Bright Spots

• Pa was smiling ear to ear tonight because he has just now come to understand that he can have second helpings at any meal any time he wants.  Ninety percent of people with Parkinson Disease have lost their sense of smell, which often leads to a loss of appetite. I think Pa is in the other ten percent.
• A winter storm is heading this way.  I do not wish an unsafe situation on anyone, but I do love a good blizzard!
• I cooked up a mess of red chard tonight along with a skillet of corn bread and a pot of black-eyed peas.  Soul food all week for me!
• I had my first experience doing hospice volunteering with someone with dementia and it went rather well. She wanted to go through my pockets and I had no problem with that.
• Pa likes being able to see the train go by from his window.

I Moved My Body!

Ever since I’ve lived in this beautiful condo building with its many amenities, I have told friends and coworkers that they are welcome to come over and enjoy them with me.  There’s an indoor, heated salt-water pool, a hot tub, a dry sauna, squash courts, tennis court, etc.  Sometimes when I invite friends to dinner, I say, “if you want, bring your suit.”  But nobody ever does.

Until today.

I have a friend who has something painful going on with her joints that hasn’t been fully diagnosed yet. Today she took me up on my offer to enjoy the warm water with me.  She brought her future step children, both pre-teen. The jacuzzi was piping hot. We could see the snow through the windows of the rec complex while sitting in the hot tub, jets pummeling our sore muscles and her achy joints.

Realizing I had nothing in the house to offer children, I’d gone out early this morning to get juice, snacks and sandwich fixings.  It ends up they already had plans to meet Dad for lunch.  That’s okay. I made myself a peanut butter, honey and banana sandwich.

When the grey clouds parted momentarily, which the forecast said would not happen for long, I headed over to Lakeview Park Marina to see if I could get a glimpse of the Black-legged Kittiwake that has been spotted there over the past two days.  Another birder spied it on the water just off Solidarity Towers and was kind enough to offer me a look. He got it in the view of his beautiful big Swarovsky with 50x magnification, but every time I tried to see it, it either moved or I didn’t focus the scope in time.  Then we couldn’t find it again, so I started to leave.  As soon as we turned to face upstream, he saw the female King Eider that local birders have also been abuzz about.  It wasn’t thirty feet away, too close for the scope! My new friend was also kind enough to point out to me which markings were diagnostic, proving that this was a female King and not Common Eider. Neat!

I had promised to help Sylvain shop for stuff for Pa’s new room, so I thanked the helpful fellow and came home.  When Sylvain and I postponed our shopping trip, I decided to head back across the street, this time taking a more western vantage point.  I was able to find a pair of Hooded Mergansers, and there was a Lesser Black-backed Gull wheeling low over the ice and water a ways downstream.

Since the sun was still out, I decided to check Lakeview Park Marina one more time.  Scanning the water without the binoculars, I easily spotted something different floating among the hundreds of divers.  It was the Kittiwake! What an adorable bird.

As I was leaving another birder was just pulling up. As she extracted a nice scope from the trunk of her car, I told her where she could find the Kittiwake.

“Is the Eider still around?” she asked.

I told her I’d seen it just an hour earlier.

At supper time  Sylvain joined me for the last of my coq au vin, after which we went out to get Pa some things for his room.

In all it was a nice, active day.  I feel much better for having moved my body AND gotten some sunshine.

Grateful Today

• that I had no trouble getting up at 4:30 to be at the nursing home at 6:00 to make sure Pa got his Parkinson’s meds on time on this, his first full day in his new residence
• for a sweet PSW who spoke French to Pa
• for the blessing that Pa’s private PSW is; she will continue to be employed for a couple of weeks while Pa transitions to his new setting; I was so happy to see her face at 8:00 when I had to leave for work
• for dawn light on untouched snow
• for the smiles of the students and the way their faces light up when they see me in the halls
• for a big hug and a kiss from a student’s four-year-old granddaughter
• for the fun I have in the T.A. room trying to teach a learning disabled student some sight words; he tries so very hard and makes slow but discernible progress
• for the pamphlet I found online that may help us advocate for Pa with the nursing home staff, who so far do not seem to fully appreciate the importance of his getting his meds on time

