The 4 Habits for Inner Peace are Validated

          Sometimes I’m asked by clients, considering what I now see and know since the shift in consciousness, looking back to before the shift, are there practices that I had then that prepared me or that I would now encourage in others given what I know now? Even before the shift, the practice that I had was not a recognized practice for me, but behavior that arose spontaneously. It was so natural I did not think of it as having a practice. The 4 Habits for Inner Peace that became a book and suggested practice for readers and clients came about when clients asked what I did to stay at peace. I had to think about it because they were natural habits for me, not something I set out to do. I now understand that they were the effect of truth rising to conscious awareness in this mind. (They were also a consolidation of suggested practices from A Course in Miracles.)

In fact, I’m often surprised looking back how much truth was here and how this mind’s practice regarding it were so right on. This is further proof that those habits arose organically as truth rose toward conscious awareness and were not contrived by ego. Of course, when ego was here, there was often doubt about the reality of my experiences of truth and any practice regarding it. Ego’s doubt was, of course, why there was a need for practice of some kind. The 4 habits were to commune daily with truth, to turn to truth throughout the day, to develop a relationship with one’s inner teacher (Teacher of Truth, as it was called), and to use uncomfortable appearances to remember truth by extending love to them to remember I was love (truth). (The latter I would now modify to “extend love to remember love is truth” as the “I” has been discovered to be totally false.)

Of course, there is no longer any practice because truth is here, there’s no need to call it to mind or remember it. After this mind has been preoccupied with something appearing, it returns to truth as soon as it no longer has to think about appearances. But in the situation of an ego in the way, the 4HIP were the best practice there could be to circumvent ego.

Looking back, what I see now is not so much the details of how Liz and her story evolved, but that truth was here and caused the changes that showed up in Liz and her behavior and her life, all the way back to when she was a child. In the introduction to the memoir about Liz’s evolution and the shift in consciousness, this was described as “Christ” being the consistent thread that ran through Liz’s life, the only thing that could be considered “real” about it. Forget how it looked, truth was always moving up toward conscious awareness here, resulting in information and practices that moved this mind away from ego, from illusion, and toward truth—toward peace. Liz did nothing; no “I” did anything. The person and ego were affected by truth rising to conscious awareness, so they seemed to be on a “spiritual journey”, and the 4 habits were an expression of this.

Last week’s article was an attempt to convey something that is difficult to get across. Perhaps relating this to the 4HIP practice can help. The practice of 4HIP is to turn one’s mind away from the world and ego toward truth. The parallel after the shift in consciousness, which validates 4HIP, is what last week’s article attempted to convey when it mentions a new orientation of the mind. It is this: A seeing that goes in a different direction from anything to do with the world and ego. This seeing not only looks on something entirely different, the seeing itself is different. Really, the seeing and the seen are the same, so, it is not seeing so much as being.

 >>>> 

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

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