A universal assembly for true discernment
Please read quotes 997-1000 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Renounce fatalism and apply yourself to self-effort.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Please read and contemplate today’s commentary in the same way that you read and contemplate the Thoughts of Awakening.
~Commentary on Attachment~
Precious is an idea that may speak of “fondness” to you. It may speak of “treasure.” But I say to you, some of what you treasure most you do not think of fondly. Some of what you treasure most you seem to hate, dislike, resist or deny.
Do not be afraid to admit that an idea is precious, whether it seems to be an idea you are fond of or an idea you dislike. If it is an idea you cannot easily let go of, it is an idea that is precious to you. Accepting that the idea is precious to you will help you question its value. In questioning its value, you open to awareness that knows how to judge the precious as precious and the seeming precious as having no value at all.
~From our Holy Spirit
An idea in the mind
is just an idea.
It is nothing more
and nothing less.
If an idea is given attention
it will become manifest
in one form or another,
but manifest does not make it
more than an idea.
You are beyond ideas
even though ideas may seem to be manifest
as you.
Let go of ideas
and their manifestation will drop away,
but you still are.
~From our Holy Spirit
This evening (or tomorrow morning):
Read NTI 1 Timothy 6 in full.
Tomorrow:
Please read quotes 993-996 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
One should never yield to laziness but strive to attain liberation, seeing that life is ebbing away every moment.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
You are not the mind. You are that which you know now as the inner teacher.
The inner teacher is your Self. When you sit and commune with the inner teacher, you are temporarily disengaging from the mind and communing with your own true wisdom. When you are able to stay with your Self, and your attention no longer drifts back to the mind as ‘me’, you won’t need an inner teacher anymore. Until then, the apparent relationship with the inner teacher is the most important relationship you have. Please treasure it as such. It will awaken you to the degree that you value it as the most important thing in your life.
For contemplation:
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” ~ Matthew 13:44
How do you define yourself?
What are the limits you place
on the idea of who you are?
Do not take this question lightly
as something to read
and then move beyond.
Stay with this question.
Give willingness to see
definitions you might not have seen,
which are part of your identity.
Look at who you think you are and ask,
“Is this idea a limit?”
If the answer is “yes”,
give willingness to release the limit
regardless of how precious
the idea may be to you.
~From our Holy Spirit
This evening (or tomorrow morning):
Read NTI 1 Timothy 5 (v11-15) to the end of the chapter.
Tomorrow:
Sometime this weekend:
Listen to this 79-minute audio teaching from NTI 1 Timothy.
Join us at 10:15 am ET/ 8:15 am MT for Our Weekly Sunday Gathering with Rev. Shiryl KaplanTitle: “New Year, New Perspective”
Description: Rev. Shiryl will share on the topic of how looking over the past year and taking stock of all that was learned is now really helping her to cultivate a new perspective for this year. She further hopes to ‘teach what she would learn’ as Inner Wisdom guides her in the homily this upcoming Sunday.
Reader: Laura Bedford will be reading excerpts from For Love of the Real by Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee.
*Weekly gathering is held every Sunday morning at 10:15 am ET/8:15 am MT in the Awakening Together Sanctuary. Join us after the Gathering for our Fellowship Time, hosted by Michelle Costa.
Join us at 1:30 pm ET/ 11:30 am MT for Freedom Practice SanghaThis will be a time of sharing our inquiries, insights, and challenges, listening to others, or just knowing that we are in community as we find that undefended place within ourselves that longs to be free.
Join us at 5:00 pm ET/ 3:00 pm MT for The Mighty CompanionsRevs. Glen Ganaway and Yolanda Mapes, who are interfaith ministers, share a delightful, funny, and inspiring hour of A Course in Miracles. Come join in on the fun, the laughs, and the music while unlearning the ego through the lessons and chapters of ACIM.
Join us at 6:00 pm ET/ 4:00 pm MT for Something Genuine with Rev. Jacquelyn EckertRev. Jacquelyn Eckert facilitates this program, in which Awakening Together members and friends join together to watch and discuss TED talks that reveal the Truth of ourselves and our universe based on the actual experience of ordinary people. Their insights are genuine—not based upon theory or dogma—and give us a “man on the street” perspective on what we are coming to learn through Awakening Together.
