A Course in Miracles

During the last couple of months, I've been studying A Course in Miracles (ACIM), reading books about it, and watching You Tube videos of authors who've commented on it.

A Course in Miracles has represented a quantum leap in my understanding of non-duality.

At first I worked with the original ACIM, as it was dictated to Dr. Helen Schucman. However, I found it time consuming to read that version, so I bought Elizabeth Cronkhite's plain language translations of the Text and Workbook. I prefer working with Liz Cronkhite's material, although I sometimes enjoy reading the two versions side-by-side.

As far as commentators on ACIM are concerned, I find Kenneth Wapnick to be very clear and accessible. I particularly appreciated his The Fifty Miracle Principles of 'A Course in Miracles'. He was a prolific author, and you can find many videos featuring him on You Tube.

Aside from the fact that she has translated ACIM into plain language, Liz Cronkhite is an inspiring author in her own right. I have found it very supportive to read 4 Habits for Inner Peace and Releasing Guilt for Inner Peace.

Space-like awareness

During my third reading of What’s Wrong with Right Now unless you think about it? I got what Bob Adamson was saying more clearly than I had before. It happened while I was reading his description of each person as a space-like awareness. It tied in with something similar that Rupert Spira had said in The Transparency of Things.

Rupert Spira used the analogy of a vase. Usually we think of a vase as a container that encloses space. Yet, in reality, it is space that envelopes the vase. The vase cannot exist without space within which to be positioned.

Space is permanent and unchangeable. The vase, in its current configuration, is temporary. Sooner or later, its form will change. The organization of its atoms will break down, and they will be redistributed.

When the vase is gone, the space still will be there. The space will not have been affected by the vase’s arrival, by its presence or by its departure.

When I contemplated this distinction, it felt like a profound shift in my usual emphasis. If I imagined that the vase represented me, Judy, I felt myself identifying less with the vase and more with the space. It was as if I had stepped back and was viewing myself from a little distance.

I found myself imagining space as a large, empty room. I then imagined the room being populated with pieces of furniture, eating utensils, books, decorations, etc. The “little me,” Judy, was represented by one of these items – let’s stick with the vase metaphor for now. The other people in my life were represented by the couch, the chairs, the tables, the dishes, the glasses, the pieces of cutlery, the paintings on the walls, and so on.

The events in my life were represented by the interactions among the pieces. A saucer was giving one of the cups a hug, a fork and a spoon were having an argument, the dining table and coffee table were playing a competitive game, one of the books was conducting a self-improvement seminar for a group of other books, and the lounge chairs were declaring war on the dining chairs. Each of the items was tall or short, fat or thin, clever or stupid, elegant or clumsy, an expensive designer original or cheaply mass-produced.

The “society” that was made up of these items conveyed to each individual piece the strong message that it was a separate entity. Each piece’s arrival in the room was marked by the granting of a name and the issuing of a birth certificate, the piece was taught how to fit in and was disciplined when it broke the rules, it was granted qualifications when it reached certain benchmarks in its educational process, its efforts were rewarded with payments of money, and on and on.

Having accepted its separateness, each piece actually sought validation of that separateness. Wives got together and commiserated with each other about what jerks their husbands were, employees similarly drew sympathy from each other about their lousy bosses, grown children went into therapy in an effort to recover from the abuse they’d suffered from their parents ....... you probably get the picture.

As pieces were brought into the room, communicated with other pieces, and then were removed from the room, the space continued to be ....... well ....... the space.

The implications of this change of focus from the objects to the space feel profound. That adjustment has a knock-on effect that ....... well ....... changes everything.

The dramas associated with Judy’s life, which previously seemed dire, now appear to be a tempest in a tea cup.

In the lead up to this new way of looking at things, one of the biggest sacrifices was giving up the notion that I had control over anything. It felt scary to admit that I (that is, the “little me”) had no power. It also made all of my “hard work” up to this point feel wasted.

Yet, when I managed to let go of the illusion of control, it felt enormously freeing. It is not so much that I no longer do anything. Today I cooked meals, moved the cattle on our little farm from one paddock to another, and wheeled loads of firewood into the shed and stacked them. The difference today is that I didn’t worry about all the remaining maintenance and administrative tasks still waiting to be done, didn’t freak out about our finances, etc.

I really felt as if I understood Jesus’s words, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” (Matthew 6:26)

It feels very cool to be at peace. I am most grateful.

Compassion -- who knew?

