an ordinary  weed blowing in the breeze,
yellow flowers stretching up with tender browning leaves.
I stared at it intensely  as if it was the most delightful thing
and the poplar branches noticed and began to sweetly  sing.
They sung of its true essence while I simply held my breath
and I felt the life within it though it was surely close to death.
It vibrated through the grass where my feet were planted still
and travelled up into my limbs emptying me of thought or will.
It seemed to become a part of me when it settled in my heart
vibrating with the hum of life, reminding  me I too was a part
of some great moving energy, an invisible ripple or a wave.
Like the weed, not long for this world, I am here to serve and save
by allowing this changeless essence that makes us who we are
to flow through my impermenent form; expanding out and far.

©Dale-Lyn ( Pen) September, 2020 

Sat out with my tea this morning.  I cannot even say it was a conscious decsion to go outside.  I just found myself walking out to the back yard and plopping down on an old beat up lawn chair that is there. I said okay...I will just practice some mindfulness while I am here. 

Not so easily done.

I had thoughts carrying me away from the moment, you know, the usual. I focused on breath and the thoughts came and pulled me away again.  I brought myself back to breath.  All great and good for awhile but off I went again on another thought train about how I was having a challenging time focusing on breath lol. 

Then something in me said it was okay...just notice what is, that it is as it is and be okay with it.  As that thought came to me, I turned my head and saw this big weed growing by the fire pit.  It was an ordinary weed that I would have passed over a thousand times but this time something drew me to it.  It obviously had weathered a dry season and looked like it was not long for this world.  I decided to focus on it instead of breath.  And for a while there were no thoughts... just it and the breeze in my awareness...It was lovely...Then suddenly, out of this space, the words came, "I caught a glimpse of a weed blowing in the breeze; yellow flowers stretching up with tender browning leaves." I knew then it was poem time lol.

So I got up and came here.  Voila!!! Judge as you see fit...or...do yourself a favour and judge not...just allow it to be whatever it is without a need to say it is good or bad.  :)

All is well in my world.

Is Suffering Real or Not?

Bad luck doesn't overtake you; you create it. Success isn't the result of hard work; it's the result of right thinking.
Andersen, Uell S.. 


Does Suffering Exist?

Also since I began this study of Three Magic words I was finding the suggestion that we should deny the negative  difficult very difficult to digest.  I write and speak and dwell  a lot on the first noble truth of Buddhism: Suffering Exists. If the negative includes those painful human experiences that  cause or lead to suffering, how can we deny it?  More importantly: Why would we want to?

Part of the learning I write about is that this "suffering" can be the catalyst that takes us inward to a higher understanding...that can help us heal once and for all.  When we understand what causes suffering...our minds...more specifically our mental response to painful experience , we can set ourselves free once and for all.  Finding the true source of suffering...will lead us to healing from it once and for all. To deny it and not look at those "negative experiences" that come our way seems counterintuitive to this healing or transformation that seems so necessary for the human race.

Yet I know what Andersen is saying...we can bypass the need to learn to transform suffering  if we simply learn that suffering is so unnecessary ...if we don't create it in the first place.

My Path to Understanding and Freedom from Suffering

In my approach, which echoes the Buddhist approach, we create suffering in our minds.  We react to Life with resistance and struggle instead of simply allowing it to be.  Once we see what we are doing and start planting positive seeds...our internal lives will change and therefore will our external lives.   We will eventually learn to use the mind  with the approach of looking at suffering and seeing it for what it is, to transform it into a higher level of awareness.

• We have a perception that our worlds are negative and painful
• We recognize and accept the sense of suffering as very real
• We see that painful life circumstance is not the cause but our reaction to it is
• We see the mind as the source of suffering
• We learn to control the mind
• We plant and water  seeds of peace, happiness, joy, compassion and love
• Suffering gives way to Love and the Ultimate Reality

Do We Need to Learn From Suffering Or Can We Bypass that Step?

In Andersen's approach , we are asked to deny the first bullet.  Instead of "perceiving" the world as negative and painful...don't give those experiences that seem negative and painful any of your attention. Don't focus on the negative.  If you walk down the street and you see someone crying in pain on one side of the road and another person laughing with joy on the other side...ignore the one crying and focus on the one laughing.

