Neutrality. Switzerland comes to mind. How many times has someone said to you, “Why can’t we become like Switzerland and just live without all the conflict?” To be neutral you have to not take sides, not divide yourself up, not see bad or good but the truth in both sides and lets face it that is not how most of us have learned to be.
To relinquish effort however is actually what we must do. Loving without conditions means acknowledging both sides without judgment. It means forgiving ourselves where we see judgment. Most interesting I learned in this chapter that it means accepting that I do feel both sides of almost everything and it is that fight within me that keeps me in constant battle and unable to be at peace.In relinquishing effort I am not choosing and living one side over the other, I am accepting both sides within myself, feeling them and then letting them be fixed by a power higher than myself simply because if I feel broken I can not fix myself. Feeling being the important word here because I am exactly how I should be. My “broken” is only my confusion in not realizing that I am whole only when I accept all my feelings and let the larger Whole find my place within It.
Nothing is good or bad, wise or stupid… those are only judgments we lay upon a situation. A situation which in itself is neutral. The wind will blow, the earth will shake, the waters will rise and fall whether I am there or not. People have lessons they are learning in ways I think I understand or not but I am not here to understand their lessons. I am here to accept each moment for it being here, acknowledge it for being without weighing it down in my own mind for its meaning. It is here because it is here to show me love and the way home. It is an opportunity to en joy a bit of home while still on the journey.
Food porn. I belong to a prayer group and one of the lessons suggested substituting porn for addiction. This opened a door for me. Porn suggests godlessness. Addiction needs God’s help. Porn is taking an addiction and not only blocking the healing but going into the darkness. The moment I said “food porn”, a door opened. I realized that I have been blocking the love that I was trying so hard to give to myself. My eating no longer was seen as an attempt to abuse my body but to love it. I remembered my first moments after birth- discomfort, cold, warmth and FOOD. I remembered those evenings in the past when the family sat in front of the tv with a large bowl of ice cream to watch “Lassie” on Sunday night. In an instant, curling up on the couch with a bowl of sugar coated popcorn was seen as a way I was trying so hard to love myself. Of course I immediately wished the large bowl of ice cream during the “Lassie” watching had been a healthy bowl of veggies, but it wasn’t and the sugar/ carb combination was engraved as love food. Now I know better. At least in my head I get that healthy eating means healthy body but in my wiring love will always be those few moments in this world that I first experienced and the warm and food. The foods bringing back that experience were the ones that now are known to be the least healthy for that body. Last night when I en joyed the sweet popcorn I loved me. I am learning to consciously love myself. Porn doesn’t survive in consciousness. I’m letting God into my thoughts and to clean out the crud so to speak. I believe that although I will always be addicted to love through food I will learn to love myself in a healthy way with foods that not only love for the moment but love continuously. The porn side of the addiction will give way to a high to love myself with good quality. Open the door. He is the doorway to change.
The chapter that bears the title. Love without conditions. I have reread for days now. Trying to absorb the words into being. Finally a dream during the night that gave me hope. I was back in high school only at the age I am now. Major scene at PE and a basketball game where I am playing horribly but the kids seem to not notice. The PE teacher is supportive. After the game I can not remember my locker number or the combination. The kids are helpful and respectful. The teacher is going out of her way to help. Scene at the lunch room. I am trying to heat water for chamomile tea. Lots of burners but they are broken or I do not know how to turn them on. No one notices yet I feel like I am being obviously pitiful. I finally just start drinking the water which is warm and tasteful. I find my daughter, Sarah, at a table with her boyfriend and do not want to interfere with their time but she welcomes me over and tells me how proud she is of me. I do not understand why since I have done nothing but she tells me she really is. I believe that when we dream all of the characters in the dream are aspects of ourselves. I am inclined to believe that in this dream I as the major character is fumbling in the earth school. I see myself as not doing well or little but within me are the minor characters. Those who just watch, those who support and those who are backing me up and showing love. No matter what the experiences of my life within myself remains a constant love that is always there regardless of what is happening in the outside world. It is a love without conditions. This love support is only asking that I show up.
I am once again on my life’s major yo-yo of gaining and losing weight. This chapter spoke to that and all experiences in my life. When it comes to weight gain I make myself into a victim of the experience. Be it cravings or lack of exercise how many times is it an outside event that I look at as the cause? The choice to bring the outside in and how it is looked at is however made within. Isn’t this true with all experiences?I am listening to the wrong voice. Instead of taking time to relax, accept the situation and then listening to the deep inner voice of God, I am allowing snapshot beliefs and instant reactions to be taken over by the ego and controlling my actions. Then the experience becomes either a blessing or a punishment within the confines of my mind. I am controlling in an out of control matter and whether the effect is positive or negative I am not learning what the experience came to teach.So whether the next lesson is how to handle the food craving or bring world peace, first I will take a deep breath and take the time to BE in the present. Only here can I really listen and hear. Only then can I find the intent behind the feeling, put it into thought and discover the action that is right for this moment.
