A universal assembly for true discernment
When I did this workbook lesson again years later, it was as if I could remember all of my previous judgments about walls and TVs and trashcans, etc.
For example, I remembered thinking that white walls are boring and different color walls are better. I also remembered being disappointed in a friend’s taste when she built a new house and had all of the walls painted white. I remembered judging people for wanting 65” or 75” TVs, thinking they are too big and unnecessary, but I also remembered judging some smaller TVs as being too small. I remembered thinking trash cans should be inexpensive—after all, they’re just trash cans—and judging one friend for wanting a $65 stainless steel trash can for her kitchen.
Workbook Lesson 17 reminds me of the reading from NTI Luke 12, which said:
“Whenever you look at anything with the body’s eyes, there are thoughts in your mind about that thing. If you look at a chair, for example, you may think it is pretty, worn out, available, desired, not desired, clean, dirty, etc., etc. The thoughts that come into your mind seem automatic, without any awareness or evaluation on your part. You may make judgments about the chair based on your thoughts, and you may choose to sit there or not sit there based on your judgment. But you never look at, evaluate or question the thought you hold about the chair, and that is only a chair.
“The process that you call thinking, of which you are mostly unaware, goes on within your mind regarding everything in your world. You make unevaluated judgments about the work you do, the relationships you have, the pastimes you choose, and the person you think of as yourself. These unevaluated judgments define everything and everyone within your world. And they are allowed within your mind without your awareness, your questioning, or your evaluation.”
Workbook Lesson 17 and NTI Luke 12 remind us that we see no neutral things because we see and experience everything through the filter of our thoughts, which are not neutral.
What Is a Miracle?
Our special theme says, “Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. And each is laid before the Word of God, upon the universal altar to Creator and creation in the light of perfect purity and endless joy.”
This reminds me of the opening of the Book of John in the Bible. It says:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. …
Once I looked up the word “word” in the dictionary to try to get some clarity on this passage from John. As I read the definitions of “word,” they seemed not to apply until I came across this definition:
an utterance
I looked up “utterance,” and found it to be the expression of an idea.
With that, I looked back at the opening paragraph of the Book of John and saw this:
In the beginning was an utterance—an idea expressed—and the utterance was with God, which is life, and the utterance was inseparable from life. It was with life in the beginning. Through utterance combined with life all things were made manifest; without utterance nothing was made that has been made. In the utterance was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. …
From that understanding of this scripture, I came up with this formula:
Life + Utterance = Manifestation
To make this simple, let me express it this way:
When we give expression to an idea by believing it and giving attention to it, it becomes infused with the life of our awareness, and it becomes manifest in some way. This is universal, divine law. It is the Third Principle of God, the creative principle.
With this little bit of clarity, let’s look back at today’s selection from our special theme:
Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. And each is laid before the Word of God, upon the universal altar to Creator and creation in the light of perfect purity and endless joy.
We’ve already seen that the “lily of forgiveness” is our choice to abide as unaffectedness, which is also the Loving All Method. Each time we abide as unaffected—each time we practice or live the Loving All Method—the expression of that choice becomes a silent utterance fed into the creative principle (the Word of God, the universal altar to Creator and creation) and results in a perfectly pure and joyous manifestation. These manifestations are often called Grace.
Grace shows up in the world in innumerable ways, in any way that is helpful in the moment. Grace is usually seen as a miracle, but Grace is actually the effect of the miracle.
The miracle is the shift in perception from seeing one’s self as affected to seeing one’s self as unaffected. This miracle, the lily of forgiveness, fed into the creative principle, creates its likeness in manifestation, because all ideas manifested through the creative principle manifest in the likeness of themselves.
Today the peace of God envelops me, And I forget all things except His Love.
Today’s workbook lesson says, “Father, I wake today with miracles correcting my perception of all things. … I do not seek the things of time, and so I will not look upon them. What I seek today transcends all laws of time and things perceived in time. I would forget all things except Your Love. I would abide in You, and know no laws except Your law of love.”
In other words, today we do not seek to fix, change, get or avoid things or circumstances in the world, because we know that judgment, as well as thought and action based on judgment, goes into the creative principle and creates like itself—more to fix, change, get or avoid.
Instead, we awake today with the realization of how divine law works. We understand that our safety and the world’s safety lies in our unaffectedness. It lies in living the Loving All Method, because when the safety of the Loving All Method is fed into the creative principle, it manifests like itself, thereby manifesting true safety as Grace.
Our way of being is a more important choice than most humans ever begin to imagine. The miracle today is that we accept this as true, and because we accept this as true, we put more effort into being the Loving All Method.
Be Loving All.
See yourself as that,
instead of as a person.
Being Loving All is forgetting “all things except God’s Love.”
Meditation Options
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
Thoughts of Awakening # 320
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
*If you don’t already have it, order The Seven Steps to Awakening. That will be our text for Year 3.