This is very counterintuitive to the Buddhist teachings of "Suffering Exists' and the importance of service and compassion. Still...does it offer a more direct route to the Ultimate truth?

Life : Not The Cause of Suffering

What if we were to skip those first two bullets in my approach all together,  and go right to "We see that painful life circumstance is not the cause of suffering but our reaction to it is". This takes us right to Andersen's main point: The first cause is always mental. What we are doing in my approach is coming to the realization by going through the negative experience  that the life experience is not causing me suffering...my response to it is.  When I respond mentally and emotionally to life circumstance that is the problem. 

What if we came to that realization without actually having to go through a painful experience? Andersen also says that the life experience is not the cause of suffering...the life experience came from mind, as a result of it rather than our thoughts being simply a reaction to it.

Both approaches state clearly then...that the mind is the source of suffering, not life and what it gives us to deal with. If we learn to control the mind and start planting and watering healthy seeds we will have a healthy life.

Indirect Route to the Same Truth?

My approach, however, seems to be the long way around the pond in comparison to Andersen's. Andersen tells us we do not need to learn from suffering if suffering was never anything we had to deal with in the first place beacsue it was never anything "real". If we stopped believing in it and knew it wasn't real. His focus says we do not need to recognize suffering, accept it, or learn from it if we see that it is all just an illusion  in the mind.  We can go right to learning that our life is what we plant in our minds. We just need to plant healthy and real  seeds instead of negative ones (unreal, only illusion)  and we will never have the illusion of  painful experience to learn from.  We already learned what needed to be learned.

According to ACIM: that would be...

Nothing real can be threatened

nothing unreal exists

Herein lies the peace of God.

 

Hmmm! complicated, I know. I am not sure if this teaching his led me away from my present approach to understanding suffering but it certainly made me question.  I need to think more on this.

 

 

All is well!

 

 

ACIM ( 2007) A course in Miracles: Combined Text. Foundation For Inner Peace.

Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . BN Publishing. Kindle Edition.





Planting Seeds

Mind is the principle center of creation.
Jack Kornfield


I am not sure that everything we are given, be it beautiful or painful, is a result of the thoughts we place in USC.  I am not sure our thinking is directly responsible for the external experiences we encounter.  I do believe, however, that our lives are a result of what we do with them. I believe there is, at play, more forces than thought and belief creating our external worlds.  This thought and belief can determine the quality of life we live.

After this quote, Jack Kornfield goes on to say that maybe we cannot create the exact life we want through our thinking but, at least, we can plant the best possible seeds in our minds, therefore in our lives, that will make our expereiences  more positive and beautiful, despite the challenges we encounter.

These seeds are compassion, kindness, patience, genorosity, selflessness, peace and love.

Hmmm!

What is given to us in this life time doesn't matter as much as what we do with it. 
Jack Kornfield

Jack kornfield (2017) Episode Three: Karma and the Power of Intention.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBHckuY09iA

By Any Other Name?

What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name will smell as sweet.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet; Act II, Scene II

Before I begin explaining what resonates with me in Andersen's book, more specifically in terms of how to understand the lives we are living...I want to clear up something that may easily be misconstrued.

I do realize that even the mention of this book and its philosphies is going to make many of us who were raised under the doctrine of traditional western religion...very uneasy.  I,still under the influence of some strong coditioning, squirm a bit as I attempt to explain Andersen's teachings.  For that reason, I am even more determined to understand why the teachings are uneasy and instead of turning my back to them out of "fear" I want to look even deeper. 

God is the Greatest.

Yesterday , or the day previously, I wrote that the USC was subordinate to the conscious mind.  I, by no means, meant to say that God wasn't the greatest , most almighty force in the universe.  I believe God to be so.  Andersen, I think, believed that as well.  If the USC is the Mind of God...it is the most powerful thing there is and ever will be.

I can just hear the "Oh My, how can you say that??? We are talking abour "God"!! How can you reduce "Him"  to a part of the human mind?  How can you say God is inside us ? Blaspehemy!  Blaspehmy! Blaspehmy!!!"

Using Different Words is Not Blaspehmous

I asked you in the last entry not to get too hung up on concepts, labels or words.

