I am going to begin by saying what is not so; I am “in” the
world, seeing with the body’s eyes; I am going to end by saying what is so; I
Am at home in Heaven, seeing with vision, yielding to Godliness and Wonder.
I ask for help to focus on what I AM, and not on what I am not. It is a case of Figure and Ground.
When I look at my hand, Figure, everything else around me becomes
Ground. I am constantly shifting Figure/Ground,
thousands of times each day. I want to
be more vigilant and steadfast in allowing Figure to be seeing myself as God’s
Son, yielding to the wonder of that experience.
For example, while looking at a brother, regardless of our
history, I want to see the Christ in him.
I always have judgments about him in body form. Let those judgments be Ground.
All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you
look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms
vision, and lets you see the real world reaching quietly and gently across
chaos, removing all illusions that had twisted your perception and fixed it on
the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a
sign of God's perfection.
Be you in wonder
being deceived by
nothing
yield to Godliness
From the forgiven world the Son of God is lifted easily
into his home. And there he knows that he has always rested there in peace.
Even salvation will become a dream, and vanish from his mind. For salvation is
the end of dreams, and with the closing of the dream will have no meaning. Who,
awake in Heaven, could dream that there could ever be need of salvation?
Each day, newly born
for him who takes it rightly
trembling readiness
How much do you want salvation? It will give you the
real world, trembling with readiness to be given you. The eagerness of the Holy
Spirit to give you this is so intense He would not wait, although He waits in
patience. Meet His patience with your impatience at delay in meeting Him. Go
out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, and walk with Him in trust out of
this world, and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness. (t-17.ll.6-8)
In simple wonder
the wonderful springs to
mind
this is redemption
Yield, trembling with readiness.
* *
*
This essay was inspired
by reading Raj, channeled by Paul Tuttle, 9 February 2014.
After reading it, I
suggested that Christine read it as we traveled to Madison last Tuesday, and we
had a spirited discussion about it. Right
in the middle of it, I “happened” to look at the license plate on the car on
front of me, and it said: Be Paul.
Holy Shit! I took it to mean that the Holy Spirit was
telling us to be like Paul Tuttle and channel Jesus, yielding, trembling with readiness.
Here is the Raj
reading.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES
STUDY GROUP
STUDY GROUP
WITH RAJ
February 9th 2014
THIS IS A ROUGH
TRANSCRIPT.
THIS COPY IS NOT IN
ITS FINAL FORM
AND WILL BE
UPDATED
Good evening. And
welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet.
The last time we were together, we talked about bearing
witness, and the difference between bearing false witness and bearing true
witness.
And for a brief review:
Bearing false witness is when you witness to your definitions, your
beliefs, your confidences. It’s when you
bear witness to mutual agreements that you have made with each other, but not
with God.
It’s that simple.
More importantly, bearing true witness is to bear witness to
God – to bear witness to Creation as
it truly is. Bearing witness to
Creation is to glorify God.
And you know what?
That’s the definition of prayer.
You think of prayer as a request – questions that you ask of
God in hopes of getting answers. But
prayer is sharing what you have learned as a result of setting aside your best
judgments and your best ideas, because in the silence you have asked, “What is
the truth here? I want to the know the
truth about this, that or the other thing.”
That’s not the prayer.
Prayer is the act of giving glory to God.
Now this is not a foreign idea.
But it’s much more intimate the way I’m expressing it than is
usual.
When you pray, you give evidence of God by expressing God’s
Meaning. That is prayer. Prayer is a Gift. It’s not something where you ask to get. This is very important.
Now it’s simple. There’s
only one thing confronting you at any given moment – at any point in your day
or what you call, your life. The one
thing that is confronting you is what God is Being. When I say that, I mean the only thing
confronting you is undistorted, perfect Reality which when you see it through a
glass darkly, which means when you put it through the sieve of your personal
assessment and interpretations and your attempt to give definition yourself,
you see a distorted perception — a misperception.
But your perception is not what is there. This is the fundamental point. Because your perception is not what is
actually there, because what I will call mankind’s perception as to what is
there, is not based upon a joining with That which has formed it. You’re seeing something that is not only
unreal, you’re seeing something that can disappear instantly. And what had been a bondage to you will not
be present any longer without any process to its disappearance.
That is the importance of it.
The fact that your misperceptions of what is going on are purely
illusory, is what means that their correction can be instantaneous!
Be with that for a moment . . .
Now, everyone’s familiar with the feeling of “not fitting in,”
of not belonging. Most of the time, you
have these feelings relative to groups in your society, or your community, or
your family. But at times you experience
it on a larger scale: Like, you do not
belong here “in the world.” You
see? You don’t fit in the world, in this
universe, in this “material” universe.
You see?
