This is the ninth talk on A Course in Miracles,
Spiritual Awakening and Introduction.
In this talk I will introduce the subject of spiritual awakening,
And later in two other talks explore the subject in more depth.
The workbook states,
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.
The light,
Love and joy of God are ever-present and wait only our acceptance.
We need not earn them as they were freely given at our creation.
Nor is sacrifice or suffering required.
So why do we rarely experience the light?
Within the illusion of time,
We long ago decided separation was preferable to oneness.
We entered space and time seeking happiness outside ourselves.
That we have not succeeded is obvious.
One look at the world clearly shows this.
However,
We are still optimistic and carry on searching for that elusive peace and joy.
At times we find it,
Only to see it slip away from our grasp.
Our ego encourages us to keep trying,
Not mentioning its real goal is to ensure we never succeed.
The text states,
I have said that the ego's rule is,
Seek and do not find.
Translated into curricular terms this means,
Try to learn but do not succeed.
The ego is the thought of separation that we,
The sleeping Christ have created.
It lives as long as we give it power and we will continue to do this while we think it serves us.
It wants to continue and thus seeks ways to keep us believing it is worth keeping.
As we begin to slowly realise that following the ego's thought system of separation brings only pain,
We start to turn to the Holy Spirit in our mind for help.
We start to open to the light.
The text states,
Tolerance for pain may be high,
But it's not without limit.
Eventually everyone begins to recognise,
However dimly,
That there must be a better way.
As this recognition becomes more firmly established,
It becomes a turning point.
Obstacles to the light.
The ego becomes alarmed at the direction we are starting to take and counsels us to return to him.
He warns us that the Holy Spirit works for God and don't remember we broke up heaven,
Took God's power and set ourselves up in time and space where we hope God will not find us and exact his just revenge.
I have watched participants on workshops having some form of experience that brings them closer to God's love and light and then a short time after they experience some fear,
Depression or sickness.
The text states,
As the light comes nearer you will rush to darkness,
Shrinking from the truth,
Sometimes retreating to the lesser forms of fear and sometimes to stark terror.
But you will advance because your goal is the advance from fear to truth.
On the one hand we are starting to tire of the ego's ways of attack,
Judgement,
Justified anger and victimhood,
But are terrified of losing our sense of identity,
Specialness and individuality.
We are strongly attached to thinking we are a body,
With important roles and ambitions in the world.
The notion of spiritually advancing and finally sitting on the right hand of God is very appealing.
But notice something about this picture.
You are still there.
Duality has crept into the wonders of heaven.
This is the ego's version of spiritual growth.
You take him with you to God.
In the fifth stage of the development of trust in the manual for teachers,
Jesus tells us we will all go through a quote,
Period of unsettling,
Unquote.
Although we are close to the top of the ladder of trust,
The real world,
We may remain,
Quotes,
Long,
Long time,
Unquote,
At this penultimate stage.
Why?
We need to willingly release the sense of I and of a me before we can return home.
Peace and joy exist only in the state of oneness or union with God.
To know this means releasing our investment in the ego's thought system of separation.
Our dilemma is illustrated in the following story.
A man is swinging on a trapeze.
He knows this trapeze well,
But is starting to tire of it.
He is not happy where he is and knows he must change something.
Suddenly he sees an empty trapeze swinging backwards and forwards in front of him.
On closer inspection he sees his name written on the bar.
He knows he must let go of his familiar trapeze before he can grasp the new one.
His fear of the new and the death of the old makes him want to hold on to the old trapeze with one hand whilst trying to grab the new one.
An impossible task.
Likewise,
The ego still has a powerful hold on us while we are being drawn ever more strongly to the light of the Holy Spirit.
The Obstacles to Peace in Chapter 19 of A Course in Miracles text spells out the various arguments that the ego will use to persuade us to stay with him.
He tells us the body is valuable for what it offers and that pain,
Quote,
Proves that it is real and the Holy Spirit is a liar when he says it is an illusion.
Death is further,
Quote,
Proof that the body is real and separate from God.
Our attraction to guilt,
Attack,
Hate and anger also act as a defence to experience in the love of God,
Which would lead to the death of the ego.
The ego warns us that God is waiting at the end of our spiritual path to exact his justified vengeance.
So don't go there.
Better to get caught up in the world's ambitions.
Know the body is the only reality and don't rock the boat.
As we slowly start to desert our ego,
Its cries will follow us until that day dawns where we finally give up all investment in its illusions.
And the illusions subtly change.
Seeing through the cruder illusions of the,
For example,
Materialism will bring us happiness,
We then fall into the trap of spiritual materialism.
Yearning for God and enlightenment can keep us trapped for a long time.
The Eastern teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj states,
The desire for truth is the highest of all desires,
Yet it is still a desire.
All desires must be given up for the real to be.
When all search ceases,
It is the supreme state.
From his book I Am That,
Knowing we will experience fear and ambivalence on our journey is very helpful.
The journey back to God is not sweetness and light.
As the ego continues to rear its ugly head,
He starts to practice forgiveness.
The workbook states,
Forgiveness,
On the other hand,
Is still and quietly does nothing.
It offends no aspect of reality,
Nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes.
It merely looks and waits and judges not.
This quotation has asked us to look quietly at the ego,
And not to fix it or improve it.
We are asked not to hate or love it,
For it is nothing,
Simply the absence of love which is waiting,
Our welcome.
It must wait until we welcome the ego instead.
The ego,
Not being real,
Merely needs to be observed without judgement.
As we learn slowly to maintain a witness attitude to our ego's behaviour,
We remove our investment from it,
And it begins to fade.
Starved of attention and guilt,
Its food supplies shrivel,
And it must start to lose its grip on our minds.
But as soon as we feel guilty about its behaviour or thoughts,
We are saying to it,
You are real,
I believe in you.
This is our day in and day out practice.
Not yearning for God or enlightenment,
Just watching our mind and not judging what we see,
While asking the Holy Spirit or Jesus for help,
In seeing the situation peacefully.
Slowly we start to smile at the ego's goings on.
Oh,
I see,
I want to throttle the driver who just cut me off on the road.
That reminds me of the anger I felt yesterday when someone jumped the queue I was waiting patiently in.
So what's new?
Many times we will forget to forgive and ask for help.
On seeing this,
We can still learn to smile at our lack of practice,
To forgive ourselves for not forgiving.
I recently saw someone had summarised my AAA approach to forgiveness,
And I include it below.
The first A is Awareness.
What is denied cannot be forgiven.
Awareness of our inner world is as important as our awareness of our outer world.
Our egos will fight our attempts to become more aware of our darker sides.
Watch thoughts without judgement.
Develop a compassionate witness.
The ability to watch thinking means we are not our thoughts.
The second A stands for Acceptance.
What you resist,
Persist.
Acceptance dissolves guilt.
Acceptance invites healing and change.
Change is fear and can block forgiveness.
The last A is Asking for Help.
Awareness and acceptance are our responsibility.
A genuine desire for peace invites healing.
Our Inner Guide completes the forgiveness process and will choose the form forgiveness takes.
Our job is to surrender to its guidance.