Sometimes, I fear that we revere the name of something more so than we revere or take the time to understand what the name is pointing to.  All a name does is point to or label something, right?  When we do this...we reduce the something that  is named into a concept, an idea. We reduce the essence of it into words and symbols the conscious mind can make sense of of. What is pointed to, named or labelled is usually so much greater than the name.

"God" is a name,  a label...we have given to this Almighty Everything, right? In other philsophies God is "That which cannot be named".  Even in the Bible God refers to Himself as "I Am That I Am." So in Andersen's claim that God is the USC that is in all of us. ...we just used a different name, a diffrent pointer, a different concept  to describe something that is really "Too Great' to be put into words; that is much greater than any concept or term or name could ever explain.  We just used a different pointer to point to the same thing.

Subordinate? 

Then to say this Great Thing That Really Cannot Be Named is subordinate to our limited human minds...can certainly seem like a "blasphemous " and untrue statement to make.  We are, afterall, by no means  greater than God. (I use the term God and I still attach to that pointer, an image of a loving father.  Even though when I really examine this "idea" I see how limted it in its ability to explain what God is. Still I use it. )

Anway...if God is the Greatest  power, how can God be subordinate to our minds?  Using my conceptual way of understanding God...we can say that the USC/God is subordinate only in the way a loving father is subordinate to his child's needs and wishes.  The conscious mind, our human form is the child created by the Father.  We desire something and if we have faith in it...it is placed in the USC/ The Mind of God...and God, loving His child, provides.  "Ask and you shall receive". 

Does that make it any easier to digest?

I hope so. We really cannot get hung up on terms..and need to seek the essence behind the name...the essence of what the name points to.

All is well in my world.


Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . BN Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The Universal Subconscious Mind, According to Andersen

The Subconscious Mind is the most powerful creative instrument in the universe; it spans space and time, manifests form from substance, reaches out to all knowledge. And it exists in every man!

Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . 





What is the Universal Subconscious Mind?

As I contemplate Andersen's teachings I have to address what the Universal Subconscious Mind is...which I abbreviated in my hand written notes as the USC.  It is very challenging to write Universal Subconscious Mind down in long hand as often as it is required when the long hand is a very lazy hand. :)

I would like to explain what I perceive Andersen meant by it before I discuss what his description triggered in my own belief system.

According to Andersen:

The Universal Subconscious Mind is the One Mind we all share.  Is the source from which we have all sprung into physical form; the Source that creates absolutely everything in the world we perceive with our five senses and beleive to be real.  So the USC is the Creator of all things , including us in these bodies and minds.

How Does it Create?

It creates from thought.  Being no more than energy it creates using energy...the energy of our thoughts...more specifically... thoughts we plant in it with conviction.  Therefore it creates what we believe to be true, what we have "faith" in.

The Sub in Subconscious

Sub means below right? So the USC exists below or beneath the conscious mind. The conscious mind is that tip of the ice berg we can see, the Subconscious mind is that which we cannot.  The consconscious mind is simply a tool the ego uses, a filter for selecting and making sense of the information that comes into us through our five senses.  It is the part of us then that thinks and then takes thoughts it has faith in and places them in the subconscious mind. It actually tells the USC what to create. The Sub -conscious is Sub-ordinate to the conscious mind. Once a thought makes it to the USC...it is manifested in the external world.

The USC creates what we think with faith and conviction

For example, Say if you have a personal or collective thought in the conscious mind that human immune systems are ineffective in preventing us from getting sick from a particular disease.  The more you are "convinced" of this or have "faith" in this thought. ... the more likely it will come to be. Say everyone around you is thinking and sharing the same thought, some experts did experiements that proved it could be true , stories of people getting sick  are all over the news or on TV. ...the more likely you are to have conviction and faith in its validity. You become convinced this thought is true .  With that conviction the thought gets put into the Sunconscious Mind by the Conscious Mind...where all strong beleivable thoughts are kept...not just yours but everybodies...One Shared Mind remember.  Then when you are exposed to the pathogens of this disease...you become sick. Not because of the bug but because your beleif had to be manifested once it was placed in the USC as is the law.

