Essay on Existential Truth

It is a joy when I write a sentence which is my own and which I love. Here are some: The truth of every human being is a focal point greater than drug induced euphoria. Wanting your truth is a new way of being. Consideration of your truth is a step to being plugged in to who you really are. I always wanted to be more than a pile of crap. It turns out that I am, just never heard that from my parents. But now, I can come to believe it of myself. Yes, it takes some practice and some focus and some intent, but it is really my reality. If I think it, it will be. My truth is my spiritual awakening.

“Spiritual awakening is no more and no less than a human being claiming his or her full humanity” (Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Mate, page 421). The core, the root, of a spiritual awakening is your truth as the human that you are. The truth of who you really are is integral to developing and sustaining a new life .

Are you an addict? You are an addict if you are human. Dopamine is your drug of choice. This neurotransmitter will drive your every decision and activity, at least until you become aware and become driven by spiritual forces instead. Your truth, who you really are, is the spiritual life force. Your brain/mind has an unconscious life of which you are not aware. Thoughts are had and decisions made without your awareness. Who is the someone who gets up and goes to work even if they don’t want to? Or does chores? Or doesn’t steal, even returns lost valuables? This person was not learned in Boy Scouts or church. This person is who was born. This person is an abstract truth, the beginning of a human, a divine perfection. This truth lives on and exists now. Be it. Remember it. Truth is who you are. Think it. Feel it. Be it.

As a self seeking human, or someone who wants more out of life than a good paying job, “…see with the Soul’s sight, move in the realm of Truth…” (Plotinus’ Enneads, McKenna translation, page 69). Contemplate for yourself: your soul; your soul’s sight; the realm of truth; moving in the realm of Truth. Feel your consciousness expand beyond any drug induced trip. This bigger consciousness can be sustained by you, for life. This bigger consciousness will sustain you, for life.

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An Inconvenient Truth

I was laying in bed last night, not getting to sleep, mulling over my spiritual situation. This thought came over my brain waves: you bear the yoke of Christ.

Now that was a shocker. Despite what I think of churches and denominations, I bear the yoke of Christ. It cannot be removed. I read all sorts of opinions about God and Christianity. But I bear the yoke no matter what I think of them. Inesacapble truth.

And so I got up this morning as usual and did my spiritual study. I slammed into Lesson 186 of A Course in Miracles. (found here in entirety, lesson 186). But the pertinent points for me were:
–   acceptance of a part assigned to you, without insisting on another role
–   Let us not fight our function. We did not establish it. It is not our idea.
–   All false humility we lay aside today, that we may listen to God\’s Voice reveal to us what He would have us do
–   the Voice for God assures you that you have the strength, the wisdom and the holiness to go beyond all images
–   Arrogance makes an image of yourself that is not real…sensing its basis crumble. Let it go. Salvation of the world depends on you, and not upon this little pile of dust…like wind-swept leaves…like mirages seen above a desert…These unsubstantial images will go, and leave your mind unclouded and serene, when you accept the function given you
–  Do as God\’s Voice directs
–  Salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive

In ACIM, forgiveness is in fact \”looking beyond.\” Looking beyond the dream of this world to Christ within, not of this world. I do in fact understand and practice ACIM forgiveness. This morning, I realized how insubstantial the roles in this world are. How we honor the role of a person instead of honoring the Christ in each.  You don\’t have to believe in God to honor the inner being of any person. That is the beauty of an atheist. Love just is; no need to attach religion or spirituality or God or any code of morals.

So for a little while this morning, my ego laid aside its frustration over being nobody and instead beheld TRUTH. I closed my eyes as I rode my elliptical and beheld Truth, the core of all which I call Christ. Yes, my vocabulary is corrupted by denominational words. But still, it is the essence which matters, the truth which sparked the word. Someone was beholding and they needed to exclaim. I am exclaiming now. TRUTH.

I bear the yoke of Christ. My way is quiet. In silence I listen to the Voice. And then I go to work. No monastic profession. No religious confirmation. No bowing or kneeling or professing allegiance. No specialness of any sort (thank you atheists). I just bear the yoke.

800th Post – Finally Wisdom

I\’ll keep it short and sweet. My quest is to find a different basis for the joy of living than the dopamine reward cycle.

I\’m certain that most people seek happiness in the ongoing pursuit of dopamine.

I\’m certain that true spiritual connection has nothing to do with dopamine.

