A universal assembly for true discernment
Please read and contemplate quotes #301-304 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. This is the last quote today:
I am offering you exactly what you need — awakening.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Note: If desired, watch all of Acts 13 from the Visual Bible movie, Acts.
Today’s reading tells us what to expect when we genuinely choose intuitive wisdom as our guide. Some of the things to expect include:
A unique path to follow. No two people follow the exact same path to awakening. One of the greatest mistakes people make is trying to copy another person’s way instead of tuning within to discern the guidance that is given specifically for him or her to follow.
Resistance. When you decide to let intuitive wisdom be your guide, an important decision has been made. However, it is unlikely that all value you’ve placed on thinking will immediately fall away. It will more likely fall away over time as your trust in intuitive wisdom increases. You will experience resistance to the degree that you still value thinking. As your trust and dependence on intuitive wisdom increases, resistance weakens.
To need a strong spiritual aspiration. As we have learned before, our spiritual aspiration is the most important factor on our path of awakening. As we go further along the path, this doesn’t become less true; it becomes truer.
To need trust and patience. The mind has its own expectations about how the spiritual path and guidance should unfold for you, but if the spiritual path and guidance unfolded in the way the mind expected, it would only reinforce the mind. Therefore, you can expect it to be different than what you expect. Because it will not be what you imagine, you will need trust and patience in order to let it unfold in its own way.
To let go of how you see. As you follow guidance, you will at first see things as you have always seen them. For example, you may see other people at fault for something that troubles you. All wrong-minded seeing comes from the wrong-mind, so you will need to learn to turn to guidance when you see with the wrong-mind. Ask guidance to help you see where you still believe the wrong-mind. Ask guidance to help you see with the right-mind. Be willing to journal and practice inquiry on your wrong-minded perceptions.
To let others be as they are. Just as you were free to value thinking as your guide until you changed your mind, others are free to value thinking as their guide. Others are free to believe their wrong-minded perceptions. Others are free to act from ignorance. When you respect their freedom, you respect truth, because our truth is life-awareness-freedom.
This list tells us what we can expect when we choose intuitive wisdom as our authority in the world.
Note: I recommend printing this tip for future reference.
Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.
There is a flow to all things,
a harmony in action,
which you recognize when you let go
and let yourself experience the flow.
What do you let go of?
Let go of who you think you are,
and what you think you need to be happy.
Let go of how you think things
are supposed to be.
Let go of stories,
which cover up and hide
the perfection of the flow.
~From our Holy Spirit
Michael Deforbes leads a weekly meditation during the weekly program “There Is Only One.” His meditations are inspired by non-dual teachings, direct path teachings, and Buddhist philosophy. With each meditation, Michael takes us on a journey through a non-dual perspective via teachers and traditions such as Helen Hamilton, Scott Kiloby, and Pema Chodron’s Tonglen practice. Each week a new and different meditation is shared but with the Universal theme of encountering the direct experience of Truth as The One.
Enjoy this most recent meditation!
Day 164 AssignmentThis evening (or tomorrow morning):
Listen to this 31-minute teaching by Regina Dawn Akers from NTI Luke.
Tomorrow:
(You may always select another meditation video from this playlist.)
Please read and contemplate quotes #297-300 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. This is the last quote today:
The moment you allow your imagination to spin, it at once spins out a universe. It is not at all as you imagine and I am not bound by your imaginings.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Note: If desired, watch all of Acts 12 from the Visual Bible movie, Acts.
Yesterday’s reading said:
The words of the Holy Spirit are final. … They are the only authority in a world that seems absent of Authority, and so it is this authority that is given.
Today’s reading says:
The authority of the world is confusion and illusion, which is no authority at all. … This is why you have the Holy Spirit.
The “authority of the world” is thinking. The “Holy Spirit” is intuitive wisdom.
The world values thinking as its guide, but as today’s reading points out, and as it’s been pointed out to us many times before, thinking is the problem, not the answer.
Have you observed your own thinking processes enough to realize that thinking is the cause of your suffering, or do you still think that thinking will resolve your problems and lead you to freedom?
If you think that thinking will resolve your problems and lead you to freedom, intuitive wisdom rests silently within you, so silently that you may not know it is there. It doesn’t interfere with your attraction to thinking as long as thinking is what you value.
However, if you are beginning to see that thinking is the problem, wisdom is ready to replace thinking. It is ready to be your guide.
You have to make the decision.
Do you still value your mind above everything else?
Do you want your spiritual aspiration or do you want to protect your mind’s image of itself?
What do you choose as your authority?
Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.
Forget who you think you are
and what you think you need
in order to be happy.
Forget the rules
that tell you how to be good and worthy
in your eyes
and in the eyes of others.
Forget the stories
that tell you what you see
and how to understand it.
Forget everything,
and just be.
This is the way of remembering.
~From our Holy Spirit
We are pleased to announce a new program on Tuesday mornings from 9 to 11 AM ET entitled, Heart Explorations: Embracing The Whole Show. This program will be facilitated by Anne Blanchard.
During our time together, we will explore what it takes to live from an open, undefended heart. Naturally, any true exploration of living from the heart necessarily entails taking a deep and sustained look at what prevents us from keeping our hearts open. Grounded in the knowledge that the essence of us, our true nature, is the very lovingness within us all, we will explore how to recognize and release egoic energies by cultivating open-hearted awareness practices which support us in directly experiencing our true Self. By leaning into willingness, steeped in self-honesty, and with a consistent dash of courage, we endeavor to open to whatever life brings, as it brings it, that is, on life’s terms. In so doing, we trust that everything – absolutely everything – is here for us to use for healing, for purification, and for learning to live from the heart. We look forward to supporting each other in our individual explorations of how we truly embrace the entirety of this show we call life.
This group endeavor will begin by contemplating Helen Hamilton’s first book, Dissolving the Ego, which Helen describes as a culmination of all the ways she found to tune into the Self, to recognize the Self, to know directly for herself what she really is. This program will be big on direct experience and lighter on “homework.” While Dissolving the Ego is a relatively short book, we will nonetheless contemplate it slowly and deliberately by reviewing just one chapter each week before class, which works out to roughly one page per day, five days a week.
Given that Helen Hamilton will be featured during the first week of Awakening Together’s Fall Retreat in October, it feels like nothing short of divine timing that we will be three-quarters of the way through her book by that time. And we won’t just be studying her work, we will be living it. Our emphasis will be on sharing how the application of the pointings plays out in our lives each week. What was most helpful? What was noticed to be a particular pitfall? Where and when did awareness come back online and give us an “aha!” moment or incisive seeing? In sum, we will share the fullness of our own exploration of how living from our hearts is coming to fruition.
Day 163 AssignmentThis evening (or tomorrow morning):
Watch the following 22-minute video.
Tomorrow:
Please read and contemplate quotes #293-296 in The Seven Steps to Awakening with your inner teacher. This is the last quote today:
You are neither the body nor in the body–there is no such thing as body. You have grievously misunderstood yourself; to understand rightly — investigate.
Note: The next Daily Contemplation will be available tomorrow morning after 2am ET at this link.
Note: If desired, watch all of Acts 11 from the Visual Bible movie, Acts.
Today’s reading is about authority. It is a simple reading, clear and easy to understand, unless you have an “authority problem.” If you do, today’s reading might bring up resistance in you.
It’s interesting that the word “authority” has “author” as its basis. One who feels resistance to authority might be able to see today’s reading differently by focusing on “author” in the word “authority.” Ask, “Which do I want to be the author of my script, ego or Spirit?”
As we learned when we studied The Code, everything is part of a script. Every thought that comes into your mind comes from the script (the code). The only real choice that you have as awareness is the choice regarding what you will give your attention to. Through this choice and the creative principle, more script (code) is written.
If you give attention to the ego thoughts that come into the mind, ego and its script are emphasized and reprocessed by the creative principle. If you give attention to intuitive wisdom, wisdom and its script are emphasized and reprocessed.
What do you want emphasized and reprocessed in your experience?
Choose that as your author-ity. By choosing that as your authority, and by allowing it to be your authority, you will discover where that script leads.
Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.
Practice is the heart of this teaching.
~From our Holy Spirit