Another example.  You truly believe that there is money all around  in unlimited supply.  You beleive this because you may have grown up rich. The thought became a conviction placed in the USC long ago. As an adult there seems to be money all around you...you are success with the stocks you have chosen, you win money, you find money, your business ventures prove to be very ptofitable. This is not because of circumstances or luck but because you just believe in the unlimited supply of money.

So we had a thought from conscious mind, and we had faith or conviction in the thought making it a bleief .  This belief then was put into the USC .  Once there , there is no choice but for it to manifest into something the five senses can perceive.

Why does the USC create?

The USC is the invisible, infinite, birthless, deathless, timeless, changeless essence that exists in every single creation that it makes.  It is the essence of everything. It is God. It expresses Itself through what It creates. It creates to express Itself.

Forever Evolving

The USC is a Creating Machine.  All things we see in life were created by thought.  We were created by a thought.  All evolution is based on creative change that came about from thought...more specifically desire...that was placed in the USC.  It is the USC's desire to express Itself in Life...to forever expand upward and outward so it can see and know Itself in finite form. That desire is for life...to expand upward and outward from one level of existence to another. The fish had a desire to walk on land as its marine habitat began to change...that was placed in USC...there emerged the creation of the most basic land animals...which continued to desire to live, to expand upward and outward until we had humans.  Now humanity is expanding upward and outward from form to formless. We are evolving into a higher level of consciousness...awareness of what the USC is.

The USC is forever expanding upward and outward in Life and Love.

Of course, this is all accorrding to Andersen. We are using pointers and concepts and terms.  Don't get hung up on them.


Hmmm!  I will get back to more of what I beleive at a later date.  This is my interpretation of his interpretation, K? Don't take my word for it. If you truely want to understand what Andersen meant by USC you need to read the book yourself.

All good.


Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . BN Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

Does Thought Really Create Our Negative Experiences?

It would be impossible to elicit admission from anyone in the world that he consciously desired these negative things [Illness, Poverty etc]. Yet, if he has them, just as surely as there is life, he has ordered them for himself.

Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . Location 126



Not Completely Confident With That Statement

I love the messages in the book.  I do.  But I had with me, from the beginning of my studying it , this little knot in me that wouldn't let one thought through into the Belief /Manifesting Machine of my mind: This thought that if we think positively enough we will only encounter positive circumstance. Our negative circumstances are all a result of our thinking, nothing else, and can be avoided  by adapting a new positive belief system. 

I am not going to argue if this is true or not true.  I am really not qualified to say either way.  I don't know if that is possible or not. 

My conditioned  mind says, "No way!"

My gut says, "Possibly... when humans reach that level of Self-realization and evolution... we will see and use the power within us to its full potential."

But I  cannot  solidify that as a truth within me at this point, no matter how I meditate, tap, affirm? And according to this teaching, if I cannot do that it will not become a belief in me from which I can operate or lets say "manifest".

Confident in "The Power of Postive Thinking" 

What I do know from my own life expereince and watching this mind of mine...is that thoughts lead to feelings...feelings lead to actions and actions lead to consequences.

And I do believe in "the power of postive thinking".  I believe it will make our lives so much better to think consistently positive rather than negative.  I agree 100 % with that part of the teaching.  I just may differ in the reasoing behind it.

Our thinking will determine the types of lives we live

Look at it this way, if you are constantly thinking negative thoughts,  seeing only gloom and doom you are likely going to feel feardul, depressed, angry, frustrated and you will then act accordingly.  You may withdraw from all the wonderful people and things  outside your comfort zone   because your mind is telling you they cannot be trusted, or they may hurt you etc.  You may not take chances , go on adventures, step out of your protective and very limiting shells. You may then  miss out on the sunlight and the beauty all around you. Your life will remain dark and limited.  You will only see in it that which supports your negative convictions about people, life and yourself.  In this case...your  thinking has definitely created a negative experience for you.

If you are consistently positive in your thinking...you may feel more "up" energy wise.  You are more likley to feel happy, excited, energetic, enthusiastic.  You are also more likely, because of these feelings, to take chances, get out there, see the good in other people and things.  ...really live your life.  This thinking which directly results in a postive attitude and approach to life is going to give you more opportunity, show you more wonderful things...so your life will be fulfilled.

So a negative frame of thinking will usually lead to negative life consequences.  A positive frame of mind will likely lead to more positive.  Simple to understand right?

