I want it my way, judging all that I see.

I finally caught myself in the act. After all this time, I caught myself in the act of judging. Someone did something that upset me, but this time instead of stewing in the upset, feeling anger, contempt, and scorn, I heard myself saying, “I wouldn’t do it that way.” There it is. I had just reduced the entire universe to fit into my limited point of reference: I would do it this way.

The miracle is that I saw the reduction. This time I did not go from the incident to the reaction, skipping the connection. Judging from my narrow point of view is hard to spot because it is so habitual, automatic, and rapid. My personal preference becomes a reference point around which my entire world turns. No wonder a long-running soap opera is called, “As the World Turns.” A life pivoting on your preferences becomes a soap.

Just test this out by taking a look at the last time you were upset. Is it possible that between the event and the upset was this unconscious phrase, “I would do it this way?”

During this holiday season, my wife, Christine, has given me ample opportunity to see this connection because she sees gift giving differently than I do. Because it is different, that is enough to trigger upset in me, but now I take it as an opportunity to practice saying to myself, “That is just her way,” and ask for help to let it pass from my mind. Letting go of my narrow frame of reference is forgiveness, enabling me to experience a peaceful state of mind Now I walk around with a new-found freedom, saying “Bah humbug” less frequently, and “Thank you, Father,” more often.

What comes to mind is a statement by a Zen monk that I read a long time ago: “When someone says this, or does that, simply say to yourself, ‘That is his way.’ ”

It also makes me think that Jack Sprat and his wife enjoyed a holy relationship.

Jack Sprat could eat no fat,
and his wife could eat no lean.
And so, betwixt them both, you see,
they licked the platter clean.

Apparently, Jack saw that eating fat was simply her way, and she saw that eating lean was his way, and in forgiveness they enjoyed the meal and each other’s company.

Learning to catch yourself in the act of imposing your way on the world is the beginning of training your mind to see that your narrow reference point is preventing you from experiencing the peace of God. In His Course in Miracles, Jesus helps you see this reduced point of view so that you can replace it by seeing from the only real state of mind, the peace of God, through which you see with the eyes of Christ.

Your small self, your personality, is like a mask covering your real Self. In fact, personality comes from the Latin per, meaning "through", and sonare, meaning "sound", referring to the theatrical wooden masks, persona, through which the sound came so that the ancient Greek actors could be heard in the large amphitheatres.

To see your neighbor through the eyes of your True Self, the eyes of Christ, requires that you learn to let go of seeing your neighbor through the mask of your false self, the self that constantly says, “I want it my way,” or in the vernacular, “My way or the highway.”

If you are tired of the soap opera of your life, you can follow Jesus’ instructions in His Course in Miracles. Just look at the titles of his first seven lessons in the Workbook, knowing that He is addressing you in your false frame of reference.

Lesson 1: Nothing I see means anything.

Lesson 2: I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me.

Lesson 3: I do not understand anything I see.

Lesson 4: These thoughts do not mean anything.

Lesson 5: I am never upset for the reason I think.

Lesson 6: I am upset because I see something that is not there.

Lesson 7: I see only the past.

Jesus instructs you that the Holy Spirit will guide you to let go of your narrow frame of reference, so that you can learn to replace it with the peace of God.

On the 49th day, Jesus presents this Lesson, God’s Voice speaks to me all through the day. Look at how He contrasts the part of your mind you narrowly rely on with the part of your mind in which truth abides.

It is quite possible to listen to God's Voice all through the day without interrupting your regular activities in any way. The part of your mind in which truth abides is in constant communication with God, whether you are aware of it or not. It is the other part of your mind that functions in the world and obeys the world's laws. It is this part that is constantly distracted, disorganized and highly uncertain.

The part that is listening to the Voice for God is calm, always at rest and wholly certain. It is really the only part there is. The other part is a wild illusion, frantic and distraught, but without reality of any kind. Try today not to listen to it. Try to identify with the part of your mind where stillness and peace reign forever. Try to hear God's Voice call to you lovingly, reminding you that your Creator has not forgotten His Son. W-p1.49:1,2

Be vigilant today to hear yourself want things your way, and when you make the connection, ask for help to let it go, so that in the vacancy you can hear the Holy Spirit speaking to you.

Click on the link below to read Lesson 49 in its entirety.

http://acim.home.att.net/workbook049.html

George Bush sees himself as being on a mission from God

I don’t know why it took me so long, but I finally understand why Bush does what he does. I keep re-reading three paragraphs from an article in The New Yorker by Seymour M. Hersh, the brilliant journalist and abrasive critic of Bush, “Up in the Air: Where is the Iraq war headed next?”

Here are the first two:

Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.
Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

Since the war on terrorism is Bush’s “personal mission,” he is impervious to political pressure. Of course, he disparages any conflicting views. To sustain his beliefs, he looks for signs that God is supporting his mission, and one such sign was the Republican sweep in the elections.

Paragraph three:

“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”

His cause, his mission, is more important than individual lives. He is becoming more and more isolated in his own bubble.

