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Why "Consciousness"

Last week I wrote about truth, or pure consciousness , rising to conscious awareness. I mentioned how the Christian labels (God, Christ, Holy Spirit) used in A Course in Miracles , though never used here (this conscious awareness) in the traditional Christian way ( Christ never meant Jesus , for example) have fallen away as special words are found unnecessary for something so delightfully ordinary and simply present. There has been a long journey here with the word “consciousness”, accepted, rejected, and accepted again, this time because it has been found to be distinctly apt. The word consciousness in the context of spiritual experience and aspiration seemed to have developed in Eastern religious philosophy rather than in the West. While Liz here recognized the truth of nonduality teachings, she was never moved to pursue them. There was an attempt here sometimes to translate what was said about consciousness in those teachings into the Christian symbols of God, Christ, and Holy ...
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Pure Consciousness Emerging

             When the shift in consciousness (The Break) happened here in 2018, anything that could be called “I” or “me” (ego) fell away. The Holy Spirit as constant companion was gone as well, because there was no longer anything here to connect with the Holy Spirit. However, it was not totally lost. What once was called the Holy Spirit no longer felt beside but surrounding . It had become the context—the space, the field, the “world”—in which everything was occurring. This was one of many experiences at the time that was baffling, largely because it did not fit expectations. But experiences that I could not understand for a few years are now coming together. (The experience of that time can be found in a memoir ). The presence of ego in consciousness seems to block part of consciousness from itself, what we experience as conscious awareness —what is immediately in our awareness. This blocking seems to make an unconscious. So, truth , which is pur...
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Accepting What Is

             Last week, I wrote that acceptance is a universally taught aspect of inner peace across psychology, religions, and spiritualities. You will often hear it as, “Accept what is .” But which “what is”? What is appearing before you and unfolding in your life? Or the what is that is truth , which is the space in which what appears appears and what unfolds unfolds? It depends, of course, on the context of what is being discussed and it can be useful to clarify with the speaker. Because while accepting truth leads to acceptance of what appears and unfolds, it does not work the other way around. No matter how much you accept what appears and unfolds, it will not lead you to an awareness of truth. It is still helpful, however. When you are aware of truth and you see that what is appearing is nothing more than an appearance—an illusion —it naturally follows that you accept it. There is no motivation to work to change an illusion. To say, “Well, ...
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The Illusions to Deal With

            When students read in A Course in Miracles that the entire experience of the person and its world is an illusion, it leads to two common questions: “How can I possibly see my reality as an illusion?” and “Am I to deal with the whole experience as an illusion or only deal with the illusions within the experience?” That the personal experience is an illusion is an awareness that may come to you through mystical experiences or a slow dawning, but it is not something that you can make occur, so there is no point in trying. Practically speaking, you can deal only with the illusions that occur within the experience.   And this is what a teaching like the Course is for. It is a “better way” to be in the personal experience. The person and its experiences have no meaning. Without ego, the person is just a human animal living out its life. The person would have thoughts and feelings and take actions and they would all just pass by if ego was n...
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Ask: If peace and good are real, why this pain?

              When I write or talk about truth and how it is peace and “the good” as I did the past two weeks, readers and clients ask why they aren’t experiencing it, why they are having this experience of inevitable pain, lack, and loss? I have explained this often through the ontology that came to me long ago and I will use it here again and elaborate. The absolute (truth), being all, must contain the idea of its own opposite. But as the absolute is all, it cannot have an opposite. So, the opposite-of-the-absolute can only be an idea that is undone by the allness of the absolute as soon as it arises. However, within that idea there is time (the opposite of timelessness) and in time it seems as though the idea of the opposite-of-a-truth arose long ago and will be undone in some indefinite future. This is what is unfolding in consciousness. Pure consciousness before anything arises in it is the truth and ego (“I”, self, identity) and its world...
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The Good

            Last week, I wrote that you should trust the still, the quiet, and the gentle over dramatic mystical experiences of love and joy. Dramatic mystical experiences do represent truth rising to conscious awareness, but they do not mean anything in themselves. I shared how for ego, though, the drama was what it looked for. In fact, Liz here missed how significant it was when The Enlightened Mind showed up to stay because it didn’t come with any drama at all. It was just quietly and matter-of-factly here. Oh, she knew it was important, but not how important. It was only when reading back in her journal while writing her memoir that she saw that it had been life changing. When you hear or read teachers who have had nonduality experiences (the onlyness of truth) say of truth “it’s so simple” and “it’s right here and always has been”—yes! We miss it because we’re looking for something dramatically different. But the different is actually ego. It is ...
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Peace

             When Liz here stumbled onto truth, it was while seeking peace. She was an anxious person, and it was not love or happiness she felt she was missing, but inner peace. Before I continue, let me define peace . Peace is an absence of conflict. Without conflict, what is present is wholeness and never-ending stillness . Notice peace is not defined as something new arising, but by the absence of something. Conflict therefore blocks the awareness of the presence of peace. Another way to say this is ego, which is the experience of conflict, blocks the peace inherently here. What Liz thought were her first mystical experiences, mind-blowing love and oneness and joy, occurred when she was twenty years old and had just started A Course in Miracles . Eventually, these and their aftermath, a kind of honeymoon, passed. Ego was upset about this, it threw a temper tantrum, it wanted those experiences back. But as Liz moved past this over the years, i...
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