Regina’s Tip for Lesson 9

The three most recent workbook lessons are “I see only the past,” “My mind is preoccupied by past thoughts,” and today’s lesson, “I see nothing as it is now.” These statements are true because of the decisions we make about what we see and experience. We make unevaluated decisions all of the time, and then we experience the world through those decisions. That means we aren’t experiencing a person, a thing, or a situation as it is. Instead, we experience our past decisions about that person, thing or situation.

You can see this for yourself by paying attention to your experience. For example:

If you decide you don’t like a certain kind of person—for example, someone who talks a lot, or someone of a particular race, religion or political leaning—what experience do you have when you meet someone of that type?

If you decide that certain behaviors are unacceptable—such as being drunk, swearing or talking loudly in public—what experience do you have when someone does that?

If you decide it shouldn’t be as hot or as cold as it is outside today, how do you experience today’s weather?

If you decide that it’s bad to eat certain foods, how do you experience yourself when you eat them?

It takes very little looking to realize there is a direct relationship between the decisions you’ve made in the past and the way you experience things now. What you see and experience now is the effect of your past decisions.

Homework for this week

1. Homework Assignment A: ACIM Workbook Lessons 8-14
2. Homework Assignment B: Read NTI Romans Chapters 1-7 (p261-270.)
   1. Do not read all at once. Read a little each day contemplatively. No need to read the Bible.
   2. Explore the reading through journaling. Journal clarity, questions, confusion, resistance, willingness, etc.

What is the Ego?

Our special theme says, “To know reality is not to see the ego and it thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in them entails.”

Yesterday I wrote, “People often wonder how enlightened masters, who claim to see no world, appear to us as everyday people with everyday lives.” Next, I shared a story about Nisargadatta when a questioner accused him of seeing a world and having a body by saying, “I see you smoking!”

Today, I would like to share a little more about how it’s possible for us to see a master in a body when the master is not aware of having a body.

On this topic, Bernadette Roberts wrote:

…permanent ecstasy appears incompatible with continued earthly existence. … But if the senses could remain perfectly functional or awake during ecstasy, the world of ordinary life could go on as usual, only without self or consciousness. So perfect ecstasy is the ability of the senses to remain awake and perfectly functional in the absence of consciousness. …

Thus one of the imperceptible changes that takes place between the beginning and the end of the unitive state [the real world] is the increasing ability of the senses to stand alone and not be affected by any change in consciousness or any change in the self-experience. … “pure sensory perception” becomes increasingly important and trustworthy; also, ecstasy or the suspension of consciousness becomes increasingly more perfect, more natural and everyday—though not permanent. So the path that lies ahead once we come to the unitive state will ultimately bring about the separation of these two different systems—namely, consciousness and the senses. The purpose of this separation is to enable the senses to remain awake and functional once the system of consciousness has fallen away. …

In other words, part of the transition period that we call the real world is learning to abide in reality without being attached to the body, which enables the body to continue being moved without an ‘I’ to move it!

As Michael Langford explains in his book, Manonasa:

When the illusory body called Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “I am not aware of the body or the world,” he is referring to the Self. … Nisargadatta did not say that the body is not aware of the world. Nisargadatta did not say that the body now talking is not aware of the world. He said, “I am not aware of the body and the world.”

Or as Nisargadatta said:

Do not be misled by my eating and smoking, reading and talking. My mind is not here, my life is not here. Your world, of desires and their fulfilments, of fears and their escapes, is definitely not my world. I do not even perceive it, except through what you tell me about it. It is your private dream world and my only reaction to it is to ask you to stop dreaming.

I am affected only by my thoughts.

The prayer in today’s lesson says:

Your plan is sure, my Father,—only Yours. All other plans will fail. And I will have thoughts that will frighten me, until I learn that You have given me the only Thought that leads me to salvation. Mine alone will fail, and lead me nowhere. But the Thought You gave me promises to lead me home, because it holds Your promise to Your Son.

In the tip for Lesson 327, I wrote:

The God that we call on for guidance is not some distant deity, knowledge or awareness. We are the one that took the outward journey from truth to our present attachment to manifestation, and every step of that journey is recorded in our divine unconscious. Therefore, the reverse of each step is known in our own divine unconscious. Our own unconscious knows the way! The communication that comes from this unconscious knowing is what I call spiritual intuition.

We can see how true this statement is when we look at Bernadette’s explanation about how the senses learn to stay awake without consciousness. Our divine unconsciousness remembers how we detached from ecstasy and the knowledge of our Self in order to attach to a body as what we are. Therefore, it knows we need to reverse that action by learning to abide in ecstasy again. Every step of our way home will be laid out for us. We simply need to trust and take the step that we need to take right now!

Please use today to contemplate how perfectly we are led. Use today as an opportunity to increase trust in guidance that comes from your own spiritual intuition. Realize it will move you to the next step only when you are ready for that next step. In fact, when writing about the stage of learning to detach from the body and abide in ecstasy, Bernadette wrote:

Until preparation is right, ecstasy keeps returning to the self or consciousness. … The gauge is an increasing ability to ‘bear the vision’ as it were, without the senses going down or without everyday life and its normal behavior coming to a standstill.

So God takes its last step to awaken us beyond consciousness when we are ready for that step, after an effective transition period, which the Course calls “the real world.” What a loving process!

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Regina’s Tip for Lesson 8

My favorite paragraph from today’s lesson is this one:

The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything.

Pause for a moment, and notice now is now. Then continue to pause, and see if you can find the end of now. Is there an actual boundary where now ends and becomes the past or the future?

If you look at your direct experience, you’ll notice that now never ends. It has no boundary. It is eternal.

Now doesn’t move. Experience comes and goes, just as thoughts come and go, but now is eternally unmoving and present.

Now is real. Yet most people miss now entirely because they are thinking about the past or imagining the future. An important key to true perception is learning to recognize the reality of now, and to give attention to this present fact.

Do you have a clock or watch with a second hand? If so, try this exercise:

Watch the second hand as it moves around the face of the watch or clock. Notice the second-hand moves, but now doesn’t move. Keep your attention focused on the unmoving now as you watch the second hand. Notice now is eternally present and absolutely real.

Homework for this week

1. Homework Assignment A: ACIM Workbook Lessons 8-14
2. Homework Assignment B: Read NTI Romans Chapters 1-7 (p261-270.)
   1. Do not read all at once. Read a little each day contemplatively. No need to read the Bible.
   2. Explore the reading through journaling. Journal clarity, questions, confusion, resistance, willingness, etc.

What is the Ego?

Our special theme says, “To know reality is not to see the ego and it thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in them entails.”

In short, to know reality is not to see the ego or its effects. They do not exist in reality.

Here is how Michael Langford describes reality:

“Describing the final Reality as Infinite-Eternal-Awareness-Love-Bliss is the closest one can come in words. In the final Reality, which is the only Reality, there are no humans, no animals, no planets, no stars and no earth.

The final reality is infinite-awareness aware only of infinite awareness. In all of eternity the final Reality has never been aware of anything other than infinite-awareness-love-bliss. Awareness-love-bliss is not three, it is one. In all of eternity the final Reality, which is the true Self, has never been aware of a human, or a world or suffering of any kind. Humans, animals, earth, planets stars and other realms, entities, places, time, dimensions, and that which almost every word in the dictionary point towards is part of the ego dream. When the ego comes to its final end, the dream ends and almost everything that the words in the dictionary point towards disappears.

When the ego comes to its final end, what remains is Infinite-Eternal-Awareness-Love-Bliss and nothing ever reappears. The planets, the stars, and almost everything that the words in a dictionary point towards never reappear. They were all part of the dream. Upon awakening, the dream disappears.”

That’s what our special theme teaches too.

People often wonder how enlightened masters, who claim to see no world, appear to us as everyday people with everyday lives. This is one of my favorite stories about that question from the book “I AM THAT, Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.”

Questioner: You said the body defines the outer self. Since you have a body, do you have also an outer self?

Nisargdatta: I would, were I attached to the body and take it to be myself.

Questioner: But you are aware of it and attend to its needs.

Nisargdatta: The contrary is nearer to truth — the body knows me and is aware of my needs. But neither is really so. This body appears in your mind; in my mind nothing is.

Questioner: Do you mean to say you are quite unconscious of having a body?

Nisargdatta: On the contrary, I am conscious of not having a body.

Questioner: I see you smoking!

Nisargdatta: Exactly so. You see me smoking. Find out for yourself how did you come to see me smoking, and you will easily realise that it is your ‘I-am-the-body’ state of mind that is responsible for this ‘I- see-you-smoking’ idea.

Questioner: There is the body and there is myself. I know the body. Apart from it, what am l?

Nisargdatta: There is no ‘I’ apart from the body, nor the world. The three appear and disappear together. At the root is the sense ‘I am’. Go beyond it. The idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ is merely an antidote to the idea ‘I-am-the-body,’ which is false. What is that ‘I am’? Unless you know yourself, what else can you know?

Questioner: From what you say I conclude that without the body there can be no liberation. If the idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ leads to liberation, the presence of the body is essential.

Nisargdatta: Quite right. Without the body, how can the idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ come into being? The idea ‘I-am-free’ is as false as the idea ‘I-am-in-bondage’. Find out the ‘I am’ common to both and go beyond.

Nisargadatta’s instructions are clear. Find the ‘I am’ and go beyond. That is how we come to not “see the ego and it thoughts, its works, its acts,” and etcetera.

My sinlessness protects me from all harm.

In today’s workbook lesson, our “sinlessness” is our true eternal nature. The lesson says, “My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever,… And only happiness can be my state, for only happiness is given me. What must I do to know all this is mine? I must accept the atonement for myself and nothing more.”

Today is a good opportunity to review the tip from Lesson 139, I will accept the atonement for myself. As you review that tip, keep Nisargadatta’s instructions in mind: Find the ‘I am’ and go beyond. Eternal life, which is infinite awareness, is beyond the sense of ‘I am.

Lesson 139

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