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Gentle Healing 2 ~ Day 289 – NTI Revelation 19, (v11-16)-end

December 23, 2020

Yesterday we saw that mental chatter is the greatest of all human addictions, and so the greatest of all desires is necessary to set yourself free from mental chatter.

As your desire for awakening increases, mental chatter catches on to your desire for awakening. It uses that, too, to try and save itself.

If you give mental chatter your attention, it will distort your desire for awakening into another desire that is similar, but not the same. It might distort it into the desire to attract people or circumstances. It might distort it into the desire to get approving attention from others. It might distort it into the desire to be a spiritual teacher. It might distort it into the desire to be part of a spiritual community. It might distort it into the desire to write and sell spiritual books, to sing spiritual songs, to be seen as spiritual by others, to buy spiritual objects, to go to spiritual places, to have a close relationship with an enlightened person or to feel spiritually special in some other way.

Today’s reading says:

True desire is known by its desire for only one thing.

True desire desires truth. It is immune to deception. If you remain fully focused on the desire for truth, you will not be sidetracked by the myriad of distortions that the ego can come up with. Because mental chatter is highly deceiving, you need to remain fully aware of what you desire in every moment.

Today’s reading says:

The only way to pass through the tests of the thinking mind, without being led astray by false desire, is to remain fully focused on true desire now. There is no other way.

You do not need to read from Revelation in the Bible today. You can go directly to the reading in NTI.

Thoughts of Awakening # 289

All that you see
with the body’s eyes
cannot harm you.
There is no reason to be afraid.

There is also no reason
to look on the world without love.
It is but Light
play-acting that it is not Light.

Have compassion for the ones
who do not know,
and choose for yourself
to remember.

~From our Holy Spirit

Homework for this week

Practice daily meditation for 30-60 minutes each day.
Practice the “Loving All” Method.
Thoughts of Awakening, 288-294
Read NTI Revelation 19-22. Read the Bible excerpt whenever there is a Bible icon next to the verses in NTI Revelation.

In the Company of Truth with Helen Hamilton 12-23-20

December 23, 2020

This bi-monthly program is Awakening Together’s In the Company of Truth with Helen Hamilton that airs on the second and fourth Wednesday monthly from 3-4 pm ET. Helen’s core message is that the Realization of the True Self is possible for everyone, no matter what background you may have as long as you want it more than anything else. After all, we are only returning to our natural state, to what we already are. We are only coming to live as that Truth consciously.

Having reached a place of total peace, love and joy, Helen has dedicated her life to helping others wake up too. The Truth is here and now and accessible to all. Helen will offer her teachings in this bi-weekly Satsang to help you Realize and BE the Self you already are.

For more information about Helen and to access her teachings, visit her website: www.HelenHamilton.org.

Listen to the Audio

YouTube Video

Being Aware of Awareness Meditation 12-23-2020

December 23, 2020

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.

Listen to the Recording

Gentle Healing Year 1 Tip For Lesson 314

December 22, 2020

What is the Last Judgment?

Our special theme makes each of the following statements:

… perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
The final judgment … sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and wholly purposeless.
Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away to nothingness …

The three previous statements refer to perception, the world and bodies as having completed their mission and no longer having a purpose. Now they are useless. These statements are worth contemplating.

If perception’s mission is done, doesn’t that mean it had a mission? If the world and bodies “now are useless,” wasn’t there once a purpose and use for them?

Since none of us are at the point of the last judgment, we are each still at the point where perception has a mission, the world has a purpose and bodies are useful.

What are perception, the world and bodies for?

Let writing (or speaking into a recorder) lead you to the answer to this question. Start by writing the answer that feels true to you. Write to the boundary of your knowledge, and then wait to see what truth comes from beyond the boundary of your current knowledge.

I seek a future different from the past.

Today’s lesson says, “From new perception of the world there comes a future very different from the past. The future now is recognized as but the extension of the present.”

This means that prior to purification and the completion of merging, our future is based on our past.

How is that possible?

It’s possible because we hold onto the past and to what we think we learned from the past, and then we see the current moment through that lens. Since we are seeing with a filter based on the past, that perception is fed into the creation principle, which results in a future based on expectations that were derived from the past.

What a mess!

Why should we keep building a future based on past confusion?

It is time to be with the present, now, in a different way, so that our new way of being is fed into the creative principle, which will result in a future different from the past. As the prayer in today’s lesson says, “Father, we were mistaken in the past, and choose to use the present to be free.”

Let’s add a step to our practice of letting go of judgment. Today, practice in this way:

Look when judgment happens.
Silently inquire to discover the past in this current judgment. For example, you might ask, “What idea did I believe in the past that has caused this current judgment?”
Notice the perception of separation that is caused by judgment.
Remember your desire to see without separation or confusion.
Let go of your judgment simply because it conflicts with what you truly want.