If you pay close attention to the thoughts that come into the mind, you’ll find attack, defense, guilt, blame, unworthiness, anxiousness, fear, envy, desire, righteousness, victimization, judgment, regrets, manipulation, selfishness and hate, to name a few. If you look at the world, you’ll find these qualities there too. That’s because these thoughts come from the ego’s illusion and these thoughts make the ego’s illusion. It’s a loop of cause and effect. Thought causes manifestation, and one type of manifestation is thought, so thoughts of a certain type create more thoughts of the same type.
Today’s workbook lesson says:
Every thought you have contributes to truth or to illusion; either it extends the truth or it multiplies illusions.
NTI Ephesians says something similar. It says:
Watch the thoughts carefully. Do not choose those which you would not deliver, knowing all that is delivered can be given back to you.
Today’s workbook lesson is a beginning step towards realizing that you do not want to believe every thought your mind receives, because many of those thoughts do not serve you, nor do they serve the world.
What is a miracle?
Our special theme says, “Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love.”
Others may not notice our miracles—that is, others may not notice our individual shifts in perception. That’s because each one sees through the filter of his/her mind. If we tell them about our shifts, they may not believe us or they may quickly forget. And that is as it is.
That’s why our special theme refers to the “silent miracle of love.” It is a miracle that is free to go unnoticed by everyone except the one who is the medium of the miracle. The one who abides as the unaffected Self to the point that a shift occurs is aware of the miracle. He/she is also aware of the universality of the miracle, although the miracle may have effects the he/she will never be aware of.
This means that we cannot look outside ourselves for evidence of a miracle or for understanding of what has occurred. The miracle is ours to behold as it has been revealed to us, while also knowing a miracle could never belong to us alone.
I offer only miracles today, For I would have them returned to me.
When we offer miracles, we do not offer corrections for the problems we see in the world. We offer miracles by living the Loving All Method. It is as simple as that. If something is to change in form as an effect of our miracles—well, we leave that to the unpredictability of the creative principle. Outward effects are not our concern. Forgiveness is our only function.
In the Bible, Jesus said, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matthew 7:1, 2)
He also said, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6:38)
These two scriptures point to the same universal law—we receive whatever we give. As today’s workbook lesson says:
Father, a miracle reflects Your gifts to me, Your Son. And every one I give returns to me, reminding me the law of love is universal.
As we live from the unaffected Self, we become unaffected. In this way, we transcend (or overcome) the world. This can be reflected in how we see a situation, and it can be reflected in the situation itself. A situation can change as a result of our way of being. However, it is never for us to decide that a situation must change, because by deciding that is so, we have also decided that we are affected by that situation. By that very decision, we have judged instead of abiding as unaffected.
The subtlety of this teaching is confusing to the mind. When this teaching is explained, people ask questions like, “So, if my husband is beating me, I just continue to let him do that?” Or, “If someone is abusing an animal, do we just stand by and watch?”
As Chapter 12 of The Direct Means to Eternal Bliss explains:
The Loving All Method refers only to your emotions. No changes in your external behavior are required.
For example: if a vase falls and you would normally try and catch it, you will also try and catch the vase while you are practicing the Loving All Method. You do not allow the vase to fall because you are loving the falling.
If someone were to try to punch you in the face and if you would normally duck, you will also duck while practicing the Loving All Method. The fact that you are loving the fact that someone is trying to punch you does not mean you will not duck. You also love the fact that you are ducking to avoid being punched.
The Loving All Method is about emotional acceptance. The Loving All Method is not about changing your actions.
Interestingly, when people ask about the abusive husband or the abused animal, they are usually not in those situations, they are only thinking about them. Thinking is trying to confuse a teaching that can be quite simple. If you forget about hypothetical examples and simply live in the moment, the simplicity of the teaching reveals itself. You will know what to do in each moment, and you will do it.
Today, as you live the Loving All Method, let doing remain in the moment instead of in thinking. Let the day unfold naturally, including your doing, as you concentrate on loving, accepting or allowing, whichever is your highest possibility in the moment.
Meditation Options
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.
Thoughts of Awakening # 319
“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 thoughts you hold
allows you to lovingly release
the limited,
and this opens your vision
to the whole.
From our Holy Spirit
*If you don’t already have it, order The Seven Steps to Awakening. That will be our text for Year 3.
In this program Anne Blanchard facilitates one of the core practices of the Awakening Together community. This program provides an opportunity to be in community with others who will to find that place of no-place, that attention to our natural attentiveness, that innate humanness that can often be overlooked. Anne Blanchard facilitates this program on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 7:30 – 8:30 am ET/5:30-6:30 am MT by leading participants through gently guided Being Aware of Awareness meditation. All are warmly welcome.
This evening (or tomorrow morning):
Read NTI Matthew 10 (v17-20).
Tomorrow:
Review the following sentence at least 4 times during the day:
