NAVIGATION 4

p. 206-212

One of the many reasons for attraction to works like this  is not only do they offer wonderful and inspiring ideas, but they also offer spiritual experience—and this is what we all hunger for—it is what much of what traditional religion did not give us.

Carl Jung went so far as to say, "One of the main functions of organized religion is to protect people against a direct experience of God.”

I think we have all heard enough of people talking about someone else’s experience of God. 

******

The ego is a drama queen. It dies and dies and dies, and then comes back again, but each time it dies it decides that this is the “big one”—so we can experience trauma whenever surrender happens. The trauma lowers in intensity as we become less identified with the personality self. It does not go away, it simply becomes less relevant as you continue to realize who you think you are/and who everybody else thinks you are is not terribly important.

“You are a vessel for spirit. You are precluded from that experience by the personality ego self, who decides what you should be for you. So that is the death, or the transition, that you are going to undertake. It’s going to be about the release of the false self to allow your own light as the Christ consciousness to manifest through you fully. This is joyful. This is a course of wonder for all of you. And it is a process of acclimation and decision, as we have thus far described to you. But death of the personality self at the level that we are discussing must be understood simply as a transitioning and a re-appropriation of who you think you are.”

Oftentimes in scripture and in other sacred texts people’s names are changed after a powerful event. This is a metaphor for an inner transformation, but it is also an indication that the person can no longer be attached to the old identity—Jacob became Israel; Saul became Paul; Cephas became Peter.

In a way, we are being asked to share the same name—the Christ Self, and now there is little or no distinction between us. Imagine what that would be like!

“Everybody is the Christ manifesting in different ways.”

“To be the Christ means to be in the frequency of the Christ consciousness and to manifest the Self at that level. That is very, very different than deciding that you are the one doing this and that you can lay claim to that as a title at the exclusion of anybody else. When you do that, you are making yourself special and you are in your ego.”

As the book suggests over and over, this is not an ego trip, no one is more “special” than another. 

Mother Theresa said it beautifully,  “I can do what you can’t do, and you can do what I can’t do, and together we can do great things.” 

The last section here helps us make a distinction between feelings, knowing and experience.

When our feeling/emotional self is aligned with our spiritual experience that can be a huge rush, a tremendous high, and I think that is a glorious thing. It is quite easy and seductive to become attached to the feelings, and when the feelings are not there, we can think the spiritual experience is not there either. We might think as Paul did that he “did something wrong” to lose the connection. 

The connection is still there, he just wasn’t feeling it.

Now, this is a difficult thing, and I’ve experienced this many times. The feeling of being high, being connected, being loved, begin held in grace, light, etc. can be a marvelous thing, and I love it, but there can be a dark side to all of this.

For instance, there are gong to be times when I do not feel close to God, does that mean I did something wrong? Does that mean God is not close? 

I remember that ridiculous expression that was going around a few years ago, “If you feel far away from God, who moved?” What garbage. God doesn’t move, nor can you move away from God. You can feel distant, but that does not mean that you are.

Your feelings are real, but they are not necessarily the truth. 

So enjoy the feelings while they are there, but know the deeper and real part is the knowing you have inside of you of the love and presence and closeness of God. Your feelings are NOT a barometer of this truth. 

All of us have experienced times when we did not “feel” like loving someone, but we also realized that just because we didn’t feel like it, we could still love and be loving. We did not let our feelings get in the way of our ability to express our truth.

PEACE

NAVIGATION 3

P. 204-208

“Energy does not leave, it only transforms,” or as ACIM puts it, "Ideas do not leave their source" both of which are other ways of stating “We are always in the presence of God, the presence of love.”

“Once you understand that your physical body will not be here one day in its present form but you will exist in another form again and again and again, you have a much easier time being here because you don’t have to hold on so tight. This is not your last meal. You don’t have to stuff yourself and grab from your neighbor and feast until you’re sick because there’s nothing else coming. You have thousands of years and more and more and more of existence before you.”