Do our thoughts really determine our expereinces or simply our perceptions of them? 

I do think our thinking will determine the quality of our lives. Does that mean, however, that the person who thinks negatively never has blessings trot across their path or the person who thinks positively will never lose a loved one, a job, have an accident or illness? Do the circumstances actually change with a change in thought or just the perception and the response  to them? If we are surrounded with negative life circumstance at a point in our lives are we totally to blame   because we "thought wrong"? Isn't that just going to add more negativity to an already negative mind? Or is it possible that there is another part of this life force at play?

Part of the Grand Plan

Is it possible that all the circumstances that come our way...come for a reason, the soul purpose being for transformation, growth and evolution?  I truly believe we are all meant to move upward and outward right?  We agree on that? We are meant to grow, change, evolve.  Would we do that if our life circumstances were always "easy" and we didn't have to step outside our comfort zone?

Probably not, right?

Suffering Has a Purpose

Suffering is the  greatest transformational tool there is.  We need challenge, obstacles, a bit of "unruffling" in our exterior lives to make us go inward so that we can expand ourward and upward.

You see there is the pain that comes from life events...a given, natural sucession of waves that we all expereince.  Change, loss, deterioration are all necessary steps in evolution. This is not necessarily suffering. How our minds perceive and respond to these pain inducing circumstances is where the suffering comes in. 

What does the mind do with all that 'bumpiness"on your natural evolutionary path to expansion?   

It is true that the  person chossing neagtive thought over positive ( and it is a choice at some level)  may look upon a challenging event that life has possibly offered as a gift...as a curse; seeing themselves as victims to yet another cruel trick played on them by life....leading them to resist, struggle against, deny, avoid, numb, retract into their comfort zones etc. 

When the mind does this ...this is suffering.  It wasn't the circumstance but the mental approach to it that created this notion of "suffering". Until they recognize how their own thinking and not Life is causing suffering, they will not evolve.  Given enough suffering, however, they may find, as a last resort, the need to turn inward, thus they may use this suffering ...they did indeed create...as a door to higher consciousness.

The person who thinks positively, however, could still have a crapload of unpleasant and challenging circumstances dumped on their door step...but they might respond differently to them.  They may see it as a gift...or at least as something that is not necessarily negative or positive.  They may see the learning potential in it and they may do, what Eckhart Tolle, says we could do with such things without the need to believe that our thinking is or isn't creating it, "Allow it and accept it as if you have chosen it." 

Allow and Accept As If You Have Chosen It

Allow it: Don't resist it or push it away...don't label it as more evidence the world is offering to justify your negativity.  It simply is what it is.  And it is. You really cannot deny its reality as a circumstance in your life right now.  I don't care how positive you are...the circumstance is what it is. Really...no matter how much you try to deny that you were fired...that doesn't change the fact that you were fired.  Try showing up at your old desk for work the next day and see what happens.

Accept it: Allow it; then accept it as a natural part of the evolution of you, of humanity in general.  Life isn't punishing you...it is trying to assist you and all of mankind  in your growing upward and outward. Accepting means having faith taht Life has a plan you cannot yet understand.

As if you have chosen it: This is the key whether you agree to Andersen's book and other New age teaching...or not.  I am not sure if my thinking directly caused this challenging  circumstance in my life...this obstacle on my road to peace...but if I see it as if I chose it...what a difference that makes.  I feel empowered.  I will stop complaining and resiting it.  I will open my arms and embrace it .  I will appreciate it and learn from it. These are emotions that enrich life, create wellness and satisfaction with one's life.  I will grow and expand ...not despite the challenge...but because of it! I will see what the person still lost in their unconscious suffering has yet to see...that suffering can take me to higher consciousness.

It creates a totally different mindset and a totally different playing fiedl.  Does it not?

Choose to Look at Life Circumstances Differently

So whether Andersen's statement that our minds and our thinking are  100 % directly related to our circumstances is true or not...doesn't matter. Maybe it is absolutely true ...may not be. Until we evolve enough to truly know this, simply act as if you have chosen the circumstances that show up in your life.  They will then all become blessings and your life will then indeed be blessed. Your perception of "problems" and "a hard life" will change whether the circumstances do or not.

All is well in my world.