So my quest is for truth.

The truth is within. It is not of this world. I want to identify with and have my being in truth, not the approval of the people in the world. If I seem depressed, it is just withdrawal symptoms as I seek freedom from addiction to dopamine.

My Vow to Atonement

Jesus is in charge of the Atonement (1.III.1)

My Vow to Atonement

1. If I am afraid, I am deceived.
2. His peace cannot be shaken. I am healed.
3. This is The Truth and my commitment.

My background thinking:

A Course in Miracles is filled with words which have been redefined in the attempt to correct our thinking. Like: miracle, Atonement, forgiveness, ego, salvation, body, world, sickness and healing. I have read the course 6 times and completed the workbook 3, but am still trying to understand and purposefully use the concepts. Undoing 50 years worth of worldly programming takes me time. It doesn’t take God any time, but a sudden rearrangement might scare me so Jesus is working slowly.

Miracle principle 25: \”Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement.\”

The meaning of Jesus is corrected by the Course. The early church, mainly after 200 ac, interpreted Jesus and his teachings incorrectly.

There are no vows to be taken in the Course; but you are asked to make choices. Throughout the course, there are many emphatic statements: just remember this one thing, just do this, your only purpose is this, etc. I believe that each of these emphatic statements are saying the same thing but in different words. The feeling of the idea in my gut is the same for each one. The feeling is a deep and insistent yearning for connection to the Love behind each of the statements. The real meaning is: I am in Love, always have been, always will be, only rely on This Love, It gives me peace and safety.

In chapter 19D, The Fear of God, the text discusses the secret vow made to the ego never to lift the veil of fear which we made to hide the face of Christ, and ultimately God. The ego is afraid of God. This secret vow needs to be uncovered and brought into the light. Hence my idea that a counter vow, used all the time but especially when I am afraid, is beneficial for returning my awareness of my existence to God.

My reflection:

OK, so I was studying in Chapter 2 and learning about the Atonement. The simplest meaning is that the Atonement undoes our incorrect thinking. There are many more facets to the term. The Atonement is/was an act of love, given so that we could defend our minds against incorrect thinking. Use of the defense against the ego’s thought system relieves fear and opens the mind to the inner light, the Holy Spirit’s thought system and we rejoin the truth of our existence solely in the heart of God. “The Atonement is a total commitment” (2.II.7). From my life as a nun, I understand commitment and vow to be related. The vow is a statement of the commitment.

OK, so my head is filled with new synapses, corrected thoughts. Musing on everything said in chapter 2 about the Atonement, the body, fear etc, and laying in bed last night wondering if I was getting a sore throat, I realized that I was afraid and decided to use the Course to relieve my fear and stop the process of getting sick. I looked again at chapter 2 and my mind pieced together, in my own words, the entire meaning of the Course, its entire learning and usefulness and what I am committed to. I’m calling this my Vow to Atonement. It is a litany I can play in my head to keep me “on course” all day, safe in the heart of God no matter what appears to be happening (so called good or bad). The world is an illusion. I am really an idea in the Mind of God. My body is part of my experience in the dream of this world, but its purpose is as a learning device. It does not have a mind of its own and nothing happens in the world which is real.

2.I.1: \”All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that you have the ability to usurp the power of God. Of course, you neither can nor have been able to do this. Here is the real basis for your escape from fear. The escape is brought about by your acceptance of the Atonement, which enables you to realize that your errors never really occurred. \”

So here is my Vow of Atonement:

1. If I am afraid, I am deceived.
2. His peace cannot be shaken. I am healed.
3. This is The Truth and my commitment.

Fear is my agreement to believe the ego’s proposition that I am separate from God and in a world which will hurt me. This thought is not true. What is true is that I have been given the peace of God, which is truly a rock. Knowing God’s peace is in me, fear leaves and my mind is healed. This is The Atonement. This is the Truth and I am committed to the Truth.

Conclusion:
The key core principle that any human must adopt and cling to at all times is reliance on God, not self. This returns the mind to the heart of God and heals the mind of fear. Living in love instead of fear, I project love and deny the ego\’s hate filled world.

Middle Class Hero

I am the everyday un-illuminated, the New Age un-enlightened. I am the group that sought God in every possible way, from conservative right Christian to pseudo-Buddhist to channeled entity to sweat lodges, vision quests and labyrinths. In the convent, I sat for hours adoring the Blessed Sacrament. Post convent, I fasted for extended periods of time and then ate only raw foods. As far as I know, Revelation didn’t happen.