I am not going to do much more with this, except to remind myself, "There, too, but by the Grace of God, go I." I, too, was isolated in a bubble of my own belief system until I got so sick of it that I asked for help and miraculously awakened from my beliefs to the truth of who I am, the holy son of God. And it is ongoing. A belief system is a bad habit that requires willingness, determination, and practice to overcome. It’s always only moment to moment.

After mulling over those three paragraphs, all I wanted to do was take twenty minutes to review the first fifty lessons of Jesus’ Course in Miracles, so that I could remind myself that I am not sustained by my beliefs, but I am sustained by the love of God.

Please click on the link for a review of the first fifty lessons.

http://acim.home.att.net/workbook051.html

Here is the link to Hersh's article.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/051205fa_fact

Today, Tuesday 18 April, 2006, James Reston, Jr., wrote an article with a similar theme: "The American Inquisition." Please click on the link below.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-04-17-american-inquisition-edit_x.htm


The New Yorker, Seymour M. Hersh, Bush, terrorism, Cheney

Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory," and experiencing Heaven on earth.

I have yet to see the movie “Capote,” but all the hype surrounding it made me curious to see what he had as a writer. I picked up his short story, "A Christmas Memory," and I was delighted to experience his lyricism in describing scenes and events, and I was stunned to come across a paragraph that expressed a great truth, in fact, so on the mark that it echoed passages from Jesus’ Course in Miracles.

The narrator, Buddy, is seven years old at the time of the story, but he is looking back on it some twenty years later. He describes his loving friendship with his cousin, a woman in her late 60’s, as they prepare for Christmas in the south.

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable—not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather!"


They scrimp all year, saving up pennies at a time, to make the thirty fruitcakes. He tells of gathering the ingredients, including buying whiskey from a scary Indian, making the cakes, distributing them, sharing the whiskey afterwards, two ounces each, decorating the house, and then going deep into the woods for the perfect Christmas tree, making each other special gifts: kites, and then flying them on Christmas Day.

"Buddy, the wind is blowing."

The wind is blowing, and nothing will do till we've run to a Pasture below the house where Queenie has scooted to bury her bone (and where, a winter hence, Queenie will be buried, too). There, plunging through the healthy waist-high grass, we unreel our kites, feel them twitching at the string like sky fish as they swim into the wind. Satisfied, sun-warmed, we sprawl in the grass and peel Satsumas and watch our kites cavort. Soon I forget the socks and hand-me-down sweater. I'm as happy as if we'd already won the fifty-thousand-dollar Grand Prize in that coffee-naming contest.

And now, here is the stunning paragraph.

"My, how foolish I am!" my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when he came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'11 wager it never happens. I'11 wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are"—her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone—"just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."

This from a woman who read only the funny papers and the Bible.

She discovers that it is always Heaven on earth, if you look through the eyes of Christ. She experiences a holy instant, and in that moment, things forever change for her, and it is implied for Buddy, too.

And now, look at the juxtaposition of lines from this paragraph and passages from A Course in Miracles.

"My, how foolish I am!" my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery

Is it not a happy discovery to find that you can escape?
W-p1.22.2:3

and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord.

Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light
are merely covering their eyes. The light
is in them now. Enlightenment is but
a recognition, not a change at all. W-p1.188.1:1-4

And I imagined that when he came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling.

This light can not be lost. Why wait to find
it in the future, or believe it has
been lost already, or was never there? W-p1.188.2:1,2

But I'11 wager it never happens. I'11 wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself.

The peace of God is shining in you now,
and from your heart extends around the world.
It pauses to caress each living thing,
and leaves a blessing with it that remains
forever and forever. W-p1.188.3:1,2

That things as they are"

Let all things be exactly as they are. Lesson 268, Title

—her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone—"just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."

The shining in your mind reminds the world
of what it has forgotten, and the world
restores the memory to you as well. W-p1.188.4:1

The shining in his friend’s mind reminded Buddy of what he had forgotten, in that moment as a seven-year old, and now at twenty-seven as he looks back. He shared her holy instant, the restoration of the memory. This accounts for his lyricism. His lyrical passages stop to caress each living thing.

The kitchen is growing dark. Dusk turns the window into a mirror: our reflections mingle with the rising moon as we work by the fireside in the firelight.

Now a nude December fig branch grates against the window. The kitchen is empty, the cakes are gone; yesterday we carted the last of them to the post office, where the cost of stamps turned our purse inside out. We're broke. That rather depresses me, but my friend insists on celebrating—with two inches of whiskey left in Haha's bottle. Queenie has a spoonful in a bowl of coffee (she likes her coffee chicory-flavored and strong). The rest we divide between a pair of jelly glasses. We're both quite awed at the prospect of drinking straight whiskey; the taste of it brings screwedup expressions and sour shudders. But by and by we begin to sing, the two of us singing different songs simultaneously. I don't know the words to mine, just: Come on along, come on along, to the dark-town strutters' ball. But I can dance: that's what I mean to be, a tap dancer in the movies. My dancing shadow rollicks on the walls; our voices rock the chinaware; we giggle: as if unseen hands were tickling us. Queenie rolls on her back, her paws plow the air, something like a grin stretches her black lips. Inside myself, I feel warm and sparky as those crumbling logs, carefree as the wind in the chimney. My friend waltzes round the stove, the hem of her poor calico skirt pinched between her fingers as though it were a party dress: Show me the way to go home, she sings, her tennis shoes squeaking on the floor. Show me the way to go home.