Side note: I do believe in miracles, divine intervention and serendipity. I asked that question yesterday: "Did I cause this with my thinking?"...when I was pondering over a challenging circumstance in my life.  I also prayed over it, intended a resolution during a very healing yoga practice I had. And yesterday the resolution I was looking for... for this other person...seemed to miracously appear.  She was more or less "guided" to discovering  a certain peace. Then...this morning as I sat at the kitchen table to listen to some profound words, as I am contemplating Andersen's book and  the question, "Did my thinking cause this?" ...this video was there when I flicked on  you tube:

Eckart Tolle (August 31, 2020) Simple Recipe for Overcoming Suffering/Eckhart's Life Practices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xANjrN3rVvE

How cool is that?

Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . BN Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Complete Confidence?

I have complete confidence that every circumstance that comes my way is part of a perfect plan to convert the image of my faith into physical reality.
Uell S. Andersen, Three Magic Words: Fourth Meditation

Feeling physically unwell and dealing with a challenging parenting issue that has left me a little deflated.  Now I know I said I was going to do my best to think only positive thoughts for thirty days...to "deny" all negative circumstance... but I have to admit it is challenging.  It is challenging not to build thought from circumstance, and instead have complete confidence on the Greater Something that can solve it all.

And I look at my circumstances with a great sense of responsibility and ask, "Did I create all this??? What the %^&* kind of crap do I have hidden in my subconscious to create this? More importantly, how the heck do I  get it out of there before I am swallowed up by some man-eating whale I manifest?"

Man...I need a break lol.

But I don't do I? It simply is what it is. It is all as it is for a reason. I just have to keep practicing and doing my best to fill my head with the positive truth of existence.

Anyway, it is all good...all part of the perfect plan.

First Cause is Mental

Thought plus Conviction equals Manifestation. There is manifested in your experience exactly that which you are convinced of!

...
Thus our thoughts are turned into things and we can neither start nor stop the process; we can only control our thinking.
Uell S. Andersen

Is the First Cause of All We See  Mental?

This is by far the greatest take away from Andersen's book and the thing I truly want to examine: The first cause is always mental. In other words, whatever you see around you...be it a person, a relationship, a thing, or a circumstance...it, whatever it is, began in your mind.  It is a thought thing.  Things come from thoughts; thoughts do not come from things.

Do you see truth in that statement? 

Or are you like the most of us still stuck in this idea that our thoughts come from things.  Do you see yourself  reactively thinking to the things your five senses deliver to you. 

For you,  is it more of a: 

I "think' he does not like me because I see his face...and I hear the way he talks to me...and I feel his distance.

or a:

He has that look on his face, is talking to me in that way and is keeping his distance because I think that he does not like me?

Does this sound like you:

I am thinking the world is an awful place because  right now I see violence and injustice everywhere I turn around, I hear about war and destruction on the radio and my lover just broke up with me.

or a:

I am noticing so much chaos and destructiveness, focusing on the bad news I am hearing about war and possibly my lover broke up with me because I tend to think negatively.

Another:


I think I am a successful writer because my book got published

or a:

My book got published because I think like a successful writer?

Oh...one more:

I know I am healthy because I feel great and my doctor tells me all my test results are normal

or a:

My doctor is telling me all my tests results are normal and I feel great because I know I am healthy?

Normal Belief is That Things Come Before Thoughts

Most of us will likely use the first type of statement.  We tend to believe that our thoughts come as a response to what we are experiencing in our worlds.  We believe we are simply having thoughts in response to what our five senses deliver to us from the external environment. 

"Winter is cold" is a thought form that arises from experiencing a Canadian winter in January.  Right? That is a logical conclusion. We experience something personally or collectively, we form a thought about it and the more we "experience" it, the more we are convinced of the thought's truth.  It gets stored away as a core belief. 

The Abnormal Turn Around

Yet Andersen, as well as many other spiritual and quantum teachers will tell us that...the first cause is always mental.  The experience of cold in winter didn't come from some natural ecological law about where we are in distance from the equator.  The experience of cold came from the thought: winter is cold, and not from experiencing a Canadian winter. Without the thought...it wouldn't be cold.

Chosen or lucky?

