“Nothing I see means anything.”
“I have given everything I see all meaning it has for me.”
“I do not understand anything I see.”
“These thoughts do not mean anything.”
“I am never upset for the reason I think.”
“I am upset because I see something that is not there.”
“I see only the past.”
“My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
“I see nothing as it is now.”
“My thoughts do not mean anything.”
“My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.”
“I am upset because I see a meaningless world.”
“A meaningless world engenders fear.”
“God did not create a meaningless world.”
A Course in Miracles, Lessons 1 – 14
The reasons our thoughts do not mean anything is because they are only projections of the past onto this moment and the person in front of us. This is not reality. ACIM spends the first part of the lessons teaching us what we are doing and why it isn’t working, and the last part showing us that there is another way.
There are a couple of fabulous online versions of ACIM here:
http://www.acim.org/Lessons/SectionIntro.htm
and here:
I refer to The Work of Byron Katie as being A Course in Miracles in 4 questions and a turn around.
I’ve been a Course student since 1985. What ACIM takes 365 lessons, a textbook and a manual for teachers, a total of around 1200 pages, to convey, Katie does in a 6-question worksheet of thoughts we meet with 4 questions and a turn around.
Much faster. Much.
Still, sometimes the fine tuning of ACIM is good for me. It is a language I love. I am very comfortable with the Christian language. I had a much kinder Christian minister and church than some people did. With my mystical mother and a youth minister from California there to help me learn to interpret, it worked.
ACIM, just like TW (The Work) is a way of dropping our lies and noticing the truth.
Where do we do that best?
Well, obviously in the lies we project on other people.
Somehow it’s easy to blame, think there’s something wrong with the other person, that if only they were different, willing to (fill in the blank) then we would be happy.
Katie, Sondra Ray and others have observed that when you have a mate, you don’t need a guru. Both ACIM and TW turn us around to look at ourselves for the truth, for healing, for enlightenment. They are both all about our relationships.
Katie says, “People leave to go to India to find a guru, but you don’t have to. You’re living with one. Your partner will give you everything you need for your own freedom.”
That’s in her little book On Love, Sex & Relationships. I borrowed this one and I just ordered my own copy. It’s sweet. Lots of concise reminders in a tiny little 90 page book. Most of the quotes in this blog are from that little booklet. There is more her book, I Need Your Love – Is That True?
If you want to know what you’re thinking, there it is. Right in front of you in 3D and Technicolor with Surround Sound. You’re projecting your movie on your lover (or, so they say, your child, but I am not a parent, so I’m going to stick to what I know.)
If you believe it isn’t about you, if you think it’s really them, that is painful.
Isn’t it?
The only pain in relationships is in our own minds.
Have you noticed?
Maybe you haven’t. A lot of people are really married to the belief that the problem is “out there.”
It’s the President, the other country, the terrorists, our parents, our lovers, our boss, our employees. Everything is someone else’s fault. I was lucky to be born to a man who thinks that a lot. Therefore, my childhood rebellion included learning that it’s no one else’s “fault,” and nothing, nothing, is really a fault at all! It’s just what is.
I giggle at ”Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?”
I used to say that Daddy thinks the world is going to hell in a handbasket and it’s everyone’s fault but his. Hmm… turn it around? I laugh. I have thought that, too, at times.
If we want to stop terrorism, the first place to do that is in our own minds. How many ways do you terrorize yourself?
You are going to be a little late to work or to a date, and you get tight in the stomach, your pulse races, you tense your body and hurry around the house trying to be on time, fearing the worst, fearing you’ll get fired or your lover will blow up at you for being late (or not calling or not finishing a project on time or whatever it is).
Who is terrorizing you?????
The boss, the lover - they aren’t even there! It’s just you!
Steven Covey says, “If you start to think the problem is ‘out there,’ stop yourself. That thought is the problem.”
If we question enough thoughts, other people turn to Teflon.
