“The end of suffering comes when man relaxes his consciousness away from selfness and toward universal reality Having overcome the negative testimony of the sensations and perceptions, the individual is able to contemplate universals and to experience a gentle receptive attitude toward reality”. “
True Religion comes to the individual as the most vital of all experiences when he transfers his sense of values from his personal ego to a universal essential principal which he comes to know as the common parent of all that lives, and the goal of all who seek.” pg 31&32 Buddah’s “ Sermon on the Mount” a lecture by Manly p. Hall
You are the work of God, and his work is wholly lovable. This is how a man must think of himself in hie heart, because this is what he is. pg 9 Course in Miracles.
To the ego it is kind and right and good to point out errors and “correct” them. This makes perfect sense to the ego, which is unaware of what errors are and what correction is. Errors are of the ego and correction of errors lies in relinquishment of the ego. When you correct a brother you are telling him that he is wrong. He may be making no sense at the time and it is certain that, if he is speaking from the ego, he will not be making sense. But your task is still to tell him he is right. You do not tell him this verbally, if he is speaking foolishly. He needs correction at another level, because his error is at another level. He is still right because he is the son of God. His ego is always wrong no matter what it says or does.
When a brother behaves insanely you can heal him only by perceiving the sanity in him. If you perceive his errors and accept them, you are accepting yours.
It is not up to you to change your brother, but to merely to accept him as he is. To perceive errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you. pg 166&167 Course in Miracles.
Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by the forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return. pg 270 CIM
And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. DO NOT FIGHT YOURSELF! But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way in which this very day can happen just like that. Then try again to have the day you want. pg 625 CIM.
Power, Not Powerlessness
I know that AA and other twelve-step programs have saved many lives. In 1935,when there were no other programs, the founders of AA, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, stepped up to the plate and took action to help a crippled population. All credit for the establishment of their wonderful, life-saving group goes to them and to those who came after them who have continued the tradition. However, there are hundreds of millions of people who still need help who are not among the estimated two or three million who attend twelve-step meetings.
Pax and I handle all the intake calls at passages, and we talk to thousands of people. Many of them are dead set against the AA program. The majority of people we talk to who don’t like the AA program tell us that they don’t go to AA meetings for the very reason that they don’t like calling themselves addicts or alcoholics.
AA purports to be open to anyone, as it is stated in Tradition Three. “The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking,” but it isn’t open to everyone. It’s open only to those who are willing to publicly declare themselves to be alcoholics or addicts and who are willing to give up their inherent right of independence by declaring themselves powerless over addictive drugs and alcohol, as stated in Step One, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable.”
To give up our power to change for the better is inherently distasteful to everyone, and to force people to affirm that they are addicts or alcoholics so they can speak in a meeting is shameful and demoralizing. The stigma attached to those labels is so great that most people won’t tolerate it. Such declarations ruin a healthy self-image. They convince us that even if we obtain sobriety, we remain broken instead of whole, spoiled instead of fresh and new.
I believe those who are reluctant to affirm that they are still addicts or alcoholics know, even if subconsciously, that the mental programming inherent in proclaiming oneself to be an addict or alcoholic is hugely detrimental. The small benefit attached to that admission- a reminder that the former alcoholic is constantly at risk of relapsing- is far outweighed by the poor self-image it creates. In fact, that poor self-image is what contributes to the relapse. When people who believe themselves to be addicts or alcoholics come under great stress or trauma, they mentally give themselves permission to drink or use drugs as a remedy. After all, aren’t they alcoholics and addicts? And what do alcoholics and addicts do? They drink and use addictive drugs. pgs. 134-135 The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure by Chris Prentiss
So who are we? Well, the reality of who and what we are is far beyond these selves we think we know. One thing’s for sure; we are not our bodies.
We see ourselves as a body that works, plays, dresses, loves, and thinks. In reality, each of us is a portion of the infinite, a glorious piece of God destined to wake up one day and become the real us. We are an immense collective mass of energy in a form of identity. We are the unlimited, unexplainable Source experiencing life here on Earth in human form. We are the power and consciousness of All That Is, God. That is our true identity.