Romans 8:28

I went up to the fellowship room after church on Sunday and sat alone with a little plate of fruit and cheese. I was content to sit by myself and people-watch. A woman came and asked if she could sit with me, unless I preferred to be alone. I appreciate the sensitivity and awareness it takes to realize that some people really do like sitting alone! Anyway, I said “welcome” and she went to get a plate. Two ladies then joined her. We started to talk about the first woman’s bright red Chinese tunic with the soft batik pattern on it. She said she chooses bright coloured clothing in winter to cheer her up. I agreed that red is very playful and I often do the same: choose bright clothing in winter, especially red, purple and other playful colours. She said she used to wear black a lot until she noticed how colours had the power to effect her mood. I nodded while thinking about my favourite winter coat and my multi-coloured wellies.  Then the lady on my right rolled her eyes, sighed and said, “the colour I wear does not determine my mood.” At that she briskly got up and went to sit with someone else. She did not even say bye or excuse me.

As soon as the chair was empty, another woman changed tables to join us. Then the guest minister made her way over. The conversation deepened. It was wonderful. I learned a lot.  I couldn’t help but think about the woman who missed out on our amazing discussion by allowing that early exchange to drive her away. I wonder how many wonderful things we miss in life by being hasty to judge and remove ourselves instead of waiting to see what develops.

=============

Sylvain’s family got the call. After two years on a waiting list, Pa has risen to the top and has been offered a room in the nursing home that is his first choice…just four minutes away from where they live.

I needn’t tell you what that’s been like. We called a family meeting so everyone could be part of the discussion on whether to say yes or “not yet.”  Saying “not yet” has its risks. If we say no to this, we cannot say no to the next one without going back to the bottom of the waiting list.  If we say no now, the next call might be from his fourth choice, which is 25 minutes away.

It was a painful 1.5 hour meeting because we couldn’t get Pa to participate in the decision. He would only say things like, “seems like it’s a done deal” or “how about I stay here and kick all of you out?”  Of course he doesn’t want to go; who would? But he understands that every hour of private care is costly, while every hour without private care is wearing on his wife.

On Monday morning, Sylvain called to tell Aspen Lake “yes.”

This has been very hard on Sylvain.  Please hold us in the Light.

=============

Yesterday my boss asked me if I would be available at 1:00 to talk to him and his boss about my position.  I was surprised when that time came to find myself in the CEO’s office with him present, as well.

Due to shifting immigration trends in Canada, the federal government is cutting funding to this area in order to give more to the metropolitan areas out west. Our organization has to cut 5% of our services.

After breaking the news to me that my noon hour class is going away at the end of March, they all assured me that it has nothing to do with my performance. My boss said my performance has been “outstanding,” and that he hopes I will continue to supply.

I looked over at my boss’ boss and also at the CEO. They both looked so… how can I say this? They looked to me like porcelain dolls that could break at any minute.  Our funding partner had not given them very much leeway at all in where to find the savings, CEO said. They have to focus on “value for dollar.”

There was only one thing crossing my mind in this moment. Do you know what it was?

It is not every day that you get an audience with the CEO. Show him what you’re made of.  Use this opportunity to let them see who you are.

“I want you to know that I feel a strong sense of allegiance to this organization,” I said. “I am not looking for work anywhere else at this point.  I know there is no way of knowing whether there will be an opening in a matter of months or years, but I am happy to be here and to be a part of this team.  I love the job and I love the students.”

My boss’ boss’ eyes got wide with surprise.

The CEO said, “I appreciate how you are responding to this news.”

I signed the paper and agreed not to blab to anyone before today’s meeting. Today I found out that a few people lost full-time jobs…ones they’d held for five, seven or ten years. There were tears.

=============

[There was] a warrior who had a fine stallion. Everyone said how lucky he was to have such a horse.

“Maybe” he said.

One day the stallion ran off. The people said the warrior was unlucky.

“Maybe” he said.

The next day the stallion returned, leading a string of fine ponies. The people said it was very lucky.

“Maybe” the warrior said.

Later, the warrior’s son was thrown from one of the ponies and broke his leg. The people said it was unlucky.

“Maybe” the warrior said.

