Ask: Could you share the bright side of your experience as Spirit?

           "…Perhaps you could share some bright sides of being spirit…I am acim student and looking forward for ‘joy and peace’ that abide in me. Reading some of your texts I hear a lot of struggling happening. I understand this is your true experience. Are you joy, love, peace?” – MS

 

Yes, now I do experience a happy lightheartedness after a long dark period where no Light was to be found, only sensed as a Context around me that I could not access.

If you read my memoir (A Memoir of Christ: A Student of A Course in Miracles Awakens, here.), the most important part to me was the very last entry in the Afterword, where I described an experience that I have come to call the Cosmic Chuckle. This was a crack of Light in the darkness. I had never experienced anything like it before. It came from a depth I had never accessed. I was thinking about the darkness I’d come through and the thought and feeling that came to me, with a deep chuckle and lifting of weight and darkness and seriousness, was, “Oh, you’re so silly.” I had never experienced such Pure Innocence before! Since then, a joker, like in a deck of cards, and specifically as a harlequin, has come to symbolize Christ for me.

This was the advent of the real world arriving in my conscious awareness. I’d glimpsed the real world before but had not experienced it like this. It is Christ’s Vision, which sees a different world, one which reflects God’s Glory, where Spirit’s Seeing either looks on the material world in a new way or looks past it toward the real world.

That first experience of the Cosmic Chuckle was last May. My mind didn’t totally lighten right away, but ever since, I have experienced a steady progression of Spirit emerging as ego continues to wind down. This has brought increasing episodes of happy lightheartedness, love and peace, and Visions of the real world. When I am not experiencing these episodes, I know that they are right around the corner.

Along with these is a continuing sense of becoming conscious, or awake, as though coming out of a long deep denial, or sleep. This brings a sense of security, as denial is a symptom of fear. It also brings a sense of Power, because when I deny, I give my power to what is denied.

Acclimating to my Power (by which I mean strength rather than force) began with the shift in consciousness, coming to me in steps rather than all at once. It seems to be the aspect of this that is taking the longest to adjust to. In my memoir I shared how weak I felt for a long time after the shift. Now I realize I was simply fully experiencing the weakness that is ego-consciousness. I had been unconscious to it, like I was to much of the dark stuff I saw and experienced.

Awakening, for this mind anyway, has seemed to be a process of walking through a membrane that separated ego and spirit, and in doing so, I have seen into ego-consciousness with x-ray vision and experienced it with stark conscious awareness. This has been intensely uncomfortable at times. Yet, I have to say it is empowering to see and face it all. I think I would rather it was this way than not. But, then again, this mind was always geared toward wanting to see thoroughly what was in it, so maybe this is no surprise.

When the shift occurred and my personal life was in upheaval, I heard in my mind, “Soft unfolding for all.” I can see in hindsight how I have been brought along in an exquisitely gentle, designed process. I want to emphasize, again, that the difficulties I faced were not due to the process, but to the limitations of this mind, and perhaps even to the orientation of it toward clarity. I see that I have been brought along in steps because the contrast between where I was and where I am now is stark. And I am still in consciousness. How much more is the contrast between ego and God (Knowledge)!

I think it must always be a soft unfolding for all. I have shared my experiences not to scare others, but to offer support and validation if they go through something similar. If you shift in consciousness and it is rough for you too, you will come out the other side, happier and stronger than you can imagine. 

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If you have a question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and I will answer it in this newsletter/blog.