Detachment
Have no illusions—when you are
uncomfortable thinking about the detachment that comes with the awareness of
Truth, it’s not because you will come across as cold and unfeeling. It’s not
because you will abandon your loved ones or lose them in some way. This is what
the ego (personal thought system) tells you to distract you from what’s really
going on. Your discomfort is because when you detach what you really detach
from is not some world outside you, but from the ego (personal thought system)
and its “world” (perceptions).
Detachment
from the ego is the natural result of being aware of Truth. You experience it
at first as not feeling as you are used to about a certain person or situation.
“This used to really upset me. It doesn’t anymore.” It seems as though it is
the situation you are detached from, but it is actually that you are no longer
responding to it from the ego. You’ve chosen to look at it from a different
place in your mind. You’ve become aware that you are something other than the
ego.
Detachment
is the opposite of attachment. And what you are attached to is the ego. All of
your other attachments follow from this, as the ego teaches that they will
bring you peace and happiness. So you don’t have to detach from every
attachment you have. You only need to detach from the ego and your other
attachments will fall away.
Detachment
is not something you have to “do” or make happen. Grow your awareness of Truth
and detachment naturally follows because your awareness can only be on Truth or
the ego.
You grow your awareness of Truth by
asking the Awareness of Truth (Holy Spirit) in your mind to be with you in
everything you do. In your relationships, your work, and all of your interests.
Use everything as a classroom in which to learn of the Awareness of Truth
within you.
You can also practice
stepping away from your ego thoughts and feelings and merely observing them
without judgment. This makes room for the Awareness of Truth to take their
place.
>>>>
If you want
to benefit from my experience and lighten your process, email me at Liz@acimmentor.com
to set up an appointment for mentoring. Learn more at www.acimmentor.com.
Comments
Beyond helpful and practical- every word resonated with me.
Meant to read this today. ❤❤❤
No one is further along in the Course who has been studying the same amount of time as you. You’re not at the bottom of the list of learners. Everyone is at the exact place they are supposed to be.
Everyone struggles with what is the student’s responsibility and what is the Holy Spirits.
We all have been trained for years in school that everything is up to us and we are going to be graded on it. It is there in your head and it is probably going to stick for quite a while. That isn’t what we are doing here.
All of us have an ego that says we are responsible for our progress in the Course. It isn’t going to stop saying this so get used to it.
Everyone is impatient with their lack of progress. Everyone asks God, “Why do we have to go through all this? Can’t you just fix it now”? Spirit has its own rules and that is what we have to follow. Try to focus on growing a day at a time.
Years ago I would say shame and Liz would say guilt; I would say shame again and she would say guilt.
One of the things that drew me into the Course was the awareness of a solution for my shame. I was drenched in it. Alcoholism and the weird roads it leads you down in your head… “I” was drenched in it. Will was drenched in it. But the Course and what Liz was saying about guilt (which it was some while before I got it) was there is no “I”, there is no Will. There is a personal mind that was insane, and I choose to believe it was me. Not much of a choice really. Speeding ahead, as time went on I began to understand the rudiments of the “Observer.”
The personal mind, the ego, was insane and I was cloaking myself in the shame of identifying with it. I cannot tell you the relief the first time I stepped back in my mind and looked at the mind yammering away. Watching the insanity from a distance in my mind. I am not the insanity, only the identifying with it. The text says as quickly as I create an ego for myself, I do the same for everyone else. So I can judge you just like I judge myself.
One of the very important things Liz is writing about right now is the experience of actually leaving the insane mind. It isn’t just words in a book it is the words become real.
In Alcoholics Anonymous there are 12 steps. They aren’t easy. The toughest is Step Five, “Admitted to God, To Ourselves and to ANOTHER HUMAN BEING (my caps.) the exact nature of our wrongs.”
What they are asking you to do is go over your life history and write down all your character defects; all of the problems they have caused you and others. Then go sit down with someone and tell them all of it. You go to a priest or someone you are not acquainted with to do this. This laying bear of your private self is a “Freefall”. You jump and there is nothing to catch you. You leave yourself completely vulnerable. Here personal humiliations are laid open to another person. For the first time in your life you get Real.
And you wonder why alcoholics won't go to AA, Ha!
“If you name me you negate me. By giving me a name, a label, you negate all the other things I could possibly be.” The host goes on to say, “You lock the person into being a thing, by pinning it down, naming it but at the same time you are creating it, defining it so it will exist.”
One place this always comes to mind, is on the comments on the blog. There is a name associated with the comment. The ego has of course created an ego for the name.