Something that a friend of mine recently posted on Facebook attracted me to the website of the Charter for Compassion and the Amazon reviews for Karen Armstrong's book, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.

The topic of compassion is one that has puzzled me since I've been studying Non-Duality.

Prior to my exploration of Non-Duality, I had placed a high value on kindness, empathy, consideration and tact.

But, according to my understanding of Non-Duality, all suffering is an illusion. Another person's treatment of me has no power to affect my feelings. If I do suffer as a result of their behaviour, it's only because of the interpretation I put on it.

The implication seems to be that the reverse also is true. I can be as much of a jerk as I like. If other people don't like that, it's their problem.

On the other hand, several Non-Duality authors state that, once you see that we're all One, you feel that whatever you are doing to someone else, you're doing to yourself. So you automatically treat everyone with respect.

Well, be that as it may, I signed up for the Charter for Compassion's Facebook group, and I started seeing the inspirational quotations that they posted. The one below really jumped out at me:

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. But I try to work one day at a time. If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever little work I can do. I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. That’s enough.

When you see you can do that, you continue, and you give two little joys, and you remove two little sufferings, then three, and then four. If you and your friends do not despise the small work, a million people will remove a lot of suffering. That is the secret. Start right now.

Sister Chân Không (1938), Vietnamese pioneer of socially engaged Buddhism

I decided to try Sister Không's suggestion. Almost instantly I experienced a few fascinating results.

As I set myself the assignment of identifying the one thing that I could do in the morning or afternoon, I found that I forgot my own troubles.

If someone was "suffering" from a long list of woes, I did not feel obliged to solve all of his or her "problems." I just thought, "What is one thing I can do to cheer him/her up or make him/her feel more supported?"

Sometimes the thing I managed to identify required a lot of effort on my part, but often it was very small -- giving directions to a couple of tourists who had a lost look about them, helping an elderly woman get her shopping bag from the store to her car, and so on.

As I focused on fulfilling the assignment I'd set myself, I found myself forgetting if the other person was nice or nasty. That is, I found myself effortlessly giving my little bit of help or smiling or saying "Hello" even if the other person was a bit grizzly or grumpy or frustrated or impatient.

After doing this exercise for a short while, it occurred to me that it was a type of meditation. In meditation, one does something to quiet what Richard Hittleman calls the ordinary mind which, in turn, helps one to sense one's connection with what he calls the Universal Mind. So one focuses on one's breathing, or one repeats a single word or phrase over and over again, or something like that.

It seems to me that focusing on Sister Không's assignment has the effect of quietening the ordinary mind. I've found myself so busy doing the homework that I've had less mental energy left over to worry, to judge, and so on.

Well, whatever the intellectual explanation, I've found myself much happier since taking on this exercise. So much so that I would say that compassionate acts might even be viewed as selfish! I'm enjoying this so much that I'm doing it for my own sake rather than the other person's!

Sailor Bob Adamson rocks

I now am on my third reading of What's Wrong with Right Now?by "Sailor" Bob Adamson.

As I mentioned in my post entitled What's wrong with right NOW, I recently had re-read this book after a two-year interval.

On this third reading, Adamson's explanation of Non-Duality is resonating with me very strongly.

Every other page -- sometimes every other sentence -- I find myself saying, "Yes! That is so true!"

In the meantime, things have grown even more challenging in what most people would call my "real life." I have had major disappointments, and I am facing big challenges for which I don't have answers. I also am working long hours on our little farm, doing chores that sometimes are physically demanding.

Yet, during this reading of Adamson's book, I'm finding myself feeling calm most of the time. Quite often I even feel cheerful. I'm comfortable not knowing how things will resolve themselves. I trust that there is an intelligence that is handling everything. I don't feel obliged to be the Fixer who can solve everyone else's problems for them.

I'm less inclined to take things personally. I'm more apt to view things simply as happening, rather than seeing them as happening to me.

In the reading department, the Tao Te Ching continues to be an inspiration too.

Newton's Third Law of Physics

The Greatest Secret of Alchemy is the title of a post that caught my attention when I recently visited my brother's blog.

The part that I found particularly interesting was William's description of our ego as the vehicle that we use to navigate the world and through which we experience ourselves as separate.

According to my understanding, my conflicts with other people are the result of our egos clashing with each other.

Since William had used the word "vehicle" to represent the ego, the image of bumper cars sprang into my mind to represent the crashing "vehicles," and I chuckled. It's interesting how fairy tales, nursery rhymes, children's games and amusement park rides often reveal truths about life.