The next week, the chief lead a war party against another tribe. Many young men were killed. But, because of his broken leg, the warrior’s son was left behind, and so was spared.

…but I AM a child of God

This blog post is a continuation of a conversation begun here.

Hi, Carlene,

Thank you for explaining the traditional Christian perspective on sin.

I am not sure how long ago you were a student of A Course in Miracles, but I would like to address two things you have said here about ACIM.

1) In your comment on the last post, you said: “In contrast to what the ACIM teaching spirits have to say, I find that the things I find most offensive in others are generally the things I find offensive in myself.”

To me, this is exactly what the Course is teaching us: that perception comes from projection, the Course’s term “projection” being very like Jung’s. When we see evil in another, the evil is a perception springing from our own minds. When I no longer have evil in my mind, I can no longer see it in my brother, so there is no sin to forgive.

Anyone reading this who is interested in more Jung-ACIM parallels can check out two blog posts called Carl Jung and The Course by Frank Dobner, Part I and Part II.

2) “If you’re not a Christian, you have to do it on your own.”

I just want to respectfully say that this is your truth, one you have arrived at through your experience. Nobody can touch that. It is yours. But it is not the only experience.

After my year of fervent prayer to God for Him to reveal Himself to me, I had what many would call a “mystical” or “religious” experience. I call it an awakening.  Before that day, I sometimes wondered if life was worth living. Since that day, God has walked with me and I am head over heels in love with life.

Before that day, the Holy Bible was gibberish to me. After the revelation, I raced back to it to see if that book would still sound like nonsense. It didn’t! I found profound, comforting truths on every page. I read ravenously for hours on end.

Still curious to see if all holy scriptures would spring to life, I picked up the Holy Qur’an, the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching. I sat reading these texts for hours under the towering conifers, my feet tucked beneath me on a bed of pine needles, tears streaming down my face.

Beforehand, evangelists’ messages (I lived in the Bible Belt) had been cryptic and frustrating to me; now I could spend whole afternoons talking with prosceletizers about the glory of God.

I worshiped with Pentecostals for a time, spoke in tongues and was baptized in the name of Jesus. My fellow congregants were happy to have me in their midst. I never once mentioned that I was not exclusively Christian, that all faiths swept me away with equal ease. Had anyone asked, I would have told them; but nobody did.

For a year I practiced Buddhism in Japan where I experienced miracles and healings through chanting the Lotus Sutra.

As Gandhi said, “I am a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim and a Jew.”

This is how I feel.  I know that Jews do not have to “do it on their own.” They are not alone! I know that Muslims and Hindus do not have to, either.  HaShem is available to us all when we seek a holy relationship with It/Him/Her.

When I turn to God through Jesus, God is with me.  When I turn to the Great Silence of my Mind in meditation, a holy peace comes over me. When I read a poem by the sufi mystic Hafez, my heart overflows with love.

I am so happy and grateful that Jesus offers himself as a path to forgiveness for you and many others.  But I know…not from any dogma or scripture or the Course or any other teaching… but from my own personal experience, that there are many paths up the mountain.

A Course in Miracles urges me to cultivate a daily relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  We arrive together at a place of pure forgiveness.

=====

P.S. I take off my hat to my wonderful readers who, in my entire five years of blogging, have never once engaged in any intolerance or ungracious behaviour with one another. You always make every commenter feel…well, if not warmly welcome then at least safely ignored.  And I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart. You are all one hell of a class act.

I Am Not a Theologian

It makes me a bit uncomfortable every time I try to talk about Buddhism or ACIM and/or other Christian* traditions for at least two reasons:

caveat # 1) I am a student of ACIM, not a teacher. I am a student of Buddhism and Taoism, not a teacher.

caveat # 2) No amount of talking or writing is going to bring us to the Truth. Language is the domain of ego and the left brain. If we want to seek the Truth, we are each better served to turn off these machines and go sit in prayer or meditation or silence.  And if we do that, can we expect Buddhists to receive one message about forgiveness and Christians another? Are we not all turning to the same Source to speak to our hearts?

Gautama Buddha said “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

With these two caveats in mind, is it still possible for us to explore these ideas together and learn from one another? Carlene is posting about Christianity and Buddhism on her blog here.

