Rev. Dawn 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.

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Part 1

Part 2

Homework for the week:

1. Homework Assignment A: ACIM Workbook Lessons 8-14 and read Regina’s tips that come out on the daily update. Here’s a direct link to Regina’s tips that are on the website: Click Here
2. Homework Assignment B: Read NTI Romans Chapters 1-7 (p261-270.)
   • Do not read all at once. Read a little each day contemplatively. No need to read the Bible.
   • Explore the reading through journaling. Journal clarity, questions, confusion, resistance, willingness, etc.

Regina’s Tip for Lesson 7

Today’s lesson begins by saying, “This idea is particularly difficult to believe at first.”

In yesterday’s tip, we reviewed the instructions from the Introduction, which reminded us that we do not need to believe the Workbook lessons; we merely need to apply them.

Whenever we come across a Workbook lesson that feels particularly difficult for us to accept, it might be helpful to review this paragraph from The Happy Learner (Chapter 4, Section II in ACIM):

“The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there. Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need to learn. Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. And you will love it because you will understand it.

Homework for the week:

1. Homework Assignment A: ACIM Workbook Lessons 1-7
   1. First, read the lesson all the way through and then practice the lesson according to its instructions
   2. If you have done the ACIM workbook before, you may add what you hear and feel to the exercises for Lessons 1-3
   3. As you do exercises 1-3, you may notice the meaning you have given to things. Just notice and continue with the exercise
   4. Tip for Lesson 4: Sometimes people have trouble remembering to do the workbook lesson when it is to be done more than twice per day. They get on with their day and forget all about the lesson. Here’s a tip: When you finish the workbook lesson 4 in the morning, make a decision about when you will do it next. After you do the lesson the second time, make a decision about when to do it again. After the third time, make a decision about when to do it for the fourth time. If you make a conscious decision about when you will do the exercise next, you are less likely to forget to do it.
2. Homework Assignment B: Read NTI Luke, Chapters 12 (p151-155), and Chapters 16-17 (p161-167).
   1. Do not read all at once. Read a little each day contemplatively.
   2. Explore the reading through journaling. Journal clarity, questions, confusion, resistance, willingness, etc.
   3. If there is a Bible icon before a verse reference, read those verses from the Bible before reading that interpretation from NTI
   4. Listen to Adyashanti video in Gentle Healing Playlist: Click Here to Watch

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 suffering, the price for faith in it is so immense that crucifixion of the Son of God is offered daily at its darkened shrine, and blood must flow before the altar where its sickly followers prepare to die.”

EW!  That’s not a very pretty description.

Yet, that is a reasonable description of the ego, although it is one the ego wants us to deny.

Let review a few things Michael Langford has to say about the ego in The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss:

“For thousands of years humans have been stuck in the same pool of inward unsolved problems. Thousands of years ago humans had the problems of suffering, sorrow, anger, fear, violence, conning, cheating, lying, death, etc. Today humans have the problems of suffering, sorrow, anger, fear, violence, conning, cheating, lying, death, etc. All of these problems have a single cause.

The ego controls thinking and the ego does not like to be exposed.

The ego is thought. The ego is thinking.

Living from thought instead of living from Awareness is the cause of all human suffering.

The ego is the cause of all disease, death, war, fear, anger and violence.

All humans are slaves and the imposter “self” is their master.”

It’s okay. A new year of Gentle Healing is about to begin. We can do something to help heal the world, if we want.

Forgiveness lets me know that minds are joined.

Our lesson says, “Forgiveness is the means appointed for perception’s ending. Knowledge is restored after perception first is changed, and then gives way entirely to what remains forever past its highest reach.”

Today, let’s contemplate our desire to free the world of its suffering by letting go of the cause of suffering in our own minds.

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Rev. Helen Avery is an Awakening Together Ordained Minister. She shares weekly in our Sanctuary with a half-hour of a heart-felt deep diving into truth, love, and awareness. This candid sharing is a time when Helen explores different modalities and teachings with various non-dual teachers and how the real life application of those particular teachings are currently showing up in her life. She shares about experiences from her path of awakening including the demonstration of how to utilize these helpful processes and spiritual tools. In her most recent Awakening journey she discusses radical truth and wisdom from teachers such as Mooji and Helen Hamilton.

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