So if we are living the Life of Riley, prosperous and rich, with blessing upon blessing steeped upon us, healthy, fit, loving and beloved...is it because of some random twist of fate, singling us out , putting us in the right place and the right time? Are we just "chosen as special" or  "lucky?"

Or could we  be experiencing life this way, because of the beliefs we have stored in our subconscious.  Beliefs we know with conviction to be true. Could we have thoughts like, "It is a great life...so much opportunity to go around; I see blessing everywhere; There is no limitation or lack in my life; There is so much abundance to go around; I am healthy because we are all meant to be healthy; I love my body and am so grateful for it...I take good care of it; there is so much love in the world; I have so much in me and it feels so good to love, to give...and it keeps coming back to me the more I give; my neighbour isn't evil or bad even though he might have done some terrible things...he just doesn't see clearly...well I see clearly.  I see the good in him...the good in everybody including ,myself.  My goodness, it is good to be alive!!"

Thinking Becomes Reality...A Bit of Hope.

Is it possibly that what we think becomes our reality?  Does the possibility of this not give you at least a bit of hope. It gives me hope and that is reason enough to pursue this possibility.

Not so Lucky?

My reality right now, seems to get me thinking  Life is tough.  I lost my respectable income for reasons beyond my control. I am now living below the poverty line and I  have adult children dependent on me financially because of COVID and other things ( I mean D. 's contribution makes life easier but as an independent woman I am determined to remain so financially...I will not make my lack of substantial income his problem). The sources of income I was dependent on to help supplement us: the apartment downstairs and my yoga classes are no longer feasible because of COVID and a change in plans. I still have yet to finish paying for it.  I feel unwell but I can't go anywhere with that but inward.  I seem to have one crisis after another ping ponging off of me like I am some type of table. I have lost any professional designation I once had and do not have a clue how I am physically going to be able to earn an income. I have loved ones who are not well and apparently, no matter what I do to support, it is wrong or not enough. My writing ...when I find the time and ability to focus enough to get something finished and out there...is meeting rejection after rejection.  I still have this massive knot of trauma in my center, in the way of everything...and though I was hoping the changes my life has taken would help me to find a way to release it so I could have more to give...I have not had the time to sit and focus on it or me. So...I get caught up in believing that my thinking is a result of these circumstances.  My writing it all down here was my way, (my ego's way), of convincing you and myself  that I have a right to think this way.

Right has nothing to do with this!!!

If I have it backwards and my thinking isn't the way it is because of the circumstances I am encountering but instead...the circumstances are the way they are because of my thinking...man I want to change my thinking.  Wouldn't you?

The thing is I am a fairly optimistic person...so I think.  I take things in stride. I reconstruct my negative thoughts into positive ones almost automatically.  I don't get too upset or go diving down into the pit of negatively when I have to deal with a crisis or undesirable event. I keep my cool.  People I live with  would not call me a negative thinker...so why is my life teh way it is?

Prompters

Andersen talks about the buried beliefs many of us have stored inside us.  Beliefs we may only be partially aware of.  These beliefs are so ingrained in the fibers of our subconscious being that we tend to  become stronger and more insidious with every subsequent trauma. For many of us, it is these core beliefs , that are creating the circumstances we are experiencing.

My mother was right...I am not worthy.
I deserve to be punished ,not blessed.
Even if there was enough to go around, it is not right that I should take it.
I should just be glad that I have what I have, it is more than I deserve.
People can be bad and evil and will do whatever they can to hurt me.
I will never be enough or do enough.
People will always be mad at me
There is something really, really wrong with me.  I am not like other people.
I will not be accepted , let alone loved.
My needs are not important!
I am not important!

These are just some of the very toxic thoughts that many of us cling to without knowing that we are.  They hide crouching within waiting for evidence from the outside world to prove them true so they can pounce up into our reality as truth.  Though they originated possibly from things done to us...now they create the things we experience in our lives. They create our reality!

I am not saying this is absolutely true but part of it strongly believes it to be.  I want to get rid of this thinking so I can have the life...this voice beyond my demented ego tells me  we all deserve. I want to deal with the monsters in my closet.  Even if  a change in believing  doesn't manifest the perfect Life for us ...man it has got to bring a little ease, don't you think?

Something to think about all is well?


Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . BN Publishing. Kindle Edition.