  I struggle with this one. I spent so many years perceiving life as a “valley of tears” that I still get the shakes thinking about going through adolescence again, but what I am missing in those fear based moments is all the lessons, healing and growth I am working on this lifetime. 

It’s all learning. I’m going to share my own version of an older metaphor about life and it s meaning:

“You are the son of a loving father and you are asked if you would be willing to leave your country and explore a part of the unknown world so you could bring back what you discover to your father's kingdom. So you do; you volunteer to take this on, and you are reminded that the journey will be arduous and that there might be difficult times of loss and confusion, and times when you will even forget the purpose of your mission. Despite all of this you decide to go on this quest/this journey so that you can add to your father's glory. You will be the father's eyes and ears and what you bring back will be experience.”

I also recalled a marvelous passage from Kurt Vonnegut when one of his characters was challenged to answer the question “What is the meaning of life?”

He replied, the purpose of life is: “To be the eyes and ears and heart and mind of the creator of the universe.” Isn’t that great?

I also recalled when a master was asked what death is like, and he replied, “It is like taking off a shoe that is too tight.”

But the death that we encounter daily is the death of the ego, that tiny part of you and me that thinks it is IT! The process is so difficult for a time because the ego has no idea that it will be continually resurrected. Death to the ego does not mean its destruction so much as it means the ego is relegated to its proper place in the hierarchy of being. 

The way the guides put it: 

“But there is a death of the ego self that we are going to address now because you might as well be prepared for what is to come. Now this is not a hard death, this is nothing terrible, nor is it even really a trial. It’s simply a matter of outgrowing a personality self that has believed it would be in control for the rest of your existence. It’s that simple.”

Our roles change, and the more we are willing to release them, the easier the transition, even to letting go of the body. 

Now we move from the ridiculous to the sublime, from Vonnegut, the cynic, to Gibran the mystic.

In this beautiful passage Kahlil Gibran offers his reflections on parents and children, a powerful bit of wisdom about letting go of our supposed roles in life.

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Parting thought. I’ve shared this one a few times in other places.

Remember when you were a child and some adult would inevitably ask, “Who do you think you are?”

I never had an answer to that one (because the question was always asked in such a belligerent kind of way), but what would it have been like if I had replied, “I am a Divine child of God, unconditionally loved, and so are you!”

NAVIGATION 2

p.200-204

There were a number of passages here that had me reviewing some ideas from past learnings, and looking at them in a fresher way:

“Now the vibration next to you is still vibrating at that frequency without the vocabulary or the focus or the exercises. But right now you have them. So when we speak of co-resonance and the individual change impacting the global change, it is really as follows: One person wakes up, the next person wakes up, they wake up ten, and a thousand, and on and on and on.”

Very reminiscent of “The Hundredth Monkey” idea, and if you are not familiar with it, you might want to check out 

http://www.worldtrans.org/pos/monkey.html

or if you want a more scientific interpretation: 

http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm

This next paragraph is a reflection of a lesson, one of my teachers offered years ago. Simply put, she said, “When it’s up, it’s on its way out.” This is true for all toxicity we might be dealing with—anger, fear, scarcity, etc.

When we pick up the challenge of spiritual growth, again with the tools of willingness and intention, all the stuff that might have been in our way comes into our consciousness to be healed, transformed or let go of.

So when we pray, “Lord, let me be filled with light” one of the things that happens is that all that has been getting in the way or blocking the light comes up to the surface—it has to.

Most of us are not prepared for this and might become overwhelmed, or even angry and bitter. This is where that misconceived idea of “Be careful what you pray for” came from. There is nothing wrong with our prayer or its results; its just that most of us have not been aware that the answer to my prayer also involved some work on my part.

“So now, once you understand that your individual consciousness is being transformed through these energies that are acclimating the planet right now, and once you understand that this makes for change on individual consciousness and group experience, you can begin to understand a little more about what is transpiring on a global level. All of the groups are fighting who believe in separation. And this is, in some ways, the big hurrah for separation—just as you know when you have a pimple or a blemish or a boil, it will rise to the surface and break through the skin as it exits the body. And if you think of the body right now as the global matrix, these things are releasing in pockets of behavior and in crises and in planetary problems. And that is part“of this shift. The old behavior has to leave. The sense of separation between men cannot be other than the separation between man and God.”

