A COURSE IN MIRACLES WORKSHOP _ LESSON TWO
Steps to developing our Spirit and Discovering our Divine Purpose
Very few of our value judgments that we have incorporated into our truth are judgments which we have made based on our own experience. Experience is why we were born. Out of our experience we create ourselves. Have you created yourself out of the experience and truth of others
LIFE TEACHERSThe guides in our life journey who are crucial to our personal development.
BIRTH / MOTHER
CHILDHOOD/FATHER
PUBERTY / SELF
MATURITY / SOCIETY
SENIORITY / OUR UNIVERSE
By discovering what our life teachers succeeded or failed in giving us, we can erase the past which erases a self-predicted future leaving space for something authentic to happen.
Our teachers are our mirrors, from them we learn basic life instincts, spontaneous ways of being and our responses to life's challenges.
MOTHER/INFANCY: Passes on her lessons through her body, example, guidance, attitude energy and vibration. Her Sacred Role is to respect her baby's uniqueness and nurture its self-worth. She teaches the child to trust itself and gives him his essential sense of well-being. We are meant to become our OWN mother by integrating the maternal instinct.
Exercise: (Get a notebook to answer the following
)Think back as far as you can to your infancy. Write down your earliest memories of your Mother.
What do you love about your Mother?
What do you dislike?
Did your mother meet your needs as a child?
Imagine her taking you up on her lap and gently rocking you, saying the things that you always needed her to say to you. Are you feeling anger or affection?
Imagine a big red balloon tied to your small chubby infant wrist. Inside the balloon are all the negative feelings you have about your mother. Realize you can let all this pain go by untying the balloon and letting it go.
Write down all the lessons she taught you about yourself, whether through negative or positive example.
Tell you that you forgive her for the ways in which she did not understand you.
FATHER/CHILDHOOD: Through the Father our image is defined. Your relationship determines whether you can be yourself, express your heart or must achieve, perform, charm, compete, please demand or negate.
EXERCISE:
Write your EARLIEST memories of your father. Recall his quirks, his habits, his mannerisms, his ideas and philosophies.
What did you like about him?
Dislike?
Use a metaphor to describe you father.
Do you have a friend who treats you as your father treated you? Describe him or her.
What lessons did you learn from your father?
What feelings do you have when you imagine yourself in a room with your father at age 5?
at age 10? Let all of your feelings come to the surface.
Imagine making physical contact with your father, whatever contact feels comfortable to you. Let your blocked affection show and receive his in return.
What kind of a friend did your father teach you to be?
During the next two weeks write a letter to your father whether he is still living or has passed on. If he taught you to come from you heart, thank him. If he did not and could not himself, forgive him. This is his pain also.
SELF/PUBERTY:
At this stage of development we begin to explore our outer edges. We discover who we uniquely are in relationship to ourselves, others and society. We become our own source of permission and authority. We dream our dreams, and follow our visions, we risk and experiment if we have been allowed to developed in a healthy manner. Sexual energy electrifies all our feelings and thinking. It fuels our life drives and forges our deepest connection to ourselves and others. Our internal instincts are born. If we were stifled in developing this at this time WE NEED TO DO IT NOW. Change something, travel, start new things, risk and get out of your comfort zone. The ideal development at this level is a marriage of maternal and paternal wisdom. You learn who you are and what you need. You are challenged to create you own steps, find your own voice and take control of your own story.
EXERCISE:
What WAs going on inside and outside of you during this phase of your life?
What were your dreams?
Fantasies?
Do you have any haunting memories? If so, What are they?
Do your adolescent attitudes trap you or inspire you?
What attitudes from this stage of your life have you carried into adulthood?
Does your outer reality match your inner reality.
Do you speak your inner truth?
What were you born to do?
What are my gifts?
Are you using these gifts in your life?
During the next two weeks Write a letter to your parents as an adolescent. Say everything that you did not have the courage to say at that time. Describe how you took control of your own life. Did you have to fight for your independence? How supportive were they of your uniqueness?
Take a moment now and make notes as to what this letter should say.
Then write a self-portrait of who you were during that time. Sketch your sexual history. Make a list of your lovers. Notice what this tells you about your body, heart, mind spirituality and sexual development. What lessons did you learn during this stage in your life?