And, now, Dear Reader, we are lit up, too, looking through the eyes of Christ and experiencing the peace of God as we gaze into the precious things surrounding us, Heaven on earth.

Click on the link below to read the complete story.

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Pointe/9352/christmas-capote.html

A Savior's Dialectic

Reading the first paragraph of today’s lesson, 333, Forgiveness ends the dream of conflict here, I was struck again by Jesus’ simple, clear, precise, step by step guidance in just four sentences: 1) to resolve your conflict, 2) don’t do this, 3) do this, and 4) your apparent conflict will disappear.

Conflict must be resolved. It cannot be
evaded, set aside, denied, disguised,
seen somewhere else, called by another name,
or hidden by deceit of any kind,
if it would be escaped. It must be seen
exactly as it is, where it is thought
to be, in the reality which has
been given it, and with the purpose that
the mind accorded it. For only then
are its defenses lifted, and the truth
can shine upon it as it disappears.

When I came across this phrase, where it is thought to be, this line flashed into my mind:

Sorrow’s springs are the same.

This comes from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) entitled, Spring and Fall: To a Young Child.

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Margaret may think she is depressed and grieving simply because of what she sees outside of her—the falling, dying leaves, Goldengrove unleaving, and worlds of wanwood leafmeal laying about, and the melancholy of a day in the fall. And the narrator knows that she will grow up, adjust to these sights, become hardened, and come to such sights colder. But he asks in the first sentence, are these external things really what she is upset about? He knows that her sorrow springs always from the same thing, conflicting thoughts that start inside and paint a sad picture outside. He answers his question in the last two lines, saying that this is the blight for which she was born. This is emphasized in rhyming born for and mourn for. The certain result of being born into the human condition is mourning.

To his credit the narrator identifies the problem, the thoughts in her mind, and yet he is incapable of offering a solution.

Right here is where we can engage the narrator and Margaret in a savior’s dialectic. That is what Jesus does throughout His Course in Miracles, and particularly in today’s lesson. (I am grateful to my friend, Jane Wiltshire, who first introduced me to this idea.) Dialectic means “dialogue, the art of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments.” Although argument has taken on negative connotations—couples argue, parents and children argue, friends argue, the word comes from the Latin, arguere, meaning “to make clear.” With an awakened mind, the mind of the savior, we can engage Margaret in a dialogue that will make clear that she is not who she thinks she is, that her thoughts have no source in reality.

We can demonstrate to her that no matter what she thinks,

What heart heard of, ghost guessed

Forgiveness ends the dream of conflict here.

Margaret, in your separated state you are, indeed, born to mourn, but that is not the truth of what you are. You are the holy child of God, and you can be reborn through forgiveness. As Jesus tells us in today’s lesson, conflict is only thought into existence, and you can learn to change your thoughts.

This brings us back to the beginning, Jesus’ step by step guidance.

1. Conflict must be resolved.

Resolve means “to make a firm decision about.” You have the power of decision to decide between your sorrow, or the peace of God.

2. It cannot be
evaded, set aside, denied, disguised,
seen somewhere else, called by another name,
or hidden by deceit of any kind,
if it would be escaped.

Jesus knows that we will do everything possible to keep the conflict, while all the time refusing to face it directly, engaging in evasive tactics. This ensures that the conflict remains as a defense against the love of God. Margaret, this is what I did in my most recent devastation. I sat down on the couch, grabbed a pen and notebook, and wrote down each thought exactly as it entered my mind—It must be seen exactly as it is. By simply setting down each thought, I faced it head on, not evading it, not setting it aside, and so forth. After filling up four pages, I realized that my inner dialogue disappeared into the nothingness it is, and I was free because it was replaced by my own dialogue with my Self, telling me the truth of what I am, the holy child of God.

3. It must be seen
exactly as it is, where it is thought
to be, in the reality which has
been given it, and with the purpose that
the mind accorded it.

The devastation was simply heightened conflict, and conflict, Margaret, is where it is thought to be, thought into existence, and these thoughts have only one purpose—preoccupying you to such an extent that you will not turn towards the light.

4. For only then
are its defenses lifted, and the truth
can shine upon it as it disappears.

And now as the dark defense lifts by your forgiving thoughts, you can see the glory of autumn as purely a reflection of your Self, shining brightly in everything you look upon.

Father, forgiveness is the light You chose
to shine away all conflict and all doubt,
and light the way for our return to You.
No light but this can end our evil dream.
No light but this can save the world. For this
alone will never fail in anything,
being Your gift to Your beloved Son.


Finally, think of light as understanding.

Understanding is light, and light leads to knowledge.
T-5.111.7:5

Now, you understand that you seemed to be born to mourn, yet you can ask for help to be reborn by changing your mind, forgiving conflicting thoughts, and experiencing the knowledge of peace and joy.