And lastly:

“We need you to understand this. When you say, “Turn the other cheek,” you are not speaking about a physical response as much as you are speaking about a change in consciousness where what is slapped has no real meaning because the cheek does not burn on a level of consciousness. We will explain.

If you have an issue with your brother, and you are angry at your brother, and you send anger his way, that brother can turn the other cheek by rising in consciousness to a place where they cannot be struck by the energy that you are sending to them. It’s really that simple. If you are vibrating at a higher frequency, you do not get zapped by the lower because, in fact, you have risen above it.”

reminded me of a marvelous story by Terry Dobson as written by Jack Kornfield: 

The quieter you are, the more you hear the true nature of compassion. The intuitive compassionate heart is the doorway to our unity. 

This story from Aikido master Terry Dobson is one of my favorites because it shows how to bring about harmony by embracing conflict with compassion and understanding: The train clanked and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy spring afternoon. Our car was comparatively empty, a few housewives with their kids in tow, some old folks going shopping. I gazed absently at the drab houses and dusty hedgerows. At one station the doors opened and suddenly the afternoon quiet was shattered by a man bellowing violent, incomprehensible curses. The man staggered into our car. He wore laborer’s clothing and he was big, drunk, and dirty. Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby. The blow sent her spinning into the laps of an elderly couple. It was a miracle the baby was unharmed. Terrified, the couple jumped up and scrambled toward the end of the car. The laborer aimed a kick at the retreating back of the old woman but missed as she scuttled to safety. This so enraged the drunk that he grabbed the metal pole in the center of the car and tried to wrench it out of its stanchion. I could see that one of his hands was cut and bleeding. The train lurched ahead, the passengers frozen with fear. I stood up. I was young then, some twenty years ago, and in pretty good shape. I had been putting in a solid eight hours of aikido training every day for the past three years. I liked to throw and grapple. I thought I was tough. The trouble was, my martial skill was untested in actual combat. As students of aikido, we were not allowed to fight. Aikido, my teacher had said again and again, is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection to the universe. If you try to dominate people, you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it. I listened to his words. I tried so hard. I even went so far as to cross the street to avoid the kids, the pinball punks who lounged around the train station. My forbearance exalted me. I was both tough and holy. In my heart, however, I wanted an absolutely legitimate opportunity whereby I might save the innocent by destroying the guilty. This is it, I said to myself, as I stood up. People are in danger. If I don’t do something fast, somebody will probably get hurt. Seeing me stand up the drunk recognized the chance to focus his rage. “Ah ha!” he roared. “A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners.” I held on lightly to the commuter strap overhead and gave him a slow look of disgust and dismissal. I planned to take this turkey apart but he had to make the first move. I wanted him mad so I pursed my lips and blew him an insolent kiss. “All right,” he hollered, “You’re going to get a lesson.” He gathered himself for a rush at me. A fraction of a second before he could move, someone shouted “Hey!” It was ear-splitting. I remember the strangely joyous, lilting quality of it as though you and a friend had been searching diligently for something and he had suddenly stumbled upon it—“ Hey!” I wheeled to my left, the drunk spun to his right. We both stared down at a little old Japanese man. He must have been well into his seventies, this tiny gentleman, sitting there immaculate in his kimono. He took no notice of me but beamed delightedly at the laborer as though he had a most important, most welcome secret to share. “Come here,” the old man said in an easy vernacular, beckoning to the drunk. “Come here and talk with me.” He waved his hand lightly. The big man followed as if on a string. He planted his feet belligerently in front of the old gentleman and roared above the clacking wheels. “Why the hell should I talk to you?” The drunk now had his back to me. If his elbow moved so much as a millimeter I’d drop him in his socks. The old man continued to beam at the laborer. “Whatcha been drinkin?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with interest. “I’ve been drinking sake,” the laborer bellowed back, “and it’s none of your business.” Flecks of spittle spattered the old man. “Oh, that’s wonderful,” the old man said, “absolutely wonderful. You see I love sake too. Every night me and my wife, she’s seventy-six you know, we warm up a little bottle of sake and we take it out in the garden and we sit on our old wooden bench and we watch the sun go down and we look to see how our persimmon tree is doing. My great-grandfather planted that tree and we worry about whether it will recover from those ice storms we had last winter. Our tree has done better than I expected though, especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil. It is gratifying to watch 