Meditation Options

Guided Meditation Audios

YouTube Meditation Playlist

Gentle Healing 2 ~ Day 288 – NTI Revelation 19, (v1,2)-(v10)

December 22, 2020

Step 1– An intense desire for awakening.

Step 2– Seeing through the ‘mask’ of ferociousness (attack, grievance, harshness) to the false beliefs that support and sustain it.

Step 3– Tiring of judgment.

Step 4– Letting go of the belief that life is temporary, which is also letting go of the belief that the body-mind-personality is your reality.

Step 5– Learning to trust all that is as it is.

Step 6– Letting go of perception, which is letting go of thought as me.

Step 7– Giving no meaning to anything the ego says or any experience you have as the ego dies its final death.

Each of the first six steps leads to the seventh step. Ego death is a step in itself, because that is the ego’s last chance to reclaim your attention, and it will likely use anything it can to manipulate you into returning attention to it.

If you can withstand the ego’s final temptations, a change will occur. The habitual connection between attention and mental chatter will collapse, and you will be free to see without seeing through the filter of mental chatter.

The physical world doesn’t change when you are liberated from the mind. It’s your way of seeing that changes. Instead of seeing through judgment and interpretation, you see naturally, which means you see consciousness as consciousness. Without mental chatter directing your actions and reactions, you live through spontaneous inspiration.

Here’s how Jesus described awakened inspired living in the Bible:

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. ~ John 3:8

Using the symbols from Revelation, today’s reading says:

The Sight of Spirit is a choice that you make.
It is the choice to marry the lamb.
For with this choice is innocence known,
and glory is seen through the land.

In this context, innocence isn’t the opposite of guilt. Innocence is the freedom of living through spontaneous inspiration. It is freedom from mental chatter.

Today’s reading recommends that we observe the thinking mind and see how it works. If we do not see our judgments and interpretation clearly, we remain enslaved to mental chatter. We let go of mental chatter when we see that it deceives us.

When we see that chatter deceives us, we can lose interest in it. As long as we believe it protects us, we give it our full attention.

Without the desire to be free of mental chatter, you cannot free yourself from mental chatter. The addiction to mental chatter is strongest of all human addictions. Therefore, the greatest of all desires is necessary to free yourself from mental chatter.

It is as Michael Langford describes in The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss:

Eagerness for liberation must be equal to the eagerness someone who is being held underwater has for trying to rise to the surface. …

Eagerness is another word for the desire for freedom.

How great, how intense is the desire of someone being held underwater trying to rise to the surface. …

Every second his desire to rise to the surface is becoming more and more intense.

Michael Langford also writes:

Another great key is self-honesty. …

Self-honesty means to be 100% honest with your self, all of the time.

Catch your ego using preservation strategies.

Today’s reading makes the same recommendation.

Please read Revelation 19:6-9 in the Bible before reading today’s reading from NTI.

Thoughts of Awakening # 288

Truth is as it is.
To see anything else
that is different
is ego.

Ego can be benign
through the interpretation of Spirit,
but truth is as it is,
and it is never anything different.

~From our Holy Spirit

Homework for this week

Practice daily meditation for 30-60 minutes each day.
Practice the “Loving All” Method.
Thoughts of Awakening, 288-294
Read NTI Revelation 19-22. Read the Bible excerpt whenever there is a Bible icon next to the verses in NTI Revelation.

Mighty Companions ~ 12-13-2020

December 22, 2020

Revs. 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. You can find out more about the Mighty Companions on their website: www.themightycompanions.com

Live in the Sanctuary Sundays at 5pm ET/3 pm MT.

Gentle Healing Year 1 Tip For Lesson 313

December 21, 2020

Our special theme makes each of the following statements:

And this the judgment is in which perception ends.
… perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
… without a function in Christ’s sight, [the world] merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it.

Imagine that you are born with poor eyesight. Your eyesight is so poor, that you often mistake one thing for another, because you cannot see well. One day you realize that the cause of your confusion is poor eyesight, and so you get glasses, which corrects your eyesight. Now you can see clearly. As a result, your confusion also disappears. This is like awakening from ego-consciousness to Christ-consciousness. What both forms of consciousness have in common is a type of seeing. With ego-consciousness, there is poor eyesight, which leads to confusion. With Christ-consciousness there is clear eyesight and clarity. Using this symbol, the final awakening is like having no eyes at all.

In the previous paragraph, “eyes” are a symbol for the sense of self. The poor eyesight is like the wrong sense of self, the idea that you are a person in a world. That leads to a lot of confusion about everything. The corrected eyesight is like the divine sense of self, knowing one’s self as consciousness. There is great clarity and right-mindedness with everything. But the final awakening is no sense of self. It is like no eyes in the previous analogy. There is nothing to see, because there is no sense of self (no eyes) to see it.

This is what the mind cannot imagine. The sense of self cannot imagine the final awakening. That is why the final awakening is fearful to our current sense of self. That is also why there is an intermediate stage between ego and truth, the stage of Christ-consciousness. Although many people misinterpret this stage as the final awakening, it is actually a stage that prepares us for the final awakening. Christ-consciousness could be thought of as a new beginning—the start of a second maturation period.

