Jesus has been known to suggest that one’s experience of our collective dream of separation is marked by an upside down, inside out view of things. We experience Love… as bound up with our pain, or perhaps we are afraid of what Love would offer us. We fear the things that offer us peace and eternal happiness, because of what we think they will cost us, and we are drawn into attachments with those things […]
This post is part of a series on the subject of Awakening sponsored/inspired by Barbara Franken—a January Challenge that has claimed the first week of February as it’s own as well… * * * * * One of my favorite descriptions of awakening comes from the book Dialogues on Awakening by Tom Carpenter. These are Tom’s recounting of conversations he has had with his friend and brother, Jesus, that grew out of his daily practice […]
A pitfall in our thinking is the notion that there is a fixed place at which we are destined to arrive- (I can’t avoid noting the obvious link between the terms destiny and destination)- a condition to realize that will be immune to change, an ideal state to occupy or embody. Alas, there is not. At the same time, I do think the Truth is constant. Identity, properly construed, is constant. I think that we […]
Faced with a world in which something has gone wrong, it is virtually impossible to encounter the madness and not attempt to envision a solution. I’m not saying solutions shouldn’t be envisioned, but I think that in A Course of Love Jesus is saying, “Hey, look, if you were a fish on dry land, and your gills were burning, and you were undergoing a total metabolic catastrophe, and you were given the choice between letting […]
Sometime around the third grade I must have read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Shortly thereafter I was at a friend’s house, and our game of Monopoly had basically ground down to that stage of painstaking, asymptotic approach to closure that takes three-quarters of the game play and offers one-tenth of the fun, when we began talking about whether or not our mental powers might be strong enough to forge […]
This past week I was shaken by an acute pain in my heart-soul-being. Like a fever in the body, it began as a dull ache, but ramped up into a full blown grippe. It was an inner aching that shook me to the core. If you have felt this, you will know the attending symptoms- the way a ghostly pallor slides over the world like a sticky film, the way we withdraw ourselves into a […]
There is a scripture passage in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 17:20) wherein Jesus tells the people (that would be us) that moving mountains, by simply telling them to move, is entirely possible if we but had the faith of the mustard seed. And while A Course in Miracles is quite remote from being a how-to text on exercising various powers, such as mentally sculpting the Earth’s contours or levitating above really large bodies of […]
If you are on a spiritual path- a path to awakening, a path to acceptance of the Christ within you and within everyone else and within all that is, eventually you will have a high noon showdown with the following paradox. To be awake is to know that the ever-changing expressions of Love that collectively are Creation do not simply ‘happen to’ us. They are not foisted upon us by a wrathful Creator. Nor are […]
I think we should begin with a bit of Rumi. This is like stretching out briefly before we tear ass across a back yard still slick with a morning dew. It’s a best practice, and it just might prevent us from ripping ligaments or pulling hamstrings in the recklessness that follows. It’s a safe beginning. Sort of. “We tremble, thinking we’re about to dissolve into non-existence, but non-existence fears even more that it might be […]
Who is studying the Course? And to what end? Who hears the words? Who is stirred to hope for a new life? Who recognizes Love and surrenders, turning round then to confront their darkness? Who finds it too complicated or difficult? Who knows? My little, egoic self is a Seeker. The starting point for this little one is the deeply held belief that my unique and particular historically-derived collection of personal experiences is all that […]
Embracing Forever 