when we take our sake and go out to enjoy the evening even when it rains.” He looked up at the laborer, his eyes twinkling. As he struggled to follow the old man’s conversation, the drunk’s face began to soften. His fists slowly unclenched. “Yeah,” he said, “I love persimmons too.” His voice trailed off. “Yes,” said the old man, smiling, “and I am sure you have a wonderful wife.” “Nah. My wife died.” Very gently, swaying with the motion of the train, the big man began to sob. “I don’t got no wife. I don’t got no home. I don’t got no job. I’m so ashamed of myself.” Tears rolled down his cheeks. A spasm of despair rippled through his body. There I was standing in my well-scrubbed youthful innocence, my make-this-world-safe-for-democracy righteousness. I suddenly felt dirtier than he was. The train arrived at my stop. As the door opened, I heard the old man cluck sympathetically. “My, my,” he said, “that is a difficult predicament. Sit down here and tell me about it.” I turned my head for one last look. The laborer was sprawled on the seat, his head in the old man’s lap. The old man was softly stroking the filthy matted hair. As the train pulled away, I sat down on a bench. What I had wanted to do with muscle had been accomplished with kind words. I had just seen aikido tried in combat, and the essence of it was love. 

You and I are in training to become conscious, compassionate beings, in the truest and deepest sense. Become an instrument of joy, an instrument of equanimity, an instrument of presence, an instrument of love, an instrument of availability, and at the same moment absolutely quiet. Since we all spend so much time in our relationships, why not turn them into a yoga for getting free? Living a spiritual life is a strategy for working on yourself for the benefit of all beings. That’s another way of saying that the optimum thing you can do for someone else is to work on yourself —not out of some idealistic sense of altruism, but because getting to oneness for yourself means resolving your sense of separateness to where we’re all family. Use every situation you have with other people as a vehicle to work on yourself. See where you get stuck, where you push, where you grab, where you judge, where you do all the other stuff. Use your life experiences as your curriculum.

*************

Again, thank you all for a marvelous continuing journey.

IDENTIFYING AS WORD 6 with and added piece of NAVIGATION 1

IDENTIFYING AS WORD 6 with and added piece of NAVIGATION 1

p. 190-201

There are no backward steps on the path, even though it might feel that way. “Two steps forward, one step backward” does not exist on the spiritual journey.

Yes, I screw up; I make mistakes; I make errors in judgement, and all of those can be called steps backward in they eyes of the world, but in this mysterious, remarkable journey of Spirit, we are always moving forward, learning, growing, evolving.

“The Christ that is within you, “Word I am Word” if you wish, the manifestation of this is coming into being. How long it will take is up to you, because you have requirements for your growth. You each do. And this does not absolve you of any responsibility. In fact, it requires you to face yourself again and again and again and regard yourself as perfect, and a perfect creation of the Father, of the Universe, of the Christed Self made manifest. Because that will then enable you to transform, to release, to transmute those energies that impede this being from coming into being in its completeness.”

Throughout this section I was reminded of the Buddha’s expression of the Golden rule, “See yourself in others, who then shall you harm?” I especially recalled this after the beautiful prayer/affirmation :

“I am now standing on a street corner, and my own perfection is reflected back to me through all that I see. I am experiencing myself as my Perfected Self in consciousness. And what is reflected back at me is my own perfection. I have wisdom now available to me and I will ask myself what I need to know. I have understanding available to me and I will consciously connect to my understanding in a way that will give me the information and knowing that I require. I listen with new ears, as I understand the requirements for my own growth. I am Word through this intention, to know myself, to experience myself, as my Christed Self. Word I am Word through this intention. Word I am Word.”