I meet a man who “isn’t wanting a relationship right now.” I can hear the congruence in his voice. It seems true to me at every level. It almost doesn’t have time to bug me anymore. I have to notice that I’ve been projecting that thought! Why else would I answer a personals ad for a “middle ground” relationship, when I’ve known for decades that isn’t what I want?
I’m human. That’s what humans do. Until we don’t.
But Russ was Teflon. I could not make any of that stick to him if I wanted to. It was way too obvious who really didn’t want a relationship. Me! Knowing that I really do want a relationship it was time to get congruent with myself and stop taking these sidetracks. Now.
I’m afraid I’ll lose my freedom. I’m afraid I won’t have time for myself. I’m afraid I won’t be able to work on my career, my projects, have time for my friends, my hobbies, and on and on and on.
Me.
I project those thoughts onto others
And thank God for others!
They are so sweet to take all of that, to be there, to be my mirror, to stand in that fire with me. I am just melted with gratitude at what the world has to put up with from me, and unflinchingly does until I remember where to look, where my healing is, where I find the truth.
I’m not saying I didn’t have times when I was cursing him venomously. I even shared that with him. He said he couldn’t blame me for thinking that. Now there is a man who knows his own mind, a man who is comfortable in reality and willing to embrace truth. He couldn’t blame.
It was worth 365 days of meditations for me to reprogram my thinking. For me, ACIM laid some groundwork for The Work of Byron Katie. I can do one of her worksheets in less than an hour. And that laid the groundwork for IAM, Instant Advanced Mediations, where each of the 12 meditations take about 5 minutes.
I just happen to like words enough to love all of it.
That’s me.
I like living in a Teflon world, where my projections don’t stick. I’m rubber, you’re glue. We’ve known this since we were children. And I love it when they seem to stick and I get to look, to check it out, to find out what’s real.
Bliss. It’s just bliss.
I’m blissfully full of smoked salmon omelette that I fixed to share with my roommate, Tina, and her boyfriend, Jack, this morning. The sun is shining. The bath water is hot.
What’s not to love about that?
Love, Ann
Sex must not remain sex; that is the Tantra teaching. It must be transformed into love. And love also must not remain love. It must be transformed into light, into meditative experience, into the last, ultimate, mystic peak.
Osho (formerly known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
Divinity schminity. If you don’t feel love deep in your heart and body, who cares if you are living a devout spiritual life or debasing yourself, eating chocolate with a lover wrapped in furs?”
David Deida
Finding God Through Sex
March 31, 2007 at 11:42 pm |
I loved this posting. Of *course* I can relate
“I’m afraid I’ll lose my freedom. I’m afraid I won’t have time for myself. I’m afraid I won’t be able to work on my career, my projects, have time for my friends, my hobbies, and on and on and on.”
All these beliefs have cropped up during my marriage. I have questioned them all and they are untrue (for me).
Sometimes one of two pop up again, but now I know what to do about that!
I’m seriously considering doing The Workbook again. I’ve never completed all 365 lessons.
Love,
T
April 1, 2007 at 6:23 am |
Of *Course* you can! (I love friends who love puns.)
Go for it. You’ll enjoy the daily thrill of truth in ACIM.
It takes me a year and a half to do the 365 lessons.
I know a teacher of TW whose wife wants nothing to do with it, but she *does* do a Worksheet on him when they have a disagreement. He loves to know what she is thinking about him.
I would love for any lover or friend of mine to do that.
A roommate did that one time. It was totally out of the blue to me. I’d never done that before and I was nervous to hear what she was thinking about me. She asked me at 10 o’clock at night, too.
So, I sat there while she told me what she thought of me and did nothing but ask, “Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true? How do you react when you think that thought? Who would you be without that thought? Turn it around.” as dispassionately as I could.
Thank God, I knew to stick to the questions and not editorialize.
By the time we went to bed, I was so high I could not sleep. (Yes, like when I read the Briah chapter of Jason Shulman’s book.)
More o’ dat!
In fact, I invite readers of this blog to tell me exactly what they think of me, my writing, my ideas, whatever. I look forward to hearing what you are thinking.
Love, Ann
PS – Mmm, tea. You Brits had the right idea with this stuff!