A book was written entitled, Stranger in a Strange Land,1
and you feel at times like a stranger in a strange land – foreign to you,
unnatural to you. And this idea of a
disparity between you and what you’re experiencing also finds expression in the
words, “being in the world but not of it.” You see?
As though there’s a discrepancy that is actual.
And so, even metaphysically or spiritually the idea of being
intelligent and careful not to be deluded, you need to make sure that if you’re
in the world, you’re not of it. This is careless
thinking. It is an idea which absolutely
blocks the opportunity for the misperception of Reality [snaps fingers] to
instantaneously vanish.
Why? Because as long as
you feel that there’s the possibility of actually not belonging – of actually
not fitting in, that you are . . . oh-h . . . in a body temporarily, but it’s
not your eternal destiny to be in a body, and so you will “live through it” and
you will “make the best of it” and you will hopefully turn it into learning, so
that if you have the experience again, you’ll be further along the road to your
Salvation. You see? In the body but not of it! You see?
Careless thinking.
Why? Because as I said,
if you are only confronted with one thing and that is Reality, if you are only
confronted with Creation, meaning exactly what God is perfectly Being, then
your way out of your misperception – the past, if you will – the direction to
move in is right into that which you’re calling “the strange land,” the very
thing that you do not feel you are a part of.
As long as you indulge in the idea that there is a world that
you can be in but not of, you will always be being alert, you will always be
scanning your experience to separate what’s valid from what’s invalid so that
you don’t get sucked in and end up being “of the world.”
And yet, anything you pick in the world, point at, and what
you’re pointing at is some aspect of Reality, some aspect of the perfect
flawless, harmonious, invincible Creation of God. And if you want to cut through the illusion,
you’ve got to home in on the very thing that you would avoid. You’ve got to be willing to look at any part
of your world with the conscious intent to discover God there. You see?
The world is not something to “rise above.” You’re not to rise above the world. But you are to pierce the misperception. And you’re having a misperception of something
specific. And the something specific is Reality
– the Presence of God.
So, you’ve got to be willing to give your attention there, anywhere
– anywhere at all – give your attention there with a conscious desire to
see God there, and abandoning your best judgments and assessments and
definitions and saying, “What is the truth here Father?” You see?
Do not let this artificial discrepancy between you and a
world that you’re not to be of – let it
become an invalid concept. Because until
you do, there are parts of your world that you will avoid because . . .
what? Well, they’re beneath you, or they
are too immoral, or they are unworthy of your attention or your blessing. That part of the world doesn’t deserve it!
Is that not arrogance?
Is that not self-righteousness?
You can see now how self-righteousness will, by virtue of the
way it functions, cause you to withdraw your attention from the threshold of
Awakening! You see that?
This is important. You
must become single-minded – single of purpose.
You must get up every day and go through your day with the intent to see
the Presence of God EVERYWHERE – everywhere
you look, any place you give your attention to, any one you give your attention
to.
“Oh, they don’t deserve it!
Oh, they don’t want to hear it!
They don’t want to know the truth.”
You see? “I do. They don’t and a lot of others don’t and that’s
why I don’t fit – that’s why I don’t belong!”
You know what? When you
drive along a road you see “for sale signs.” And sometimes the property that is
for sale is a dilapidated property and there’s not much desire to purchase it,
of course, unless you see a way to make a buck.
But that’s not my point.
My point is, that when you see a dilapidated property, is it a
place to see as foreign to you, unworthy of your attention? Or do you see it as an opportunity to restore
its original intent – to redeem it to its original state? You see what I’m getting at?
When you go through your day and you see, in any form, a world
that you don’t want to be of, or a group that you don’t want to be of, or
anything else that you use as a means of separating yourself —isolating
yourself from — you need to catch yourself and recognize that here is an
opportunity of redemption. And that is
the purpose of that moment. Because
until you do it and until you Wake up, that is the only thing you should be
giving your attention to. Because that
is the only thing that will free you from the misperception of the Kingdom of
Heaven and reveal to you the Kingdom of Heaven that it is right now. That’s why it’s the only thing to do.
The only thing to do is that which Wakes you up. Anything else leaves you a stranger in a
strange land. And you know that being a
stranger doesn’t feel good. It’s not
your Birthright. And it’s not even
actually possible, it’s only imaginatively possible. You see?
And then the possibility that you’re experiencing isn’t Real.
Some of you have the experience of a sudden shift of
perception, where what wasn’t real vanishes and what is in its place is the opposite,
and you call it a miracle. If that has
happened once in your experience, or if that has happened once to
someone else in your immediate experience, where they are close enough for you
to catch the Meaning of it, then you understand what I am talking about and can
bring your commitment more easily to the task I’m talking about.