This motivated me to do a Google search on "bumper cars." That led me to a website entitled Amusement Park Physics. It stated, amongst other things:

Newton's third law of motion comes into play on the bumper cars. This law, the law of interaction, says that if one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body. It's the law of action-reaction, and it helps to explain why you feel a jolt when you collide with another bumper car.

That gave me a further chuckle. I thought, tongue-in-cheek, "You see, there's scientific proof of the workings of the ego!"

Of course, a great deal of spiritual teaching is about disengaging your inner bumper car so that, when someone else collides with you, you don't exert an equal and opposite force on him or her.

But I digress. William's piece contains more wisdom than the vehicle metaphor so, if you feel moved, please feel free to read the original post.

If you visit William's website, you'll probably notice that, unlike me, he is not into Non-Duality. Yet there are overlaps between his philosophy and mine. I certainly do find it worthwhile to visit his blog from time to time and check out what he's saying.

Loosening the ties that bind

The big insight that I got from Robert Scheinfeld’s audio entitled The Rings of Relationship is that I didn’t need people.

Yes, people add flavour to my life; I enjoy them, and welcome interaction with them. But I don’t need them.

To have an inkling of the significance of this insight, you’d have to have some appreciation of what a stark contrast it represents from my previous orientation.

Prior to this, I considered people to be vital to me – you know, right up there, just after oxygen. I made many decisions around people, bent myself out of shape to include them in my life, and felt distressed when things didn’t work out with them.

Yet, in what seemed like a split second, that focus evaporated.

That, in turn, resulted in a tremendous sense of freedom.

This change in alignment has a domino effect. It influences many other aspects of what Robert calls the Human Game.

The flip side of the coin, namely, that other people don’t need me any more than I need them, also feels freeing. In fact, it lifts a huge weight off my shoulders.

An interesting feature of this new level of awareness is that I feel no less love towards my family members and close friends than I felt before. Actually I feel warmer and fuzzier towards them than I did in the past.

As Robert has said elsewhere in his teachings, when you’re watching a movie, you suspend your awareness of your physical surroundings and allow yourself to get caught up in the story enough to enjoy the drama.

In a similar way, you can know that you’re in the Earth Amusement Park, and yet you can allow yourself to “forget” the mechanics of the particular ride you’re on to a degree that enables you to relish it.

So, if I stop and think about it, I know that Greg is my apparent husband (to use Sailor Bob Adamson’s language), I know that my apparent mother had an apparent operation recently, I know that my apparent son just switched apparent jobs, and so on.

But I don’t go around couching it in those terms all the time. I check in with Greg to find out what progress he’s making with the electrical gizmo he’s trying to fix, I wonder how Mom is doing after her surgery, I’m curious how my son is finding his new job, etc.

When things in the storyline go “wrong,” I offer what help I can, but quietly chuckle and wonder what will unfold in tomorrow’s episode of the soap opera.

Again, in the interests of being honest, I must admit that I don’t experience this level of “enlightenment” (or whatever you would call it) consistently. Yet, I would say that, compared with the way I experienced life before gaining this insight, I feel 85% better.

The moments during which events around me “grab me by the throat” are less intense and last a shorter time than they did before.

The Rings of Relationship

I had been wanting to share with you one of my remaining emotional triggers, which was my over-sensitivity to any hint or implication that I was stupid.

However, in my "real life" offline -- or perhaps it would be more accurate to say "in my illusory life" -- I had been too busy to blog.

But that's almost academic now. During these last few days, in which I had wanted to blog but hadn't been able to, my sense of inadequacy evaporated.

I completed Byron Katie's questionnaire, and I recalled the advice of various Non-Duality authors (both contemporary and ancient). Those efforts seemed to help to some extent, but I still was feeling a bit low.

Then I "stole" a few minutes out of my demanding schedule, and listened to Robert Scheinfeld's audio entitled The Rings of Relationship.

While I was listening to it, I experienced a powerful -- and extraordinarily freeing -- Aha moment.

I found the recording insightful on many levels.

Oddly enough, although Robert did not address intelligence, in a roundabout way his words provided me with support in that regard too.

Perhaps in the busy days ahead I'll get a chance to share with you how I unpacked the emotional suitcase labelled "stupid" that I'd been carrying around.

In the meantime, The Rings of Relationship link is available, in case you're curious about it. I consider a topic worthy of consideration in its own right.