I have not even yet read 1/10 of the text of The Course and am only to Lesson 134 out of 365 of the workbook lessons, but so far it seems to me that I am being encouraged above all to sit in silence and await what some Christians call the voice of the Holy Spirit. That is my ultimate authority above any book or teaching from outside myself.

I awoke before dawn this morning since I am going to church (I attend a church that sees no conflict between Christianity and Buddhism) and opened the big blue ACIM book to the next lesson, the one I will do today: 134.  Wasn’t I blown away to see the topic of today’s lesson?  So maybe you can help me with it. Is the Course saying that the act doesn’t exist or that the evil doesn’t exist (except in my mind) or that the evil doesn’t exist as something to be judged by me because I am capable of the same?

Lesson 134

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Let us review the meaning of “forgive,” for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appear to rest salvation on a whim.

This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected, when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. It must be limited to what is false. It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. Truth is God’s creation, and to pardon that is meaningless. All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. Does this need pardon? How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign?

The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth, and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth, in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind, as you regard yourself.

Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. It would see as right the plainly wrong; the loathsome as the good.

Pardon is no escape in such a view. It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed, denied or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. Guilt cannot be forgiven. If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned; first, by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.

It is sin’s unreality that makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely.

Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks straight through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, “My brother, what you think is not the truth.”

The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies; the great restorer of the simple truth. By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which has been blocked by dreams of guilt. Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself.

There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for that is self-deception. Ask instead, “Would I accuse myself of doing this?”

Thus will you see alternatives for choice in terms that render choosing meaningful, and keep your mind as free of guilt and pain as God Himself intended it to be, and as it is in truth. It is but lies that would condemn. In truth is innocence the only thing there is. Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth; between the world you see and that which lies beyond; between the hell of guilt and Heaven’s gate.

Across this bridge, as powerful as love which laid its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth. They are not kept to swell and bluster, and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them. He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there. And now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied to him.

He does not have to fight to save himself. He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him. Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe. He can remove the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery. His step is light, and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead a star is left behind, to point the way to those who follow him.

Forgiveness must be practiced, for the world cannot perceive its meaning, nor provide a guide to teach you its beneficence. There is no thought in all the world that leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought that it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality. And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.

Today we practice true forgiveness, that the time of joining be no more delayed. For we would meet with our reality in freedom and in peace. Our practicing becomes the footsteps lighting up the way for all our brothers, who will follow us to the reality we share with them. That this may be accomplished, let us give a quarter of an hour twice today, and spend it with the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness, and was sent to us to teach it. Let us ask of Him:

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Then choose one brother as He will direct, and catalogue his “sins,” as one by one they cross your mind. Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his “offenses” but to save the world from all ideas of sin. Briefly consider all the evil things you thought of him, and each time ask yourself, “Would I condemn myself for doing this?”

Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom. If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief. The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains you sought to lay upon your brother, but were laid upon yourself.

Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will still be many times when you forget its meaning and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Would I accuse myself of doing this?
I will not lay this chain upon myself.

In everything you do remember this:

No one is crucified alone, and yet no one
can enter Heaven by himself.

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* The term Christian is a very dicey one and a dangerous area on which to tread. A Course in Miracles, as I see it, is an attempt to bring us back to Jeshua’s original teachings/message. In that sense, it can be called Christian.

Suki’s Question Revisited

Ever since I tried to respond to Suki’s request for me to speak to the “x does not exist” position presented in A Course in Miracles (Lesson 14), I’ve been troubled by the insufficiency of the essay I wrote.

There is another model, one that is much more in tune with the teachings of The Course, and I did not include it or really come close to presenting it when I attempted to present a few models as explanations. So let me return to it now.

Let’s call this one the All is All model.

What is God?

For the sake of today’s argument, can we call God “All That Is?” Can we shake ourselves loose for one moment from that old (PSEUDO!) Judeo-Christian model whereby we were programmed to think of God as outside ourselves, separate from us?

The New Physics points to our oneness with all that is. Everything at every level of existence is both enfolded by every other level and enfolds every other level. The old Newtonian idea of building blocks went out the window a long time ago, yet we continue to be trapped in that paradigm of conceptualizing our world as being comprised of pieces.