Take a moment now to make notes about your self portrait.
SOCIETY/MATURITY:
At this stage you are called upon to live permanent and responsible relationships to others, life partners, children, parents, extended families and friends. As puberty is discovering what you have to give, maturity is the time to give it. Our sacred task is to serve society and at the same time be true to ourselves and meet our own needs as well. The challenge is to give to others what you uniquely have, while retaining your individuality. This is the time when you become more aware of your soul. We find that we have a difficult time living up to these commitments if we haven't had the proper preparation during our previous cycles. Finding the right work, the right relationships, our personal path requires courage, commitment and a healed past.
EXERCISE:
Write a detailed account of the primary relationship in your life.
What was good and bad about it?
Describe the sexual dimension.
How has this relationship changed.
Describe your idea of an ideal intimate relationship.
What essential elements make it ideal for you?
What type of work would be your ideal.
If money or responsibilities were not an issue what would be the most challenging and fulfilling work you could be doing?
What is the first thing you could do to make it happen?
Describe the reality of your life. Does it meet your expectations of how you wanted your life to be? What is missing? What is greater than your expectations?
How does your life and work fit into society?
How does it fit with who you really are? Are you making a difference? How could you?
OUR UNIVERSE/SENIORITY:
Our universe becomes our sacred teacher during this stage of our life. It can be the richest, fullest phase of our life. We must confront our mortality, learn to value solitude, find peace and tranquility. We learn here and now enlightenment and we have more wisdom about living. Death is the ultimate letting go from the material plane of reality and we begin to prepare for our release. Ideally we increasingly enter into a still center of the spirit. If we arrive here without having achieved intimacy and maturity in the previous cycles of life, our last years may be spent in pain, loneliness and confusion. To appropriate our power of entering the Spirit, we must be willing to let go of everything including our images, ideas and beliefs about who we are. We must be willing to die. The death of our ego prepares us for the death of the body.
Exercise:
Think about how you will relate to loved ones, your parents, your mate, yourself as you get older and approach death.
How would you like to spend the last cycle of your life?
Imagine yourself doing what your heart desires, what would you be doing?
During the next two weeks, Write your ethical will and your legacy of wisdom for your survivors. Who were you, what did you believe, who influenced your life the most. What do you most want to be remembered for?
Take a moment now to make notes about writing your ethical will.
Once you have done each exercise you will understand yourself better and how you relate to others. It will also help you to identify from where most of your belief system has come. Examine your values one by one. Hold them to the light for scrutiny. Ask the Holy Spirit for validation and release for all that has become valueless when seen in the light.
The Holy Spirit, who is the voice for God, is a source in the universe that is 100% Trustworthy. We are part of an intelligent system. By tapping into this system of knowledge we discover who we truly are. We are not who our ego’s belief system has taught us to believe we are. We discover our undamaged Spirit. As we start to live in “above the waist” energy. We invite God to enter our lives to co-create it for His purposes. He knows our purpose and will lead the way.
STEPS TO DEVELOPING OUR INNER MOST SELF
1.Claim your own Divinity. “I am here to seek and be like God” Any problem we are experiencing is caused by our disconnect from God. The root of every problem we experience stems from the belief that we do not consider ourselves worthy enough to be spoken to by God. God speaks to all of us who will listen.
“A sense of separation from God is the only lack you need to correct.” ACIM
2. Remove any barriers that block the bliss of inspiration.
The ego convinces us that we are weak. The spirit knows that we can tap into the power of God if we make adjustments to become into vibrational harmony with it.
When we listen to the voice of God, our purpose will chase us.
When we discover who we truly are, we also discover that we have a divine purpose which we chose before we were born. When we are listening to guidance every experience we have will lead us to this purpose.
Desire is the beginning of all creation. It is first thought, a grand feeling within our soul. This feeling excites and inspires us. Our first desire should be to know and experience God, Secondly we should desire to know and experience ourselves in any way that inspires us. God desires our whole life process to be an experience of constant joy, continuous creating, never ending expansion and total fulfillment.
Everything we see began with a thought or idea. Nothing exists in the world that wasn’t first pure thought; an idea, a concept or visualization.