This chapt
er after read upon read gave way to the truth in me that this blog is my journey into myself. A sharing of my experience not to “thrust it upon others” but to share. I have sat in this nest of mine for almost a year now, consciously and unconsciously trying to find the reason Bobby left and I just watched it unfold. I can no longer look for the answers in the gone Bobby. The answers for me are here with me in my nest, within me. I watched the demise of the physical relationship believing deep within me that communicating my feelings would do more harm than him leaving. Problem is that I still have to deal with my feelings and the person who could have helped me get them to the surface quicker is gone. I now can see that he was a mirror into my mind and I watched him leave because I was afraid of what I was seeing. Until I face myself, the ghost remains.
Ferrini says that we are all good. The bad we think we see is really fear within ourselves, our own thoughts. This world is built on those thoughts both good and bad, judgments, conditions, validations, etc. We created the good vs. the bad. To God there are no opposites only to us. I guess maybe when Adam and Eve took that bite of the apple they all of a sudden realized that they had the creative gene and if I had been Eve I think my first thought having taken something that I wasn’t ready for would have been what if I cannot do this? Had they waited until the time when God would have given them this gift they would have known that they were created in His image and therefore not able to not do this. But stumbling into it with their immature creative side, they were scared. Immediately the computer thinking brain set up a scale for them to create with and poof!!! Judgment, right and wrong, valid and invalid was made and they stood naked. From that moment on we became makers not creators and the world as we know it was made. God in his all knowing knew we have to learn our way back home. This earth is our school. We make our lessons and He give us the answers to return to Him if we listen or we mutter through one lesson after another trying to find that A on a scale made out of the original fear.So what is my lesson with Bobby? I’m sure there are many to be unearthed. The one I got this chapter was that we are both good. There is nothing to find in going over the time we were together to pin this on either one of us. I will not find the lesson I am here to answer by trying to figure out why he left me. My answer lies in why I didn’t express my feeling when he was here. What buttons he pushed in my mind that scared me to avoid intimacy and back away from him. What was that fear? That I am not good enough; smart enough; lovable… All the lies that keep the scale leaning away from making me good. The scale made by us to help us create as God and ended up getting us here making a world that separates us from each other and our God. It’s time to accept our goodness. Our thinking is in error.
Pollyanna gets a heads up and the devil walks away.
This is it. The work begins. A Course of Miracles prayer goes something like where would You have me go; what would You have me do; what would You have me say and to who. This chapter asks that we start where we are, with what we have and who is there. It is not the what so much as the intention with which we do/ be. Our work is to intent to love without expectation and to let go of any attachment to the outcome.
Well doesn’t that clear up why I am where I am and how I got here. It gives rhyme to reason and a clean slate to live life aware of the truth that what I intent on my most inner thought level will appear before me in my outer vision. It enforces the truth that nothing of this world is permanent and our attempts to build the foundations on sand have the obvious outcome.
It is not easy for me to admit to some of my inner thoughts. I don’t like some of my inner thinking. I have lived with the belief that if I just give the world my rose colored thoughts that they will cover up and keep the not so rosy hidden. Well, how has that worked for me? The hidden are not hidden… they seep out and do the damage that I think they would do. A relationship is ended not because it didn’t have the positive intentions but because the negative intents were disregarded and allowed to seep into the air and because they weren’t spoken, talked out, torn apart and digested thoroughly they crucified the form of the relationship that could have healed them. So the healing had to take place in a different way. Intentions will be dealt with one way or another until they are love in the now. Our greatest fears will be brought into the light either by choice or because they can not remain hidden. This is our work to heal and heal we will, our only choice is do we ask for His help now or later and do we follow through.
Sum this chapter up: Ask, then clear your mind of what the answer will look like and accept what comes… Miracle given.Ferrini starts out giving a very cool definition that “Every Miracle is a demonstration of the fact that love is stronger than fear.” Our homework for this chapter is to become aware of our fears, our fear based thinking. To our surprise he doesn’t ask us to replace these thoughts with positive, loving ones… no sugar coating… we are to feel them thoroughly and when ready ask God for help. In doing this we recognizing that there is a power greater than the fear and we then ask that our thoughts be changed. His prayer:
“Father, I am willing to change my mind about the situation. Please help me see this, not through the eyes of fear, but as You see it. Help me see this with equal love for myself and all others.”
The Miracle will come when three factors are present that we know that the need is there, we ask sincerely and we are willing to receive it. Here’s the tricky part, the Miracle will be given but we many times ask for a preconceived outcome. This is where the clearing of the mind comes in. Let God to answer the prayer. Accept what happens next even if it doesn’t seem like a Miracle to you. It is the one you need.