People, there are no pieces.

When I say that the airplane crash does not exist, I mean that it does not exist as something outside yourself. It does not exist as separate from you.

God enfolds everything and so do you.

Look at your hand. Is that you?

Go down a layer to the cells, then to the molecules and then to the atoms. Is that still a being or entity you can call by your name?  Is it?

Go deeper.

Eventually, the new science tells us, you arrive at something that cannot be picked further apart into “building blocks.” No. You arrive at something ineffable and mysterious. Fabric? Strings? Essence? Love?

I don’t know what it is or how it works, but is it still you?

Either it is not you and neither were the cells and skin and body and face you call (your name goes here). Id est you do not exist, and so there is no need to worry about any plane crashes.  OR…it IS still you at that level… in which case you and I are one. You and the plane are one. You and the people on the plane are one. You and I and all the planets and stars and galaxies are one.

This is what I believe.

There is no death (and certainly no suffering) to this over-arching organism or system that enfolds us all.

I love metaphors, have you noticed? So…

Have you ever seen an organism…like a fern or certain species of fungus…whose colonies can cover square miles of land? It looks like hundreds upon thousands of individual ferns or trees or mushrooms, but they are all connected underground…where they eye cannot follow.  One or several members of this connected colony can be cut down or succumb to a forest fire, but there truly is no death here…just a bit of pruning.

Was there suffering? Was there pain?

Yet there is pain. Pain is a part of having nerve endings. People who die or are injured in plane crashes do experience pain for a time. And there is suffering. But whence is the root of our suffering? Is the suffering something real or something imagined?

I suggest to you that suffering is all a matter of perception.

I have never given birth, but I’ve heard it can involve physical pain. And yet mothers often willingly have a second child and a third knowing that there will again be physical pain. Why? Because they consider it a price worth paying for the precious gift they get in exchange for it… a beautiful baby.

There have been monks who set themselves on fire. Can there be any physical pain worse than burning alive? I doubt it. Yet some humans have chosen that for themselves because of their values.

Pain and suffering are products of our small-minded, petty egos. Whether or not we see something as suffering depends on the context, depends on what we believe we are getting in return for it, depends on whether we believe we have chosen it and are in control of it. In and of itself, suffering does not exist.

The plane crash happens and for a short moment in time, some humans experience fear, anxiety, physical pain. But whether that is something to get worked up about depends entirely on your perspective, on how you view this universe and this life.

Life and death go hand in hand. We somehow accept the pain of childbirth as a natural by-product of a beautiful cycle. Yet we second-guess God on plane crashes and other so-called tragedies. In our narrow view, most of us don’t see them as natural by-products of a perfect cycle.

When you can expand outside your ego and realize that you do not exist as a separate entity from the All, plane crashes are no problem. Yes, one day this body will die, but I will never die because I never existed. This thing I call Kelly isn’t anything but a human construct, an idea, …it has no weight and no volume. It is but a cluster of thoughts that I struggle to keep in place from moment to moment, day to day.

If you are still with me on this monster blog post, will you indulge me in quoting from the essay Love & Emptiness by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche in this month’s Shambhala Sun? He does a most brilliant job of explaining our non-existence:

The self has no entity in itself, but it believes it does. Its nature is that it spreads. Wherever it goes it pervades; whatever it encounters it begins to absorb as “I.” For example, when we are born, somehow our consciousness has been able to transfer from our previous life into this body, which exists only in a temporary way. Once we came into this body, we thought, “Hmm, not bad. It’s not mine, but I’ll make it mine.” And once we got used to our body, we immediately began thinking: my mother, my father, my house. Then my city, my state, my country, my planet, and so forth.

Ego has no boundary. It can go on continuously, appropriating other. When we come in contact with something, initially we look at it in a neutral way; we see it as belonging to somebody else, or maybe belonging to no one. If we see a tree, we don’t automatically think, “My tree.” Then we build a house next to it—and after a while, we think, “My tree.” This happens in any situation. When we buy an article of clothing, at first it feels foreign, but then it begins to feel familiar as my shirt. It is other, but the ego is constantly solidifying it as self.