The next step to finding our purpose is through the word. The word is your thought, idea, concept or visualization expressed. The word sends forth energy into the universe where it can now assist us. “Ask and it shall be given.”
Action then is necessary. Action is the third level of creation. Actions are our words moving. We connect to the vibrational energy which is a match to what we desire to create.
When Desire, Thought, Mind, Word and Action are put together we cannot fail to produce a result. This action causes us to reassemble all the parts of ourselves, thus reminding us who we are.
Whatever is showing up in your life is assisting your life purpose. Your source cannot be removed by what it creates. When you drop your ego identity, you return to a life where inspiration awaits you.
Work diligently to become independent of the good opinion of other people. Be willing to accept the disapproval of others.
You will feel resistance to your calling from others but when you hold true to where your Spirit is leading you this resistance will turn into respect.
Stay detached from the outcome of what Is happening. Live fully in the present moment and know that God knows what he is doing.
Remember, that your desires will not arrive on your schedule but they will arrive precisely on God’s time table as soon as we can become aligned with the Spirit of abundant energy and we are a vibrational match to God.
The biggest barrier to keep us from tapping into this powerful Source is the ego. (Edging God Out)
Ego Thinking vrs. Spirit Knowing
1. The Ego sees itself as a body. The Spirit knows that it is a never changing source of being.
2. The ego says that thoughts are important. The Sprit knows that only thoughts WITH God are real.
3. The Ego thinks that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. The Spirit knows that the Lord gives all that we ask to be to add to his glory for his purpose.
4. The ego believes in good and bad, right and wrong. The Spirit knows that there is nothing to judge because the thoughts of the ego are not real. The Spirit knows that each experience is only a lesson which will get us to our next step of spiritual evolution.
5. Ego directs love and hate towards individuals. The Spirit knows that there are no boundaries. No separation of Spirits, We are all connected.
6. The Ego devices reasons why we should listen to it creating “strivers but no arrivers” Spirit knows that we will always return to it. It is our home and the longing always remains within our heart.
“When things don’t seem to go my way, I let go of my idea of how things should be and trust that I do not know the whole picture” Deepak Chopra
Steps to becoming Peaceful and Purposeful
Never need to control.
Need to Love and be loved.
Discover your spiritual identity.
Acquire wisdom.
never need approval
Relinquish your need to judge
Learn to shut down your inner dialogue through meditation.
Never fear change.
If you cannot do great things do small things and make them great.
“Fear would disappear completely if we knew who walks beside us.” ACIM
“Today I shall judge nothing that occurs for non-judgment creates silence in my life” where I can hear the voice of the Holy Spirit which speaks for God.”
SHUTTING OUT THE INNER DIALOGUE
THE MORE I LISTEN. THE MORE PROFOUND THE SILENCE BECOMES.
Our inner worlds are a frenetic beehive of activity with the same thoughts endlessly repeating themselves. This inner frenzy I call the inner dialogue. The Chinese sage Seng T'san gave us the following piece of wisdom:
"Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand. Return to the root and you will find meaning."
When you shut down the inner dialogue you are in direct contact with the loving presence of God. "Let this mind be within you . . . God resides within you." The ability to go within, meet God and bring back something of value in the form of higher awareness is available when you seek the silence. Peace is what you will bring back.
Levels of Consciousness
Level One: The Surface
The surface on your mind is where you note all of the disturbances. This is what I call the "chatter" level. Here is where a multitude of thoughts are constantly breezing across the surface of your mind. The chatter is of finances, deadlines, health, children, appointments, shopping lists, retirement, vacation choices, conflicts at work, etc..
The storms of your life become the violence of your mind.
Level Two: Just below the Surface
A storm is still observable from below the surface, but its presence is not felt in the same way as it is when you are in the middle of it. Here, the constant entering and exiting of thoughts is replaced with a different kind of thinking. You have more control of the thinking process though you are still a long way from silence. You are more focused. Your thoughts are now on analyzing. The difficulty here is in thinking that there is something other than this moment and analyzing how to get to a place of peace and bliss.