Join us at 7:00 pm ET/ 5:00 pm MT for Clarifying the Teachings with Rev. Regina Dawn AkersEach week Regina picks a different topic and clarifies the teaching around that topic. She also takes questions regarding that topic. If there is extra time at the end of the session, she takes questions on any spiritual topic in a Satsang type of format.
Join us at 7:30 pm ET/ 5:30 pm MT the Live Satsang with Liz CronkiteRegina Dawn Akers will be interviewing Liz Cronkhite.
Liz Cronkhite is a spiritual teacher, life coach, and writer, most notably of The Plain Language A Course in Miracles and 4 Habits for Inner Peace. Liz enjoys working one-on-one with students of A Course in Miracles and other nondualistic paths to help them access their inner peace. She emphasizes a direct relationship with Spirit as the way to do this.
In 2018, Liz experienced a moment she calls The Break when existence as she knew it fell away, taking with it the life she had been living. Since that moment, she considers herself to be in an awakened dream. The spirit-centered life she led before, as well as this dramatic shift, are detailed in A Memoir of Christ: A Student of A Course in Miracles Awakens.
*Sanctuary now closes at a new time of 9 pm ET.
Awakening Together Internet Broadcast: Listen Live on AT Radio
Please read quotes 989-992 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. Here is the last quote:
Love is boundless.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Today’s message cannot be understood by the mind, so if you are identified with mind when you read today’s message, you will not be able to follow its clarity. It might be helpful to practice awareness-watching-awareness before reading today’s message in order to break the attachment to mind and read from a place of Self-realization.
The Self does not experience pain. It does not experience mental pain, emotional pain or physical pain. It is completely beyond pain. The only thing that experiences pain is the mind (attention on thought).
When you believe that you experience pain, you are identified with the mind. Awareness as attention has projected itself into thought and imagines itself to be thought. It is like watching virtual reality from what appears to be within virtual reality; therefore, appearing to experience virtual reality, although virtual reality can never be actually experienced, and you can’t actually be in a virtual reality.
When Ramana Maharshi’s body was being eaten up by sarcoma prior to his death, the body was filled with pain. Ramana asked his devotees to move his body carefully, because of the pain. When asked about his experience of pain, he explained that the Jnani (enlightened one) experiences pain as if it is a dream.
Today’s reading explains the same phenomenon this way:
“You are the true Self, who is constant and changeless and sees the passing of all experience from a deep abidance within itself.”
In other words, Ramana saw the pain in the body and asked his devotees to move it carefully in the same way that you may be aware of the pain in a hurt kitten’s body and ask a person who is moving the kitten to move it carefully. You do not experience the kitten’s pain, but you have compassion for it. Ramama did not experience the body’s pain, but he had compassion for it.
Ramana’s compassion for the body wasn’t any different than his compassion for the world. He saw the pain and understood that it was experienced as real, but he did not experience pain from his place of abidance.
Just as the Self does not experience pain, the Self does not require purification. It has never been anything but pure, so the idea of purifying the Self is ridiculous. Also, the mind cannot be purified. The mind is the illusion that it is. All one can do is see that the mind does not exist and that s/he is not the mind.
So, what is the purpose of purification?
Purification is not the process of changing or improving the mind, which is what many people mistake it for. Purification is the process of seeing that the mind is not real and the mind is not what I am. When one awakens from the delusion that the mind is me, purification is no longer necessary, because one has awakened to purity (pure truth). The false isn’t believed anymore.
In the apparent process of awakening, one may feel like s/he is changing or improving the mind. However, what is really happening is this:
One is starting to see, “I am not the mind.” Therefore, one is starting to disregard the mind’s chatter and act based on wisdom instead of mind. That is not changing or improving the mind. The mind remains the same. That is disengaging from the mind.
“I am not what I think I am”
is an important realization.
As long as you think
you are what you think
you will not let go of the obstacle,
which is your thinking.
Realizing you are beyond
the limited,
the limited thoughts you hold
allows you to lovingly release
and this opens your vision
to the whole.
~From our Holy Spirit
Rev. Saina Fernandez guides a group of committed students through year 1 of Gentle Healing who would like to make consistent, gentle progress toward genuine peace, joy, and love. This group meets weekly on Thursdays at 6-8 pm ET and all members are committed to specific assignments and practices between group meetings.
Please note: it may be necessary to download the audio to listen to it fully.
Homework for next week:
