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Showing posts from April, 2008

The Way Out of Fear

I wrote a couple of week ago about realizing in a moment of extreme fear that I didn’t have to suffer and about how I sought relief in Truth: Only God is Real . The thing is, I have become less and less willing to tolerate much smaller fears. I don’t have to suffer at all, I realize at moments. But then ego pushes back with a frightened, “Yes, you do. Without fear you would be dead. Fear is life.” I can remember a time in my life when I was very young when fear seemed unnatural and alien whenever I experienced it. I somehow knew it wasn’t “right” or “natural”. But at some point when I was a pre-teen fear started to creep into my everyday life until eventually I just “adjusted” to it. Fear was just a part of life, I concluded, and it just had to be accepted. Anything from minor insecurities, vulnerabilities, uncertainties to extreme phobia – fear was always present in some form. Fear was life. Looking at this with the Holy Spirit the other day I was able to lift up the fear and peer und

Why Did I Make This Thing Happen?

Sometimes students contact me to ask why they made something terrible happen in their life. They interpret A Course in Miracles to say that they chose this “bad” thing to happen. “Why did I make my child sick with this terrible disease?” “Why did I “create” this hurricane that destroyed my house?” “My husband was only thirty and I didn’t want my husband to die but the Course says I make everything happen in my life.” What the Course teaches is that the world is chaos. It is unfair and cruel and it has no rhyme or reason. It will never make sense. It is a place of separation from God. It is hell. Nasty things happen in this world. Children are born sick. Natural disasters occur. People die. There is a lot that is out of your control. You do not “invite” everything that happens to you - you are living in a perception of separation from God and as long as you live in this perception it will manifest all around you. What the Course teaches is that these situations do not have a meaning

God Is In His Heaven

For years I’d here Christians say “God is in His Heaven” as comforting words and I’d think, “Big whoopdie-doo. What’s that to me? Here I am in the world suffering, what do I care that God is in Heaven?” Even after being a student of A Course in Miracles for years I’d still think this because I was looking at it from the traditional Christian perspective that there was a relationship between the world and God. But after I finally accepted what A Course in Miracles says – that I am One with God and that there is no connection between the world and God – I understood the relief this idea could bring: God is in Heaven and nothing can change that; and I am in God. A couple of weeks ago we had to put down our beloved dog, Murphy, on his 16th birthday. My partner and I like to be there when the vet euthanizes our pets and we had been through the experience 3 years before. But I had totally forgotten how I had had trouble with the process of watching the chemicals go through the IV to “kill m

Observing vs. Judging

Sometimes a student will say something like this: “I work with this guy Joe and I don’t want to be judgmental, but Joe comes to work late every day and our supervisor does nothing about it.” It is not a judgment to say that Joe comes to work late every day and your supervisor does nothing about it if in fact Joe comes to work late every day and your supervisor does nothing about it. You are simply observing a fact. It can also be a fact that Jane lies, that Tony is selfish, that Marie gossips, that Bob has never been on time for anything in his life, that 90% of the time Alice is going to cancel on you, etc. Observing facts is not judging. Judging is when you decide these behaviors are “bad” and hold a grievance against those who have these behaviors rather than simply acknowledging these behaviors and making a determination of how much you want to be around them. Ego is inherently insecure and frightened and so it is selfish and inconsistent and chaotic. Once you accept this fact you