What I am I is a mature American woman, single, professional, white, educated, vegetarian, long distance running, health freak. I have been in pursuit of God since an unfortunate (or fortunate) trip to Israel at the age of 22. But my actual life has mostly been about going to work in order to have money and staying straight emotionally. I’ve not succeeded at suburban family life, nor at weirdness pretending to be wisdom. The heroes of my cultural heritage are the ones that retire young and live comfortably. Since the American economy no longer plays that game for us, I am one of many who will not retire young, if ever. The crumbling of the United States is just enough to show us its false unfounded delusions of grandeur.

My culture does not have a class of wise ones.

My problem is that my story is not a hero’s story. I have done what is heroic in other people’s stories, but in mine it is ho hum. I am done with the pseudo-Buddhist bullshit and the romance of suffering for Christ.

Before I went monastic, I fit in. Post monastic, I scorned society. I did not settle for a life of fitting in with ordinary social groupings (and everyone is encouraged by psychology to fit in somewhere). My scorn turns out to be pure ego. It is not based on any real advantage. I don’t have a special place in anything to justify my position. I just don’t want to be like “them,” to be contaminated by their corrupted food, overeating, television programming or useless conversations. But I am not special either. So I have sunk into nothing.

Nothing can be made of nothingness. I’ve tried that too; the romanticizing or spinning of nothingness into a prized position, close to God. Recently, in a brief interlude of difficult emotions, I came to the truth. I suddenly realized that I am in a valley, not the inhabitor of mountain tops at all. It is a delusion to think some sudden discontinuity in reality will save me. Not even A Course in Miracles, which offers a way out, has transported any of its followers in THIS lifetime.

So I guess I will go running, lift weights, collect my paycheck, eat tofu, drink coffee and quietly grow. That is the blessing of my life: I do keep growing.

The Book of My Heart – a love gospel

\”I love you,\” is the most obvious thing God ever said to me. That it has taken 51 years to hear is incredible.

We all want something out of life. The most useful name for what we want is \”love.\” But usually we don\’t realize that love is what we want and instead spend gobs of time seeking fame, fortune, success, victory. Inside this exterior seeking work is hidden our issues; needs for approval, self-esteem, self-worth, validation. Deeper inside the relatively superficial self layer is our fear. Oh, God, that fear is terrifying. Fear that I am really nothing; or worse than nothing: a worm, a piece of crap or that I am bad. That I might be truly bad terrifies me to see so I turn back to the world and work on my conquests hoping they\’ll hide my badness.

But if I make another choice and keep pondering the fear and what it could be hiding, I\’ll conclude (after months or decades) that it is not true. During my exploration of why I think I am a piece of crap, I am actually healing the infection and draining the pus by opening myself to whatever it is. As it reduces, I see something else. Slowly, I see goodness; mine and everyone else\’s.

At this point, I am free. I find myself off the hook, and I\’ve let everyone else off the hook too. I no longer need any identifying labels: I am a marathoner; I am a Boston Qualifier; I am an Ironman; I am a parent; I am a millionaire. I no longer need conquests to define me or give me an acceptable sense of self.

The only victory I ever needed was the decision to turn inward away from the world and accept my pre-existant intrinsic good.

As I say this, I hear the gufaws of the audience. I stand alone in the spot light held up to ridicule. \”Silly Spirit Flower,\” they say. \”We are not afraid. We already know we are good people. It is you who are so deprived. Quit telling us that our conquests are meaningless illusions, children\’s play acting. Our victories mean alot.\”

Spirit Flower looks into the crowd and finds the one pair of eyes which admits it\’s pain. \”Oh really?\” she says. \”Then why do you feel like a faker? If a marathon medal really meant anything, all my troubles would be over.\”

But I kept dropping the rocks of worldly validation until I finally spent enough time shining light on the fear. I melted its ice and became undaunted. I believed it less and less. Then, the inner good could be discerned, accepted, joined and loved.

All I ever wanted was to love myself; that inner good who is my true identity. My true identity is not window dressing. Sure I still run marathons, but my self love does not depend on how fast I was or even finishing. What ever I do, I do as that inner good. That inner good is my identity. Good is what I am, what I bring, what I give.

Life lived at the level of age group awards is futile.

Life lived as good is eternal.