As NTI says:

The purpose of your life in the fourth phase of living on earth (Christ-consciousness) shall not be different than the purpose at any other time. Only now, in the fourth phase, the distractions have been erased. In letting yourself become an empty shell, you freed yourself from the desire for distraction. Now, in the fourth stage, your focus is complete. Now you know what you want, and you want it wholly.

During the fourth phase, there are no distractions. During the fourth phase, there are no fears. There are no doubts, and there is no feeling of guilt. There is only a knowing of what is true and a life that is the willingness for acceptance

Now let a new perception come to me.

The prayer in today’s lesson says, “Father, there is a vision which beholds all things as sinless, so that fear has gone, and where it was is love invited in.”

The plan for awakening from ego-consciousness to Christ-consciousness, which is a transformation of the sense of self, is gentle. Instead of having the sense of self ripped away from us, which would also end everything we know and believe to be true, there is a gentle transformation to a state of ‘no fear’ first. This state of ‘no fear’ or Christ-consciousness is our current goal. Although it is helpful to know that it is not the end of the path, we do not need to think about the final awakening yet. In fact, we can’t think about it. It is beyond the capability of our imagination. So, we will take one step at a time as we travel from fear and judgment to love and acceptance. That is the journey we are on now.

As we have already learned, as we do our part on this path of awakening, Grace responds to us and does its part. Using the analogy of the caterpillar and butterfly, our part is like building the cocoon; what happens in the cocoon is Grace’s part. However, if we do not do our part—build the cocoon—Grace does not have the means to do its part.

Today, let’s be as earnest as we can be as we continue to surrender our judgments. Here are the steps again:

Look when judgment happens.
Notice the perception of separation that is caused by judgment.
Remember your desire to see without separation.
Let go of your judgment simply because it conflicts with what you truly want.

Meditation Options

Guided Meditation Audios

YouTube Meditation Playlist

Gentle Healing 2 ~ Day 287 – NTI Revelation 18

December 21, 2020

The world is a reflection of the mind. That statement is true in two ways:

The scenes of the world are created through the creative principle based on the believing-attention that consciousness gives to thought.
The scenes of the world are interpreted through the filter of the individual mind.

The world is seen and experienced with clarity when there isn’t mental chatter. Inspiration shines through the mind that is not blocked by mental chatter, and it looks out on a world of miraculous beauty. The things that were important to the mind blocked by chatter, aren’t important to the clear mind. Although the person may still work in the same way and face the same daily challenges, she is happy, because she lives and works amid the spontaneous magnificence of consciousness.

Here’s a story that illustrates this:

St. Francis traveled from Assisi to Rome to get the Pope’s approval, so that his order of friars would be legitimized in the eyes of the church. This could have been seen as an important journey, one that could end in success or failure. In fact, it could have gone very wrong. Francis could have been arrested as a heretic and thrown into the Vatican’s dungeon.

One who listened to mental chatter would have had quite a bit to worry about on this trip. And once the approval was given, one focused on mental chatter might have big plans to focus on and talk about with his fellow travelers. You may be able to imagine what this journey could have been like if mental chatter was active in Francis’ mind.

Here’s a poem by St. Francis, which illuminates his experience of that journey to and from Rome:

A bird took flight.
And a flower in a field whistled at me
as I passed.

I drank from a stream of clear water.
And at night, the sky untied her hair
and I fell asleep clutching a tress of God’s.

When I returned from Rome, all said,
“Tell us the great news,”
and with great excitement I did:

“A flower in a field whistled,
and at night the sky untied her hair and
I fell asleep clutching
a sacred tress …”

Francis lived in the moment—in the miracle.

Please read Revelation 18:1-3 in the Bible before reading today’s reading in NTI.

Thoughts of Awakening # 287

The world is not real.
It is but Light
play-acting not to be Light.

Does Light become upset with Light?
Does Light fear the reflection of itself?

When one notices fear or upset,
one can also observe he does not recognize Light.
Then one may relax in joy,
remembering that Light is simply play-acting
not to be Light.

~From our Holy Spirit

Homework for this week

Practice daily meditation for 30-60 minutes each day.
Practice the “Loving All” Method.
Thoughts of Awakening, 281-287
Read NTI Revelation 12-18. Read the Bible excerpt whenever there is a Bible icon next to the verses in NTI Revelation. Do the journaling exercises mentioned in NTI Revelation 13.

Being Aware of Awareness Meditation 12-21-2020

December 21, 2020

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Direct Path Meditation with Michael DeForbes~ 12/20/20

December 21, 2020

Michael Deforbes led a meditation on Sunday, December 20, 2020, during the weekly program There Is Only One. Enjoy this meditation, which is based on the teachings of Helen Hamilton and direct path teachings.

Listen to the Audio