Now are you the Sons of God, and now is everything the Kingdom
of Heaven. And as the Son or Daughter of
God it’s your Birthright to be experiencing who you Are, and the Kingdom of
Heaven as It is. And the restoration
of your Sanity is what it’s all about . . . is what everything we’re
talking about is all about.
Watch out . . . watch out for any technique that you find being
used that distorts your perception and causes you to doubt the true
Meaning, the true value, the actual divinity of absolutely everything, which seems
to justify your standing apart from It — “rising above it,” as they used to
say.
Whatever you feel like rising above, whatever you feel
uninclined to expend the energy on, catch yourself and give your
attention and energy there.
What does that mean? It
means to bring your curiosity there. It
doesn’t mean to bring some capacity you have in your mind to force a new
perception into the picture. It doesn’t
mean to exercise a form of will through creative imagination. It calls for peace in you. It calls for silence in you. It calls for the humility in you that allows
you to abandon control, which means creating new ideas or abiding by ideas
already established in your mind, and making room for what you’re not expecting,
making room for what you don’t know, which isn’t the exercise of will at
all. It’s the presence of yielding. You hear that? It’s the presence of yielding—letting in.
So, the next time you’re in a circumstance which seems to be
less than the best — to be one that you would rather not be associated with —
or some dilapidated property along the road, catch yourself. Don’t go down that road of judgment and
false superiority in your mind. Humble
yourself to bring wonder into play.
That’s what curiosity is — wonder.
“I wonder what the truth is? I
wonder what is actually right there where I seem to see a strange land
that I don’t fit in.”
In the simple act of wonder, that which is wonderful
comes forth and that is the only way it does. You see?
In a way it’s like being a super-sleuth, because you want to
get past all the folderol, all of the belief structures which cause what you’re
looking at to seem to you to be a strange land, and make you seem
to be a stranger in it. When the fact
is, that as the holy Son or Daughter of God, you are inseparable from Creation
in all of its flawless perfection. And
so, you’re not a stranger in It and you’re not, not of It! It’s a unity.
Now, when I said that you’re not to rise above the world but
pierce the misperception, that could have sounded aggressive to you. But the only way to pierce the misperception
is by yielding to what is behind it.
It’s like yielding through the misperception, sinking through it by not
validating the misperception, sinking through it by means of the humble desire to
see the Presence of God that has to be there, because there literally is
nothing else present! And now that
is clearer to you, giving you a means to practice this with more trust and I
will even say, with more anticipation.
Wherever you are, whatever you’re experiencing, be present
with it, not judging it and standing apart from it — above it, superior to
it. Be present with it. Sink into it, knowing that you’re not sinking
into the current definition you’re holding of it, but that you are sinking into
the Presence of God that is what is there that you have been blinded to,
but which it is your Birthright to be experiencing, and therefore, awaits your
simple acceptance of the fact that the illusion is an illusion, that your
current beliefs are not true and have no substance or structural integrity to
hold themselves together and successfully blind you. Therefore, they can collapse instantaneously
and will collapse instantaneously.
A Course in Miracles defines a miracle as “a sudden
shift of perception.” We’re talking
tonight about what that sudden shift of perception is.
Be careful not to take the definitions you are applying to your
world as you go through your day and the media tempts to bias you and train you
into how to see things. Be careful that
you do not take your perceptions seriously, else you will be trapped a
little longer until you can remember that if you’re seeing anything less than
the Kingdom of Heaven, if you’re seeing anything less than infinite,
harmonious, invincible Reality, then you are seeing nothing with
substance and you need to not validate what you are seeing, and you need to
bring wonder into your mind with a sense of expectancy. And you must continue to do this until, we’ll
say, the misperception is pierced, or until in your humble lack of assertion of
private perceptions, you find yourself infilled with a sudden shift of
perception, in which redemption occurs, healing occurs — everything is redeemed
to its spiritual original. And that
which appeared to be dilapidated, or unworthy of interest or attention is gone
because it has been redeemed.
It’s not gone because it wasn’t real. It’s not gone because it was an
illusion. It’s gone because the
misperception you applied to it was abandoned by you when you began to wonder.
I’m using the word “wonder” here in it’s wonderful connotations
so that you understand that what I’m talking about tonight is not to be seen as
work, it’s not a labor to engage in.
It’s a joy to allow.
Joy to the World . . . joy to the world coming from you is
prayer, the evidence to your having said, “Yes” to God. Not the evidence of your having asked for a
favor, but because you don’t want to hold yourself — you holy Son of God or
holy Daughter of God — you don’t want to hold yourself separate from the very
Source of You one moment longer.
I have been making a joyful noise unto the Lord tonight. And I’m sharing it with you and inviting you
to join me in doing the same thing.
I love you all and I look forward to being with you next time.