So, as part of the Whole, what God is, we are. Can you say that, because your parents are human, you are then butterfly? Of course not. You are of the human species, therefore human. You are of God, therefore God. You are a fiery, pure, energy force of light, living inside that vehicle, your body, to obtain the prize of creative life, the emotional (gut-level) understanding that life is communication with God, and communication with God is life. Indeed, you are Life, a portion of God struggling to rid itself of ego and return to the totality of its being.
Step Two says we “came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity” (Alcoholics Anonymous 1975, 59). A power greater than our ego-selves, yes, but a power greater than our real selves, no! We are not less than. We are not less than! In fact, to accept ourselves as less than is downright arrogant, for it means we believe our inflated ego-evaluation of ourselves is truer than God’s! Can’t be so.
So we run around searching desperately for value when in truth, our value needs no defense. It merely is. We exist as the mind of God which cannot be separate from us; it is us. There is not now, nor has there ever been, a separation between any one of us and God, except as devised and reinforced by the ego.
All of life is God! And we are life, here, there, everywhere. God is outside us as the light source from which to draw, and God is connected to us through the oneness of consciousness and thought. Yes, there is a power greater than ourselves, only we are a part of that power, ever changing, ever creating, ever expanding, ever being. God is the Whole of Life, evolving, ongoing into forever. God is man and woman. God is our Inner Being. God is you. Behold God! pgs 84-85 Beyond the Twelve Steps by Lynn Grabhorn
The circumstances and conditions of life are outpictured inner talking, solidified sound. Inner speech calls events into existence. In every event is the creative sound that is its life and being. All that a man believes and consents to as true reveals itself in his inner speech. It is his Word, his life.
Try to notice what you are saying in yourself at this moment, to what thoughts and feelings you are consenting. They will be perfectly woven into your tapestry of life. To change your life you must change your inner talking, for “life,” said Hermes, “is the union of Word and Mind.” When imagination matches your inner speech to fulfilled desire, there will then be a straight path in yourself from within out, and the without will instantly reflect the within for you, and you will know reality is only actualized inner talking. pg 51 Awakened Imagination by Neville
The movie What the Bleep Do We Know!? explains how you can make new patterns in your brain by affirming what you want to create. Literally, you ‘create your day,’ as suggested by one of the talking heads in the film. Of course, Louise Hay had shown people how to do this several decades earlier, when she introduced affirmations as a way to heal. The movie dramatized that your words and thoughts strengthen synaptic connections in your brain, changing your neural patterns, or networks, giving you a personal experience of reality and potentially bringing about the results you want. Spoken words- either positive or negative- have the power to create a reality you either want or don’t. pgs. 110-111 Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d by Candace B. Pert, Ph.D.
Character, image, ego-self, outer-self, call it what you will. If this ego of ours is what has caused the separation from our real Selves, why do we have it anyhow?
The ego is the tool we’ve been given to test the strength of our desire to evolve back to the Light. But instead of working with us, the ego has fearfully perceived itself as separate, completely on its own. It learned at an early age precisely how to control our private world to ensure we remain in a constant state of struggle. We all know only too well that marvelous Program expression. “self-will run riot.” Well, in a broader sense, our ego is free will run riot. It’s the cunning lovable troublemaker of our being that’s just gotten way out of hand. We have this perpetual image of ourselves, this being we think we want to be with all the labels. That’s the ego, forever drawing to it circumstances and events to reinforce the image. For all its power, though, our ego is really nothing more than an irascible brat over whom we’ve exercised little or no control up to now. It’ll do everything it can to weigh us down with those very beliefs we want to give up, hollering bloody murder the moment we attempt to remove them.
Happily, the ego doesn’t have to be obliterated to continue this journey, just soundly and lovingly put in its place. While we can almost always expect a fight at the entrance to every new level of spiritual development, as long as the ego sees itself evolving along with the rest of its being and not left behind, it will usually throw in the towel and go along. pgs. 100-101 Beyond the Twelve Steps by Lynn Grabhorn