The entity that really does exist is not diminished by plane crashes that destroy temporary parts of itself, transitional physical manifestations, pockets of its Consciousness. The entity that is real does not suffer. The suffering you think is real for the people you think are real (including me, including you) is an illusion, a dream.

ACIM Workbook Lesson 132

I absolutely LOVE this lesson, which I did yesterday. The highlighting/bolding is mine. It’s so beautiful to have my dear friend Olivia’s copy of ACIM with all her highlighting and pretty, glittery stickers in the margins to mark special passages. Is this not powerful? I have never been in AA or Al Anon, though maybe there were times when I should have been. But I like their saying, “It works if you work it.” If you see reality in accordance with the model below, it absolutely becomes true and you start to dance with the entire Universe.

Lesson 132

I loose the world from all I thought it was.

What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? And what can save the world except your Self? Belief is powerful indeed. The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth. A madman thinks the world he sees is real, and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.

Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it. Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think. You free the past from what you thought before. You free the future from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find.

The present now remains the only time. Here in the present is the world set free. For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world. You have enslaved the world with all your fears, your doubts and miseries, your pain and tears; and all your sorrows press on it, and keep the world a prisoner to your beliefs. Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thoughts of death within your mind.

The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came.

There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind.

But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is. There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today. Today’s idea is true because the world does not exist. And if it is indeed your own imagining, then you can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances. The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death.

A lesson earlier repeated once must now be stressed again, for it contains the firm foundation for today’s idea. You are as God created you. There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. How can a world of time and place exist, if you remain as God created you?

What is the lesson for today except another way of saying that to know your Self is the salvation of the world? To free the world from every kind of pain is but to change your mind about yourself. There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought.

Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and Love. Are these inherent in the world you see? Does it create like Him? Unless it does, it is not real, and cannot be at all. If you are real the world you see is false, for God’s creation is unlike the world in every way. And as it was His Thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts which made it and must set it free, that you may know the Thoughts you share with God.

Release the world! Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.

There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.

Today our purpose is to free the world from all the idle thoughts we ever held about it, and about all living things we see upon it. They can not be there. No more can we. For we are in the home our Father set for us, along with them. And we who are as He created us would loose the world this day from every one of our illusions, that we may be free.

Begin the fifteen-minute periods in which we practice twice today with this:

I who remain as God created me would loose the world from all I thought it was. For I am real because the world is not, and I would know my own reality.

Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed, along with you.

You need not realize that healing comes to many brothers far across the world, as well as to the ones you see nearby, as you send out these thoughts to bless the world. But you will sense your own release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could never be released alone.

Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world, and say whenever you are tempted to deny the power of your simple change of mind:

I loose the world from all I thought it was,
and choose my own reality instead.

Provoking Utne Article on Resuscitated Whorfian Debate

My friend Violet sent me an issue of UTNE recently because she said there wasn’t an article in the whole magazine that didn’t remind her of me. Tonight I went back to re-read this fascinating article about new findings supporting the idea that language changes our perceptions and thoughts.  I have a problem with the sub-title Utne gave to the article, though:  ”We don’t shape language, language shapes us.”  The brilliant researcher, Lera Boroditsky of Stanford, does a great job of proving that language influences cognition, but I don’t see how her data disprove that perception also shapes language.

In fact, in this debate between Lera and Mark Liberman in the Economist, Lera herself says: “Each language provides its own cognitive toolkit, and encapsulates the knowledge and worldview developed over thousands of years within a culture.”

Exactly! So is it right to say that a speaker of Kuuk Thaayorre is always well oriented in space because of her language, which uses compass-point terms rather than left/right (there’s an ant on your southwest leg)? Isn’t it fairer to say that being well oriented in space was always very important to this people and so their language evolved to reflect that?

Seems like a chicken and egg argument to me!  Juslar’s comment strikes me as sharper than either expert’s proposal:

Dear Sir,two satements to ponder: 1. What was first, man or language? 2. The size of your world is the size of your vocabulary. Given that man preceded language, every culture shaped different languages according to their specific environments and needs…Thus language is a human (cultural) construct that you (as a national) help to make evolve (plus interaction with other cultures). 2. Once a grownup, vocabulary does shape the way you think about the world. Most people have limited views for lack of good education. Conclusion: Both motions are true and interact in the shaping and mutation of cultures and wiews of the world: You and your environment shape languages and languages shape you (as your instrument for thought).

Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability | Video on TED.com

Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability | Video on TED.com.

Six Degrees of Separation?

You’ve heard of that theory, right? If not, go read about it here and come back.

Let’s play a little game with that notion. Let’s say we were trying to connect all of us (the writer and readers of this blog) to every famous person in the world in six degrees of separation or fewer.

To which famous person or persons could you help link us?

For example, I know someone (my friend J) who knows Bill Clinton personally. So I could be part of our path of links to him.  I also used to play bridge with someone who knows Hilary Rodham Clinton. See, I already have two points in this game.

What about dead people? Why not? I knew someone (my paternal grandfather) who knew someone (his brother Albert) who knew someone (his wife Muriel Earhart) who knew Amelia Earhart, her sister. That’s four links.

Leave your comments here and after a few days I will make a list of all the people we came up with! Are you game?

Your turn.

Loving Mamah

This is a great post title considering that at first glance, someone thought my last post title was “One Night Stand.”

I am about halfway through Loving Frank and it is still a page-turner for me.  When two blog readers reported not being able to really sink their teeth into this novel and stick with it, I began to wonder which of its elements make it so interesting to me.

One, for sure, is my feeling of kinship with Mamah Borthwick.  She followed her heart at the cost of being cast out of society as an immoral woman, a home-wrecker who brought scandal to her town.  I have had two love affairs that involved men who were married, though unhappily, when we began seeing each other. Each got divorced during our time together. In one case I found myself at bridge tournaments where people loyal to his ex made tsk tsk sounds and refused to speak to me. I ignored it and just played.  Little did they know that before it was all over, his ex would end up hugging me and thanking me for giving her the exit she’d been afraid to seek on her own.  In the second case, not only was the man married when we met (though they’d had separate bedrooms for years), but he had been my professor and was 40 years my senior. We were respectfully discreet much of the time, but did not always slink around. He actually had the courage to bring me as his date to a university dinner, where his colleagues, who all knew of our cohabitation and his divorce by then, treated me with great civility.

I don’t know how much liberty Nancy Horan took in portraying Mamah, but the one in the novel spoke fluent German and interpreted Italian for Frank when they were in Italy, translated Latin for him when they encountered it over doorways, and promised to master Swedish in three to four months’ time in order to become Ellen Key’s American translator.

German is one of the two languages I brought to the point of fluency or near fluency, though my German is now very rusty.  Whenever Sylvain and I encounter a bit of Latin here or there, I translate it for him. I don’t imagine there are too many people who would promise to master a language in three months’ time, so I feel as if Mamah and I are members of a little club.  Though it would be difficult, I know I could do that given an opportunity for full immersion and enough hours in the day to devote myself to nothing else.

Until high school, I had been a troubled child. I was very forgetful and was always staring out the window daydreaming. I glanced back at the teacher and blackboard just often enough to keep up with the lesson. When we read a novel in class, such as Twelve Angry Men, I would silently read so far ahead of the rest of the class that every time I was called on, I didn’t know what page we were on.

Due probably to a cluster of early and later childhood traumas, I fell into a pattern of self-destructive behaviours and friendships with those with similar issues: kids on the fringes.  There was one teacher in junior high who managed to find an area of giftedness in my odd brain. I remember that he confronted me once after I wrote an essay for his class that had rather shocking content; he couldn’t believe I hadn’t fabricated it.  He said, “this can’t be you.”

I said, “yours is the only class I’m good at. I make Ds in English.”  I’m not sure he believed me.

Of course the reason I made Ds in English wasn’t that I wasn’t good at English; it was because English was right after lunch, which was when I got drunk out in the tall weeds–sometimes alone and sometimes with an equally messed up friend.

In high school there were two classes where my academic potential began to emerge: English and German.  This was when I discovered my facility for languages and quickly added Spanish to my schedule.  It was a very odd feeling when I began to bring stacks of first place awards back from the state-wide foreign language festivals, making my teachers and principal proud. I guess even my city was proud, because my photo and an article appeared in the paper about how I had cleaned up at the annual competition in Fayetteville.