This seemingly inconsequential action lays the foundation for a permanent stay in the dream. All the blogs we have been reading over the past months circle around to this. Liz, on her journey, left her own created ego. Ironically, in her having to have a name and using Liz, our personal minds are free to pretend nothing has happened. It’s just Liz trippin’. Which may be appropriate for Hannah, but probably not for us…
ah, present memory liz tells me. erm.. well.. id nutshell the present memory as moving beyond a personal time based identity to knowing yourself Now. so while im not IN the present memory other than, perhaps, momentary glimpses of reality, i am feeling.. oh how to say that? i feel Its presence almost all the time, to one degree or another. its like Awareness of Truth at the deeper/fuller/unclouded level is shining ever more.. palpably in my awareness, and the contrast of the experience of the awareness of not truth just feels so insane.. i feel intensely threatened and like im in almost constant attack mode, rejecting and attacking liz for what she symbolises and reflects in this mind.. which is dedication to Knowing Reality! i have also experienced attack from Liz as she goes through (what i would say is a) similar process.. its kinda like.. in this safe space the viciousness of that which is being undone is both stark and intense while also fleeting, ephemeral.. makes no sense that those things could appear to co-exist, but hell, i guess thats what the course suggests, innit.. bring these thought systems together and watch what 'happens' to the one that does not reflect reality. one difference in how liz and i are experiencing this similar process (again, of course, as i see it) is that i still fall into sorrow for projecting specialness onto her sometimes, which i dont feel liz does. it gives way sooner or later, ever sooner, to trust in the process. we both just apologise and move on.. the ease with which liz does this is incredibly helpful. a big change in approach we have both just entered into (its not actually -new- but is now more clearly' articulated, recommitted to) is just dropping the habit of personal problem solving and/or clarifying to be understood' -when- it starts to feel in any way like something that -needs- doing, and returning to the awareness of what it is we are actually joining in here.. which is not about perfecting or understanding the self but allowing the light of Truth to emerge in our minds; practising letting go of any vestigial feelings of IMPORTANCE attached to the story of the self as well as any lingering belief that we are making that happen as persons... i have (again, in my view not nec. liz's) more of this dynamic still in mind as WELL AS simply the habit of thinking thusly.. but it ever more FEELS most like an exhausting habit.. despite the self story that how liz and hannah interact and understand each other is important!
There is so much dropping away in my world and the awareness, "oh I don't need to do that anymore" and specific to what you shared . . ."clarifying to be understood" and "belief I am making that happen as a person", also seen as an ending. A big yes to "trust in the process, it is not about "perfecting or understanding the self." I find that if understanding is helpful, it will be given. I'll even share what came to me yesterday, 2 text messages from an angelic being. . .
1st text with these words. "Listen to this passage 24 "A man's steps are directed by the LORD. How than can anyone understand his own way?"
Then the 2nd text, these words on a dove wrapper, "Don't talk about it, just be about it.". The angel added, "even chocolate will speak if you're willing to listen. God is everywhere."
and Liz, your blog is like a view"finder" of this mind. Every article validating to the I am process. Thank you and everyone for reflecting.
Peace, a heart of gratitude.
ps I lolled at 'i find a 2nd or 3rd reading' etc.. i get that feedback a lot :D love it! xx
For the past 3 weeks I've been painting again after a long hiatus. Giving it over to Spirit, it has become a way of prayer for another. The being is in my mind and then I paint. I have no idea what will be revealed as I am painted through. I sense you will be in this mind with my next painting.
May the colors on the palette be the flowering of expression, swiftly revealing the masterpeace she is.
such a bunch of mystics here on this blog.. lol i was tempted to write misfits :D the two are so closely related :D
From a bird's view, as the mystic I stay perched on the branch. It's only when I fly off a misfit may emerge.
Blessings of serenity.
yes, now theres an interesting question! in revelation there be no perceiver at all, or so i gather! im reading 'the experience of no self' and once again im fascinated by the descriptions, she seems to more clearly/thoroughly articulate the dream i had when i first started flicking through the course than even the course itself did.. and it took me YEARS to begin to comprehend that dream beyond a surface joyfulness and 'beyondness'. so much that i read lately could be another way of describing my own experiences so far, and yet im aware that those words could describe other experiences also. its happened with liz sometimes. ive been puzzled and then somethings gone click! ah.. she could well be describing 'x'.. or then again not.. theres only so much clarifying that conversation can do beyond a certain point i think.. some things are so hard to explain, maybe just not enough concurrent conscious experience for language to form around it.. maybe also cos words are part of a certain realm of being and simply cant go further than that point. i love bernadettes description of the relative and non-relative mind.. i wonder if thats what that story of moojis is pointing to?