Level Three: Well Below the Surface
Here the chatter is lessening and so is the need to analyze everything. You are allowing your mind to see the flow of how things are all connected and held together. To synthesize; means to bring together; to analyze means to take apart. At this level you are experiencing more of your spiritual nature. You can feel the flow of gratitude, joy and acceptance. Here you will sense the divine flowing through everything and everyone rather than trying to figure it out. You are becoming more peaceful.
Level Four: Stillness in Bliss
In this space, you begin to block thoughts and sink into awareness. You notice the silence of awareness, as fewer thoughts swim through. As your mind becomes quieter, joy begins to sparkle in the depths of the fourth level. Joy is a sign of the presence of God. Joy is a particularly noteworthy feature of the sacred quest because its presence confirms that you have found your path. The quietness is an inner confirmation that you are experiencing a higher part of yourself. An old proverb states: "When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten." This is the state of mind that level four takes you to - a blissful forgetting of that which doesn't fit, because the mind is at peace.
Level Five: The Field of All Possibilities
This is the final resting-place deep within the mind. This is beyond quieting the mind. Here is the place within, where you empty your mind of all thoughts and experience the stillpoint. This is the field of infinite love and the place where all things are possible. You are unified with God and the energy of love that is at the center of all. As you experience the unified field in your daily "shutting down of the inner dialogue" practice, you will bring back a knowing about the purpose of your daily life. The field of all possibilities is what St. Matthew was referring to when he said, "...with God, all things are possible."
The storms will continue in your life, as they do on the pond. Serenity will no longer be defined as freedom from storms but will be known as peace during the wild weather. You will learn to fly above the turbulance.
THE FIVE FREEDOMS Dr. Virginia Sater
1. The freedom to see and hear what is here and now, rather than what was, what will be or should be.
2. The freedom to think what one thinks, rather than what one should think.
3. The freedom to feel what one feels, rather than what one should feel.
4. The freedom to want and to choose what one wants, rather than what one should what.
5.The freedom to imagine ones own self-actualization, rather then playing a rigid role or always playing it safe.
SPIRITUAL LAWS: THE LEVERAGE TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE
DAN MILLMAN
1. The Law of Faith: Only when we find faith in ourselves can we have faith in others.
2. The Law of Expectations: Our life unfolds according to our hidden expectations and assumptions.
3. The Law of Intuition: As we stop monitoring other's opinions, we connect with our heart's wisdom.
4. The Law of Choices: We can choose to express our creative energy in positive or negative ways.
5. The Law of Action: To overcome self-doubt, we need to acknowledge our vulnerably but act with confidence.
6. The Law of Flexibility: Staying flexible, we make the best use of difficulties and changing circumstance.
7. The Law of Balance: Seeing our tendency to swing from one extreme to another, we find our balance point.
8.The Law of Process: To get where we want to go, the only sure way is one small step at a time.
The Power of Attitude
The nest of young eagles hung on every word as the Master Eagle described his exploits. This was an important day for the eaglets. They were preparing for their first solo flight from the nest. It was the confidence builder many of them needed to fulfill their destiny.
"How far can I travel?" asked one of the eaglets.
"How far can you see?" responded the Master Eagle.
"How high can I fly?" quizzed the young eaglet.
"How far can you stretch your wings?" asked the old eagle.
"How long can I fly?" the eaglet persisted.
"How far is the horizon?" the mentor rebounded.
"How much should I dream?" asked the eaglet.
"How much can you dream?" smiled the older, wiser eagle.
"How much can I achieve?" the young eagle continued.
"How much can you believe?" the old eagle challenged.
Frustrated by the banter, the young eagle demanded, "Why don't you answer my questions?" "I did."
"Yes. But you answered them with questions."
"I answered them the best I could."
"But you're the Master Eagle. You're supposed to know everything. If you can't answer these questions, who can?"
"You." The old wise eagle reassured.
"Me? How?" the young eagle was confused.
"No one can tell you how high to fly or how much to dream. It's different for each eagle. Only God and you know how far you'll go. No one on this earth knows your potential or what's in your heart. You alone will answer that. The only thing that limits you is the edge of your imagination."
The young eagle puzzled by this asked, "What should I do?"
"Look to the horizon, spread your wings, and fly."
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