What on earth does all this history have to do with Loving Frank? I am explaining how I got to the same streets in Europe where Mamah had lunch and bought books.

Every year the AATG and German ministry of education sponsor an exam for high school German students across America. Those students in each state getting the very top scores are then interviewed by a panel of German teachers, and one from each state is chosen to stay with a German family for one month, attend high school classes in German, and go on a number of cultural field trips.

My German teacher told me, “You could win this if you try.”

And so I started taking a stack of German books with me (dictionary, 501 German Verbs Fully Conjugated in All The Tenses, grammar books, cultural readers) to all my babysitting gigs. After the kids were asleep, I would cram for the exam instead of watching TV.)

It worked. I got one of the top five scores in the state and was chosen for an interview.

I still remember the interview. First I was asked to talk about a series of unrelated pictures. “Zwei Jungen spielen mit einem roten Ball,” I said, so happy to have nailed the declension of a neuter noun in the dative case.  There were other questions designed to see if my personality and interests were compatible with this very valuable gift from the German Ministry of Education. Thankfully, my teacher had coached me a bit on what they would be looking for in answer to these questions.

“I want to go to the opera and lots of museums,” I said, convincing myself along with them as I uttered the words.

I was chosen.

And I was living a double life.

On the one hand the mother of a rich kid whom I had dated for a while in spite of her disapproval started being very chatty with me at school events.  On the other hand, this was still one of the most tumultuous periods of my adolescence with regard to alcohol abuse and other self-destructive patterns. I felt like the odd one out in that group of smart and mostly wealthy kids, since I was still more pot head than egg head.

Even if I couldn’t relate to my fellow scholars, the opportunity of a lifetime was not wasted on me.  I floated through the whole month eyes wide with wonder. Stationed with families in Nuremberg, we spent three weeks attending special high school classes in German, interspersed with lots of evening and weekend field trips to palaces, castles and museums throughout Bavaria. Then we travelled to what was then called West Berlin where we stayed in a youth hostel and discovered the night life of Berlin.  We saw the Brandenburg Gate and Museum at Checkpoint Charlie. A bus took us into East Berlin for a day, making the disassembly of the Wall nine years later especially meaningful to me.

When Mamah writes about her time in Berlin or mentions Unter den Linden Boulevard, I close my eyes and remember it.

I’m only halfway through the book, but look forward to the rest of the journey with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, my newfound kindred spirit.

——-

As a side note, I have since written for myself a “no married men” rule. It seems I am the type who has to experience something in order to learn what is right and wrong for me–as opposed to those people who are either born with a lot of common sense or can accept on faith what parents and society tell them is not a good idea.

On My Night Stand

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik (because Writing Down the Bones was checked out)

At the beginning of my library visit, I hoisted my tote onto the circulation counter and asked if I could donate some books to their book sale. The library clerk said yes.  When I pulled out two tomes and a hardback novel, her eyes got wide and she said, “Oh, I’ll show these to the librarian. We may want to add them to the collection.”

I’d been carrying the two enormous and expensive XML programming books around for three years. It felt so good to find them a good home.

As I was leaving the library, a handsome older gentleman actually flirted with me! When I told him I was engaged, he asked if my mother was available. I can’t wait to tell her that I’ve lined her up a hot date.

2010 Blog Stats

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 62,000 times in 2010. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would have performed about 3 times.

 

In 2010, there were 301 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1367 posts. There were 102 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 42mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was September 12th with 264 views. The most popular post that day was Grace in Small Things 96 through 102.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were blogger.com, windsoressexspeak.ca, lynn-nonameblog.blogspot.com, internationalmetropolis.com, and Google Reader.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for zereshk polo, nudism, her feet, divine sex, and pocket door.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Grace in Small Things 96 through 102 September 2010
30 comments

2

Zereshk Polo November 2006
7 comments

3

Lisa’s Feet March 2007
12 comments

4

How to Make a Dress May 2007
15 comments

5

Piano Windows and Pocket Doors! January 2007
1 comment