No matter where we find ourselves standing, this would be a wonderful truth to continue to affirm.

As I continue to embrace my own true nature, I cannot help but to embrace yours as well.

In speaking about your spiritual work with others, share what you will, but know that you are not responsible for another’s journey, nor should you let other’s opinion influence you own trip.

A favorite cartoon of mine shows a man tied up in a straight jacket hanging from a tree and below him is a bearded guy serenely sitting and meditating. The caption reads; “What is the difference between mystic and psychotic?” “The mystic knows who not to talk to.”

“I am Word through my being. Word I am Word. I am Word through my consciousness. Word I am Word. I am Word through that which I perceive, that which I hear, that which I know, and that which I understand. I am Word. I am Word. I am Word. So be it.”

NAVIGATION

Moving with and through the transformations that are occurring.

Jesus reminded us, “You do not pour new wine into old wineskins.” Don’t expect your old ideas to fit with the new energy. Realize even as your frequency shifts your physical body will need to make adjustments as well.

For many years I have waited for change to happen. There was the Age of Aquarias, the Harmonic Conversion, the Hundredth Monkey, the end of the Mayan Calendar, and many other events in between, all of which seemed to promise huge shifts in consciousness and transformation. As far as I could tell nothing happened. I was the same old mess I always was, and the world was the same nutty place. 

Of course my first problem was that I was waiting for something outside to change me inside. Alas! It doesn’t happen that way.

So when I came across Paul and the guide’s books, I was slyly skeptical. In a very short time, however, I became aware there is an energy at work here that I had not consciously encountered before. I first became more hopeful, then ready to answer the challenge of working on myself and with spiritual help and guidance allow myself to be worked with. It continues to be an invigorating, stretching and lively journey. (And I thank you all for letting me travel with you!) I find it difficult to describe exactly what is different about all this, but I know it is real.

We are now offered a choice again. We are participating in the expanded energy of healing and vibration, and by actively participating in the process we are also affecting everyone and everything around us.

This is a constant and continual process. “Word I am Word through everything before me.”

Now, many of us are doing this, in the ways described in the book which not only shares the energy, but also a vocabulary and explanation to go with it.

My thoughts go to people like Gandhi who through his love and influence brought an entire nation together. So we too are creating a “critical mass” of people and energy that is turning this whole thing around. The patterns of the past and limiting separate consciousness all seem to be fighting back, but we are asked not to give that much focus or attention. Concentrate on what is positively shifting, not what seems stuck. 

“If you have one high frequency and you place it next to one that is lower, the lower frequency then sees that it can go higher and attempts to resonate with the higher, and that is what is actually happening here. We’re resonating at a high frequency. We’re bringing this frequency to you and saying, “Yes, you can have it. It’s here if you want it. Come on board, the view is much nicer from up here,” so then you climb aboard through these exercises.”

Not everyone is going to resonate with these books, but everyone who has the willingness and intention to grow and evolve is going to be part of this process, and eventually that means everyone. None of us knows what is going on inside of another and we are advised not to evaluate or judge by what we see on the outside. So let’s not waste our time and energy trying figure out someone else, or trying to evaluate the rest of the world, let’s focus on our own growth and transformation.

What we and others are doing is stepping into what  Rupert Sheldrake referred to as a “morphogenetic field.” Simply put when a physical, mental, psychological or spiritual barrier is in place, there is a tremendous amount of inertia that needs to be moved through, BUT once that breakthrough occurs the barrier begins to dissolve and it becomes much easier to move through.

An example of one of these barriers on a physical level is the 4 minute. For years it was thought to be an impossibility. Many came close, but no one made it through. When Roger Bannister finally did it in 1954, he opened the gate, many runners followed afterward.

Spiritually, Jesus (and others) became One with the Christ Consciousness opening the door to and for each one of us to follow, and as we move forward we create a space for others to do so also.

The guides have informed us that the density of the energy around us is much lighter than before, almost as if we were living in a cramped little box, and now the box is open; we can stretch and grow. 

The time has come.